Let me clarify, I think both those statements ARE TRUE, but I feel like there's some caveats. Like, if you're a 100% Herero masculine man who doesn't have much empathy for others, the patriarchy probably kinda rocks. I hate cooking and cleaning personally and would love if a robot could do it all for me, but I can see why a less moral man would be fine with just having a woman do it for them.
Same with racism, sure it's used to divide the working class, but that divide is facilitated in part by giving the more privileged workers more goodies, and some people REALLY love those goodies.
Now sure we can tell people "things would be better under socialism!" But let's be honest here, things would be better under FALGSC, and FALGSC is farther off than many of us would like to admit. Even if we pulled off global socialism tomorrow there's probably at least a 100 years or so of "transitional period" before we get to a socialism that works that good that we'll have replicators and shit. In that period, I think the more privileged sectors of the working class are probably gonna experience some belt tightening, and they may not be happy with that. Sure, your grandkids (or maybe great grandkids) are gonna be doing great but I don't think Bob the Union Truck-driver is gonna be happy about losing his jetski and his wife getting shoes and not making him steaks in the kitchen anymore.
Mind you, I'm not a Maoist Third Worldist, I think there are workers in the imperial core for whom socialism is appealing, but I think we kind of need to be honest with the fact it's not like everyone who technically qualifies as a proletarian is gonna reap the same benefits here.
I know this is kind of unfocused and scatter brained but it's just a shower thought I've been having.
A system can give you everything you want and still fuck you up. It certainly doesn't mean that the privileged classes don't have it better than those who are oppressed, but a life of paranoid treat-hoarding is worse than a life lived in community with your fellow humans
For me the issue is, I think there are a lot more shallow materialist people out there than we want to think, for whom the more "spiritual" ways capitalism sucks doesn't really matter to them. I'm alienated, so what? I ain't a poet, just get me my treats!
Those people, if they're already doing well, socialism ain't that appealing to them.
Well yeah there are always going to be individuals who do well no matter how fucked up a system is, their happiness doesn't make it good. Also just because someone is better off than someone else doesn't mean they aren't still both being screwed, even if the first person doesn't recognize it.
Here is a true, and very funny in hindsight story which illustrates one way patriarchy harms men. I observed some blatantly unsafe practices at work and tried to bring the matter up with my supervisor, who berated me and called me a removed . This was a more visible example but it's fundamentally a common trend that of you dont want to take unnecessary risks at work, you are a pussy, and I can't even count the number of times I have seen someone pressured into doing something unsafe and pointless to prove their "manliness" or whatever, from refusing to ask for help when moving or lifting very heavy materials, to just not using basic safety gear such as ear protection or harnesses to just innumerable other dumb things
Yeah patriarchy & racism don't really hurt the oppressing classes in a material way. Usually talk of this type focuses on the, idk, spiritual aspects? Like if you hold these hierarchical views on gender and race you fundamentally see the world in a way that isn't true. It's distorted. So a lot of things don't make sense to you and this keeps you in a fairly frustrated state. Like picture a patriarchal man meeting a woman who is smarter than him, which probably happens pretty often. He immediately has to start jumping through mental hoops to reduce her achievements, or finds some nitpicky way in which she is wrong to "expose" her. It's just a very fraught way to exist. Versus if you're fine with the idea that women are equal to men it doesn't really bother you when you meet a brilliant woman, you're just like "cool I met a smart person" and continue along. Not having to constantly be jockying to justify your position in some imaginary hierarchy is pretty nice.
Yeah patriarchy & racism don't really hurt the oppressing classes in a material way. Usually talk of this type focuses on the, idk, spiritual aspects?
It's not a spiritual aspect that cis men have a lower life expectancy than cis women, it's almost entirely due to materially self-destructive aspects of toxic masculinity. Boys are tought from an early age to treat their bodies as disposable, to accept injury and discomfort, to prove themselves through a callousness towards injury and it shows. Patriarchy has perceptible ideological overreach, but has 100% materialist roots. It is, among other material things, a gendered division of labor. The patriarchal binary does not only unload reproductive labor that is necessary, but does not generate profit on women, who are not only tied to child-raising, but are also overrepresented in necessary, but low-profit nursing and education jobs. It also assigns destructive labor like warfare to the opressor class of men, and being part of that opressor class means you can turn out to be a redshirt at any time. The same holds true to the way men are nudged to embrace self sacrifice in not physically violent positions, how they learn to see it as honorable to perfomatively overwork and overextend themselves while never showing weakness. This disregard for their own wellbeing in the name of being manly and a provider is highly exploitable on a material level, and it very definitely has a health toll. Masculinity in a capitalist system is inherently harmful, it makes men harm others for the sake of the ruling class, and that ability to be a harmer comes with a marked tendency to self harm.
I hate to do the "as a trans woman" thing, but if people have tried to raise you as a boy and completely failed at that because you just do not want to be seen as a man, this shit becomes super fucking obvious. I don't pity men, like i said they're an opressor class, but this is capitalism we're talking about, the deal it offers always sucks if you're not haute bourgeoisie. There's always a catch, that catch is always material so it pays off for the ruling class, and in the case of male privilege that catch is that performing manlyness in a convincing way gives a ton of guys a heart attack before their 50th birthday, or that men are four times as likely to die in a car crash because the way they drive is outright para-suicidal, or that they're three times more likely to drink themselves to death because they've never learned to maintain an emotional support system and so on and so on.
Like, if you're a 100% Herero masculine man who doesn't have much empathy for others, the patriarchy probably kinda rocks.
Idk. Feels like "the game of basketball is great if you're over 6 feet all". Yes, to a degree. But the patriarchy more describes an exclusionary principle than an inclusionary one. If you're the middle daughter of a rich family, you experience a gulf in benefits relative to an eldest son, because of the behaviors and impulses of your clan patriarch. However, if you're the eldest son in a destitute family, there's no inheritance to springboard off of.
Do you really want to be the king of squalor when you could live to serve in paradise?
Same with racism, sure it's used to divide the working class, but that divide is facilitated in part by giving the more privileged workers more goodies, and some people REALLY love those goodies.
Racism is, again, an exclusionary process. As a minority - a native or a migrant or a poc or a religious minority - you're cut out of the running for a position in the hierarchy. But there are plenty of folks who simply lose out on their own merits and never see the benefits of a tightly knit social circle they weren't invited into.
I think the benefits of patriarchy and racist divisions are simply more appealing in a socialist society, as the real divide in these communities is access to common public works. Patriarchy absent access to a corporate ladder or family property, racism absent access to public health care or education or housing, is just poverty couched within the language of liberalism.
Under mid-20th century socialism, a woman will bang her head on the glass ceiling of a patriarchal institutions, as her talents are ignored by free-entry public colleges and influential bureaucracies looking to promote exclusively within the male caste. She can only ever aspire to be middle class. Under mid-20th century capitalism, a woman has no colleges or bureaucracies within which to advance herself on merit and must rely exclusively on her marriage-ability and her ability to influence the senior member of her clan. She can attain the peak of wealth and privilege, so long as she enjoys a male sponsor to hold the figurehead role, but the number of roles available is contracted by the inefficient distribution of resources.
Mind you, I'm not a Maoist Third Worldist, I think there are workers in the imperial core for whom socialism is appealing, but I think we kind of need to be honest with the fact it's not like everyone who technically qualifies as a proletarian is gonna reap the same benefits here.
The fundamental sell of socialism is not that it is a panacea, but that it creates a rising tide that carries all ships. Conservatives will happily call out aspects of socialism that undermine patriarchal structures (most notably, the ability to live outside the care of a male/white patron). But racism and patriarchy can still exist comfortably in a socialist economy, so long as positions within the hierarchy remain monopolized by a given gender or race.
This is a fundamental flaw with "class reductionism", at least in so far as it exposes the social divisions among genders and races that persist even when their fundamental economic needs are all met. But the broad appeal of socialist policy is that - even as a disenfranchised minority - the proletariat will experience a better quality of life by way of more free time, more pleasant accommodations, and fewer economic uncertainties.
This still leaves a higher tier of egalitarianism to strive for. But it does not undermine the appeal of generally improved living standards enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of the population.
Under mid-20th century socialism, a woman will bang her head on the glass ceiling of a patriarchal institutions, as her talents are ignored by free-entry public colleges and influential bureaucracies looking to promote exclusively within the male caste.
Wait, what? The USSR had a lot of women in government and STEM fields. Hoxha promoted women in education and government while aggressively suppressing cultural and religious movements that got in the way of them. One of Mao's most famous quotes is "women hold up half the sky."
The USSR had a lot of women in government and STEM fields.
It had significantly more women than under the prior and subsequent governments, but they were still outnumbered 2:1 at the peak. And virtually none of them made it into senior administrative posts. Yes, you could work as a scientist or engineer, but you'd never lead a factory or a laboratory or rise particularly high in the military.
One of Mao's most famous quotes is "women hold up half the sky."
And yet how many women have held up the Politburo? They continue to drastically lag their male peers at every step of state and private administration.
"the game of basketball is great if you're over 6 feet all".
Well, I mean, if you're also in shape then that statement is kinda true
If you're tall and in shape and you spend half your life training to do the sport, you'll have the opportunity to engage in cut-throat competition with equally talented peers for a tiny handful of positions available in the pro-league. In the same way, being white or male is a leg up. But only in a very marginal sense.
If I have to choose between being tall in a world where my favorite sport is hyper-professionalized and exploitative or being short in which the same sport is recreational and accommodating to all, I'm going with the second one, because it gives me the best opportunity to do what I enjoy rather than a slim chance at being an elite.
I'm totally spitballing. I feel like this is true for white dudes born before 1980. Like ya, I know a lot of men my age who are doing pretty OK. But like, even white dudes who are 30 in the imperial core seem to be struggling.
This is all non-sourced, so please disagree with me.
The friends I have that are struggling even on ostensibly good salaries are astounding.
I think part of the problem is that just to afford the American dream of a house in the suburbs, household income probably needs to top 200k.
So when were they truer? When white dudes could own slaves? When wives couldn't say no?
I don't know that it's really changed recently. I think that the benefits of patriarchy and racism are usually obvious to the oppressors, and the downsides are more subtle and may indeed be outweighed by the upsides. For instance, patriarchy excludes half the possible labor pool from "men's work" and leads to higher salaries in those fields. So there's a material incentive just as straightforward as that which pushed Irish immigrants to bar black workers from jobs. The downsides of patriarchy are things like male loneliness, machismo, (for straight men) struggling to understand the women you're attracted to, etc. Less tangible. This goes double for racism, where some of the downsides can be made invisible through segregation. At least men have to talk to women eventually.
Within the broad groups, there are individuals whose incentives are not the same as the overall class. Among the oppressed groups and the oppressors. Quants making $650k a year do not want socialism even though they sell their labor like you and me. The wives and beneficiaries of presidents and CEOs are ultimately fine with patriarchy (I'm reading Right-Wing Women next). Some men see few benefits from patriarchy; others are YouTube hustle culture PUAs having the time of their lives. Some white people live lives especially uplifted by the oppression of black people (prison industrial complex workers, home flippers, etc), others don't get much material benefit out of it. I guess we have to restrict ourselves to talking about the groups in aggregate, and splitting them up when they become too incoherent.
Lately I've been feeling that the way oppressed groups will throw off their chains is not going to be by convincing their oppressors. It would help to have some men and white people who are allied, but it seems like the prime mover has been / will be building consciousness and collective power within the group to force the oppressors to relent. But this is a rather depressing outlook and I still have a lot of reading to do. Dunno.
Here's how patriarchy hurts me, a middle aged, white, cisgender, married, combat veteran.
My wife runs a small farm. The employees or "employees" are exactly two people she and me. SO, because I try to help her out doing this thing that she loves and has spent 20 years making there are a few things that I always answer "no" to when applying for jobs: No mornings, no graveyard shifts, no Saturdays.
Now I'm not a professional anything so I'm usually applying at grocery stores and hardware stores and the local farm stores for stocking/receiving type jobs when I'm looking for off farm work... and I never hear a peep when I fill out an application or apply for an advertised open position without checking the boxes that mean "I'm always available". The one time I decide to say "fuck it" and just say I'm available at all hours and all days... I get a call back a few weeks later and stumbled into a weird job at the local post office.
So... maybe its purely a fluke... or maybe there seems to be an expectation that I will be infinitely available to work any job and fuck my home life, fuck seeing my wife, fuck my wife having a regular sleep schedule (as my bosses could schedule me for day shifts one week and night shifts the next), fuck me having a regular sleep schedule, etc all because I have a penis.
