Feminism's Faustian Bargain and the Failure of Reaction

It is all but certain now that the ideological descendants of the Frankfurt critical theorists and the French postmodernists, once such critics of capitalism - have entered into unholy alliance with corporate power to oust conservative and reactionary voices from the public sphere and ultimately remake western civilization in their own image.

But this is a Faustian bargain, an arrangement worthy of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. For these so called progressives have become dependent on corporate power and the structure thereof to do this. Christ had the wisdom and foresight to resist Satan's temptations of worldly power. Today's social justice crowd, like the Soviet socialists and medieval church before them, do not. They'll throw themselves at Old Nick's cloven feet faster than a Scandinavian black metal band. The progressives will not hesitate to use conglomerate media to hoist feminist and other "socially progressive" ideologies on the populace and fire and blacklist those who oppose them.

But wasn't resistance to this kind of power the purpose of critical theory to begin with?

The feminist and SJW types are so fond of reminding us white dudes that America's wealth was purchased at the expense of native genocide, black slavery, wars for imperialism abroad and ongoing discrimination at home. But as the voices with which feminism's indictment are made louder by state, corporate and academic leverage, does not their complicity and even their shared guilt for these attrocities likewise grow? As they integrate themselves into the power structure, telling themselves that it's okay when they do it because they intend to use that power structure in a subversive manner, do they not also partake in it sins, past and present, whether they would admit or accept this or not? Is the platform from which they remind us of our privilege not built on the same black slavery and native genocide they're condemning?

It's not sexism and racism when college feminists or New York Times columnists do it. Yeah, sure. Power plus prejudice and all of that. Where have we heard that kind of thinking before? The USSR can't be oppressive, because oppression is the means by which one class exploits another and the great Soviet motherland, being a socialist state and therefore controlled by "the workers" has no exploitation, and is on the road to becoming a classless society. I'd doubt that the millions who died in the gulags would forgive the Kremlin its self serving sophistry and moral rationalizing. Though guilty of far lesser evils (so far) the feminist establishment in the culture industry of today is every bit as guilty of the same kind of egocentric arrogance and hypocrisy.

Keep trying to lie to the devil, sisters. I'm sure he might even start believing you one of these days.

Thus are the existing political categories rendered obsolete. The right who rails against "cultural Marxism" does so oblivious to the fact that it is capitalist mechanisms that are being used to "destroy the west" as they put it. As if deindustrialization and financial global capital didn't already do that under the rubric of neoliberal laissez faire and free trade, ideas conservatives and reactionaries not so long ago championed. Most still do. The devil does not give up his souls easily.

This corporate leftism, for it's part, cannot succeed. You do not foster "diversity" by grinding everyone into cogs in a corporate machine, nor are "social justice" and "inclusiveness" achieved by the creation of a cubicled underclass, kept as subservient by feminist theory and diversity today as the industrial proletariat of 150 years ago were kept docile and obedient by religion and nationalism.

Critical theory began by casting western civilization as a kind of foundation for capitalism. It is ironic, then, that critical theory itself, or at least its offshoots in the critical race theory and women's studies departments should acquire the same kind of hegemony that Gramsci originally ascribed to the cultural trappings of western capitalism. And it works to the same end - to uphold capitalism, not undermine it. "Diversity" "feminism" and "multiculturalism" translated well into "untapped markets" in corporate boardrooms across the world. They weren't going to neglect that potential out of some abstract loyalty to a culture, race, nation or religion. And all that woke talk and anti-racist pretense added up to a whole lot of manufactured consent for most of the left, most all of whom were more than happy to turn away from socialism if that's what would make the women happy. All and all, a good deal for capital. As always. Donald Trump would be proud.

It is untrammeled capitalism, not "cultural Marxism" that's responsible for all the social trends that the neoreactionaries and paleoconservatives don't like. Marx himself explains, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. 

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. 

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. 

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. 

Blame Marx all you want, neoreactionaries and paleocons, for your declining birth rates and rising rates of immigration and out of wedlock birth. But shooting the messenger, which is what attacking Marx boils down to in these culture war debates, isn't going to help your cause any. Likewise, there are no "cuckservatives." Conservatism was never about western civilization. It was, and continues to be, about capital. Reactionaries were defeated by feminism and multiculturalism, but only because the progressives managed to align themselves with the interests of global capital. But if it's any consolation to to the far right, the progressives have done this at the expense of whatever they once stood for. In that sense, today's feminist progressivism and yesterday's religious reactionaries are very much like. Mammon is a jealous master, as the saying goes.

Whatever he may have been wrong about, all of this shows how right Marx was when he attached foundational importance to economic relations and modes of production, and culture was seen as being eventually derived from that. Not the other way around.

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