Sexual Liberation does not liberate
I want to thank Ari Mendelson for finding and posting this very important 22 minute video on the history of political correctness. And I want to thanks the Free Congress Foundation for making this.
This video is important to the Ruth Institute because it shows the connection between Marxism and the Sexual Revolution. Marxism has failed as an economic ideology, but it’s adherents have not given up. In fact, this video shows that some Marxists realized as early as the 1920’s that capitalism was a successful economic system. Therefore, the working class was not likely to rise up against the capitalist class. (Listen especially around the 6 minute mark.) These Marxist theorists began looking for another class to play the revolutionary role that traditional Marxism had assigned to the working class.
They found the answer to that dilemma in what we would now call the Sexual Revolution. The relationships between men and women are considered another form of class struggle, comparable to workers and capitalists. These members of the Frankfort School developed the idea that gender is a political category, not a biological category. (Listen especially starting at the 8 minute mark, through 10:30, and then again at 16:30 through 19 minutes.)
The Marxist origins of the sexual revolution should be disconcerting to libertarians. The ideology of class struggle does not have any kind of “Invisible Hand” or other automatic mechanism that allows everyone to do whatever they want, and still have everything to work out in the end. Therefore, the sexual revolution ideology is not and cannot be a ‘spontaneous order’ philosophy. It is a philosophy of continuing revolution, which necessarily creates disorder. The state then becomes the agent for creating order out of the chaos.
Libertarianism used to mean limited government. It is coming to mean “I get to do whatever I want.” These two views are not compatible if personal license creates the condition for the expansion of state power and the centralization of society. I believe that this is where the sexual revolution is leading us. I hope this video on the origins of political correctness and the Frankfort School will cause some of my libertarianism-as-license friends to reconsider their position.
Loading ...
I followed a TrackBack to a blogger who was writing about the Daily Kos/Ruth Institute exchange last month. Here is part of what he wrote:
” ‘[Dante] sets forth the fundamental liberal value — the freedom to choose your own destiny’ which is rarely articulated as part of the public debate over abortion.
“To that, I would like to add that the “freedom to choose your own destiny” has historically been an incredibly rare freedom, limited only to the wealthiest. The rich, for example, have always had, and will always have, full, unfettered access to safe abortion on demand, the middle class much less access, while the poor must resort to coathangers and lye. The struggle over abortion rights, in other words, is class warfare, pitting egalitarians against aristocrats. It is no wonder, therefore, that wealthy fiscal conservatives are such enthusiastic proponents of christianists and their efforts to coerce births – or are, at the very least, willing to find common cause with them. They have the same ultimate objectives: preserve and extend the privilege and wealth of upper class whites while limiting privilege and wealth – and freedom – for the rest of us.”
Here we have both “I get to do whatever I want”, and abortion as a subject of Marxist class warfare.
(From http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/more-on-liberal-values-and-ruth.html )
There is a treasure trove of citations for the marxist underpinnings of radical feminsim in this tome by Roman Catholic Manfred Hauke, Women in the Priesthood, available at Google Books.
http://books.google.com/books?id=0qV-zmxTroAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=women+in+the+priesthood&hl=en&ei=2N4PTJTEBeeynAeC9_3HDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
And that’s why people started having casual sex? Because the Frankfurt School told them to?