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Equity of outcome, family units & the West

Posted by Dissident on Saturday, January 07 2023 at 6:40:57PM
In reply to Re: Conflicting use of some political terms posted by Eeyore on Sunday, January 01 2023 at 11:49:57PM

"Would I be correct or not, to assume you mean **economic equity** under the banner of that term? I consider the latter to be one of those crazy woke ideas you mentioned. In other words, a level playing field is not enough to satisfy them. They want to simply take from these people to give to those people and artificially create equality. What was the Vonnegut novel possibly mocking Soviet times where the better ballerinas had to tie weights around themselves in order to have equity among all the ballerinas? (Yeah, I could look it up but I'd rather be truthful about an old idea in my head than pretend.) Other ideas coming to mind under that banner are reparations and basing degrees or certifications for high-paying careers on race (where Asians seem to lose out the most in the US in that regard)."

Let me reassure you on this! By economic democracy, I DO NOT mean equality of outcome, or what may better be called forced equality of outcome--meaning that (to partly use the example you provided) that everyone who wants to become a ballerina should be "pushed" to succeed even if they lack the proper skill; or that literally anyone who wants to become a doctor should be allowed to become a doctor by lowering the requirements for those with less skill than those who are truly good, or penalizing the truly good somehow to benefit those lacking in skills to make the grade in this particular vocation, or lowering the requirements for those of a certain race or gender, or of any identity group considered "underrepresented", etc.

Classic Marxists/socialists fully understand that *not everyone is equal when it comes to specific talent, or willingness to work at a certain vocation*. Someone who lacks the skill to become a ballerina should not be able to do it professionally (doing it just for recreational purposes would be fine, of course). Those who cannot make the grade as a doctor should not be allowed to become a doctor (and in this case, not be allowed to do it as a hobby either!). Similarly, those who may have the skill but not the desire, and so would do a so-so job due to lack of interest, should likewise not be "pushed" to become a ballerina or doctor simply because they might meet a race-based or gender-based etc quota.

What classic Marxists/socialists instead support is *equality of material compensation*. Meaning, people should be given jobs where they shine in terms of both natural talent and desire to do a good job when it comes to contributing to useful work, regardless of what that talent or job should be. This is providing economic security for everyone and is NOT akin to "equity" or lowering standards for any given vocation to meet an identity-based quota.

And I do not support arguments that some jobs are "more important" than others and thus should receive better material compensation. What your talent set happens to be is due to the luck of the dice, and no one should be held back or benefit unduly because of luck. The current system under-compensates numerous important fields and over-compensates for others. Moreover, it often well compensates useless and even anti-social but profitable jobs such as corporate lawyers, munitions, debt collection, banking, and politicians, all of whom would be useless if not for a system that runs on money. This is not to get into a debate with my Libertarian friends here about whether or not a system that runs on money is best, but simply making a point about how classic Marxists view things to distinguish them from the woke. Social democrats would likely agree with us on much of us, but they are not against a system based on money and profit per se, just a regulated version of it.

Hence, to be clear, we DO NOT agree that women or people of color should be "pushed" into certain fields, have their requirements lowered from white men in the same jobs (though in some cases, such as the police, women simply need to be trained differently, to compensate for their typically lesser upper body strength by capitalizing on their typically greater speed and maneuverability), or that people with high skill and dedication should be denied training or job placement because they are from an identity group that does not meet a quota. To compensate for the fact that women are traditionally smaller earners than men because they more often gravitate to lower paid jobs, those latter jobs should simply be made to compensate them a lot better.

Hence, equality of material compensation in no way resembles forced equality of outcome in terms of inherently unequal factors like talent and dedication. I understand that people on the Right would likely also argue against equality of material compensation, but that is a *whole separate argument* from the ones we tend to stand united against the Wokes, i.e., regressive leftists, about. So, while my friends on the Right and even many social democrats are free to disagree, of course, I ask them not to conflate the two things as being the same, because they are not.

Now, in regards to reparations. I do not support them, because they are divisive and giving to one group and not another only inflames racial/ethnic animosity. What the government should do instead is a living wage job guarantee for everyone, not put people from Group A ahead of Group B and simply invert injustices of the past. That is a social democratic solution within the current system; an actual economic democracy would eliminate economic injustice the way I described above, full material compensation for everyone, and the idea of reparations would make no sense whatsoever.

"I fear we already may not be on the same page, because I doubt you believe some people should be getting paid more than others, regardless of their careers, but I am hoping we can keep this topic focused around kids and teens and what is being done to them, whatever the correct political labels for it may be."

*thumbs up*

"To be honest, I don't think the Left vs. Right dichotomy is even at play anymore, because I believe the power players are above all of them and have both sides in their back pocket now. You don't last long if you are exposing plots of banking families and the entities they now own. Just look at Elon's fortune and businesses suddenly crumbling after exposing what powerful agencies were committing treason behind the scenes on Twitter (and naturally, all the other major social media sites). I already knew that was going on. I said it here many times."

Yup, which is why many civil libertarians on the Right, despite still being in basic support of some variant of capitalism, are beginning to become highly uncomfortable with the results produced by the system, and at the very least oppose the obscene levels of power that the system bestows upon the few who control everything. Granted the Libertarians believe the acquisition of personal financial power under the market system on an enormous scale is a form of freedom (in contrast to classic Marxists), they are beginning to oppose how much this disparity of power is beginning to heavily encroach upon their support for civil liberties and opposition to war. They are rapidly become uncomfortable bedfellows.

"Again, whether climate change is real or not, it has been decided that it will be the vehicle used to remove freedoms of all kinds within a coming dystopic technocratic tyranny. If they get their way, our money is no longer going to be physical. It is going to be digital and ephemeral, tied to nothing. It WILL be tied to a coming social credit score. Do something which resists or supplants their power? Your ability to buy and sell simply gets turned off. Now how do you think people like you and I will fare in that coming reality? We're anonymous here, provided we actually are. That's going to change when quantum computing enters the scene, which is not very far off."

This is already beginning to happen, as people are having Paypal and Stripe cancel their accounts for expressing unpopular opinions, including those that are anti-Woke or against the war in Ukraine (and likely the next big war after that). How long will it be before Venmo and CashApp starts doing the same?


Don't get me wrong, I like the convenience of digital money, but as commerce becomes increasingly digitized, it's clear the powers that be are using that against us to stifle dissent. This is another major reason why my Libertarian and right-wing friends will never get me to support a system based on money even though I understand and respect the fact that they probably always will. If we can at least agree on combating the abuses of money when it comes to suppressing freedom of speech, then I'll content myself with that. This is often a difficult thing for Libertarians, who can find themselves torn between supporting big social media forums doing whatever they want because they are privately owned but lamenting their enormous ability to censor unpopular opinions and spread propaganda posing as facts, especially when Libertarians themselves are often the targets and victims of this due to their opposition to Wokeness and war.


"There something between you and I which could be the crux of where we might disagree (if I understand your *classic* Marxist ideology), revolves around the traditional family unit (male father, female mother, child). I think we (may?) already agree about biology as you said (I am in agreement with an argument claiming there is really only sex (male/female), and that gender was mostly a mid-20th century concept meant to deconstruct sex and sex rolls)."

Agreed. I have no problem acknowledging the existence of alternate gender identities, and that gender dysphoria is a real condition, but I do not believe that this actually means that biological gender one is born with is just a cultural construct, or that trans women are real women in an anatomical sense. I simply accept that they *feel* like women on the inside and thus cannot abide with identifying as males in terms of emotions, aesthetics, and cultural expectations etc. That is fine, but it doesn't change their biological circumstances; if it did, they would not require cosmetic surgery to remove a penis and hormone injections (or further surgery) to give them breasts, etc., to make themselves look more closely female. For such individuals, I hope the day comes where medical science advances to the point where their own DNA can be used to clone actual, fully functional female (or male) bodies for them and their consciousness uploaded into it. That day is not today, however.

"This is not to disparage people who honestly feel what they feel about their identity. They have always existed after all. On the other hand, let's none of us be naive that deconstructing the family unit (possibly in favor of the state taking over these rolls in some ideologies?), tends to be a fast track toward the destruction of a civil society in order to either rebuild it, or to leave it in ruins purposely. I don't know where you stand on any of this, and I'd like to know."

Classic Marxists/socialists take no position on what the expected family unit should be and has no desire to either preserve or 'destroy' any particular family unit, including the nuclear family unit. That unit, in my observation, works fine for some couples and kids, but most certainly not for others. I think extended or communal family units can also work, but likely not for all. I believe that ultimately there should be no enforced cultural expectations of what a family unit should or shouldn't be, but multiple choices to suit different people. There is much about the nuclear family unit I can appreciate, and much about it I do not like, which all comes down to individual mileage.

As both a classic socialist and a youth liberationist, I would not support any idea of forcing kids to live in a nuclear family unit, or any other type of family unit, if they were not happy in it. I would also not try to forcibly end the existence of the unit, though in a youth liberated society the nuclear family unit would have to be a more democratic and less insular version of the nuclear family we know today, which remains hierarchical and more secretive and divorced from the community at large than ever before. In both a projected future economic democracy or a youth liberated society (regardless of its economic structure) there would be no possible way to *enforce the existence of any particular family unit on everybody*. It would all come down to individual choices, and whatever ends up working best for a more democratic system would prevail or not based on its own merits.

In short my view is that the nuclear family unit is great for those individuals of either gender or age groups who it works well for, but not great for those individuals whom it does not. It also depends largely on what type of parents you get saddled with, either by accident of birth or by an oppressive state making the decision And overall, it has become too tyrannical and insular in the wake of the moral panics under the current system to go unopposed in the particular variation we know of today. In other words, it should not be up to the state or anyone other than the individuals in society as to what type of family unit they should live under.


"I think we agree on some things. I'm sure we've both either read or heard that kids and teens claiming to be "trans" is up 20-fold in just the last few years. Do you believe that is just organic, or the result of having the "safe space" to "come out" and tell people? Because, I certainly don't."

I have no doubt that being more free to come out has something to do with it, but I have little doubt that the huge explosion in numbers is a combination of a very popular trend widely spread by the likes of TikTok et al for disaffected youths to jump on and the result of Woke educators and people belonging to other institutions imposing the aesthetic and attempting to "manufacture" as many of them as possible in opposition to what they call "heteronormitivity", i.e., the biological fact that the majority of people will always be heterosexual and identify as not only one of the two natural genders but also the gender they are "assigned" at birth.

As I've noted many times before, natural sexual desire and sexual behavior are often two very different things, with the latter heavily influenced by societal forces. This is why in decades past, you had numerous gay and bi people pretending to be straight, with the "straight" identity imposed on them; and in today's culture you have numerous straight people pretending to be at least bi or 'non-binary', with the 'LGBT' or 'non-binary' identities imposed on them. Some Woke activists are pushing the 'non-binary' identity most heavily on both naturally straight and naturally gay students and colleagues.

"I may or may not be able to locate the studies, but when a girl declares that she is trans and feels like a boy, suddenly a bunch of her close friends declare the same. Considering the historic small number of people who admitted to being trans in the past, it looks far more like a calculated effort by teachers to wreak havoc. Get enough people believing they are "trans", and most of them are never going to make children of their own. This lends itself to the downfall of a society (and its system), so here again, I don't understand where your classic Marxism would be in disagreement with that when its goal is to tear down a Capitalist system."

Tearing down a capitalist system has nothing whatever to do with imposing any type of gender or sexual "norm" of any sort. People who are naturally straight without gender dysphoria would be allowed to be themselves, and people who were naturally otherwise would be allowed to be themselves. Nothing more, and nothing less. I am frankly not sure how you may (if I'm reading this correctly) identify support for people being what they naturally are somehow being a capitalist phenomenon when the Woke agenda was not only born under the capitalist system but fully supported by the great majority of capitalists. The goal of capitalists is to preserve the system, not preserve any specific type of sexual identity. As long as those at the top still get to choose, what those below that tier are expected to do depends on what works best for the system in any given decade. The Woke attitude and modern day liberalism are very authoritarian and inimical to freedom of choice and expression, and that is not any type of system that I would support or identify with. Unfortunately, many on the Right attempt to identify classic Marxists with Wokeism because they dislike both. That is intellectual dishonesty, and it confuses many others (which is why I'm glad you are asking me for clarity).

In short, however, the "Neo-Marxism" of the Woke has nothing to do with classic Marxism, which is about class solidarity and economic democracy, i.e., the workers running the system themselves without any boss class of any sort. It does not support any aspect of what has come to be called the 'Culture Wars'.

"As I said, I am still trying to understand where you stand on things all these years later and after so many big events in the world. I have posted for years that I don't want to tear the traditional family apart. I just want to agitate for a role for us within that framework, and I believe it could be done."

In short, we disagree on whether or not the traditional family unit should be actively supported or whether or not it's inherently a good thing rather than that depending upon various factors. I agitate for a better system that works for everyone, and I do not think any one particular family unit will accomplish that for everyone. Hence, I support the idea of a future youth liberated society, one where MAPs would also be free and judged on their individual merits rather than near-universally hated, to ultimately decide what family unit works best. That day is not here yet, but I suspect a variety of family units would become the norm. and that the future nuclear family unit will become more democratic in form.

That's where I stand on not only the traditional nuclear family unit of the West, but the idea of "tradition" in general. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it isn't, and whether it is or not depends on a variety of both internal and external factors.

I should also say this, regarding the idea of either supporting or vilifying the West. I do neither of the two. I believe that the West, like the East, has both good and bad qualities, some from each which should be universally adopted and some from each that should be consigned to the dust bin of history. I appreciate the technological progress brought by the West, but I also remind you that the moral panics of today, including the pedo panic, is a product of the West. So if you ask me whether I support or oppose the West, I would respond thusly: "That is a rather simplistic question. It depends upon which aspect of the West we're talking about. The same would go for the East".

Regarding your last paragraph, worry not, you did a much better job with much less initial errors than I typically do! :D

Regarding your disappointment and frustration that I wasn't around when those discussions you mentioned were going on, I again apologize but I felt the same when you happened to be gone for just the two days required to entirely miss participation in my epic exchange with the Woke anti Lemondolphin in a thread still quite visible on the front page of the board :P



Dissident






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