How can Woke possibly be related to Communism?
I thought Communism was about economics!
If you read my post on woke (as a concept), you’ll have seen how it is a synonym for critical consciousness which means communist radicalisation.
But how can woke possibly relate to communism? Wasn’t communism all about economics - giving working class people better conditions and redistributing wealth? The short answer is no (just look at what those lunatics actually did). You might say that communism was briefly (and superficially) concerned with economic outcomes. However that’s not the foundational belief of communism or any of the related ideologies such as fascism, national socialism (Nazis) or other forms of socialism.
I’ll start off by briefly showing that communism is not specifically concerned with economics. The obvious example, which we’ve talked about before, is Mao’s Cultural Revolution. It wasn’t an economic revolution yet no one disputes that he was a communist.
Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture.
- On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (1959), Mao Zedong (emphasis mine)
At around the same time, Herbert Marcuse became one of the most influential Marxist (communist) thinkers in the West. He taught at Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis and San Diego universities (of course he did). He was a big fan of Mao and was cheering on his Cultural Revolution from the sidelines even when it had become clear it was a bloodbath.
More recently, the break in the unity of the communist orbit, the triumph of the Cuban revolution, Vietnam, and the “cultural revolution” in China have changed this picture. The possibility of constructing socialism on a truly popular base, without the Stalinist bureaucratization and the danger of a nuclear war as the imperialist answer to the emergence of this kind of socialist power, has led to some sort of common interest between the Soviet Union on the one side and the United States on the other.
The body-count doesn’t matter when you’re a communist, it’s all for the greater good! (Also notice how he rationalised the absolute catastrophes and atrocities of communism - by blaming it all on Stalin! It was just that one guy that let the side down. We’ll get it right next time, comrades!)
In the same essay, he articulated the transition of communism from economic materialism and (working) class consciousness (of a majority) to a solidarity movement of minorities with a new consciousness (later to become known as critical consciousness).
But while the image of the libertarian potential of advanced industrial society is repressed (and hated) by the managers of repression and their consumers, it motivates the radical opposition and gives it its strange unorthodox character. Very different from the revolution at previous stages of history, this opposition is directed against the totality of a well-functioning, prosperous society – a protest against its Form – the commodity form of men and things, against the imposition of false values and a false morality. This new consciousness and the instinctual rebellion isolate such opposition from the masses and from the majority of organized labor, the integrated majority, and make for the concentration of radical politics in active minorities, mainly among the young middle-class intelligentsia, and among the ghetto populations. Here, prior to all political strategy and organization, liberation becomes a vital, “biological” need.
In other words annexing more and more unrelated minority groups into one political bloc bound together by critical consciousness. Sounds pretty far fetched. How would they unite all these disparate groups? And they’d need to keep changing the name all the time, it would never work.
From LGBT to LGBTQIA+: The evolving recognition of identity
As society’s understanding of diverse sexual identities and gender expressions has grown more inclusive, so has the acronym used to describe them.
Ok, so they’ve got the name covered. But what about the iconography? That would have to keep changing too. They’d need some kind of ever-expanding banner or flag!
Oh right. Just think about this part - a concentration of radical politics in active minorities, mainly among the young middle-class intelligentsia. Doesn’t this all sound incredibly familiar? This was written over 50 years ago and almost perfectly describes the woke phenomenon we’re seeing today. It’s uncanny.
As one final counter-example to communism being fundamentally economic, let’s revisit our old friend Paulo Freire.
You don’t think I’d forget Paulo do you! He’s openly a communist, loves Mao and Lenin and Lukac but seems much more concerned about Christian spirituality than economics. Which makes his writing seem even more nutty than the other famous communists. But this is why I love him the most!
This Easter, which results in the changing of consciousness, must be existentially experienced. The real Easter is not commemorative rhetoric. It is praxis; it is historical involvement. The old Easter of rhetoric is dead—with no hope of resurrection. It is only in the authenticity of historical praxis that Easter becomes the death that makes life possible. But the bourgeois world view, basically necrophiliac (death-loving) and therefore static, is unable to accept this supremely biophiliac (life-loving) experience of Easter. The bourgeois mentality—which is far more than just a convenient abstraction—kills the profound historical dynamism of Easter and turns it into no more than a date on the calendar.
- The Politics of Education (1985), Paulo Freire (emphasis mine)
(A belated Happy Easter by the way. Notice the emphasised phrases, we’ll reference those later.)
In a sane world, he’d be straight off to the asylum. But in today’s clown world, he’s the most cited and influential education philosopher in history and his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the most cited education textbook in the world. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry (I say this a lot).
Ok, so if communism isn’t about economics then what the hell is it about? Luckily, Mao gives us a hint. Thanks Mao.
Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are "poor and blank". This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.
If you read other communists’ work they all have this same theme. That people, society and the world are like blank sheets of paper that can be drawn (or re-drawn) any way you like. There’s no innate human nature. There are no good or pragmatic reasons for things to be the way they are. Or to be any particular way. There’s no regard to what works and doesn’t work. People, society and the world can be moulded (or transformed) into anything. And if you can make the world any way you want then why not make it the perfect world? All you have to do is overcome the systems of power and oppression that stand in-between you and the utopia.
Once you understand this - that communism is not a theory of economics but is instead a theory of social constructivism then suddenly everything makes a lot more sense. Not only does it explain the original economic materialist form of communism (they imagined capital should be evenly distributed and were willing to do whatever it takes to make it so) but also how it can so easily morph into other forms. After all, if you believe you can make the world any way you imagine then anything and everything is a possibility as far as you’re concerned. In other words there are no limits as it’s total make-believe. And this is at the heart of the woke ideology which takes imagining to a whole new level. In fact, communist literature often uses the word imagination. Here’s just one example.
Paulo represented for those of us who are committed to imagine a world, in his own words, that is less ugly, more beautiful, less discriminatory, more democratic, less dehumanizing, and more humane.
- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (preface (emphasis mine)
Just think about that for a second. Committed to imagine a world. That euphemistically describes the core of communism. You may as well call that a definition. The original communists had different imaginations and limited their dreams to economics. They just didn’t imagine hard enough Not so today.
Boston Children’s Hospital is facing a wave of backlash over its Center for Gender Surgery that performs mastectomies on teenagers as young as 15, as well as since-deleted wording on the hospital's website that claimed teens as young as 17 can get vaginoplasties.
The communist imagination has now turned its attention to gender (I mean why not if you can imagine anything). Men can become women (and vice-versa) and boys can become girls (and vice-versa) so long as enough people believe it. Knowledge is socially constructed (via consensus). And if not enough people believe then they can simply be forced to believe (as you may have noticed recently). I wonder what else they might be imagining?
A private school in Melbourne is reportedly supporting a year eight, non-verbal student in identifying as a cat.
The behaviour is being normalised. Now more and more people are identifying as whatever they want to identify with, including ‘furries’.
Oh great, the communist imagination has also turned its attention to species! Humans can become cats too so long as enough people believe it. Knowledge is socially constructed (via consensus). And if not enough people believe then they can simply be forced to believe. It’s the same old pattern.
Where will this end, you might ask? I think that much is obvious. There is no end. Only a horizon of steadily increasing lunacy. And we’ve circled back to Freire again! But the bourgeois world view, basically necrophiliac (death-loving) and therefore static (from the quote above) equates static to necrophiliac. In other words anything that stabilises is bad and we must keep changing everything, forever. Welcome to the perpetual revolution, comrades!
In other words there are no ends, no limits and no boundaries (not even for knowledge itself). There is no reality. Everything is socially constructed and anything is justified to enforce it (for the greater good). Any existing boundaries must be dissolved, by force if necessary. Just think through what an ideology like this will end up doing. It will be totalising and brutal and insane and nothing will be spared. Just look at what it’s got into already.
Let’s recap. Communism is not a theory of economics but is instead a theory of social constructivism. This roots it in fiction and fantasy and violence and not reality. You see this even more clearly in the modern woke movement though already to a certain extent in the delusions of the early 20th century communists. This time around though it will be much, much worse. The woke’s current fictions are even further away from reality and even more deluded. And the stakes are higher with a larger world population that’s much more interconnected by modern technology. Eventually reality will win like it always does. But the damage caused before that will be immense. We’d better stop this quickly before we cannot.