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.