370. Contemplation (XI)
A few posts ago, I noted that Michel Houellebecq gets the socio-sexual hierarchy wrong; he understands that the ‘60s ushered in a ruthless zero-sum sexual competition, but he attributes this to “neoliberalism”; for Houellebecq, traditional marriage was “primitive communism” whereas today we have a “capitalistic” sexual economy where there are big winners and big losers. This is muddled up, traditional marriage was property ownership—the property was the woman—and the changes that mainly occurred in the ‘60s were sexual communism, women became unowned and so were consumed with abandon. The result is the gross inequality in sex distribution that has led to the contemporary “incel” phenomenon, as chronicled by Houellebecq himself.
What men like Houellebecq fail to grasp is that communism is a deeply inegalitarian system; the Pareto distribution of sex—20% of the men get 80% of the girls—is what you would you expect to see under communism, not under a private-property system. When Marxists say that what they call “capitalism” is a deeply unequal system where a tiny group hoards the wealth and sustains their rule with lies (e.g. religion and tradition) they are actually describing the system they intend to set up themselves: a deeply unequal system where a tiny group controls all the country’s wealth with lies—as happened in the USSR. The problem is that men like Houellebecq, still residually Communist in my view, believe what the Marxists tell them; even though the evidence is to the contrary.
I still see idiot journalists and academics write sentences along the lines: “Although many welcomed the New Russia, ordinary Russians still feel that life under the USSR was fairer; the income difference between a top official and an ordinary worker was very small—and officials lived modestly, perhaps with a small private dacha as a luxury.” Yes, on paper, Khrushchev probably earned three pay grades above a manual worker, but so what: Khrushchev belonged to a tiny oligarchy that had de facto control over the entire wealth and resources of the USSR; further, since there was no functional legal or other constraints on his power, Khrushchev ruled more absolutely and enjoyed more privilege than any grand monarch ever did.
The only constraint on his power were those other, often obscure, oligarchs and bureaucrats who lurked in the background vying to bring him down. The gap between what an ordinary worker—who effectively had nothing and was a slave—and a top Party official had in the USSR was vastly greater than any such gap in the West. “But the statistics say…” Of course the statistics say. The statistics do not even have to be doctored: I am sure that Khrushchev really was paid not much more than a manual worker; scrupulously honest, no doubt!
Communism amounts to perverted feudalism; it is feudalism without what is good in feudalism. Under a feudal system, the lord has some interest in not crushing his peasants; he wants their agricultural products—he might even develop a kind of paternal benevolence to them over the generations. The peasant has relatively little—very little autonomy—but he can keep a portion of what he earns; he is not run to five-year plans, nor does his lord tell him exactly what to think and say—not out of benevolence, but because a lord simply does not care what a peasant thinks or says.
Feudal power is relatively transparent; and the king, the Church, and the other nobles serve as a slight check on abusive power; it was possible to flee to a church for sanctuary in medieval times and, usually, you would be unmolested by king, peasant, or lord if you did so. Communism keeps the power and wealth differential found in feudalism, but magnifies it and operates it with no constraints—no private property, no Church—so that almost everyone is enslaved, wealth is destroyed, and the gap between rich and poor is vast. What Communism did in Russia we have done with sex in the West.