one of marx’s central insights, right up there with dialectical materialism itself, was his notion of the proletariat. modern leftist politics concerns itself excessively with individual virtue and sin but marxism — real, old-school marxism — is not a religion, but rather a cognitive tool for understanding an exploitative society and a strategy for effecting change upon that society. the proletariat, as marx defined it, was simply that group of people that had both the motivation and the means to alter the balance of socioeconomic power. the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, had the means to do so, but not the motivation, whereas e.g. the mentally and physically disabled had the motivation, but not the means, and the lumpenproletariat (think tramps, thieves, and whores, or, in our more modern and enlightened times, drug dealers, welfare queens, and affirmative-action hires) had neither the means nor the motivation, because they depended just as much as the bourgeoisie on the injustice of the system or the misery it generated to survive, even tho they were not wealthy and neither shared the ideology of the haute bourgeoisie nor sought to emulate bourgeois morality, as the petite bourgeoisie does. it is not that marx saw the workers as of some special merit (nor the bourgeoisie as particularly evil individuals), as mao did — he simply understood that appealing to anyone else would accomplish nothing, as in the case of the "utopian" bourgeois socialists who came before him, and failed because they expected their own class to defy its class interests. the working class is exploited, marx tells us, not because the bourgeois are superhumans capable of physically coercing them en masse, but rather because the workers are rats in a maze of the bourgeoisie’s own design, lost and deceived, their energies carefully redirected inwards where they cannot not pose a threat to their masters. the act of revolution, put simply, is the act of refusing to play by the bourgeoisie’s rules and — this is the crucial part — working together to impose different rules upon society, rules that favor the working people who produce wealth instead of the parasites who hoard it.
well, that was how things worked in the olden days. but in the latter half of the 20th century and onwards, perhaps enabled by the horrors of world war and the Holocaust, a new kind of power emerged. the early antifeminist socialist writer Ernest B. Bax foresaw this very shift, and consequently warned in the late 19th century against the feminist hysteria that was widespread in his time (and has only spread further since). the weak, he said, did of course deserve consideration and protection from the strong (only fascists and anarchists believe that might makes right) but should not be permitted to overcome and enslave the strong outright (whether the bourgeoisie enslaving the proletariat, or women enslaving men). he coined the term “aggressive weakness” (perhaps an early reflex of esr’s “victicrats”) to describe a dynamic that has come to define the modern West, wherein one’s perceived weakness per se becomes a source of authority and thus power.
this development is novel. i do not know of any other historical examples, isolated incidents aside, where not force but guilt has been wielded as a coercive implement to alter the course of history. it is no coincidence that modern “leftists” have left the working class by the wayside; they have enthusiastically grasped this new technology of power and are wielding it with gusto. it creates scenarios that would have been incomprehensible in the honor cultures of the past — individuals who fancy themselves weak (or who so wish to be perceived) now do not hide that weakness away behind a veil of shame, or work to build strength of which they can be justly proud, but bicker with each other over who is the weakest, and thus most entitled to moral and ontological authority. and all the while the strong kneel silently and shamefaced, heartbroken with guilt and self-hatred, awaiting the command of those who have been anointed their lessers.
one could argue at length the merits of this technology of power, but it alarms me for one cardinal reason. history has taught us over and over again that when you take the battered and traumatized, give them power, and unleash them upon the world, only bloodshed and horror ever follows. Israel is of course the most prominent modern example, but we forget that Nazi Germany itself was the ultimate result of a nationwide trauma, resentment, and humiliation endured at the hands of the Entente in the Treaty of Versailles (not to mention the genuinely boorish and sometimes outright oppressive ethnic chauvinism of wealthy and well-connected Jewish cliques in Germany and elsewhere, largely forgotten by history in light of the gruesome and disproportionate vengeance subsequently wreaked against their entire tribe, among many others — the cycle of abuse is a cliché but very, very real). injustice and cruelty must certainly always be curtailed wherever it arises, but if you allow the victims themselves to wield the javelin of retribution, it will strike far afield of its target. the proper course of action is for the strong and righteous to exact retribution on behalf of those wronged, as was done e.g. by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. this is the central reason why in liberal democracies trials are decided by a disinterested judge or a jury of one’s unbiased peers — and it comes as no surprise that feminists, today’s greatest champions of the weak over the powerful (even as they worship at the altar of "girl power," a twisted mockery of what female strength actually looks like that we should all feel insulted by), are so heavily invested in undermining and dismantling these institutions, propagating a doctrine that anyone who claims to be a victim (at least, a victim of a man) must be believed automatically no matter the outcome.
i have long feared that the current course of the “leftist” movement (in reality a corpse puppeteered by small-minded bougie globalist ideologues, who have transformed it into a vehicle of bourgeois-nationalist grievance politics to divide and conquer us all) will not be to abolish exploitation, but rather to change who’s on top of the capitalist hierarchy of exploitation (this, to them, is "socialism"). today, my fears seem to be entirely realized.