As we all know, in the 2020’s we’re living at a time when we are surrounded with fakeness. Fake news, of course. But also fake Presidents, fake Russian collusion, fake journalism, and even fake artists and writers. However, in my never-humble opinion, the root cause of Wokeness is none of the above, but something worse: the Fake Proletariat.
Originating in Ancient Rome, the proles were the non-elite class, the ordinary Romans. Passing through French, the word proletariat probably entered the world of politics when Friedrich Engels referred to it 1847. Later Engels and Marx formalized it in the 1888 Communist Manifesto, written in German and translated for international promotion.
The idea, of course, was that the Proletariat, fed up with mistreatment by the oppressor class (the “Bourgeoisie,”) would rise up, make a revolution, bringing about first socialism, and then Communism.
And what is Communism? A more current description is a world in which we all own nothing and are happy. And maybe eat bugs too.
But that’s Marxism in all its various forms. Real Marxism, not fake Marxism (more about that in a minute or so.)
In real Marxism, the Proletariat (or a leadership class who knows better than the average working stiff) rises up and takes over. That’s what we now call the Old Left.
Why Old Left? Because in the USA, and quite a few other places, the Marxist Revolution failed, even with the leadership class of activists. And the reason that they failed is that the real Proletariat didn’t want Marxism.
For me, the Old Left ended when Ronald Reagan was elected. The press went on about the “hard-hats,” Democrat blue-collar union members who helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House.
Leftist activists at the time needed something new. They called it the New Left.
Feel free to read and digest the Britannica article just linked, but I will offer you a shortcut. The Old Left failed for good, and it failed for good because the Proletariat was not interested in overthrowing the Bourgeoisie and establishing Communism. Instead, they wanted to become the Bourgeoisie.
What New Left activists needed then was a new Proletariat. But they couldn’t make use of the real Proletariat, so they needed a Fake Proletariat.
In my opinion, since real Marxism needs a real proletariat, the New Left with its Fake Proletariat is actually Fake Marxism.
Now let’s take a look at the results. Based on ideas introducted by the former German Communists Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, who had both emigrated to the USA, they came up with a body of Critical Theory and a list of cherry-picked substitutes for the old Proletariat, sometimes called “protected” or “high-risk” groups. If you want more detail, in my opinion, a good source is James Lindsay, who is not likely to leave you feeling deprived of detail.
Of course you know who the “high-risk”groups are: BIPOCS, women, queer people, and others, who have replaced the Proletariat in the fake Marxism of the New Left.
In the next installments of this Fake Proletariat series, I will address each “high-risk” group in turn, beginning with women. I hope you will be interested if you are a woman, interact with women, are not a woman but want to become one; or, for that matter, before you were born, were once inside a woman.
Stay tuned.
Great essay! I hadn't seen yours before writing my own, so it's good to see someone else is reading the tea leaves the same way I am. The zeitgeist is changing. The Canadian trucker convoy was like the "Lexington and Concord" of the new civil war against the Globohomo Un-American Empire. As the regime institutes more of its plans for a "great reset," I believe we will see the workers of the Western world unite -- against the Marxcissists!