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LessWrong comments on "3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism" - Less Wrong
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What does social justice even stand for these days? It sounds like a noble cause but it's also somewhat unrefined.
I like to think of it as the newest incarnation of Mao Zedong Thought. Complete with grandiose claims about 'bourgeois privilege'; demands for an actively enforced 'Great Cultural Revolution' sweeping away all that's old and encrusted with so much bias and oppression; and a deeply puzzling attitude of almost complete fascination with the 'movement' by some portions of Western academia. (Remember, Pol Pot actually studied in freakin' Paris!)
Maybe except that there is less emphasis on economical privilege, because... surprise, surprise... it costs a lot of money to get education in "oppression studies" at an expensive university, and also people with connections are more welcome in media.
This is why using a wrong pronoun is a supreme evil, but someone starving to death is just "meh". Okay, that's a bit exaggerated, but the idea is that only the bad things that can also happen to rich people are considered real problems. For example, a rich black person can still be a target of racism, which is why there is an emphasis on racism; but a rich person is unlikely to starve, which is why there is no emphasis on starvation.
This does not seem to me like an accurate description of the thinking of the people I know who are "social justice" types. They tend to make a big deal of economic privilege and oppression. Contra bogus, though, although they certainly tend to be leftist there's nothing particularly Maoist about them.
There may of course be a substantial difference between people writing about "social justice" in the media, and random individuals who consider themselves part of the social justice movement.
Imagine a poor cishet white man. In Marxism, he would be among the archetypal examples of the oppressed. In Maoism... well, I am not very familiar with Maoism. But in SJW-ism, he would be considered a privileged oppressor.
When I see SJWs mentioning poverty, as far as I remember, the poverty is always framed as something that happens to women or black people or trans people etc. Like it is just another injustice that happens to people who are already disadvantaged along some of the recognized axes. Instead of being a standalone axis, a cause of disadvantage. (In other words, it is never "poor people have it bad", but it could be "women have it bad, especially poor women" etc.)
You are allowed to complain that there are too many male CEOs. You are allowed to complain that women only make <insert random number> cents for each dollar men make. But you should never compare a poor man with a rich woman (unless your point is that the poor man is still more privileged).
The kismet of a cishet...
I also know about Maoism only what I find on the internet. And what I find on the internet doesn't indicate to me that Maoists were dramatically less concerned about economic (in)justice than other Marxists, and certainly doesn't suggest any particular similarity between "social justice" and Maoism. The most distinctive social preference of the Maoists seems to have been for rural agrarians over urban intellectuals, which really doesn't seem to line up with anything in present-day "social justice". It's true that Mao said that women should be treated equally with men, but that's hardly unique to Maoism.
I just had a look back at posts from the two SJWiest people I'm friends with on Facebook, and it looks to me as if their look-at-these-oppressed-people comments cover (e.g.) women, gay people, trans people, poor people, people in poor countries, people whose religion others around them don't like. So no, they aren't cookie-cutter Marxists, but I don't see that they're any more Maoists than they are Marxists.
(And honestly, this whole discussion seems rather odd to me. "Social justice is just warmed-over Maoism!" "Really? Show me how it's Maoist." "Well, look, here's a way in which it isn't typical of Marxism." Huh?)
Look, not only are there basic similarities (For instance, Maoism was the first variety of Marxism to really put cultural concerns at the forefront. People dispute whether 'cultural Marxism' is actually a thing and I think you can argue this either way, but there's no disputing that the 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution' really was called that and that Mao argued for it on Marxist grounds) but there is in fact a clear cultural lineage from Maoism to student movements in Western Europe starting from the late 1960s and extending into the 1970s and 1980s, to modern 'Social Justice'-ish theorizing as that generation gradually rose up the academic totem pole. It's not something that there's serious controversy about.
The example you give is that Maoism made a big deal of "cultural concerns". I find this less than convincing. Not least because Maoism's cultural concerns do not seem to have been at all the same as those of "social justice". E.g., the avowed aim of that "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" appears to have been to purge China of capitalism and to put Mao loyalists in charge. Its famous Sixteen Points don't say anything about any of the themes that dominate "social justice" discourse -- sexism, racism, etc.
You started off with "I like to think of it as ...". Now apparently it's the expert consensus. Can you tell me where to find evidence of this consensus? I'd have thought, e.g., that if it were uncontroversial that present-day "social justice" is basically a variety of Maoism then something like Wikipedia's article on social justice would at least mention Mao somewhere. It doesn't. (It does mention Marx, but only in the specific context of "liberation theology".)
Wikipedia has a neutrality policy, so they're not going to say "SJ is just warmed-over Maoism" or anything like that. But, again, it's simply not controversial that student protest movements starting in the late 1960s looked up to Maoism as a sort of utopia and were heavily influenced by it. And it's not even under dispute that, in many ways, current "social justice" theorizing and practices are rooted in the attitudes of these same social movements. These assertions may not be mentioned in Wiki, but they're common knowledge among people who are reasonably informed about such things; and sources to this effect could be found quite easily, e.g. by perusing these movements' printed or otherwise preserved output.
No, but they might reasonably be expected to say something like "It is widely agreed that the history of the social justice movement can be traced back to a Maoist movement among students in the United States in the late 1960s" or something of the kind. If that's true, that is.
If you mean that some student protest movements did, I bet you're right. If you mean that most or all did, I bet you're wrong. If you mean that some, including in particular ones that are responsible for the present state of the social justice movement did, then I'm afraid I'm going to repeat my request for some actual evidence that it isn't controversial.
(For the avoidance of doubt: I am not saying you're wrong. I am saying I don't know enough about the relevant history to know whether you're right or not, and that merely telling me repeatedly that what you're saying is uncontroversial doesn't convince me.)
Let's just be clear about what claim it is you originally made:
So far, what you've offered in support of this is:
This seems to me to fall outrageously short of saying that present-day "social justice" is an incarnation of Maoism. And many of these claims seem very doubtful in themselves. E.g., "bourgeois privilege": so far as I can tell, the Maoists weren't much interested in the sort of "privilege" social justice folks complain about, and the social justice folks aren't much concerned with bourgeoisie versus proletariat (or versus any other particular group). There just isn't much actual similarity there.
Do you have evidence showing an actual line of descent from Maoism to "social justice", or is this just conjecture?
According to Wikipedia (which is always right, except when it's wrong) the term was first used (with something resembling its modern meaning) by a Jesuit priest and its history continues with the likes of Louis Brandeis and John Rawls. And that history -- which is clearly not Maoist in any useful sense -- seems to me like a more obvious antecedent to today's social justice movement than Maoism does. Even if Pol Pot studied in Paris.
(Perhaps I'm taking you too literally and "is the newest incarnation of Mao Zedong Thought" just means "is kinda leftist and boooo, I hate it"?)
SJ had multiple influences of course, the existence of one line of descent (e.g. Rawls) does not invalidate other ancestors.
For sure. Which is why, having observed one obvious non-Maoist line of descent, I'm asking "any evidence for the Maoism thing?" rather than saying "you're obviously wrong about the Maoism thing".
There seem to be similarities in behavior to the "Cultural Revolution", such as rebelling at universities, and requiring teachers and classmates to toe the line or publicly apologize and/or get fired, etc. (I don't know if the similarities are sufficient, or if this is more or less a standard pattern for every political movement.)
Cultural Revolution = SJWs + "Lord of the Flies"
Imagine the current student protests, except that they would happen during a revolution, so instead of getting teachers fired you could simply hang them and no one outside the school would really care. The accounts of Cultural Revolution that I have read were pretty much this.
Cultural revolutionaries had the options that SJWs currently don't have. (Similarly how current neo-Nazis don't put people into gas chambers, because they don't live in an environment where they would be allowed to build the gas chambers. That doesn't make them mentally different.)
I don't know about every political movement, but it's certainly a thing that happens a lot; see e.g. the list at the end of Wikipedia's article on student protests. You'll notice that there's quite a variety of causes there, enough so that from "Maoism and X both had rebellions at universities" I don't think you can infer any interesting similarities between X and Maoism.
Keeping in mind that I'm not part of the group and might even be cynical about them, here is my definition of Social Justice Activism:
The idea that everyone should be equal in the social sphere, That everyone should have equal access to being cool, to being popular, to being the center of attention, to feeling liked, to feeling part of any group they want to belong to, to being liked by anyone else, to feeling comfortable and at ease in any situation. That everyone should be welcomed and accepted into any group they encounter, regardless of their race, gender, or any permeate aspect or demographic characteristic. Imagine a nice middle class kindergarten class were if a child comes to the teacher and says “I am sad, no one will play with me,” the teacher takes that child to a group and instructs them to include the lonely child. If someone’s feelings are hurt the teacher will go to the other student and explain that stupid, ugly, or scardy-cat are “just not words we use” and extract an apology. This is a sort of Social Justice Utopia were everyone is included, everyone is required to be nice, and no-one is allowed to hurt anyone else’s feelings. I can see how this would seem like a nice, safe society you would want to be part of, especially if you think that other people get to experience this sort of world as adults and you are being unfairly excluded because of the color of your skin or something else you can't help. There is awareness that just going up to someone and demanding that they like you and/or your friend doesn’t work. But so many things from networking to find a job to getting peer awards can depend on social standing and whether people you meet like you and whether you feel comfortable and relaxed with them. So there is a feeling that anyone with any sort of authority or influences in a business, organization or semi-formal group (or even just officially sanctioned membership) needs to at least act like they like everyone ( at least individuals that might potentially be discriminated against) and behaves in ways that make them feel comfortable and welcome. And that the business or group as a duty to punish or expel anyone who doesn’t do this. The idea is especially relevant to college campuses were much social activity is at least some what connected to official groups that could in theory take the role of the kindergarten teacher.
Only eventually. In the meantime, right now, because there are terrible oppressive structures in place, SJ wants explicitly to take power away from some social groups and give it to other social groups. The goal is not NOT equality now, the goal is to create inequality which will compensate for the oppression and, to some extent, balance it.
Look at the lists of demands made by SJ students at colleges (Missouri, Yale, etc.). They don't want to be race-blind, for example. They want to be very very race-conscious to, um, hand-correct for oppression. They want racially segregated housing, FFS.
And, of course, everyone is to be equal except for the enemy which must be cast out and stoned.