The theory of communism is a fantastic idea. Really. The same goes for patriarchy.
That might be the last thing you ever expected a libertarian feminist to say, but there it is.
Communism’s theoretical definition is a system in which labor and resources are equally distributed with everyone working towards a greater societal good. Because everyone is working towards the same goal no one person is overworked, and everyone reaps the benefits. What’s wrong with that?
Patriarchy has come to mean different things to different people. I define it as a society in which men hold power, responsible for the well-being, financial stability, and protection of those under their authority.
In theory, women in a patriarchal world just have to look after the house and kids and not worry themselves with things such as taxes, military service, and politics. It can be a highly stable system and was a trait of all of history’s major world conquerors (Egypt, Rome, the Mongols, Great Britain, etc.).
Both communism and patriarchy are great ideas, but they have the same problem—they don’t work in real life, and they fail for the same reason.
Both involve taking power from one group, which loses most if not all individual autonomy, and giving it to another group. What’s worse, the group in power rarely suffers consequences for abusing their power.
In practice, communism must be organized by an authoritarian figure who must be able to perfectly foresee and plan for everything from healthcare needs, natural disasters, food requirements, necessary buildings, and so on. Dictatorial power is needed to control all this and it also means that the average person has no power. Ergo, what we inevitably see develop under communism is a slave-state.
In a truly communist society, taking matters into one’s own hands can be a capital offense. Since people have no power to address hunger and famine by, say, growing their own food, they are utterly at the mercy of the governing body.
Keeping with the food example, having private providers of resources is a threat to the government’s control and a capital offense in some cases (dictators are not historically understanding or sympathetic people). It doesn’t matter if the government is providing sufficient resources or not. Therefore, we see these systems deteriorate until people are making boats out of tires and crawling through barbed wire to escape.
It’s the same with patriarchy. In a patriarchal world, a girl supposedly doesn’t have to worry about her food, shelter, or upkeep. But when taking care of her constitutes a burden to her male guardian, we get things like sex-selective abortions and infanticide to curb the number of women within the population. There also exists a push to marry off young girls so as to limit the number of years they must be supported by their families.
When a girl grows up, she becomes subject to her husband who—because he is the one assigned power and obviously knows what’s best—can pretty much do whatever he wants with her. Her medical, financial, and personal life are dictated wholly by his decree.
Affirmative action is another great idea, as it is supposed to lift minorities out of poverty by offering them government jobs. What actually happens is these jobs primarily go to minority workers who are already part of the middle class.
Affirmative action changed the social standing of very few. In addition, now every minority worker is suspected of having their job only because of “diversity quotas,” regardless of how skilled or effective they might be.
Subsidies and government pressure on banks to give every US citizen ownership of a home also seems great on the surface. It was so great that both Democrats and Republicans loved it right up until a bunch of people who couldn’t sustain mortgage payments (and should’ve never been given loans in the first place) went bankrupt. The American populace collectively suffered from the Great Recession of 2008, but it was totally the banks’ fault.
All these ideas are rooted in the belief that a certain group of people—lower classes, women, and minorities—can’t take care of themselves. These systems developed around the good intention to care for those who were “weaker.”
But we all know what they say about good intentions and the road to Hell.
In the end, efforts to help are flawed because rather than creating a system where the disadvantaged could compete, we assigned a group already in power—political leaders, men, banks, etc.—to level the playing field. No one was empowered, no one was given liberty. In the end, we left power where it had always been.
The lesson we should learn is that assigning one group to look after another does not end well. Only by granting people personal freedom and autonomy can we ensure that they can at least work to secure what they need. I’m not saying it’s perfect, no system is. However, it’s about as close as we can get.
Rather than designating one group of people to look out for another, be it the government or a group of private citizens, disadvantaged groups should have control over, and responsibility for, their own lives. No matter if those in power are richer, more educated, or more charismatic, we should never allow someone else to “take care of us” if we can help it. In the words of my favorite Avenger, “The best hands are still our own.”
* Elisabeth Wheatley is a college student, blogger, and fiction writer who loves freedom. Besides playing the token conservative in an aptly named liberal arts school, she is a gigantic nerd and pro-life feminist who dreams of owning a hobbit house.
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