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Eric Zemmour, a French political writer and polemist (he has controversial views on immigration and such, but is right on other topics), speaks about this in great detail in his book "The First Sex" (a reference to Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex") He explains how capitalism has taken the "useful idiots" of feminism and used them to first turn women into workers (hence doubling the amount of consumers as it created a population with a newfound salary) and then feminised men to turn them into passive materialists. Men are no longer the authority, they are less and less the breadwinner, they are encouraged to be more feminine, to be more passive than aggressive, to be sensitive and open with their feelings, all emasculating them even further. Then he cites studies of the sharp rise of men who have trouble getting an erection, of the sharp rise in divorces and people no longer wanting to have a family of their own. He connects, in a somewhat Marxian manner (without the communist solution that Marx proposes) that unbridled capitalism destroys the nuclear family under the false kings of individualism and liberty. If you're interested in this stuff, Freud also talks about this: he claims Civilisation should channel men's aggressive tendencies, not suppress them (as we are doing now). The result in doing the latter will mean men will find other ways to rebel, and it will be against civilization instead of being used to enhance it.


It seems to me that communism would make that problem worse, not better. If the state is the breadwinner in your family, why do you need men at all?


Of course, he is not advocating for communism. The big "enemy" he is denouncing is rather _unbridled_ capitalism, and with that, the erasure of borders, the liberal, globalist economy (and political movements that follow), the sovereignty of countries being traded away to transnational entities, etc. As general as I could put it, he exposes feminism for making women the "reserve army" of capitalism against the worker strikes in the 1970s, which resulted in the diminution of salaries and thus prevented families from being able to support themselves on only the man's salary. He highlights that power has been moving from political leaders to business leaders (see: election of Donald Trump) who have been bending countries to their will, forcing those countries to no longer make decisions to best serve their countries but instead to best attract businesses (which bring jobs, development, education, etc etc). He is advocating for a return to the nation state which he believes is being dismantled, conservative and self-sustaining economies within countries with protectionist/nativist regulations. Whilst his solutions can be questioned, his diagnostic is still rather accurate, in my opinion.

That book has a lot of his opinions on the disappearance of the men's virility, but the parts in which he explains the causes and consequences of that are fascinating.


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I specifically highlight the fact that I don't think his conclusion is the best one. However, none can deny that there is truth in his diagnostic. To me, he's a guy who writes well and does his research on current phenomenons, hence why he is accurate on what is _currently_ happening. He has little education on economics though, and is just proposing ideas which he has gained through reading nostalgic essays on the glories of the past.


I take exception to the diagnosis! There was never a system of "national" capitalism under which nation-states could make totally independent economic decisions, except during the two world wars. Even in those times, those nation-states made those decisions not for the good of working-class people but for the survival and power of the nation-state itself.

The social-democratic "reasonably golden" age was based upon the Bretton-Woods trade system, under which currencies were pegged to each-other and surpluses were recycled to prevent international debt crises. That was by no means an autarkhic capitalist system; it was internationalist social democracy.


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