Kay S. Hymowitz
Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys
New York: Basic Books, 2011
I expected this book to be a diatribe against the often-discussed “loser” men—those who, not having any marketable skill, are still living off their parents into mid-life. Manning Up actually is about a new demographic, the SYM (single young male), its female counterpart, and what factors led to the decline in marriage and number of children in the Western world. Simply having a job is not enough to be a man in the author’s view; true adulthood means being married and having children. Most young men and women are what she calls “preadults.”
Kay S. Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has written extensively on issues of marriage, the sexes, class, and race, and she appears to be genuinely concerned about the declining rates in marriage childbirth. Her stance is slanted in favor of women, but she is sympathetic to the plight of men today. She mentions that boys are often discriminated against and ignored in favor of women. While funds pour in to increase girls’ math and science scores, boys are not given special treatment to improve their reading scores. She cites a BusinessWeek story that explains today’s young men as a “payback generation” intended to “compensate for the advantages given to males in the past.”
The Shift to the Feminine, Knowledge Economy
Scholars attribute women’s entry into the workforce largely to innovations in science and technology in the twentieth century. With no need to can food, make bread, weave, or sew, women were not “needed” at home the way they were in every generation past. They were having fewer children, too, due to birth control: In the early 1800s, white women had an average of seven children. By 1900, it was 3.56. When the birth control pill was introduced in the 1960s, state laws “kept the drug away from unmarried women.” Economist Martha Baily showed that when a state changed its law, there was a decline in the percentage of young women who gave birth by age 22, and an increase in the number of young women in the labor force and the hours they worked.
The number of working women (ages 33 to 45) went from 25 percent in 1950, to 46 percent in 1970, to about 60 percent since 1995. But in the 1950s to ’70s, women tended to work to help pay the bills, often as secretaries, waitresses, nurses, teachers, and librarians. Today’s young women set out in the world to find their “passion” not in a husband, but in a career.
The shift from secretary to major player in corporate America, Hymowitz explains, was largely due to a shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy. By the 1980s, the economy was booming as manufacturing jobs decreased and millions of positions opened in fields like public relations, health, and law. Women, too weak physically to participate much in the industrial economy, could do almost any job in the knowledge economy.
One example given is design. As technology advanced, designers transitioned from working with their hands (and making lasting work as is found in Bauhaus and Art Nouveau) to being hands-off fashion designers, who no longer needed to learn drafting, typesetting, drawing, or how to use heavy equipment. Using cheap labor overseas meant many more products, and thus a greater need for marketing and advertising. Women now make up 60 percent of design students, once a male-dominated field.
New industries sprouted up, too, as increased wealth and leisure time demanded workers at yoga centers, spas, travel companies, and more marketing and ad agencies for these specialty industries—all areas in which women participate as easily as men. Working women had new needs and money to spend, so more industries sprouted up to create feminine business suits, trendy lunch spots, meal “helpers,” stylish computer bags, $400 work pumps, $5 lattes, spa treatments and scented candles to help women unwind, houses with bathrooms the size of our grandparents’ bedrooms, a variety of products in the color pink, and right-hand rings for women who want to buy themselves a diamond. Other women entered the design arena through boutique companies: making jewelry, crafts, or custom stationary.
Nation-building and culture-building thus fell out of the workforce, replaced by sales, marketing, and fashion.
Today, men outnumber women in fields like construction (88 percent), while women make up 51 percent of management and professionals, particularly in fields like Human Resources, Public Relations, and finance. Women make up 77 percent of workers in education and health services. Women are more likely to work at the numerous new nonprofits, and make up 78 percent of psychology majors, 61 percent of humanities majors, and 60 percent of social and behavioral science doctorates. Publishing has long had high numbers of women workers, but now women have moved from what Hymowitz calls the “ladies’ magazines ghettos” to political commentary.
While women moved into the knowledge economy, men remained in behind-the-scenes fields that required more technical skill: jobs like writing code and IT. Some men flocked to jobs at ESPN, Cartoon Network, microbreweries, and video game design firms. Other men knew that even in the midst of feminism, their wives would still want the option to stay home and raise children (so long as men didn’t tell them they had to), and concentrated on high-paying jobs rather than following their bliss.
In the early nineteenth century, most men worked for themselves, as farmers, small merchants, or tradesmen. But by the end of the nineteenth century, two-thirds were working for “the man.” Some experts believe that it’s women who will soon be “running the place,” since the knowledge economy workplace “requires a more feminine style of leadership.” Employers will increasingly placate women, who are not solely concerned with the bottom line as a measure of their career success, but also want a job where they “help others,” enjoy relationships with colleagues, get recognition, have flexibility, and are in an environment of “collaboration and teamwork.” More women in the workplace means that it is more genteel and less of a man’s club: Swearing and spitting are forbidden, and men are now in a domesticated atmosphere both at home and at work. The popularity of psychoanalysis means that men and women alike are trained to listen sympathetically, be sensitive to emotions, and control their anger.
To explain the dynamics of the knowledge economy, Hymowitz references a 2002 paper by Harvard economist Brian Jacob called “Where the Boys Aren’t.” He found that girls are better at noncognitive tasks, such as keeping track of homework, working well with others, and organization, and suggests that such skills may explain the gender gap in high school grades and college admissions (women have higher GPAs and are 58 percent of college graduates, but they lag behind men in math SAT scores). These cognitive skills also are important for success in today’s feminized workplace.
Though not mentioned in Manning Up, these skills are also ones for which men have traditionally relied on women: organizing the home, keeping track of appointments, and being the family PR rep and social coordinator. Today’s women benefit in the career-world, as more jobs require good communication skills and “EQ” (emotional intelligence), while men are left with lower paying jobs and the added disadvantage of no wife at home.
SYMs: The New Demographic
In 1970, 80 percent of men aged 25–29 were married, compared to 40 percent in 2007. In 1970, 85 percent of men aged 30–34 were married, compared to 60 percent in 2007.
This new single-young-male demographic used to be called “elusive,” since it was a difficult advertising target. Then Maxim arrived in America in 1997, and seemed to have the answers to what SYMs wanted. Its readership reached 2.5 million in 2009, more than the combined circulation of GQ, Men’s Journal, and Esquire. Hymowitz says other magazines, like Playboy and Esquire, tried to project the “image of an intelligent, cultured, and au courant sort of man.” Even though Playboy promoted the image of the eternal bachelor, he was at least an intelligent and sophisticated bachelor. (Hugh Hefner wrote that his readers enjoyed “inviting a female acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.”) Maxim, however, catered to the man who didn’t want to grow up.
Hymowitz doesn’t buy into the idea that the masses of men are moved by the media (or an inner party seeking to destroy them, let alone any subversive forces dominant in the Kali Yuga). She instead posits that products like Maxim were developed for an existing market.
Regardless of the reason, a number of TV shows were created with the SYM in mind, starting with The Simpsons. Comedy Central brought out South Park and The Man Show, while the Cartoon Network promoted cartoons for grown men. More films featured SYM stars like Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey, and Jack Black, and movies like 2003’s Old School (30-somethings who start a fraternity) were popular. American men ages 18–34 are now the biggest users of video games, with 48.2 percent owning a console and playing an average of 2 hours and 43 minutes per day. That doesn’t include online games like World of Warcraft.
Hymowitz recounts the numerous silly Adam Sandler movies, in which he plays a stereotypical young adult, male loser. Meanwhile, the media’s counter-image for women is the well-heeled, single young female:
If she is ambitious, he is a slacker. If she is hyper-organized and self-directed, he tends toward passivity and vagueness. If she is preternaturally mature, he is happily not. Their opposition is stylistic as well: she drinks sophisticated cocktails in mirrored bars, he burps up beer on ratty sofas. She spends her hard-earned money on mani-pedi outings, his goes toward World of Warcraft and gadgets.
It’s in this chapter that Hymowitz’s double-standard for men and women is most apparent, and annoying. She seems to think that when single women spend money for clothes and pedicures, it’s women’s empowerment, but single men who spend money on guy-flicks and video games are childish. Both cases seem to me examples of adults who, instead of having children, make themselves into the child: men by continuing all the games and comic books of their youth, and women by playing Barbie doll with themselves.
So if simply cutting the financial apron strings doesn’t make one a man, what does? Hymowitz answers by looking to masculine virtues throughout all cultures: “strength, courage, resolve, and sexual potency,” but that one line is about the extent of the analysis. She is careful to distinguish between having sex (which single men do a lot these days) and “manning up” by being married and becoming the head of a family.
But even when men do settle down, the roles they play as fathers have changed. Rather than being a strong father figure, today’s father often relates to his children by “accentuating his own immaturity,” according to Gary Cross, author of Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity
With high divorce rates, many young men today were raised in matriarchal family environments, which may be one contributing factor to the “unmanliness” of some of today’s men. Instead of having their own families, some men instead play the role of the “fun uncle,” like men in matriarchal, non-white societies.
A Different Dating World
After college, all of these single young people embark on a journey more confusing than if they started a family: modern dating, now with websites that describe the etiquette for one-night stands (it’s “leave quickly”).
Men and women are both confused by the new rituals, and the lack thereof. A man who inadvertently insults a girl by not opening her car door may have been chastised by his last girlfriend for doing just that. Women sometimes “pick up” guys (whether at bars, or actually driving to pick them up for dates), and there is ambiguity about who pays for dates when SYFs outearn SYMs in the majority of large cities. Men experience the nice-guy conundrum when they see girls dating jerks. Meanwhile, women practice a Zen-like nonattachment when dating, since bringing up marriage before a year of sex seems to turn men off.
Hymowitz recounts a number of events from the childhood of young women that play into their behavior as adults: Today’s SYFs were often told by their mothers that they shouldn’t need a man to be happy. They were likely raised in the 1990s, in the midst of a tween-based advertising frenzy that marketed make-up, thong underwear, and high-heeled clogs to preteens, while at the same time trying to “save the self-esteem” of young girls. Popular TV shows for girls were based on the female warrior type: The Powerpuff Girls, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These women try to convince themselves for years that they shouldn’t “need” a child or husband, then end up debating whether to become a “choice mother” (the new term for a woman who uses sperm bank).
* * *
Manning Up might be a good “beach book” for women readers of Counter-Currents, but I have trouble imagining men enjoying it, though they would find some insights into the mind of the typical woman. I found it interesting for its wealth of statistics about marriage rates and ages, men and women in the workplace and universities, and summaries of various causes that contributed to the (mostly white) single and childless young men and women today.
There have been numerous debates on Counter-Currents and other websites about what exactly has caused the decline in marriage and childbirth. Manning Up does a good job of touching on some of the contributing forces, but never addresses any of the larger forces.
The good news from Manning Up is that the majority of young men and women still want to get married and have children. In addition, while women in their early 20s are “hot commodities,” by the time they reach 30, they are beginning to get desperate and may “settle for Mr. Good Enough” as the subtitle of the book Marry Him
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Unlike Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald devoted little space to analyzing the French Revolution itself. His focus instead was on understanding the traditional society which had been swept away. His review of Mme. de Staël’s 
, e.g., ends up turning into a theory of the nobility and its function. Bonald scholar Christopher Olaf Blum calls this “his most original contribution to the theory of the counter-revolution.”
, p. 92ff. Bonald’s views on this matter are quite similar to Hegel’s.)
than to the ideal type described by Bonald. As Blum says, “in making [his] argument, [Bonald] was a reformer, for the French nobility had shown itself willing to jettison its duties in favor of the kind of freedom that would enable them, the wealthy, to dominate more effectively and without the hindrance of traditional strictures.”
National Socialism promoted two images of woman: the hardworking peasant mother in traditional dress, and the uniformed woman in service to her people. Both images were an attempt to combat two types of woman that are foreign to Traditional European societies: the Aphrodisian and Amazonian woman.
These were the Aphrodisian elements that had made their way into the Weimar Republic and Third Reich, and which the National Socialists tried to restrain, along with modern Amazonian woman (the unmarried, childless, career woman in mannish dress). The Aphrodite type was represented by the “movie ‘star’ or some similar fascinating Aphrodisian apparition.”[6] In his introduction to the writings of Bachofen, National Socialist scholar Alfred Baeumler wrote that the modern world has all of the characteristics of a gynaecocratic age. In writing about the European city-woman, he says, “The fascinating female is the idol of our times, and, with painted lips, she walks through the European cities as she once did through Babylon.”[7]
The earliest Europeans tended toward simplicity in dress and appearance. Adornments were used solely to signify caste or heroic deeds, or were amulets or talismans. In ancient Greece, jewels were never worn for everyday use, but reserved for special occasions and public appearances. In Rome, also, jewelry was thought to have a spiritual power.[11] Western fashion often was used to display rank, as in Roman patricians’ purple sash and red shoes. The Mediterranean cultures, influenced by the East, were the first to become extravagant in dress and makeup. By the time this influence spread to northern Europe, it had been Christianized, and makeup did not appear again in northern Europe until the fourteenth century, after which followed a long period of its association with immorality.[12]
, trans. Guido Stucco (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 1995), 211, footnote.
, by J. J. Bachofen, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), xxx–xxxi.
(Milwaukee, Wis.: Gareth Stevens, 2007), 13.
, trans. Guido Stucco (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2002), 260–62.
Je trouve qu’une vie intéressante est une vie où l’on se bat, où l’on souffre, où l’on affronte l’adversité, et surtout, où l’on s’affronte soi-même. Je trouve qu’une vie intéressante est une vie difficile. C’est ce qui me donne de la joie, en tout cas, et peut-être de l’espérance ; je me dis que quand je partirai, couché sur un lit à regarder le plafond en sentant le froid qui remonte de mes pieds vers mon cœur, je pourrai dire au patron, dont je suppose qu’il m’attend de l’autre côté : j’ai joué ma partition, maintenant, tu décides pour la suite. Je trouve que ce qui rend la vie intéressante, c’est de se battre pour en arriver là : savoir qu’on a lutté.
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Né à Vienne en 1926, d’un père dalmate et d’une mère d’origine juive, et mort en toute discrétion en 2002 après avoir vécu entre les États-Unis, l’Allemagne et l’Amérique du sud; prêtre anticlérical, médiéviste joyeusement apatride, érudit étourdissant, sorte d’Épicure gyrovague, polyglotte, curieux, passionné, insaisissable, et touche-à-tout; critique radical, en pensée comme en acte, de la modernité industrielle, héritier de Bernard Charbonneau et de Jacques Ellul, inspirateur d’intellectuels comme Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Mike Singleton, Serge Latouche, Alain Caillé, André Gorz, Jean Robert ou encore des mouvements écologistes, décroissantistes et post-développementistes; hélas aussi figure de proue d’une certaine intelligentsia des années soixante qui ne feuilleta, en général, que Une Société sans école et ne retint de son travail que ce qui pouvait servir ses mauvaises humeurs adolescentes puis, plus tard, ses bonnes recettes libertariennes, Ivan Illich est sans conteste l’un des penseurs les plus originaux, les plus complets, les plus lucides ainsi que les plus mal lus du XXe siècle. 
Dans le premier, Une société sans école, Illich montre que l’école, comme institution, et «l’éducation» professionnalisée, comme logique de sociabilisation, non seulement nuisent à l’apprentissage et à la curiosité intellectuelle, mais surtout ont pour fonction véritable d’inscrire dans l’imaginaire collectif des valeurs qui justifient et légitiment les stratifications sociales en même temps qu’elles les font. Il ne s’agit pas seulement, à l’instar du travail de gauche «classique» de Bourdieu et Passeron, de montrer que l’école reproduit les inégalités sociales, donc qu’elle met en porte-à-faux, stigmatise et exclut les classes sociales défavorisées dont elle est censée favoriser l’ascension sociale, mais de démontrer que l’idée même de cette possibilité ou de cette nécessité d’ascension sociale par la scolarité permet, crée ces inégalités en opérant comme un indicateur d’infériorité sociale. Par ailleurs, l’école et les organismes d’éducation professionnels agissent en se substituant à toute une série d’organes d’éducation propres à la société civile ou aux familles, délégitimant les apprentissages qu’ils procurent. Elle est donc un moyen de contrôle social et non pas de libération des déterminations sociales. Les normes de l’éducation et du savoir, la légitimité de ce que l’on sait faire et de ce que l’on comprend se mettent donc à dépendre d’un programme et d’un jugement mécanique qui forment aussi un écran entre l’individu et sa propre survie ou sa propre valeur. Ce programme est celui de l’axe production/consommation sur lequel se fonde la modernité industrielle. «L’école est un rite initiatique qui fait entrer le néophyte dans la course sacrée à la consommation, c’est aussi un rite propitiatoire où les prêtres de l’alma mater sont les médiateurs entre les fidèles et les divinités de la puissance et du privilège. C’est enfin un rituel d’expiation qui ordonne de sacrifier les laissés-pour-compte, de les marquer au fer, de faire d’eux les boucs émissaires du sous-développement» (1). 
(1968), 
(1970), and 
(1972). Baudrillard believed that there were four ways an object acquired value: through its functional value (similar to the Marxian use-value); through its exchange, or economic value; through its symbolic value (the object’s relationship to a subject, or individual, such as an engagement ring to a young lady or a medal to an Olympic athlete); and, finally, through its sign value (the object’s value within a system of objects, whereby a Montblanc fountain-pen may signify higher socioeconomic status than a Bic ball-pen, or a Fair Trade organic chicken may signify certain social values in relation to a chicken that has been intensively farmed). Baudrillard focused most of his energy on the latter forms of value. Writing at the juncture between evolutionary psychology and marketing, Geoffrey Miller (an evolutionary psychologist) does the same here, except from a purely biological perspective.
, Jean Baudrillard’s early works on consumerism, and some of the texts in Miller’s own bibliography, which include — surprise, surprise! — 
, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, and 
, by Richard Lynn, among others.
Malgré l’instrumentalisation des corpus doctrinaux de l’Ecole de Francfort et malgré les désastres que cette instrumentalisation a provoqué en Europe, les idées diffusées par l’Ecole de Francfort véhiculent des thèmes intéressants qui, eux, n’ont pas été inclus dans la vulgate, seule responsable des dégâts sociaux et anthropologiques que nous déplorons depuis quelques décennies en Europe. Quand un Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) nous parle de l’homme unidimensionnel, pour déplorer sa banalisation dans les sociétés industrielles modernes, il ne fait qu’énoncer un état de choses déjà déploré par Nietzsche. L’homme unidimensionnel de Marcuse partage bien des traits en commun avec le « dernier homme » de Nietzsche. Dans « Eros et la civilisation », Marcuse évoque le refoulement du désir dans les sociétés modernes, exactement comme le déploraient certains mouvements de jeunesse alternatifs allemands entre 1896 et 1933 ; cette option philosophique de vouloir libérer les instincts refoulés, en imitant les groupes marginaux ou exclus des sociétés même au détriment des majorités politiques et parlementaires, a eu, avec l’appui de tout un attirail d’interprétations freudiennes, un impact important sur la révolte étudiante des années 67-68 en Allemagne, en France et ailleurs en Europe. Marcuse condamnera toutefois l’usage de la violence et se fera apostropher comme « mou » par certains échaudés, dénommés « Krawallos ». Entre la théorie écrite et la pratique mise en œuvre par les services à partir des années 60 du 20ème siècle, il y a une nette différence. Mais c’est la vulgate, la version instrumentalisée, sloganisée à l’usage des Krawallos, qui a triomphé au détriment de la théorie proprement dite : c’est au départ d’une hyper-simplification du contenu d’ « Eros et la civilisation » que l’on a fabriqué la société festiviste actuelle, une société festiviste incapable de forger un Etat digne de ce nom ou de générer un vivre-ensemble harmonieux et créatif. Tout comme dans le « Meilleur des mondes » d’Aldous Huxley, on vend des drogues et l’on favorise la promiscuité sexuelle pour endormir les volontés. 
Outre Marcuse, idole des festivistes de mai 68, l’Ecole de Francfort a surtout aligné, en Allemagne, deux figures notoires, Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) et Max Horkheimer (1895-1973). Ces deux philosophes ont été les principaux représentants de la philosophie allemande dans les années 50. Adorno a déployé une critique de l’autoritarisme qui, selon lui, aurait toujours structuré la pensée allemande et, partant, européenne et américaine, faisant courir le risque de voir émerger de nouveaux fascismes à intervalles réguliers dans l’histoire. Il va vouloir déconstruire cet autoritarisme pour enrayer à l’avance toute émergence de nouveaux fascismes. Pour y procéder, il élaborera un système de mesure, consigné dans son célèbre ouvrage, La personnalité autoritaire. On y apprend même comment mesurer sur « l’échelle F » le degré de « fascisme » que peut receler la personnalité d’un individu. Le livre contient aussi un classement des citoyens en « Vorurteilsvollen » et « Vorurteilsfreien », soit ceux qui sont « pleins de préjugés » et ceux « qui sont libres de tous préjugés ». Ceux qui sont pleins de préjugés comptent aussi les « rebelles » et les « psychopathes », les « fous » et les « manipulateurs » dans leurs rangs. Ceux qui sont libres de tout préjugé comptent tout de même des « rigides », des protestataires, des impulsifs et des « easy goings » (« ungezwungene Vorurteilsfreie ») dans leurs rangs, qui sont posés comme sympathiques, comme mobilisables dans un projet « anti-autoritaire » mais dont l’efficacité n’est pas parfaite. Le summum de la qualité citoyenne ne se trouve que chez une minorité
Outre la composition de cet instrument de contrôle que fut le livre d’Adorno intitulé La personnalité autoritaire (Studien zum autoritären Charakter), les deux philosophes de l’Ecole de Francfort, installés dans l’Allemagne d’après-guerre, en rédigent le principal manifeste philosophique, Die Dialektik der Aufklärung (= « La dialectique des Lumières »), où ils affirment s’inscrire dans la tradition des Lumières, née au 18ème siècle, tout en critiquant certains avatars ultérieurs de cette démarche philosophique. Pour Horkheimer et Adorno, la science et la technologie, qui ont pris leur élan à l’époque des Lumières et dans les premiers balbutiements de la révolution industrielle avec l’appui des Encyclopédistes autour de d’Alembert et Diderot, ont pris au fil du temps un statut marqué d’ambigüité. La technologie et la science ont débouché sur la technocratie, affirment Horkheimer et Adorno dans leur manifeste, et, dans ce processus involutif, la raison des Lumières, d’idéelle est devenue « instrumentale », avec le risque d’être instrumentalisée par des forces politiques ne partageant pas l’idéal philosophique des Lumières (sous-entendu : les diverses formes de fascisme ou les néoconservatismes technocratiques d’après 1945). Le programme promu par La personnalité autoritaire peut être interprété, sans sollicitation outrancière, comme un instrument purement technocratique destiné à formater les masses dans un sens précis, contraire à leurs dispositions naturelles et ontologiques ou contraire aux legs d’une histoire nationale particulière. Alors qu’ils inventent un instrument de nature nettement technocratique, Adorno et Horkheimer critiquent la technocratie occidentale sur des bases sociologiques que nous pouvons pleinement accepter : en effet, les deux philosophes s’inscrivent dans un filon sociologique inauguré, non pas par Marx et ses premiers fidèles, mais par Georg Simmel et Max Weber. Ce dernier voulait lancer, par ses travaux et ceux de ses étudiants, « une science du réel, nous permettant de comprendre dans sa spécificité même la réalité en laquelle nos vies sont plongées ». Pour Simmel et Weber, le développement des sciences et des technologies apporteront certainement une quantité de bienfaits aux sociétés humaines mais elles provoqueront simultanément une hypertrophie des appareils abstraits, ceux de la technocratie en marche, par exemple, ceux de l’administration qui multipliera les règles de coercition sociale dans tous les domaines, conduisant à l’émergence d’un gigantesque « talon d’acier » (iron heel) ou d’une cage d’acier, qui oblitèreront la créativité humaine.
Habermas, ancien assistant d’Horkheimer puis son successeur à la tête de l’Institut de Francfort, devient, dès la fin des années 60, la figure de proue de la seconde génération de l’Ecole de Francfort. Son objectif ? Pour éviter la « cristallisation » des résidus de l’autoritarisme et des effets de l’application de la « raison instrumentale », une « cristallisation » qui aurait indubitablement ramené au pouvoir une nouvelle idéologie forte et autoritaire, Habermas s’ingéniera à théoriser une « praxis de la discussion permanente » (s’opposant en cela à Carl Schmitt qui, disciple de l’Espagnol Donoso Cortès, abominait la discussion et la « classe discutailleuse » au bénéfice des vrais décideurs, seuls aptes à maintenir le politique en place, les Etats et les empires en bon ordre de fonctionnement). La discussion et cette culture du débat permanent devaient justement empêcher les décisions trop tranchées amenant aux « cristallisations ». Les évolutions politiques devaient se dérouler lentement dans le temps, sans brusqueries ni hâtes même quand les décisions claires et nettes s’avéraient nécessaires, vu l’urgence, l’ Ernstfall. Cette posture habermasienne ne plaisait pas à tous les hommes de gauche, surtout aux communistes durs et purs, aux activistes directs : sa théorie a parfois été décrite comme l’incarnation du « défaitisme postfasciste », inaugurant, dans l’après-guerre, une « philosophie de la désorientation et des longs palabres ». Habermas est ainsi devenu le philosophe déréalisé le plus emblématique d’Europe. En 1990, il déplore la réunification allemande car celle-ci « met en danger la société multiculturelle et l’unité européenne qui étaient toutes deux depuis quelque temps déjà en voie de réalisation ». La seule alternative, pour Habermas, c’est de remplacer l’appartenance nationale des peuples par un « patriotisme constitutionnel », préférable, selon lui, « aux béquilles prépolitiques que sont la nationalité (charnelle) et l’idée de la communauté de destin » (Habermas s’attaque là aux deux conceptions que l’on trouve en Allemagne : l’idéal nationalitaire de romantique mémoire et l’idéal prussien a-national de participation à la vie et à la défense d’un type particulier d’Etat, à connotations spartiates). Le « patriotisme constitutionnel » est-il dès lors un antidote à la guerre, à ces guerres qu’ont déclenché les patriotismes appuyés sur les deux « béquilles » dénoncées par Habermas, soit l’idéal nationalitaire et l’idéal prussien ? En principe, oui ; en pratique, non, car en 1999 quand l’OTAN attaque la Serbie sous prétexte qu’elle oppresse la minorité albanaise du Kosovo, Habermas bénit l’opération en la qualifiant « de bond en avant sur la voie qui mène du droit des gens classique au droit cosmopolite d’une société mondiale de citoyens ». Et il ajoutait : « les voisins démocratiques (c’est-à-dire ceux qui avaient fait leur l’idée de « patriotisme constitutionnel ») ont le droit de passer à l’action pour apporter une aide de première nécessité, légitimée par le droit des gens ». Contradiction : le « constitutionalisme globaliste de l’OTAN » a sanctifié un réflexe identitaire ethno-national, celui des Albanais du Kosovo, contre le réflexe ethno-national des Serbes. L’OTAN, avec la bénédiction d’Habermas, a paradoxalement agi pour restaurer l’une des béquilles que ce dernier a toujours voulu éradiquer. Tout en pariant sur un élément musulman, étranger à l’Europe, importation turque dans les Balkans, au détriment de l’albanité catholique et orthodoxe, avant de l’être pour la « serbicité » slave et orthodoxe. Le tout pour permettre à l’US Army de se faire octroyer par le nouvel Etat kosovar la plus formidable base terrestre en Europe, Camp Bondsteele, destiné à remplacer les bases allemandes évacuées progressivement depuis la réunification. Camp Bondsteele sert à asseoir une présence militaire dans les Balkans, tremplin pour le contrôle de la Mer Noire, de la Méditerranée orientale et de l’Anatolie turque. Ces déclarations d’Habermas vieillissant ressemblent étrangement à l’agitation de ces chiens qui tentent de se manger la queue.
La noticia del apresurado y dichoso financiero yanqui, nos trae al recuerdo la figura del gran economista alemán profesor Werner Sombart, que ejerció docencia, justamente sonada, como profesor de Economía Política, en la Universidad de Berlín, y cuya obra es una verdadera pena que aun no haya sido traducida —que sepamos— al castellano.
La lotta che l’individualismo liberaldemocratico ha ingaggiato per demolire ogni realtà e rappresentazione comunitaria ha il significato di un finale regolamento di conti tra l’umano e il disumano. Al fondo, si apre una divaricazione tra visioni del mondo che è oltre la sociologia, oltre la storia, investendo l’antropologia e la vita di base di ognuno. Chi cura l’appartenere e percepisce il legame, avverte la precisa sensazione, e la avverte come verità di evidenze, che l’individuo è preceduto da qualcosa che lo connota e lo distingue, cioè la comunità che gli dona individuazione anche come singolo soggetto, e senza la quale l’essere non è appunto individuabile, non è descrivibile, non rivela nulla di sé, se non la solitudine astratta e il nonsenso concreto. Chi giudica che la società venga prima dell’individuo pensa socialmente, pensa comunitariamente, pensa plurale. Chi invece giudica che sia l’individuo a venire prima della società ragiona in termini di monade semplice e ottusa: l’essere umano assembrato casualmente, riunito in folla per necessità e bisogno. I “contrattualisti”, quei liberali che pensano la società come nata dall’incontro dei meri bisogni, costituiscono i grandi demolitori moderni dell’idea comunitaria. Coloro che da secoli tendono l’insidia ad ogni costituirsi di tessuti relazionali e di legami politici e metapolitici. Essi pensano unicamente entro categorie individuali: l’interesse, la sicurezza, il profitto.
Le projet d'instauration d'une société multiculturelle où les cultures, les religions, entreraient en dialogue, s'enrichissant mutuellement de leur diversité, a paru de nature à remplacer avec bonheur l'ancienne recherche d'assimilation de ceux qui venaient d'ailleurs. Les Pays-Bas, la Grande-Bretagne et quelques autres ont été en pointe dans ce domaine. Et voilà que le vent tourne. Comment comprendre la montée d'un populisme xénophobe dans une bonne partie de l'Europe ? Réaction de populations déstabilisées par la crise économique mondiale et en quête d'un bouc émissaire ? Ou effet des limites d'une utopie ?
Terwijl de meerderheid van onze werkende mensen tussen de 80 en 120 euro bruto per dag verdienen. Terwijl uitkeringstrekkers 50 euro of minder per werkdag ontvangen, zijn er in dit land toch gelukkige zielen die zonder uitkering of zonder zelfs maar te werken kunnen genieten van Club Med-faciliteiten. De plaats van gebeuren: Brussel.
A condição de assalariado, que é hoje o destino de quase todos os trabalhadores, nos anos cinqüenta apenas concernia a 60% da população ativa. Foi durante os três decênios seguintes à Segunda Guerra Mundial quando começou a generalizar-se. Naquela época descansava sobre dois pilares. Primeiro, um salário direto e crescente, fruto de uma economia estimulada pelo produtivismo fordista e o consumismo importado dos Estados Unidos. Depois, um salário indireto assegurado pelo Estado keynesiano, dispensador de seguridade social, a qual incitava os indivíduos a comportarem-se no mercado como trabalhadores e consumidores "livres", quer dizer desligados das solidariedades tradicionais. Êxodo rural, crescimento urbano, deslocamento das comunidades: este foi o preço que se teve que pagar pela americanização do modo de vida que caracterizou os Trinta Gloriosos, como denominou a estes anos Jean Fourastié.
Nazi Fashion Wars:
The Evolian Revolt Against Aphroditism in the Third Reich, Part 2
Judaism is not historically opposed to cosmetics and jewelry, although two stories can be interpreted as negative indictments on cosmetics and too much finery: Esther rejected beauty treatments before her presentation to the Persian king, indicating that the highest beauty is pure and natural; and Jezebel, who dressed in finery and eye makeup before her death, may the root of some associations between makeup and prostitutes.
In most cases, however, Jewish views on cosmetics and jewelry tend to be positive and indicate woman’s role as sexual: “In the rabbinic culture, ornamentation, attractive dress and cosmetics are considered entirely appropriate to the woman in her ordained role of sexual partner.” In addition to daily use, cosmetics also are allowed on holidays on which work (including painting, drawing, and other arts) are forbidden; the idea is that since it is pleasurable for women to fix themselves up, it does not fall into the prohibited category of work.[1]
In addition to the historical distinctions between cultures on cosmetics, jewelry, and fashion, the modern era has demonstrated that certain races enter industries associated with the Aphrodisian worldview more than others. Overwhelmingly, Jews are overrepresented in all of these arenas. Following World War I, the beauty and fashion industries became dominated by huge corporations, many of the Jewish-owned. Of the four cosmetics pioneers — Helena Rubenstein, Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder (née Mentzer), and Charles Revson (founder of Revlon) — only Elizabeth Arden was not Jewish. In addition, more than 50 percent of department stores in America today were started or run by Jews. (Click here for information about Jewish department stores and jewelers, and here for Jewish fashion designers).
Hitler was not the only one who noticed Jewish influence in fashion and thought it harmful. Already in Germany, a belief existed that Jewish women were “prone to excess and extravagance in their clothing.” In addition, Jews were accused of purposefully denigrating women by designing immoral, trashy clothing for German women.[2] There was an economic aspect to the opposition of Jews in fashion, as many Germans thought them responsible for driving smaller, German-owned clothiers out of business. In 1933, an organization was founded to remove Jews from the Germany fashion industry. Adefa “came about not because of any orders emanating from high within the state hierarchy. Rather, it was founded and membered by persons working in the fashion industry.”[3] According to Adefa’s figures, Jewish participation was 35 percent in men’s outerwear, hats, and accessories; 40 percent in underclothing; 55 percent in the fur industry; and 70 percent in women’s outerwear.[4]
Although many Germans disliked the Jewish influence in beauty and fashion, it was recognized that the problem was not so much what particular foreign race was impacting German women, but that any foreign influence was shaping their lives and altering their spirit. The Nazis obviously were aware of the power of dress and beauty regimes to impact the core of woman’s self-image and being. According to Agnes Gerlach, chairwoman for the Association for German Women’s Culture:
Not only is the beauty ideal of another race physically different, but the position of a woman in another country will be different in its inclination. It depends on the race if a woman is respected as a free person or as a kept female. These basic attitudes also influence the clothes of a woman. The southern ‘showtype’ will subordinate her clothes to presentation, the Nordic ‘achievement type’ to activity. The southern ideal is the young lover; the Nordic ideal is the motherly woman. Exhibitionism leads to the deformation of the body, while being active obligates caring for the body. These hints already show what falsifying and degenerating influences emanate from a fashion born of foreign law and a foreign race.[5]
Gerlach’s statements echo descriptions of Aphrodisian cultures entirely: Some cultures view women as a sex object, and elements of promiscuity run through all areas of women’s dress and toilette; Aryan cultures have a broader understanding of the possibilities of the female being and celebrate woman’s natural beauty.
The Introduction of Aphrodisian Elements into Germany and the Beginning of the Fashion Battles
Long before the Third Reich, Germans battled the French on the field of fashion; it was a battle between the Aphrodisian culture that had made its way to France, and the Demetrian placement of woman as a wife and mother. As early as the 1600s, German satirical picture sheets were distributed that showed the “Latin morals, manners, customs, and vanity” of the French as threatening Nordic culture in Germany. In the twentieth century, Paris was the height of high fashion, and as tensions between the two countries increased, the French increased their derogatory characterizations of German women for not being stereotypically Aphrodisian. In 1914, a Parisian comic book presented Germans as “a nation of fat, unrefined, badly dressed clowns.”[6] And in 1917, a French depiction of “Virtuous Germania” shows her as “a fat, large-breasted, mean-looking woman, with a severe scowl on her chubby face.”[7]
Hitler saw the French fashion conglomerate as a manifestation of the Jewish spirit, and it was common to hear that Paris was controlled by Jews. Women were discouraged from wearing foreign modes of dress such as those in the Jewish and Parisian shops: “Sex appeal was considered to be ‘Jewish cosmopolitanism’, whilst slimming cures were frowned upon as counter to the birth drive.”[8] Thus, the Nazis staunch stance against anything French was in part a reaction to the Latin qualities of French culture, which had migrated to the Mediterranean thousands of years earlier, and that set the highest image of woman as something German men did not want: “a frivolous play toy that superficially only thinks about pleasure, adorns herself with trinkets and spangles, and resembles a glittering vessel, the interior of which is hollow and desolate.”[9] Such values had no place in National Socialism, which promoted autarky, frugalness, respect for the earth’s resources, natural beauty, a true religiosity (Christian at first, with the eventual goal to return to paganism), devotion to higher causes (such as to God and the state), service to one’s community, and the role of women as a wife and mother.
Opposition to the Aphrodisian Culture in the Third Reich
Most students of Third Reich history are familiar with the more popular efforts to shape women’s lives: the Lebensborn program for unwed mothers, interest-free loans for marriage and children, and propaganda posters that emphasized health and motherhood. But some of the largest battles in the fight for women occurred almost entirely within the sphere of fashion—in magazines, beauty salons, and women’s organizations.
The Nazis did not discount fashion, only its Aphrodisian manifestations. On the contrary, they understood fashion as a powerful political tool in shaping the mores of generations of women. Fashion and beauty also were recognized as important elements in the cultural revolution that is necessary for lasting political change. German author Stafan Zweig commented on fashion in the 1920s:
Today its dictatorship becomes universal in a heartbeat. No emperor, no khan in the history of the world ever experienced a similar power, no spiritual commandment a similar speed. Christianity and socialism required centuries and decades to win their followings, to enforce their commandments on as many people as a modern Parisian tailor enslaves in eight days.[10]
Thus, Nazi Germany established a fashion bureau and numerous women’s organizations as active forces of cultural hegemony. Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the national leader of the NS-Frauenschaft (NSF, or National Socialist Women’s League), said the organization’s aim was to show women how their small actions could impact the entire nation.[11] Many of these “small actions” involved daily choices about dress, shopping, health, and hygiene.
The biggest enemies of women, according to the Nazi regime, were those un-German forces that worked to denigrate the German woman. These included Parisian high fashion and cosmetics, Jewish fashion, and the Hollywood image of the heavily made up, cigarette-smoking vamp—the archetype of the Aphrodisian. These forces not only impacted women’s clothing, personal care choices, and activities, but were dangerous since they touched the German woman’s very spirit.
Clothing should not now suddenly return to the Stone Age; one should remain where we are now. I am of the opinion that when one wants a coat made, one can allow it to be made handsomely. It doesn’t become more expensive because of that. . . . Is it really something so horrible when [a woman] looks pretty? Let’s be honest, we all like to see it.[14]
Though understanding the need for tasteful and beautiful dress, the Nazis were adamantly against elements foreign to the Nordic spirit. The list included foreign fashion, trousers, provocative clothing, cosmetics, perfumes, hair alterations (such as coloring and permanents), extensive eyebrow plucking, dieting, alcohol, and smoking. In February 1916, the government issued a list of “forbidden luxury items” that included foreign (i.e., French) cosmetics and perfumes.[15] Permanents and hair coloring were strongly discouraged. Although the Nazis were against provocative clothing in everyday dress, they encouraged sportiness and were certainly not prudish about young girls wearing shorts to exercise. A parallel can be seen in the scanty dress worn by Spartan girls during their exercises, a civilization characterized by its Nordic spirit and solar-orientation.
Some have said that Hitler was opposed to cosmetics because of his vegetarian leanings, since cosmetics were made from animal byproducts. More likely, he retained the same views that kept women from wearing makeup for centuries in Western countries—the innate understanding that the Aphrodisian woman is opposed to Aryan culture. Nazi proponents said “red lips and painted cheeks suited the ‘Oriental’ or ‘Southern’ woman, but such artificial means only falsified the true beauty and femininity of the German woman.”[16] Others said that any amount of makeup or jewelry was considered “sluttish.”[17] Magazines in the Third Reich still carried advertisements for perfumes and cosmetics, but articles started advocating minimal, natural-looking makeup, for the truth was that most women were unable to pull off a fresh and healthy image without a little help from cosmetics.
Although jewelry and cosmetics were not banned, many areas of the Third Reich were impossible to enter unless conforming to Nazi ideals. In 1933, “painted” women were banned from Kreisleitung party meetings in Breslau. Women in the Lebensborn program were not allowed to use lipstick, pluck their eyebrows, or paint their nails.[18] When in uniform, women were forbidden to wear conspicuous jewelry, brightly colored gloves, bright purses, and obvious makeup.[19] The BDM also was influential in shaping fashion in the regime, with young girls taking up the use of clever pejoratives to reinforce the regime’s message that unnatural beauty was not Aryan. The Reich Youth Leader said:
The BDM does not subscribe to the untruthful ideal of a painted and external beauty, but rather strives for an honest beauty, which is situated in the harmonious training of the body and in the noble triad of body, soul, and mind. Staunch BDM members whole-heartedly embraced the message, and called those women who cosmetically tried to attain the Aryan female ideal ‘n2 (nordic ninnies)’ or ‘b3 (blue-eyed, blonde blithering idiots).’[20]
The Nazis offered many alternatives to Aphrodisian values: beauty would be derived from good character, exercise outdoors, a good diet, healthy skin free of the harsh chemicals in makeup, comfortable (yet still stylish and flattering) clothing, and from the love for her husband, children, home, and country. The most encouraged hairstyles were in buns or plaits—styles that saved money on trips to the beauty salon and were seen as more wholesome and befitting of the German character. In fact, Tracht (traditional German dress) was viewed as not merely clothing, but also as “the expression of a spiritual demeanor and a feeling of worth . . . Outwardly, it conveys the expression of the steadfastness and solid unity of the rural community.”[21] Foreign clothing designs, according to Gerlach, led to physical and “psychological distortion and damage, and thereby to national and racial deterioration.”[22]
* * *
Some people may be inclined to interpret Aphrodisian culture as positive for the sexes—it puts the emphasis for women not on careers but on their existence as sexual beings. Men often encourage such behavior by their dating choices and by complimenting an Aphrodisian “look” in women. But Aphrodisian culture is not only damaging to women, as Bachofen relates, by reducing them to the status of sex slave of multiple men. It also is degrading for men, at the level of personality and at the deepest levels of being. As Evola writes about the degeneration into Aphroditism:
The chthonic and infernal nature penetrates the virile principle and lowers it to a phallic level. The woman now dominates man as he becomes enslaved to the senses and a mere instrument of procreation. Vis-à-vis the Aphrodistic goddess, the divine male is subjected to the magic of the feminine principle and is reduced to the likes of an earthly demon or a god of the fecundating waters—in other words, to an insufficient and dark power.[23]
(PICTURE: Swedish singer Zarah Leander)
If someone needs the ‘unusual’ to be moved to astonishment, that person has lost the ability to respond rightly to the wondrous, the mirandum, of being. The hunger for the sensational . . . is an unmistakable sign of the loss of the true power of wonder, for a bourgeois-ized humanity.[24]
A society that promotes so much unnatural beauty will no doubt lose the ability to experience the wondrous in the natural. It is essential that people retain the ability to love and be moved by the pure and natural, in order to once again return to a civilization centered in a Traditional Aryan worldview.
Notes
1. Daniel Boyarin, “Sex,” Jewish Women’s Archive.
2. Irene Guenther, Nazi ‘Chic’?: Fashioning Women in the Third Reich
(Oxford: Berg, 2004), 50–51.
3. Guenther, 16.
4. Guenther, 159.
5. Agnes Gerlach, quoted in Guenther, 146.
6. Guenther, 21–22.
7. Guenther, 26.
8. Matthew Stibbe, “Women and the Nazi state,” History Today, vol. 43, November 1993.
9. Guenther, 93.
10. Stefan Zweig, quoted in Guenther, 9.
11. Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Germany
(Essex, UK: Pearson, 2001), 88.
12. Stephenson, 133.
13. Guenther, 120.
14. Adolf Hitler, quoted in Guenther, 141.
15. Guenther, 32.
16. Guenther, 100.
17. Guido Knopp, Hitler’s Women
(New York: Routledge, 2003), 231.
18. Guenther, 99.
19. Guenther, 129.
20. Guenther, 121.
21. Guenther, 111.
22. Gerlach, quoted in Guenther, 145.
23. Evola, Revolt, 223.
24. Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture
, trans. Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 102.