The other day I saw an article in a mainstream newspaper in which some ‘celebrity’ regaled her readers with a frank and clinical discussion of her problematic labia. I wish I could tell you what the nature of the problem was, but I didn’t read far enough to find out.
The celebrity obviously felt, and her editors must have agreed, that the subject of one’s genitalia is fit for public airing. That could be easily dismissed as an exercise in solipsistic bad taste, but I think it’s more sinister than that.
The woman and the paper both proceeded from ideological premises they regard as universal and uniquely correct. The desirability of letting it all hang out, literally if need be, springs from the urge to smash up the old order, replete as it was with repression, body-shaming, religious superstition, alienation, misogyny, suffocating ethics, anally retentive etiquette, retrograde morality and so on, all the way down the list.
This brings me yet again to my recurrent theme: the eerie and growing similarity between the communism of my youth and the liberal democracy of my adulthood. Both are ideological, and both ideologies aim to replace the old, deficient world with a new, progressive one.
Since a world is made up of people, the aim of any ideology is to create not only a new and improved political order but also a new and improved man, as defined in the terms of the received ideology. Step by step, the whole complexity of man is reduced to a simple binary proposition: with us or against us.
Communist ideology was simpler than liberal democracy, but both are simplistic (that is an essential attribute of any ideology). However, in one respect communism was better: as it went along, the fervour of ideological commitment attenuated.
In the beginning, the masses, with notable exceptions, were quite gung-ho. But by the time I became a sentient person, in the 1960s, no one in Russia took communism seriously, although most people continued mouthing meaningless clichés by rote.
With liberal democracy, it’s the other way around. Rather than becoming gradually less ideological over time, it becomes more so, and at an ever-accelerating tempo. And, unlike communism, it attacks on many fronts because its enemies come in all shapes.
Stalin’s pet idea was that, the closer the shining ideal of socialism, the more intensive the class struggle. That didn’t happen in communist countries. On the contrary, communism there steadily became more and more anaemic and less and less belligerent. However, a related idea worked out perfectly in liberal democracies.
As they became more liberal and democratic, their enemies were coming out of the woodwork in greater numbers and types, and the dominant ideology had to grow more aggressive by the day.
Allegiance to the communist ideology boiled down to a simple pro or con. If one accepted the sole truth of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin, one was a friend eligible for some latitude. If one didn’t accept it, one was an implacable enemy slated for destruction. That ideology was embodied by the communist party, whose doctrine changed day to day, but it was up to every citizen to follow the ideological zigs and zags vigilantly.
The task of creating a new, which is to say ideological, man has a vital political dimension because most people stubbornly cling to the old and familiar version of humanity. They can only be made to see the light by political action, and there democracy of universal suffrage comes in handy.
By drawing every citizen into elective politics, democracy predisposes them to expect a political solution to every problem. Ideology then moves in to claim the crumbs of the pie.
The ideology of liberal democracy is as comprehensively politicised as communism, but it’s broken down into multiple strains. It too strives to create a new human type, but its criteria for belonging are more multifarious than a simple statement of allegiance.
An aspiring adherent has to demonstrate that he accepts every aspect of the ideology, and these constantly become more numerous. One has to pledge allegiance to climate change, transgender rights, women’s rights, homomarriage, anti-colonialism, anti-racism and any other pet idea of the moment. Moreover, one must make that pledge vociferously.
Passive acquiescence isn’t good enough, as it wasn’t under communism. Ideologues demand enthusiastic support, not merely non-resistance. And they brook no argument, mainly because they don’t even know what constitutes one.
Even though ‘idea’ and ‘ideology’ are etymological cognates, they are antonyms. An idea, which becomes an argument when expressed, submits itself to a test of true or false. If the argument is persuasive, the idea is accepted as fact; if not, it’s rejected.
Conversely, the only test imposed by an ideology is loyalty to it. That’s why there is no point arguing, say, that changing sex is impossible at any biological level. An ideologue won’t engage you on your turf.
He’ll simply comply with the demands of his ideology by identifying the pernicious roots of your disagreement with it. Thus he won’t try to prove that a transsex operation does change the biological makeup of a person. He’ll simply dismiss you by saying “you believe this because you are…” Whatever follows in that phrase means “a rebel against my ideology and therefore my enemy.”
The same goes for any attempt to present, say, scientific evidence proving the ideology of climate change is based on false and bogus evidence. Your opponent won’t relate to any real argument. His response will be: “You are saying this because…”
In the incident I cited at the beginning, ideology was working overtime. A new, ideological man must pass the test of renouncing his old prejudices. What in the past was considered common decency affirming the dignity of man is now seen as sexual repression, which is a fatal failing of character and ideological probity.
When Marcuse and other Frankfurters concocted an organic blend of Marx and Freud, they formed perhaps the most vital aspect of the new ideology. Everyone, according to them, was driven by his unconscious class prejudices (Marx) and sexual urges (Freud).
The former are fine if the prejudices are those of the lower classes. If you have any others, you are… [fill in the blanks]. But any sexual self-expression, especially of a kind that used to be frowned upon, is healthy and ideologically sound. Suppressing such urges, on the other hand, means rejecting the liberating effect of the new ideology. If you are guilty of such shameful repression, you are…
No subject is taboo any longer. If you refuse to indulge the public’s taste for intimatemost details, you implicitly reject the liberal-democratic ideology, which makes you an oddity at best, an enemy at worst.
A woman discussing her labia in a family newspaper makes thereby a statement of allegiance, at the same time submitting her readers to a test of ideological purity. If you wince, as I did, and refuse to read any further, then you are… well, you know what you are.
If, however, you lap up every tasteless word – even if you may be cringing somewhere deep down, around your pancreas – you pass the test. You’ll be an ideological man, my son, as Kipling didn’t quite put it.
In this area too, the communist ideology was vectored differently from its liberal democratic sibling. One of the first decrees of the Bolshevik government was the abolition of family. Prominent Bolsheviks, such as Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand and Karl Radek, proclaimed sexual liberation and called on every true communist to express himself with multiple partners.
Radek founded the Shameless League and personally led nude marches through Moscow. Marriage was declared a bourgeois perversion, a way of enslaving women in their men’s bondage. Every woman was now community property, and she had to accept the advances of any Party member who fancied her.
However, as the Soviet system matured, it became puritanical. Even though divorce and abortion remained easily available, marriage was reinstated, and sexual licence discouraged.
Back in the 1970s a Soviet woman involved in a TV debate with her American sisters even declared that “there is no sex in the Soviet Union”, much to my hilarity as I watched from the safety of my Houston house.
But the dynamic of liberal-democratic ideology is exactly reverse. At the beginning, some erstwhile reticence held firm as a throwback to Christian morality. Yet the revolutionary outburst of the ‘60s put paid to that. The poet Philip Larkin even wrote: “Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me).”
That was followed by a rapid escalation all the way to today, when formerly serious newspapers happily talk about labia and various ballistic possibilities ensuring orgasmic bliss. Ideology is laying about it, and I for one wonder what comes next.