Marketing Marxism
On my first read I found this Substack post from Michael Magoon, "How a Generation of Young Women Moved Left after 2010—And Why" both fascinating and off-putting. Fascinating because he has crafted a pretty believable theory why Western women -- the free-est, most liberated, most educated, and richest women with the most personal agency in the history of the planet -- have been radicalized towards the Left and particularly to Marxism.
There are a lot of parts to his theory and he shares a good bit of data, but the theory boils down to certain psychological traits amplified via social media. The article is worth a read -- I think it is firewalled but can be accessed with a free registration.
But, as I mentioned, it was also off-putting, for a couple of reasons. First, I don't really like robbing individuals of their agency by talking about them in groups, and besides I know a number of young females who don't match these descriptions at all.
More importantly, though, the whole thing felt to me on first read like an ammunition dump for future ad hominem attacks -- eg we don't have to take what you say seriously because you are just another neurotic female. And really, there is not much need for ad hominem attacks on Left anyway when you see gays for Gaza marching in the streets -- you know right away they are intellectually bankrupt without having to do a Meyers-Briggs on them. Yes, I realize this somewhat puts me out of touch with the world. After all, the woke/Marxists causing chaos on the Left all absolutely argue via ad hominem attacks on the group (eg you are white/male/cis/American/Christian/Jewish so you are inherently evil and we don't have to respond to you). As an aside, I always found it ironic that Progressives have so much vitriol for white supremacists when in fact white supremacists are the one other prominent group that shares the Progressive intersectional assumption that an induvial is defined first and foremost by their race and other hard-coded personal traits, rather than their beliefs, arguments, or actions. The white supremacists share the same fundamental intersection assumption, they just root for a different team.
But I had occasion to think about this article again the other day thanks to the new Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani when he promised New Yorkers he would "replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
My first reaction was what the actual f*ck? Who could have the benefit of learning from the 20th century and say any such thing? Was this the warmth of Nazi book-burning bonfires, or of the Soviet Siberian Gulags, or maybe of the tropical Cambodian killing fields? I and many other greeted this slogan as laugh-out-loud ridiculous. Give me rugged individualism all the way.
But I had to think again. This guy got elected out of nowhere, with a resume that included not much more than grad school struggle sessions, so let's assume he is a good marketer. And then it hit me -- the "warmth of collectivism" is absolutely a precision-crafted slogan for the demographic described in the article above. If we think of that article as political market research, and if it were correct, then this is exactly the slogan a politician would offer. Here are a few selected bits from the piece:
Social incentives further amplify vulnerability. Women tend to have higher levels what psychologist call Agreeable. That is women are more likely than other demographic groups to be:
- more socially attuned,
- more sensitive to peer approval, and
- more likely to conform to perceived moral consensus within their networks.
Unlike Neuroticism, which declines with age, Agreebleness increases. In tightly connected social environments—especially digital ones—ideological alignment becomes a prerequisite for social belonging.
Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies offer a ready-made moral identity that signals compassion, awareness, and virtue. Adoption of that identity is rewarded socially, while deviation carries reputational risk. For individuals already sensitive to social threat, the cost of dissent can feel existential rather than merely intellectual.
further
Modern progressive ideology is articulated in terms that resonate strongly with traditionally feminine moral intuitions: care, safety, inclusion, protection, and emotional validation [ed-- the warmth of collectivism]. These values are not inventions of ideology; they reflect real differences in moral emphasis that have been documented across sexes. When an ideology elevates these values to absolute status and frames disagreement as harm, it becomes especially compelling to those already oriented toward preventing suffering and maintaining social harmony.
Taken together, these factors help explain why young white unmarried women are not merely participating in Post-Modern Left-of-Center movements but often occupying their emotional core.
He explains why this can still occur despite women being more empowered and materially secure than ever in history:
In a world where material constraints have loosened but meaning has thinned, vulnerability is no longer defined by poverty or exclusion. It is defined by exposure:
- exposure to threat narratives,
- social pressure, and
- moral systems that convert personal distress into political certainty.
This vulnerability does not predetermine radicalization, but it makes it far more likely when the surrounding environment consistently rewards emotional alignment over skepticism and moral intensity over restraint.
Those of us aware of the disaster that socialism always wrecks on populations see Mamdani selling an obviously failed prescription. But looked at in the context above, it makes more sense that he is not selling policy, he is selling inclusion and belonging and approval and threat-protection -- essentially the same as a cult with -- come to think of it --the same mass death waiting somewhere at the end.
