PC equality versus Marxist equality: status versus salary

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Developed from a comment I posted at:

http://www.amerika.org/politics/what-comes-after-liberalism/#comments

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Political correctness is (obviously!) about equality - in some way and at some level: equality of outcomes and not equality of opportunity.

And PC is about equality of status above all else.

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It is this focus on status which makes PC different from Communism (tho’ clearly from the same roots) – Marxists viewed the economic as primary and assumed that if income and wealth were equalized then all else would follow; but PC views equality of esteem as primary and assumes all else will follow.

It is the vast totalitarian ambition of enforcing this impossibility which makes PC so pervasive and so dangerous.

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And obviously it is incoherent to enforce equality of status including those individuals and groups who explicitly, foundationally, assert inequality of status (i.e. their own superiority) – such as many/ all of the approved groups on-whose-behalf PC acts.

It is the vast incoherence of tolerating the intolerant which renders PC self-contradictory and self-destroying.

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Political correctness attempts or intends (implicitly) to solve this incoherence by aiming/ intending (at some point) to enforce equality of status in all discourse (public and personal - as in the slogan 'the personal is political') - therefore PC is intrinsically totalitarian.

This totalitarianism is justified on a utilitarian basis: that of promoting happiness and preventing suffering; and on the pragmatic basis that anything less than total control of discourse will be subverted and ineffective.

(Of course, PC does not argue for total control of discourse; but each step towards total control of discourse is seen as necessary.)

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Political correctness (implicitly) believes that it can solve any apparent contradictions because it is built on the nihilist assumption that there is no real-reality.

For PC there is no reality but many realities, reality is not given but created by human society and individual choice - and individual choice is constrained by socially-created discourse (which is in principle amenable to control).

For PC, society creates its own reality: the only limits are the limits of human imagination (and the limits of human power to enforce that imagination).

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This world view is foundational to political correctness - it is the bottom line.

Reality is merely perception: that which is perceived is the only real, and the way we perceive is changeable.

To control reality, therefore, we need to control the perceptual biases.

If everyone without exception wears rose-tinted spectacles, then reality is pink.

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For PC, control of discourse will control bias will control perceptions will control reality.

When perceived reality contains no basis for perceiving or mentioning or acting-upon unequal status, then equality is reality.

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