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Right, I noted at the end that Marcuse's empirical description was not entirely correct today (especially if you're a straight white male).
This was a great anime by the way.
What? No it's not. It's dominated by adult men who have a lot of money.
No. My apologies, that was an attempt to interject humor into the OP. He wasn't right. He insisted that non-identical ideologies were actually identical. Our language was insufficient to justify his position because his position was incorrect.
Older men have only the authority vested into them in their ability to lead younger men: either in the personal level in tribal and medieval context, or in the ideological and abstract state apparatus in the current era. Young men are the currency of science, warfare, and economics. No vigorous movement has succeeded without them.
I disagree. The currency of economics is, ultimately, capital.
Sure, young men (and women) could band together and take over Somalia, and live without any older person telling them what to do.
However, most are wise enough to see that that this would be a terrible decision. Instead, they live in big cities paying high rents to older people, working in companies controlled by older people (at least indirectly), and voting for political parties controlled by older people.
You are mistaken: the currency of economics is homo economicus, the idealized man-laborer/manager in the shape of a spherical cow. It is human beings who are the primary agents of subjective value, who give meaning and purpose to capital and the commodities it produces.
You make the mistake of looking at the top of the pyramid: and seeing that they are all old, and conflating that with power. Experience and expertise count for much but the simple fact of biological death ensures that transition of power is inevitable. Institutions, by necessity, are constantly replacing their principal agents.
Which leads back to the original premise: any organization that fails to appeal to the young (and young men in particular) will be swiftly made irrelevant. Feminists are only successful insomuch as they are able to appeal to the resources of powerful men (in the suffragette era) or abstractly through the mechanisms of taxation and policy (now.) Old, infertile women have no power over young men and must sway their younger, more beautiful counterparts to have any political power at all.
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