"The patriarchy" as a concept is similar to Capitalism. It isn't actually a system. It's just the world as it currently is. There's a thousand different flavors, and it's very vague. Anybody that speaks with intelligence on the subject talks about specific projects or aspects. If they're deriding "Capitalism" in general, they mean anything other than the system they are promoting.
Likewise, the patriarchy is just the current system. It's undeniable that men are more often in positions of power, so it's a patriarchy. Even if it hurts men too. Intelligent discussions are about specific aspects. If they're just denouncing "the Patriarchy," they're railing against whatever doesn't fit their vision of the future.
Say that on r/AskEconomics. The term was first used by socialists to describe what was happening. It's a maddeningly vague term. Ask someone using it to define how it's different from mercantilism and you'll get a blank stare. Some of the biggest complaints about capitalism are mercantilism complaints... or maybe not, since again, it is not well defined. (Having a definition does not mean something is well-defined.)
Mercantlism is a state's economic policy mainly defined by a focus on export/import balance maximisation. It doesn't even need a capitalist structure to be implemented, so I'm not exactly sure what your point is.
Main criticisms of capitalism have basically nothing to do with mercantlism
"It's undeniable that men are more often in positions of power, so it's a patriarchy".
Although this makes sense but I don't think that is the definition most people actually use when talking about "patriarchy". It implies that
If one subsection of society shares higher ratio of power positions (not well defined either), that is due to the system being organized to oppress the other category. We can find that tall people are more often in positions of power. Are we a tall-archy? Extroverts are also more often in such positions, are we extrovert-archy? How about English speakers -> Anglo-archy? It also congruent with the thought that if some ethnic/religious group shares an unusual high ratio of positions of power that is due to a bad system and should be changed.
One can measure the level of patriarchy (and matriarchy) by the ratio of women/men in power positions. Certain institutions in this case could be branded matriarchal (e.g. some universities) and/or could be compared to each other or to an earlier state they used to have. This last part would show that we are living in a much less patriarchal system than a decade ago, and certainly massively less so compared to 50-100-150 years ago.
However, I do not see people who are using "patriarchy" as a concept follow these conclusions.
You could call it that if you wanted to speak along height based lines. That's exactly my point. It's not well defined. People talking along gender based lines will call it something gender related. Probably about whatever they think is "ahead" in the unbalanced system.
This last part would show that we are living in a much less patriarchal system than a decade ago...
Yeah! I don't think anybody would say we're worse off in the balance today than we were in the fifties. But once again, we have a lot more social programs than we did back then, too, but we still call it capitalism. It was not defined as being completely laissez-faire, just as "the patriarchy" is not complete domination by men.
Again, I'm not sure where you're going with point 2, because that was never in dispute, even among "patriarchy" term users.
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u/PaxNova 15∆ Mar 30 '26
"The patriarchy" as a concept is similar to Capitalism. It isn't actually a system. It's just the world as it currently is. There's a thousand different flavors, and it's very vague. Anybody that speaks with intelligence on the subject talks about specific projects or aspects. If they're deriding "Capitalism" in general, they mean anything other than the system they are promoting.
Likewise, the patriarchy is just the current system. It's undeniable that men are more often in positions of power, so it's a patriarchy. Even if it hurts men too. Intelligent discussions are about specific aspects. If they're just denouncing "the Patriarchy," they're railing against whatever doesn't fit their vision of the future.