Feminist Carol Hanisch is famous for opposing the Miss America contest in the 1960s. She is also the person who in 1968 coined the phrase "the personal is the political." Her essay on the topic denounced the idea that women's liberation can come about through individual action. The issue, she wrote, is not about having women make better choices with their lives. Instead, it is about revolutionizing politics. As she said, "There is only collective action for a collective solution."

Now, this extreme statement is only different from conventional left-wing academic opinion in one sense: it is in plain English. As the decades wore on, the opinions of the post-Marxist crowd didn't change. They only began to wrap them in ever more turgid gobbledygook. But the conclusion is always the same: we need collective action, which is a euphemism for the state. The goal is to strengthen the state, that is, make it more totalitarian.