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I hate to break it to you, but the idea that Cultural Marxism is a myth, is a myth. There literally were academics calling themselves Cultural Marxists, and they were promoting exactly the kind of thought that would later become SJWism, and now Wokeness.
No. It's not. I'm a Marxist. If it were real I would have heard of it. The first time I heard of it was from ultra-right wing extremely online types. And they continue to be the only ones that talk about it. This leads to at least one of two conclusions
In the years I have argued Marx and Socialist stuff I have pretty much never encountered an anti-Marxist that really knew much of anything about Marxism. It really is kind of astounding how ignorant anti-Marxists are about the ideology they profess to hate, actually. Up to the most respected professors, it's immense amounts of confused BSing. And we're not talking about something small that's easily missed here.
You mean academic singular. I watched this happen in real time. The extreme right-wing types that desperately wanted to put the cultural marxism myth on to wikipedia were having a hard time with power users and their citation gatekeeping. Eventually someone just went to google scholar and found a book with the title Cultural Marxism from the 80s or 90s from some literal who. Not a single conservative I've seen citing this "proof" has read said book, that I know of. Nor has any serious Marxist. Nor have I. There might be others, I don't know, since culture and marxism are two very popular buzzwords for overproduced academic hacks, but no serious Marxist has ever talked about such things. This might not be obvious to you, but trust me, It's really obvious to me because I am actually somewhat familiar with this ground.
The other works the conspiracists like to cite never call themselves "cultural marxist" e.g. the Frankfurt School. Who are not literal whos. No fan or detractor of them has called them such in Marxist circles. Again, it's all right wingers from without confusedly opining. Fans call their influence "critical theory" and it's no great secret or grand conspiracy.
Again we are talking about a supposed movement that's brought much of the developed world to its knees. Despite the fact economic leftism as a movement is laughably dead and pathetic now. Not some micro book from around the collapse of the USSR.
If wokeness had much to do with serious Marxism maybe I would be Woke. I'm not. I'm opposed to it.
Whether the Cultural Marxists call themselves Cultural Marxists or not is not relevant to the usefulness of the term; 'Death of the Author' and all that. Deer don't call themselves deer either.
There definitely do seem to be a subset of >1 academics that do/did call themselves that; here's another: https://scholars.duke.edu/person/jameson. And his book ('Conversations on Cultural Marxism'), which you could buy if you want to read it: https://www.amazon.ca/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Marxism/dp/0822341093
That aside, the class struggle components of regular Marxism are so much in the academic water of post-war humanities studies, it seems implausible that academics would not incorporate them into their studies of culture, even if it were unconscious - which in some cases it maybe is. So why not call a spade a spade?
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Cultural marxism is slightly pejorative descriptive name for critical theory ("a social theory focusing on critiquing and changing society" per Wikipedia) and other programmes by likes of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Gramsci. All considered themselves Marxists or descendants to Marxist thought, but turned into considering cultural, sociological forces instead of classical Marxist materialism.
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Cultural marxism is effectively Antonio Gramsci. He absolutely wanted to influence culture and was pushing marxism.
The cultural revolution clearly shows that the communists wanted to influence culture.
Especially the early soviet union wanted to greatly impact culture.
This isn't more of a conspiracy theory than that right wingers want to change culture. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy that people with similar political views want the same thing. That christians tend to be pro life isn't a conspiracy. They are not all congregating in a central lodge. Many of them aren't really taking orders from above and those who are such as catholics are entirely open about the church's stance.
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I understand your frustration here, but it seems manifestly true (from my perspective as an academic, albeit not in the humanities) that the academic priesthood of the SJ establishment has appropriated Marxist vocabulary as well as a fair amount of concepts (whether they use them correctly or not) and generally sees itself as the rightful inheritor to labels including "Marxist", "leftist", "socialist" et cetera, and they only disavow them as part of a slippery routine when their opposition tries to put a name on them (see relevant Freddie DeBoer post). At some point it just seems impractical to not go along with the self-identification of the overwhelming victors - almost as if you insisted that no major modern branch of Christianity were actually Christian, though of course it's not a perfect analogy since we are not in a setting where Christians protest whenever members of other religions pejoratively call them Christian, even as they happily identify with the label among themselves.
I agree with the "appropriation" framing of it, but one thing I'd like to emphasize, is that this idea didn't spring, fully formed, from the finest minds of Tumblr, the work started around the 60's, as OliveTapendale pointed out.
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Just my unsolicited advice, but 'if it were real I would have heard of it' doesn't seem to me like a sensible way to approach a world where the number of things that might be 'real' are limitless and the number of things you 'have heard' isn't
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I don't see why I should assume this is true.
Well, why don't we argue over the facts of whether or not Cultural Marxism is a myth, and then you can tell me which one of those was correct.
Off the top of my head I can think of Richard R. Weiner, Douglas Kellner, and Emily Hicks, so plural. I remember there were more, but I'd have to start searching.
a) I think the term goes back to WWII or thereabouts, and there's been several books written about it.
b) "Myth" means it didn't happen, not that it was neiche.
The students of the core Frankfurt School thinkers were calling themselves cultural marxist, so this is flatly wrong, unless you want to say that people who studied directly under them don't get to call themselves "Frankfurt School".
Yes. It brought it to it's knees culturally not economically. This is why the "Cultural" part of "Cultural Marxism" is so important, and the deadness of economic leftism is irrelevant.
I don't get why Marxists get so defensive on this. I agree that OG economic Marxism is not responsible for any of this nonsense.
The term certainly appears starting from the 60s, though, it must be said, not incredibly prominently. I don't think this by itself proves very much, though. "Cultural Marxism" in the sense of 2010s-and-20s culture wars just doesn't seem like something that has much to do with a handful of 1960s academics.
Much like the term “Neoreaction”, “Cultural Marxism” is really several strands of Marxist and post Marxist thought that has been woven together to form what is now the dominant group of ideologies on the academic left since the new left moved from the streets to the classroom and beyond.
Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, is the real jumping off point. Critical theory, third worldism, post colonial theory, orientalism, all these things flow from that particular bend in the road.
It’s a descriptor of a family tree of thought with a common ancestry. Without classical Marxism it certainly wouldn’t exist. It’s certainly a much more accurate and narrower description than “The Successor Ideology” or “Woke”.
I think the reluctance to be named, which has been expounded on both satirically and seriously by better writers than I, is ironically part of the fuel for the whole “conspiracy theory”. There’s no shortage of articles basically saying “Ok, you don’t like term X so what the fuck do we call this clearly aligned school of thought?”. “The ideology who shan’t be named?”
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I recall reading something by Walter Benjamin from just before the war, but back then it boiled down to "Marxists talking about culture".
Why not? What they were saying back then was eerily similar to what would define modern culture wars. I'm half-willing to make a bet that if you trace the influences of people like Ibrahim X. Kendi or Robin Di Angelo you'll run right into those 60's academics.
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