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Cultural Marxism seems to be a subject that starts discussions here from time to time (this is the latest example, I guess), and one conclusion I came away with from these is that apparently many Blue Tribers are convinced that the concept is nothing but a neofascist myth, similar to how the same group dismisses "political correctness" as something not real and instead existing in nowhere else but the imagination of GOP propagandists.
Anyway, it's not like I want to reinvent the wheel here, but I propose a simple concept to differentiate cultural Marxism from economic Marxism. For the sake of argument, let's assume that both Marxist tendencies actually exist, although I understand that this is a very big jump for the leftists mentioned above. Instead of observing what these tendencies argue, let's look at how they find purchase in society, to the extent that they do.
Economic Marxism seeks supporters by appealing to the economic grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly right-wing hierarchical social environments.
"How is it possible that I'm working my ass off yet still remain nothing but a poor shmuck while assholes who never worked a day in their life drive around in fancy cars and fancy clothes?!"
"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men." (John Ball)
It's not difficult to see why economic Marxism lost most of the allure it ever had: the people who keep appealing to such grievances are no longer the Marxists. This has multiple causes of its own, but I won't try going into this here.
Cultural Marxism, on the other hand, seeks supporters by appealing to the cultural grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly right-wing hierarchical social environments.
"Why is everyone in this town such a homophobic garbage Nazi shithead? I bet they'd start pelting me with rocks if I tried walking down Main Street holding hands with my BF."
"I'm from Alabama and my pal got thrown out of the house by his shitty Fundamentalist parents just for being gay and trans. Why is it such a cesspool, man?!"
"Everytime I visit family I get cold stares and they keep pestering me when am I finally getting married. I'm done with these fuckers."
"Why is it still considered normal here for shitbag rednecks to drive around flying the Confederate flag? I can't even."
First off, I’m surprised that nobody has brought up James Lindsay and his New Discourses project. Lindsay gets a ton of ridicule from many on the right (some of it justified) and is treated as a joke by the left, but I think he has done a wonderful service on this front. He does sprawling podcasts where he actually reads and deconstructs some of the foundational works of 20th-century post-Marxist thought, tracing the explicit genealogy not only of the ideas but also of the authors. It’s trivially true that most of the writers and thinkers people are taking about have common intellectual mentors and influences, and I think Lindsay does an able job of demonstrating this.
Secondly, people are getting hung up on the specific term “cultural Marxism” when in fact most of the proponents of that school of ideas would instead call it “critical theory”. (There are, of course, various subdisciplines - most famously critical race theory, but also critical fat studies, critical pedagogy, gendercritical, etc.) Critical theory also comes with critical praxis - the specific actions and analytical approaches applied by practitioners of critical theory, who for a while were calling themselves crits. (I don’t remember if it was Richard Delgado who coined the term. I’d have to go back and check.)
In discussions about whether or not “critical race theory” is being taught in K-12 schools, educators will usually protest that critical theory is a college- and graduate-level set of ideas which are both inappropriate for, and impossible to teach to, children. And that’s true! What they are teaching children is critical praxis. They’re teaching children how to apply a critical (and this word has a very different meaning in this context than it does in the phrase “critical thinking”) lens to specific real-world examples.
And what is critical theory? Succinctly, it’s the view that social relations can be accurately described as a set of unequal power relations between socially-constructed affinity groups, such that groups can possess and accrue social capital - the power to disseminate and reproduce a hegemonic set of cultural norms - which, barring intentional efforts to redistribute social capital/prestige, will allow those groups to maintain their dominant cultural power indefinitely. In this sense it is applying the analytical tools and framework of Marx (the dialectic, the identification of complex power relations, the belief in accrued capital as an inherently unjust state of affairs) and treating social/cultural hegemony as the unit of capital, rather than money or land ownership. And much as communists seek to intentionally seize and redistribute/democratize the means of economic production, crits seek to seize and redistribute/democratize the means of cultural production.
Just as the end goal of communism is a world in which no person or group can possess and selfishly hoard more economic capital than another, crits want a world in which no group has more prestige than another. No group feels more “at home” in a certain place, no group feels confident as a majority to impose its cultural norms on others, etc. To get there, we must first identify the current power relations and actively subvert them; the formerly-marginalized must be centered, the hegemonic/bourgeois cultural norms must be relentlessly critiqued and negated, and the means of cultural production must be actively turned toward the dissemination of counter-hegemonic narratives.
I fail to see how anyone can miss that this is Marxist analysis applied to culture and status instead of money. I think that a fair reading of the authors in question will make their intellectual foundations very obvious.
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The predominantly right wing environments is wrong and there is an inaccuracy in "marginalized communities". We should select a description that is less biased in favor of the cultural marxist lingo.
Cultural Marxists are very willing to keep pandering to the same favorite groups, if they aren't marginalized and if the hierarchy favors them. The narrative is one of marginalized communities and right wing heirarchy, but you can, and in fact it is the increasing model, of increasing cultural marxism with the communities not being marginalized. If they marginalize disfavored groups, you will not see the kind of people called cultural marxists, reversing cause.
If a space becomes less diverse, by becoming more black, and less white, you won't sdee them complain.
In fact, your definition seems to accept the assumptions of cultural marxists.
I would say that cultural marxists are those who are biased in favor of progressive favored groups, of intersectional alliance, such as blacks, Jews, women, LGBT, and more, are identitarians in favor of such groups, on the basis of deeming them oppressed, and favor the destruction, or disminishment, with especially hostile against whites, and are also hostile against men, straight, etc, treating an environment that favors them, or is even even handed, as inherently oppressive and an example of the crisis of misogyny, antisemitism, racism (agaisnt blacks). It is about those who are dogmatic and see as heroic favoring such groups and a reforms in that direction.
It is about the presumption of ism being against those groups. So your quoted definition is great if one says that a cultural marxism is someone who makes that presumption. But inaccurate, if you use that definition on face value.
Where there is some difference between more naked tribalism, although I consider cultural marxism, to be fairly seen as progressive supremacist, and supremacist movement of supremacists for those groups and against their outgroup is that there is an argument that promotes disingenius one sided critique and promotes a motte of against identity politics, inequalities. Then they change it, to favor superior treatment for their favorite groups.
Some do this while arguing for the destruction of their outgroup, and painting them as nazi evil threat for opposing their own self destruction.
Another element, is the utopian dream that after destroying their white, or heteronormative, or any combination of identities they are against, they will reach an utopian without racism, or oppression. There is a certain egalitarian pretense, or belief at least with some of the less well off groups. But cultural Marxism is not sincerely egalitarian.
The most pervasive cultural marxist ideology is on areas of ethnicity and race in the USA. Elsewhere it is more complciated.
It is the people who see men rights activism, white nationalism, transphobia, homophobia, etc, etc as a great evil and are incapable of seeing whether a certain level of rights and interests for men, whites, straights, etc, and moves that can limit and go against a certain level of rights they favor for such groups. Basically they don't care for any compromise with the interests and rights, of those groups and with the right wing opposition who identify with such interests.
There is also continuity with historical marxism that shared cultural marxist elements, even if in weaker proportion and had in it an element of destroying the family, or nation, and also had these kind of biased tribalists among its ranks. Even if this element was a weaker part of it. Modern actual marxists have often adopted cultural marxist beliefs or be even more hardcore for them.
Calling liberals with the title cultural marxists would be a fair, and accurate description and not at all uncharitable. They are just going to be displeased about this, because they want to potray themselves as moderates and their opposition as extremists. And obviously they are very willing to censor and fight to not let us have an accurate picture of this. And other groups like most leftists who don't self describe as liberals agree with cultural marxism but might disagree with liberals on some things, fake conservatives who share this bias and hostility. Some fake conservatives are actually especially cultural marxists in their rhetoric, who are basically the version of cultural marxism that tries to be more consistent with the motte but still fails to be consistent and still is biased in favor of progressive identity groups and tolerates them in the manner that doesn't right wing ones.
A cultural leftist is in fact a cultural marxist. Cultural leftism cannot be seperated with cultural marxism. Marxism is central to leftism. Modern liberalism is cultural marxism. And it is very pervasive. We live in very cultural far left times.
There are elements associated with liberalism that aren't cultural marxism, that some right wing edgy figures might not like, although modern liberalism and really historical liberalism has its own blame which gave ground to socialism also failed to be consistent with those and isn't fair to give it ownership of those exclsusively. Especially when they undermined say natural rights. For example, lets take human rights. Cultural marxists rely on their interpretation of human rights, but it is possible to have one that isn't cultural marxist and still value human rights, and even despise cultural marxists for the harm they do towards genuine human rights, by promoting fake ones.
Their rhetoric is less important, the most important element of cultural marxism is the bias in favor of the identities they favor, the bias against the identity they disfavor, their complete disregard of the rights and interests of those groups and how they prioritise their dogma in favor of reducing nations, (which they aren't consistent about and target particularly their outgroup nations and make exception for their ingroup nations), gender roles, masculine and female duties and obligation, in a manner that is destructive to society.
However, while cultural marxism is an illegitimate, ironically it is a very ist ideology that distorts the situation, it is possible in a limited way and not the limitless maximalist way cultural marxists push, in certain circumstances, for some of the groups cultural marxists, are biased in favor, to be mistreated. Currently it is the opposite problem at play, because of the influence of cultural Marxists.
Wokeness can also be used to describe it. Or really identify it as the new left ideology which grew from important elements of the old left.
There is an interesting question about whether someone who isn't a cultural marxist in some other areas but is a super hardcore SJW type behaving individual when it comes to one of those groups, and shares the core ethnic enemy of the progressive intersectionally, most notably and usually in my experience of American online discourse, is for the Jews, but one sees it with Muslims who are tribalist for themselves, carry those grievances and share the enemy, but don't like Jews. Are they part of cultural marxism? Mostly yes. Ideological purity is less important than the fact that they are part of the intersectional team and have the same enemy.
There are also people who are part of the intersectional alliance, who are more sadistic, hateful, openly tribalist, and don't buy into this idea that they are fighting against oppression, even if cynically they might pretend to do so. They know that by not tolerating identity politics of the outgroup, they are harming it and creating a caste that favors them and they like that. That they belong in the same team and are even more hardcore in harming the out group, is more important than whether they buy into the idea, that they are fighting "oppression".
Finally, just cause some cultural marxists who agree that it is morally superior to favor the groups they favor and to disfavor the groups they disfavor, disagree with the rhetoric of other more edgy cultural Marxists, or with how far they push some things, doesn't make the first to belong in a different faction. Especially if the first are putting on a mask and pretending to be against nobody, while the later are saying the quiet thing loud. Like compare Noel Ignatiev, or people cheering that X European country will no longer exist and they are colonizing it, with someone who shares Noel Ignatiev position that opposing this is white supremacy, but uses weaker rhetoric.
At the end of the day compromising with right wing identitarians and giving extreme far righters too, what they want on the issue of their own people and favorite groups not being screwed over, is the obvious limited requirement for someone to not be a cultural marxist. If you are unwilling not to screw over white people, or men, or other groups that are disfavored by progressive paradigm, and you deny the legitimacy of their collective rights, then that qualifies as cultural Marxism, especially if you see such compromise as giving nazis what they want.
So is about a bias for progressive identities, and against disfavored groups, especially favoring destruction of those. People not compromising with the legitimate rights and interests and therefore sharing ground with negatively symbolized right wing associated groups and advocates. Another element is whether those with such biases are unwilling to consider whether their dogma wrecks society.
There is a huge connection between excessive social liberalism in general and cultural Marxism, and again being sufficiently conservative is a requirement to be a moderate, and not be a cultural marxist. Because cultural Marxism, excessive social liberalism includes in its agenda, breaking down important identities and roles and responsibilities that help keep society working (even though cultural Marxism has double standards and the bias of cultural Marxists is the most important element of it).
People just want to both be excessive on the left on such areas, (including people who choose to claim that they are conservatives and conservatives must compromise more to appeal to women, and insert ethnic group and LGBT types) and to have the fame of the even handed moderate, or of the conservative.
Liberalism and much of leftism does not work in isolation as a goal to strive upon, but in combination with conservatism, and must exist in a limited manner. Same with the interests of the groups cultural Marxists favor, and limiting the rights and interests of the groups they disfavor. Cultural Marxism is very extreme on the later, acting as if their rights and interest are inherently illegitimate, under the false pretense, that identity politics and interests are illegitimacy Sympathy for other groups must be balanced with concentric circles of concern, and objectivity. The idea of constantly progressing and moving in a more left wing direction that lead to Cultural Marxism is like swallowing ten packages of panadol to get rid of a headache, because in a limited quantity it would help with a genuine problem.
It’s basically naked tribalism as most in-group out-group political ideology is. There’s no way around it, and frankly it’s no different than any other sort of political tribal alliances that existed in every society that ever existed. Political hegemony is produced by convincing various tribes to unite against the common enemies of the powerful. In this case it’s whites mostly because they have the legacy money and connections to effectively fight back against regime power. By destroying the rivals in the name of other tribes, they cement their power.
It’s still tribal. And pretty nakedly tribal. Blacks being outright told that they’re betraying their tribe if they vote republican or pretty much calling it “self-hating” if they bite the hands of the elites. And yes, the white tribe is the Dalit of modern political discourse. Any hint of the kind of tribalism that is encouraged by the discourse for others is evil for the political Dalits.
They’ll pick something else. I’m already seeing people start to include East Asians and Jews and Indians as part of the tribe.
But to be honest, Equity is the problem. It’s impossible for any society to create a situation where everyone is capable of doing everything equally and with equal results. You are not an interchangeable cog. And so the tribes simply use the cudgel of “inequality of outcomes” to secure the ability to cut in line to the good positions society has on offer. You don’t hire the only black guy to apply — you’re obviously racist even if he isn’t qualified. And as not everyone wants to do the work, it often means active discrimination against whites to meet the quotas.
I think honestly the law shouldn’t see race, sex, religion, or gender at all. If a field is 99% white, fine. If it’s 99% black also fine.
Sorry, but what you propose is still kind of cultural marxist. It is the ideology that says you can't discriminate against women and men should include women in their organisations. And then demands female exclusive organisations.
Trying to not see race, religion, gender, leads to that and becomes oppressive in its own right. What are you going to do about people who do see race, religion, gender. or ethnicity?
And how are you going to stop cultural marxists who concern troll your group not to see such characteristics, while seeing it themselves and just lying about it.
Do I have a solution that is simple, yes and no. I think on some areas you should see it, in others you shouldn't, in others you should see it, but as part of other important things and not the priority.
Same with family. I am going to listen to a foreign scientist who is working in a manner that shows competence, and proffessionalism. But I wouldn't let him take over my country.
I don't think your ideology is superior to having nations that favor the interests of their people first, try to continue respecting their ancestors their historical legacy, and try to behave in a manner that isn't parasitical against other nations.
The important objection to cultural marxism is the dishonesty, destructive attitude, which you kind of share with your idea that nations, separate sexes, must be irrelevant and the bias.
You do object with their bias for the most part but you do show a little.
Jews, Indians are benefiting and part of the cultural marxist, progressive intersectional alliance. Both are very woke in the USA. East Asians is somewhat more complicated but also lean in that direction, were harmed by AA policies, but after the supreme court decicion, now they seem to be gaining in representation. It is about being antiwhite, in important part because of the Jewish grievances and hostility to white non Jews.
However, the very idea of destroy all nations, nuclear family, distinction between sexes, and excessive social liberalism is also part of that way of thinking. As is not recognising that restrictions on the behavior and number of such groups are necessary based on the legitimate interests of white Americans.
Are you genuinely fair here, or are showing preference towards Jews, East Asians and Indians?
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Based on the last year's events, I can think we can comfortably say that Jews don't fall into that list. In fact, I'm pretty sure Jews haven't been on there since what, the 60s?
Among those who play the oppression olympics game, Jews are super-whites.
The opposite, among those who play oppression games, Jews, who are a key progressive associated group and strongly as a pattern, especially the most influential Jews supporters of cultural marxism might even be the champions of being oppressed and deserving superior treatment because of this.
In the latest year the powerful jewish organisations, and stakeholders have been pushing the mighty and powerful to intimitate opposition and to promote an one sided story of Jews being oppressed in the American congress.
You are doing the thing that is the epitome of cultural marxism, of acting as the group you favor is always oppressed, regardless of all the power and fanatics biased in favoring them and screwing over others. Lets just say that SJW/cultural marxists in favor of Jews are some of the worst and more influential ones but there are definetly some who disfavor Jews in favor of Muslims and others who want to keep both groups not hate each other too much and favor both sides cooling off that hostility, but still support the ADL and friends narrative about antisemitism.
Based on what I explained above, your perspective fits cultural marxism for being so incredibly biased in favor of Jews that you promote the idea of Jews as oppressed, a 50 Stalin type of statement. Of course Jews are benefiting and remain a core part of far left progressive supremacist alliance. And core participants of the game "I oppose identity politics.. but actually for my outgroup". And in general the meme of antisemitism, is precisely a part of the cultural marxist idea of promoting justice by favoring this oppressed group that is under threat of being victimized and oppressing the oppressors.
As per my definition of cultural marxism, a bias, a lack of objectivity, and a permanent dogmatic mentality in favor of such groups is an important component and this applies towards Jews. Also important to note, it is not incompatible with being a jewish chauvinist who uses right wing language in terms of Israel, or even identifies as a Jewish supremacist, and being a cultural marxist. The cultural marxist faction is more pro zionist than has anti zionists. The who/whom is more important to cultural marxism, than any consistency.
To be very clear here, I am not going to pretend that cultural marxists are correct, and aren't biased, and such issues are a mystery. Nor will pretend that core groups of their alliance, probably the most important one, are somehow oppressed by them. It is simply a reversal of reality where black Americans and Jews are oppressed by the system. The Cancel culture contrarilly favors them. This is the reversal of reality that is Cultural Marxism 101.
It is also true that Jewish reputation has deservingly suffered in the current circumstances, and sure some people who dislike them might also be part of the intersectional alliance and might oppose them because they are Muslim chauvinists.
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So what do you call a movement that seeks supporters by appealing to the cultural grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly left-wing hierarchical social environments? Is it okay to also call them - presumably including you - "Cultural Marxists"? Is the entire Online Right, as represented on this forum, a Cultural Marxist movement, or is the term reserved for those who fight against a right-wing environment? That seems like it's pretty close to @Primaprimaprima's observation below that part of the motivation is simply to be able to say that opponents of right-wingers = Marxists.
And then, who even gets to define what is right-wing? What do you tell to people like me whose political compass is rotated just enough that the SJW establishment looks like a right-wing movement with a new coat of paint, simply having gone through the usual evolution where a left-wing movement (ex. early Christianity) overthrows a right-wing establishment (ex. the pagan Roman aristocracy) and proceeds to become the new right-wing establishment (ex. the papacy) itself? Now you have to refine your definition to say "no, Marxists is the proper term for whatever instance of this general dynamic my tribe is fighting against", which looks increasingly contrived.
In general, I think it is right to be suspicious of people who insist on using a particular preexisting term for some politically significant notion at all costs, because this is the central element of a widely deployed manipulation strategy to redirect people's intuitions, heuristics and rules that were built up in response to one thing to be aimed towards another. This is what is going on when SJWs insist that you use their definition of "racism" (and relegate portions that were in the old extension but are excluded from the new to the semantic ghetto of "reverse racism"), instead of going the least-resistance path of coming up with a fresh word to capture the exact set of tendencies that they want to suppress, or "fascism", and why the content industry is adamant about referring to copyright violations as "theft" and "piracy", and I'm sure you could come up with many other examples. This is notwithstanding the other extreme, pointed out by @ArjinFerman, where one side is denied the use of any term for a politically significant notion at all - but the answer to a trap being laid in front of you isn't to defiantly turn around and walk into the trap laid behind you.
Of course, "Cultural Marxism" is an interesting example, because part of the intended transference seems to go the other way - the insistent advocate hopes that by being convinced that he is fighting against "Cultural Marxism", the anti-SJW will in the future also take up the torch of the fight against plain (economic) Marxism. I can't think of many good examples of this from other sides, since it requires a degree of having lost but still being around to plot a comeback; perhaps old-school economic lefties should pick up the strategy and push the idea that newspapers, Hollywood etc. are just "cultural Big Oil" that pulls the same tactic of using US foreign policy might to gain access to new markets.
The problem with this transference is not just that it is manipulative, but also that as soon as it is recognised, you lose a big part of your potential coalition, namely all the people (me included) who think that (economic) Marxism isn't particularly good, but the movements that fight against Marxism or think that we directionally need less Marxism are strictly worse. I would like to fight against SJWs, and in fact I consider it very important to do so, but I would be very reluctant to make common cause with a movement that wants to take some or all of my energy to do that and redirect it towards reducing taxes, abolish mandatory healthcare, or give more of a political voice to the wealthy.
This is like the guy on datasecretslox who claimed not to know what race is. People know what right-wing is to enough of a degree to be able to talk about it, even if you can "well, aksually" the edge cases.
No, it's not so alike. Germans, Americans, Africans and Chinese would agree about classifying a typical black and a white guy, even as the others might find the US "one drop" boundary weird. Meanwhile, there are real differences between what people consider fairly central examples of left and right, to the point that I've seen German press refer to the BSW (new split-off "tankie" party with direct lineage from the GDR capital-P Party) as right-wing because they are against SJWs, immigrants and Ukraine.
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Ok, but what if I told you I don't want the transference? Like I mentioned, I like MadMozer's analogy to Mormonism, because I can understand the Christians' impulse to say "hey, don't put me in the same bag as those weirdos", but that's not what the Marxists here are saying. What they're doing is more akin to "the Church of Mormon is a conspiracy theory", it's maddening.
I don’t know of any atheists out there saying a Mormon state is the end-goal of American Christianity, which is what would garner the equivalent response, “The Church of Mormon is a conspiracy theory.”
It would be easy, actually, to point out how the LDS church is a major driver of conservative culture, trying to match the Roman Catholic Church in cultural power through new media (Angel Studios, Glenn Beck, The Blaze, etc.). Now, build up a conspiracy theory of a group of influential and wealthy Mormons trying to bring about the White Horse Prophecy. Then check the funding of conservative candidates and PACs by Mormons, and you’ll see “evidence” for the theory everywhere you look. Easily disproved, of course, but now you’ve got the mind-worm whispering to you every time you see a Mormon involved in the culture war. (It works because of the successful othering of Mormons since their beginning, the American equivalent of the perpetually-othered Ashkenazi Jews of Europe complete with pogroms.)
But all that aside, the reason “Cultural Marxism” is denied is because most people have no clue what actual Cultural Marxism was/is. The progressive movement’s economic policy wing is rolling along on the momentum of bog-standard envy-driven collectivism, same as it ever was, grabbing and using new terminology by opportunity, not by design.
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So then why do you want to use the term so badly? You should have seen a lot of arguments against using it that are not "it's a conspiracy theory" by now. Can you be baited into doing something if the outgroup condemns you for doing it in sufficiently maddening terms? If the "right-wingers take Ivermectin against COVID because they are anti-science conspiracy theorists" needling had become obnoxious enough, would you have taken it just on those grounds? (If you do actually believe in Ivermectin, replace with drinking/injecting bleach)
You'll note that I don't actually go around calling the woke stuff "Cultural Marxism" in day-to-day conversations. It's only when someone denies that such a movement ever existed, and applied that label to itself, and that they were inspired by Marxist ideas, and that they resulted in what we now call "woke", that I pipe up, and point out that they are wrong.
Well, this is (almost) a motte I'm happy to concede - the only part that I find doubtful is how by "resulted" suggests that the lineage of "woke" is entirely, or mostly, within the movement that referred to itself as "Cultural Marxism". I have seen evidence of existence of communities that used that term for themselves, but the volume of evidence is really too small for there to ever have been more than a fairly small number (on the order of a few academic groups and attached activist groupies? Perhaps 100-1000 people?). If you want to claim that those groups, however small they are, begot the "woke" that we see today to a sufficient degree that "resulted" is justified as a term, when the "woke" themselves see their lineage as a procession of mass movements (civil rights, LGBT etc.), this is pretty close to the textbook definition of a conspiracy (events are secretly steered by a small group). Then the moniker "conspiracy theory" would be appropriate on the surface. Whether one should abstain from using it because of the pejorative connotations, or push back against the pejorative connotations on account of those being obvious enemy action by conspiracies, is a separate question.
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Reactionaries, I suppose.
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I think the "Cultural Marxism" discourse on the Motte tends to go down rabbit holes due to arguments about the meaning of words. The core facts are:
The argument about whether or not "Cultural Marxism" is really Marxism is analogous to the argument about whether Mormons are really Christians, and is equally unproductive. From the perspective of outsiders using the word to attack something we dislike, the more interesting question is whether thinking of "Cultural Marxism" as a form of Marxism helps or hinders our efforts to defend against it. *
From a liberal perspective, "Cultural Marxism" and orthodox Marxism are bad for sufficiently different reasons that lumping them together makes you dumber. In terms of epistemics, orthodox Marxism claims to know things which aren't true, whereas "Cultural Marxism" wrongly accuses its opponents of knowing nothing. In terms of political impacts, orthodox Marxism rejects individual action because it might lead to economic inequality, whereas "Cultural Marxism" tries to prevent effective collective action by saying it is impossible until we have all completed therapy for our internal systems of oppression. I oppose using the term "Cultural Marxism" because orthodox Marxists, most "Cultural Marxists", and intelligent liberals all agree that "Cultural Marxism" is not a subset of Marxism, so the word is misleading.
From a cultural conservative perspective, both "Cultural Marxism" and orthodox Marxism are godless, anti-cultural, and anti-us, and lumping them together is harmless. I think this is a bad case of outgroup homogeneity bias, but I understand where the cultural conservatives are coming from.
FWIW, I call the thing "Wokism"
* In the Mormon analogy, it is logical for anti-Christians to think that Mormonism is Christianity regardless of the theological arguments because they oppose it for the same reasons.
So, first of all thank you for outlining the "core facts", because I pretty much agree on every point, and I don't know if I'd manage to list them in such a detached way, but I do kind of disagree that this is the crux of the issue, and what people here end up fighting over. I explicitly stated that I'm perfectly happy to say The Thing is not Real Marxism, that it is in fact a perversion of the real thing, The Last Jedi of Marxism, a CIA op to co-opt it, and make it serve capitalism instead. I'm entirely fine with all of that.
But if we map the arguments we've heard here, and in the other thread, to your analogy, we'd be getting things like "the Church of Mormon is a myth!" or "I'm a Christian, and if there was such a thing as Mormonism, I think I would have heard about it". It sounds like blanket denial, even as the other side is pointing at church buildings and the missionaries standing on the street corner.
I can think two better mappings. The crux that makes it different from most of other is that "cultural marxism" is a descriptive term that was never widely used as ingroup denominator, though it makes sense as theoretical construction.
During the George W. Bush years, many leftists here in not-the-US drank all the US leftist messaging about then-political enemy of American Evangelical Christians without much critique. Some people honestly think the US teeming with sex-crazy corrupt religious religious cultists called "Evangelicals", lead by nightmarish ministers who look something that crawled from 1st season of True Detective and Witchfynder General, who are generally corrupt and fully intend to subjugate women and instill visions from Handmaid's Tale.
If I thought it would matter, I could say things like "I have met Evangelicals, they are different from us bu not like the media portrays" or "if there was a conspiracy to turn Handmaid's Tale into reality, I would have heard about it" (and be not believed).
Another example: Patriarchy, as defined by feminism. Yes, there have been social and cultural organization models where men had more rights than women. Yet also the strong forms of "patriarchy" as an all-encompassing cultural force that must fought everywhere, all the time, that both needs to eliminated in our minds to remove hurtful notions and social expectations and also in the social world to remove privileges and old boys networks by setting up quotas ... yeah, we do get arguments lke "patriarchy is a myth" and "I am a man and if there was such a thing as patriarchy that supports me with my career, I think I would have heard about it".
That doesn't work. If we map that back to the debate on Cultural Marxism, it would end up looking like "I've met Cultural Marxists, they're not saying what you're accusing them of". No one here is saying that.
Ok, but that's just a direct denial of Cultural Marxism having existed, and I'm quite prepared to argue the other side of the position (see here), and that just means the "core facts" from MadMozer's post are actually under dispute.
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I believe that I am at least somewhat acquainted with leftist thought, not only through reams of videos and text produced by contemporary leftists online, but also through the works of the Frankfurt school (primarily Adorno and Marcuse), the works of Freudian psychoanalysts from Freud himself up through the 20th century and into the current day, and 20th century European philosophy in general. I have never once heard a leftist refer to themselves unironically as a "cultural Marxist". In fact I have never heard the term used by leftists at all, except when contemporary commentators use it to designate a conspiracy theory. That doesn't mean that no one ever used the term! I could have just missed it. But I am relatively confident that the term has never seen wide usage within actual leftist circles.
More importantly, this preoccupation with cultural Marxism seems to be an instance of the everything-I-don't-like-is-Marxism fallacy, which is the right's analogue of the left's everything-I-don't-like-is-fascism fallacy. Leftists will sometimes collate groups as diverse as ancaps, white nationalists, and monarchists all under the heading of "fascist" (or at least "gateways to fascism"), which is simply incorrect and ignores the many distinctions and divisions between those positions. You can't say that all your enemies are the same just because they're your enemies. There are many people who I would file under the broad banner of "leftism" who are simply not Marxist at all. Someone whose entire focus is, say, trans surgeries for minors or reparations for blacks, could easily be a liberal capitalist who has no overlap with historical Marxism in terms of goals or methodology. And I believe that is precisely the case for many leftists today. (Prosecuting your own particular racial grievances doesn't actually have any necessary connection with forming a global workers' movement to institute a total transformation of the economic system).
We certainly need some term to describe the dominant social phenomenon in Western politics today, whether that term is "leftist" or "woke" or "SJW" or whatever. But "cultural Marxism" is not a particularly good term for it, because the phenomenon isn't particularly Marxist, and the "culture" part is just obvious. What political movement doesn't want to shape the direction of culture? The right wants to influence culture as well, and they're fairly explicit about this.
You're probably just not old enough to remember, then.
This is only kind of true. The cultural Marxists are the ones co-opting Marx. Marxism is modern and materialist; cultural Marxism is postmodern and sociological. The idea was to use Marxist insights to determine how to distribute sociological, rather than material, "equality." It's all right there in the book. As @MadMonzer correctly observes, the actual Marxists often object to the cultural Marxists (today this manifests as, say, Brian Leiter or Freddie deBoer criticizing Wokists).
But in the United States, the cultural Marxists and the originalist Marxists vote as a bloc, so in practical terms...
I've recently revisited the the only Cultural Marxism article on Wikipedia after I saw this discussion (again) in the last 30 days. I keep forgetting to ping you. Wasn't it you who used to maintain the Cultural Marxism subreddit? Did that get binned?
In case it wasn't you, you may remember from the /r/slatestarcodex CW thread days: it was a subreddit where someone had tried to collate a lot of older Cultural Marxist materials, since the Wiki page was already shot by then.
It wasn't me, but several of my posts on reddit were included in the maintenance of a cultural Marxism "thread" (maybe on CWR?) for a time, that included numerous materials. But at some point the creator deleted it, presumably either by quitting reddit or by being banned from it. This was not my first post on the topic, but Google is not helping me find older ones and I haven't got the bandwidth just this moment to dig up the others.
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Do the books, papers, Google ngrams graphs, etc. that people keep linking in these conversations, where the term is used self-descriptively, move the needle for you in any way?
It's very Marxist. Like, anyone you'll drop the term in front of will instantly know this refers to a particular type of feminist / anti-racist / gay/trans/wathaever-rights advocate, that sees everything through the lens of patriarchy / white supremacy / cis-straight-heteronormativity, or if you want to take all these together - intersectionality, the same way Marx was looking at the world through the lens of relations to the means of production.
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For people who might doubt that 'Cultural Marxism' was a term happily used by academics referring to the intellectual project there were themselves engaged in, here is an essay that is still up on Douglas Kellner's academic website: Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies.
I am reminded of a line from a Scott Alexander essay replying to Nathan Robinson about SA's supposed misunderstanding of left-wing thought:
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I think what's missing here, for me, is the history or genealogy of these posited tendencies? One of your examples of 'economic Marxism' is from many centuries before Marx - it seems undeniable to me that whatever John Ball was thinking, it wasn't Marxism, i.e. it was not using the same ideas, analyses, etc., as Marx.
You can, I suppose, redefine 'Marxism' to mean something like 'any sensibility that can be roughly characterised as egalitarian, or opposed to existing hierarchies', and I think I see something like that in your post here. But that doesn't seem like a decent general understanding of it.
If we understand 'Marxism' instead as involving, well, Marx's thought specifically, and then the thought of followers or disciples of Marx influenced him - the wider Marxist tradition, as it were - then I think that forces us to be more precise in our analysis. Thus, say, Jacobs' criticism of 'cultural Marxism' - that the word 'Marxism' functions as a mere bugaboo, associating any roughly egalitarian movement with the spectre of communism.
I am not asserting that there is no way to draw a genealogy that would get you to a 'cultural Marxism'. That's probably there, even if I think the most enthusiastic, even promiscuous, users of the term don't respect that genealogy much. But just as far as it goes, I think the historical connection or tradition matters.
I only quoted Ball to give an example of a purely economic argument for redistribution and equality.
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This criticism doesn't work at all. If you understand "Marxism" to involve the thought of the followers or disciples of Marx, than Cultural Marxism is Marxism, and the word "Marxism" is not any sort of bugaboo, it denotes the use of oppressor-oppressed analysis that Marx first applied to one's relation to the means of production, and the "Cultural" prefix indicates that it's applied to other aspects of the culture. This criticism is extremely dishonest, because people calling themselves Cultural Marxists have explained this in their own words:
What more do you want at this point?
We are not talking about "a genealogy that would get you to a 'cultural Marxism'", we're talking about "the ideas labelled Culturally Marxist do, in fact, have a genealogy going back to OG Marxists, if not Marx himself, and the label itself was originally self-applied by Marxists".
The top-level comment is plainly not doing that, though. It cites a 14th century peasant leader as an example of 'economic Marxism', even though, bluntly, there is no way to regard John Ball as a Marxist except by redefining 'Marxism' so broadly as to be practically meaningless. If John Ball is meaningfully a Marxist, then George Washington or Thomas Jefferson are even more Marxist.
Definitions can't be wrong, so if you want, you technically can define 'Marxism' as broadly as 'the analysis of oppressed and oppressor classes'. But that definition is so broad as to be useless. If that's how you define Marxism - if any analyst who identifies a class of oppressors is a Marxist - then everybody's a Marxist and the term is useless.
I would argue that, in order to be useful, 'Marxism' should mean the broad school or schools of thought historically derived from Marx's ideas.
Are there forms of 'cultural Marxism' that fit that definition! Sure! Entirely possible!
But I think there's a motte and bailey here. Is Martha E. Gimenez a Marxist? Sounds like, yes. Is any analysis of oppressor-oppressed relations Marxism? No.
Thus in the top-level comment here - there's no reason to think that any of the (fictional) examples of 'cultural Marxism' are Marxist at all. It's not Marxist to be LGBT or socially progressive in the Deep South. It's not Marxist to think that your family are annoying, or that people shouldn't fly the Confederate flag. If Marxism means anything at all, it means something more than that.
Ok, and I'm saying "Cultural Marxism" meets that criterion. If you pick a random thinker from an "intersectional" school of thought, and follow their citations, you will land on someone who is indisputably Marxist and, quite possibly, will go through someone who at one point called themselves a "Cultural Marxist".
Not in the way it is used in the top-level comment here, though - and in my judgement, not in the way that it is casually used in right-wing discourse.
Let's take some specific examples. The Federalist has a whole category for cultural Marxism. The currently most recent article is about a day care in Wisconsin. So let's have a look - despite being tagged 'cultural Marxism', the article itself does not mention Marxism once. It describes a training programme that repeats the clichés of the social justice left, but nothing specific about Marxism.
The second-most recent article is the same story. Next. The third-most recent is a piece criticising Tim Walz. This one does use the word 'Marxist' in the article itself. The story here is that Minnesota teachers will be required to 'affirm' a range of protected identities, including LGBT identities. The article frames this as 'banning Christians from teaching', which doesn't seem like the most sober approach, but never mind. Where does Marxism come in? It offhandedly describes "race, sexual orientation, [and] gender identity" as "cultural Marxist categories", and describes department standards regarding race and cultural sensitivity as "race Marxism", but no further explanation is offered. It is not clear how any of the programmes described are Marxist. (For what it's worth, I think the programmes these articles describe are genuinely bad, even though The Federalist's descriptions of them strike me as histrionic to the point of undermining their credibility.)
Skipping down a bit more, let's try to find one that explains what it means by 'cultural Marxism'. Perhaps this story on Bari Weiss and cultural Marxism might help. Let's see what we learn here. It describes 'intersectionalism' as a doctrine of cultural Marxism, and then... we don't see a lot sense. Apparently Marxism denigrates men? Unfortunately there's still no explanation of what it actually is. These are all by one author, Joy Pullmann, and it seems to me that for Pullmann, 'cultural Marxism' or 'Marxism' just serve as a shorthand for culturally progressive politics in general.
Well, enough of The Federalist. Let's try another relatively mainstream conservative publication.
National Review tackles the question of whether cultural Marxism exists by linking to another article. This looks promising! Allen Mendenhall, the author, even traces its genealogy. There is definitely a robust argument here. There are elements I quibble (in particular I'd have liked a clearer sense not only of the genealogy, but of the ideas transmitted themselves, and how they evolved and changed; and also the recognition that many of the later thinkers he describes would not necessarily have called themselves Marxists), but Mendenhall does admit that he is giving only a "simplified, approximate version of a much larger and more complex story", which is limited to his specific field of literary studies. So I would be interested to hear more from Mendenhall. I note that Mendenhall's assertion does not justify the rhetoric of authors like Joy Pullmann - he may be using the term responsibly even though she is not.
Maybe we can get even more mainstream. The first non-video content I found for cultural Marxism from Fox News was this article about a book by Ted Cruz. The summary of the book tells us that Cruz sees an evolution from 'classical Marxism', which recommends a violent revolution by the working class to seize and redistribute wealth (a bit of a simplification, but all right), to 'cultural Marxism', which 'transitioned into critical legal studies'. Cruz describes cultural Marxism as "a method of saying the never ending struggle between victims, and oppressors can only be corrected through force by the government punishing the oppressors and rewarding the victims". (I feel conflicted about that definition - I feel it identifies a real and dangerous trend in American politics, something like Greer's Title-IX-ification of American politics, but I think 'cultural Marxism' is a misleading label for it.)
I think what frustrates me about this kind of piece is a kind of strawmanning or oversimplification of even just classical Marxism, long before we start talking about cultural Marxism. It's the idea that 'Marxism' is just the idea that the poor need to revolt against the rich, or that we need redistribution, or something about violent revolution to create justice. It's true that Marxist rhetoric has included elements like that, but to boil Marxism as a school of thought down to just that by itself is to miss its essential nature.
It's not precisely that I expect Fox News to start explaining the labour theory of value or commodity fetishism to its readers, but I can't help but read a sentence like like "Karl Marx's perspective of an inevitable conflict between the wealthy and the less privileged" without grinding my teeth and thinking that actually the conflict posited by Marx is between bourgeoisie and proletariat, or that is to say, between capitalists and labour, and those are not quite the same thing as 'wealthy' and 'poor'.
Seen in that light 'cultural Marxism' is frustrating for me because what it usually seems to denote, to me, is schools of thought that, while perhaps historically influenced by Marxism in such-and-such ways, ignore or skip over entirely the fundamental principles of Marxism. If you remove all the economic parts from Marxism, there's, well, nothing left. You can't take away all the pillars of Marxism and still be a Marxist, or so it seems to me.
I'm afraid I'll have to slow you down here, because I skimmed through some of these examples and they look like a point in my / OP's favor, not yours.
What do you mean? This is how OP described Cultural Marxism:
And here is an excerpt from Cultural Marxism: Nonsynchrony and Feminist Practice
Emily Hicks is a big fan of Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy, which as far as I can tell are just a rebranded version of what she was writing about back in the 80's. If I look at, say, the training the Wisconsin daycare kids had to go through, do you think I'll find any connection to Critical Theory or Critical Pedagogy through people that designed them?
If that's your concern, I'm more than happy to make a clear separation between classical Marxism and Cultural Marxism. I already called it The Last Jedi of Marxism, I can come up with other catchy names that will indicate how it's nothing but twisted perversion designed to mock and torture Marxists with it's very existence. But it exists! In the other chain MadMozer compared it to fighting over whether Mormons are real Christians or not. I like that analogy. You can say "Mormons are not real Christians" because their ideas are so out there that they do actually look like nothing more than a strawman and oversimplification of Christianity. But don't tell me "Mormons don't exist" after a missionary just knocked on my door, and don't tell they weren't even inspired by Christianity, when they lifted half the story from Christians.
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One of the random factoids I heard somewhere, and have no idea what it relates to or if it's true, is that some ancient people had this idea of hell, where it's just like our world, but it's full of terrifying demons, but if you point them out everyone will think you're insane. This is sort of how this whole conversation felt like to me (though thankfully the spell seems to be breaking in recent years), there's a movement-that-shall-not-be-named:
The last one was chronologically first, and it getting memory-holed is particularly annoying, because it's a damn good label. First of all it was originally self-applied, and secondly if you take any mildly intelligent person who has even the faintest clue about Marxism, they'll be able to deduce what Cultural Marxism is supposed to be about, and list a few recent examples of Cultural Marxist ideas floating around in the public sphere. Contrast that with something like "neoliberalism" that is actually a poorly defined slur, that for some mysterious reason was taken seriously by academia for a decade or two, and in my opinion Cultural-Marxism-as-conspiracy-theory has no leg to stand on.
Now, I can understand OG economic Marxists being aghast at what came out of the cultural- variant. As someone watching several institutions, subcultures, and media being hollowed out and worn for a skin-suit, I have some sympathy for someone with a take like "Cultural Marxism is to Marxism, what The Last Jedi / The Acolyte is to Star Wars". There's even an argument to be made that the whole thing is a CIA op to castrate Marxism, but sympathy is not a "get out of jail for free" card. I think they should at least admit it's their skin that is being worn for a suit.
The term "neo-liberal" originates from a 1951 Milton Friedman essay, Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects.
I agree that afterwards, it has became a poorly defined slur, used most often by leftist academics opposed to neoliberalism and adopted by nearly no one.
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Giving something a name and admitting it’s real gives people the ability to fight it as a phenomenon. Terms like Political Correctness and Cultural Marxism give you the ability to abject to the phenomenon without having to be an open heretic. You can oppose the notion that one must have only “correct” opinions or must be forced into silence if you can name the phenomenon behind it. You no longer have to argue for the heresy, just oppose the enforcement of orthodoxy. It’s much harder for the inquisition to fight back because you aren’t officially endorsing the heresies of the day. You didn’t say “trans women are men” you said “I should not be threatened for not using pronouns”. Because we still value free speech, it’s actually an appeal to commonly held values.
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I find it bewildering that they call it a conspiracy. Is Antonio Gramscii a conspiracy?
Is critical race theory supposed to be a conspiracy?
The believers in the conspiracy have even made a long wiki page about cultural marxism in the soviet union.
The left is deeply involved in cultural issues so calling it a conspiracy is just the least sensible way of waving it off. They can't actually debate the issue so they have to use slander. Left wing movements use gossip, shaming and rallying to much higher degrees than right wing movements.
It's an idea that's basically a variation of the old "it's just a few college kids on Twitter, dude" argument. They'll tell you that CRT is ackchyually just a really obscure left-wing legal theory from the '80s that like 50 academics in total are actually familiar with.
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It was a term of art in political philosophy for years, I had legit university courses on "Cultural Marxism". So of course it makes sense, it's even the term the Frankfurt school uses for itself.
There was a deliberate effort by Marxists to switch tactics after the Soviet failure, and they did seek to undermine Western culture specifically. This is undeniable and directly stated in primary sources.
Then the people who use the tactics that the Frankfurt school delineates figured out their enemies found them out and shifted the frame to conceal it and use it as a bludgeon against anybody who noticed the tactics. And then in 2016, it became a conspiracy theory that only antisemites believe in.
They went so such lengths to redact the wikipedia article that it no longer even exists in the history of the page, but it was there.
There is no point in arguing that Cultural Marxism is real, because it is, and the people who use it are extremely invested in making sure people who know it is are ruined. And not just under that particular name. You can call it "Woke" or "DEI" or "CRT" or any number of other names, they will always shift the frame to prevent you freezing a good label. And so long as they control the places that have the writ of legitimacy, there is nothing that can be done.
Labels don't really matter anymore anyways, we now live in a present where everybody knows that the left has abandoned native working classes for a minority coalition. It's a given. The educated urbanites don't even pretend to view the working class as anything else but objective enemies.
The archive page from the screenshot, for the curious:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140519194937/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism
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