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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29662 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I apologize if this is too basic of a question, but why do any of these italicized concerns need to be associated with cultural Marxism? These all seem like legitimate issues that could be addressed without such a label. Like, each one of these probably happens at least once per day somewhere in the US.

I've never seen any of such complaints raised anywhere in any context other than one promoting cultural Marxism.

Realistically, I think it's just because to conservatives of a certain generation, 'Marxism' is the scariest and most evil word available, so calling everything they don't like Marxist is just a habit. It's equivalent to the way people on the left call everything 'fascism'.

Marxism definitely exists, just as fascism exists, but once the word comes to mean 'the polar opposite of everything I believe, i.e. everything good and right', the temptation to deploy it to describe everything under the sun quickly becomes irresistible.

Realistically, I think it's just because to conservatives of a certain generation, 'Marxism' is the scariest and most evil word available, so calling everything they don't like Marxist is just a habit. It's equivalent to the way people on the left call everything 'fascism'.

Would you classify Black Lives Matter as a Marxist movement, or no?

I would not, no.

I'm aware of that time a couple of its founders identified as Marxists, but I don't think that makes the movement Marxist.

BLM is amorphous enough that it's difficult to nail down any specific principles, but some are outlined here, and I don't think they're Marxist. Based on that page alone I think there's a clear anarchist influence on BLM, with a heavy emphasis on the abolition of punishment, end of coercion, and mutual aid, but I think that to be Marxist specifically, there would need to be something about the ownership and distribution of capital.

So, anarchist or at least anarchist-adjacent, yes, but Marxist, no.

Mm.

So in your opinion, when some guy spraypaints #BLM, multiple hammers and sickles, and the publication date of the Communist Manifesto on a public structure, what do you think is going on in that guy's head? Would you expect the misconception he's suffering from to be common or rare?

I think that someone who paints hammers and sickles and 'CPUSA' on to a block is almost certainly a communist. That imagery is pretty unambiguous.

(You can't see the BLM in that image, but the reverse of the block shows it.)

But all that proves is at least one person supports both communism and BLM. My priors on the kinds of people who go around spray-painting slogans on skate parks make me think it's quite likely that the person is an idiotic, edgy teenager with no developed political platform. At any rate, I do not draw conclusions about the ideologies of entire movements supported by millions of people from individual graffitos.

But all that proves is at least one person supports both communism and BLM.

Would you expect American Communists, or indeed communists generally, to not support BLM?

At any rate, I do not draw conclusions about the ideologies of entire movements supported by millions of people from individual graffitos.

If you were persuaded that hammers and sickles were a common addition to BLM-riot graffiti, would this be weak evidence of a connection between the two movements? To be clear, the best I can do after a brief search is two instances, and the vague memories of seeing many more at the time. I'm more curious about your reasoning process.

More generally, do you think the examples linked in this comment are likewise lacking a "developed political platform"? Are those people Marxists, in your view?

On the statue of Christopher Columbus, they scrawled “George Floyd” and “BLM,” as well as rudimentary Soviet hammer and sickle images (now sometimes representing a union of social classes), and stencilled raised fists, often viewed as an emblem of Black liberation and solidarity.

...Could it be that you were mistaken, and the hammer and sickle in that first example only represented "a union of social classes"? Maybe that guy wasn't a communist at all?

Would you expect American Communists, or indeed communists generally, to not support BLM?

I expect there to be a range, actually. The far-left in America, as I understand it, is pretty diverse. For instance, CPUSA seems pretty pro-BLM, but meanwhile, WSWS denounces BLM as capitalist stooges, and sees it as a ruling class ploy to divide workers.

My overall sense is that this is probably a relatively low ebb for the link between communism and black politics in the US. The Black Panthers were explicitly Marxist-Leninist - BLM indulge in anarchist rhetoric sometimes (abolish the police etc.), but aren't as directly ideological.

If you were persuaded that hammers and sickles were a common addition to BLM-riot graffiti, would this be weak evidence of a connection between the two movements?

Yes, that seems reasonable enough.

My current read at the moment is that the George Floyd protests and aftermath were quite incoherent, ideologically. Apart from a general sense that something is wrong, there wasn't a clear platform or idea, and what we saw after the protests and riots was a wide range of competing actors trying to capture the energy of the moment. I wouldn't say that any wholly succeeded.

More generally, do you think the examples linked in this comment are likewise lacking a "developed political platform"? Are those people Marxists, in your view?

Yep, those seem pretty Marxist, or at least, Marxist-influenced. I could probably pick some nits if I really wanted - Marxism is one specific school of socialism, socialist thought is broader than just that, anti-capitalism is not synonymous with Marxism - but I think no one could deny that, at the very least, those writers are familiar with Marxism and it has influenced their thought. A couple of them strike me as more intersectional (this one, for instance, strikes me as an all-of-the-above approach to critique), but I'm not going to argue that much.

Would you expect American Communists, or indeed communists generally, to not support BLM?

Given the history of ‘а вас негров лунчают’, almost certainly, but that just makes them fellow travelers from a common enemy.

Did you transliterate that from memory? I'm always baffled when someone takes the effort of quoting some culturewarism in Russian and gets it so badly wrong. I mean, can't you just copy+paste it from somewhere? Same re: "Holomodor", "Bamkhut" et al.

It's "а у вас негров линчуют" for reference.

I think the idea is that the framing of these issues is done in an oppressor vs oppressed (ie Marxist) narrative style, wherein the dominant mainstream culture is "oppressing" the "lifestyles" and "identities" of those who diverge from it.

So if we take the example of the woman who feels pressure from her family to marry (and presumably have children), of course this happens all of the time and has happened since time immemorial but the question is how you frame it. The cultural Marxist would say that this an unjust application of social pressure that is meant to limit the woman's autonomy. It's a raw exercise of power by those who have it against those who do not have it. A more traditional cultural analysis might say that this is beneficial social pressure which applies the embodied wisdom of the older generation and nudges the younger generation to make choices that maybe they wouldn't choose on their own, but which they would greatly benefit from if they just take the leap (not to mention that they would perpetuate the physical existence of the species and ideally the cultural stability of the civilization).

Thank you, that makes sense. It seems like the cultural Marxist in your example might be exaggerating the concerns of the parents whereas the traditionalist might be restraining the autonomy of the woman.

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