Cultural Marxism

[LOLseph Stalin]

What is it exactly? I've seen it used among right-wingers a lot to paint Marxism as some kind of threat to their traditional worldview, but is it actually a thing? I haven't really seen it used outside of the right-winger context so I'm wondering if maybe it's just some slander term they invented.

[Remus Bleys]

Cultural Marxism is anything seen as "progressive" and affects their "culture."

The real question is whether the proletarian state should force its own culture. The answer is of course yes.

[LiamChe]

Cultural Marxism pretty much means that person that used may be a Nazi or some other reactionary. It's just a word invented by anti-communists, it has no real meaning.

[motion denied]

Conspiratorial rubbish.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Invented by ultra right-winger crackpots to basically describe any form of progressive movement as 'pushing the marxist agenda', while describing their own (usually disgusting) political views as 'the culture' (this happens all the time with bogans here, and with the current ruling party in Hungary). Often tied up with weird jewish world-control conspiracy theories.

[Rugged Collectivist]

From what I gather it's the idea that anyone even marginally located on the political "left", but not an outright communist, is just a communist in disguise who has adapted less radical rhetoric so they can appeal to larger swathes of the population.

I'm not sure if this term would also apply to genuine liberals who the fascists believe to be unconsciously carrying out the work of the Marxists/Jews, but it seems to have a sinister, conspiratorial connotation so I'm going to assume it doesn't.

[Agapi]

The Judeo-Bolshevism conspiracy theory by another name. Basically, since the dissolution of the USSR meant they couldn't point to actual communists as dangerous agents of cultural decay anymore and be taken seriously, "Cultural Marxism" was invented to paint anything to the left of fascist ideals as secretly communist in origin. Believe women should be treated as equals to men (regardless of what "equal" actually means, we're talking like suffrage here)? That's Cultural Marxism. "Race Realism" laughed out of universities? Academic conspiracy to uphold Cultural Marxism. Anti-bullying initiatives by parents? Dangerously advanced Cultural Marxism, they've been brainwashed themselves and are now turning their kids into sissies! Nobody outside of the far right actually buys it because it's completely fucking insane on its face, it's just impotent flailing.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

There was a species of Marxist philosopher in the mid 1900s which critiqued the methods of ideological control in everyday life. A lot of them are affiliated with critical theory, some with some strains of Maoism.

Rightwing loons conflated those people with some broad Leftwing conspiracy which wanted to destroy European countries by opening the floodgates to immigrants and forcing poor nationalists to live in a world of cosmopolitan multiculturalism. The joke was on them though - it was the capitalists who wanted cheap workers who brought in those workers from other societies. It was also the Capitalists who conquered countries in other parts of the world, driving their people into destitution while teaching them about the wealth of the mother country while also teaching them the language of the mother country.



The real question is whether the proletarian state should force its own culture. The answer is of course yes.

Since the proletariat is the vast majority of society, who exactly would they need to force their culture on? Would the proletariat even really care that a handful of ex-bourgeois assholes still hold obsolete social values? Would it be some process whereby the proletariat purges itself of bourgeois values? Would it look like the Chinese cultural revolution, which descended into petty idealism and mass hysteria?

Not that I disagree with the notion of a cultural revolution of sorts - it's just less clear what that would look like than the economic or political revolutions.

[Per Levy]

yeah as many said its a term used by right-wingers to discribe anything they dont like. as a little extra fact, during the weimar republic and the the time the nazis were in power the term "cultural bolshevism"(kulturbolschewismus) was widley used by the nazis and other right and conservative groupings. you can see how very much related these 2 terms are in the way they were/are used.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism

[Remus Bleys]

Since the proletariat is the vast majority of society, who exactly would they need to force their culture on?
The less class conscious, more reactionary proletariats.

Would the proletariat even really care that a handful of ex-bourgeois assholes still hold obsolete social values?
Yes. Although, like i said, its main target is the less class conscious proletariat.

Would it be some process whereby the proletariat purges itself of bourgeois values?
Largely, yes.

Would it look like the Chinese cultural revolution, which descended into petty idealism and mass hysteria?
No. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was just a way for mao to keep power.

[Queen Mab]

Isn't that the conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt School infiltrated the media and other cultural instutitons to brainwash society at the end of the 20th century? Pretty fucking stupid.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The less class conscious, more reactionary proletariats.


And you can't see any link between an 'advanced' section of the proletariat, in power, forcing their cultural values on subjectively 'more reactionary proletariats', and the degeneration of any society into a one-party, dogmatic orthodoxy?

I don't think we should support anybody purporting to advance a society that is culturally homogeneous.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

"Cultural Marxism" - as reading this thread might lead you to conclude independently - has two distinct, but related meanings.

The first, of course, is as a slur used by the populist right, particularly in the United States. Its implication is that the popular liberalism and the left generally are a product of intentional and conspiratorial manipulation of the public by Marxists within various social institutions, particularly government and the academy.

The second usage is in reference to the body of Marxist theory that gave rise to "Critical Theory" and "Cultural Studies". In particular, it owes a debt to the Frankfurt School (esp. Marcuse and Benjamin), as well as other thinkers within the broader "Western" Marxist tradition. It is generally defined by a concern with ideology, a rejection of "economism", and attempts to grapple with the "subject" in the context of highly developed capitalism (the period of capital's "real domination" to borrow from a different body of thought).

[Remus Bleys]

I don't know if you are implying this or not tgdu, but I am not advocating for the frankfurt school.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I don't know if you are implying this or not tgdu, but I am not advocating for the frankfurt school.

*Shrug* Your loss.

Benjamin wrote some pretty brilliant stuff.

I think contemporary Marxists who reject the insights of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies (generally by hurling the epithet "Post-Modernism" at them) are missing out on important insights necessary to understanding capitalism's continued resilience in the face of its increasing economic incoherence.

[Karl Marx]

WTF is a CULTURAL Marxist? Why not just a marxist?? No oen explained it really... Can someone tell me because i dontunderstand :wub:

[Blake's Baby]

'Marxism' failed militarily in 1989 when the Eastern Bloc collapsed. It 'lost the war'.

But 'Cultural Marxism' as it were 'won the peace' by stopping (white male) people from behaving exactly as they wanted towards other people who were somewhat less white and male (and therefore somewhat less people).

That's more or less how it runs I think.

Equal pay for women? Cultural Marxism burrowing away. Equal rights for black people? Cultural Marxism at work. The notion that Europeans coming to the New World and slaughtering millions of Native Americans wasn't an unproblematic really good thing? It's Cultural Marxism gone mad I tell you.

In other words, in the way it's used by the rabid right, it means almost the same as liberal democracy.

[Rafiq]

Apparently it existed long before Marx, seeing that liberal egalitarianism originated in the enlightenment.

I suppose there is some truth to it, however. Things like feminism and civil rights for racial minorities were a result of intensified class struggle, of which was led partially by Marxists and the contradictions of capitalism. The point is that these things were conceded, and then utilized to reinforce the hegemony of capital (the sexual revolution). But that doesn't mean, in retrospect to the old nuclear family or segregation, they are opposable or condemnable.

[Karl Marx]

Allright... i read the Frankfurt school article on wikipedia.It took me half a day and i still dont know what is a cultural marxist... It says

"The school's main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber and Lukács.[4]"

So they syntesised marx and all these weirdo philosopheres...okay. Maybe thats why economic critique is at the bottom of the article. Hmmm



So i think cultural marxists (whatever they are...) should juust become regular marxsits and everything will be okay.

[Sasha]

in really really short cultural marxism as meant in the franfurter school sense believe that communism cant be successfully won through (only) the conquest of state power by either democratic means or a uprising but needs a fundamental shift in the thinking and organisation of the whole civil population. as such its more or less a rejection of the Leninist Bolshevistic vanguard theory and the party model and more akin to modern communization theory.

[Karl Marx]

But doesnt the base determine the superstructure? And they are basicaly investigating the superstructer. Then the whole thing is kinda pointles isnt it... I mean Lenin made some mistakes but that wasnt because he didnt read Freid.