4 ms·
I often hear people I dismiss directly mention cultural marxism. But I have never seen an explanation of what cultural marxism is. Could you enlighten me?
by rocqua 5y ago
I often hear people I dismiss directly mention cultural marxism. But I have never seen an explanation of what cultural marxism is. Could you enlighten me?
- ceilingcorner 5y agoCritical theory is actually what people mean when they say cultural Marxism. Critical theory itself came out of various Marxist and Marxist-influenced academics in the mid-20th century.
- rocqua 5y agoIt seems that most people in this thread who use the term cultural marxism don't quite mean critical theory. Instead it seems to be about seeing (and advocating for) a dialectic between the oppressors and the oppressed. The idea is that this division maps somewhat to 'cultural' groups. The main 'cultural' division they mention is race. I would assume they also include LGBT+ and occasionally jews as part of the opressed group. A main part of the concept behind this is that this dialectic is wrong. And hence people supporting it are doing so for other goals. Apparently this goal is "communism". That is, the goal is overthrowing the oppressed. It seems like the idea is that some of the people supporting this dialectic do so without questioning whether it is true. Hence, the argument goes, the supporters of this idea are either maliciously pushing a false agenda, or they are convinced by the false agenda and are well-meaning fools. I also get the feeling there is an undertone of trying to understand why white / straight / gentile people are actually supporting the progressive side of identity politics. Personally, I think most of this is plainly wrong. Though it seems like an interesting lens through which to look at the most extreme people at the progressive spectrum of identity politics.
- blacktriangle 5y agoMarxism and critical theory are separate but related, and its no accident critical theory came out of a Marxist think tank. Marxism looks to exploit some perceived opressor/opresee relationship in a civilization. Critical theory is about examining a civilization to determine what the opressor/opresee relationships are within that culture.
- blacktriangle 5y agoMarx wrote about a theory of history in which all of history progresses through phases in which each phase is defined by struggle between classes. His view was that communism was the inevitable end of this model of history in that communism would finally resolve the class struggle. But for somebody who wishes to promote communism, the problem is if there is no class struggle, then history does not advance to their desired end state. The original formulation of Marxism was economic, based on the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This conflict worked to create communist revolutions in nations with more feudalistic systems like Tzarist Russia. However Communists have struggled to create revolution in more Democratic societies with greater social mobility, or at least the perceived possibility of. So failing to get the economic class consciousness to trigger a revolution, the modern Marxist has moved on to pushing race/culture based class consciousness as the trigger for their revolution. This is why todays Marxist is not obsessed with rich and poor but white vs black vs hispanic.
- rocqua 5y agoSummarizing what you said (without agreeing) to see if I understood your point correctly. Marxism is the idea of needing class struggle for progress. Cultural Marxism is transposing that from class to culture / ethnicity. Essentially moving the dialectic from worker / captialist to privileged race / non-priviliged race? And the idea is that this is done, not to engender gradual change, but to engender revolutionary change?
- blacktriangle 5y agoYes, I'd say that summarizes my statement well, where Marx's definition of progress is moving a society towards communism. This is why any time you see somebody talk about "the right side of history" that's a flag that said person is a Marxist, they view their desired communist end-state as inevitable.
- onionisafruit 5y agoYou may be right about the origin of "the right side of history", but the phrase has become popular enough that you can't use it to pin down the speaker's ideology. I think most people use it to mean that their ideas will be commonly accepted in the future. Whether their perceived future is a communist utopia or a libertarian thunderdome is irrelevant.
- at-fates-hands 5y agoCultural Marxism is a revolutionary leftist idea that traditional culture is the source of oppression in the modern world. Cultural Marxism is often linked to an insistence upon political correctness, multiculturalism, and perpetual attacks on the foundations of culture: the nuclear family, marriage, patriotism, traditional morality, law and order, etc. Cultural Marxists are assumed to be committed to establishing economic Marxism, in which case their cultural attacks are a necessary preparation for their ultimate goal.
- psychometry 5y agoWhere'd you come up with that definition? MTJ's Twitter?
- blacktriangle 5y agoI don't know, but his list of things cultural marxism stands against could literally be lifted from BLM's web page.
- techbrobane 5y agoIt's recycled nazi propaganda: "Cultural Bolshevism (German: Kulturbolschewismus), sometimes referred to specifically as art Bolshevism, music Bolshevism or sexual Bolshevism, was a term widely used by Nazi German-sponsored critics to denounce modernist and progressive movements in the culture... Cultural Marxism is a contemporary variant of the term which is used to refer to the far-right antisemitic Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. This variant of the term was used by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik in the introductory chapter of his manifesto." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism
- blacktriangle 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
- drewcoo 5y agoThere ought to be an axiom of Godwin's law that states that whenever someone mentions Nazis some nerd brings up Godwin's law.
- _jal 5y agoSo, in terms of intellectual thought, there was a strain of thought referred to as the Frankfurt School that discussed a thing they called 'cultural Marxism'. Some of that discussion was about what we'd now think of as PR/propaganda - promoting socialist/Marxist thought. In terms of right wing PR/propaganda, it is another example of them following a specific playbook to redefine a term to mean what they want it to mean. 'Critical Race Theory' is the current example of this; 'political correctness' was another. Remember when they were shouting about Saul Alinsky? Well, that was because the playbook is largely derived from his writings - specifically, the tactic described as 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' So there you are. Depending on your politics, it was a strain of Marxist intellectual thought in the 1930s, or just another cudgel in the culture wars.
- eplanit 5y agoA worldview which sees only The Oppressed and The Oppressors, and maps people into one category or the other. For Marx class was used, now it's race... and complete bullshit.