It seems to be the right’s boogeyman du jour, at least in some circles. Or rather, has been for a little while now. But what are they actually talking about? I’m moderately familiar with the works of Marx and the history of Marxism, and I know of no such thing as “Cultural Marxism”. A cursory glance tells me it has something to do with the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, which I’m not very familiar with. Do these arcane academic strands of thought really have an outsized influence on “the left” or some subset of it? Is “Cultural Marxism” even a coherent term referring to a real thing, whether or not the “Marxist” part is accurate?
Edit: I haven’t found much at all on this subject that’s remotely neutral. It seems almost every discussion of “Cultural Marxism” is either a right-wing piece talking about how terrible it is, or a left-wing piece claiming it’s a false premise.
It’s probably a real thing in the sense that somebody somewhere used the term. It was probably in some academic journal read by twelve people.
But, no, it’s not a thing anyone cares about or is talking about in the American political mainstream. Most people hadn’t even heard of it until conservatives started protesting against it.
That thread is… interesting, but, even though it’s ostensibly about “Cultural Marxism”, it doesn’t really provide any answers. If anything I’m a little more confused.
I don’t think there’s any serious disagreement that Gramsci was a cultural Marxist, that he was extremely influential within Marxism, and that he continues to be studied by political scientists today. Nor do I think there’s much disagreement with the basic insight that cultural institutions can be politically influential, or the observation that people in American cultural institutions mostly (but certainly not uniformly) lean left and would like to use those institutions to move our society farther left.
What’s off the rails is any notion of concerted or conspiratorial action, or any suggestion that anyone’s goal is a social model that qualifies as Marxist.
My knowledge of Marxism is rusty, but I recall Gramsci being best known for his (Marxist) theory of cultural hegemony about how the bourgeoisie maintain power in capitalist societies through cultural institutions, not related to what is called “cultural marxism”.
AFAIK, this is different from the cultural marxism school of thought centred around Goethe University in Frankfurt, including theorists such as Marcuse and Adorno.
We, sadly, can’t prove the existence of Cultural Marxism because no one has (to date) provided tangible evidence of an actual Cultural Marxist. I have yet to see a single society, group, or gathering of self-proclaimed Cultural Marxists organizing or advocating such views as purported to them.
Baring this, we must place our trust in their existence as told by the fleeting sightings experienced by alt-right wackjobs who encounter Cultural Marxists daily in many political/news forums.
Makes sense. I’ve only been familiar with Cultural Marxism in its present day usage, as a spook story that alt-right wackjobs tell each other. Cultural Marxists have always held a similar position to Bigfoot, Nessie, and ‘alien visitors’.
Its interesting to know that the reality of it is more akin to living dinosaur sightings instead.
The Frankfurt School was a group of revisionist Marxists at the University of Frankfurt in the 1930s, who tried to use Marxist theory to analyze society and culture. This approach is generally known as “critical theory”, and it, as well as Gramsci’s work, was sometimes called "cultural Marxism ", because they’re attempts to apply Marxist theory to culture.
Critical theory is fairly influential in academic circles, contributing to post modernism and a lot of modern linguistic and communication theory, but outside of academics, you won’t notice it much.
Unfortunately, some on the right wing have used the term to refer to a theory that there’s some plot to secretly intoduce communist and Marxist thought and ideas into our culture by the media and influential figures. That needs to be distinguished from actual historical cultural marxism, which was strictly an analytical method; a way to adapt Marxist theory to cultural critique and Freudian thought.
Economic Marxism divides society into the ruling class and the exploiting class, and encourages rebellion by the exploited class even if that requires violence, crime or authoritarianism.
Cultural Marxism is the belief that society is divided into the ruling class and mistreated class and calls for social upheaval on behalf of the exploited and mistreated classes (gays, racial minorities, religious minorities,)
When communists tried to develop a foothold in the US, they tended to reach out to the exploited class (communists did anti lynching work in the South for example).
Basically it’s egalitarianism. However I think people who use the phrase cultural Marxism worry that people pushing egalitarianism will use violence and authoritarian strategies to push egalitarianism. Attacking speakers or anyone with a different opinion,Drowning them out if they give a speech.
Some people like Jordan Peterson claim that the groups the cultural Marxists claim to represent (transgendered for example) don’t actually feel represented by them. He claims the cultural Marxists use them as a tool to upend the social system.
That’s my understanding. It’s authoritarian egalitarianism in the eyes of its critics.
For example, critical legal study is a lens through which academics determine (or perhaps predetermine) whether legal institutions are a tool of the oppressive capitalist oligarchs. So they might call for reforms that make the playing field more even in the civil justice system, since the present system (arguably) benefits owners of capital at the expense of owners of labor. We’re talking about academics, not jurists.
Yes! I came in here to mention that exactly. Newt Gingrich was talking about how all liberals follow Saul Alinsky and his name was showing up in conservative posts here and elsewhere, and I was all “Saul who?” I think there was something about Obama’s anti-colonial or Kenyan something that was supposed to be all meaningful that I didn’t get at all. Cultural Marxism seems to be the same thing – some sort of conservative in-group term for some way that liberals are bad.
In the conserv-o-sphere, “Marxism” is a sophistry that signifies a “don’t-like thing”. “Cultural Marxism” is how they express dismay over people not worshipping white history like they did in the old days.
