Making up terms like cultural marxism.
Having watched almost half of RaleighRally’s conservative thinktank youtube blurb (painful), and after a cursory reading of the wikipedia page on “Cultural Marxism” (confusing) i get the feeling that “Cultural Marxism” is a right wing name for research in the tradition of the Frankfurt School.
Do you agree? What I’m asking here is - since i never heard that term before - is this: do any serious scholars actually use that term?
The problems are obvious: There has been numerous regimes throughout 20th century history that have subscribed to “marxism”, and those countries have all had (often diverging) policies on culture. But my guess would be that most of them didn’t give a sh-t about what Gramsci and Habermaas thought about anything.
So anointing a small subset of several marxist theories on culture The Cultural Marxism would seem somewhat lacking in stringency.
E.g. cultural policies in Maoist China could not be called “cultural marxism”, cultural policies in Stalinist Russia could not be called “cultural marxism”, cultural policies in Castros Cuba would not be “cultural marxism”, and so on… Only the stuff that poor (sorry) Film School students have to read for a couple of weeks can be accurately denoted Cultural Marxism.
That doesn’t make sense. Calling it “The Frankfurt School” (of marxist social studies) makes perfect sense though.
So: Are “Cultural Marxism” and “The Frankfurt School” synonyms in mainstream scholarship or is the former new terminology made up by the political right wing?
The funny things about moonbats is that they’re utterly convinced they are the normal people. I’d post examples of this to make a point, but you got ahead of me there.
As it happens, a great many Americans are terminally confused about the difference between “Marxist” and “liberal”.
Marxists, Muslims, Mexicans, Marrying Gays, Massachusetts, Manhattan, Moonbats - they’re all part of the Letter M Conspiracy.
What the hell are you talking about?
I guess it’s too far down this thread already to hope for any kind of, you know, definition of “cultural marxism”.
Please mind your language, Capitaine: LWs are moonbats; RWs are wingnuts.
My wife the music history professor would probably agree that she uses Marxist techniques in her scholarship. That doesn’t mean that she promotes communism in the classroom. It means that she often analyzes the production of works of art from an economic and cultural perspective instead of an aesthetic one. Why was this piece of music written? What function did it serve in its original cultural context? Who paid for it and how did that influence the creative process? What does it tell us about the political and cultural structure of its time? These are the sorts of questions that Marxist criticism is useful for.
I personally have only seen the term cultural marxism only once or twice usually it is refered to using the german Frankfurter Schule or the english Frankfurt School.
Though terms such as post-Marxist tradition or post-marxist approach are not unusual. Like Hamster King said most of it is used these days as an approach to analyze power structures and ideologies in cultural studies. Asking questions like who is being served, what does it do, does it work. This does not automatically imply a political position from the theory itself.
Personally I’m slightly puzzeld why they would focus on the Frankfurt School whose legacy is mixed, and sometimes considered seriously outdated, even within the cultural field.
I don’t doubt that, and IMHO it’s past due for social and culture studies & etc to salvage the worthwhile stuff that are presently considered part of a “Marxist” tradition and call it something else. Because, well, other parts of Marxism enabled some really nasty stuff.
But my question was rather more narrow, specifically about the etymology of the term “Cultural Marxism”. Is it something that’s in use by scholars and has a clear meaning or was it something dreamed up in a think tank?
Because - as noted - “Cultural Marxism” could refer to many things, most of which has never been practiced outside hardcore communist nations.
Well I still think it’s somewhat unhelpful that that terminology is still in use (though I’m not suprised going by my own recollections from social/culture studies). Put another way: It’s unhelpful that any theory or approach to analyzing power structures in society and their manifestation in culture are still supposed to be understood within a larger “Marxian tradition”. It’s about as clever as it would be calling all modern psychological theories Freudian or Post-Freudian. Marx and Freud got about the same amount of stuff seriously wrong and Marx f-ckups arguably had much worse real world outcomes.
Political correctness was not invented in Sweden. It was indirectly imposed on Sweden and all other countries of the western world by their almighty leader, USA. Political correctness is a very clever construct. If you oppose it, you will be stigmatized in the classic Marxist way, well known to political dissidents of former Soviet Union. I will give you an example:
As you can see here, if you don’t agree with political correctness, you are labeled as a fascist/racist. And in old fashioned Marxist way, all newspapers tell you the same “truths”. Like this one:
Just bull. Read this UK article and also bear in mind all the new technology by which the workforce can be reduced: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82/8211.htm#a34
(By the way, how can something that cost 2% of the GDP actually be a benefit? Stopp för inhuman invandringspolitik | SvD Ledare)
Before the start of the cultural marxist revolution in the 60s, was Sweden a fascist country? Let’s take a look at what Tage Erlander, Swedish PM between 1946-1969 said 1962 in a speech about the race riots in the US:
“We Swedes are living in an infinitely happier situation. Our country’s population is homogeneous, not only in terms of race but also in many other respects.” Tage Erlander - Wikiquote
If he had said the same thing a decade later, the cultural marxist press would have demanded his resignation.
In New York 1967, it was decided that refugees could apply for asylum not only in neighboring countries, but in fact all over the world, making Sweden with its generous welfare system and faith in cultural marxist theorems such as “White Guilt”, a very soft target. Here I will give you some interesting facts to consider about the refugee situation:
“With an estimated 55,500
asylum applications, the United
States of America was the
largest single recipient of new
asylum claims among the group
of countries included in this
report. France was second with
47,800 asylum applications,
followed by Germany (41,300),
Sweden (31,800), and Canada
(23,200).” http://www.unhcr.org/4d8c5b109.html
US population (according to wikipedia) 308,745,538
Sweden population 9,354,462
(31800/9,354,462)* 308,745,538 = 1,049,564
USA should have more than a million asylum application each year if they want to be as good as Sweden. To this you must add family members, which would approximately triple the figure. It is estimated that Sweden will have a muslim majority by the year of 2050. “A deteriorating society is just what political correctness strife for”, says Lind in the video. Well, political correctness will certainly succeed in Sweden.
Yes yes yes. Now please provide a definition of “cultural marxism”. In text, on this board. Once you get around to it (as if), we might get around to discussing the merits of your question.
ETA: I don’t really want to guess, but given your Marxism - USA connection, the most obvious inference (to me) would be that “cultural marxism” is some kind of Jewish conspiracy. I’m sort of hoping it’s not going down that route, but if that’s what you actually mean, I’d appreciate you calling a spade a spade.
I thought that was obvious by now. Cultural Marxism is the same as the Political Correctness we are experiencing all over the Western World since the 1960s.
Jews would certainly not want Sweden to become a muslim state, that’s for sure. I don’t think Lind is an antisemite either.
They tossed people into prison or killed them. What the USSR did was not “political correctness”. Nor for that matter has America been going around imposing “political correctness” on Sweden or anywhere else.
Or sometimes, people get labeled fascist & racist because they are fascist and racist.
SherwoodAnderson is a newspaper, now?
Rightfully, since that is the statement of a bigot and an idiot. And opposing that attitude has nothing to do with Marxism.
:rolleyes: “Political correctness” strives for a deteriorating society? That’s one of the sillier statements I’ve heard. What, do you think left wingers are Satan worshipers too? And there’s no reason to think that Sweden will have a Muslim majority by 2050, or that it would matter much if it did. You are just indulging in the fantasy of pretending that trends continue forever, and that Islam is somehow genetic.
In Sweden we have leftwing “Stormtroopers”, who attack and even murder people who express doubts about political correctness. Our Prime Minister Reinfeldt (he actually has afroamerican ancestry) says “They should not be surprised”. I hope I can elaborate more on this tomorrow. It is very late in Sweden right now, and I have to go to bed. See ya!
I doubt if anyone claims to be a “cultural Marxist.” The term was invented in order to discredit certain ways of thinking.
That’s a publication I don’t know in a language I don’t speak. Not very informative especially since for all I know it’s some far right propaganda piece; you did link earlier to Fox after all.
This claim is entirely false, but I’d like you to make an attempt at proving it. If not, I’ll have to dismiss the bulk of your argument as the ignorant raving of the hopelessly ill-informed.
The US is now, and has been for decades well to the right of Sweden in the great majority of its policies. The idea that the US could or would force Western Europe to be more left wing is nuts. It’s the Europeans who consistently criticize the US for being so right wing.