Discussing Cultural Marxism and the Reactionary Movements That Oppose It.

a reply to: boohoo

Perhaps we are just describing different parts of the elephant. How would you term it? I think the term fits perfectly in describing it.

originally posted by: boohoo

originally posted by: NihilistSanta
a reply to: boohoo

What is distressing is you are arguing that we are talking about the same thing. So your greater point would be what exactly?

If that's the case, than why do you keep calling it "Cultural Marxism"

I am hearing a lot of declarations of irrelevancy and complaints about inappropriate terminology but, very little in the way of refutation.

My understanding is that the global workers revolution failed to manifest in the west as Marx predicted.

Dedicated long-term thinkers advanced culture as the cause of the failure and proposed delegitimizing and diluting it through various means as the solution.

Do you believe that this is the case?

Do you disagree about who was the authentic originator of the strategy or are you simply repudiating it as an idea wholesale?

a reply to: greencmp

Do you disagree about who was the authentic originator of the strategy or are you simply repudiating it as an idea wholesale?

I have repudiated it as an invalid, Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. I guess you haven't been paying attention. What you are calling "Cultural Marxism, " and implying is a conscious strategy on the part of shadowy manipulators (obviously, based on the emphasis on the Frankfurt School, Jews) is known by genuine political scientists as the politics of identity, or "Identity Politics." There has always been a tendency for people to identify with their family, tribe, religion and so forth, but in a multi-cultural society like America, this self identification has become more complex and diverse, and a driver of political forces.

What some people see as a Marxist conspiracy is, in fact, people working together to further the ends of their chosen "tribe." Often, these "tribes" disturb the narrow "moral boundaries" (ie; prejudices) of people with a conservative world view. Neo-paganism, trans-genderism, polyamory, and so forth, make some people feel so uncomfortable that they can only perceive them as a threat to society.

ETA: Feel free to make a counter argument to what I said on the first page of this thread:

The phrase "cultural Marxism" is inappropriate*, as it implies that the proposed solution to the perceived imbalance of societal power is economic. When homosexuals want to have the same rights as heterosexuals, the solution is not to give control of the means of production to the workers.

Your analysis is biased in other ways. First, you assume that social criticism is chiefly leveled at "western" institutions. In fact, it is leveled at whatever society the critics inhabit. Social activists oppose monarchy, Islam, Stalinism, and so forth in countries where these "isms" apply. Obviously, social criticism is more dangerous in these "non-western" societies.

Secondly, you overemphasize the contribution of central European socialist academics. There was not much interest in their brand of Marxist analysis outside of academia in the United States. There was a long tradition of grassroots labor organizing in America that sought to make capitalism more just, not overthrow it.

The greatest impetus to what you (inaccurately)* call "scientific Marxism" came with the influx of "structuralist" thought from France in the 1960s. Levi-Strauss, Fanon, and especially Foucault, developed their deconstructionist theories as an alternative to Marxist analysis, which had been losing its dominant place in French academic thought. It is they who expanded social criticism from the economic to the personal, with an emphasis of how institutions use coercion to maintain power over groups, and individuals use power to control others. Foucault was positively Sadean in his view of power. Throw in Jacques Derrida's ability to prove that black is white and up is down, and you had the perfect formula for transforming society into a free for all of conflicting "victims."

Your greatest error is in assuming this is addressing some sort of coherent goal. Perhaps its earliest theoreticians thought that getting different groups within an industrialized society to feel oppressed might make them more inclined to revolt against capitalism, but by the time it trickled down to "community organizers" by way of the French, it tended to re-conform itself to the traditional American labor desire of getting a bigger slice of the pie, not tossing the pie out altogether.

* I strengthen this language in reposting it.

a reply to: DJW001

I don’t know why you are saying that the term scientific socialism was coined in the 1960s. Engels chose it to differentiate his and Marx’s flavor from the utopian varieties.

I think you confuse tribal mentality with pack mentality. I certainly don’t think transgenderism is a traditional cultural value anywhere and that is why these neologisms are perceived as manufactured specifically to intentionally manipulate cultures otherwise hostile to socialism.

You have the whole concept upside down, the goal of the Frankfurt school wasn’t to liberate homosexuals by making them economically equal but, to invoke socialist economic equality by promoting homosexuality (among other verboten practices) in traditional cultures in order to weaken the enemy of the revolution, the culture of the middle class. Socialists had no sympathy or tolerance for homosexuals within the collective.

It was western culture that thwarted the global revolution so, yes, advocates of Fabian socialism primarily target western culture through enacting social policies which diminish inherently incompatible notions within society.

You act like there is no coherent goal to destroy capitalism among socialists. That is patently false, perhaps you misspoke. The only variant of socialism that purports to be a happy medium between capitalism and socialism is syndicalism.

Syndicalism/corporativism certainly has the stronger foothold in labor politics as is evidenced by the popularity of concepts such as 'profit sharing' and slogans like "railroads to the railroad men" and "mines to the miners".

a reply to: greencmp

I don’t know why you are saying that the term scientific socialism was coined in the 1960s. Engels chose it to differentiate his and Marx’s flavor from the utopian varieties.

I am not saying scientific socialism was coined in the 1960s. What I am saying is that what started influencing academia, and then popular culture, in the 1960s was not scientific socialism. Critical theory was a reaction to Marxism.

I think you confuse tribal mentality with pack mentality. I certainly don’t think transgenderism is a traditional cultural value anywhere and that is why these neologisms are perceived as manufactured specifically to intentionally manipulate cultures otherwise hostile to socialism.

You need to brush up on your anthropology:

www.bilerico.com...

When people fear two unrelated things, the mind will sometimes associate them, even though they are not really connected.

You have the whole concept upside down, the goal of the Frankfurt school wasn’t to liberate homosexuals by making them economically equal but, to invoke socialist economic equality by promoting homosexuality (among other verboten practices) in traditional cultures in order to weaken the enemy of the revolution, the culture of the middle class. Socialists had no sympathy or tolerance for homosexuals within the collective.

The Frankfurt School has nothing to do with contemporary identity politics. Why do you insist it does?

It was western culture that thwarted the global revolution so, yes, advocates of Fabian socialism primarily target western culture through enacting social policies which diminish inherently incompatible notions within society.

Ironically, it is the global reach of western culture that is causing social change; other countries are adopting western values and the west is absorbing values and practices from other cultures. The forces of reaction, both in the west and the rest of the world, reject this natural process and seek explanations in conspiracy theories. This theorizing leads to a cycle of self-confirmation that eventually results in nationalism and xenophobia.

You act like there is no coherent goal to destroy capitalism among socialists. That is patently false, perhaps you misspoke. The only variant of socialism that purports to be a happy medium between capitalism and socialism is syndicalism.

Of course there are people who want to destroy capitalism. They are not doing it by organizing Gay Pride parades. Most people who espouse socialism see it as being part of a mixed economy in a democratically elected representative polity.

Syndicalism/corporativism certainly has the stronger foothold in labor politics as is evidenced by the popularity of concepts such as 'profit sharing' and slogans like "railroads to the railroad men" and "mines to the miners".

And that is exactly the thread of American labor politics I have been talking about. The blue collar workers who get stock options for working on an assembly line probably don't care one way or another about identity politics beyond getting their due share of the profits.

What will destroy capitalism will be internal flaws within the system (i.e., the need for continuous growth) versus physical limits of the biosphere.