Cultural Marxism BTFO

"Cultural Marxism" is a term that was coined by various antisemetic groups in the early-to-late 1990's as a conspiracy theory alleging that "Political Correctness" is a theoretical outgrowth of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory as a means of subverting traditional western values and a means of shifting bringing about socialism or communism.

There are three general problems with this characterization that lead me to conclude it's nothing more than a nonsensical buzzword meant to rile up those on the right.

The first problem is that the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory more generally had no real focus on "Political Correctness" as a field of study, nor do their major figures write on the topic in any systematic way. Generally speaking, the Frankfurt School's prime focus was in applying dialectical methodology to both philosophy and the social sciences to locate "contradictions" within ideological and sociological systems. The most famous strategy, known as "Imminent Critique", focuses on locating internal contradictions within an ideological, economic, or sociological system. This method was pioneered by philosophers like Hegel and Marx, and has been used by figures all over the political spectrum to analyze this or that topic. To oversimplify how this works, you take an object of study --In Marx's case it was 19th century Capitalism and Classical Political Economy. In Adorno and Horkheimer's case it was the entire Enlightenment tradition through Modernity-- you then locate within that object its various features and trends, and then you take these features and attempt to explain how these features come into conflict with one another.

Other urls found in this thread:

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/19/cultural-marxism-a-uniting-theory-for-rightwingers-who-love-to-play-the-victim?CMP=soc_567
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudo-Marxism#The_Frankfurt_School
azizonomics.com/2012/08/07/the-cantillon-effect/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Its called cultural Marxism because it applies Marxist dialectic to social institutions and problems instead of economic ones.

That is why the Left phrases all political discussion in terms of an oppressor who can do no right, and an oppressed class who can do no wrong.

Regardless of how 'intentional' this development was, there can be little argument that

1. The Left does in fact argue in this way. And
2. The Left does indeed seek a socialist state.

So with Marx we see how by the very standards of Classical Political Economy, a capitalist mode of production has within it the seeds of its own eventual collapse. In Adorno and Horkheimer's case, their object was the age of Enlightenment and what they wanted to understand was how, by its very own standards, that age of enlightenment was capable of producing the rise of Fascism, Stalinism, and any and all other forms of Totalitarianism within the 20th century. Their reasons and arguments I'll have to set aside for the moment, because they're unimportant for my purposes here. The key point is that this is how their method works. You take a given tradition or social structure, look at its component parts, and try to make sense of how by their very own standards they're capable of producing something in seeming contradiction with the goals of that tradition or structure. In this aim, the Frankfurt School took up the tools of Hegel, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and a handful of other figures.

The second problem is that by all practical accounts, members of this subreddit and various other right-wing groups are more than happy to utilize the methods and insights of the Frankfurt School when it serves their purposes. That is to say, when you hear members of the right complaining about State or Corporate corruption of journalism or the media more generally, they're lifting the analysis of various members of the Frankfurt School, and Critical Theorists generally, and appropriating them as their own. You really can't have a coherent framework for thinking about those types of things without the work done by people like Gramsci or Marcuse who were both explicitly Marxists figures who's work was famous for dissecting the mechanisms and relationship between the production of mass culture and the proliferation of 'Statist' or 'Corporate' ideology within that mass produced culture. One doesn't need to be a Marxist to accept the insights they provide, but it would be rather silly to pretend their insights haven't filtered through and been appropriated by non-Marxists. Even setting aside that kind of stuff, more close to home for AnCaps, the entire argument of "Argumentation Ethics" which I've seen utilized to varying degrees by AnCaps and Libertarians is a direct appropriation of [then] Marxist philosopher/theorist Jurgen Habermas' "Discourse Ethics".

I agree OP. It's like social darwinism. It means nothing. Just trying to tie a negatively preceived word ( Marxism ) and apply it to another word to make it sound creepy

The third problem is, in my opinion, the most devastating. That is that the entire concept of "Cultural Marxism" as described above --the "subverting traditional western values and a means of shifting bringing about socialism or communism"-- is a contradiction in terms. If we take Vladimir Lenin's "The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism" seriously, then one of those parts is Historical Materialism. Historical Materialism itself is based on the "Base-Superstructure" model pioneered by Marx. The theory being that there's an Economic Base, in our time it's a Capitalist Mode of Production, on top of which arises a "Superstructure" which comprises our politics, culture, art, religion, science, philosophy etc. The base shapes the superstructure, and the superstructure maintains the economic base via ideology. For example, think of a feudal society where the mode of production maintains feudal society by producing goods and services to keep society going and the superstucture, the culture, religion, and politics of a feudal society exist to maintain that base by convincing people that the feudal system is the best thing for everybody.

The fallout of this argument being that you simply can not change Capitalism by getting everyone to be "Politically Correct". It simply doesn't make sense in terms of Marxian theory. Here is where I'll make a slide and copy what I've said before on this topic. Who benefits from Political Correctness? Marxists or Capitalists? The answer is Capitalists. The introduction and mass appeal of notions like 'Political Correctness' is not because of some conspiracy by "Cultural Marxists" but instead actually appeals to, and is promoted by, Capitalists. Businesses want more customers and in particular, loyal customers. Adopting business policies which appeal to minority groups on the basis of mutual respect is the logical outcome. And by jumping in as a first-adopter of such notions you get a certain loyalty by those who see your company as "progressive" for treating minorities with a certain appearance of such respect. In short, you appeal to a broader consumer base rather than restricting yourself to a traditionalist value system that capitalism as a mode of production simply has no time or need for. Don't believe me? Think about the phone sex industry. Doesn't the act of making money providing audio-sexual gratification for someone who you don't care about seem to conflict with traditional christian values? I think it obviously does. And businesses sprung up for that long before "Political Correctness".

>"Heh, it's not Marxism at all. Now let me tell you how it's influenced by Hegel and Marx... Remember, it's JUST a systematic questioning of the roots of society and duty!"

If you read all the way through, he explains how shit like political correctness is an inevitable byproduct of capitalist entities seeking to expand their consumer base.

Just because someone uses the Socratic method doesn't make them Socrates. Just because someone uses the scientific method doesn't make them Aristotle.

Ah. So he's retarded. Good to know.

Bump

this is complex bait .png

How is that retarded? Enlighten me user.

This is super comprehendible. Refute it if you can, I'm interested to see what pol thinks.

so it's a bullshit piece, that you've bought into, those enough stupid enough to believe such tripe are already lost and those who don't aren't stupid enough to buy it, any possible inbetween being noise.

>2. The Left does indeed seek a socialist state.

Really? So Hillary, who takes all that money from Goldman Sachs and half a dozen other high profile investment bankers, who would presumably have the most to lose from socialism in any real sense, are in fact using their money against their own interest?

Wew lad.

Marxism: "Rich white men oppress everyone else"

Cultural Marxism: "White men (which are all rich due to white male privilege) oppress gays, women, niggers, spotted owls and greenhouse gases!"

No, can't see any parallels.

>Saying literally nothing.


Ok.

Hillary isn't really a liberal, mate. She lies about her viewpoints to gain votes.

>have the most to lose from socialism in any real sense

not if they are those in whose hands power and money is concentrated - which is the already the case.

>Real Socialism [TM]

Face it in the real world socialism is great for the greedy assholes who end up in charge of it.
Because blaming capitalism for leftist insanity is both hilarious and ridiculous.

The real reason "cultural marxism" exists is because multiculturalism as a social doctrine helps justify globalism as a political and economic doctrine, so the powers that be promote it for their own interests, whether that interest be more votes or cheap labor.

So then the left as a political force doesn't really exist?

And those who seek to institute a leftist approach to US politics (Bernouts) gets BTFO by corruption from within their own party then?

And people are still scared of these 'real leftists', even though they have no political platform within the party that claims to represent them, they still represent an all powerful cabal subverting our values?

More wew I am afraid good sir.

Marxism: We, the workers, are oppressed by the capitalist owners of the modes of production.

Cultural Marxism: We, the capitalist owners of the modes of production, would like to have one uniform consumer base so it's easier to opress them.

So basically you agree with what this guy is writing then?

...

>nobody calls out you-know-what
Obviously too much for Sup Forums to read.

>So basically you agree with what this guy is writing then?

no, he said they would lose from socialism when in fact they win. A bank has no means of production which possibly could be seized, they couldn't care less whether a productive company's shareholders or syndicalists pay the interest rates for loans...

That's a shame. I guess we will continue to be philosophically specious.

In this sense loans are the means of production.

If any group other than the sate, or society defined in other terms, owns the rights to extract the value from interest on these loans, it is in no way socialist...

Also, I am not a socialist, just putting that out there.

Of course we will. Good post though. Next time edit out the subreddit bit, Replace with board.

I was going to stamp a 9gag watermark on it.

>In this sense loans are the means of production.

no, they are incentives to enable productivity.

>If any group other than the sate, or society defined in other terms, owns the rights to extract the value from interest on these loans, it is in no way socialist...

it is socialist since the state makes sure you pay interest rates, debts and taxes into the hands of that cartel/centralized power.

>Also, I am not a socialist, just putting that out there.

then why do they eagerly fund politicians - and get huge "bail outs" if they wouldn not profit from that policy at all...

"Cultural Marxism" was created by Marxists to apply Marxist principles to society and culture.

It is largely based on "critical theory", which aims to critique, dismantle, deconstruct, ... every single aspect of culture and society; including biology.

That's how you get dumb shit like denial of sexual dimorphism or racial differences.

The name is pretty apt in denoting this general trend, and there's nothing inherently disparaging about the name/term "Cultural Marxism" itself.

If the term had been "poopy-faced society destroyers", then you might have a case.

What do the Australian’s columnist Nick Cater, video game hate group #Gamergate, Norwegian mass shooter Anders Breivik and random blokes on YouTube have in common? Apart from anything else, they have all invoked the spectre of “cultural Marxism” to account for things they disapprove of – things like Islamic immigrant communities, feminism and, er, opposition leader Bill Shorten.

What are they talking about? The tale varies in the telling, but the theory of cultural Marxism is integral to the fantasy life of the contemporary right. It depends on a crazy-mirror history, which glancingly reflects things that really happened, only to distort them in the most bizarre ways.

It begins in the 1910s and 1920s. When the socialist revolution failed to materialise beyond the Soviet Union, Marxist thinkers like Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs tried to explain why. Their answer was that culture and religion blunted the proletariat’s desire to revolt, and the solution was that Marxists should carry out a “long march through the institutions” – universities and schools, government bureaucracies and the media – so that cultural values could be progressively changed from above.

Adapting this, later thinkers of the Frankfurt School decided that the key to destroying capitalism was to mix up Marx with a bit of Freud, since workers were not only economically oppressed, but made orderly by sexual repression and other social conventions. The problem was not only capitalism as an economic system, but the family, gender hierarchies, normal sexuality – in short, the whole suite of traditional western values. (...)

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/19/cultural-marxism-a-uniting-theory-for-rightwingers-who-love-to-play-the-victim?CMP=soc_567

The point is that "critical theory" is a concept shaped by the Frankfurt school (the original "cultural Marxists"), and wherever the tenets of critical theory take hold, we may speak of "cultural Marxism".

>no, they are incentives to enable productivity.
In the sense they produce something (interest) they are the means of production. If this means is privately owned, the model isn't socialist.

>it is socialist since the state makes sure you pay interest rates, debts and taxes into the hands of that cartel/centralized power.

Which will claim the legitimacy of being the state

>>then why do they eagerly fund politicians - and get huge "bail outs" if they wouldn not profit from that policy at all...

The Koch brothers also pay immense amounts to politicians, pretending this is somehow 'socialist' flies in the face of all available evidence.

Those with money or resources seek to use it to gain political power, as this is the only thing more valuable. This is a story as old as three guys living in a hut...

Hilary is as left as my right asscheek. She's a plutocratic DINO, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

yes, still Gramsci's influence was at least as significant as Freudo-Marxism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudo-Marxism#The_Frankfurt_School

And yet Critical Theory doesn't remain true to either's intention of truth.

Critical Theory explicitly undermines, and creates 'dialectic' through this procedure of undermining. There is no 'end goal' to Critical Theory other than to criticize. You cannot compare them to each other when a true dialectic is done in person, one-to-one, in the verbal format with the intention of a pure revelation; not a 'victory through a thousand cuts'.

>In the sense they produce something (interest) they are the means of production. If this means is privately owned, the model isn't socialist.

the current planned and centralized currency policy with fixed interest rates - even negative interest rates here in the EU - is a showpiece of socialist currency policies. Today no price is dictated by supply and demand, therefor no capitalist price setting.

>Which will claim the legitimacy of being the state

or, a supranational organization such as the EU with an own central bank, the ECB...

>The Koch brothers also pay immense amounts to politicians, pretending this is somehow 'socialist' flies in the face of all available evidence.

hence the term socialism for the rich makes perfect sense.

>Those with money or resources seek to use it to gain political power, as this is the only thing more valuable. This is a story as old as three guys living in a hut...

may I remind you it is the left championing for the destruction of national states, no borders, ever increasing taxes, fixed salaries (minimum wages), QE and all that nonsense that creates economic misery in the first place. Are they doing that because they like capitalism?

must be neat to be able to force oneself into willfull ignorance

I'm left wing as fuck on certain issues and anti globalist. The two are not mutually exclusive.

It's a massive red herring designed to convince the people reading that the people who invoke 'Cultural Marxism' still believe in a grand revolutionary plot to overthrow capitalism, rather than using it as a knowing specter to conjure up an image of 'class struggle' and translate it into 'culture struggle, for nothing more than pitting people against each other so that globalist interests may more easily snatch up and tie down the scrabblers.

The person writing this seems not to understand that the people who use the term do not like 'Corporatism' at all, mostly due to its clandestine practices facilitated by government. Indeed, the only link the person writing it might have is that an opposition to oppression is almost entirely met with more government control. These people are not capitalists, they are autocrats, and autocrats take form in all nations.

Hillary is a fucking neocon, and a pawn of the establishment. She's about as left as fucking Mussolini.

>establishment.
(((establishment)))

just get to the point, jews.

Why do you belive this stops her from pandering to the left dureing the election or what point are you trying to make?

>I'm left wing as fuck on certain issues and anti globalist. The two are not mutually exclusive.

how are they mutually exclusive? National sovereignty, a weak and decentralized state, low taxes is what no leftist ever said. Freedom of contract in gay marriages sure, but never in economy is typical leftist.

>members of this subreddit
Take your copypasta and shove it up your shill ass.

I was agreeing with the poster I replied to.

>the current planned and centralized currency policy with fixed interest rates - even negative interest rates here in the EU - is a showpiece of socialist currency policies.
Cultural marxism isn't a term that tends to be used in the European sense. Europeans do tend to be much more socialist than Americans. And with negative consequences to be sure. But this isn't cultural marxism and we are losing the point with these shifting goalpost.

>or, a supranational organization such as the EU with an own central bank, the ECB...
No argument from me here. EU a shit and I hated paying 70% tax on a barely livable wage when I lived in Brussels

>may I remind you it is the left championing for the destruction of national states, no borders, ever increasing taxes, fixed salaries (minimum wages),
No, it is both sides. The 'right' as it exists within the establishment is just as bad

Yeah why don't just call it hegelianism. It's what it actually is, after all.

>Cultural marxism isn't a term that tends to be used in the European sense. Europeans do tend to be much more socialist than Americans. And with negative consequences to be sure. But this isn't cultural marxism and we are losing the point with these shifting goalpost.

the degree of economic socialism is higher here, true, still the USA is catching up. In matters of sociopolitics the USA leads the pack, we even use English terms like e.g. whiteness studies and political correctness.

>No argument from me here. EU a shit and I hated paying 70% tax on a barely livable wage when I lived in Brussels

a good example how leftist state power and big banks and corporations are acting hand in hand.

>No, it is both sides. The 'right' as it exists within the establishment is just as bad

It is one side, it makes no sense to call Tories implementing leftist policies a different branch. "David Cameron says it is a ‘personal priority’ to make gay sex legal worldwide." Power is centralized, no freedom of speech, no free market for opinions and an alternative viewpoint, speech policing is what we have everywhere - and everywhere it goes in favour of one side, the left.

You are tilting at windmills here. 'The left' as you define it hasn't been solely responsible for the fact
>Power is centralized,
And gay marriage or whatever other cultural stuff you are claiming is important has very little to do with the fact that increasingly
> Power is centralized,
Except perhaps as a fig leaf of legitimacy,

>You are tilting at windmills here. 'The left' as you define it hasn't been solely responsible for the fact

so who else too?

>And gay marriage or whatever other cultural stuff you are claiming is important has very little to do with the fact that increasingly

I couldn't care less for gays, I brought up the example to show the priorities of "conservative" prime ministers - it is all one mischpoke.

>Except perhaps as a fig leaf of legitimacy,

why do leftists oppose referendums this much but want more "democracy" on their demo signs? Personal freedom and decentralized government are seen as racist, Because it is a traditional bourgeois white male thing...

>so who else too?
The entire political apparatus

> it is all one mischpoke.
And I think we are in agreement here, as said abovr

>why do leftists oppose referendums this much but want more "democracy" on their demo signs? Personal freedom and decentralized government are seen as racist,

My argument here is a little involved, and involves the single thing I have actually read closely from the frankfurt school.

They basically said, and I paraphrase extensively here, that everything that is 'cool' contains within it a kernel of threat to the powers that be. It is this very possibility of overturning the established order that grants it it's glamour.

Capital sees this threat, and seeks to inoculate itself by repackaging the same aesthetic in a form that appears the same, but lacks the threat to the established order.

We see this with punk devolving from social commentary into blink 182, and hip hop devolving from social commentary into bling rap.

And in terms of politics, it is the devolution of a 'leftist' project concerned with redistributing wealth and refocusing the loci of political power to communities into endless bickering over LGBT or other forms of identity politics.

What does the head of Citibank or BNP Paribas think about a truly revolutionary redistribution of wealth and political power vs having to put a token nigger on the board and having the 'left' concerned with transgender bathroom rights and other identity faggotry?

And as stated before, this insight was the only thing I have ever cared to read from thew Frankfurt school.

Also, I am still not a leftist. I think that Socialist policies have enough faults without being carried away with Chimera.

>"Cultural Marxism" is a term that was coined by various antisemetic groups in the early-to-late 1990's

lulno.

pic related, a book from the early 80s by a lefty.

>"Political Correctness"

Politial correctness came out of critical theory, which assumes and seeks out the 'hidden' systems of oppression built into the superstructure of the west. This superstructure is why, according to Frankfurt school thinking, the revolutions Marx predicted didn't happen in the west.

What would you say about this good sir?

>The entire political apparatus

which is a centralized leftist apparatus, apparatchik doesn't refer to leftists for nothing.

>And I think we are in agreement here, as said abovr

Hm, the mayor issue of disagreement is you didn't pay enough attention to the fact the central banks manipulate and set the interest rates (amongst others e.g.QE). Centrally planned and controlled currency policy is socialism. Leftists however are too dumb to acknowledge their own idiocy and keep criticing capitalism.
azizonomics.com/2012/08/07/the-cantillon-effect/

>What does the head of Citibank or BNP Paribas think about a truly revolutionary redistribution of wealth

They are excited because they get richer every time. There are many more billionaires after each financial crisis - just be too big to fail and the wealth redistribution from below to top commences limitlessly - or, if we are more precise, the wealth distribution mainly to the top and a bit below, to keep those voters happy that regularly hope to get a bigger "fair share" in elections.

your other comments: of course leftists don't have much left to criticize in an overall leftist environment, mainstream policy, media, unis, entertainment already is leftist, why would they rebel against it? All their barking up the wrong tree just shows how lowly educated the alleged experts already are.

>everything I hate is leftist

Literally commie tier reasoning in reverse.

You even said they are excited about revolutionary redistribution of wealth, when revolutionary explicitly means an overtuning of the established patterns of wealth.

You are stupid and not worth talking to. You leave any conservative thought looking more stupid than if you hadn't chosen to support it.

Good day sir.

I'd suggest that not everyone who applies critical theory is a cultural marxist. But every cultural marxist applies critical theory. The difference would be that cultural marxists explore and hammer home 'conclusions' reached through critical theory with the goal of changing the existing order. The other group exploit the proclaimed oppression/oppressor dynamic to create new identities, new target markets. I think there's also a large degree of moralising. Large corporations try to create a friendlier face by supporting oppressed classes.

On oppressed classes, notice how there appear to be more of them day on day? This is to make up for the lack of class struggle among 1st world workers. New classes, oppressed in different ways, but by the same system, are needed as the revolutionary foot soldiers.

>New classes, oppressed in different ways, but by the same system, are needed as the revolutionary foot soldiers.

And of you were to replace foot-soldiers with consumers, would you not have an image that equates fairly squarely with OP's argument?

For what it is worth, I do believe the existing order should be overturned for a devolution of the most significant power to the smallest political units. As has occurred in Switzerland

>Literally commie tier reasoning in reverse.

if there were any right-wing in power I would dislike them too. There just is none.

>You even said they are excited about revolutionary redistribution of wealth, when revolutionary explicitly means an overtuning of the established patterns of wealth.

They prefer the safe revolution, the destruction of the bourgeois middle class is the destruction of the traditional pattern of wealth.

>You are stupid and not worth talking to. You leave any conservative thought looking more stupid than if you hadn't chosen to support it.

I have nothing to do with conservativism

>Good day sir.

c ya

>New classes, oppressed in different ways, but by the same system, are needed as the revolutionary foot soldiers.

Islamic communism?

Maybe I was too harsh and too hasty. Your last post seems not so far from what I believe, except I believe that falling into a pattern of 'itz da left' makes you a pawn and useless in your ability to the affect changes needed to preserve what matters.

And if you are interested in preserving the middle class, you are doing so against both left and right, and in pursuit of conservatism.

At least that is how I see it.

Good night friend, and all the best. it is still late here and my girl doesn't t sleep well if I am not next to her.

Most of the people out marching for SJW are useful idiots. It is perfectly possible that both porky and merchant are pulling their strings. However the ideas and 'rationale' behind them taking to the streets was likely put there by a cultural marxist, that is somebody who knows that critical theory will be applied to break down the 'cultural hegemony'. There's no denying the leftist leaning of academia, and writing them off as IDpol idiots is probably underestimating most of them. But the collapse of teh USSR essentially killed, at least for a few more decades, the traditional revolutionary approach taken. So they've switched focus to reshaping culture.

Nice dubs
consider them checked
See

The reason the powers that be slant to the left is because it's logical conclusion is nihilism and slave morality.

>Maybe I was too harsh and too hasty. Your last post seems not so far from what I believe, except I believe that falling into a pattern of 'itz da left' makes you a pawn and useless in your ability to the affect changes needed to preserve what matters.

you still haven't answered why the establishment is not leftist. Because some Maoist splinter groups don't recognize social democracy to be leftist?

>And if you are interested in preserving the middle class, you are doing so against both left and right, and in pursuit of conservatism.

well, reason is in the centre, is it not? The left - right dichotomy does not exist anymore, as there is no active right wing power (except one considers clerical fascist regimes in the ME to be right wing).
I do not pursuit conservativism, I have no compassion for cuckservatives.

GN be well