Toggle menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Cultural Marxism

From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia

This article is about the conspiracy theory. For Western leftists who focus on culture instead of economics, see Frankfurt School.

Racist poster from the United States connecting Jews to communism and the civil rights movement

Cultural Marxism is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims that Jews are using Marxism to destroy Western civilization. In 1935, Joseph Goebbels said, "It was the Jew who discovered Marxism. It is the Jew who for decades past has endeavored to stir up world revolutions through the medium of Marxism. It is the Jew who is today at the head of Marxism in all the countries of the world." Winston Churchill also believed in an international Jewish conspiracy that dated back to the French Revolution.[1]

Misrepresentation of Marxism[edit | edit source]

Those who claim that "cultural Marxism" is a real thing very often misrepresent Marxist thought. This is evident in the claim that "Marxists" are trying to infiltrate cultural institutions (the superstructure) to change the West's mode of production (the base); from an actual Marxist perspective, to attempt such a blatantly idealist strategy would be to put the cart before the horse. The claim that "cultural Marxism" is simply Marxism applied to culture instead of economics is likewise absurd; the foundational ideas of Marxian economics cannot be easily translated into cultural ideas.[2]

Most of the things that "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theorists attribute to this imagined Jewish plot can be better explained through a materialist analysis of capitalism itself. For example, mass immigration provides the imperial core with surplus labour; liberal identity politics is a means by which the bourgeoisie keep the workers divided; hypersexualized media is a result of the fact that sex sells; and decline in religion is caused by its utility (as an opiate of the masses) being phased out by social programs.[3]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Ellen Engelstad, Mímir Kristjánsson (2019-02-16). "The Return of “Judeo-Bolshevism”" Jacobin. Archived from the original on 2023-06-07.
  2. “The definition subscribers of the conspiracy present is often rather crude: cultural Marxism is Marxism transposed from the domain of economics to that of culture. Such a proposition, at first glance, appears preposterous to those even vaguely familiar with Marxist theory. A logical cultural analogue to Marxism’s foundational economic insight, i.e., the law of value, for example, is inconceivable in this scheme.”

    Michael E. Acuña (2015-01-13). "The Origins and Ideological Function of Cultural Marxism" Common Ruin.
  3. “What is more, if one carefully dissects the phenomena cultural conservatives sometimes impute to the Frankfurt school from a materialist perspective, it is not difficult to discern how these policies are actually of utility to that imperative.

    Mass immigration’s benefit is obvious: it saturates the domestic market with surplus labor, thereby putting downward pressure on wages in certain sectors of the economy52 and erecting barriers to the formation of class solidarity.53 Speech codes, affirmative action, multiculturalism, and general ‘political correctness’ can best be understood as liberal mechanisms to regulate behavior in a manner which fosters racial tolerance while simultaneously solidifying the belief that capitalism’s class divisions are structured along genuinely meritocratic lines—meritocracy being the bourgeoisie’s principal self-legitimating ideological construct in the 21st century.54

    (...)

    Hypersexualization is another feature of contemporary culture groundlessly accredited to cultural Marxism. Interestingly, Freudianism does bear some accountability in this development, although definitely not in its quasi-Marxian, Frankfurt school manifestation. Instead it can be traced to Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. Often heralded as the “father of public relations,” Bernays was hired by several large corporations throughout the course of his life to consult on ad campaigns, and one of his main contributions was to recommend that these companies appeal to mankind’s baser instincts in order to more effectively instill in the public a desire for their commodities. 56 His advice resulted in greater sales, and since then sexual themes have become a cornerstone in the capitalist marketing effort. 57 But this Freudian connection is purely coincidental, as the commodification of sex—horrendously inhumane and distorting as it is— was just as inevitable a development of capitalism as labor power being mediated through the cash nexus. Nothing is sacred before the laws of accumulation, or as Karl Marx expressed it: “Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”58

    Lastly, the decline in participation in organized religion witnessed in the global north often blamed on the Frankfurt school, while not necessarily of service to capital, is attributable to material developments which have transpired during the bourgeois epoch. Empirical data points to reductions in precarity and privation that social welfare systems provide as being the foremost impetus behind the precipitous reduction in religiosity witnessed in recent decades.59 The triumph of evolutionary biology in disclosing the origins of mankind should not be overlooked as an explanatory factor, either.”

    Michael E. Acuña (2015-01-13). "The Origins and Ideological Function of Cultural Marxism" Common Ruin.