Maverick Philosopher

James Lindsay on Critical Theory

Accurate. About eight minutes long.

Here he is on Critical Race Theory. Longer and better. PragerU, about 18 minutes.

What is Cultural Marxism?

Despite the febrile complaints of some leftists, 'cultural Marxism' is a useful term that picks out a genuine cultural phenomenon. It is no myth. Nor is it an anti-Semitic or a racist 'dog whistle.'  It is alleged by leftists  to be an anti-Semitic conservative slur because the members of the Frankfurt School were mainly Jews, even Adorno.  Adorno's original name was not 'Theodor W. Adorno,' but 'Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund.'  

But what is cultural Marxism?

For Karl Marx, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class conflict. In market societies the two main classes in conflict are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which stand to each other as oppressor and oppressed. This is not a conflict that can be mediated: it can be overcome only by the defeat of the oppressors. Herein lies an important difference between (classical) liberalism and Marxist leftism.ⁱ For the latter, politics is war, not a process of bargaining and accommodation on the basis of mutually accepted norms between parties with common interests and a desire to coexist peacefully. Cultural Marxism, retaining both the oppressor-oppressed motif and the belief in the intractability of the conflict, moves beyond classical or economic Marxism by widening the class of the oppressed to include blacks and other 'people of color,' women, male and female homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, Muslims, immigrants legal and illegal, and others deemed to be victims of oppression.

Correspondingly, cultural Marxism widens the class of oppressors to include potentially all whites, males, heterosexuals and religionists, Christians mainly, regardless of their economic status. Thus within the ambit of cultural Marxism, a working-class Southern white male heterosexual Christian ends up among the oppressors. Such are Hillary Clinton's deplorables and irredeemables, and those about whom Barack Obama said, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”ⁱⁱ

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i cf. Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 17.

ii https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/14/barackobama.uselections2008. Read the sentence carefully. It makes no sense.

The Frankfurt School Knew Trump was Coming!

Holy Horkheimer!