Yoink! Stealing this for later use.
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In Cultural Marxism, the People (the “Culture Vultures”) control the means of Cultural Production. Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud, Flickr, &c.
Since my|our mind-melded collective gestalt has been outed, I|we might as well admit to my|our Sekrit Literachure:
#The Cultural Marxist Manifesto
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of media struggles.
Mass Media has subjected culture to the rule of the producers. It has created enormous bodies of creative work, has greatly increased urban media consumption as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the people dependent on the cable monoplies, so it has made illiterate and semi-literate countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of watchers on nations of producers, the East on Bollywood and the West on Hollywood (and Africa on Nollywood), and all of us on Facebook.
The weapons with which the Mass Media felled illiteracy to the ground are now turned against the Mass Media itself.
But not only has the Mass Media forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence those who are to wield those weapons — the modern media class — the Culture Vultures.
The Culture-Vultures disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing Mass Media. Let the media classes tremble at a Culture-Vulture revolution. The consumers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world of Entertainment to win.
##Culture-Vultures of All Countries, Unite!
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The problem with your argument is that everybody on the right seems to understand what cultural marxism is, and yet you haven’t told us on the left what you think it means. Sure, Marcuse exists, and Habermas exists, and Adorno exists, but no one on the right seems to have generated a substantial critique of what they actually said,
Marx bad.
Ergo Cultural Marxism bad.
It’s ridiculous. You accuse us of fallacious reasoning, when it’s not the form of the argument that matters, but the content. Either grapple with the text, and argue with what people actually said, or be dismissed as a conspiratorial crank.
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To begin with, if I were going to talk about the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, I’d talk about the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, instead of “cultural Marxism”. Sometimes inventing a new term is useful, but in this case, I suspect it’s deliberately obfuscatory – if you go searching for texts on “cultural Marxism”, you’ll find these weird quasi-conspiracy theories, instead of the many books by Adorno and Horkheimer and Pollock and so on, and the many, many secondary texts based on them, that you’d find if you tried to look up the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory.
In the sketchy outlines of “cultural Marxism” I’ve read, the only thing mentioned that seems to have anything to do with the Frankfurt School is the idea that you need to take cultural factors into account in political analysis, not just the structure of the economy. Which, by itself, doesn’t distinguish “cultural Marxism” from much of anything.
Most often, I’ve seen “cultural Marxism” used as an apparent synonym for identity politics, which, as we were discussing above, is often politically at odds with Marxist and most shades of anarchist thought. The crux of the disagreement is that the radical left traditionally emphasizes the principle of solidarity, whereas identity politics distrusts calls for unity out of concern that particular groups and struggles will be subordinated. Even if contemporary identity politics has its origins in a particular thread of Marxist thought, it’s been at odds with Marxism for decades.
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Here’s some source material that should help collapse the idea of the Frankfurt School into actual specifics.
Repressive Tolerance by Herbert Marcuse
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Okay, this really deserves a “Pphbbbbbt”.
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I would go with the first paragraph of that article. After that, I would say that it falls on the typical, overly simplistic guilt-by-association* of people who use the term.
- a very Stalinist thing to do.
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Why is that?
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I’m not surprised that you all are not gathering yourselves at the feet of this 4chan guy, begging him to explain his position when he throws that term around.
Look, Critical Theory is a quite esoteric thing. I’m just curious as to why the reaction is always a mocking dismissal rather than an inquiry.
Or it may be the reputation that is constructed around discussion of this type of thing outside of academia.
For example, as others have brought to my attention, the [RationalWIki article on “Cultural Marxism”][1], one need only go two paragraphs deep before Anders Brevik is invoked.
This is about the 3rd time I have posted this vid. I think it serves a good explanation of our understanding of this subject.
I encourage you to watch the vid, its a bit old and the subject matter is quite dry( you shouild try reading the source material )
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I’m going to agree with you, I think I made a mistake by continuting to use the term.
Yes, I’m sill on board.
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Martin Jay has some interesting things to say about this video:
Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe
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I like that - I can understand what he’s writing. There’s a coherent point.
As noted in that article, this video is produced by the Free Congress Foundation founded by Paul Weyrich. Dear Paul brought us such other gems as the Heritage Foundation and the Koch-funded ALEC, and is big on Dominionism.
Not my taste.
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I think that most “modern” economics, politics, and philosophy are still mostly fallout from the 19th century. Only now coming to terms with the Industrial Revolution, and still trying to apply colonialism, mass production, and scarcity to an increasingly information-based world. It seems intellectually dishonest to avoid reading and considering Marx, or anybody else who had real insight into how this process has unfolded over the years. I grew up Marxist, but later dismissed both communism and capitalism as antiquated thinking. Both are worth learning about. Don’t let dogma or ideology scare you from trying to understand ideas which you fear may be disagreeable to you or others.
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But it’s not really fair to say the reaction to critical theory is always one way and at the same time say that you understand why people would react that way, given who brought it up.
I will watch the video when I can. But this is exactly my point. You asked why the response is always eye-rolling and jokes, but what did it take to overcome the eye-rolling and jokes? It took a few sentences that read as someone with a genuine interest who wanted to share. The threshold for getting people here to listen is really, really low. If people bringing up ‘cultural marxism’ have never crossed that threshold before, that’s not because of a bias against the subject.
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Thanks for the link. I have not read the whole thing, yet, but I will.
I did notice that Mr. Jay didn’t quite make it thru the first paragraph before invoking conspiracy theorists.
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That’s called a lede.
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Well, I’m betraying the fact that I have a theory as to why this happens. I wont color any potential responses by revealing it here.
Also, on reconsideration, I take into account that you all are reacting to someone that you, understandably, don’t hold in very high esteem. I would like to direct the conversation away from this 4chan guy, in the interest of clarifying the conversation.
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Off topic: but that’s really become a quite popular term, outside the communication industry.
You do understand that nothing about critical theory espouses murder or antisemitism? That some radical groups use it in their propaganda is not a sufficient refutation?
After all, Charles Manson was inspired by the Beatles song Helter Skelter.
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I’m not sure that you do. Look, I could go on stormfront and learn all about “the Jew”. I could also go to any number of legitimate sources, and learn that Judaism exists, just as stormfront “predicted”. At the same time, however, the Nazi conception of Jews is entirely fictional.
I’m not denying that critical theory exists. I’m not even denying that it’s substantive, or denying that it is still interesting. What I am denying is the supposition that it bears more than a superficial resemblance to Paul Weyrich’s version, or Lyndon Larouche’s version, or Fidel Castro’s version.
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Did you get past the first paragraph? Martin Jay is a scholar who is most known for his studies of the Frankfurt School. He was not trying to refute Critical Theory, he was trying to explain how and why right wing conspiracy theorists have been going on about a caricature of it.
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