User:Sennalen/sandbox/Marxism

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The term "cultural Marxism" has been used in academic contexts to signify various strands of Western Marxism, including cultural studies and critical theory.[1][2][3][4][5][6] However, the term "Cultural Marxism" is also used by purveyors of the anti-Semitic Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory.[7][8] Parts of the conspiracy theory make reference to actual thinkers and ideas that are in the Western Marxist tradition,[9][10][11] but they severely misrepresent the subject.[11][12] Conspiracy theorists exaggerate the actual influence of Marxist cultural analysis,[13] including claims that Marxist scholars aimed to infiltrate governments, mind-control populations,[9][10][11][14] and destroy Western civilization.[4] Since there is no such movement, Joan Braune has argued it is not correct to use the term "Cultural Marxism" at all.[13]

Extended content

[15]

[16]

[17]

Cultural Marxism includes diverse thinkers with conflicting ideas, but conspiracy theorists instead treat them as interchangeable parts of a coherent movement.[18]

  1. ^ Jamin, Jérôme (February 6, 2018). "Cultural Marxism: A survey". Religion Compass. 12 (1–2): e12258. doi:10.1111/REC3.12258. Cultural Marxism, and Critical Theory more generally with which it has a close signification, have both a direct link with the Frankfurt School and its Marxian theorists. Initially called the "Institute for Social Research" during the 1930s, and taking the label the "Frankfurt School" by the 1950s, the designation meant as much an academic environment as a geographical location. As Christian Bouchindhomme puts it in its entry devoted to "Critical Theory" in Raynaud and Rials' Dictionnaire de philosophie politique, the Frankfurt School has been more a label than a school, even if it referred to a real academic environment:
  2. ^ Markwick, Roger (2010). "Gurevich's Contribution to Soviet and Russian Historiography: From Social-psychology to Historical Anthropology". In Mazour-Matusevič, Yelena; Korros, Alexandra (eds.). Saluting Aron Gurevich: Essays in History, Literature and Other Related Subjects. Brill. p. 42. ISBN 978-90-04-18650-7. Marxist cultural analysis, as it emerged in post-war Western and Eastern Europe, was a reaction to the tendency within Soviet-style Marxism to treat culture as a mere secondary epiphenomenon of economic relations, of classes and modes of production. Western European Marxists led the way. The humanist Marxism of the New Left, which first emerged in the late 1950s, increasingly engaged with anthropological conceptions of culture that emphasized human agency: language, communication, experience, and consciousness. By the 1960s and 1970s Western cultural Marxism was engaged in a dialogue with structuralism, post-structuralism and semiotics.
  3. ^ Arce, José Manuel Valenzuela. "Cultural diversity, social exclusion and youth in Latin America" (PDF). Euroamericano. Some of the most suggestive criticisms of the path taken by many followers of the Birmingham School (not of its founders) emphasize that they have let themselves be caught out by a certain textual condition, where the text seems to acquire a self-contained condition, overlooking the connection with social contexts. Therefore, Fredric Jameson emphasizes the need to recover the critical theory of culture that comes from Marx, Freud, the School of Frankfurt, Luckács, Sartre and complex Marxism, and suggests redefining cultural studies as cultural Marxism and as a critique of capitalism. For this, the economic, political and social formations should be considered and the importance of social classes highlighted (Jameson, 1998).
  4. ^ a b Busbridge, Rachel; Moffitt, Benjamin; Thorburn, Joshua (June 2020). "Cultural Marxism: Far-Right Conspiracy Theory in Australia's Culture Wars". Social Identities. 26 (6). London, England: Taylor & Francis: 722–738. doi:10.1080/13504630.2020.1787822. One of the issues associated with the Cultural Marxist conspiracy is that Cultural Marxism is a distinct philosophical approach associated with some strands of the Frankfurt School, as well as ideas and influences emanating from the British New Left. However, proponents of the conspiracy do not regard Cultural Marxism as a form of left-wing cultural criticism, but instead as a calculated plan orchestrated by leftist intellectuals to destroy Western values, traditions and civilisation, carried out since at least the 1930s (Berkowitz, 2003; Breitbart, 2011, pp. 105–135).
  5. ^ Schroyer, Trent (1973). The critique of domination: the origins and development of critical theory. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807015230.
  6. ^ Brenkman, John (1983). "Theses on Cultural Marxism". Social Text. No. 7. Duke University Press. doi:10.2307/466452.
  7. ^ Jamin, Jérôme (February 6, 2018). "Cultural Marxism: A survey". Religion Compass. 12 (1–2): e12258. doi:10.1111/REC3.12258.
  8. ^ Braune, Joan (2019). "Who's Afraid of the Frankfurt School? 'Cultural Marxism' as an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory" (PDF). Journal of Social Justice. 9. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 16, 2020. Retrieved September 11, 2020.
  9. ^ a b Jamin, Jérôme (February 6, 2018). "Cultural Marxism: A survey". Religion Compass. 12 (1–2): e12258. doi:10.1111/REC3.12258. When looking at the literature on Cultural Marxism as a piece of cultural studies, as a conspiracy described by Lind and its followers, and as arguments used by Buchanan, Breivik, and other actors within their own agendas, we see a common ground made of unquestionable facts in terms of who did what and where, and for how long at the Frankfurt School. Nowhere do we see divergence of opinion about who Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse really were, when they have met and in which universities. But this changes if we look at descriptions of what they wanted to do: conducting research or changing deeply the culture of the West? Were they working for political science or were they engaging with a hidden political agenda? Were they working for the academic community or obeying foreign secret services?
  10. ^ a b Tuters, M. (2018). "Cultural Marxism". Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy. 2018 (2): 32–34. hdl:11245.1/7b72bcec-9ad2-4dc4-8395-35b4eeae0e9e. The concept of Cultural Marxism seeks to introduce readers unfamiliar with – and presumably completely uninterested in – Western Marxist thought to its key thinkers, as well as some of their ideas, as part of an insidious story of secret operations of mind-control[...]
  11. ^ a b c Tuters, M. (2018). "Cultural Marxism". Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy. 2018 (2): 32–34. hdl:11245.1/7b72bcec-9ad2-4dc4-8395-35b4eeae0e9e. The Cultural Marxist narrative attributes incredible influence to the power of the ideas of the Frankfurt School to the extent that it may even be read as a kind of "perverse tribute" to the latter (Jay 2011). In one account, for example (Estulin 2005), Theodor Adorno is thought to have helped pioneer new and insidious techniques for mind control that are now used by the "mainstream media" to promote its "liberal agenda" – this as part of Adorno's work, upon first emigrating to the United States, with Paul Lazarsfeld on the famous Princeton Radio Research Project, which helped popularize the contagion theory of media effects with its study of Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds. In an ironical sense this literature can perhaps be understood as popularizing simplified or otherwise distorted versions of certain concepts initially developed by the Frankfurt School, as well as those of Western Marxism more generally.
  12. ^ Woods, Andrew (2019). "Cultural Marxism and the Cathedral: Two Alt-Right Perspectives on Critical Theory". Critical Theory and the Humanities in the Age of the Alt-Right. Springer International Publishing. pp. 39–59. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-18753-8_3. ISBN 978-3-030-18753-8.
  13. ^ a b Braune, Joan (2019). "Who's Afraid of the Frankfurt School? 'Cultural Marxism' as an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory" (PDF). Journal of Social Justice. 9. Retrieved September 11, 2020. Although some members of the Frankfurt School had cultural influence—in particular, some books by Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse were influential on some activists on the New Left in the 1960s—"Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theories greatly exaggerate the Frankfurt School's influence and power. Furthermore, there is no academic fieldknown as "Cultural Marxism." Scholars of the Frankfurt School are called Critical Theorists, not Cultural Marxists. Scholars in various other fields that often get lumped into the "Cultural Marxist" category, such as postmodernists and feminist scholars, also do not generally call their fields of study Cultural Marxism, nor do they share perfect ideological symmetry with Critical Theory. The term does appear very occasionally in Marxist literature, but there is no pattern of using it to point specifically to the Frankfurt School--Marxist philosopher of aesthetics Frederic Jameson, for example, uses the term, but his use of the term "cultural" refers to his aesthetics, not to a specific commitment to the Frankfurt School. In short, Cultural Marxism does not exist—not only is the conspiracy theory version false, but there is no intellectual movement by that name.3
  14. ^ Braune, Joan (2019). "Who's Afraid of the Frankfurt School? 'Cultural Marxism' as an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory" (PDF). Journal of Social Justice. 9. Retrieved September 11, 2020. Cultural Marxists, the conspiracy theorists believe, now control all areas of public life, including the media, schools, entertainment, the economy, and national and global systems of governance. Not only does this theory vastly overestimate the influence of a small group of intellectuals, the conspiracy theory trades on the Frankfurt School's perceived Jewishness and amplifies antisemitic tropes.
  15. ^ Kellner, Douglas (2013). "Cultural Marxism & Cultural Studies" (PDF).
  16. ^ Dworkin, Dennis L. (1997). Cultural Marxism in postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the origins of cultural studies. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-1914-6.
  17. ^ Blackford, Russell (August 2, 2015). "Cultural Marxism and our current culture wars: Part 2". The Conversation.
  18. ^ Braune, Joan (2019). "Who's Afraid of the Frankfurt School? 'Cultural Marxism' as an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory" (PDF). Journal of Social Justice. 9. The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theorists are no exception to this lack of distinction-making. First, the ideas advanced by any individual member of the Frankfurt School are generally taken as representative of all members of the Institute; Marcuse's views on tolerance, Adorno's aesthetics, or Fromm's psychoanalytic analysis of fascism cannot be universally attributed to "Critical Theory" as a whole. Secondly, the lack of distinctions made often extends beyond the Frankfurt School, such that everyone promoting "political correctness," for example, or "multiculturalism," is considered part of a single school of thought originating with the Frankfurt School. In MacDonald's case, the lack of distinctions extends so far as to encompass all Jews. The linkages made between the Frankfurt School and other institutions and schools of thought are generally tenuous at best. Critical Theory differs in its approach from postmodernism, which unlike Critical Theory has tended to be wary of or even hostile towards Marxism, notwithstanding exceptions such as postmodernist Jacques Derrida's homage to Marx's continued haunting of the present in his book Specters of Marx. Critical Theory has tended to be quite male and Eurocentric, open to reason and to science, and often fond of the sort of "grand narratives" postmodernism rejects. Postcolonial theorist Edward Said (not a postmodernist), most famous for his critique of "orientalism" ("Western" stereotypes of "the Orient"), was critical of the Frankfurt School's false "universalism," and its tendency to view everything through a European lens. Some Critical Theorists have wrestled with such critiques as Said's and seek to "decolonize" Critical Theory.63 Additionally, some Frankfurt School theorists of Horkheimer's generation engaged with non-Western traditions (such as Erich Fromm's work on Zen Buddhism). However, the Frankfurt School of Horkheimer's generation were essentially German philosophers, at home in the world of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. The image of these thinkers held by antisemitic conspiracy theorists—i.e., Critical Theorists meeting in some secret room plotting to destroy people's appreciation for Shakespeare or Gothic cathedrals—is deeply laughable.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sennalen/sandbox/Marxism&oldid=1104401878"