[I must thank John Fea’s blog The Current for drawing this Jacobin article to my attention.]
One can rarely find a conservative discussion of America’s so-called
“culture wars” without discovering that most, if not all, “liberal” activism in favor of social justice or cultural transformation, alongside CRT, BLM, feminism and gay rights, can all be solidly dismissed as scurilous examples of “cultural Marxism.”
Cultural Marxism is one of the Right’s new magic words. Somehow, by simply linking the two words together nothing else needs to be said; incisive critique and definitive dismissal are miraculously accomplished, simultaneously. Voila!
My own attempts at uncovering the intended meaning of the label “cultural Marxism” has led me to conclude that — whether or not the person using the term has thought this through — it is used to criticize any attempt at instigating social or cultural change. That’s it.
Apparently, since Karl Marx is considered a revolutionary who wanted to change western society, anyone else who tries to change something that they perceive to be a social problem must also be a (cultural) Marxist.
Black Lives Matter activists want to change policing practices in America, so they must be cultural Marxists.
Union activists who want better working conditions for America’s working class must also be cultural Marxists.
At the end of the day, cultural Marxism descibes anything that scares conservatives. (For me, personally, that means all vampires are cultural Marxists.)
Unfortunately, evangelical Christians who consider themselves to be cultural critics have become especially enamored with this label. But while it appears to make its user sound smart, it only reveals the shallowness and dishonesty of their analysis.
To better understand why this is the case, I highly recommend this article by Ben Burgis.
Burgis has written a good article at Jacobin titled “Conservatives Think ‘Marxism’ is Anything That Scares Them.” He clearly explains what Marxism really is and why this new label consistently misunderstands the issues involved:
Here is an excerpt:
Earlier this month, best-selling author Jordan Peterson declared that “climate justice” is “the new guise of murderous Marxism.” The same day, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis appeared at a town hall event sponsored by WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire. A voter asked DeSantis, who often rails against all things “woke,” to define his favorite term. DeSantis replied that “woke is a form of cultural Marxism.” Speaking of Manchester, a few days after the DeSantis event a member of New Hampshire’s legislature accused the city’s mayor, Joyce Craig, of promoting “Marxist indoctrination” in the public schools.
“Marxism” seems to be taking up a lot of space in the heads of contemporary conservatives. But, as they use the term, what does it mean?
All too often, it’s a catch-all term for every left-coded trend they find frightening. . .
. . . What does Marxism mean here? What could it mean that’s consistent with the idea that “major corporations” are in Marxist hands? One would think any “Marxist activist” would want those corporations to be either nationalized or turned over to some form of worker-ownership. Why haven’t the Marxist activists controlling them taken steps in this direction since the summer of 2020?
If Marxist activists have taken over “most important news media,” shouldn’t such media be agitating for expropriating the means of production? If they’ve taken over the universities, shouldn’t economics departments long filled with mainstream, pro-capitalist economists now be populated by, well, Marxist economists?
You can read the entire article here.
