I have read through summaries online, but I cannot for the life of me understand what any of it has to do with Marx as I know him. Nothing even mentions the words class struggle or economics or capital. Can someone who knows more than me give me a ELI8 explanation?
Cultural Marxism is a nazi conspiracy theory. Cultural Bolshevism 2.0.
Western Marxist is mainly leveled at people who refuse to support movements outside of the imperial core because of "reasons". Though it can also be used to excuse bigotry, by saying ideas like LGBT rights are a capitalist construct or bourgeois decadence.
I would go so far as to say that the most mainstream version of it tries to explicitly avoid reveling in antisemitism, a relatively old world fixation that doesn't have universal traction with contemporary western fascists, and instead subs in gender identity and sexuality among other groups. There is little difference outside of this substitution.
Not that Cultural bolshevism wasn't also incredibly homophobic and transphobic and Romaphobic (if there's a better word for that, I'd love to know it), but the antisemitism was a large focal point for it.
(if there’s a better word for that, I’d love to know it)
I think the term is antiziganism?
That also makes sense. The Wikipedia article on the topic is like, yeah anti-slurism so I didn't want to just assume my made up one is fine.
Western Marxist is mainly leveled at people who refuse to support movements outside of the imperial core because of “reasons”. Though it can also be used to excuse bigotry, by saying ideas like LGBT rights are a capitalist construct or bourgeois decadence.
like tankie, class reductionist, etc. it's been completely defanged by over/misuse and basically means nothing anymore
Cultural Marxism is the incorrect fashy conspiracy theory that from the 60's onward, Marxist academics dropped class analysis and rather solely focused on "culture"*. This then boils down to "the reds in university are trying to bring down western civilisation". It's reminiscent of the Nazi idea of'cultural Bolshevism'.
'Western Marxist' is a pejorative against idealist, chauvinist Marxists from the west. They don't support communists from the global south, despite not having ever seen a successful revolution themselves. It's not about Marxists in the west in general (Marx was born in Trier after all)
--
*this is why the phrase "post-modernist neo-marxists" makes sense to Peterson. In his mind, neo-marxists have nothing to do with materialism.
he still needed literal years to answer Zizek's request to name some of the PostModern NeoMarxists he constantly blathers about. And then, that list exclusively consisted of people who were either postmodernists OR marxists. which is hardly surprising, as postmodernism and marxism are fundamentally incompatible
Apparently "The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture." – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism
:shrug-outta-hecks:
Cultural Marxism was too dense for the pea brained reactionaries to comprehend so they shortened it to "woke". It's basically anything they don't like.
Up yours, Cultural Marxist moralists! We'll see who cancels whom. :jordan-eboy-peterson:
You're right, that is a mouthful, bucko.
Cultural Marxism, to supplement the other explanations, is rooted in the association between Jews and socialism that goes back at least to the Nazis. It's a slightly more specific version of the "subversive Jews who control elite institutions to corrode white society" that reactionary hacks often fall back on.
“Cultural Marxism” only has meaning when used for red-tagging, the practice of denouncing someone as a communist in order to damage their reputation or to justify their arrest or murder.
“Western Marxism” as I understand it is a perverted strain of Marxist thought that is unable to acknowledge the contributions of theorists associated with actual revolutionary movements or any successes achieved by communist parties in the real world. A helpful shorthand is “Marx without Lenin”. This is the only “legal” strain of Marxism in the anticommunist world. Examples would be the Frankfurt School philosophers in Europe, and economists like David Harvey and Richard Wolff in the USA. It’s not useless to read them, but be aware of the enormous constraints they are under. My favorite lately has been Andreas Malm.
Hmm yeah I guess so. Except the Trotskyites get to call themselves themselves communists when it suits them.
its helpful to think of cultural marxism as 'secularised' antisemitism. its the exact same ideology they just are quieter about saying jewish people are behind it (not that quiet, see ' judeobolshevism ')
and because everything boils down to sexpolitics its just '[different race] dancing with your daughter' transmuted to 'communists dancing with your daughter/turning her lesbian' etc. etc.
To the some on the right, Cultural Marxism is just any sort of egalitarian culture that threatens the "traditional" social structures upheld by the church (especially conservative ones). There's a lot of existential angst now that these "cultural Marxist" views are becoming mainatream in many churches, and it's easy to just take the latent anticommunist propaganda the church internalized during the cold war and translate it to this situation. In this perspective, Marxism = social egalitarianism = bad
For others on the right, it's just repackaged "cultural bolshevism" antisemitic paranoia as other comments in this thread have mentioned more in depth
When the boobs get smaller in your videogames? That's cultural marxism. It's western marxism when it happens in an FPS.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory"Western Marxism" is when you call all socialist countries bad and authoritarian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism. This is an ELI5 article
This was one of the articles that got me to ask this question. I feel like it tells me so little about the substance of Western Marxism while name dropping a hundred other philosophers I've never heard of.
Or maybe that's the essence of Western Marxism
This isn't really ELI8, but if you want to understand Western Marxism then the essay "Considerations on Western Marxism" by Perry Anderson is a good resource for understanding the origins and philosophical positions that makes it up.
