I don't often use the term "Cultural Marxism" because people use it as an easy answer. The term implies that our enemy is Communism, but Liberalism is not Communism and our main enemy is Liberalism. That of course does not mean that the two have nothing in common or that they have never influenced each other. They do have things in common and of course they have influenced each other.
They both believe that man is God and that man is capable of perfection. They are both of the broad Left, but they are not the same. But one idea that started out as communist has become an accepted part of Liberalism particularly Left-Liberalism and I intend to chart it's birth, mutation, current location and it's possible future. That idea is Class Warfare.
Class Warfare started as a Communist idea, as a reaction against Liberalism. It sort to find a way out of a Liberal or as Communists took to calling it the Capitalist system. Because the Liberal economic system is Capitalism, the idea that capital, or in everyday English money, should be unrestricted. That it should be free to invest in any industry or country without restriction. Communism was one of a number of Political Philosophies that did not agree with this and wanted it to end. Class Warfare became for Communists a way of both describing what was wrong with Liberal Capitalism but also how the system would bring about it's own destruction.
In short Class Warfare is the idea that there are two classes the Oppressed Class and the Oppressor Class. And that if you are being oppressed then you are in the Oppressed Class and that if you are not being oppressed than you are an oppressor and are a member of the Oppressor Class. What must never be forgotten is that no one is allowed to be neutral, if you are not being oppressed than you are an oppressor, Class Warfare is perpetual.
This idea is the most important idea within Communism, rivaled only by Historical Materialism, the idea that history is deterministic and that a Communism world is ultimately the way history will end. But Class Warfare is at heart a conspiracy theory, it believes like Nazism and Feminism that the basic nature of reality is conspiratorial. That there are special classes of people who are engaged in a conspiracy and that only they can see the true nature of this conspiracy and therefore only they can combat it and defeat it. Communism believes that the Rich conspire against the poor, Nazism believes that the Jews conspire against everyone else and Feminism believes that men conspire against women.
Once upon a time Liberalism rejected this kind of thinking, sadly those days are over. One branch of Liberalism came to accept many of the criticisms made against Liberalism. That it was exploitative, even though it didn't mean to be. Their response was to accept some Socialist ideas into Liberalism. this was Liberalisms first split. It took roughly 70 years before the contradictions within Liberalism lead to an even greater split in the 1950's.
Now within Communism Class Warfare was quite literal, it was warfare between different social classes. But within Left-Liberalism, Class Warfare wasn't called by that name, instead it didn't really have a name, but the idea came to dominate Left-Liberal thinking. The idea that there are special classes of people who are oppressed and that that means that there are classes of people who oppress. The opponents of Liberalism would come to call it "Identity Politics".
Why would Liberalism, any branch of Liberalism come to think like that?
Liberalism believes in the Autonomous Individual, that people are born as individuals but that society constricts and controls the individual. That all people are equal and that people should be free to be anything or anyone they want to be. That freedom is unlimited. If you believe that freedom is unlimited then people must be freed from the restrictions within their life. It is really the only moral option. So if you see that some types of people are not doing as well as other types of people then that is immoral and must be opposed. Liberalism then went looking for people who fitted that description and they found the Civil Rights movement.
Liberals had supported the Civil Rights movement even before it formally existed. But it was a fringe element, the early starters so to speak. Now that Identity Politics was front and centre the Civil Rights movement really took off. It is no coincidence that the 1960's was a very successful decade for the Civil Rights movement. It is no coincidence that the 1960's were a very successful decade for Feminists either. They both could claim that they were oppressed and they both did. And they both obtained much support, the same would happen for Indigenous Rights and for Gay Rights. Each made a case that they were oppressed and they joined the the list of approved oppressed peoples.
In 1964, the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, what is of particular interest is that to achieve this Liberals destroyed one of Liberalism's prized ideals. The idea of freedom of association, that every one had to right to associate with any other person that they wished to and by definition the right not to associate with anyone they didn't want to associate with. In a fight between Classical Liberalism and Identity Politics, Identity won.
In Communist societies those who were class enemies were destroyed, they lost their money and their power, they lost prestige, often they lost their lives and this continued even onto subsequent generations. In Liberal societies Left-Liberalism and Feminism are not dominate, although they are powerful, so they cannot be as direct as the Communists were. They must try to remove the oppression, as they see it, piece by piece. They throw up new ideas and accusations constantly, and some stick. In recent times one of the ideas that has stuck is White Privilege.
The Left-Liberal argument is that Whites are a class, an oppressor class and they continue to be so successful because they have privilege. Unstated is that privilege is unearned and undeserved, I bet you have never heard someone say that but you still knew it. The idea of White Privilege appeals to Left-Liberals as it explains why their attempts to create what they believe to be a more equal society have failed. It has failed, they believe, because there are people who opposed it even though they claim to be on the side of the oppressed. No matter what you think or say or do if you are white then you are guilty.
This is the same argument the Nazi's used against the Jews. That they had unearned privilege, that they oppressed others simply by existing, that the only way to protect everyone else was to destroy the Jews. Millions of innocent people were murdered because of a conspiracy theory.
But Liberals are not Communists or Nazi's, Mass Immigration proves that. Not even Communists thought it was a great idea to invite millions of foreigners into their countries and to do it for more than 50 years. Liberals thought of that one. And they have been remarkably successful, it is rare to hear people say this is bad or wrong, instead you will hear people complain about it's "excesses", as if the basic idea is fine. White Genocide is not something that will happen in the future, it is something that is happening right now. Mass Immigration is White Genocide, the destruction of the family is White Genocide, the hollowing out of the real economy is White Genocide as they all prevent the formation of families, they prevent the birth of children and they will make White's a minority in every land where they were once the majority. Liberalism in all it's forms is coming to mean White Genocide.
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"I don't often use the term "Cultural Marxism" because people use it as an easy answer."
ReplyDeleteI do agree that it's becoming a less useful term. These days the neoconservatives accept pretty much the entire Cultural Marxist package.
The fact that the neocons are now right on board with identity politics is quite interesting. Neocons certainly don't believe in egalitarianism. Neocons couldn't care less how unequal society is. They couldn't care less if someone is being oppressed. They also don't buy into the perfectibility of man idea. And they sure aren't Marxists.
My assumption is that they support identity politics out of sheer cynicism and opportunism. Identity politics diverts the public's attention away from economic inequality and it also diverts attention away from the disastrous consequences of mass immigration (which neocons love so much).
But the neocon support for such policies does make the term Cultural Marxism confusing and misleading.
The neoconservatives, these days indistinguishable from Conservatism Inc., have turned into a racket. The writers today don't have the skills of their ancestors. There is no Moynihan like figure serving as their public face. Where there was once a movement of people, funded by the CIA, that had thoughts on all sorts of political issues; today there is just mindless shilling for more war in the Middle East.
DeleteTheir current day concern with identity politics is a failed attempt at reclaiming the liberal stances the early movement took during the Civil Rights movement. But that isn't going to satisfy the BLM and SJW movements, who want nothing less than a pure marxist outcome.
A Trump victory in November might throw many of these think-tankers out of their jobs. But it's important to remember that the struggle must continue beyond Trump, and into Congress.