About

Cultural Marxism is a term used used to denounce political correctness as an attempt to destroy the west. The term is defined as an ideology which emphasizes culture as a main cause of inequalities.

Origin

Karl Marx believed that a large enough conflict would trigger revolutions because as he believed communism was the next step in a country’s development because at the time Britain was a capitalistic economy, because this never came true “Critical Theory” was invented as a explanation of why his prediction failed to come to fruition.

The idea of Critical Theory originated in Frankfurt School after being founded in 1923 after being funded by donations by Felix Weil. “The Institute was founded, thanks to a donation by Felix Weil in 1923, with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany.”^[5] Critical Theory was a criticism of capitalistic societies and mass culture.

Marxist theories as the causes of inequality

“Critical Theorists have long sought to distinguish their aims, methods, theories, and forms of explanation from standard understandings in both the natural and the social sciences. Instead, they have claimed that social inquiry ought to combine rather than separate the poles of philosophy and the social sciences: explanation and understanding, structure and agency, regularity and normativity.”^[6]

“Using Hegelian terminology, Critical Theorists came to regard advanced capitalist societies as a “totality,” in which the tight integration of states and markets threatened to eliminate the space for freedom.”^[6]

“The ‘inevitable’ tendency of liberalism to collapse into fascism ‘can be derived, apart from any economic causes, from the inner contradiction between the subjectivist principle of self-interest and the idea of reason that it is supposed to express’ (Horkheimer 1987, 21)^[6]

“In Legitimation Crisis (1969), for example, Habermas argues not only that the demands of advanced capitalism restrict the scope and significance of democracy, but also that the state is “crisis ridden” and unable to solve structural problems of unemployment, economic growth, and environmental destruction”^[6]

Summary:

Marxists believed that the reason why Karl Marx’s predictions about communist uprisings in Britain and other countries failed is that they believed that culture, media and other reasons were at fault thus they created “Critical Theory”. “Critical Theory” holds that reason for countries failing to have communist revolutions like Karl Marx predicted were cultural.

“Cultural Marxism” bases it’s ideas off of “Critical Theory” in that both believe that a country’s culture creates inequality; “Cultural Marxism” goes one step further and describes culture and mass media as means of removing the cause of what they believe to be the cause of inequality.

Spread

The term is used extensively on far right websites and users. Most notably /pol/, conservapedia, and Metapedia. The word is criticized by many left wingers as being a being something used to describe anything that a conservative doesn’t like or being a snarl word to describe anyone a far Right wing person doesn’t like^[2][3][4]

Search Interest

Additional Resources:

Marxist Internet Resource Frankfurt school

British Library Communist Manifesto

External References