Joe Langabeer, Lincoln Labour member
Since the recent explosion of demonstrations and protests around the Black Lives Matter movements, discussions surrounding the term “cultural Marxism” have started to re-appear. False links are being made from the right, between socialism and socio-cultural politics.
This can be seen by the right-wing press including The Daily Telegraph with an article entitled Make no mistake – BLM is a radical neo-Marxist political movement. They refer to the term “cultural Marxism” and use it to link cultural issues to Marxist ideas. It is a ploy to try and dismiss these movements and divide working-class forces.
These methods take cultural topics and used them to create divisions within the working class, based on, for example, gender, race, and sexuality. The phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ has been coined by right-wing commentators, academics, Tory MPs and even the Norwegian killer Anders Breivik, who, as most socialists would know, killed young Social Democrats. His motive was a belief that their party was involved in a ‘cultural Marxist’ plot to undermine conservative values, by bringing in mass immigration from the Islamic world.
Anti-EU think tank
Last year, Tory MP Suella Braverma, spoke at a meeting of the anti-EU think tank the Bruges Group, saying, “As Conservatives, we are engaged in a battle against cultural Marxism…”. This speech led to strong attacks from both the left and the right, with some socialists interpreting it as a ‘death threat’. These words are dangerous, and in the case of far-right extremism it can lead to serious consequences. The idea of Cultural Marxism is a myth, but one that has the power to even plague the consciousness of some workers.
The phrase itself is a made-up term and there is some indication as to where the right-wing may have originated this term. The so-called Frankfurt school in Germany was set up in 1923 by mostly Marxist intellects and it became a home to Marxist intellectuals in the early 20th century. Some of the individuals that came out of that tradition were Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Friedrich Pollock. The point must be made that socialists would not agree with every theory that came out of the Frankfurt School and there was a lot of disagreement even its own ranks, including, for example, between Lukacs and Ernst Bloch on the relevance of class consciousness and their political connections to expressionism.
Politics & Aesthetics is a series of essays and conversations by Lukacs, Benjamin, Adorno, Bloch and Bertolt Brecht and although it is focused on the aesthetics of art and literature, it is important to recognise that all these thinkers saw that the elements of capitalism were sewn into the cultural seeds of our heritage. For socialists, it is important to recognise that capitalism is in control of our culture, through commercialisation, commodification, and a manipulative mass-media. By these means, the cultural oppression of capitalism is largely successful, and for two main reasons: profit-making and the control of news, ideas, education and information that are given to the working masses.
Post-modernist roots
There are many different opinions about where the right-wing coined the origins of ‘cultural Marxism’. Some believe it came out of Marx and Lenin themselves, but others like Jordan Peterson (a right-wing academic) believe that it came out of the post-modernist movement. If Peterson knew anything about post-modernism, he would know that it was structured to be apolitical so that argument becomes invalid. The reason why they point to Marx and Lenin is because of the famous expression, often quoted by the right wing, (usually with no context added) “the dictatorship of the proletariat”, a term that socialists (including me) often get tired of discussing. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian socialist imprisoned for his beliefs (and who later died in prison) dealt with thisin his Prison Diaries. He believed that the working class alone would not be able to overthrow capitalism, because of the cultural hegemony of capitalism. There needed to be cultural shifts, he argued, to open the minds of the working class to progress and revolution.
Gramsci, like others who attended The Frankfurt School, had a range of ideas that did not always put forward the solutions for the working class. Whilst I would agree with him that ‘cultural hegemony’ exists, it is also true to say that events can change public consciousness. We see this the government’s failure in Covid-19, and the subsequent fall in popularity of Boris Johnson, a man who has used ‘cultural hegemony’ including racism and a fear of immigration to his own advantage.
Events can change consciousness
For decades, the British capitalist press has fed of a minorities to the British public and to some extent that time and effort has paid off, as we see from the Brexit vote and the tradition of backward ‘working class Tories’. But it is important to note that events can change the consciousness of the working-class. It is important to mention the work of Louis Althusser, a French philosopher and socialist who also attended the Frankfurt School. His essays on Ideological State Apparatus argued that capitalism (through culture, media, and the state) has played an important part in the manipulation of the public. Althusser saw these methods being used by the state to ‘pacify’ populations and to sell their own ideologies. Many politicians have done and continue to do this, and it must be up to socialists to challenge it any possible form.
Brexit, the debates around ‘immigration controls’ – policies even accepted by the right-wing of the labour movement – and islamophobia are examples of 21st century ‘cultural’ struggles, which are in reality struggles for political ideas and programmes. But there are other more striking examples and the gender and sexuality debate comes up frequently. Piers Morgan is often heard ranting about the “multitude” of genders, arguing that “it does not make sense scientifically”.
Unfortunately, some on the left do not see this as an issue that concerns the working class and that therefore it is only a secondary priority, but I would remind socialists that this is an important area of discussion because it involves a minority and the right-wing use this issue, as with others, as a means of dividing the left under the mantle of “cultural-Marxism”. They use it in a negative sense, to argue that society is “too politically correct” and that it all stems from the influences of ‘Marxist’ academics.
Socialists should fight for minorities
Socialists should always argue for the rights of minorities. It has even been linked to the BLM movement. In this article, on the eternity news website, Why people talk of ‘cultural Marxism, when discussing Black Lives Matter, John Sandeman suggests that this is movement is seen by the right-wing as a “brutish” way of discussing identity politics. Other taglines have been used and associated with the BLM movement, including transgender rights and black gay rights, because the BLM movement supports and encourages them to be a part of the movement. But right-wing commentators jump on the bandwagon to attack the BLM movement as “progressive” but with no understanding of the real world.
Where do socialist go from here? I do agree that economic policy and the day to day needs of ordinary workers should be a central focus for socialists, but it cannot be the only focus. Socialism must be inclusive and linked to all sections of the working class. If we are truly to be a movement of equality, we must fight on the cultural front as well as the economic.
This can be done in several ways: strengthening those sections within the Labour Party and actively seeking out LGBTQ organisations that need our support and reaching out to movements like BLM and getting them to align with the labour movement. The labour movement cannot afford to get stuck on the right-wing’s view on gender, sexuality, and race rights. ‘Cultural Marxism’ is used to divide and separate the working class; only together can we fight for an equal and socialist future.
July 2, 2020
