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Cultural Marxism seems to be a subject that starts discussions here from time to time (this is the latest example, I guess), and one conclusion I came away with from these is that apparently many Blue Tribers are convinced that the concept is nothing but a neofascist myth, similar to how the same group dismisses "political correctness" as something not real and instead existing in nowhere else but the imagination of GOP propagandists.
Anyway, it's not like I want to reinvent the wheel here, but I propose a simple concept to differentiate cultural Marxism from economic Marxism. For the sake of argument, let's assume that both Marxist tendencies actually exist, although I understand that this is a very big jump for the leftists mentioned above. Instead of observing what these tendencies argue, let's look at how they find purchase in society, to the extent that they do.
Economic Marxism seeks supporters by appealing to the economic grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly right-wing hierarchical social environments.
"How is it possible that I'm working my ass off yet still remain nothing but a poor shmuck while assholes who never worked a day in their life drive around in fancy cars and fancy clothes?!"
"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men." (John Ball)
It's not difficult to see why economic Marxism lost most of the allure it ever had: the people who keep appealing to such grievances are no longer the Marxists. This has multiple causes of its own, but I won't try going into this here.
Cultural Marxism, on the other hand, seeks supporters by appealing to the cultural grievances of marginalized groups in predominantly right-wing hierarchical social environments.
"Why is everyone in this town such a homophobic garbage Nazi shithead? I bet they'd start pelting me with rocks if I tried walking down Main Street holding hands with my BF."
"I'm from Alabama and my pal got thrown out of the house by his shitty Fundamentalist parents just for being gay and trans. Why is it such a cesspool, man?!"
"Everytime I visit family I get cold stares and they keep pestering me when am I finally getting married. I'm done with these fuckers."
"Why is it still considered normal here for shitbag rednecks to drive around flying the Confederate flag? I can't even."
I apologize if this is too basic of a question, but why do any of these italicized concerns need to be associated with cultural Marxism? These all seem like legitimate issues that could be addressed without such a label. Like, each one of these probably happens at least once per day somewhere in the US.
Realistically, I think it's just because to conservatives of a certain generation, 'Marxism' is the scariest and most evil word available, so calling everything they don't like Marxist is just a habit. It's equivalent to the way people on the left call everything 'fascism'.
Marxism definitely exists, just as fascism exists, but once the word comes to mean 'the polar opposite of everything I believe, i.e. everything good and right', the temptation to deploy it to describe everything under the sun quickly becomes irresistible.
Would you classify Black Lives Matter as a Marxist movement, or no?
I would not, no.
I'm aware of that time a couple of its founders identified as Marxists, but I don't think that makes the movement Marxist.
BLM is amorphous enough that it's difficult to nail down any specific principles, but some are outlined here, and I don't think they're Marxist. Based on that page alone I think there's a clear anarchist influence on BLM, with a heavy emphasis on the abolition of punishment, end of coercion, and mutual aid, but I think that to be Marxist specifically, there would need to be something about the ownership and distribution of capital.
So, anarchist or at least anarchist-adjacent, yes, but Marxist, no.
Mm.
So in your opinion, when some guy spraypaints #BLM, multiple hammers and sickles, and the publication date of the Communist Manifesto on a public structure, what do you think is going on in that guy's head? Would you expect the misconception he's suffering from to be common or rare?
I think that someone who paints hammers and sickles and 'CPUSA' on to a block is almost certainly a communist. That imagery is pretty unambiguous.
(You can't see the BLM in that image, but the reverse of the block shows it.)
But all that proves is at least one person supports both communism and BLM. My priors on the kinds of people who go around spray-painting slogans on skate parks make me think it's quite likely that the person is an idiotic, edgy teenager with no developed political platform. At any rate, I do not draw conclusions about the ideologies of entire movements supported by millions of people from individual graffitos.
Would you expect American Communists, or indeed communists generally, to not support BLM?
If you were persuaded that hammers and sickles were a common addition to BLM-riot graffiti, would this be weak evidence of a connection between the two movements? To be clear, the best I can do after a brief search is two instances, and the vague memories of seeing many more at the time. I'm more curious about your reasoning process.
More generally, do you think the examples linked in this comment are likewise lacking a "developed political platform"? Are those people Marxists, in your view?
...Could it be that you were mistaken, and the hammer and sickle in that first example only represented "a union of social classes"? Maybe that guy wasn't a communist at all?
I expect there to be a range, actually. The far-left in America, as I understand it, is pretty diverse. For instance, CPUSA seems pretty pro-BLM, but meanwhile, WSWS denounces BLM as capitalist stooges, and sees it as a ruling class ploy to divide workers.
My overall sense is that this is probably a relatively low ebb for the link between communism and black politics in the US. The Black Panthers were explicitly Marxist-Leninist - BLM indulge in anarchist rhetoric sometimes (abolish the police etc.), but aren't as directly ideological.
Yes, that seems reasonable enough.
My current read at the moment is that the George Floyd protests and aftermath were quite incoherent, ideologically. Apart from a general sense that something is wrong, there wasn't a clear platform or idea, and what we saw after the protests and riots was a wide range of competing actors trying to capture the energy of the moment. I wouldn't say that any wholly succeeded.
Yep, those seem pretty Marxist, or at least, Marxist-influenced. I could probably pick some nits if I really wanted - Marxism is one specific school of socialism, socialist thought is broader than just that, anti-capitalism is not synonymous with Marxism - but I think no one could deny that, at the very least, those writers are familiar with Marxism and it has influenced their thought. A couple of them strike me as more intersectional (this one, for instance, strikes me as an all-of-the-above approach to critique), but I'm not going to argue that much.
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Given the history of ‘а вас негров лунчают’, almost certainly, but that just makes them fellow travelers from a common enemy.
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