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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 believe that I am at least somewhat acquainted with leftist thought, not only through reams of videos and text produced by contemporary leftists online, but also through the works of the Frankfurt school (primarily Adorno and Marcuse), the works of Freudian psychoanalysts from Freud himself up through the 20th century and into the current day, and 20th century European philosophy in general. I have never once heard a leftist refer to themselves unironically as a "cultural Marxist". In fact I have never heard the term used by leftists at all, except when contemporary commentators use it to designate a conspiracy theory. That doesn't mean that no one ever used the term! I could have just missed it. But I am relatively confident that the term has never seen wide usage within actual leftist circles.
More importantly, this preoccupation with cultural Marxism seems to be an instance of the everything-I-don't-like-is-Marxism fallacy, which is the right's analogue of the left's everything-I-don't-like-is-fascism fallacy. Leftists will sometimes collate groups as diverse as ancaps, white nationalists, and monarchists all under the heading of "fascist" (or at least "gateways to fascism"), which is simply incorrect and ignores the many distinctions and divisions between those positions. You can't say that all your enemies are the same just because they're your enemies. There are many people who I would file under the broad banner of "leftism" who are simply not Marxist at all. Someone whose entire focus is, say, trans surgeries for minors or reparations for blacks, could easily be a liberal capitalist who has no overlap with historical Marxism in terms of goals or methodology. And I believe that is precisely the case for many leftists today. (Prosecuting your own particular racial grievances doesn't actually have any necessary connection with forming a global workers' movement to institute a total transformation of the economic system).
We certainly need some term to describe the dominant social phenomenon in Western politics today, whether that term is "leftist" or "woke" or "SJW" or whatever. But "cultural Marxism" is not a particularly good term for it, because the phenomenon isn't particularly Marxist, and the "culture" part is just obvious. What political movement doesn't want to shape the direction of culture? The right wants to influence culture as well, and they're fairly explicit about this.
You're probably just not old enough to remember, then.
This is only kind of true. The cultural Marxists are the ones co-opting Marx. Marxism is modern and materialist; cultural Marxism is postmodern and sociological. The idea was to use Marxist insights to determine how to distribute sociological, rather than material, "equality." It's all right there in the book. As @MadMonzer correctly observes, the actual Marxists often object to the cultural Marxists (today this manifests as, say, Brian Leiter or Freddie deBoer criticizing Wokists).
But in the United States, the cultural Marxists and the originalist Marxists vote as a bloc, so in practical terms...
Did or does Marxism talk about how? Or was it mostly an analysis of current pressures, with a prediction that socialism and communism would inevitably come to pass?
This is a surprisingly complicated question, over which scholars reasonably differ. I do think most of Marx's own writings assert a kind of historical inevitability. He was also unquestionably an advocate for that change, but not to the point where he ever did any real revolution-organizing of his own. But it turns out he was just factually wrong on many questions of economics, and he certainly never formulated a practical approach to revolution.
This ties back to Marx's Hegelian roots. The disciples of Hegel fell into two distinct camps: conservative Hegelians who viewed the unfolding of history as inevitable, but also as collectively transcending any one person's insights or inputs. For them, attempting to "reform" the system was just interfering with processes which no human could reasonably comprehend (or, therefore, effectively guide). Whereas the radical Hegelians were basically accelerationists; they believed that the arc of history bent toward justice and that meant the faster history could be made to "progress" toward the predicted utopia, the better off everyone would be. Arguably Marx's problem with the radical Hegelians was that they weren't sufficiently radical. But stated a little differently, Hegel's focus on "spirit" Marx saw as ineffectual and disconnected from practical reality; he wanted more of a focus on the material origins of oppression.
This focus on oppression as the enemy is substantially what percolates through leftist political thought--to the point that even non-Marxist liberals will often talk about "oppression" as a major focus for political activism (though what actually constitutes oppression, as opposed to say inconvenience or violations of preference, turns out to be a difficult question for honest thinkers). Certainly any theorist styled "critical" is focused on the practical alleviation of perceived oppression. Today, I think most people who like Marx are also very interested in political activism rather than in the academic question of Socialism's putative inevitability. But I assume there are at least some academics out there who could be accurately characterized along such lines.
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