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PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   2920 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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OG Marxism says that the key to true freedom is for the proletariat to seize the means of industrial production because they are materially oppressed. Cultural Marxism says they need to seize the means of cultural production (art, universities, etc) because they are socially oppressed. Replace "economic status" with "cultural status." Hence "cultural Marxism."

Genuinely asking, who is the "they" in "they need to seize the means of cultural production"

Who are the cultural Marxists? Because the people Lobster Daddy hates have been in control of art, universities, etc for the back half of the 20th century and all of the 21st

Because the people Lobster Daddy hates have been in control of art, universities, etc for the back half of the 20th century and all of the 21st

And are we arguing that that has yielded no fruit? All of the things people blame on Tumblr started in the academy.

Or is that they clearly aren't trying because they otherwise would have succeeded given their hegemony in those spaces?

I don't see why "they did try. They were just wrong, like their Marxist forebears" isn't an answer in this framework. There may just be limits on what you can do sometimes using those tools.

"They" is the disadvantaged. And if "they" won't seize the means of cultural production, then a cultural Lenin or Lenins has to do it for them. When the welfare state (mid-20th century, which explains your timeline) solved economic problems but none of the attendant social problems in marginalized communities, it seemed like maybe the problem was cultural power. If no one lacks anything material, but you still don't have the equality you were looking for, maybe you need a black little mermaid.

who is the "they" in "they need to seize the means of cultural production"

Realistlcally, a small vanguard party of dedicated ideologues.

Who are the cultural Marxists?

Initially there was Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm, Benjamin, Pollock, and Lowenthal. Of those, Columbia, Brandeis, and a few west coast public universities (Marcuse wound up at UC San Diego) saw the most influence in political science and theory. Fromm had a large impact on feminist theory.

Second generation figures include Habermas, Frederic Jameson, Stuart Hall, and generally the New School for Social Research and the UC system more broadly (which also played a big part in bringing in and fusing French post-structuralist analysis into it).

Then you have the full efflorescence through Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak, Duncan Kennedy, Kimberle Crenshaw, Nancy Fraser, Donna Haraway, Wendy Brown, Cedric Robinson, Walter Mignolo, Andreas Malm, Shoshanna Zuboff, etc.

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