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Notes -
Marxism and the History of Philosophy:
If this sounds a lot like a religion, then that's because it should. Marxism undoubtedly shares many structural features with traditional religions in its fundamentals.
(I have argued previously that wokeism is not identical with Marxism. The relationship between wokeism and Marxism should be understood as being something like the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Adherents of the newer religion incorporate the sacred texts of the older religion as their own, but they also make a number of modifications and additions that adherents of the older religion would stridently reject. Nonetheless, the two traditions are united in certain ethical and philosophical commitments that more distant outsiders would find baffling.)
Much ado has been made about the "crisis of meaning" in the contemporary West, and how "we", as a civilization, "need" religion (and how in its absence, people will inevitably seek out substitutes like wokeism). But speaking at this level of generality obscures important and interesting psychological differences between different individuals. Many, perhaps most, people are actually perfectly fine with operating in the absence of meaning. And they can be quite happy this way. They may be dimly aware that "something" is missing or not quite right, but they'll still live docile and functional existences overall. They achieve this by operating at a persistently minimal level of sensitivity towards issues of meaning, value, aesthetics, etc, a sort of "spiritual hibernation".
It is only a certain segment of the population (whose size I will not venture to estimate -- it may be a larger segment than the hibernators, or it may be smaller, I don't know) that really needs to receive a sense of purpose from an authoritative external social source. And this segment of the population has an outsized effect on society as a whole, because these are the people who most zealously sustain mass social movements like Christianity and wokeism.
Finally there are individuals who are seemingly capable of generating a sui generis sense of meaning wholly from within themselves. This is surely the smallest segment of the population, and it's unlikely that you could learn to emulate their mode of existence if you weren't born into it -- but you wouldn't want to anyway. Such individuals are often consumed by powerful manias to the point of self-ruin, or else they become condemned to inaction, paralyzed with fear over not being able to fulfill the momentous duties they have placed upon themselves.
I find these arguments nonsensical.
The Jordan Peterson-esqe "cultural Marxism" shibboleth is genuinely gibberish.
What on earth does grievance politics have to do with redistributing the means of production so that the workers capture more of the surplus value of the product of their labour? How do you do that with "culture" at all?
It's literally just "I 'ate communism, I 'ate wokism, refer to 'em interchangeably, simple as"
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
"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.
So you're saying cultural Marxists think black people need to be in charge of art, universities, etc?
Yes, and that is why the people we are calling Cultural Marxists have engaged in a protracted and highly public campaign to, among many other things, put black people in charge of art, universities, and "etc". Surely you are aware of this campaign, the explicit arguments forwarded for its necessity and its many notable and expensive foibles?
What is your actual argument here? You appear to be quoting newspaper headlines as examples of ridiculous things that obviously haven't happened.
I was legitimately just trying to clarify what he was saying
Obviously that is happening, I have eyes and I'm not a shitlib
My argument is simply that the phrase "cultural Marxism" is pretty devoid of meaning and when used in common parlance has essentially nothing to do with Marxism at all.
It's basically the right-wing equivalent of the very common leftist trope of "everything I hate is neoliberalism, the more I hate it, the more neoliberal it is"
Just in this case it's "everything I hate is Marxism, the more I hate it, the more Marxist it is"
There is a lot of meaning, but most of that meaning is indeed in the meta: these people blame entire groups for the alleged oppression of other groups, based on a very poor analysis, and see the solution in giving power to these supposedly oppressed groups with the assumption that this will solve the alleged oppression (and not create new oppression). As people have explained to you, the initiators of this movement actually saw cultural Marxism as a meaningful name, that they chose for themselves, where they shifted their Marxist reasoning and methodologies to a new field.
Imagine that there is a group in Indonesia who wrote the Protocols of Sino, blaming Indonesian problems on a secret cabal of Chinese elites and think that the solution to Indonesian problems is to kill the Chinese. And imagine that they initially called themselves 'anti-Chinese Nazi's', but ran into the issue that Nazi has a rather negative connotation outside of their own little bubble, so they rebranded with a different name. Not because their beliefs fundamentally changed, but just to get more acceptance.
Then it makes perfect sense for the critics to use the original name. Not because it falsely links the ideology to another ideology with a negative connotation, but because that link actually exists and is strong.
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