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[–]wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Soros is also behind a hell of a lot of the non trans woke crap we are wading through socially. He's pushing old school social Marxism hard.

This statement reads like satire. Maybe you have some credible sources to go with it?

[–]bopomofodojo 8 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 3 fun -  (5 children)

He won't. "social Marxism" is not a thing, and a billionaire is certainly not a Marxist.

[–]slushpilot 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

"social Marxism" is not a thing

I don't know what the fuck Soros is supposed to be about, but that is absolutely a thing. It has all kinds of names, but see cultural hegemony for some background on what this ideology is attacking in its world view.

Basically, Marxism was about organizing people under oppression vs. the oppressed. Originally this was an economic theory with terms like "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" to describe the players in the class warfare, but anything could be framed this way, you just have to convince people that they need to side with the "oppressed", or else. The goal for the oppressed is called "liberation", but you know, like the Chinese People's Liberation Army it'll liberate you of something, that's for sure.

After the revolution in Russia, other western academics understood that it'll take more than the economy to make good people hate everything & each other to the point of tearing everything down in order to rebuild society to their vision of utopia. People do actually have principles that go deeper than money so you have to pick away at the culture and undercut any anchors of stability like cultural traditions & values first.

What you're seeing now with the promotion of divisions between sexes, within sexualities (as evidenced by the linked image), between races and political ideologies is exactly that: an attempt to discredit the values that underpin all of culture and make people hate everything while debating who's more oppressed. There is no interest in resolving these conflicts. There are no acceptable solutions because the conflict is the whole point: saying you are tolerant is not enough, saying you want to be apolitical is not enough. You are expected to take a side, or else you're complicit. This is a cultural revolution. This is cultural/social Marxism.

[–]bopomofodojo 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

So, you're describing neoliberal attempts to discredit class-consciousness (i.e. actual Marxism) with identity politics. That's not "social Marxism", a.k.a. "cultural Marxism", a.k.a. "The Joos", a.k.a. Nazi propaganda. Western Marxists have, indeed, across the board, lost the goddamn plot, but this is because they've strayed away from Marxism and embraced Postmodernist theories of value/truth (contrary to Historical Materialist thought, i.e. the underpinning of Marxism) and identity politics, and have been embraced by the US bourgeoisie as useful idiots to further this cause. Your terminology is nonsensical (and basically backwards), but your thought is correct. This is a problem. Western idpol-obsessed "Marxists" are a problem, but the problem with them is not the Marxism part.

You are correct, it is an attempt at a "cultural revolution", in the sense of "destroying the [insert whatever ism here] western culture", but it's not the Marxism part advocating for that. In fact a lot of the same idiots call Marx a "cishet rich [lol] white guy we shouldn't listen to", which should tell you all you need to know about their co-opting of that term. What this is, is another attempt by the US establishment to destroy class consciousness - the only threat to their power - with idpol and a self-fracturing assortment of safe "leftist" ideologies which ultimately do not pose a threat to their wealth. And mark my words - the bourgeoisie doesn't give a fuck about "destroying western civilization" because they know full well climate change is already well on its way to doing that anyways. But this lets them build their bunkers for the decade or two we have left and could be fighting them while their Idpol soldiers are out-screaming each other on Twitter and injecting themselves with (conveniently patented for your wealth-transfer pleasure!) hormones to make "the ideal me" in selfish vanity.

The world is driving off a cliff, and rather than try and stop it, half the passengers are shouting at each other about how badly the last driver oppressed passenger X and putting on their makeup, the other half are claiming none of this is happening, and the shotgun is laughing while he gets ready to jump out.

[–]slushpilot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That's not "social Marxism", a.k.a. "cultural Marxism", a.k.a. "The Joos", a.k.a. Nazi propaganda

Your initial argument was that it's not a thing, then you go on to describe it pretty well. (I disagree about the "Nazi" propaganda part, unless you mean to say these postmodern warriors are the same as that. Blame entire groups of people for society's problems, things like that do go with the territory.)

Your terminology is nonsensical (and basically backwards), but your thought is correct

I am not a well-studied academic. I just call it as I see it.

but the problem with them is not the Marxism part

LOL. Process of elimination! What else is left... this is the part where I bring up Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

What this is, is another attempt by the US establishment to destroy class consciousness - the only threat to their power

The literal defininition of "wokeness" is creating consciousness — it might just have been given the wrong targets of race & gender instead of wealth & class as its origin of societal power structures. Misdirect to divide instead of unite. Maybe that's by design. Or maybe we're just doing it to our well-meaning selves.

[–]bopomofodojo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Your initial argument was that it's not a thing, then you go on to describe it pretty well. (I disagree about the "Nazi" propaganda part, unless you mean to say these postmodern warriors are the same as that. Blame entire groups of people for society's problems, things like that do go with the territory.)

No, my point is only that the initial terminology is literally Nazi anti-Soviet (mixed with anti-Semetic) propaganda. "Cultural Bolshevism", also known as "Cultural Marxism", refers to a specific propaganda narrative in (pre- and powerful-)Nazi Germany that Marxism and various forms of socialism, especially as espoused by the Russian Bolsheviks, was a Jewish conspiracy to do... take-over-the-world stuff. Your term is suspiciously similar.

I am not a well-studied academic. I just call it as I see it.

Nor am I, I just read a lot. Modern academia is trash at best.

LOL. Process of elimination! What else is left... this is the part where I bring up Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

The postmodernist part. Marxism is a notion of historical narrative and progress; all identity politics is driven, at its core, by postmodernism. Postmodernism explicitly rejects notions of historical narrative, progress, (objective) truth, etc., in favour of identity-based experiences ("my lived experience is more real" stuff) and groupings. A core, fundamental portion of Marxist thought is of a continuous line of economic development that has proceed in various stages, identified as the cultural "base", on top of which all other notions of culture and society are based. Postmodernist philosophy dismisses this as an "oppressive", which is why I bring up the "people call Marx names" bit. A core component of this identity-based philosophy is that there is no truth, no goal, and no objective reality, only identities and experience. It is fundamentally a philosophically idealist viewpoint, in contrast to Marxism which is materialist. Thus, anyone who claims to subscribe to Marxism while being woke is certainly not.

On the subject of your specific historical examples, Pol Pot was a CIA funded despot who's ideas objectively had nothing to do with Marxism; the party he led was "Communist" in name only after his merger with the Khmer National Party and subsequent purge of the Communist party leadership. His policies were far more inline with anarch-primitivism than any form of Marxism, and he admitted as such. Marxism does not in any way advocate for deindustrialization, subsistence farming, shooting people with glasses or the educated, etc. On the contrary, it seeks to ensure better standards of living for the majority of people. That's the entire point. On Mao, he fucked up a bunch, yes. Subsequent Chinese leaders turned it around to build the world's second largest economy. Without Wokeism; with proletarianism. On the Cultural Revolution specifically, the material conditions of building socialism in mid-century China required a "cultural revolution" for very specific reasons related to Chinese history that would take pages to get into. Most other socialist movements have not required or attempted to undertake such a thing, and it's something that goes get a lot of flak in socialist circles. That specific event, however, isn't the same thing as western wokeism, though the term may be broadly applicable in a generalized sense. The specific goals of woke leftism are quite vague and seemingly contradictory and nonsensical, in contrast to the Chinese cultural revolution which had very specific goals and, broadly, achieved them.

The literal defininition of "wokeness" is creating consciousness — it might just have been given the wrong targets of race & gender instead of wealth & class as its origin of societal power structures. Misdirect to divide instead of unite. Maybe that's by design. Or maybe we're just doing it to our well-meaning selves.

No, it's not, which is my point. "Wokeness" is specifically a distraction from class consciousness - a specific Marxist term - and onto inter-identity relations: white vs black, gay vs straight, man vs. woman, trans vs. cis, etc. ad nauseum to ever more fractured levels. Woke warriors are not interested in class consciousness; if they were, they would not, in their first breath, dismiss poor white people who voted for Trump - as an example - but instead attempt to convince them of the merits of Marxism and the realities of Capitalism. But like I try to point out in my original post, and like most (I presume) right-wingers, you're getting many parts of it, but for the wrong reasons. Yes it is by design: because it suits capitalists to keep "the left" fractured along identites, which can be conveniently commodified and sold, and which participants can easily share on social media/the Internet, instead of real grassroots, real-world collective class consciousness (which is specifically about the relations between the people and the means of production i.e. property, land, etc.). The idiot woke leftists are just that: idiots, distracted from the cause by a desire to participate in oppression olympics and generally rise to the top of a misshapen social hierarchy. Which suits the capitalists' motives. And Idpol is not unique to the left, it permeates all forms of liberalism (both left and right wing), just emphasizing different identities. As a Marxist I'm just more knowledgeable about their form of it.

[–]slushpilot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Interesting discusssion, thanks. I think we are fundamentally debating classic Marxism as an economic theory against various strains of neo-Marxism here. Such as Antonio Gramsci, for one:

... renovate the existing intellectual activity of the masses and make it natively critical of the status quo. His ideas about an education system for this purpose correspond with the notion of critical pedagogy ...

"Cultural marxism" is not my term though. As a criticism of "cultural hegemony" it might be Gramsci's own invention, but as I said I don't really care what it's called... There is also "Marxist cultural analysis":

Since the 1930s, the tradition of Marxist cultural analysis has occasionally also been referred to as "cultural Marxism", in reference to Marxist ideas about culture

Wikipedia also has an article called "Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" which is what you're probably referring to. I'm not. We shouldn't go on pretending that these ideas don't exist or are willful misrepresentations though. And if we do need to adopt a derisive term for this kind of ideological attack by borrowing it from Gramsci's critics, then so be it. Heck, even "capitalism" comes from Das Kapital and we use it to this day.

To be clear though, I really don't subscribe to any "Jewish question" baggage that comes along with these terms. We need a common language though, and I guess I would call the kind of ideological revolution called for in the quote above (through arbitrary definitions of oppressor/oppressed categories) to be some kind of cultural marxism. That's my colloquial definition at least, and it comes from reading Gramsci, a bonafide (neo-) Marxist—not his persecutors.

Maybe you're right and it is actually possible to tease apart these ideas from postmodernism and nazism. But there are still core elements of (neo-) Marxism in there, and those distinct ideas are from a century ago have semantically drifted into each other into the mess we're seeing today. It's probably not helpful to quibble about old terms and instead talk about what's actually happening.

If I am an "ist" of anything I would want to call myself a pragmatist. I don't believe in the supremacy of the Right over the Left or vice-versa. They are both necessary to keep balance on different issues. Some things are necessarily better when socialized; many other things not. You said:

A core, fundamental portion of Marxist thought is of a continuous line of economic development

I fundamentally don't believe there is a continuous line. We need the ability to adapt and diversify our resources, and a singular theory or way of thinking cannot be helpful to all situations or avoid creating harm that it didn't account for.

[–]GConly 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You should Google the list of people and organisations he openly donates too.