CULTURAL MARXISM FOR DUMMIES

 "Situation hopeless but not serious," may have been the view taken of the Soviet economic system by the Politburo. Among the proletariat, an old joke raised the odd smile when nothing much else would: "we pretend to work and they pretended to pay us." These were two takes from different perspectives on an economy that worked about as well as solar panels during a Scandinavian winter .

Just as within the think-tanks of Western capitalism, constant growth was all that mattered. Without it .. well no-one really wanted to think about that. A major difference however between a capitalist and a communist economy was that with the former the concrete and steel wall that growth must inevitably hit was somewhere off in the future, while with the latter, the system was pushing up against the wall right from the beginning.

But as with so many other things, a prime example being the situation during the initial phase of the German-Soviet war when to tell the truth about another crushing defeat was a fast-track to getting a bullet in the back of the head, a certain amount of reticence existed when it came to reporting growth rates possibly less spectacular then expected. Cunning methods were devised to avoid any nastiness such as, for example, boosting production figures by way of having gleaming finished products passing out through a factory's front door only to be re-routed back through the back door so they could be counted again ... and again.

Naturally enough an economy that belonged in Fantasy Land could only be maintained for so long until the whole house of cards came crashing down, which it did. The Soviet Union ceased to exist and its chained up European satellites, generously handed to them by their World War 2 allies, threw off their shackles and celebrated like it was 1999.

Similarly, the Chinese saw the graffiti on the Great Wall and switched to a hybrid of economic capitalism and political communism, not caring too much about the tension set up between economic freedom and the continuing oppression of a communist society. Its neighbour, Vietnam, attempted to follow suit but with limited success, widespread poverty still being the general rule. Cubans stuck to their guns and drove the same model cars for sixty years. But at least that attracted vintage car enthusiasts with money in their pockets. That only leaves North Korea which if not careful may still be radioactive in 1,000 years.

Communism had three major problems. (Estimating the exact numbers of all the others could provide an excellent competition for morning radio.) They were 1. Marx seriously misunderstood human nature. Christians and Freudians had a far firmer grasp of the nettle. Man is essentially flawed, they said. Christians blamed 'the Fall', while Freudians blamed the irrationality swirling around in the dark depths of the Unconscious. This condition, it was thought, is fixed for all time. Man has about as much chance of being perfected as a square wheel. He is selfish, tribal and as territorial as a hippopotamus.  He is the most dangerous creature to ever walk the earth.  And sadly, he is not as smart as he thinks. If he were, the average IQ for white people, although higher than that of other races, wouldn't be flat-lining at around 100, meaning of course that exactly half the population comes in with an IQ of less than 100. However, one Herr Marx believed that this unpromising material could not only be converted into the totally unselfish 'brotherhood of man' but could also be moulded into a state of perfection. Human nature to Marx was Play-Doh. This was taking naivety to a whole new level. And Jews are supposed to be smart!

2. Class consciousness trumps nationalism. Once the workers of the world were properly "educated" they would realise that they had more in common with workers of other nations than they had with their own nation-states ruled over as they were by the evil bourgeoisie. The First World War put the kibosh on that idea when the workers of different nationalities slaughtered each other on an unprecedented scale. Nationalism, as it turned out, trumped class.

3. (essentially an elaboration on 1.) Throughout every incarnation of Communism, some animals were always more equal than others. While some holidayed in seaside dachas, were driven around in sleek limousines, and dined on caviar and imported cognac, the rest of the farm animals scratched the barren earth in search of scraps. But this is just temporary, they were told. Sacrifices are needed. But take heart, a glimmering socialist paradise lies just over the next hill. Yet as the years rolled by and the proles trudged ever onward, the paradise, being the mirage it was, remained forever out of reach.

Nothing really panned out the way Marx said it would, which is surprising given that Marxism was billed as being as scientific as a test-tube. For instance, according to the theory, (theory as in theory of evolution - already beyond doubt) the lift-off of Communism could only be achieved in industrially developed countries already softened up by "bourgeois revolutions" such as the upheaval in France in 1789. The great impediment to "progress", the aristocracy, would be thereby bulldozed out of the way. The arrival of Communism, that is to say, the dictatorship of the proletariat, was predicted to be an historical inevitability but a little help from the vanguard of that benighted social class wouldn't go astray.

But here was a surprise: the two main events of Communist revolution in the twentieth century occurred in industrially backward nations where the peasantry and not the proletariat formed the backbone of the body politic.

Antonio Gramsci

But, hey, any port in a storm. That could be worked with. Just a little tweaking and a shift in strategy was all that was called for. And this slight departure from the gospel of Marx might even have worked out better in the long term. After all, once the workers in industrially advanced countries witnessed the miracles taking place in nations which had jumped the gun, who could stop them wanting the paradises possible in their own countries. Admittedly, they had not been softened up by the predicted bourgeois revolutions, but rather by peaceful evolution. Same result wasn't it?

But once again, the cold, wet blanket of disappointment descended. The official script was again being ignored. Workers of the First World, when advised that all they had to lose were their chains, replied, "what chains?" Notwithstanding wars and economic depressions (and if the Great Depression couldn't tempt its victims into communism, what could?) they were living la dolce vita. With a little prompting from unions and social democratic political parties they were now being smiled upon by Capitalism with a human face. In fact, the embryo of a welfare state had been conceived by the shrewd Bismark in Germany precisely to cut the legs out from under troublesome socialists. These reforms began making their way around the world. Incidentally, the only advanced country where a communist revolution came close was Germany after years of unimaginable suffering. But of course we all know what happened there.

The appearance of thinkers becoming known as neo-Marxists was a sure indication that something had gone badly wrong with the old Marxism. The seeds of what would become known as the New Left - a term interchangeable with Cultural Marxism - but a cleaner ring to it, such as New Rinso with the implication being that it was both new and improved, were beginning to sprout. Proponents of the New Left preferred this term because of the impression it gave of not having anything more to do with Marx. It would only be the Right who would use the alternative term to remind people it had everything to do with Marx. It even came with the thought crime invented by Marxists: political correctness

These seeds were planted independently in countries going in the opposite political direction - in Mussolini's Italy by the brilliant Antonio Gramsci, and in a Germany about to undergo the National Socialist revolution by the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt. Becoming known as the Frankfurt School, its members surrounding the institute's director, Max Horkheimer who founded it in 1930, were Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorner, Walter Benjamin and Eric Fromm. The intellectual centre piece of the Institute was Critical Theory. This essentially was holding up every pillar of western civilization to scathing critique in the hope that, like a pier pounded relentlessly by wild seas, it would eventually surrender to a collapse.

Gramsci's  genius lay firstly in his perceiving that Marxist economics were unworkable and so began distancing himself from it and, secondly in understanding that something almost intangible was maintaining the ruling class invulnerable in its position of dominance over western societies and it had nothing to do with raw brute power. It worked far more effectively. In order to isolate this mysterious force, he formulated his theory of "cultural hegemony". In terms of being able to see something no-one else could, Gramsci was right up there with Newton musing on gravity.

Briefly, Cultural Hegemony is something achieved by those crafty capitalists who had succeeded in converting their ideology into the very culture of a society so that its inhabitants would be like fish not noticing what they were swimming in was water. Moreover, the ideology now seen (but not seen) as the permanent furnishing of a society would be accepted as being beneficial to all and not just the ruling class or bourgeoisie (take your pick) to whom of course it was exceedingly beneficial. This cultural status quo would so permeate the hearts and minds of those living within it that it would be accepted simply as reality with no other reality being possible. To think otherwise, one might as well be longing for a parallel universe. This master-stroke of pure genius hinged upon a form of mass-hypnosis, if you will. So logically, all that needed to be done to usher in the new age - shorn of all the economic mumbo jumbo - was to flip the cultural hegemony. How this was to be done, Gramsci never got around to telling us. Never having enjoyed good health he died relatively young after years of imprisonment in Mussolini's jails.

In Germany, the Frankfurt School was just getting into its stride only a few years before Gramsci shuffled off.  Like Gramsci, the Frankfurters were concerned with the way in which ideology was used as a tool of oppression, and also like Gramsci they arrived at the conclusion that an ideology was able to function so smoothly in this way was because the assumptions underpinning it were so rarely challenged. This is what they set out to do by way of criticism or critique similar to the critique of capitalist economics engaged in by Marx in Das Kapital. But instead of writing their own Capital, broadsiding every other facet of capitalist society, they hit on the idea of using the means already in existence - the humanities or social sciences: Geography, Sociology, History, Political Science and Anthropology, the latter providing a classic example of how to criticise (and therefore change society, the whole point of the exercise) to do the job. The job was to criticise society to within an inch of its life at which point it would give up and became more conducive to an alternate ideology.

With the advent of National Socialist rule the Frankfurt boys got the hell out of Dodge and lit out for the US with their peculiar brand of poison.

As foreshadowed, the discipline of Anthropology and the way it was turned inside out to further the agenda of the few determined to remodel western society in line with their own interests provides a crystal clear illustration of what the Frankfurt School was up to.

Franz Boas, although not associated with the Frankfurt School (except by shared religion) indeed preceding it by a number of years, his most important work being done not long after the turn of the twentieth century, and winning for himself the mantel of Father of American Anthropology proved to be a genius at taking an established discipline and reshaping it into a tool for furthering his own agenda. Before Boas, anthropologists took race as much for granted as the seasons of the year. Boas decided to change that. Under his reign, race would become a "social construct", human nature therefore being what Marxists preferred: malleable. At last the perennial argument was over: nurture trumped nature. To seal the deal, Boas coined the term "cultural relativism", meaning all cultures, once their peculiar strengths and weaknesses had been weighed, would come out of the wash exactly equal. Extending the logic a little, the same could be applied to individual human beings. In this way, Marx's holy grail of egalitarianism was sneaked in through the back door. But even a showman like Boas knew he needed more than smoke and mirrors.

To this end he sent his young protege, Margaret Mead all the way to Samoa tasked with bringing back proof from the primitive society living there that, being out of reach of capitalist machinations, these people were as carefree, joyful and free-loving as nature meant them to be. This mission she performed with admirable energy and dedication, having no idea that the prank-loving Samoans were showing her exactly what she wanted to see. Eventually the Australian anthropologist, Derrick Freeman lifted the lid on the whole sorry episode. Samoans were in fact just as inclined toward the darker side of life as every other Homo Sapien. But the damage had been done. Boas had single-handedly flipped a significant plank of the cultural hegemony. There was now no such thing as race, that is, unless you wanted to blame the white race for every misfortune suffered by every other race. And of course, what did an immigrant's race (non-race) matter if, being exactly equal to everybody else, he could be simply dipped in the culture of his adopted (or invaded land) and presto! he was every bit as American, British or Australian as the natives. Just in case he didn't, and of course turning science, common sense and thousands of years of history's lessons on its head was bound to produce a few contradictions, this simply being one more, multiculturalism would be constructed to allow the immigrant to remain in a non-assimilating bubble.

All that was now needed was someone to come along, gather all these loose strands together and have enough rope with which to hang western society. That person was Rudi Dutschke, an activist who had grown up in East Germany and had been greatly influenced by the jail notes of Gramsci. Borrowing from Chairman Mao, it was Dutschke who coined the term "the long march through the institutions". However, like a surfer lifted by a wave he was greatly assisted by the social revolution of the sixties that hit the US and Western Europe and in a way compensated for the bourgeois revolutions that had failed to eventuate. Herbert Marcuse, still around in '72 when his book Counterrevolution and Revolt was released, positively swooned over Dutschke's blueprint for pulling off the trick of the century - working against the established institutions while working within them.



The new improved Marxism had not only dropped the dubious economics: it had also quietly dispensed with the proletariat. Not even the lumpenproletariat need apply for shelter under its umbrella. It was as though, after their past rude ingratitude, they didn't deserve the extreme left. Besides, there were now so many other rich pickings to choose from. The new oppressed class would be a composite of all the groups who would be quick to recognise the advantages in claiming victim status under a stubbornly remaining racist, patriarchal, imperialist ruling class. They, blacks, indigenous people, minorities, women, refugees, homosexuals, would be conscripted on a quid pro quo basis. Ever more indignities, humiliations and injustices would be uncovered in return for undying allegiance to the new hegemony.

Dutschke's advice, plus hardened activists riding on the back of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam war that had provided the impetus for the revolution, as well as stoned and sex-soaked hippies so engrossed in their own infantile romanticism they would have believed anything, comprised the perfect storm. The success of the revolution was breathtaking, the revolutionaries did indeed march through the institutions - most critically, the media, education and entertainment - and made them their own. Traditional cultural hegemony was flipped on its back. There it will stay until once again flipped right side up. In order for that to be achieved, much could be gained from studying the methods of those who perverted everything they touched.