Bottom-up Pride Month Special Edition

Diversity is about how we are different. Inclusion is about how our opinions are considered and valued among the people we work and live with. The only way to achieve peak performance is to be exactly who we are, contributing with our uncensored ideas, backgrounds and differences. Bottom-up is an affinity network intended to support Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Ally employees, fostering a safe, respectful culture. Help us nurture this intent following these simple steps.

1.) Bring your whole self to work

Your personal productivity will raise if you do not expend your energies hiding a significant part of yourself. It is important to have your entire energies focused on a single activity, instead of having a burden to your performance.

2.) Understand Differences

Keep in mind that we are all different, try and include these differences in your vocabulary. Avoiding exclusion through open questions can help you improve your relationships with others and foster peak performance in others. It is better to ask for a significant other than for a husband/wife, this behavior is called heterosexism.

3.) Join Bottom up.

The Bottom up affinity network is intended to include both heterosexual and homosexual employees. Join the distribution list and learn more about this important business strategy.

This email was sent out to employees of a fortune 500 company. It was passed on to me. The name “Bottom up” is a pseudonym for the real group’s name. This reveals that even fortune 500 companies are pushing this Transformation of American agenda.

The grammar and punctuation mistakes are part of the e-mail. I left them as I received them.

I wanted to spend some time exposing the fallacies.

(1.) No, diversity is about the demand that the pervert and the oddball being accepted as normative. Diversity is about insisting that traditional understandings of normal must be destroyed.

(2.) Inclusion is only important when it means including anything but that which says that including the abnormal is not healthy. Inclusion is not intended for those who have standards that demand that perversity be excluded.

(3.) Are we really to believe that the “Bottom-up” affinity group would want Biblical Christians to be exactly who they are so that they might work at the level of peak performance? Are they going to support the uncensored ideas of those who take the Scripture seriously? Will the worldview differences that exist as between a “Bottom-up” activist employee and a Biblical Christian activist employee really make for a atmosphere where peak performance is achieved?

(4.) #1 in the circulated e-mail is a recruitment tool to lure people out of the closet.

(5.) #1 in the circulated e-mail allows Biblical Christians to talk about the Lord Christ in the work place? After all, Christian employees hiding a part of themselves would be a burden to their performance.

(6.) #2 in the circulated e-mail excludes those who believe that significant others is sin. Why would you want to exclude them. It also excludes those who prefer insignificant others. After all, there doubtless are people in the company who just involve themselves in serial hook-ups with people they don’t know. Why should you ask about a significant other when that could offend the Gay Bathroom stall employees who value insignificant others?

(7.) The example used in #2 in the circulated e-mail is an example of Xenosexism (fear of the “Insignifant Other.”)

(8.) Do you suppose this Fortune 500 company would allow an e-mail to circulate amongst its employees whereby an affinity group was being started that made the point that diversity has always been a weakness? Do you suppose that they would allow an affinity group that excluded all who didn’t agree with perversity just as this groups excludes all who don’t agree with normalcy?

Considering a few thing that Dr. North offers here.

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12623.cfm

I agree with many of his observations. I am just tweaking here.

GN offers,

The heart, mind, and soul of orthodox Marxian socialism is this: the concept of economic determinism. Marx argued that socialism is historically inevitable because of the inevitable transformation of the mode of production. He argued that the mode of production is the substructure of society, and culture in general is the superstructure. He argued that people hold a particular view of society’s laws, ethics, and politics because of their commitment to a particular mode of production. The dominant mode of production in 1850 was capitalism. Marx named this mode of production. The name has stuck, even though original Marxism is culturally dead.

Marx gained support for his position precisely because it was purely economic/materialist. It abandoned all traces of historical explanation that were based on the idea that ideas are fundamental to the transformation of society. Marx believed that the deciding arena of class warfare is the mode of production, not the arena of ideas. He saw ideas as secondary outgrowths of the mode of production. His view was this: ideas do not have significant consequences. Take this idea out of Marxism, and it is no longer Marxism.

BLMc

1.) Of course Marx used non material ideas to communicate his insistence on his Dialectical Materialism and his economic determinism. (But then most intelligent people realize that dialectical materialism is inherently contradictory.)

2.) The way that I like to think about this is that materialistic economics is to Marx what Theology is to the Christian. In other words, Marx made Economic determinism his own Theology. Whereas the Biblical Christian traces everything back to Theology as the source, Marx traced everything back to Economic Determinism. And Naturally, the Biblical Christian traces Marx’s tracing of everything back to Economic Determinism back to His presupposed Theology of Dialectical Materialism. Marx believed what he believed about Economic Determinism because his theology of Dialectical Materialism forced him in that direction.

GN writes,

Gramsci argued, and the Frankfurt School followed his lead, that the way for Marxists to transform the West was through cultural revolution: the idea of cultural relativism. The argument was correct, but the argument was not Marxist. The argument was Hegelian. It meant turning Marxism on its head, just as Marx had turned Hegel on his head. The idea of Marxism in the earliest days was based on a rejection of the spiritual side of Hegelianism. It placed the mode of production at the heart of the analysis of capitalist culture.

BLMc

I would suggest that the commonalities of Cultural Marxism (Gramsci-ism – Frankfurt school) with Marx are,

1.) Both Atheistic

Both Cultural Marxists and garden variety Marxists insist upon Atheism. The denial of God makes it difficult to be able to assert the reality of the “mind” or the idea of “ideas.” If the non-corporeal God does not exist where does a non-corporeal mind and non-corporeal ideas come from?

2.) Both contradictory

Without God it is hard to not be materialistic since God is the fount of the non-corporeal. Marx was in contradiction on this point because he was using “ideas” and non material “Logic” in order to communicate that ideas don’t exist. The Frankfurt school is inconsistent because they likewise insist that culture must be overturned via changing the ideas that create Christian culture.

3.) They are both a religion of revolution and so both a totaltistic anti-worldview.

Gramsci merely took Marx’s work on “Economic determinism” where Economics was seen to be the whole of cultural change and gave instead a “Economic / Education / Politics / Arts / Law etc.” (i.e. — culture) determinism. The Frankfurt school did not abandon Marx’s determinism they merely expanded it, and like Marx (and later Lenin) who believed all of this could be directed and helped along by human guidance and assistance the Cultural Marxists believed that that which was inevitable, could be helped along by human aid. (An inconsistency on the part of both parties given the fact that if all of reality is determined then helping or not helping is incidental to the deterministic processes.)

4.) Both Marxism and Cultural Marxism appeal to order arising out of chaos.

For both variants of Marxism, integration downward into the void is the means by which order is arrived at, and as such both Marxism and Cultural Marxism aligned themselves against structures of order such as Family, and Church. Alexandra Kollontai’s Feminism and war against the family was as much a Part of Lenin’s Marxism as was the famous five year economic plans. Lenin’s destruction and warfare against the Russian Church was as much a part of his Marxism as was his attempts at collectivization for Economics.

5.) Both still advance using the Hegelian dialectic

Both Classical Marxism and Cultural Marxism advance by retreating when necessary.

So, while I agree with Dr. North that Cultural Marxism and Marxism are different, I would also say that still retain much in common and the reason they remain much in common is that it was impossible for Classical Marxists to be consistent with their own dialectical Materialism just as it is impossible for Cultural Marxists to be consistent with their avowed atheism. The commonality between the two is the impossibility to be consistent while holding to Atheistic materialism.

6.) 6.) Both retain a category of the Proletariat

For Classical Marxism the proletariat that must be set free from the bourgeoisie chains was the working class. For Cultural Marxism the proletariat that must be set free from the bourgeoisie chains are the perverts, minorities, and feminist women. What those different proletariats have in common is throwing off Christianity and Christendom.

GN wrote,

We can discuss this split in Marxism in terms of a particular family. The most prominent intellectual defender of Stalinism in the United States during the 1940’s and 1950’s was Herbert Aptheker. His daughter Bettina was one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement, which began in the fall of 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley. She became far more famous than her Stalinist father. That campus event launched the student rebellion and the counter-culture movement. But the very term “counter-culture” is indicative of the fact that it was never Marxist. It was an attempt to overthrow the prevailing culture, but Marx would not have wasted any time on such a concept. Marx was not a Hegelian. He was a Marxist.

BLMc

But the point here is that it was impossible for Marx to be consistent given his Atheistic Materialism. Because of his inherent contradiction it was a foregone deterministic conclusion that someone like Gramsci or Bettina Aptheker would come along and relieve the inherent contradiction of Marx.

GN writes,

Years later, she wrote that her father had abused her sexually from age 3 to 13. Deep down in her father’s worldview, he was conducting his own personal Gramscian agenda. He was attacking Western culture in his own home. But this did not affect his orthodox Marxism. It affected his daughter’s.

BLMc

The fact that he was sexually abusing his daughter suggests that his orthodox Marxism was very consistent with cultural Marxism. His daughter just made explicit that which was implicit in the Father.

GN writes,

THE COUNTER-CULTURE

Let’s get it straight: Marx was wrong. Gramsci was right. But Marxism was not the primary cause of the counterculture. The counter-culture was based on culture. The alliance between theological modernism and the Progressive movement, which began in the mid-1880’s and peaked around 1920, was the theological underpinning of the roaring twenties. Then the Great Depression came. Then World War II came. When the boys came back from over there, after 1918, they were no longer committed to anything like Orthodox Christianity. When their boys came back from World War II, the cultural erosion that had taken place after World War I was pretty much complete. This had nothing to do with Marxism. Marxism was committed to a defense of cultural change that was based on changes in the mode of production. But there was no fundamental change in the mode of production in 1945, other than the rise of modern management, which took place during World War II. This consolidated capitalism; it did not weaken capitalism.

1.) There are many scholars who connect the dots between Progressivism, Theological Modernism and Marxism.

2.) A good book to read on the connection from the very beginning of Progressivism, Theological Modernism and Marxism is C. Gregg Singer’s “The Unholy Alliance.” Singer traces the rise of the Marxist / Progressive / Modernist Church well before Cultural Marxism had rooted itself here in the States. A read through that book reveals that the Modernist Church was clearly economically Marxist, while at the same time showing signs of what would be later referred to as Cultural Marxism.

3.) I think that with the rise of the Federal Reserve in 1913 one could argue that there indeed was a change in the mode of production. That change in the mode of production went from laissez fair Capitalism to a ever burgeoning Finance Capitalism, a Corporatism that many have argued works well with Marxist Economics. Now the laissez fair Capitalism of the early 20th century was hardly genuinely Market economics but it was a great deal more Market Economics then what came after the creation of the Federal Reserve and the passage of the 16th amendment.

GN writes,

The problem is this: conservatives take way too seriously the claims of the cultural Marxists, who in fact were not Marxists. They were basically Progressives and socialists. They would have been the targets of Marx in 1850. He spent most of his career attacking people like this, and he spent almost no time at all in attacking Adam Smith, or the classical economists. He never replied to the neoclassical economists and Austrian School economists who appeared in the early 1870’s. Marx had plenty of time to respond to these people, but he never did. He spent most of his life attacking people who would be called today cultural Marxists. He regarded them as enemies in the socialist camp. He attacked them because they did not base their attack on capitalism in terms of his theory of scientific socialism, which rested on the concept of the mode of production.

If this paragraph is accurate then the Russian Revolution was not a Marxist Revolution and the Bella Kuhn Revolution in Hungary was not a Marxist Revolution because each of these at one and the same time went both after the mode of production and after cultural issues as well. And keep in mind that cultural Marxists still insist that Economics and mode of production must be Marxist.

Dr. North finishes with the complexity found in tracing the History of ideas and I quite agree with that.