Gottfried Insists that WOKEism Doesn’t Arise Out of Marxism … A Conversation Part I

One of the things I try to stay up on is Cultural Marxism. I believe it is the nursery from which WOKEism grows. I further believe that Cultural Marxism is the number 1 theological threat right now to Biblical Christianity as a religion in terms of worldview hegemony.  If Christianity can’t find a way to choke the life out of Cultural Marxism then Christianity will go into the catacombs until it can find a way to eliminate this enemy.

As such, I find a article like this;

Marx Was Not Woke

interesting.

In this piece Jewish Intellectual Paul Gottfried argues that;

“Wokeism arises out of the failure of liberalism, not out of the theory of Marxism.”

I think I can argue convincingly that Dr. Gottfried is in error here. I provide the link for your convenience because I want you to be able to access the article for yourself to make sure I am not misrepresenting Gottfried’s argument. Also, I may not fisk Gottried’s entire article and as such you can make sure that I am not leaving out context that would make a difference in Gottfried’s article.

Allow me to say before we begin that I have read several of Gottfried’s books with profit. However, like any author Gottfried has to be read presuppositionally and through one’s own worldview grid in order to catch the errors that might be in any otherwise fine work.

Begin Gottfried (PG)

Yoram Hazony provides what is perhaps the best exposition of how the woke left represents an “updated” form of traditional Marxism. His argument, which is ably presented in his book Conservatism: A Rediscovery, is summed up as follows:

Bret responds,

Generally speaking, it is widely accepted that WOKEism is indeed an “updated” form of traditional Marxism. Updated because it is Marxism as coming through the grid of one Antonia Gramsci. Some have argued that Gramsci’s “Marxism” was a return to Marx’s earlier writings. So, I would argue that WOKEism is just another label for Cultural Marxism while noting that Cultural Marxism is a nuanced form of Marxism. Keep in mind that as Marxism by definition does not work, therefore there are going to be continued updated versions of Marxism. Marxism changes like your I-Phone and like updated I-phones it is always the same only different.

PG argues

Marx’s principal insight is that the categories liberals use to construct their theory of political reality (liberty, equality, rights, and consent) are insufficient for understanding the political domain. They are insufficient because the liberal picture of the political world leaves out two phenomena that are, according to Marx, absolutely central to human political experience: the fact that people invariably form cohesive classes or groups and the fact that these classes or groups invariably oppress or exploit one another, with the state itself functioning as an instrument of the oppressor class.

Bret responds,

And here we see WOKEism in spades. We see the two phenomena that Gottfried speaks of screaming from the balcony.

(a) The presence of cohesive classes or groups (b) accompanied by the fact that these class and groups invariably oppress and exploit one another. 

This is pure WOKEism. WOKEism exists by marginalizing and even eliminating the individual in favor of group identity. Further, WOKEism provides a narrative, like Marxism, where people in their identity groups fall into either oppressors or oppressed categories. WOKEism with its intersectionality sliding scale of oppressed status provides a methodology where a sliding scale of the degrees of oppressed and oppressor can be measured.

Now the difference between WOKEism here and Classical Marxism (CM) is that CM measured the oppressors vs. oppressed in terms of Economics (proletariat as oppressed vs. bourgeoisie as oppressor), whereas Cultural Marxism (CulMar) measures the oppressors vs. oppressed in terms of Religion and Race (Christian white man as oppressor vs. Heathen minority/pervert/feminist/Academician as oppressed). CulMar as such as expanded the oppressed category beyond economic categories though not exclusive of economic categories, while at the same time distilling the former bourgeoisie to what was always implied; to wit, the evil Christian.

We see thus that PG is in error when he says that WOKEism is not the offspring of Marxism.

PG writes,

Part of this argument is undoubtedly correct. The form of liberalism that came out of the 18th-century Enlightenment did indeed stress individual rights and liberties, and it placed less emphasis on national and class identities than on individual advancement. This liberal tendency continued to manifest itself into the late 20th century, although liberalism itself underwent significant changes with the modern welfare state and the introduction of universal suffrage. Moreover, while self-identified liberals supported nationalist movements and movements of national liberation throughout the 19th century, to whatever extent they reflected Enlightenment liberalism, they stressed individual rights and individual self-fulfillment.

Bret responds,

And inasmuch as WOKEism does not stress individual rights and individual self fulfillment in that much it clearly is not the child of the Enlightenment Left.

However, keep in mind that both the atomistic individualism of Liberalism gone to seed and the hyper collectivism of Marxism end up in the same place when they are worked out to their inevitable end. Atomistic Liberalism and Hyper collectivism as social orders end up being Van Til’s two wash women who always take in each other’s laundry. Just as Fate and Chance end up being complimentary poles when the God of the Bible is surrendered so Atomistic individualism of Enlightenment Liberalism and Hyper-Collectivism of Marxist/WOKE end up working together towards the same goal. Only in Christianity where you find an Eternal One and Many can we find a place where the temporal individual and the temporal collective find a stable and complimentary meaning.

PG writes,

Hazony is correct that the woke left has outflanked self-described liberals in the media and the academy by defending collective identities. These privileged identities are ascribed to exploited members of designated victim groups. The contemporary left has therefore developed its own collectivism by incorporating a vocabulary and conceptual framework borrowed from the Marxist tradition. Like Marxism, the woke left divides humanity into oppressors and the oppressed, and it views the state as an instrument of power that should be made to fit the needs of the supposedly downtrodden. The woke left has abandoned the socioeconomic perspective of older Marxist theory but, according to Hazony, continues to imagine reality along similar lines: that is, as a confrontation between cohesive classes, consisting of the oppressors and oppressed. Thus the woke left conjures up a situation that calls for a revolutionary solution.

Bret responds,

The older socioeconomic perspective of older Marxist theory that the WOKE left has abandoned has been replaced by a totalistic religio-racial-cultural weltanschauung and has given us Biblical Christians the glad consequence of crystalizing the anti-thesis between Christ and Anti-Christ. For those with eyes to see we are living in a moment where the battle lines are drawn, without any illusion, between those who desire to kill Christ and those who desire to honor Christ. If there ever existed a religious war, some of us are now fighting it.

Still, PG is singing to the choir so far in his analysis.

PG writes,

Hazony relates his treatment of this left as an updated form of historic Marxism to the waning of anti-Marxist liberalism. In his judgment, liberals who fight Marxism in the name of individual rights are holding a poor hand. They are upholding individual natural rights against collective identity, a concept that now dominates in Western societies. The battle lines are no longer between the liberal defense of the individual and various form of collectivism. Rather the lines are drawn between conservative nationalism, that is, “conservative democracy,” and Marxism in its regnant woke form.

Bret responds,

Here my disagreement is going to be with Hazony since he has not gotten to the core of the matter. The contestants that Hazony lists are just not accurate except in a tangential sense. Hazony has given us some of the proximate contestants but he has not given us the ultimate contestants.

First, while “conservative nationalism” is certainly a factor it is more accurate to label this contestant as  “Christian Nationalism,” and it is perhaps even more precise to say ” White Christian Nationalism.” Now, this is not to say that only White Christian  Nationalists are fighting. There are many minority Christians who believe in Christian Nationalism who are fighting with us, however, considered collectively it is White Christian Nationalists that are in the cross-hairs. We have to admit that the primary target and foe of the CulMar is White Christians who believe in Nationalism, and from there we have to admit that this is fight against White Christian Nationalism is just a proxy war to throw off the authority of Jesus Christ in every area of life. The reason that the CulMar are going after White Biblical Christians is because they realize that if they can rid the world of that “pestilence” than any other opposition will be a mere mopping up matter. Considering all this Hazony’s “Conservative Nationalism” as one of the two major contestants is not going to get it done.

Even, labeling the white contestants as “Conservative Democracy” is not helpful since Biblical Christians (the true combatants) are not in the least interested in “Conservative Democracy,” as that is currently defined. What Biblical Christians desire is a governmental arrangement that honors and is beholden to Jesus Christ as King of Kings and His expressed Law-Word. Hazony’s “Conservative Democracy” is part of the problem.

And of course Marxist in its regnant form is correct so far as it goes but it would be better to reduce the enemy to their essence and the essence of the enemy here is “antichrist.”

PG writes,

Unfortunately, Hazony cannot escape the materialist foundation of Marxist historical theory. Marx was not in the least concerned with nonbinary oppression, raging homophobia, or the inherently evil nature of being white. This father of “scientific socialism” focused on socioeconomic antagonisms expressing themselves as class conflict. His historical materialism, however, was overhauled in interwar Germany, as the Frankfurt School and its Critical Theory came onto the scene. This new iteration of the left developed what has been called “cultural Marxism,” and it defined as a pressing socialist task the reconstruction of the bourgeois Christian family. This reconstruction was supposedly necessary to stand firm against the rampant spread of fascism. Among Frankfurt School theorists, attempts were also made to assimilate Marxism to a variant of Freudian psychology; and in Herbert Marcuse’s work, Marxist socialism was fused with the vision of polymorphic sexuality.

Bret writes,

True, Marx was not concerned per se with “nonbinary oppression, raging homophobia, or the inherently evil nature of being white,” but Marx and Engels were concerned with the socialist task  of reconstructing the bourgeois Christian family and I am convinced that Marx and Engels would have embraced “nonbinary oppression, and raging homophobia”  if he was convinced that by doing so the Christian concept of family could be destroyed.