Over at Chronicles Magazine Jewish Intellectual Paul Gottfried advances the idea that “Marxism is not Woke.” In this conversation with Gottfried I am disagreeing with that sentiment. This is part II.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/recent-features/marx-was-not-woke/
Paul Gottfried (PG) writes
It was also the Frankfurt School theorist Marcuse who paved the way for the New Left neo-Marxism of the 1960s and ’70s by advocating an alliance of counterculture revolutionaries with anticolonial rebels in the Third World. Marcuse’s “Berlin Lectures,” delivered to cheering young German radicals in 1973, looked forward to a period of extreme change driven by collaboration between Third World revolutionaries and the Western student movement. By the 1970s, it was also becoming clear that the Western working class, which was moving decidedly to the right, could no longer be instrumentalized as a leftist revolutionary class. Marcuse added to his revolutionary brew, perhaps as an afterthought, the rage of angry young blacks.
Bret responds,
Here is one area where we see that Marx clearly was indeed WOKE. It was Marx who gave us the rise of the proletariat as the instrumental means of world socialist revolution. In the well known rallying cry of “Workers of the World Unite,” Marx envisioned a force animated by resentment and envy against the bourgeoise so as to bring about social revolution. With the rise of Cultural Marxism (CulMar, Frankfurt School) the idea of a necessary proletariat is not surrendered but rather the former proletariat is transmogrified into a different coalition force comprised of the wastrels, disenchanted, and outcasts of Western civilization. Whereas it was previously the workers of the world who must unite, with the rise of CulMar it is the minorities, feminists, academicians and perverts, (call it the MF AP) who will unite into a new proletariat who will serve as the new shock troops engaged in the long march through the Western and Christian Institutions. The principle of Marx remains in CulMar but it has shape shifted to bring revolution to a new Era. Marx is WOKE.
PG writes,
This was a useful course of action because, by the 1960s, blacks had become more and more drawn into revolutionary activism, although they would soon be joined by others in what can be described as the post-Marxist left. Although members of what eventually evolved into the woke, antifascist left looked for an “oppressed class,” their choices had nothing to do with Marx’s proletariat. The real working class wanted nothing to do with cultural revolutionaries, and fights broke out between the two groups in American cities in the 1960s.
Bret responds,
But what PG misses here is that structurally speaking the WOKE anti-fascist (so called) retained the conceptual idea of a proletariat. The only difference between classical Marxism (CM) on this point and CulMar is who would do the proletariat dirty work. The concept of the proletariat remains but the team jerseys are changed. The proletariat is the same only different.
Secondly, I am not convinced that the choices of the WOKE left had nothing to do with Marx’s proletariat. Keep in mind that WOKEism still has an economic component. WOKEism still strums the string that the poor are oppressed. It is just that CulMar WOKEism has expanded the oppressed class to include more than the economic woebegone. The genius of WOKEism is in how it expanded the base of the aggrieved so as to create a new proletariat.
PG writes,
Marcuse and his followers also fatefully redefined the “realm of needs,” as understood in traditional Marxism. No longer was it the labor required to sustain the working class but rather the acquisition of psychological and esthetic fulfillment. This lent weight to the complaint that capitalism was emotionally repressive. In the post-World War II Western context, the capitalist form of production was accused of leaving the youthful vanguard of a future revolution inwardly stunted. Marcuse believed Western countries were materially able to create a “rational economy”—that is, a socialist one—but simply lacked the will and the vision to establish the sexually and economically liberated society that he desired.
Bret responds,
Yes, the deck chairs on the Titanic are rearranged but it remains the good ship Titanic. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t make it not a pig. Cosmetic changes were made but, contra Gottfried, the essence and goal of both Classical Marxism and WOKEism remain the same and because of that WOKE is Marx. CM and WOKEism both remain committed to the project of overthrowing Western Civilization with it Christian roots and though the players may have changed and the rules of the game tweaked, WOKEism is Marxist. Another way that is seen is the fact that Biblical Christianity remains the only force that can finally defeat both Marxism and its bitch chid WOKEism.
PG writes,
Such ideas represent a countercultural alternative to traditional Marxism as well as to the still recognizably bourgeois Christian society that Marcuse and other Critical Theorists hoped to transform. Communist parties throughout the West as well as Soviet critics condemned this reconfiguring of Marxism as a distortion of Marx’s dialectical materialism. Instead of highlighting the class struggle centered on the ownership of productive forces, Critical Theorists were talking about fighting prejudice and increasing erotic satisfaction. If such notions passed for Marxist theory, so went the critique; these notions would reduce a true revolutionary doctrine based on an analysis of material forces to a bourgeois campaign against emotional repression and discrimination. The invective against this transmogrified Marxism among Communists and orthodox Marxists was every bit as furious as those denunciations against the Frankfurt School that have issued from the Christian right.
Bret responds,
Yes, yes, yes, among the purist Marxists the WOKEism of CulMar was heresy. However, if we are follow this Gottfried reasoning then Trotskyism was not Marxist, nor was Syndicalism Marxism, nor was Maoism Marxism, nor was Fabianism Marxism, etc. etc. etc. Marxism has had more facelifts than Madonna. However, under each facelift the leering visage of Marx remains.
Gottfried is correct that the WOKEism of CulMar is contradictory on the matter of Marx’s dialectical materialism, but as dialectical materialism is itself contradictory I am not sure why this matters except to the Marxist purists. Keep in mind here that the common Marxist thread that remains between CM and WOKEism is philosophical Materialism. Gottfried needs here to keep in mind Marx’s watch cry;
“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Gottfried is playing the philosopher here insisting that Marx is not WOKE all the while the WOKEism of Cultural Marxism is changing the world.
So, PG and I agree that the WOKEism of Gramsci and the Frankfurt school has tweaked Marx but a tweaked Marx remains Marx. Some have even offered that the Marxism of CulMar and WOKEism is a return to the earlier writings of Marx as opposed to the later writings of Marx upon which Classical Marxism is based.
PG writes,
The woke left is an even more grotesque distortion of Marxism than anything the interwar and postwar Frankfurt School brought forth. This left has shed any recognizable Marxist theory, but it continues to venerate Communist heroes while appealing to the interwar struggle between the Communist left and “fascism.” Despite socialist proposals that occasionally enter woke wish lists, corporate capitalists are integral to the post-Marxist left. Nor are such capitalists likely to suffer any ill effects even if the green agenda that most Western countries are pushing is put more broadly into effect.
Bret responds,
It is kind of humorous to talk about something being a more grotesque distortion of Marxism than some earlier grotesque distortion of Marxism given how grotesque a distortion Marxism is itself. I mean when one is dealing with a grotesque distortion to begin with it might be a clue that if something is even a more grotesque distortion than the original grotesque distortion in question, that even more grotesque distortion might indeed be related to the original grotesque distortion.
Second, the fact that “this left” continues to venerate Communist heroes might be a clue for all of us “this left” of Gottfried identifies with Marxism. I mean who are we to question them on who their heroes are? If I tell you that my hero is Che Guevara or Barack Obama or Vladimir Lenin why would you question my Marxist bonafides?
Surely PG has to know that corporate capitalists were also integral to the rise and ongoing success of the Marxist left. The fact that corporate capitalists are integral to the left in no way proves that that left is not Marxist. Anybody who is familiar with the works of Antony Sutton
1.) Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists
2.)Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
3.) Wall Street and FDR: The True Story of How Franklin D. Roosevelt Colluded with Corporate America
The fact that the Corporate Capitalists are integral to the left proves that what we are dealing with now is not Marxism, frankly is ridiculous. I’d be more inclined to believe that what we are dealing with now isn’t a Marxist variant if what we are dealing with now weren’t in bed with Mega Corporate America. Corporatism and Marxism go together like Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light beer.
Who does Gottfried think profited from the rise of the USSR besides Western Mega Capitalists? Certainly Gottfried has heard of names like Armand Hammer, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Guggenheim, the Vanderbilt family, and many other less known names that were part of what we call the Corporate Establishment.
The Mega-Corporatists very seldom suffer ill effects from the rise of Marxism.
