György Lukács, the Frankfurt School & Some of its Tactics & Goals

“The question is, Who will free us from the yoke of Western Civilization?”
 
György Lukács
Cultural Marxist

“I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution. A worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.”

György Lukács
Cultural Marxist

“Münzenberg, along with György Lukács and the founders of the Frankfurt School, had seen what in the West only Madison avenue seems to have learned, that language leads to action — and that control of words and their overtones can be far more effective than hand-grenades or nuclear power to force or or intimidate someone into saying “A” when he really believes “B” and that that is most of the battle. The Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance in this were John Dewey, cultural Marxism, and the Frankfurt school.”

Ralph de Toledano
Cry Havoc

“By following Gramsci’s lead Marcuse had managed to find a surrogate for the working class that Horkheimer had been searching for; students and minority groups. Marcuse stated that the student radicals should aim for the radicalization of university departments. Of pivotal importance to this idea was his introduction of the concept employed so successfully by Freud and György Lukács, of so-called sexual liberation as a means of social control.”

Alasdair Elder
The Red Trojan Horse — pp. 62

In post WW II America a political movement that had been around since the 1920’s began to gain leverage in America. In its beginnings it was called “The Frankfurt School,” but as time passed it began to be known as Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, or multiculturalism. The leaders of this movement began to be the gurus on American Universities and with their teachings and their books they began to have influence beyond their numbers. Names like Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, György Lukács, Max Horkheimer and Erich Fromm became the Generals leading a student rank and file who would accomplish the long march through the Institutions, seeking to overturn the previous identity of every Institution wherein was heard the footfall of the march. The final goal of this march was the overthrow, shredding, and destruction of every vestige of biblical Christianity that remained in the DNA of the West.

As mentioned György Lukács, was one of the early Cultural Marxists who became Commissar for Education and Culture during the short lived Hungarian Jewish Bolshevik regime that lasted for four months in 1919. Lukács complained when finally thrown out of power that the Red Hungarians mistake was that the didn’t spill blood fast enough. During his time as Deputy to the Commissar of Education in Hungary Lukács was remembered for his action in undermining traditional morality by teaching Hungarian children in government schools debauched sexuality.

In the 1920s, this Hungarian Marxist, György Lukács, set out to address a contradiction within orthodox Marxist dogma: for Marx, a society’s dominant ideology was a “superstructure,” a mere reflection of its more basic economic structure. Thus, the ruling class of capitalists who controlled the money and the means of production also created and controlled its dominant ideas. But a workers’ revolution of the sort Marx predicted could, Marx thought, only come from the subordinated class, i.e., the workers themselves. This question then arises: what will convince workers to revolt when the very ideas in their heads are implanted by their overlords? To answer this question, Lukács, in his History and Class Consciousness (1923), argued for a more subjective conception of class consciousness than the one favored by Marx. Workers (the proletariat) had to have their consciousness raised in order to muster up the appetite for revolution.
In analyzing this we note a contradiction. Marxism is a materialistic worldview. The non-material doesn’t exist. Yet, we see the Marxist Lukács here talking about the necessity to change “ideas.” Ideas are not material, as such, they do not exist.

Now I think the Cultural Marxist right about the necessity to change “ideas” but I don’t think it was consistent with their materialistic worldview. Which might explain why the classical Marxists (now called “vulgar Marxists) did not like the Gramscian neo-Marxists.

The primary goal of the Frankfurt School, of whom Lukács was a member  was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on race and culture, harnessing new “oppressed” groups (minorities, sexual perverts, feminists) to replace the faithless proletariat. The Frankfurt school was/is committed to smashing the Christian religion, and morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression. Toward this end, Herbert Marcuse-who favored polymorphous perversion-expanded the ranks of Gramsci’s new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Into this was spliced György Lukács radical sex education and cultural terrorism tactics. Gramsci’s ‘long march’ was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning techniques. The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism and its goal It was the hope of Lukács and the other members of the Frankfurt school to, in the words of fellow Frankfurt School member Willi Münzenberg;

“We must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink.”

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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