Category: Apologetics

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.

“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.”

Christianity is a faith characterized by boundaries, hierarchy, and distinctions. The God of Christianity is a God who assigns roles, who segregates (day from night, land from water, sun from moon, female from male, etc.) and whose existence is the means by which all differences are defined.

Perhaps the greatest boundary in Scripture is the one known as the Creator Creature boundary. It is the boundary that the Serpent and our first parents sought to remove. Not satisfied with a creaturely role our first parents aspired to erase the Creator Creature boundary and transcend so to be as God knowing good from evil.

Since that time the temptation for fallen man has been to transcend the boundaries set by God, in order that, by their own fiat word, they themselves could dictate their own boundaries and so create a reality where they erased Gods’ boundaries and set their own, or at other times merely attempt to erase all boundaries so that “all colors bleed into one.”

We live in such a time when the sin du-jour is the war against all boundaries. Man cannot be limited by his race, his ethnicity, his gender, any transcendent ethic, or any ordained status or definition. This mindset is so ubiquitous that by my usage of the pronouns “his” in the last sentence I have already revealed how insensitive I am to the modern demand that a pronoun boundary that prefers the masculine pronoun is an example of the lack of respect for the erasure of the old boundary once characteristic of the English grammar.

According to our Brave New Egalitarian Boundary-less world man must be allowed to make himself over and over again according to his own fiat word and according to his own template. No boundaries can be allowed to stifle or limit man. Gods after all, by definition, may not be limited.

The evidence of the assault on the idea of boundaries is everywhere, but unfortunately it is getting so common that we no longer have the ability to see it given how close we are to the boundary-less state of affairs. On this subject we have arrived at the proverb, “if you want to know what the water is like don’t ask a fish.

Still the evidence is omnipresent,

1.) The US government, in collusion with the National Chamber of commerce and leftist Marxists are currently literally trying to erase the southern border with Mexico.

2.) It is all the rage among judicial tyrants, by the means of legal fiat, to erase a boundary that has been set in place for millennium in Western Civilization which insisted that marriage requires one from each sex. Judges from Indiana to Utah are telling us that the Christian and historic boundary that defined marriage is now passe.

3.) It was just announced that the Speaker of the House is taking the POTUS to court to sue him because he is not honoring the Separation of powers (Boundaries). It seems that the man who is allegedly POTUS doesn’t care for the boundaries that define his position and role. He will erase those boundaries and set his own.

4.) Recently Facebook went from the traditional two gender option (Male — Female) to a new offering of 51 choices. All previous gender boundaries erased. Man can create his own boundaries in terms of gender.

5.) New forms from the Government no longer read in such a way as to fill in names for “Father,” and “Mother,” choosing instead “Parent 1,” and “Parent 2.”

6.) Recently in Houston, Texas it was decided that public restrooms are now boundary-less.

7.) The fashion world is run by sodomites and so they give us female models who look like little boys with breasts. In such a way the boundary between desiring a woman with curves and desiring a little boy is eliminated.

8.) No ID required for voting. This is to eliminate the boundary between Citizen and non-Citizen. It has become so upside down that it is fast becoming more of an advantage to be a non-citizen than to be a citizen.

9.) Even in the Reformed Church there are those who insist that God requires the boundaries of cultures be extinguished. Such men are convinced that only in a cultural-less, boundary-less “Christian” world can God be glorified.

10.) The mantra is relentless which states that a family can be defined anyway one wants. The boundary that once defined a family as blood relation sharing a common faith has now been eliminated. We all understood that there would be exceptions at time to this truth but for generations we held that normatively, the boundary that defined family, was blood relation sharing a common faith.

11.) The next boundary under assault is between adult and child. Already organizations exist that are lobbying for the sex between adult and children.

12.) The Pulpit used to have a boundary around it by following God’s Word in allowing only Men as Elders. That boundary has largely fallen.

13.) With the rise of deconstructionism in literature the boundary between author and reader has been destroyed. The reader is now the author and the author has been eclipsed. This is the inevitable consequence to eliminating a transcendent Author of all reality. If one eliminates God eventually one must eliminate all other authors. Boundaries in literature fall readily.

14.) Sodomy is on the verge of being publicly recognized. Here is another boundary being erased. Heretofore the public understood that male parts went with female parts. That was a boundary. It is now a receding boundary. Whereas the former boundary said that men and women in marriage should work together to create life. The new boundary insists that the life found in man should be surrounded by death found in the male evacuation canal. The new boundary insists that two women should pursue sterility by rejecting men.

All of this destruction of boundaries is the consequence of Kant’s subjectivism and the subsequent rise of Kierkegaardian existentialism. Man cannot reach the noumena realm and therefore men are allowed to arrange the phenomena realm as they will. Wittgenstein reinforced all this with his language games and postmodernism has sealed the deal for the everyday man on the street.

The elimination of stable and shared boundaries can not help but lead to social order upheaval. No society can long withstand a boundary-less world in religion, morals, fashion, art, education, law, etc. Further the elimination of stable and shared boundaries means the persecution of those who do insist that transcendent boundaries exist. If Biblical Christians will not share in the Brave New Boundary-less world where the only boundaries will be the elimination of boundaries then Biblical Christians become enemies to the State God.

Anthony Esolen on this matter offers this insight on how God is a God who created a world with God given boundaries,

“When God made the world, He made things, with their characteristic boundaries. That is what the sacred author of Job insists upon. God said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And, “Who shut up the sea within doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” and said, “to here shall you come, but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”

Likewise in Genesis we see that God divides and distinguishes when He creates, not only when He divides the light from the darkness, and sets the firmament between heaven and earth, and orders the waters into one place so that the dry land may appear. He does so when He makes every living thing after its kind, a crucial phrase for understanding the whole. The kinds are so by means of boundaries: an apple tree brings forth apple blossoms after its kind; birds flock together and mate after their kinds. Man too is made after his kind, male and female; and it is characteristic of man to be made by God, for God: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

The sad thing in all of this is that when mankind tears down God’s ordained boundaries they at the same time tear down themselves. Man is not God and man cannot violate God’s order and boundaries without at the same time violating himself.

We live in a time and epoch where boundaries are being attacked. This time is not likely to end soon unless God is pleased to graciously visit us with judgment.

“The more Christianity gains ground, and the more Christians become with their religion, the less cultural differences we will see in the world. In the final day of history, every place on the planet will have the same covenantal views of God, man, law, judgment, and future, and therefore every place on the earth will have the same cultural practices informed by the Christian faith.

In short: people choose their religion, their religion determines their culture. When the world as a whole accepts the Christian religion, the world will be one culture.”

– Bojidar Marxinov

1.) Throughout History the European Protestants formed distinct Protestant cultures. The Swiss Protestants were different from the English Protestants who were different from the German Protestants, who were different from the Dutch Protestants. Is Marxinov telling us that some or all of them were in sin and that postmillennialism requires us to eliminate the differences between Bavinck and Warfield — between Kuyper and Hodge?

2.) Also we need to ask, why is it, given the few cultures that have been considered Christian, by any reasonable estimation, have not all been the same throughout history? If all Christian culture will look the same why didn’t the Christian culture of Charlemagne look the same as the Christian culture of Calvin’s Geneva or why didn’t Calvin’s Geneva look like Puritan New England? Was it because one or all of them were in deep sin?

3.) Marxinov has not taken into considerations the likelihood that Theonomists in one Christian country will come to a different understandings of how the law of God applies in different settings and situations. The reality of this almost certainty has the explanatory power to demonstrate why there might remain legal – jurisprudent differences between two nations in the Postmillennial Kingdom fully flowered.

4.) Marxinov has lost the Many in his search for the One. His God (and so his view of culture) is the view of the Unitarian. Marxinov, channelling U2 actually does believe that all colors will bleed into one. Marxinov has embraced unity and no diversity now remains. Rushdoony pointedly warned against this.

5.) Marxinov’s vision runs face flat into the wall of God’s Word where we find the Nations as Nations still existing in the New Jerusalem. In Revelation 5:9, 7:9 and in 22:2 we do not find the presence of an amalgamated whole in the New Jerusalem, but rather the distinctions of the Nations remain. Marxinov has lost the understanding that Grace restores nature and has exchanged it for the understanding that Grace destroys nature and replaces it.

6.) Marxinov’s vision is the same vision of Saruman who started off with the best of intentions in resisting Mordor but who, because of his desire to save the world, became as evil as Sauron in trying to save the world. Marxinov in seeking to save the world from Marx is actually in competition with Marx seeking to out Marx … Marx.

What a wonderful coincidence that Bojidar’s last name is Marxinov.