What the heck is Cultural Marxism? (2024)

Wojak Karl Marx

From the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

You may have seen it on a clumsy wojak speech bubble via a Facebook group or on Twitter, more than likely in a 4chan meme, but the buzz phrase ‘Cultural Marxism’ has entered the political lexicon. A term rooted in the theoretical work of the Frankfurt School, which sought to apply Marxist theory to culture, it has also been appropriated to denote a sinister conspiracy theory. That is to say, it initially referred to Marxist critiques of culture but has been adopted by some right-wing and far-right groups to describe perceived threats from progressive social reforms. Members of the Jewish community and anti-racist groups hold that using this term perpetuated antisemitic conspiracy theories.

In 2019 the Guardian, referring to Suella Braverman, reported ‘Tory MP Criticized for Using Antisemitic Term “Cultural Marxism”.’ Other Tory MPs have been criticised for this including the Croydon South MP and multi-millionaire landlord Chris Philp (tinyurl.com/skkrr33e). Somehow he retained his seat in this constituency that has large parts among the country’s lowest twenty percent deprived areas.

This portrayal of Marxism is a misrepresentation that conflates a broad and complex set of ideas into a monolithic threat. As a party with a strong basis in Marx’s actual writings, we can easily dismiss this definition as not only inherently incorrect but also because the term serves not as analysis but as a dog whistle for any type of racist, misogynist or bigoted behaviour.

In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition or for avoidance of true understanding. Much like ‘woke mind virus’ and ‘social justice warrior’, what ‘Cultural Marxism’ means isn’t as important as who it is being used against and who’s listening.

Cultural Marxism 1.0

‘Cultural Marxism’ initially referred to the work of the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist theorists established in the 20th century, intellectuals like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, who aimed to expand on Marx’s work by applying Marxism to cultural and social phenomena. The goal was to understand why capitalist societies had not yet collapsed despite the inherent contradictions that Marx had drawn attention to.

The Frankfurt School theorists argued that culture, ideology, and mass media play significant roles in maintaining the status quo by shaping public consciousness and discouraging revolutionary thought. They explored concepts such as the ‘culture industry,’ which describes how popular culture is mass produced to reinforce consumerism and passive acceptance of the capitalist system. These ideas were not about destroying ‘First World culture’ but about critiquing how cultural forms are manipulated to maintain the capitalist dominance.

Gramsci contributed to this school of thought with his concept of ‘cultural hegemony’. He posited that the capitalist class maintains control not just through force or economic power, but by dominating cultural norms and values, peddling the capitalist worldview as common sense. This notion emphasized the need for a counter-hegemonic culture to challenge and replace the dominant capitalist ideology with socialist ideas.

Appropriation and distortion by the far-right

In the cold dead claws of the alt-right, Cultural Marxism loses its meaning as a critical theory and is presented as a pejorative term engineered to invoke the conspiracy theory that Marxists are covertly campaigning to subvert ‘White’ culture by accepting the value of equality between race, genders and sexuality. The distorted view accuses these socially progressive changes as part of a coordinated effort to destroy ‘White’ culture. Popping another red pill and through fash-tainted glasses, this conspiracy theory goes on that Cultural Marxists are waging a war against traditional and Christian values to weaken the West from within. This reframing is a gift to the alt-right fash, reformed to paint itself as the victim of a red terror and saviour of Western civilization against a perceived cultural invasion.

The alt-rights use of ‘Cultural Marxism’ as a catch-all term for everything it opposes — feminist, multiculturalist, LGBTQ+, atheists, even the vegans — serves to rally the right and reactionaries against imaginary bogeymen (but usually minorities) and anyone really. This approach allows them to cosplay as the last line of defence against an existential cultural threat. As Slavoj Žižek noted in The Sublime Object of Ideology, ‘The more we discuss the impact of political correctness, the more we lose sight of the actual economic struggles’. This diversion helps the alt-right avoid engaging with tangible issues of capitalist exploitation and economic hardship and racial inequality. Paul Mason in Post-Capitalism added ‘The conspiracy theory of “Cultural Marxism” is an attempt to reduce complex social phenomena into simplistic and unfounded narratives.’

Let’s make sense of the frothing-at-the-mouth rhetoric.

From a socialist perspective the appropriation of Cultural Marxism is a deliberate calculated distraction from hardships and truths facing workers. By focusing on cultural battles it serves the interests of the ruling class by preventing the working class from recognizing its own power. Meanwhile, the capitalist class continues to exploit labour, accumulate wealth, and consolidate power, largely unchallenged by a fragmented and tired populace.

Rosa Luxemburg argued that ‘the most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening’. Thus we argue that the real struggle is not over culture or identity but over who controls the wealth generated by the working class. The focus should not be on fighting imaginary cultural enemies of fictional conspiracies but on the working class organizing to liquidate the capitalist system that exploits them.

This alt-right myth is a convenient albeit dangerous tool for the ruling class to attack the working class, keeping us divided and distracted. By promoting fear of cultural change, the capitalist class can avoid accountability for the economic exploitation and inequality that capitalism perpetuates.

Who smears wins

The tactics used by the alt-right in promoting the Cultural Marxism narrative is a direct lift from the 20th century fascist propaganda tactic of scapegoating with fear-mongering. Smears and vitriol, less blood and soil, more shite and bile. Fascist states thrived on dread and fear of the external enemy — whether it be other nations, communists, a minority, or immigrants — this all served to unify their base and justify extreme political violence. By positioning themselves as defenders of traditional ‘White’ values against a supposed cultural onslaught of the unknowable hordes and heathens, they seek to rally disaffected individuals around a nationalist identity and exclusionary vision.

In The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism in Europe, Paul Hanebrink, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, points out that ‘for much of the twentieth century, Europe was haunted by a threat of Judeo-Bolshevism myth’. He examines the unfounded and damaging narrative that falsely connects Judaism with Bolshevism. This myth emerged in early 20th century Europe and falsely claimed that Jewish people were behind the rise of Russian ‘communism’. The conspiracy theory was employed as a propaganda tool to justify antisemitic policies and actions, contributing to the persecution of Jewish communities and supporting authoritarian regimes. He underscores the myth’s impact on European politics and society, demonstrating how such harmful narratives can distort public perception and fuel discrimination.

Fascism relies on an us-versus-them mentality, which is why the alt-right’s use of ‘Cultural Marxism’ as a bogeyman is so effective. It allows them to present themselves as the last line of defence against a cultural apocalypse, even as they promote intolerance, exclusion, and violence. As political theorist Hannah Arendt observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, ‘The essence of totalitarianism is not merely a system of government but a state of mind that relies on fear and hate to unite and control’. The alt-right’s approach is not new; it’s a recycled form of demagoguery used to maintain control through division and fear.

This approach ultimately serves the interests of the capitalist class as by promoting cultural conflict, it enables them to continue to exploit labour and amass wealth without facing unity of resistance.

Socialism offers a world where the wealth we create together is used to meet our needs, not to enrich a privileged few. It’s about a future society where we work cooperatively, where resources are shared equitably.

Socialists have a clear-eyed understanding of the challenge we face and reject the false narratives peddled by the alt-right, other bad faith actors and their allies. It’s essential to recognize that the real struggle is not over culture but over economic power and control. By dismantling the capitalist system, we create a society where cultural diversity is celebrated and where all people have the opportunity to participate fully in shaping the world around them.

A. T.

End of work? (2009)

Book Review from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critical Social Theory and the End of Work. By Edward Granter. Ashgate, 2009. £55.

The main theme of this book (adapted from a PhD thesis) is that work is being eliminated through the use of advanced production technology. The Critical Social Theory in the title refers to the publications of the Frankfurt School (notably Adorno, Horkheimer, Lowenthal and Marcuse) but the views on work of other critical social theorists such as Marx and Gorz are also included.

Sensibly Granter devotes a few pages to definitions of work, but the results are disappointing. The author wastes space telling us that someone thinks work is “picking something up and putting it down somewhere else because you have to”. Gorz is more helpful in pointing out that “‘work’ nowadays refers almost exclusively to activities carried out for a wage”. Curiously Granter writes of work hundreds of times but hardly mentions employment. He doesn’t seem at all clear that although all employment involves work, not all work is employment.

The chapter on utopians and the end of work summarises what More, Fourier and the little-known Etzler had to say on the subject. Apparently Etzler though that the ‘powers in nature’ (wind, solar, tidal energy) could be developed to replace all human labour. The two pages devoted to William Morris correctly note that his News From Nowhere was a reaction to Bellamy’s Looking Backward, but fail to convey much of the richness of Morris’s imagination about what work will be like in socialist society.

Granter’s discussion of Marx quotes from no less than 14 of his works and the author believes there are “many Marxisms”. He confuses the issue by referring to “the erstwhile superpower that many saw as operating on Marxist principles…” It is also misleading to say that “The idea of the end of work is at the centre of Marx’s vision of a future society…” Granter is however on stronger ground when he writes that Marx was not in any way against work and did advocate its “radical transformation”.

Prior to a short concluding section, the final chapter is about globalisation and work. This is by far the most opinionated and forceful chapter, offering the most devastating critique of capitalism. Starting with Marx’s “It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connection everywhere,” Granter goes on to show that the impetus for globalisation “comes primarily from the need of the expanding capitalist system to maximise profit”. The worst victims are Britain’s underpaid, easy to sack, second class workforce of migrant labour, ‘a world of gangmasters, zero hour contracts, the minimum wage [or less] and eventually no employment rights.”

Stan Parker

Party News: Fircroft Summer School (2007)

Party News from the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

This weekend some 40-plus members, sympathisers and Standard-subscribers from as far a field as Italy, Turkey and USA gathered for a weekend of discussion and debate at the annual summer school organised by Birmingham Branch.

Under the theme “Thinkers of the 20th Century” a range of ideas – from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, information technology, literature and philosophy – were reviewed from a socialist perspective and much heated debate followed.

Its not surprising that a recurring issue throughout such a themed weekend is that of “freedom”. Much abused in everyday currency, “freedom” often translates as little more than lower taxes and fewer regulations, issues of little or no concern to world socialists. In contrast, socialists are intensely interested in freedom, whether its the freedom we have to surpass the gene as a constraint on how we live, the freedom to work co-operatively in software development/use software without restrictions, or the more abstract freedom of the individual under the state.

The dystopian visions of Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and George Orwell (1984) then, formed a large part of the discussions around the first two talks from Richard Headicar and Mike Foster respectively. What sort of state do we live in now? Which dismal projection has survived the best ? Probably a bit of both is the answer: Orwell’s boot stamping on the face is still prevalent in many parts of the world as the market system emerges to an ungrateful population of new wage-earners. “Late” capitalist states on the other hand have clearly evolved more complex and subtle forms of oppression, including of course the diversions of Big Brother (the TV “reality” show) and the dubious freedom of consumer choice.

To what extent can you separate the thinker from the thoughts ? While Orwell got his hands dirty down mines, in hotel kitchens and most famously on the frontline in Spain, Aldous Huxley in common with most of the other thinkers risked little more than a paper cut in the drawing rooms of Bloomsbury. Does this influence how we read each author ?

As Marx famously noted, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world the point is to change it”. Someone who has done very little interpretation of the world, but by contrast has undeniably changed it is Richard Stallman. A software engineer turned intellectual property activist, Stallman developed GNU software, CopyLeft and the free software movement. This has inverted contract law to ensure that CopyLeft software (such as Linux operating system) gets the fullest expression of its use value (i.e. it is free to copy and use), but has effectively no exchange value as users have to agree to make available and not restrict access to any amendments made to it. Tristan Miller discussed how this little oasis of “socialistic” production has grown unstoppably within the body of capitalism and effectively mirrors – albeit within the software and digital music communities – all the features of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”.

The subject of freedom of the individual phenotype (e.g. human) as opposed to the dubious constraints of biological determinism arose during Adam Buick’s introduction to the cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who is best known for his contributions during the middle part of last century to the nature v nurture debate. It is likely that his writings will stand the test of time better than the more recent fashions of biological determinism – sociobiology and evolutionary psychology – as typified by the “popular” science writers Richard Dawkins, E O Wilson and Steven Pinker. If human nature is slowly becoming less of an ideological “barrier to socialism “than it once was, it will be due to the painstaking work of real scientists such as Montagu.

Simon Wigley got the short straw in having to present the ideas of the Frankfurt School of philosophy shortly after a large Saturday lunch. He stuck to the brief given to him admirably however, particularly given that he had little enthusiasm for these ideas, as he made clear. Whilst some in the audience wanted to shoot the piano player, others were grateful that Simon had done the hard work of reading this stuff and translating it from the English for our benefit.

Personally speaking I gained most from this talk – even if it was only to gain confidence that the Frankfurt emperors were indeed just as stark naked as I had always suspected, and that rather than being extensions to marxist philosophy, the ideas of Adorno, Habermas et al (along with the post-modern ideas they set the scene for) are negations of class-based analysis, of the enlightenment, and even of the scientific method that drove it.

The material conditions of capitalism really haven’t changed that much in the last century – and our philosophies really don’t look like they need to change much either. Anyone who thinks that world socialists are intellectuals, academics or armchair philosophers would have been pleasantly surprised at the disdain with which these ideas – far removed from anything actually to do with working class experience – were discussed. Habermas could have dug coal during the Spanish Civil War for all I know, but – judged on their own merit – his ideas still should not be taken seriously.

In summary, there is of course a perpetual tension between theory and practice that no political organisation, whether liberal, marxist or anarchist, gets right all the time. However, assisted by a plentiful supply (according to need of course) of the local Black Country beer, and the opportunity to catch up with old comrades and new sympathisers, most attendees I spoke with left the weekend feeling stimulated, reinvigorated and better-prepared for the more practical need to spread the socialist case. Surely, the ideal balance between ideas and action.

Brian Gardner

Blogger's Note:

The Socialism or Your Money blog also carries this report from July 2007, where there are some interesting comments arising out of Brian's report of the Summer School.

Freud and Marxism (2) (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first part of this article appeared in our September issue

For Freud, there was an inevitable and necessary conflict between the individual and society. Inevitable because the id instincts could never be fulfilled; the id was insatiable and social reality set limits on what could be provided. Necessary because the development of civilization required the repression and sublimation of the instincts to provide the energy needed for the production of culture.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Freud was at most a liberal reformer. He never questioned the socio-economic foundations of capitalism, nor criticised its specific ideologies. His criticisms were limited to the level of sexuality, in favour of a loosening of restraints on sexual expression.

Freud did not hold out much hope for any radical social change. Indeed, he wrote off most radical hopes as a search for “consolation”:

  “For at bottom that is what they are all demanding—the wildest revolutionaries no less passionately than the most virtuous believers.” (Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930).

Psychoanalysis, therefore, does not seem a likely candidate for a psychology compatible with Marxian social and political theory. Nevertheless, there have been a number of attempts over the last sixty years to adapt Freud’s views so that they can form the foundation for a Marxian psychology.

Freudo-Marxism

The first concerted attempt at an integration of Marx and Freud occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time this was considered a bold and unconventional step. The Bolshevik regime had outlawed psychoanalysis, preferring the physiological reductionism of Ivan Pavlov as the orthodoxy. Although Trotsky had been sympathetic to psychoanalysis, his voice no longer counted after 1923. Instead, Lenin’s prudish accusation that Freud was poking about in sexual matters was to be the orthodox Bolshevik view.

Within the psychoanalytic movement the integration of Freud and Marx was suggested by a few, but with little success. The most vociferous proponent was Wilhem Reich. However, by the mid 1930s, he had been expelled from the psychoanalytic movement as well as from the Communist Party. It was not until the resurgence of radical politics in the 1960s that Reich’s views on sexual politics were re-examined.

It was around the intellectuals based at the recently formed Institute for Social Research in Germany (more commonly known as the Frankfurt School) that the main Freudo-Marxist debate took place. The attempt to introduce psychoanalysis into this school’s own particular brand of Marxism was part of its desire to free itself of what it saw as the straightjacket of orthodox Marxism. The director of the Institute, Max Horkheimer, had had an interest in Freud from the 1920s. What attracted him to Freud was a desire to find a psychology different from the instrumental utilitarianism that he felt dominated Marxism.

However, the main work of forging links between Marx and Freud was carried out by two other members of the Frankfurt School: Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. It was through Fromm, himself a psychoanalyst, that the Institute first attempted to reconcile Marx and Freud, in a series of articles that he wrote for their journal, beginning in 1932. But even before joining the Institute Fromm had written The Development of the Dogma of Christ in 1931, his first major statement of the problem.

It was only in the 1940s and 1950s that Marcuse acquired a serious interest in Freud, unveiling his views in 1955 with the publication of Eros and Civilization. Along with Reich’s works, this formed the core of material that fuelled the debates in the 1960s and 1970s before the introduction of feminist theory into the Freud-Marx arena.

Although these three intellectuals shared a common interest in integrating Marx and Freud, their views on how this should be achieved were very different. The movement could not agree on even the basic requirements for integration. Fromm attacked Reich; Fromm attacked Marcuse; Marcuse attacked Fromm and Reich. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the debate attracted only a few adherents of either Freud or Marx.

In Western Europe the end of the First World War sparked off a number of working class uprisings that seemed to some to herald the imminent overthrow of capitalism. But, with varying degrees of difficulty, these uprisings were put down. In the wake of these failures there followed the rise of Stalinism and of Fascism, both finding a significant level of support from the working class. To many Marxists such events were incomprehensible. The means of production were sufficiently developed to provide the objective conditions for socialism, yet the subjective side, working class consciousness, seemed to be moving in the opposite direction with socialist ideas becoming less and less attractive.

This divergence of objective and subjective was seen as suggesting a major deficiency in Marxist theory: an inadequate understanding of the individual and of how irrational ideology could be accepted, when it was clearly not in the interest of the working class. Socialist consciousness did not follow automatically with the growth of the means of production. Somehow working class consciousness could be manipulated to ensure that workers willingly accepted capitalist ideology and submission to authoritarian control. In the search for an answer to this most crucial of questions, Freud seemed appropriate with his emphasis on the role of the irrational and unconscious in human affairs, suggesting that capitalist ideology penetrated deep into the unconscious and repressed instincts that might otherwise challenge the social order.

Reich and Sexual Revolution

Reich was aware of the central role of ideology, or false consciousness, in social oppression. The task of psychoanalysis was to account for the mechanisms whereby the economic base of society could be internalized to comprise a set of unconscious beliefs that would provide an obstacle to revolutionary consciousness. For Reich, the desire to change the social conditions of capitalism is a natural response of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis, therefore, was seen as a process of undoing the repression of patriarchal capitalism and releasing the individual to act in accordance with his or her individual desires.

Reich based his views on Freud’s notion of the libido and its repression, leading to neurosis. Poverty and bad housing gave rise to sexual repression and the damming up of sexual energy that would otherwise be released. Sexuality, for Reich, was expressed as heterosexual orgasm based on the genitals. Sexual repression did not exist in primitive cultures, argued Reich, and only emerged with class interests, being one of the main ways the ruling class maintained its domination. Within the personality this repression is achieved by the build up of a character armour (the ego), as a result of the conflict between the sexual instincts of the id and the requirements of a repressive society.

The character structure is formed in childhood and embodies the ideology of an earlier era. It is this force of tradition that accounts for the lack of correspondence between objective and subjective factors. Reich saw the family as the main vehicle for the reproduction of sexual repression. This led to a respect for authority, which was functional for the child’s future role of worker and servile citizen. In the family, authority was in the father and was cased on the subordination of women. It was the ruthless sexual repression to which the “lower middle class” was exposed that, said Reich, created the authoritarian fixation on which Nazism fed.

Any political revolution, he concluded, must also be a sexual revolution, otherwise all the old authoritarian ideology embedded in the character armour would return. Thus, Reichian therapy aimed at breaking through this armour and allowing the instinctual sexual energies to be fully released and satisfied.

Such a viewpoint is one of the views that uses a concept of human nature as a justification for social change. Reich’s main and radical modification of Freud was in the historicisation of repression, of its restriction to class society. Socialist society, concluded Reich, would have no repression; the free expression of sexual energy would result in enjoyment, comradeship and mutuality.

Marcuse and Surplus Repression

It was on the issue of repression that Herbert Marcuse attacked Reich; for, like Freud, Marcuse held that repression of the libido was a necessary condition for civilisation. Bui Marcuse, too, introduced a historical dimension to repression. This he did by the distinction between basic and surplus repression.

Basic repression was necessary for the continuation of the human race in civilization, whereas surplus repression was necessary only for social domination. The necessity of repression varies with the level of technology and productiveness. Given a constant amount of repression, more of it will be surplus in a society of plenty than in one of scarcity.

Marcuse also introduced a historical element into the reality principle as the law of the ego. He argued that in different historical periods it took different forms. Under capitalism it took the form of the performance principle, ensuring that the libido was repressed during alienated labour. The only period during which the libido was released was during the workers’ brief recreation time.

Since the performance principle was based on the need to overcome material scarcity, the technological advance it resulted in reduced the problem of scarcity and therefore weakened the basis for its continued existence. With the growth in the possibility of pleasure as scarcity became less and less of a problem, more of the repression became surplus. More and more effort was put into warding off the possibility of rebellion by increasing the extent to which the productive capacities were turned against the individual; there was thus an increase in state repression and the manipulation of consciousness.

For Marcuse, the spiral of surplus repression is broken by the power of imagination and fantasy within the unconscious and by the pursuit of sex for pleasure rather than procreation. Revolutionary change would occur not with the development of socialist consciousness in the working class, but through the development of art and play. It was these aspects of Marcuse that were irresistible to the pleasure-seeking radicals of the 1960s.

Erich Fromm’s Social Psychology

For Erich Fromm, the main task was to use psychoanalysis to provide the link between ideological superstructure and socio-economic base. Marx, he argued, had the beginnings of a psychology, seeing humans as having certain basic drives (hunger, love, and so on) which seek gratification. But other psychological insights were needed. Marxists such as Kautsky and Bernstein had proposed inborn moral instincts that would account for the demand for socialism. Fromm viewed such notions as idealistic whereas psychoanalysis was a materialist, historical and social science.

Freudian drive theory was compatible with Marxism. Also, Fromm added, both Marx and Freud agreed in regarding consciousness not as the ultimate motor of history, but as the reflection of other, hidden forces. To Marx, these forces were human’s instincts, needs and capacities which had become hidden because of the alienation in capitalist society.

Each society, Fromm argued, had its own libidinal structure, a combination of basic human drives and of social factors. The task of analytical social psychology was to understand the effects of the socio-economic substructure on the basic psychic drives, and especially sexuality due to its ability of being displaced, sublimated and satisfied in fantasies. Childhood experiences in particular were important as the family was the agent of society.

A valid social psychology, said Fromm, must recognise that when the socio-economic base of society changed so did the social function of the libido. Thus, for Fromm the Oedipus complex was not a universal aspect of human development but was restricted to patriarchal societies. In general, the instinctual apparatus was given but highly modifiable; the role of primary formative factors went to the economic conditions.

Feminism and Freud

The resurgence of the women’s liberation movement and the corresponding development of feminist theory since the late 1960s produced a second movement for the development of Freudo-Marxism.

At first the varieties of feminist thought found much to criticise in Freud. For example, Freud’s account of female psychology rests heavily on the concept of “penis envy” (the awareness of lack in comparison with the male), with the implication that the woman wants sex not for pleasure but for the restitution of her lost penis via male penetration. For Freud, only the male is really a full human being; the woman is a crippled, castrated man.

However, a turning point in the evaluation of Freud by feminism occurred in 1974 with the publication of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Consciousness-raising techniques, which had been a prominent feature of the feminist movement, had failed to free women of their patriarchal feminine ideology and desires. This suggested that these were more deeply rooted in the mind and were not capable of being rejected solely at the conscious level. Psychoanalysis seemed to provide the concepts which would enable feminists to understand how patriarchal ideology functioned by being internalized into the unconscious layers of the personality. The earlier explanation of social conditioning into sexual roles was rejected as inadequate for concentrating on surface appearances and being unable to deal with the depth of penetration of feminine ideology Psychoanalysis was seen as offering an explanation of the formation of sexual identity and gender formation. But the appropriation of Freud had to be a critical one; his biological reductionism and sexism had to be seen not as the essence of his views but merely the result of his own unconscious acceptance of patriarchal ideology.

Mitchell’s work encouraged feminists to pursue this dialogue with Freud and post-Freudian theory. For Freud, the resolution of the Oedipal conflict with the father was the most significant period in development. But in recent years feminists have focussed on the pre-Oedipal period and on the role of the relationship between infant and mother. It is during this period, according to Object Relations Theory, that the differences between masculine and feminine personality characteristics are formed.

From this perspective, change from “patriarchal society” is seen as coming about through men and women sharing child care to provide both sons and daughters with the conditions for their relational capacities to be fully developed. But it is difficult to see how such changes in child care can lead to changes in the basis of society. As a political programme this can only lead to failure. If social change is to come then socio-economic foundations themselves must be attacked. Ideological struggle and change in individual relations are important, but political power is the only way to change basic social relations.

While feminists are justified in analysing the role of the family in the construction of the individual, other influences are also important. There are other, more significant sites where individuality is forged—those connected with capital and the state. The personal may be political, but the political is not personal. It is in the failure to reveal the interconnectedness between the personal, ideological, political and economic that Freudo-feminism is at its weakest. What is needed is not just a castrating of Freud, but a more radical critique.

Ed Blewitt

What about Marx? (2014)

Book Review from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market–Based Society’, By Paul Verhaeghe. Scribe.

This book, written by a Belgian academic and translated from the Dutch, is fundamentally an attack on ‘neo-liberalism’. He sees it as psychologically extremely destructive and socialists would concur with his withering critique. The great problem is that without any political understanding (which Marx would have provided) he sees this ideology as something new rather than merely the latest propaganda that seeks to justify the continuation of capitalism. One is tempted to think that his scorn is generated (as he indicates) by the penetration of the ideology into his own realm of teaching and psychotherapy ; industrial workers might say, with some justification: ‘welcome to our world’.

With its attempt to measure everything and so turn quality into quantity capitalism famously knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Another flaw in Verhaeghe’s analysis is the contention that human identity is wholly dependent on the relationship with parents who represent moral and ethical values. Socialists would contend that man’s relationship with nature through his desire to constructively change it (his or her work) is fundamental to all human identity and its absence in capitalism is the real genesis of alienation. Verhaeghe has not understood that working to make profits for the parasite class is fundamental to capitalism and as such can never offer mankind the kind of meaningful fulfilling work that he advocates. And so he joins the countless other critics who want to reform the system without really understanding it. His dismisses socialism which conflates with the leftist regimes of the past.

Verhaeghe’s knowledge of Freud is extensive (as one would expect) but it does serve as a warning that a purely psychological approach to mankind’s travails can be very misguided. The work of Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse is infinitely superior to this short book because, although dealing with the same subject, the political knowledge expressed is on a par with their psychological understanding. With the exception of one passing reference to Theodore Adorno the author would seem oblivious to the work of the Frankfurt School. This is very odd since they were focused on the very same subject of the book.

Unfortunately the author of this book has no political weaponry with which to destroy  the system that he so clearly despises.

Wez.

Barbarians at the gate (1991)

From the April 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the United States and to a lesser extent in Britain, university departments in the Humanities (Classics, Literature, Languages, History, Philosophy, etc.) are emptying of both students and teachers. Education is giving way to what is in effect vocational training: Business Studies, Law, and Medicine. Scientists are disappearing down tunnels of specialisation, unable to communicate even with each other. Twenty percent of all American students are choosing economics since this is seen as the way to make the most money. The best-paid jobs for scientists are in armaments or patent medicine. The barbarians are at the gate.

None of this is new. Alarm at the state of scholarship has been voiced for most of the century. The extension of higher education to members of the working class has been blamed for the trend by some—“More Means Worse"—particularly in Britain after the 1944 Education Act. In the United States such critics blame the upheavals of the Sixties and positive discrimination in favour of women and blacks.

The majority view has been that the malaise goes deeper and has been around a lot longer than these phenomena. "The World's Classics Compressed Into A Few Chapters” was satirised by the Canadian Stephen Leacock in the thirties. Others winced at Readers' Digest, The Five Foot Shelf Of Books (specify your colours), potted literature, “crackerbarrel philosophy", homogenized culture, pasteurised art. Great Thoughts of Great Men, etc.

In England the novelist Richard Aldington had complained that the best poets had gone into advertising. “Phyllo-san fortifies the over forties!" was a better piece of alliteration than could be found in any literary review and "My Goodness, My Guinness!" was nearly as good.

Whine of muzak

We should not be surprised at this, nor at the fact that most artistic and musical creativity is being put to the task of selling soap powder and toilet paper, chocolate bars and preparations to make your armpits charmpits. Talented men and women are discovering fulfilment in drawing Noddy characters and training articulate monkeys to urge us that life will not be complete without this or that product. The whine of muzak from some twentieth century Mozart follows us round the supermarket and the pop-music industry goes through its weekly production cycle.

A third of the American population is said to be functionally illiterate. In Britain Peter Morgan, director general of the Institute of Directors, has complained that 60 percent of British children leave school at sixteen—and two-thirds of them without any academic qualifications. We could add that the only literature any of them are likely to have come into contact with is advertising jingles. It does not seem to occur to him either that a market-dominated world is unlikely to produce a different result. He refers to continental Europe where a marginally happier situation reigns, but we should expect similar economic conditions to produce similar results in the long run. Cultural traditions there have put drag chains on the slide to barbarism—as they have in Scotland—but one would have to be a real optimist to hope for the future of education.

The problem lies in the collision between human values and the scientific market-directed machine which is colonising every aspect of our private worlds, cultural, intellectual, and emotional. The application of cost-benefit analysis to tastes like plaster-ducks-on-the-wall versus Michaelangelo’s David, or Gandhi versus Heinrich Himmler, or the Good Samaritan versus Ariel Sharon can only lead to the conclusion that a little of what you fancy does you good. Eating people is not wrong, just a matter of taste.

Market madhouse

Since the 1920s the Frankfurt School in Germany—Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Lukács, Habermas—and, more recently, the post-war Paris thinkers like Castoriadis and André Gorz have tried to deal with the crisis this has created in philosophy. The spreading application of the criteria of the physical sciences to non-physical things, like taste and goodness, has cut the ground from under the philosophers. If they can't be measured, the argument goes, they are nonsense at worst, and a mere grunt of pleasure or squeal of pain at best.

One conservative critic, the American professor Allan Bloom in his The Closing of the American Mind, has written of the fate of those condemned to trying "to find their way through the technical smorgasbord of the current school system, with its utter inability to distinguish between the important and unimportant in any way other than by the demands of the market".

If he thinks deeply about that last clause, he might be able to add his bit to the efforts of those of us who are trying to find our way not only through the crisis-ridden school system but out of the market-dominated madhouse we inhabit as well.

Ken Smith

To Have or To Be . . . (1995)

From the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The title of this article is taken from the book of the same name by the psychologist, Erich Fromm. It is probably true to state that many Socialist Party members view psychology with some suspicion because of its tendency to see “abnormal” human behaviour in isolation; but Fromm is in no doubt that it is our sick society that leads to such behaviour, and not the reverse. Thus, his ideas are worthy of study by socialists.

Fromm commences To Have Or To Be by stating that the failure of capitalism, aside from its economic contradictions lies in its two main premises:

  “The first is ‘that the aim of life is happiness, defined as the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need a person may feel (radical hedonism) “;
   The second is ‘that egotism, selfishness, and greed, as the system needs to generate them in order to function, leads to harmony and peace.'”

With regard to the first premise, Fromm distinguishes between subjectively felt needs (desires) whose satisfaction leads to momentary pleasure, and objectively valid needs that are rooted in human nature, and whose realisation is conducive to human growth which produces “well-being”.

Fromm notes the contradiction between the concept of unlimited pleasure and the ideal of disciplined work, and between an obsessional work ethic and the ideal of complete laziness. “Both contradictory attitudes”, we are told, “correspond to an economic necessity; twentieth-century capitalism is based on maximal consumption of the goods and services produced as well as on routinised teamwork”.

Fromm sums up the first section by stating that “… (the) pursuit of happiness does not produce well-being”. We are a society of notoriously unhappy people lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent – people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save!

The second psychological premise of capitalism, that the pursuit of individual egoism leads to harmony and peace, is equally rejected by Fromm. To be an egoist means:

  “I want everything for myself that possessing, not sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because if my aim is having, I am more the more I have. “
   "I can never be satisfied, because there is no end to my wishes: I must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less. “

Fromm is in no doubt that the passion for having must lead to never-ending class war and, in global terms, international war. He states that “Greed and peace preclude each other”. He is also in no doubt that the development of an economic system as an autonomous entity, independent of human needs and human will, is a recent development. The question, therefore, is no longer “What is good for Man?” but “What is good for the system?” – and the assumption is that the latter is good for the former.

And this assumption is bolstered by the further assumption:

  “That the very qualities that the system required of human nature – egotism, selfishness and greed – were innate in human nature; hence, not only the system but human nature itself fostered them.”

Societies in which egotism, selfishness and greed did not exist, were supposed to be “primitive” and their inhabitants “childlike”. People refused to recognise that their traits were not natural drives that caused industrial society to exist, but that they were the products of social circumstances.

Fromm reinforces his assertion with the little-known, but surprising, fact that the majority of the world’s languages have no word for “to have”. Such languages express possession in the form “it is to me”, whilst others have only developed the construction “I have” at a much later date. “This fact”, argues Fromm, “suggests that the word for ‘to have’ develops in connection with the development of private property, while it is absent in societies with predominantly functional property; that is, possession for use”. And “While private property is supposed to be natural and a universal category, it is in fact an exception rather than the rule if we consider the whole of human history.”

Thus, for Fromm, the difference between “being” and “having” is between a society centred around persons and one centred around things such as property, profit and power. The distinction is between “I have knowledge” and “I know” – where “knowing” means to “see reality in all its nakedness”.

Fromm therefore concludes that the character traits engendered by our socio-economic system are pathogenic, and produce sick people and a sick society. Given that fact, we are headed for an economic catastrophe unless we change our social system. The physical survival of the human race depends on it.

Richard Layton

Blogger's Note:

From the same issue of the Socialist Standard, see also 'And Fromm Where . . . '