This is obviously a large subject, and if I tried to cover every caveat and nuance, it would turn into a dissertation, which isn’t the aim here. That said, I welcome good-faith disagreement. If you found the piece thought-provoking, a 'like' helps it reach others. And if you haven’t already, consider subscribing to get more like this straight to your inbox.
This is a good essay for articulating the transition of Marxism as a failed economic system to neo-Marxism, also called cultural Marxism, where it has become a worldview, a moral code. I like to call it a type of religion, albeit an idolatrous one. One could also call it Leftist morality, which, as this author correctly states, simplistically (and falsely) classifies everyone into oppressed and oppressor categories. Why? It's not for truth or justice, as is commonly supposed. It's a way to seize political power. In a sense, the old type of Marxism (economic) was also based on moral indignation against economic exploitation of the working class. But the working class never fully adopted it, preferring the traditions of family and Christian faith and patriotism, so it was forced on them violently by the Communist elites. Neo-Marxism has been indoctrinated over the course of decades, since the 1960s and 70s, through education and entertainment, and has slowly emerged as the dominant worldview in the West, eroding its foundations. To try to undo this we have to understand it.
"But the working class never fully adopted it, preferring the traditions of family and Christian faith and patriotism" – Yep, this is crucial. Excellent comment, and thanks for reading.
"Consider the tenured professor on six figures teaching wide-eyed students that capitalism is violence." - for some reason these professors are also keen supporters of Russia and China regardless of their economic systems. On the other hand, anyone who read Marx realize that today's "Marxism" has nothing to do with Marx's ideology.
Different in that it lacks any understanding of the working class, but the division into haves and have nots is still there, as is the desire to tear down the 'system' and make their heaven on earth, whether the majority want it or not.
My take is that white middle class people had certain expectations from their college educations, such as being put in charge of other people, having a nice house and being able to eat out or go on holiday to fancy destinations whenever they wanted.
They expected to be richer and more successful than their parents, without understanding that the combination of globalisation, outsourcing and automation meant that white working and middle class incomes had already peaked.
And so what we call neo-Marxism is mostly resentment at loss of relative privilege for uncompetitive white people, and is therefore reactionary.
Superb. That moment has indeed arrived and what we all need is the courage to stand up against it. No more cowering at the insults, there’s too much at stake. We need to have the hide of rhinos and the courage of all the heros who’ve gone before us.
I am anti woke and no Marxist but will push back on this. Marxism survives for the same reason religious puritanism and fascism survives - they all appeal to innate human instincts.
Marxism is a utopian ideology and right wing and left wing utopian ideologies have existed for thousands of years. How many attempts have there been to create a "Kingdom of Heaven" on earth by both right and left wing religious groups? Marxism is an atheist version of that.
I don’t disagree with this at all. I touch on it in the piece – that Marxism survives less as an economic theory and more as a utopian moral framework. My emphasis was on why this version proved so successful within modern institutions, long after its material predictions failed. But yes, the religious characteristics are also crucial.
You're not the only one noticing we are winning. I've encountered Robert Manne's Substack and he is in arms about "Thermidor", what he terms the reaction against the post-68 cultural revolution his generation carried out. This Thermidor is as necessary as the original.
Naturally this is characterised as a "far right" phenomenon. I'm happy people are catching on that this is all the same thing under different labels; and no longer afraid to use the canonical terminology: Cultural Marxism.
(For any Northerners Manne is a famous Australian left academic)
Scrton's observation about intellectuals seeking power through Marxism is spot on. The "memes of reproduction" framing is clever too, though I'd argue Dawkins himself underestimated how aggressively ideas can parasitize institutions once embedded. What intrigues me is how these frameworks collapse when applied outside protected academic environments. The real world keeps serving up falsifying examples, but there's no feedback loop becuz tenure insulates believers from consequence. It's like having a pilot who never has to land the plane.
"What intrigues me is how these frameworks collapse when applied outside protected academic environments". Absolutely – a point I wish I'd made in the piece. Love the plane analogy.
Not just tenure for individual academics, but the huge endowments of the elite universities and their powerful alumni networks help protect these institutions from reality. Guaranteed tuition fee and real estate income has propped up the lesser universities over the last 15 years or so since the credit crunch.
There is no money-back guarantee on a worthless degree, creating a Western higher education sector which is now 'too big to fail'. I recently wrote in my Substack article 'Genius does not scale' about how lesser institutions in the UK will soon find out what 'polycrisis' means unless they can provide better teaching and better value for ordinary students.
I find another useful analogue here is to recognize that our professorial priesthood have replaced what was known in pre-revolutionary France and elsewhere as the the First Estate (Clergy).
Modern secular Westerners often forget how deeply religious history was/is until 10 minutes ago (using the full chronology of humanity) and how every society's rulers needed to come with divine imprimatur, from ancient Sumer and Egypt where kings were also gods through the apotheosis/divination of the Roman emperors and the later European tradition of having new monarchs crowned by priests in church.
Our new First Estate doesn't claim any supernatural or theological aka divine imprimatur, but at the same time they do follow similar procedures and rituals: they spend their younger lives studying dogma and learning sacred texts at schools at the feet of their elders; they do take this (supposed) wisdom down to the masses and preach to them about how to save their souls, they do claim to incarnate a higher purpose and morality, and they do claim that they can tell the saved from the damned.
In the post-Christian post-Marxist West, the new sacred creed promulgated by our First Estate is based on some form of egalitarianism, and a claim that, if given total power, they can use their ideology and "critical consciousness" to free us from the chains of unchosen ties and oppressive structures and create a fairer, more just society—this claim, however vague and however difficult to implement, represents our professorial priesthood's will-to-power, their ultimate credential, in the same way that aristocrats consider their bloodlines and wealth their credential and how generals in the past considered their martial valor and success represented their credential and right to rule.
And in the West we've been subject to egalitarian uprisings for centuries, they seem to be a permanent part of our collective psyche, maybe the obverse of how freedom (esp financial) always creates wealth that becomes hoarded by a few and resented by the many. As long as freedom creates inequality there will always be a market for moral entrepreneurs to gather the angry and resentful into an opposing movement, which now seem to come rooted in the Manichaean oppressor/oppressed binary Marxist worldview. (Hoffer called this new priesthood "adversary intellectuals" and we do seem to produce a massive amount of these.)
But one of the many weak points of these movements seems to be that they are masters of destruction and vilification, but cannot build anything lasting on their own. (You don't send a deconstructionist to construct a better future!). Our new First Estate has now reached the point where they've torn down all the old temples and altars, but instead of their promised utopia, we live in the rubble, anxious, lost and angry.
This is a fascinating addition to the piece. The religious dimension is critical to understanding so much of this, and it’s something I didn’t explore directly but which you’ve laid out very clearly here. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Thanks for the kind words and thanks for the inspiration.
I don't know if you've ever read Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life", but it really changed my perspective.
Once you see how deeply rooted the concept of The Sacred is in human lives and cultures, you see it almost everywhere. It is inescapable and I'm not sure we'd want it otherwise.
See also Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction, which allows the group considering itself oppressed to define its oppression without reference to the other party, or any objective standard.
A dangerous idea which killed at least 50 million people in Schmitt's time, due to his German compatriots positioning their nation as the victim of a Jewish conspiracy, when in fact it was the aggressor twice over.
You have clarified and articulated my own thoughts on this subject far better than I could have, and have added details to my understanding of how this has been happening for so long - thank you.
For me, cultural Marxism is also a symptom of how people behave in late stage empires. It gets increasingly difficult to survive and make money by doing honest work in the private sector. That requires innovation, satisfying customers, finding win-win opportunities, working long hours and perhaps above all else - risk.
Being an entrepreneur is hard, you risk your capital, you have to employ and manage people etc.
The relative appeal of working in government and the civil service is much higher, as are roles in compliance, monitoring, statistics, governance, auditing etc.
I love your Roger Scruton quote - “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it”, he wrote, “but the power it confers on them”.
It reminds me of something I read in John Butler's book - The Golden Revolution revisited. When discussing the Austrian Economic School (AES) of money vs Keynes school.
On p33 -
Keynes and Hayek (AES) in particular engaged in a fierce, ongoing debate [about monetary policy]. Economic historians claim that Keynes eventually won.....because economic policy moved in the direction he prescribed.
This was related to Keynes' proposal that governments run a surplus and save a bit in good times, then smooth out aggregate demand (government spending) in lean times.
The theory makes sense - but practicality it doesn't. Governments use Keynes as a justification for government spending all the time.
Butler makes the point "the Keynesian viewpoint can be seen as a self-serving one". Government officials and bureaucrats of all stripes naturally endorse that which justifies their existence and their innate desire to extend their power and control".
I don't understand why people can't see that centralized structures and are not in their interests? The more centralized and power-seeking they are, the more we should be sceptical of them.
Political parties in particular that are all about control, centralization, a narrow band of elite thinkers. We need more distrust of government!
It was an "economic theory" only in Marx's ahistorical, irrational and perpetually confused mind. (And he never had a job, never made any money for his family, always borrowed and never repaid, fathered children he abandoned, impregnated his elderly servant and never washed -- slovenly, a total reject! Not a man to be admired.) One just has to read but a few of his loathsome writings to see their utter falsehoods right there on the page. Bad facts, no evidence, made-up evidence to support dubious and specious claims. Pseudo-intellectuals adopted it because anyone could assert anything and make up the evidence as they went along. But to those who wanted some justification for theft, torture and murder, it was always -- ALWAYS -- propaganda. That's why it is still useful -- only less so, because hundreds of millions of people see it for its malignity.
You are correct. This is indeed a large subject. Are you in the USA? Perhaps you are familiar with this author and tv presenter. John Stossel is known for his career as a host on ABC News, Fox Business Network, and Reason TV.
This is obviously a large subject, and if I tried to cover every caveat and nuance, it would turn into a dissertation, which isn’t the aim here. That said, I welcome good-faith disagreement. If you found the piece thought-provoking, a 'like' helps it reach others. And if you haven’t already, consider subscribing to get more like this straight to your inbox.
Wonderful Frederick ! A tour de force of reason in a world full of insanity.
Thanks, Alan!
This is a good essay for articulating the transition of Marxism as a failed economic system to neo-Marxism, also called cultural Marxism, where it has become a worldview, a moral code. I like to call it a type of religion, albeit an idolatrous one. One could also call it Leftist morality, which, as this author correctly states, simplistically (and falsely) classifies everyone into oppressed and oppressor categories. Why? It's not for truth or justice, as is commonly supposed. It's a way to seize political power. In a sense, the old type of Marxism (economic) was also based on moral indignation against economic exploitation of the working class. But the working class never fully adopted it, preferring the traditions of family and Christian faith and patriotism, so it was forced on them violently by the Communist elites. Neo-Marxism has been indoctrinated over the course of decades, since the 1960s and 70s, through education and entertainment, and has slowly emerged as the dominant worldview in the West, eroding its foundations. To try to undo this we have to understand it.
"But the working class never fully adopted it, preferring the traditions of family and Christian faith and patriotism" – Yep, this is crucial. Excellent comment, and thanks for reading.
Wow. Thanks for writing this. You’ve put into words everything I believe about “new marxism”.
Great to hear – thanks for reading.
"Consider the tenured professor on six figures teaching wide-eyed students that capitalism is violence." - for some reason these professors are also keen supporters of Russia and China regardless of their economic systems. On the other hand, anyone who read Marx realize that today's "Marxism" has nothing to do with Marx's ideology.
Different in that it lacks any understanding of the working class, but the division into haves and have nots is still there, as is the desire to tear down the 'system' and make their heaven on earth, whether the majority want it or not.
My take is that white middle class people had certain expectations from their college educations, such as being put in charge of other people, having a nice house and being able to eat out or go on holiday to fancy destinations whenever they wanted.
They expected to be richer and more successful than their parents, without understanding that the combination of globalisation, outsourcing and automation meant that white working and middle class incomes had already peaked.
And so what we call neo-Marxism is mostly resentment at loss of relative privilege for uncompetitive white people, and is therefore reactionary.
Superb. That moment has indeed arrived and what we all need is the courage to stand up against it. No more cowering at the insults, there’s too much at stake. We need to have the hide of rhinos and the courage of all the heros who’ve gone before us.
Too much at stake – exactly! Thanks, TT.
I am anti woke and no Marxist but will push back on this. Marxism survives for the same reason religious puritanism and fascism survives - they all appeal to innate human instincts.
Marxism is a utopian ideology and right wing and left wing utopian ideologies have existed for thousands of years. How many attempts have there been to create a "Kingdom of Heaven" on earth by both right and left wing religious groups? Marxism is an atheist version of that.
I don’t disagree with this at all. I touch on it in the piece – that Marxism survives less as an economic theory and more as a utopian moral framework. My emphasis was on why this version proved so successful within modern institutions, long after its material predictions failed. But yes, the religious characteristics are also crucial.
Marxism claims to be atheist, but is more like a religion where the State is divine, after Hegel.
You're not the only one noticing we are winning. I've encountered Robert Manne's Substack and he is in arms about "Thermidor", what he terms the reaction against the post-68 cultural revolution his generation carried out. This Thermidor is as necessary as the original.
Naturally this is characterised as a "far right" phenomenon. I'm happy people are catching on that this is all the same thing under different labels; and no longer afraid to use the canonical terminology: Cultural Marxism.
(For any Northerners Manne is a famous Australian left academic)
'Reaction' in this context is just a pejorative word for a social change movement someone doesn't like.
Scrton's observation about intellectuals seeking power through Marxism is spot on. The "memes of reproduction" framing is clever too, though I'd argue Dawkins himself underestimated how aggressively ideas can parasitize institutions once embedded. What intrigues me is how these frameworks collapse when applied outside protected academic environments. The real world keeps serving up falsifying examples, but there's no feedback loop becuz tenure insulates believers from consequence. It's like having a pilot who never has to land the plane.
"What intrigues me is how these frameworks collapse when applied outside protected academic environments". Absolutely – a point I wish I'd made in the piece. Love the plane analogy.
Not just tenure for individual academics, but the huge endowments of the elite universities and their powerful alumni networks help protect these institutions from reality. Guaranteed tuition fee and real estate income has propped up the lesser universities over the last 15 years or so since the credit crunch.
There is no money-back guarantee on a worthless degree, creating a Western higher education sector which is now 'too big to fail'. I recently wrote in my Substack article 'Genius does not scale' about how lesser institutions in the UK will soon find out what 'polycrisis' means unless they can provide better teaching and better value for ordinary students.
I find another useful analogue here is to recognize that our professorial priesthood have replaced what was known in pre-revolutionary France and elsewhere as the the First Estate (Clergy).
Modern secular Westerners often forget how deeply religious history was/is until 10 minutes ago (using the full chronology of humanity) and how every society's rulers needed to come with divine imprimatur, from ancient Sumer and Egypt where kings were also gods through the apotheosis/divination of the Roman emperors and the later European tradition of having new monarchs crowned by priests in church.
Our new First Estate doesn't claim any supernatural or theological aka divine imprimatur, but at the same time they do follow similar procedures and rituals: they spend their younger lives studying dogma and learning sacred texts at schools at the feet of their elders; they do take this (supposed) wisdom down to the masses and preach to them about how to save their souls, they do claim to incarnate a higher purpose and morality, and they do claim that they can tell the saved from the damned.
In the post-Christian post-Marxist West, the new sacred creed promulgated by our First Estate is based on some form of egalitarianism, and a claim that, if given total power, they can use their ideology and "critical consciousness" to free us from the chains of unchosen ties and oppressive structures and create a fairer, more just society—this claim, however vague and however difficult to implement, represents our professorial priesthood's will-to-power, their ultimate credential, in the same way that aristocrats consider their bloodlines and wealth their credential and how generals in the past considered their martial valor and success represented their credential and right to rule.
And in the West we've been subject to egalitarian uprisings for centuries, they seem to be a permanent part of our collective psyche, maybe the obverse of how freedom (esp financial) always creates wealth that becomes hoarded by a few and resented by the many. As long as freedom creates inequality there will always be a market for moral entrepreneurs to gather the angry and resentful into an opposing movement, which now seem to come rooted in the Manichaean oppressor/oppressed binary Marxist worldview. (Hoffer called this new priesthood "adversary intellectuals" and we do seem to produce a massive amount of these.)
But one of the many weak points of these movements seems to be that they are masters of destruction and vilification, but cannot build anything lasting on their own. (You don't send a deconstructionist to construct a better future!). Our new First Estate has now reached the point where they've torn down all the old temples and altars, but instead of their promised utopia, we live in the rubble, anxious, lost and angry.
Thanks for the great essay!
This is a fascinating addition to the piece. The religious dimension is critical to understanding so much of this, and it’s something I didn’t explore directly but which you’ve laid out very clearly here. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Thanks for the kind words and thanks for the inspiration.
I don't know if you've ever read Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life", but it really changed my perspective.
Once you see how deeply rooted the concept of The Sacred is in human lives and cultures, you see it almost everywhere. It is inescapable and I'm not sure we'd want it otherwise.
Cheers
Perhaps the modern problem arises when people sacralize themselves and their own desires.
See also Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction, which allows the group considering itself oppressed to define its oppression without reference to the other party, or any objective standard.
A dangerous idea which killed at least 50 million people in Schmitt's time, due to his German compatriots positioning their nation as the victim of a Jewish conspiracy, when in fact it was the aggressor twice over.
You have clarified and articulated my own thoughts on this subject far better than I could have, and have added details to my understanding of how this has been happening for so long - thank you.
Thanks, Jan. I write and research these pieces largely to clarify my own thinking, so it’s good to know others find them useful too.
Brilliant observations here Frederick.
For me, cultural Marxism is also a symptom of how people behave in late stage empires. It gets increasingly difficult to survive and make money by doing honest work in the private sector. That requires innovation, satisfying customers, finding win-win opportunities, working long hours and perhaps above all else - risk.
Being an entrepreneur is hard, you risk your capital, you have to employ and manage people etc.
The relative appeal of working in government and the civil service is much higher, as are roles in compliance, monitoring, statistics, governance, auditing etc.
I love your Roger Scruton quote - “It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it”, he wrote, “but the power it confers on them”.
It reminds me of something I read in John Butler's book - The Golden Revolution revisited. When discussing the Austrian Economic School (AES) of money vs Keynes school.
On p33 -
Keynes and Hayek (AES) in particular engaged in a fierce, ongoing debate [about monetary policy]. Economic historians claim that Keynes eventually won.....because economic policy moved in the direction he prescribed.
This was related to Keynes' proposal that governments run a surplus and save a bit in good times, then smooth out aggregate demand (government spending) in lean times.
The theory makes sense - but practicality it doesn't. Governments use Keynes as a justification for government spending all the time.
Butler makes the point "the Keynesian viewpoint can be seen as a self-serving one". Government officials and bureaucrats of all stripes naturally endorse that which justifies their existence and their innate desire to extend their power and control".
I don't understand why people can't see that centralized structures and are not in their interests? The more centralized and power-seeking they are, the more we should be sceptical of them.
Political parties in particular that are all about control, centralization, a narrow band of elite thinkers. We need more distrust of government!
Fascinating comment – thanks, David!
Awesome piece.
This is excellent. Restacked. Thank you.
It was an "economic theory" only in Marx's ahistorical, irrational and perpetually confused mind. (And he never had a job, never made any money for his family, always borrowed and never repaid, fathered children he abandoned, impregnated his elderly servant and never washed -- slovenly, a total reject! Not a man to be admired.) One just has to read but a few of his loathsome writings to see their utter falsehoods right there on the page. Bad facts, no evidence, made-up evidence to support dubious and specious claims. Pseudo-intellectuals adopted it because anyone could assert anything and make up the evidence as they went along. But to those who wanted some justification for theft, torture and murder, it was always -- ALWAYS -- propaganda. That's why it is still useful -- only less so, because hundreds of millions of people see it for its malignity.
You are correct. This is indeed a large subject. Are you in the USA? Perhaps you are familiar with this author and tv presenter. John Stossel is known for his career as a host on ABC News, Fox Business Network, and Reason TV.
Stossel posted this recently: https://youtu.be/OhZr03g1PI4?si=Af-VZbz3V3xifCzd