Political Correctness as Cultural Marxism

Bill Lind (hat tip, Adam Baldwin:

Second, the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past is about that one thing.

Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good – feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be "victims," and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.

Fourth, both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation. When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions. When a white student with superior qualifications is denied admittance to a college in favor of a black or Hispanic who isn’t as well qualified, the white student is expropriated. And indeed, affirmative action, in our whole society today, is a system of expropriation. White owned companies don’t get a contract because the contract is reserved for a company owned by, say, Hispanics or women. So expropriation is a principle tool for both forms of Marxism.

And finally, both have a method of analysis that automatically gives the answers they want. For the classical Marxist, it’s Marxist economics. For the cultural Marxist, it’s deconstruction. Deconstruction essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts any meaning desired. So we find, for example, that all of Shakespeare is about the suppression of women, or the Bible is really about race and gender. All of these texts simply become grist for the mill, which proves that "all history is about which groups have power over which other groups." So the parallels are very evident between the classical Marxism that we’re familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness.

Of course, the "first" attempts at Marxism failed, in so much that it didn't overtake the globe. So, what did those little Marxists do? They founded a think tank, the Institute for Social Research. They couldn't call it the Institute for Marxism, now could they? Born here was "Critical Theory."

The stuff we’ve been hearing about this morning – the radical feminism, the women’s studies departments, the gay studies departments, the black studies departments – all these things are branches of Critical Theory. What the Frankfurt School essentially does is draw on both Marx and Freud in the 1930s to create this theory called Critical Theory. The term is ingenious because you’re tempted to ask, "What is the theory?" The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative. They explicitly refuse to do that. They say it can’t be done, that we can’t imagine what a free society would look like (their definition of a free society). As long as we’re living under repression – the repression of a capitalistic economic order which creates (in their theory) the Freudian condition, the conditions that Freud describes in individuals of repression – we can’t even imagine it. What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down. And, of course, when we hear from the feminists that the whole of society is just out to get women and so on, that kind of criticism is a derivative of Critical Theory. It is all coming from the 1930s, not the 1960s.

Now, Feminism, gay studies, black studies and all the other offshoots of Critical Theory have, so far, failed to bring around the new Marxism. But, they have a new tool in their belt with dangerous potential. Environmentalism. This article/ speech was given around 2000, but the reality of this today is even more alarming.

Speaking of "Global Warming", Dicentra points us to this little tidbit and has this to say:

Richard Lindzen of MIT finally proves that the founding assumptions of AGW are a crock. [PDF]

AGW promoters say that the more CO2 you get in the atmosphere, the less heat will radiate into space. On page 45, he shows all of the estimates by AGWers as to what will happen with the increased accumulation of CO2.

On the next page, he shows actual measurements of what has happened.

Conclusion? Increased heat in the atmosphere results in increased amounts of heat radiated into space.

Ergo, it’s all wrong. Every bit of it. But then, Lindzen also knows that no one will stop promoting the AGW cause: it’s just too good to stop.

I'm still reading the Lindzen piece, but he quotes Eisenhower:

"Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitue for intellectual curiosity ... The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."

"Global Warming" aside, you know who needs to start cleaning up their act? China. YUCK! Maybe Obama should bring that up while he's over there.