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Cultural Marxism "original" definition

The section on CM currently says:

• Originally the term had a niche academic usage within Cultural Studies where it described The Frankfurt School's objections to forms of capitalist culture they saw as having been mass-produced and imposed by a top-down Culture Industry, which they claimed was able to cause the reification of identity, alienating individuals away from developing an authentic sense of self, culture and class interests.[56][57][58][59][60][excessive citations]

Regardless of previous primary topic/conspiracy theory etc debates, this is simply a false statement at every step, and not one supported by any of the, as noted, excessive number of citations. The broader, arguably original usage of the term was not "within" cultural studies and it did not apply just to the Frankfurt School, let alone solely to one aspect of FS thinking. If we're going to have this back-to-front set up, with the term subsumed into a page about an entirely discrete thing and its pejorative use prioritised over its serious use, it at least needs to be accurate. N-HH talk/edits 09:56, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

It is much more productive if you would propose content that you would like to replace this with. Please do so. Jytdog (talk) 10:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's the second part of the process. Having pointed out the problem, I'll get to a possible solution when I get a moment. As you know, this page tends to get bogged down in endless debates once anything opens up, and trying to sort out the crap on it is often not an appealing prospect. There's no point proposing an actual change if people are just going to come in and argue at length as to why what we already have is just fine. N-HH talk/edits 11:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

"...did not apply just to the Frankfurt School" yes; hence the inclusion of "The Birmingham School" who are considered to have developed a "British Cultural Marxism" - which is a somewhat distinct form (the main difference being that the frankfurters put high culture on a pedestal, whereas the Birmingham School were more interested in working class culture). But as I tend to say to you; this is not a topic that has a large array of quality sources available; perhaps due to the fact that the term never met large scale usage within academia (never 'caught on' so to speak). The term has instead been re-invigorated by the conservative and alt-right media; often with little to no understanding of The Frankfurt School's theories or arguments. For instance; Frankfurt Schoolers (Nancy Fraser and Jurgen Habermas) critique identity politics and post modernism; where as the alt-right tend to believe The Frankfurt Schoolers are post modernists & support identity politics. That's the nature of WP:FRINGE/conspiracy theory topics (lots of opinion, not enough fact). Look forward to hearing your proposed changes. --Jobrot (talk) 03:12, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

As ever, this has immediately gotten somewhat discursive and defensive, as I suggested it would. I posted some broad descriptions and sources when the broader question was discussed on my talk page a while back, and those are what I would look to. That said, making a minor tweak along those lines would still leave the rest of the section a mess (I believe there's a phrase about lipstick and pigs, or polish and turds). Perhaps now at least the error has been pointed out, one of the editors who is actually responsible for this mess (eg those who supported it via the RFC above) could try to sort it out rather than them expecting someone else to do it for them. In the meantime I'll just keep advising people to disregard WP as a source for information about politics. N-HH talk/edits 21:18, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Or you could just; write some text out for inclusion in the section. Then we can discuss it and put it in if it's appropriately sourced and editorially acceptable (ie. the proposed text is not blanking other more relevant content, and the effected section still reads in a straight forwards manner). That's how Wikipedia works. I suggest approaching edits from an editorial manner rather than a political one. Threats that you'll "keep advising people to disregard WP as a source for information about politics." don't exactly help - we're meant to be wp:here to improve Wikipedia in wp:goodfaith as an encyclopedia. --Jobrot (talk) 02:11, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Also in regards to your original complaint; the current description that The Frankfurt School was objecting to "forms of capitalist culture they saw as having been mass-produced and imposed by a top-down Culture Industry" is entirely accurate. Here is one such example of Adorno doing just that.

I believe earlier discussions on your talk page had me fairly convinced that "Cultural Marxism" was just an early deformation of the much more common term "Critical Marxism" (which may have later become Critical Theory). You'd probably have better luck starting a page on Critical Marxism as there are far more academic references for that term (who knows, it may eventually result in a merge). --Jobrot (talk) 04:38, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Cultural Marxism

A loose Marxist movement seeking to apply critical theory to matters of family composition, gender, race, and cultural identity within Western society. It started to be a more definable with Adorno and Horkheimer that highlight the importance cultural rather than economic problems in their analyses and theories(http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803121845122). IBestEditor (talk) 00:32, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Neutrality is required and selecting information in a negative sense is to reflecting. By selecting two sources is called WP:CHERRYPICKING and is not enough to label a party Far-Right. Simplistic labelling is not appropriate and misrepresents the idea that WIKIPEDIA article should fairly represents all significant viewpoints WP:WEIGHT. Editors should take heed of not basing articles on opinion pieces from selected journalists and stating them as facts WP:YESPOV, WP:NOTOPINION. When a statement is an opinion (a matter which is subject to dispute) it should be attributed to the source that offered the opinion using inline-text attribution - WP:ASSERT. Also avoid falling in the trap of WP:SYN i.e. Synthesis of published material that advances a position.

Failure to do so often violates Wikipedia's policies and guidelines:

• WP:NPOV (policy): Neutral point of view, by selectively presenting one point of view from a source that actually includes two or more that conflict with each other
• WP:OR (policy): No original research, by presenting a statement not supported by any source, not even the cited sourcing
• WP:UNDUE (policy): Not giving undue weight to a view, by omitting information that shows that it is relatively unimportant
• WP:SOAP: Opinion pieces. Some topics, particularly those concerning current affairs and politics, may stir passions and tempt people to "climb soapboxes" (for example, passionately advocate their pet point of view), Wikipedia is not the medium for this.
• WP:PROMOTION : Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment for any political view point, be it nationalist or antinationalist

Activists, like all editors, must understand the fundamental importance of "Five pillars" and must be very careful of not falling in to the Partisanship cycle. Value-laden labels WP:LABEL , may express contentious opinion and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources, which is not the case in this article. So please, no Wikipedia:Propaganda & Wikipedia:No holy wars and try to imagine yourself in your opponents shoes before calling him a facist, racist, sodomit or Far-right extremist.

By trying Wikipedia:Writing for the opponent you can allow yourself to edit an article from the perspective of a viewpoint opposed to your own. By doing so, you can sharpen and apply your neutral point of view editing skills. Try Wikipedia:Writing for the opponent editing an article from the perspective of a viewpoint opposed to your own and by doing so, you can sharpen and apply your neutral point of view editing skills.IBestEditor (talk) 00:51, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

There's already a page for Western Marxism, your source does nothing to connect the "Cultural Marxism" of the Frankfurt School to progressive or identity politics. That is in fact not what they were about or known for (hence their many run-ins with Feminism). They certainly didn't have anything to do with Post-Modernism hence Frankfurter Jurgen Habermas being THE key critic of post-modern thought.

No the Frankfurt School's neo-marxism came in the form of criticizing the Culture industry, and Hegemony - which are both already covered in the section. In doing so they may have created the space for other discussions - but that doesn't make them responsible for modern politics - and it doesn't extend or transplant "Cultural Marxism" to a modern context. --Jobrot (talk) 13:19, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

The Cultural marxism section is a mess. It's long and flabby, and full of piecemeal quotes. DrVentureWasRight (talk) 18:12, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there's any prohibitions on the current length if the topic warrants it; and the complexity of this topic would seem to. As for "piecemeal quotes" - another way to look at that would be; good quality sourcing without deferring WP:OR. This section has been bombarded with complaints about WP:NPOV and so using direct quotes is one way to minimize complaints. --Jobrot (talk) 01:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

It's not that there are strict rules but we want our articles to be concise. It's a hugely long section given it's relative importance (low). Ideally, we want the section to describe where the term came from, and where/how it's used. Using a quote can't really avoid NPOV. The choice of quote and the author are huge. Even then, small quoted fragments of what a person has said rip out all context of what the person was saying. A quote should be long enough to cover the entire thought the person was expressing. So the quote by Jérôme Jamin is good, but the quote from Heidi Beirich "“bêtes noires”" is terrible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrVentureWasRight (talk • contribs) 03:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

As I and others have pointed out ad nauseam, but to no effect, there are serious issues here. A page about the Frankfurt School should be a description and appraisal of the school as found in serious, reliable and authoritative sources. Setting out the hostile and polemical views of fringe right-wing figures in great detail and how they use the term "cultural Marxism" (along with, in turn, criticism of those views from the left) has nothing to do with that. Unfortunately, due to a bizarre AFD conclusion, the content of another page was merged here a while back. N-HH talk/edits 10:12, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

N-HH; if a topic is polemic, Wikipedia should represent that (without violating WP:GEVAL or WP:FRINGE of course). We haven't created these conflicting viewpoints; we are merely reporting on them. The subject matter appears on the Frankfurt School page, just as conspiracy theories concerning the Rothschild family appear on their general page Rothschild_family#Conspiracy_theories. This is not unusual for Wikipedia. Most conspiracy theories that Wikipedia covers have the true believers side represented, as well as the academic/skeptical side. Unfortunately due to the lack of common academic usage for the term Cultural Marxism; most sources discuss the conspiracy theory side of the term (the academic meaning of the term not only being far less common, but also being unclear, as well as having several competitors such as neo-marxism, Western Marxism, post-marxism and social marxism, just to name a few. You're welcome to perform a WP:DRV, or take up any of the other suggestions made to on this talk page (or in the archives). My personal favourite (and the one I think would be the most straight forwards for you) - is to draft a page on Critical Marxism, and go from there. It is a more well founded term (academically speaking) and does not carry as much far-right baggage as "Cultural Marxism". All the best. --Jobrot (talk) 14:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The original line from Beirich as found in the source text reads; "Ultimately, this enemy [Cultural marxism] has come to embody a whole host of Lind's bêtes noires: feminists, homosexuals, secular humanists, multiculturalists, sex educators, environmentalists, immigrants, and black nationalists." - I believe this line accurately represents her overall viewpoint on the subject of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. She's a writer for the SPLC, and I don't believe this to be an attempt to misrepresent her politics or to take her unfairly out of context. --Jobrot (talk) 14:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Professor Douglas Kellner

Douglas Kellner is the leading authority on Herbert Marcuse, and was a personal friend. There can not possibly be a better secondary source om the subject. Here is a quotation, first in short version , and the second in a larger version:

......In view of his writings and activity both before and after the publication of One-Dimensional Man, it is clear that he fervently desired total revolution, described as a radical upheaval and overthrow of the previously existing order, bringing about wide-ranging changes that would eliminate capitalism and establish a new liberated society and way of life.

— Douglas Kellner THE NEW LEFT AND THE 1960s

... Marcuse supported strategies of militant confrontation politics from about 1965 to 1970, then shifted to the advocacy of political education and the formation of small oppositional groups modeled on workers' councils; during the 1970s he called for a "United Front" politics and the long march through the institutions. Throughout, Marcuse remained faithful to a Marxist tradition of revolutionary socialism represented by Marx, Luxemburg and Korsch, while he increasingly criticized orthodox Marxist-Leninist conceptions of revolution and socialism. Marcuse was the only member of the original Frankfurt School who enthusiastically supported political activism in the 1960s, gearing his writing, teaching and political interventions towards New Left struggles. The result was a remarkable series of writings, from "Repressive Tolerance" in 1965 up until his death in 1979, which attempted to articulate the theory and practice of the New Left while repoliticizing critical theory. Some key examples of texts that articulate the theory and politics of the New Left and that could inspire oppositional theory and politics for the contemporary era are collected in this volume. Marcuse's political involvement in New Left politics won him notoriety as a guru of the student movement, thereby creating a heated political-intellectual situation that made it extremely difficult to appraise his works dispassionately and to measure his larger contributions to critical theory....The year 1968 has been widely celebrated as the year of revolution and Marcuse was excited by the worldwide student movement that seized universities from Berkeley to Columbia and that culminated in the May 1968 upheaval in Paris where students and workers threatened the existing French system and which Marcuse observed at first hand...In Marcuse's view, the French student protest movement, like the one in the United States and elsewhere, represents a total protest, not only against specific evils and against specific short-comings, but at the same time, a protest against the entire system of values, against the entire system of objectives, against the entire system of performances required and practiced in the established society. In other words, it is a refusal to continue to accept and abide by the culture of the established society. They reject not only the economic conditions, not only the political institutions, but the entire system of values which they feel is rotten to the core. And in this sense I think one can indeed speak of a cultural revolution...In view of his writings and activity both before and after the publication of One-Dimensional Man, it is clear that he fervently desired total revolution, described as a radical upheaval and overthrow of the previously existing order, bringing about wide-ranging changes that would eliminate capitalism and establish a new liberated society and way of life.

— Douglas Kellner THE NEW LEFT AND THE 1960s

Now lets examine the first sentence in the article: "'Cultural Marxism' in modern political parlance refers to a conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of a movement to take over and destroy Western society." Is that not what Kellner writes, except Kellner states that there is no conspiracy involved, that Marcuses agenda was open and public? Razzham (talk) 12:07, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

No where is "Cultural Marxism" mentioned in those quotes, and both Herbert Marcuse and Douglas Kellner already have their own individual pages on Wikipedia. --Jobrot (talk) 14:26, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

But it does prove that Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt was promoting "a movement to take over and destroy Western society". Is that not exactly what the current text denies? Razzham (talk) 15:27, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

No it doesn't; it proves that Douglas Kellner has opinions.

Marcuse was not the whole of The Frankfurt School, and writing about changing society in revolutionary ways is a very different thing to destroying society. All political types wish to change society.

Marcuse has a right to his opinions, as does Kellner; that does not a 65 year old long running hidden movement make... and as I pointed out; your quotes don't mention "Cultural Marxism". They don't even mention "destroying society"... and there are already sufficient pages on Marcuse and Kellner's viewpoints, as well as pages on many of the individual works by Marcuse (in which he critiques both communism and capitalism).

Look at this quote; these are not the words of someone out to "destroy society":

"It is indeed true that the police should ‘not be abstractly demonized’. And, of course, I too would call the police in certain situations. Recently, with reference to the university (and nowhere else), I formulated it in the following way: ‘if there is a real threat of physical injury to persons, and of the destruction of material and facilities serving the educational function of the university’." -Herbert Marcuse

The Frankfurt School were critics of Culture; and specifically of the values Capitalism could produce when applied as a Culture Industry. That doesn't make the Frankfurt School responsible for all movements that have been interested in culture. There simply is no 65 year old long running movement under the label "Cultural Marxism".

What's more The Frankfurt School has argued against Identity Politics, and Post Modernism, and were protested by Feminists. That is to say they've written in opposition to many of the movements they're blamed for under the accusation of "Cultural Marxism". Sorry; there is no "Cultural Marxist" movement aimed at destroying society; and a few lines from Douglas Kellner does not change that fact. --Jobrot (talk) 15:53, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

It requires interpretation (i.e., OR) to take what Kellner wrote and rephrase it the way you have. Unless you have a reliable secondary that does that, the source cannot be used the way you suggest. In particular we assume that the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxism are the same thing. There are problems anyway with your analysis. Kellner says, "Marcuse was the only member of the original Frankfurt School who enthusiastically supported political activism in the 1960s." So even if what you say applies to Marcuse, the source does not say it applies to the School itself, in fact this is where Marcuse departs from the School. Also, Marcuse did not oppose Western Society, he opposed the direction capitalism was taking it. Perhaps he wanted to save society from the rugged individualists who believed there was "no such thing as society." TFD (talk) 21:41, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

This information is relevant to Marcuse but it does not establish the "cultural Marxism" theory as correct.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:37, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Let me guess, it's just a total coincidence that without knowing anything else about you I know you're a leftist? I wonder why that is? Maybe it's because your motivated reasoning is so clear that there could be a signed letter from the entire Frankfurt School on their desire to destroy Western civilization and you'd still call it a conspiracy theory. You are a disgustingly dishonest individual. Rivalin (talk) 01:59, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

The above content belongs on the article about Marcuse rather than the Frankfurt School. It is highly doubtful that he wanted to overthrow bourgeois "civilisation" since he decided to work for the forerunner of the CIA (the OSS), he and his family were hosted and sheltered by the United States throughout the Cold War until his death. Kellner's quote is just an attempt to create a hagiography for a man who was essentially an opportunist and laughably talk up the revolutionary potential of semi-anarchist kids from Berkeley. Kellner even says in the quote "he increasingly criticized orthodox Marxist-Leninist conceptions of revolution and socialism". So, old Herby was a revisionist who opposed to the legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution. The title of the book "The New Left and the 1960s" also shows that the Cultural Marxism section would be better off on that article rather than here. Claíomh Solais (talk) 23:39, 18 April 2017 (UTC)