Cultural Marxism Explained

the term cultural Marxism is one that is used heavily in modern discussions dealing with contemporary social issues as well as issues within the church so today in our video we're gonna be explaining exactly what cultural Marxism is and what the roots of it are as well as how we are to evaluate and understand this movement so to begin we must look at the foundations of what Marxism is and then discuss how it was appropriated today into what is sometimes known as cultural Marxism Marxism begins in the nineteenth century with a man named Karl Marx of course with Frederick Engels now Marx and Engels argued that both sociology and anthropology can best be understood by gaining an understanding of class systems now what they argued is that there is an essential economic divide that happens within capitalism and people are basically divided into two groups there is the bourgeois and the proletariat now the bourgeois are those who have the most money and they control the means of production the proletariat are the ones who are abused or used by the bourgeois and do not really have a say in what happens within a culture and it is argued that there is then this class struggle the ruling class as well as those who are poorer the working class in this struggle for Marx outlines the basic structure and foundations of society and for him all of the other inequalities and issues that happen can essentially boil down to these economic ones now Marx also was a follower of Hegel a prominent philosopher in the 19th century who argued that history is in a process a process of change and that history is essentially improving now Marx bought into certain aspects of Hegel's philosophy while he rejected others and so he created his own view of world history that things were coming to a kind of conclusion that things were going to improve there was a kind of synthesis that was going to happen between the antithesis and this thesis as Hegel described and for Marx this would lead to a new form of state that we now know as communism Marx argued that it was inevitable within the progress of history that there would be a socialist revolution of course we have seen how that worked itself out with various communist countries coming into power in the 20th century and as we have seen the results were not all that positive but this so far describes only Karl Marx himself in a very basic overview and probably inadequate one but after this the ideas of Karl Marx shifted and changed and certain thinkers took his ideas about economics and applied them to other areas of social life in particular this was adopted by a school of thought sometimes described as the Frankfurt School being named after Frankfurt Germany where this school was founded now this term the Frankfurt School refers primarily to an institution called the Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 by a number of different thinkers and this is labeled critical theory now critical theory itself is something that is very hard to define and when you read the actual books on critical theory even the authors themselves don't really give a clear definition because it really cannot be defined but broadly speaking critical theory is a theory of supposedly of all of reality or at least that is the intention which is critical critical not just of capitalism but also critical of historic Western thought in the historic Western world and so critical theory plays itself out in all different areas of thoughts including economics but goes far beyond that to social relations as well as things like art but what's really important about this whole movement and how it affects us today is this that with critical theory the ideas of Karl Marx were developed and expanded to relate to all different areas of thought now well Marx thought that all different social relations were essentially and foundationally based upon economics critical Theory began applying this narrative of an oppressed group and an oppressor group and applying it to various aspects of social life and the oppressor was no longer seen as just as the rich or the bourgeois who controlled the means of production but it was expanded to speak about issues of race class and gender classically those are the three that are used the most though there are many other categories that can be discussed in this way as well and it's argued that there are those classes which are oppressors those people who are oppressors are those who are of the privileged class the privileged race as well as the privileged gender and the oppressed are those who are the underprivileged and this broader narrative as seen as a way to understand basically all of reality itself and that's the way that this developed in the culture that we are in today now this was adopted in some ways by Foucault and post-modernism however post-modernism actually denies the essential idea of any overarching meta-narrative at all and that would include the Marxist meta-narrative so certain ideas from Marxism or what is sometimes known now as cultural Marxism were adopted by post modernists though they do not necessarily have the kind of optimism of a social revolution as a necessity as Karl Marx himself did though oftentimes I think it's the case that activists really don't know about the consistency of these various positions with one another and so on our current societal discourse when you hear people talking about an oppressed class and an oppressor and making arguments for certain laws or ideas that necessitate that the oppressor becomes less privileged so that the oppressed can gain some kind of benefit in society that essentially is what we know as cultural Marxism so what do we do with this idea what do we think about cultural Marxism is this a good thing for society or is it a bad thing for society well in some sense the basic ideas of cultural Marxism can only come from a Christian worldview in a Christian perspective now that might seem rather odd and why would I say that Karl Marx himself was quite critical of Christianity as were the Frankfurt School well in the pre-christian world in the West there wasn't really any kind of status for victims or the oppressed if you read the works of Roman or Greek literature you'll see that there really wasn't a care for the oppressed at all that's not to say that nobody cared for oppressed groups but there was no broader understanding in terms of societal structure or morality that would give the victim class any kind of stat whatsoever these values really came through the birth of Christianity going back to the Old Testament we see books like the Prophet Amos speaking about those who are victims or those who are oppressed and the need and the importance of taking care of those who are victimized and oppressed and this becomes a value that is very important for the Christian West and it's something that people care about in the Christian West and should continue to care about however what cultural Marxism has done is taken this Christian foundation and then manipulated it and distorted it while Christians should certainly be caring and considerate of those who are victims those who are oppressed and we have an understanding that all people are made in the image of God whatever their sex race class might be this does not mean that persons themselves must be judged by whatever class they are essentially a part of for Christianity this is not some overarching narrative that we can place everybody into one of these categories of either oppressor or oppressed and this is exactly what you find in modern Marxists and postmodern theory the interesting thing about this of course is now the Christians have become in the minds of some at least the oppressive class and therefore on the wrong side so here now are some of the problems with this Marxist theory first it is problematic when people are treated first and foremost by whatever particular groups that they are a part of rather than as the individuals that they are now certainly we have an identity in our groups and communities as well as we do individually but these group identities do not define absolutely everything about us in this leads to the second problem which is that a lot of these groupings are really arbitrary why is it for example that every white person is classified in a particular group because of race when those white people may be of extremely different economic statuses from very different parts of the world and have completely different life experiences when there's really nothing that unites them at all other than the fact that they have the same skin color it's too simplistic to identify and lump people into groups in this way there are so many aspects of reality that determine what one's privilege is and that doesn't just have to do with whether it might be a skin color or origin or race could be one's attractiveness it could be one's athletic ability it could be one's ability to speak with people or it could be you know ones disabilities which is why people are now talking about being disabled as another kind of underprivileged group as well as able-bodied people having privilege the point is that this list could go on and on and on there are so many different factors that determine what somebody's privilege and under-privileged might be that you really can't simply classify it in any way at all a third problem is that this can actually lead to exactly the same power dynamic that these people are pushing against it is the case that those who are considered to be underprivileged and are fighting against those are privileged that they then use their own class as a way of gaining an upper hand against those who are considered to be in the privileged class and isn't this really just the same kind of power dynamic they're accusing others of and now they're using this narrative as a way to put themselves into power in the final problem is that those with this particular idea seemed to think that society is always in this growth or progress that things are constantly getting better society is getting better and government can and should have more power to be able to enforce these kinds of equality but in reality we know that the world is not necessarily getting better in some ways it is of course in terms of technology and health care and many other advances in human life but as Christians I confess that sin is just a part of reality it's a part of nature this is why Marxists are generally opposed to Christianity a view that says that man is inherently sinful does not really work with an idea that the government must enforce this kind of equality because we must confess that though equality is a good and that we should care for victims and those who are abused and victimized in various different ways we can't force that to change we can't force that to stop now as individuals we can certainly and should help those who are in need in whatever ways that we can and we can talk and disagree and debate about various government policies but the notion that we can bring about some kind of utopian total egalitarian state is simply false well I know that this is a short video and these ideas are probably inadequate they explained because there's not enough time to get into details but this should give you a very basic overview of what people mean when they use the term cultural Marxism now be careful in the way that you use this term don't accuse everyone of being a cultural Marxist whoever speaks about victimization or equality because those things aren't necessarily just tied to cultural Marxism however this idea of cultural Marxism is certainly behind a lot of the arguments that people are making in society today thanks so much for watching if you like this video I want to see others like and subscribe we'll see you next time god bless

Channel: Dr. Jordan B Cooper

Views: 314,681

Keywords: cultural marxism explained, a detailed explanation of cultural marxism, what is cultural marxism, explanation of cultural marxism, Definition of cultural marxism, Christian view of cultural Marxism, Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism, Marxist ideas, Karl Marx, Explanation of Marxist ideas, Critical Theory explained, Frankfurt School explained, Definition of Critical Theory, Postmodernism marxism, Cultural marxist postmodern, Cultural Marxism

Id: rj1fjy0iM6U

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 28 2018