It was with significant anticipation that I read the article from Themelios on Cultural Marxism from a Christian perspective by Robert S. Smith (click here for the article. A brief description of the author is at the end of the article). Why the anticipation? It is because of the source. Themelios is an academically upscaled version of the Gospel Coalition website. The article by Smith contains 171 references from various sources and is more academic in terms of its the style in which it is written.
But that anticipation gave way to disappointment. Why the disappointment? It is because, for the most part, Smith's critique of Marxism and the Cultural Marxism ended up with the typical conservative memes about both. It fell far short of Martin Luther King's shorter critique of Marxism and Communism found in his book, Stride Toward Freedom (click here pages 92-95). Though there are some minor faults to be found in King's analysis, King was able to both find the good and bad in Marx and compared that with the good and bad in Capitalism. And he did so from a Christian perspective as he cited the former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who called Marxism a "Christian Heresy" because it combined in one product essential Christian concerns for justice with ideas and beliefs that no Christian could afford to accept.
Conservative memes almost, if not completely, take an all-or-nothing approach to describing Marx in negative terms while uncritically assuming the Christian nature of the Western Civilization context from which they interpret Marx.
Perhaps my disappointment comes from our differences in ideologies. I lean toward Marxism because of Marx's analysis of Capitalism was not only based on observation of the economic structures of his time, it is rings true today in our Neoliberal Capitalist economic system that seems to measure the well-being of our economic system solely to the financial returns of the shareholders of publicly owned companies. Neoliberal Capitalism turns upside-down the traditional business definition of the term 'stakeholder.' That term's traditional definition included all who were impacted by the operations of a given business. That included the owners, customers, workers and their families and communities, the communities impacted by the given business, the venders of the business, the environment, and whatever else. Conservative apologists for Capitalism tend to identify the sellers and the buyers as stakeholders where most of the decisions of many of our businesses now equate the stakeholders with shareholders. That is not my view alone, but it is also the view of several white and blue collar workers as they talk about what they see and experience at work.
And though I lean toward Marxism because of Marx's analysis of Capitalism and his most essential concern of redistributing power to the working class, which is the proletariat, I totally reject that that redistribution must take the form of a proletariat dictatorship. That term is unfortunately a misnomer because those workers who would rule are elected to positions of authority by their peers. So just as when a ethnic group uses democratic processes to control the government and give themselves privileges over all other groups, Marx envisioned that kind of rule be given to his sacred cow economic class: the proletariat. While the former could be called an ethnocracy, the latter could be called a classocracy. Marx saw that a classocracy already existed and in order to achieve equality in society, he wanted to flip the first and last place teams in that classocracy in an attempt to eliminate the classes and reach equality.
So what disappointed me in the article? The answer could be summed up in one word: misrepresentation. Marx and Marxism is grossly misrepresented at times. Some people in Cultural Marxism are misrepresented. And Western Civilization and its association with Christianity is also misrepresented.
How is Marx misrepresented in the article? The writer seems to describe Marx of not having any moral values because he "promoted" violence in order to achieve Communism. And that Communism can be summed up, as stated in the Communist Manifesto, as the abolition of private property. But what Marx meant by that and why he and Engels reduced Communism to that go unexplained except to say that such played a significant role in the killing of 100 million people by Communist regimes.
When one reads the Communist Manifesto (click here for the source, will point to the section of the Manifesto that talks about this, it is clear that the abolition of such property was the abolition of bourgeois private property, which was the source of social power for the bourgeoisie. And thus without the elimination of their power, there can be no proletariat dictatorship. And without both the abolition of private property by the proletariat, there could be classless society that results in a utopia.
In his work, On The Jewish Question, Marx praised some of the states in the US as achieving the idea of abolishing private property by giving non-landowners the right to vote and hold office (click here for the source).
And so when Smith cites the last line in the Communist Manifesto in justifying his view that Marx saw violence as being necessary, he forgot Marx's references to democracy and assumed that the 'forcible overthrow' of the bourgoisie necessarily referred to violence. Earlier in the Communist Manifesto, Marx talked about the 'despotic' means initially employed by which the Proletariat would use its 'political supremacy' to take away capital from the bourgeoisie as a way of eliminating their power. But political supremacy and despotic means does not imply violence.
In saying all of that, my point isn't to defend everything Marx says, I neither cannot nor will not do that. But my point is that Smith significantly misrepresented Marx and Marxism especially when he blames Marx for the 100 million murders committed by Communist regimes.
BTW, it is only in the footnotes that Smith says that Marx backed away from promoting violence and revolution to achieve Communism.
In addition, in blaming Marx for the actions of those regimes, Smith either refused mention or was not aware of the vast differences in Marxism and the Bolshevik revolution. Not all viewed Lenin's regime as being Marxist and Socialist. Rosa Luxemburg, a Socialist contemporary of Lenin, described his rule over the Soviet Union as that of a bourgeoisie dictatorship rather that a socialist regime. That was because of its top-down organization that did not rely on the control of the Proletariat (click here for the source). Noam Chomsky makes a similar point in referencing the critiques by Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek (click here for source). Chomsky described Lenin's reign, and this could be applied to other totalitarian leaders who called themselves socialists, as practicing an 'opportunistic vanguardism.' All of that is based on Marx's most essential tenet: the rule of the Proletariat. And here we should note that Lenin belonged to the petite bourgeoisie class.
In addition, Smith also fails to mention the Mensheviks, the Kronstadt sailors who eventually fought against Lenin's Bolsheviks, and the Lefitist Marxists whom Lenin called 'infantile.' Thus, what is really Marxism and what isn't is not adequately discussed as Smith seeks to scapegoat Marx and Marxism for past horrors.
When Smith talks about the Frankfurt School, he inadequately describes the views of Eric Fromm and Theodore Adorno. Now the Frankfurt School comes into play because, as Antonio Gramsci tried to address why what Marx wrongly predicted about the fall of Capitalism, of the angered uprising of the Proletariat. Gramsci saw strong cultural influences, such as that exhibited by the Church, Thus, Marx's Revolution had to change its method of operation in order to become reality. And that change revolved around changing culture and its view of history. What came out of that is called Cultural Marxism.
The significance of Fromm and Adorno is that they pointed to a personality type that had its own version for two different roles for participants. The personality type was called the Authoritarian Personality. Much of the concern for identifying such a personality type was to try to explain why many Germans stayed so loyal to Hitler. One of the reasons is that many Germans embraced the authoritarian personality.
Smith mentions Fromm's sadomasochistic model of the Authoritarian Personality without explaining it (click here for Fromm's own explanation). When Fromm talks about that sadomasochistic model, he is actually making a distinction between active authoritarians, or rulers, and passive authoritarians, or willing subjects. In either case, Fromm saw that authoritarianism was the result of an immaturity in people who relied on power, as either leaders or followers, and the feeling of significance which that brought instead of love, and we could add reason.
As for Adorno, Smith gives a contradictory account. In one place, Smith stated that Adorno was trying to find the key character faults in civilization that produced such a personality type. Not long after that, Smith cites Martin Jay in saying that Adorno's Authoritarian Personality was there to describe totalitarian leaders rather than the society that produced them. But not only did he give competing accounts of Adorno's work, by not describing Fromm's distinction between active and passive authoritarians, he missed how the model of the Authoritarian personality describes both the totalitarian leader and their followers.
But while Smith does not smile on Adorno's partially blaming Christianity for promoting such a personality type, he seems not to mention how Church history is replete with examples of the Church siding with wealth and power over against the welfare of the people. Such examples could be seen in the pre-revolutionary times prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions. It could be seen in more modern times as Chile's Salvador Allende, a democratically elected leader, started to lean toward the left. In the civil unrest that preceded the coup that both replaced and killed him, the Church sided with business owners rather than the workers.
We could even cite American examples. For example some Southern slave owners partially relied on Black preachers who would use the Bible to tell the Black slaves how they were to submit to the authority of their owners.
And even now, the majority of religiously conservative American Christians are loyal to the political party that favors owners of business over against the interest of the workers.
Smith should be honest here in recognizing how much of Christian teaching revolves around submission to authority figures. And that submission is to such an extent that many of us religiously conservative Christians do not know how to turn off that authority switch and to relate to others, especially unbelievers in society, as equals. Instead, many of us are always looking for a hierarchical setup in society where Christians have some degree of dominance or control over unbelievers in terms of laws and cultural norms.
We should also note about Adorno that his initial work on the Authoritarian Personality was somewhat skewed against conservatives. But his work has been adjusted by others so that authoritarianism from all ideologies can be recognized.
One final point should be made here. That the traits seen in Adorno's description of the Authoritarian Personality are readily seen today. And they are seen not the mere disagreement we often have with others. They are seen in how we express disagreement. At this point, we can say that the Authoritarian Personality exhibits a avoidance of using reason in discussing issues and coming to one's own conclusions.
Much of Smith's reactions to Marxism and Cultural Marxism is because he is responding as a outsider. Thus, we should exhibit some understanding for why he has misrepresented both movements. But we should also note that critiques from the outside can offer insights into movements that those inside of the movements are blind to. So one should read Smith's article alongside my comments to see who is more accurate when describing these movements.
But part of Smith's reaction to Marxism and Cultural Marxism is possibly due to a tribal reaction to direct and indirect criticism of his own faith, Christianity, and source for his own society and culture, Western Civilization. The indirect criticism of Christianity that Smith can see is actually direct criticism of Western Civilization. And what makes that indirect criticism of Christianity depends on how closely one sees Western Civilization as depending on Christianity.
But like the identification of Lenin's reign with Marxism, we should question the "Christian roots" of Western Civilization. This is especially in the light of its history of wars between nations, religious wars, imperialism, colonialism, the exploitation of people, the marginalization of people and so on. Quite often, God rejected the Old Testament worship of His people because of the injustices they inflicted on the vulnerable. If God can question the faith of His own people because of how they treated others, shouldn't we at least consider that how Christian a nation or civilization is at least partially depends on how people are treated in that nation or group of nations. How much is Western Civilization a Christian one or is it a Christian one in name only?
As Christians this should point us to the fact that once we call ourselves Christians, all that we do and don't do, say and don't say is associated with the Gospel. And that is as true for religiously conservative Christians who are politically Leftist, Liberals, and Conservatives. That our political positions, taken as Christians, can hurt the reputation of the Gospel when those political positions when implemented hurt others.
Thus, it is possible that part of Smith's reactions to Marxism and Cultural Marxism comes not just from the direct comments made about Christianity, but the ones made about Western Civilization too.
In an effort to not write forever, what has been discussed so far should point Smith, and those who agree with him, to return to the drawing board when it comes to assessing Marxism and Cultural Marxism as well as how Christians should react to it. That Smith depends too heavily on the opinions of fellow conservatives when discussing Marxism and Cultural Marxism does not show objectivity on his part.
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