{"id":4549,"date":"2018-05-05T17:50:45","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T17:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/05\/the-essence-of-cultural-marxism-no-truth-only-power\/"},"modified":"2018-05-05T17:50:45","modified_gmt":"2018-05-05T17:50:45","slug":"the-essence-of-cultural-marxism-no-truth-only-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/05\/the-essence-of-cultural-marxism-no-truth-only-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The Essence of Cultural Marxism: No Truth, Only Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rod Dreher:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

There it is, reader. There is the \u201ccultural Marxism\u201d that you hear so much about, and that so many on the left deny. It is in the Marxist principle that there is no such thing as truth; there is only power.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Lenin understood this well. This is the meaning of his famous dictum, \u201cWho, whom?\u201d<\/a>  In Lenin\u2019s view, co-existence with capitalism was not possible. The only question was whether or not the communists will smash the capitalists first, or the other way around. One way of interpreting this is to say that the moral value of an action depends on who<\/em> is doing it to whom<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why it is pointless for us conservatives and old-school liberals to stand around identifying contradictions and hypocrisies in how the progressives behave. They don\u2019t care! They aren\u2019t trying to apply universal standards of justice. They believe that \u201cuniversal standards of justice\u201d is a cant phrase to disguise white heterosexist patriarchal supremacy. They believe that justice is achieving power for their group, and therefore disempowering other groups. This is why it\u2019s not racist, in their view, to favor non-whites over whites in the distribution of power. This is why they don\u2019t consider it unfair to discriminate against men, heterosexuals, and other out-groups.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The third paragraph is exactly right. Why did it take me so long fully to appreciate this? To accuse leftists of double standards as I have done and as many conservative do is to fail to understand that they don't accept our standards and values. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

They will use things like \u201cdialogue\u201d as a tactic to serve the long-term strategy of acquiring total power. Resisting them on liberal grounds is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. The neoreactionaries have seen this clearly, while conservatives like me, who can\u2019t quite let go of old-fashioned liberalism, have resisted it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have resisted it because I really would like to live in a world where we can negotiate our differences while allowing individuals and groups maximum autonomy in the private sphere. I want to be left alone, and want to leave others alone. This, I fear, is a pipe dream. Absent a shared cultural ethos, I can\u2019t see how this is possible. I hate to say it \u2014 seriously, I do \u2014 but I think that today\u2019s conservatives (including me) are going to end up as neoreactionaries, just as today\u2019s old-school liberals are going to end up as progressives, because the forces pulling us to these extremes are stronger than any centrism.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, our politics is becoming increasingly 'centrifugal.' In the "widening gyre," "the centre cannot hold." (Yeats<\/a>) Rod is right: many of us conservatives are moving in the neoreactionary direction. You could say that we are becoming 'radicalized' by the insanity of our leftist enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why then is Dreher so bloody hard on Trump, when he is all we've got? In a war you have to take sides. Push has come to shove, and shove may come to shoot. So you'd better be ready. Trump stands with the NRA and the NRA with Trump. And as Dreher is aware, you don't bring a knife to a gunfight.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum (5\/6)<\/strong>  Dreher is wrong when he says that the denial of truth is a Marxist principle. It is not. It is a culturally<\/em> Marxist principle. Marx fancies his dialectical materialism a science<\/em>. Marx, Engels, and Lenin are not precursors of post-modernism. So it is wrong for Dreher to suggest in the second paragraph quoted above that  V. I. Lenin denies objective truth. On the contrary, he upholds the objectivity of truth in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum (5\/7)<\/strong> Edward comments:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t entirely agree. In The Communist Manifesto<\/em> section II the authors consider the objection that there are certain eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice etc \u2018that are common to all states of society\u2019, but Communism abolishes all such eternal truths.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their reply concedes<\/em> the objection, or rather denies the existence of any \u2018eternal truth\u2019 except the historical existence of class antagonisms \u2018that assumed different forms at different epochs\u2019. The commonality of these forms is simply \u2018the exploitation of one part of society by the other\u2019. These common forms, i.e. the supposed eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice etc, will completely vanish with the total disappearance of class distinctions<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a large topic, Ed. But I would insist that on a charitable reading of Marx, he is not a relativist about truth.  He may be setting the stage  for POMO, but he himself is not a POMO man. On the page before the page about Freedom and Justice (p. 102 in my Pelican paperback) we are told that man's consciousness, his ideas, views, and conceptions "changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life." Marx is asserting this as TRUE and is exempting it from the changes in material existence. He is not countenancing the possibility that a change in material and social conditions could bring it about that his version of materialism is false.  The Commie Manifesto is littered with assertions like these, assertions that are intended to be TRUE.  Old Karl is trying to get at the TRUTH about the human condition.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

To your reply that \u2018Marx fancies his dialectical materialism a science\u2019. Correct, but dialectical materialism is the science of class antagonism. That is the only \u2018eternal truth\u2019. All the rest, i.e. Freedom, Justice are simply a form that class antagonism takes at different epochs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No, not the only eternal truth. What about the one I gave above? And all the others, e.g., the one about religion being an opiate, the sigh of the oppressed creature, which implies that there is no God and no soul and no post-mortem existence, that these are all fictions that keep people from achieving happiness here on earth?<\/span><\/p>\n

Surely Marx would not say that God existed in Medieval times but does not exist today.  He would say that God never existed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Note also that it cannot be an 'eternal truth' that there will always be class struggle, but that until the classless society is achieved history is the history of class struggle. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

After reading the Manifesto<\/em>, I am thinking about the various \u2018No True Scotsman\/Marxist\u2019 apologetics for Marxism that we see from time to time. E.g. Marxist\/Leninism not true Marxism, Pol Pot not true Marxism, Cuba Venezuela etc.  It seems to me that previous brutalist regimes have interpreted the Manifesto<\/em> pretty well. Look at its 10 points carefully. Abolition of private property, justified on the grounds that for the proletariat (read \u201899%\u2019), there is no property at all, and that it is the property of the bourgeoisie (read \u20181%\u2019) that must be seized. Bringing the means of production, communication and transport into the hands of \u2018the State\u2019. Centralisation of credit by means of a national bank etc etc. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Right. The hard Left is Communist in inspiration.  The bastards never give up. One has to read the Manifesto to know what they are up to<\/em>, and what we are up against<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
<\/a>A Leftist Core Belief: Denying Evil<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Maverick Philosopher: Ignorant Liberals<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rod Dreher: There it is, reader. There is the \u201ccultural Marxism\u201d that you hear so much about, and that so many on the left deny. It is in the Marxist principle that there is no such thing as truth; there is only power. Lenin understood this well. This is the meaning of his famous dictum, \u201cWho, whom?\u201d  … Continue reading “The Essence of Cultural Marxism: No Truth, Only Power”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-marx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}