Western Marxism

You can also see this in the sort of kind of McCarthyite Red Scare, where a, a lot of sort of you would describe them as liberal fellow travelers of the, the communist movement were blacklisted, were targeted, were shown to be suspicious.

What is quite curious about their choice of the Frankfurt School is the fact that many of them, and I think this is one of the sort of critiques that comes from Perry Anderson's big, quite influential essays on Western Marxism, they weren't really embedded in left-wing political parties or the communist movement as a whole, and in a way represented a kind of retreat to the, to the universities, where it is possible to l- uh, at least do work that's inspired by Marx on a sort of sociological level, take some insights from the philosophical tradition that informed Marx and that was informed by Marx to analyze certain changes in so- in society and, and in culture.

But really, it, it does represent a form of Marxism that isn't necessarily too interested in actually getting more engaged in politics or fi-figuring out sort of political strategies and things like that.

It's skeptical.

And Hobsbawm, in some sense, reflects that.

But unlike more serious theoreticians in the Western Marxist tradition of the 20th century, he never really tangles with violence.

the deep implications for understanding the dialectic, the philosophy of history that might follow from that.

He's no Adorno.

He avoids the real abyss that people like Walter Benjamin will see, deriving from that insight about the role of violence and the state.

possibility of barbarism ultimately as the trajectory of global development.

That I think is quite alien to Hobsbawm and he doesn't have much connection with that Western Marxist scene.

Yeah, I guess it's important to emphasize that that last volume, Age of Extremes, was published after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In fact, I highly recommend a very important book that was recently published by Gabriel Rockhill called Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism as part of the intellectual World War.

In this book, Rockhill shows in devastating detail how the US government, especially the CIA, supported anti-communist Western so-called left-wing intellectuals because they were useful propagandists in the first Cold War.

A good example of this is Herbert Marcuse, who published a book called Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis, which was very influential in the nineteen sixties because Marcuse identified as a Western Marxist, even though he opposed actually existing socialism, even though he opposed the national liberation struggles in the Global South.

He demonized Global South Marxists and revolutionaries as so-called Stalinists and authoritarians and totalitarians.

By the way, his book on Soviet Marxism was funded by the predecessor of the CIA, the OSS, which later became the CIA in nineteen forty-seven.

They literally do and behave the same way.

So the leftism, it's not extractable at this stage of Western Marxism.

The, again, it's not strictly speaking anti-Semitism.

Right.

If we don't, if we don't, through education, we organize and mobilize effectively without allowing ourselves to be, you know, pushed astray left, right, and center with these, uh Titles.

I think a great p- piece that everybody is talking about is, like, the Who Paid the Piper?, as well, uh, of Western Marxism, which was produced, which was published in 2025.

Although, of course, there've been other pieces that are s-

Did you read it? This has been, it's been, it's been on my freaking list.

But I mean, I've read other pieces of literature that are similar, that are older, like The Cultural Cold War, for example.

That's a really good book that predates that one.

I mean, of course, Who Paid the P- um, [clears throat] Who Paid the Price of Western Marxism, I had a brief overview look at it, but I haven't sat down to properly read it.

It is a great introduction for people who want to understand this, right? U- understanding, like I said before, how, uh, social democracy and democratic socialism and, um, was hijacked, and the idea of leftism, uh, being associated with socialist policies or social progression, uh, or West- you know, like a welfare state was...

If we don't, if we don't, through education, we organize and mobilize effectively without allowing ourselves to be, you know, pushed astray left, right, and center with these, uh, titles.

I think a great p- piece that everybody is talking about is, like, the Who Paid the Piper as well, uh, of Western Marxism, which was produced, which was published in 2025.

Although, of course, there've been other pieces that are similar.

Did you read it? This has been, it's been, it's been on my freaking list, but again-

It's been, but I mean, I've read other pieces of literature that are similar that are older, like The Cultural Cold War, for example.

That's a really good book that predates that one.

I mean, of course, Who Paid the P- um, Who Paid the Price of Western Marxism, I had a brief overview look at it, but I haven't sat down to properly read it.

It is a great introduction for people who want to understand this, right? Understanding, like I said before, how, uh, social democracy and democratic socialism and, um, was hijacked, and the idea of leftism, um, being associated with socialist policies or social progression, uh, or West- you know, like a welfare state was all these, all these ideas were propagated by the CIA as an anti-communist movement in, uh, essentially, um, getting people to believe again in the system, uh, but also to believe that it's possible to achieve, uh, you know, equality and protections within the system without actually confronting the fact that capitalism itself is im- i- is the problem.

Uh, James Lindsay, what links the WNBA's current woes, the Smithsonian National History Museum becoming an anti-American museum, and people insisting that two plus two can equal five? What is the common thread?

You guys probably call it woke, but the answer is modern Western Marxism.

Right, based on, in, in large part, critical theory, which you talk about in Cynical Theories.

Help people understand, uh, i- is woke not the most useful term or, or, uh, what's...

I don't understand

understandRight.

So that's the magic word that I threw in when I said Marxism a moment ago, and I said Western Marxism.

So in the 1910s, uh, Marxism split into two schools.