A Brief History of
Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness
Jefrey D. Breshears
PART 2
The Frankfurt School
The Founding Agenda
In 1923 Georg Lukacs helped establish a Marxist research center at the
University of Frankfurt under the sponsorship of Felix Weil. Like Marx’s
benefactor, Friedrich Engels, Weil was the son of a wealthy capitalist and
an ardent Marxist who had earned a Ph.D. in political science from
Frankfurt University. The Institute’s first director, Carl Grunberg, was a
professor of law and political science at the University of Vienna and an
avowed Marxist. (In fact, Grunberg was the first openly-Marxist professor
to hold a chair in a German university.) The original name for the center
was the Institute for Marxism (Institut fur Marxismus), but Weil and
Grunberg decided for public relations purposes to give it a more generic
name, The Institute of Social Research (Institut fur Sozialforschung). Since
then, it has usually been referred to as simply “the Frankfurt School.”
From the outset the founders were clear about
the school’s mission. Their model was the MarxEngels
Institute in Moscow, and according to
Weil, “I wanted the institute to become known...
due to its contributions to Marxism as a scientific
discipline.” However, there was always a
contradiction between the Institute’s stated
philosophy and reality. Although theoretically a
Marxist institution, the governing structure of the
Frankfurt School was anything but classless and
egalitarian. In fact, it was even more hierarchical
and less collegial than most academic institutions
with a single director who was empowered with
dictatorial control over the Institute’s policies,
programs, faculty and administration. That
inconsistency aside, as Martin Jay records in his
book, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the
Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research
(1973, 1996), “Carl Grunberg concluded his
opening address by clearly stating his personal
allegiance to Marxism as a scientific
methodology, [and declared that] Marxism would
be the ruling principle of the Institute.”
Weil and Grunberg were orthodox Marxists,
but from the beginning they encouraged a broad
interdisciplinary approach to scholarship. As a
result, the Institute attracted gifted scholars not
only in economics but also in philosophy, history,
psychology, sociology and other academic areas.
Although generically Marxist, there were some
philosophical variations and different emphases as
various scholars applied Marxist principles to
their particular field of study. As an independent
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 2
Marxist think-tank, the Institute was a center for
theoretical discourse but not revolutionary
activism. Although some of its faculty and staff
were avowed Communists, the Institute was
never officially affiliated with either the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) or the more
moderate Socialist Party of Germany (SPD).
Furthermore, although the Frankfurt scholars
praised Lenin and the Bolshevik regime in the
early Twenties, support for the USSR was more
tempered after Lenin died in 1924. Interestingly,
Grunberg and his colleagues were careful not to
criticize Stalin overtly, but they circumspectly
kept their distance.
Grunberg suffered a stroke in 1927 and retired
as director of the Institute of Social Research a
couple of years later. In 1930 Max Horkheimer
became the director of the Institute, and at that
point a new philosophy took hold in the Institute.
Horkheimer’s view of Marxism was more
expansive and dialectical rather than rigid and
mechanical, and like Gramsci and Lukacs before
him, he was convinced that the major impediment
to the spread of Marxism was Western culture. In
particular, he despised traditional
Judeo/Christian ethics and morality, which he
believed prevented the widespread acceptance of
Marxism.
Under Horkheimer’s directorship, the
Frankfurt scholars synthesized Marxism, Social
Darwinism and Freudian psychology, and in the
process they created an ingenious cultural
ideology that had the potential to radically
transform German (and Western) culture.
Horkheimer was convinced that human values
and actions were psychological as well as
ideological, and he was adamant that the Institute
integrate psychology into its philosophy. The
result, as Martin Jay observes, was that in the
early years “the Institute concerned itself
primarily with an analysis of bourgeois society’s
socio-economic substructure” in keeping with
classical Marxism, while “in the years after 1930
its prime interest lay in its cultural superstructure”
as developed by Neo-Marxist theoreticians.
Under Horkheimer, the Frankfurt School
propagated a revisionistic Neo-Marxist
interpretation of Western culture called Critical
Theory. In essence, Critical Theory was a
comprehensive and unrelenting assault on the
values and institutions of Western civilization.
Based on utopian social and political ideals,
Critical Theory offered no realistic alternatives,
but it was nonetheless a devastating critique of the
history, philosophy, politics, social and economic
structures, major institutions, and religious
foundations of Western civilization. As a result,
despite the individual personalities and the
respective differences and emphases of the various
Frankfurt scholars, there was a basic
philosophical coherence in their cumulative work.
Ultimately, what united these scholars was the
application of a Neo-Marxist dialectic in their
unrelenting criticism of contemporary Western
society and culture.
An important point to consider is that the
driving force behind the Frankfurt School’s
research was never impartial scholarship but the
aggressive promotion of a radical left-wing
socio/political agenda. Even Martin Jay, who is
generally sympathetic toward the Frankfurt
School and Critical Theory, concedes that “the
true object of Marxism... was not the uncovering
of immutable truths, but the fostering of social
change.” The conservative research scholar,
William S. Lind, is more blunt:
The goal of Critical Theory was not truth
but praxis, or revolutionary action: bringing
the current society and culture down through
unremitting, destructive criticism. [William S.
Lind, “Further Readings in the Frankfurt School,”
in Political Correctness: A Short History of an
Ideology. www.freecongress.org.]
Horkheimer and his associates did not regard
truth and reason (including Marxist dogmas) as
immutable and transcendent realities, but neither
did they consider themselves to be relativists –
either epistemically or ethically. Instead, they
argued that truth exists, but only within history. In
this sense, they regarded the dichotomy between
absolutism and relativism to be false because it
was merely a theoretical construct divorced from
real life situations. As Martin Jay explains, “Each
period of time has its own truth, Horkheimer
argued.... [and] what is true is whatever fosters
social change in the direction of a rational
society.” He goes on to note...
Dialectics was superb at attacking other
systems’ pretensions of truth, but when it
came to articulating the ground of its own
assumption and values, it fared less well....
Critical Theory had a basically insubstantial
concept of reason and truth, rooted in social
conditions and yet outside them... If Critical
Theory can be said to have had a theory of
truth, it appeared in its immanent critique of
bourgeois society, which compared the
pretensions of bourgeois ideology with the
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 3
(L-R): Felix Weil, Walter Benjamin,
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
reality of its social conditions. Truth was not
outside the society, but contained in its own
claims. Men had an emancipatory interest
in actualizing the ideology. [Martin Jay, The
Dialectical Imagination, p. 62.]
This is, to say the least, an unconvincing
argument. The claim that truth is only a product
of one’s historical circumstance would itself be a
product of one’s historical circumstance, which is
of course self-refuting. Although denying they
were epistemic relativists, the Frankfurt scholars
were certain that truth is found only within
historical circumstances, yet they claimed
personal exemption from the restrictions of their
own historical circumstance and assumed a
transcendent truth perspective. In logic, this is the
“self-excepting” fallacy – but they conveniently
resolved this contradiction by simply dismissing
formal logic as bourgeois thinking. Besides, it
imposed unwanted restrictions on their theoretical
assertions.
Under Horkheimer’s leadership the Frankfurt
School attracted some brilliant scholars and
intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno, Eric
Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Walter Benjamin, Leo
Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse. Like Trotsky,
Luxemburg, Lukacs, Bela Kun and other notable
European Marxists in the early 1900s, many of
the Frankfurt scholars were secular Jews, a fact
that the Nazis successfully exploited in their
propaganda regarding a “Jewish conspiracy” of
Communist intellectuals who were perverting
German society.
Although independent scholars in their own
right, the Critical Theorists held a common
commitment to Neo-Marxism and the belief that
Western civilization has
been an imperialistic and
repressive force in human
history – especially,
Western Christianity. In
their view, Western
civilization was built on
aggression, oppression,
racism, slavery, classism
and sexual repression.
Decades later, this
ideology became the
philosophical basis for the
founding of the various
“critical studies” programs
and departments in
universities such as
African-American Studies, Ethnic Studies,
Feminist Studies, Peace Studies, and LGBT
(Lesbian/Gay/Bi-sexual/Transgender) Studies.
Particularly significant in this regard was
Wilhelm Reich’s book, The Mass Psychology of
Fascism (1933), which offered up an intriguing
revision of the Marxist dialectic. Unlike classical
Marxism, which was fundamentally economicsbased
and reductionistically simplistic in terms of
setting the bourgeoisie against the proletariat,
Reich contended that the conflict in the 20th
century was between “reactionaries” and
“revolutionaries.” In other words, the culture war
was not exclusively a class-based conflict but one
between those who held incompatible socio/
political ideologies. This allowed some among the
elite classes in society, including some who were
rich and highly-educated, to join in the struggle
against oppression along with the poor and the
exploited. Of course, it also opened up the
opportunity for Marxist intellectuals such as
Reich and his Frankfurt School colleagues to take
leadership in the culture war on behalf of the
downtrodden and the victims of Western
capitalism and Christian oppression. Nonetheless,
as members of the intellectual elite, they retained
a certain distance from the unwashed masses. As
Martin Jay notes, “the Institute’s members may
have been relentless in their hostility towards the
capitalist system, but they never abandoned the
life-style of the haute bourgeoisie.”
In retrospect, the Frankfurt School had a
significant influence on the evolution of the
American left over the past 70 years, particularly
the kind of cultural Marxism that generated the
New Left movement in the 1960s. Since then, the
left has launched an
unremitting culture war of
attrition that has largely
succeeded in terms of
secularizing American culture
and undermining traditional
values and institutions, and
much of its ideology,
inspiration and tactics were
gleaned from the Frankfurt
School’s Institute of Social
Research.
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 4
Wilhelm Reich
The ‘X’ Factor
From the outset, the founding fathers of
Communism understood that traditional family
values and male/female relationships could be
exploited in order to destabilize Western culture.
In fact, throughout most of history, in both
Western and non-Western societies, women had
been oppressed and denied basic civil rights, so
this was an issue that could easily be used by
Critical Theorists in their critique of Western
culture.
In Karl Marx’s The German Ideology (1845) and
Friedrich Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State (1884), both men argued that
traditional male patriarchy oppressed females by
holding them as property of their fathers and
husbands, and both advocated the abolition of the
traditional family. But neither Marx nor Engels
wanted to see women truly liberated; they simply
wanted a sexual revolution in which women were
released from marital contracts so they could be
held in common by men.
A key component of Critical Theory was its
integration of Marxism with Darwinism and
Freudianism. Factoring Freud into the equation
was a controversial notion because he was
generally held in low esteem by traditional
Marxists who understood human psychology in
terms of Pavlovian behaviorism. Philosophically,
Freudianism was inherently counter-revolutionary
in that it discounted the primacy of economics in
human social evolution in favor of liberation
through psychoanalysis. Rather than a violent
external revolution that immediately liberated the
masses, the Freudian revolution was peaceful,
deliberative, internal and individual. In traditional
Marxist circles, Freudianism was viewed as an
unwelcome complication that disrupted the
sublime simplicity of the whole Marxist dialectic
of history.
But as proud and independent Marxist
revisionists, the Frankfurt scholars saw great
potential in utilizing Freud as a useful ally in their
efforts to undermine traditional Western values
and culture. Like Freud, they considered sexual
repression to be a hindrance to societal evolution.
According to Horkheimer and others, bourgeois
society is inherently sexually repressed, which is a
major factor in neurosis and other forms of mental
illness. They believed that a revolutionary, postcapitalist
and post-Christian society could liberate
humanity from this repression, so sexual
liberation from the restrictions of a patriarchal
society was a major theme in their ideology.
In this regard, the social psychologists Eric
Fromm and Wilhelm Reich played key roles in
the integration of Marx and Freud. Fromm
contended that sexual orientation is merely a
social construct, there are no innate differences
between men and women, and that sexuality and
gender roles are socially determined.
Furthermore, he argued that sexually-repressed
societies discourage sexual experimentation and
practices such as homosexuality due to manmade
legal codes and moralistic taboos that are
psychologically inhibiting and counter-productive.
All this does is increase the angst-level in society
and keep people in a perpetual state of frustration.
The psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich was one of
the originators of “sexual politics” and, like
Fromm, an outspoken sex propagandist. Based on
a Darwinian evolutionary view of humanity,
Reich argued that human beings are
fundamentally sexual animals. For Reich,
sexuality is an innate impulse that should not be
inhibited by artificial and manmade moral
restrictions. In his book, The Sexual Revolution, he
argued that sexual repression was an underlying
cause of many psycho/social pathologies, and he
laid much of the blame on “familial imperialism”
that is perpetuated through the authoritarian
structure of the traditional family. In fact,
according to Reich, “familial imperialism” is the
root cause of “national imperialism.”
The authoritarian
family is the
authoritarian state in
miniature. Man’s
authoritarian character
structure is basically
produced by the
embedding of sexual
inhibitions and fear in
the living substance
of sexual impulses.
Familial imperialism is
ideologically reproduced
in national imperialism....
The authoritarian family...
is a factory where reactionary ideology and
reactionary structures are produced. [Quoted
by Raymond V. Raehn in “The Historical Roots
of ‘Political Correctness,”in William S. Lind,
Political Correctness: A Short History of an
Ideology. Www.freecongress.org.]
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 5
Reich’s solution, as he argued in The Mass
Psychology of Fascism (1933), was to replace the
traditional patriarchal family with a matriarchal
model, which he regarded as the only truly
“natural” order of things. This was part of a
comprehensive sexual revolution, which
according to Reich should include the legalization
of homosexuality and abortion, in order to foster
a more “natural” and “healthy” society. Of
course, all this sounds suspiciously similar to the
sexual propaganda later spouted by the likes of
Alfred Kinsey and Hugh Hefner, who themselves
were influenced by Reich and Fromm, among
others. The great attraction, of course – other than
the obvious fact that it appeals to our base
instincts – is the pseudo-scientific basis for it.
[NOTE: Reich’s aggressive advocacy of sexual
politics was too extreme even for most of his
fellow- radicals at the time. In the early 1930s he
was expelled from both the Communist Party and
the International Psychoanalytical Association,
and in 1939 he emigrated to America. In 1942 he
founded the Orgone Society, which advocated
free sex and mental health through “the power of
the orgasm.” Years later, the Food & Drug
Administration sued Reich for fraud, and he died
in prison in 1957.]
In terms of long-range influence, the most
significant Frankfurt School sex propagandist was
Herbert Marcuse. Like his colleagues, Fromm and
Reich, Marcuse understood that a true cultural
revolution would include sexual liberation along
with political and economic transformation. In
this regard, he called for the casting off of all
traditional values and sexual restraints, to be
replaced by what he termed “polymorphous
perversity.” Even the concept of marital love and
fidelity was counter-revolutionary, according to
Marcuse. Although cultural change was the
ultimate goal, what seemed to primary stimulate
him was the pleasure principle. Like the radical
French Jacobins a century-and-a-half earlier,
Marcuse questioned, “What good is a revolution
without general copulation?”
Neo-Marxism and Popular Culture
Political Protest Music
In Martin Jay’s book, The Dialectical
Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School, his
chapter on “Aesthetic Theory and the Critique of
Mass Culture” is particularly insightful given the
enormous influence of popular culture in our
society. Of course, much of popular culture –
including most music, movies, television, etc. – is
merely crass entertainment, and as such much of
it is trivial, banal and inconsequential (except for
the fact that reflects the feelings and the shallow
thinking of so many people). Nonetheless, some
popular entertainment is truly significant and its
cumulative effect is substantial. Although the
following comments refer primarily to popular
music, many of these observations generally apply
to other forms of mass entertainment, too.
Social observers have long recognized the
power of song. Reportedly, Plato commented that
if he could write the popular songs of his culture,
he cared not who wrote the laws. In other words,
like the Neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt School,
Plato understood that culture drives politics, not
vice-versa. As novelist John Steinbeck once noted,
popular music expresses the most fundamental
values and beliefs of a people and constitutes the
“sharpest statement” about who and what they
are. According to Steinbeck, we can learn more
about a society by listening to its songs than by
any other means of observation, since “into the
songs go all their hopes and hurts, the anger,
fears, the wants and aspirations.” Leo Lowenthal,
a leading theorist in the Frankfurt School,
expressed the same idea when he wrote that
“mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse.”
Popular culture, including music, has always
functioned as a kind of social barometer, and
throughout history the significant issues and
events of the day have often been expressed
through the medium of popular music. From the
broadside ballads of the Revolutionary era to the
campfire sing-alongs of the Civil War, from Joe
Hill’s radical labor anthems of the early 20th
century to the Depression-era Dust Bowl ballads
of Woody Guthrie, from the folk and rock
socio/political commentaries of the 1960s to the
nihilistic rantings of contemporary punk and rap,
popular music has often expressed the Zeitgeist –
the spirit of the times. Throughout the 20th century
hundreds of popular songs functioned as
socio/political musical editorials, and although
most were quickly forgotten and left little lasting
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 6
impression, some were quite profound and
undeniably influential.
[NOTE: Before the advent of the phonograph
and the radio, popular music was
indistinguishable from folk music in that one
generation’s popular songs became the folk songs
of succeeding generations. It wasn’t until the early
20th century, with the evolution of a commercial
music industry, that popular music became a
distinct category from folk music.]
Prior to the 20th century social protest songs
often disguised their messages, such as in the
Mother Goose rhymes. However, with the
coalescence of several different reform movements
in the early 1900s, socio/political protest music
became more open and explicit. In particular, the
radical left-wing of the labor movement, as
characterized by the Marxist-oriented Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), utilized music very
effectively to rally the troops and promote its
agenda. Labor anthems, such as those composed
by songwriters such as Joe Hill (see below),
contained sharp and explicit lyrics and were sung
with revivalistic fervor by the union faithful.
Since popular music echoes the spirit of the
times, socio/political message songs tend to
proliferate during times of crisis and turmoil.
This was certainly the case during World War I
when Tin Pan Alley songwriters churned out
scores of topical songs related to the war –
everything from the anti-war “I Didn’t Raise My
Boy To Be a Soldier” to flag-waving anthems
such as “Over There”
and social
commentaries like
“How Ya Gonna
Keep ‘em Down on the
Farm (After They’ve
Seen Paree)?” During
the raucous and
prosperous Roaring
Twenties very few serious socio/ political
commentaries were written and recorded, but
following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the
onset of the Great Depression there was once
again a flurry of socio/political musical
commentaries. Many of these songs, such as
“Happy Days Are Here Again” and “There’s No
Depression In Love,” were slick and jazzy
productions designed to revive the flagging spirits
of the American people, while others dealt more
seriously with social realities such as “Brother,
Can You Spare a Dime?” “Hobo’s Lullaby,” and
many of Woody Guthrie’s songs.
Likewise, World War II inspired scores of
songs that echoed the times – e.g., Irving Berlin’s
“God Bless America,” “Remember Pearl
Harbor,” Johnny Mercer’s “G.I. Jive,” The
Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,”
“Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition,”
“Coming In On a Wing and a Prayer,” Peggy
Lee’s “Waiting For the Train To Come In,” and
many others. In the relatively placid Fifties few
songs dealt with themes other than romance (e.g.,
Elvis Presley’s “Love Me, Tender,” Pat Boone’s
“Love Letters In the Sand,” etc.) or the pursuit of
pleasure (Bill Haley & the Comets’ “Rock Around
the Clock,” Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,”
etc.). Then, the turbulent 1960s once again
produced a great outpouring of socio/ political
topical songs. But unlike the past, this time
counter-cultural themes dominated the music, and
the lyrics tended to be overwhelmingly critical of
mainstream American lifestyles and values.
Since the Sixties popular music in general has
gotten even more cynical and jaded. Much of it
has become a celebration of decadence, and the
glorification of sex, drugs, violence, irresponsible
hedonism and mindless materialism is certainly
cause for alarm. If Britney Spears, Madonna,
Eminem, the hip-hoppers and the gangsta rappers
speak for a critical mass of young people today,
this is truly disturbing. And although most of this
music is not overtly political, the very fact that
these people are pop culture icons is a damning
indictment of the state of our culture.
Many people wonder why so much popular
music is so ugly, so degenerate, so sexualized, so
obscene, and so fixated on drugs and violence.
Since all art is an expression of philosophy and
moral values, much of this is due to the insidious
influence of Nihilism and Postmodernism on
contemporary American culture. But some of it
directly reflects a Neo-Marxist political ideology
as well. To radical left-wing social critics, the
reason why so much modern art expresses such
rage and dissatisfaction is because it reflects the
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 7
realities of living in a repressive and oppressive
society under the heavy yoke of capitalist
exploitation and traditional Christian-influenced
moral values.
Cultural Marxists argue that all of life is a
struggle against the forces of oppression and
repression. Originally, classical Marxism focused
rather narrowly on economic oppression and class
conflict, but by the 1930s Neo-Marxists began to
widen the scope of their cultural critique to
include a broader range of social issues and even
psychological factors – in particular, issues related
to sexual repression. In their condemnation of
Western culture, they emphasized social injustice
and the plight of marginalized minorities – those
victims of the bourgeois social order that included
the working classes, racial minorities, radical
feminists, homosexuals, and non-Christians in
general. Therefore, it was within the context of
their Neo-Marxist Critical Theory that they
encouraged the politicization of the arts as part of
a full-scale assault on Western culture.
Among cultural Marxists there have been two
competing theories regarding the proper role of
revolutionary art. The first approach, which Lenin
sanctioned and has always been the most
common, focuses on content. In this approach art
is an expression of agitprop (agitation/
propaganda), and it emphasizes overtly social and
political messages. However, these messages may
be either relatively mild and suggestive or harsh
and confrontational. Examples of the former
would include many of the socio/political protest
songs of the early Sixties such as Bob Dylan’s
“Blowin’ in the Wind” and Pete Seeger’s “If I
Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the
Flowers Gone.” By the mid-Sixties much of the
protest music became more explicit and
aggressive, as characterized by songs such as
Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-changin’,” Barry
McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” The Beatles’
“Revolution,” or “I Feel Like I’m-Fixin’-To-Die
Rag” by Country Joe & the Fish.
The alternative
theory of revolutionary
art emphasizes form
rather than content.
As such, its messages
are often more stylistic
than overtly
propagandistic. This
approach has been
incorporated into
various types of avant-garde music such as atonal
free form jazz (most notably, the music of John
Cage), the extended guitar “freak-outs” that were
popular among some rock bands in the Sixties,
and in recordings such as John Lennon’s bizarre
“Revolution No. 9" on The Beatles’ White Album.
More recently, much of rap, hip-hop and heavy
metal music emphasize form over content. In
much of this music the lyrics and the messages are
vague, inarticulate or even unintelligible, but the
mood is obviously angry, aggressive and antisocial.
In such music, form trumps content and, to
borrow Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum, the
medium is the message. Despite the lack of any
clearly articulated or intelligible message, such
music can function as a potent expression of
socio/political protest.
Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurt School’s most
prominent cultural analyst, was a staunch
advocate of the form over content approach.
Adorno began his academic career as a music
critic, and as a doctrinaire Marxist he had a
peculiar take on music as a political statement. He
was contemptuous of popular culture in general,
which he regarded as bourgeois, frivolous and
counter-revolutionary, and as a musicologist he
was particularly scornful of popular music, which
he considered trivial, insipid and banal – which of
course most of it was (and always has been).
But Adorno was more than just a cultural
elitist, and he held a radical view of art and
culture that few would accept. According to him,
since modern bourgeois culture is intrinsically
“repressive,” art could only be “authentic” if it
were non-commercial, dissonant and alienating.
In other words, any art form, such as music, that
conveyed joy or contentment or harmony was at
best an expression of ignorance or at worst an
affirmation of the authoritarian status quo.
Declaring that “defiance of society includes
defiance of its language,” Adorno might also have
added that defiance of society includes not only
defiance of its traditional values but its art forms
as well. As he stated, “We interpret [art] as a kind
of code language for processes taking place within
society, which must be deciphered by means of
critical analysis.”
[NOTE Marxism has long been recognized as
a kind of surrogate religion. As such, it shares
some common perspectives with Christianity,
such as a deep longing for transcendence beyond
present realities. Also, like Christians, Marxists
rejected the popular notion that art is merely an
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 8
expression of the individual creativity of artists
themselves. Art is not values-free or valuesneutral.
Wittingly or not, all art expresses the
beliefs and ideals of its creators, and the concept
of artistic creative freedom is in many respects
illusory. Unlike Christians, however, Marxists
were strict determinists who believed that
sociological factors alone determine people’s
values. Christians don’t deny that society and
culture can influence (or condition) our values, but
human beings still have a measure of free choice
as a result of being created in the imago Dei – the
image of God. Still, like Marxists, Christians
believe that the ultimate goal of art is not merely
individual expression but a reflection of truth and
reality.]
According to Adorno, until current social and
political alienation and contradictions were
reconciled in reality, the utopian harmony of art
must always reflect the current dissonance. For
him, everything was political, and since bourgeois
capitalistic society was innately discordant and
repressive, the only legitimately authentic music
was that which avoided commercialism and
“spurious harmony” and expressed the
“contradictions” of modern life. Furthermore, he
reasoned, just as true artistic creativity was
determined by social factors, so too was people’s
subjective appreciation of art. This is why popular
culture, including virtually all popular music, was
so deplorably vacuous: it expressed bourgeois
values and the unsophisticated tastes of the
masses, who were the psychologically oppressed
products of a bourgeois capitalistic system and its
propaganda. The People needed to be liberated
from such constraints, and Adorno believed this
could be accomplished in part through true art
and true music, which was innately revolutionary
and counter-cultural. As he expressed it...
A successful work [of art]... is not one
which resolves objective contradictions in
a spurious harmony, but one which
expresses the idea of harmony negatively
by embodying the contradictions, pure and
uncompromised, in its innermost structure....
Art... always was, and is, a force of
protest of the humane against the pressure
of domineering institutions, religious and
otherwise....” [Quoted in Martin Jay, The
Dialectical Imagination, p. 179]
For Adorno, even modern jazz, which many
conservatives feared was promoting sensuality
and undermining traditional morality, should be
rejected as just another commercial commodity.
Observing that it served primarily as dance or
ambient background music, he challenged the
claim that jazz was sexually liberating. In fact, he
contended, rather than transcending alienation,
jazz music actually strengthened it by reconciling
the alienated individual with mainstream culture.
Prior to Adorno, most criticism of popular
culture came from social conservatives. Now,
however, it was attacked as a tool of the status
quo that pacified the masses and diverted their
attention away from all the oppression, repression
and social injustice inherent in American culture.
As such, it was part of a massive bourgeois
capitalist conspiracy. Martin Jay explains:
The Frankfurt School disliked mass
culture, not because it was democratic, but
precisely because it was not.... The culture
industry administered a nonspontaneous
[and] phony culture rather than the real
thing. The old distinction between high and
low culture had all but vanished in the
‘stylized barbarism’ of mass culture.... The
subliminal message of almost all that
passed for art was conformity and
resignation.
Increasingly, the Institute came to feel
that the culture industry enslaved men in
far more subtle and effective ways than the
crude methods of domination practiced in
earlier eras. The false harmony [promoted
in popular culture] was in some ways more
sinister than the clash of social
contradictions, because of its ability to lull
its victims into passive acceptance....
Moreover, the spread of technology served
the culture industry in America just as it
helped tighten the control of authoritarian
governments in Europe. Radio, Horkheimer
and Adorno argued, was to fascism as the
printing press had been to the Reformation
.... [Ibid, pp. 216-17]
In his study of the Frankfurt School, Jay
concludes that the Institute’s greatest impact on
American intellectual life was its critique of mass
culture along with its analysis of American
authoritarianism (see below, “Fascist Amerika”).
But Adorno’s philosophy of culture and music
was too extreme even for many of his NeoMarxist
colleagues, some of whom challenged his
basic assumptions. Walter Benjamin, a notable
philosopher and essayist, expressed the more
orthodox Marxist view that came to prevail
among most left-wing social critics and activists.
Unlike Adorno, Benjamin recognized the
immense potential of agitprop commercial
entertainment, and he contended that popular
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 9
Charlie Chaplin
Joe Hill
music could be a potent political weapon in the
culture war in terms of undermining traditional
values, radicalizing the masses and transforming
culture. Adorno was unconvinced, and argued
that any such attempts to integrate “socialist
realism” into commercial popular music only
succeeded in promoting the kind of “premature
harmony” that was in fact counter-revolutionary.
Most left-wing artists took Benjamin’s view
because Adorno’s more radical critique essentially
eliminated any audience for their art. In this
regard the playwright Bertolt Brecht was
particularly significant in his utilization of the
theater as a political forum to explore what he
called “the critical aesthetics of dialectical
materialism.” Brecht inspired a whole new
generation of Marxist artists and entertainers, and
his influence was particularly significant in films
and the theater. Meanwhile,
in America, perhaps the most
successful and influential
propagandist for the Marxist
cause was the actor and
movie producer, Charlie
Chaplin, whose comic genius
in films such as Modern Times
and The Great Dictator
skillfully and subtly promoted
the left-wing agenda.
Adorno’s eccentric views
aside, many Marxists
understood intuitively the
power of politicized music as
a social and
cultural force. As noted
earlier, the IWW was a
radical Marxist labor union in
the early 1900s that included a fragile and volatile
coalition of Communists, socialists and
anarchists. According to its Manifesto, the union
was founded on “the class struggle” and “the
irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class
and the working class,” and its motto proclaimed,
“The final aim is revolution.” IWW rallies often
resembled religious revivals with stirring,
emotional speeches and a lot of group singing.
Songwriters such as Joe Hill converted scores of
well-known church hymns into labor anthems,
and the IWW even published its own hymnal of
sorts, the Little Red Songbook, featuring songs such
as “Solidarity Forever,” sung to the tune of
“Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
They [the bourgeois capitalists] have taken
untold millions
That they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle
Not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power
Gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.
(CHORUS)
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the union makes us strong!
[NOTE: Like most other left-wing groups, the
IWW was constantly racked by internal sectarian
disputes and power struggles. During World War
I it lost most of its members, and many of its
leaders were charged with treason and sent to
prison. “Big Bill” Haywood, the public face of the
union, evaded prison by fleeing to the USSR,
where he was treated as a celebrity by Lenin’s
regime. When he died in 1928, Haywood was
buried in the Kremlin – one of only two
Americans so honored. In its short but colorful
history, the IWW produced quite a few
memorable characters including the firebrand
agitator, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Joe Hill,
America’s first left-wing protest singer/
songwriter.]
In 1914, on the eve before he was scheduled to
be hanged, Joe Hill explained his rationale for
writing political protest songs:
A pamphlet, no matter how good, is
never read more than once, but a song is
learned by heart and repeated over and over.
I maintain that if a
person can put a
few cold, common
sense facts into a
song, and dress
them up in a cloak of
humor to take
the dryness off of
them, he will
succeed in
reaching a great
number of workers
who are too
unintelligent or too
indifferent to read a
pamphlet or an
editorial.
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 10
Woody Guthrie
Pete Seeger
[NOTE: Joe Hill was a Swedish immigrant
and a professional provocateur who, according to
American left-wing lore, was hanged by local
authorities for his courageous stand against
injustice on behalf of the downtrodden working
class. From point of fact, he was executed for
murdering two men. At the 1969 Woodstock
music festival, folk balladeer Joan Baez
momentarily resurrected the dormant memory of
this early working class hero with her lilting
rendition of “Joe Hill,” but few in the crowd had
a clue who she was singing about.]
Left-wing protest music was not a factor in
American popular music during the Roaring
Twenties, but with the coming of the Great
Depression dozens of topical songs related to the
times were played on the radio and became hits.
Some American leftists, along with their
European counterparts such as Theodor Adorno,
considered all commercial popular music to be
bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, but others
saw great potential in exploiting the medium for
propaganda purposes. Still, American
Communists generally looked at popular music
with suspicion if not outright contempt. Popular
music was mostly Broadway show tunes,
formulaic Tin Pan Alley love songs, and hyperkinetic
jazz, and most doctrinaire Marxists
dismissed the commercial music industry as just
another capitalistic scam operation.
Instead, the American left preferred the
socio/political folk-style music of performers such
as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Almanac
Singers. In their minds, folk music was the music
of “The People” and therefore an “authentic” art
form, and operating outside the commercial music
industry, it was itself a protest against capitalism.
Furthermore,
politicized
folk music
avoided the
kind of
“spurious
harmony” –
both
thematically
and musically
– that
Marxists
like Adorno
detested. Unlike slick commercial jazz and
sentimentalistic love ballads sung by professional
crooners, folk-style music was plain and
unadorned. It featured simple instrumentation,
and songs were sung (or in many cases, croaked,
howled, wheezed, whined, growled or rasped) in
a down-home style by singers with gloriously
untrained voices. The “beauty” of the song was in
its message rather than the melody, the
instrumentation or the vocals. Therefore, a
warbler like Woody Guthrie could be hailed as a
great singer and musician when in fact he could
not have sounded worse if he’d been born without
vocal cords. (Nor would his guitar playing have
suffered much had his fingers been webbed.)
The folksong genre
remained the officially
sanctioned and preferred
medium for left-wing music
into the 1960s. As a young
music phenom, Bob Dylan
mastered the genre and wrote
some of the defining protest
songs of the early Sixties such
as “Blowin’ in the Wind,”
“Masters of War” and “The
Times They Are A-changin’.”
But he soon grew tired of
acoustic folk music because it
was too restrictive, and when
he formed a rock band and
went electric, folk purists such
as Pete Seeger went ballistic.
For Seeger and other left-wing
ideologues, authentic political
music was folk music, and they
regarded Dylan as a
commercial sell-out to the capitalistic music
industry. This opinion didn’t last long, however,
as other gifted songwriters such as Paul Simon
and Phil Ochs converted to rock.
By the late 1960s, left-wing themes and
influences had thoroughly infiltrated American
pop culture in music, movies, the theater and even
TV. In the end, the elitism of a Theodore
Adorno was discarded for very practical reasons:
a Marxist agenda could very effectively be
communicated to mass audiences through mass
marketing and new technologies. If the ultimate
goal was cultural infiltration and social change,
concessions had to be made to the realities of
modern life. In fact, being almost entirely
consumer-driven and virtually devoid of any
quality control, there was not a medium more
open and susceptible to left-wing propaganda than
popular culture.
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 11
American Neo-Marxism
The Columbia Connection
When Hitler and the Nazi Party came to
power in Germany in 1933, the Frankfurt Institute
of Social Research was shut down “for tendencies
hostile to the state” and most of its library
confiscated. Horkheimer was one of the first
scholars to be dismissed from Frankfurt
University along with luminaries such as the
theologian Paul Tillich and the psychologist Karl
Mannheim. Seeing the proverbial handwriting on
the wall, most of the Institute’s faculty and staff
fled Germany, and the trustees considered
reestablishing the school in Geneva, London or
Paris. Significantly, they never considered seeking
sanctuary in Stalin’s Russia.
In previous years the Institute had developed
contacts with prominent Americans such as the
Marxist historian Charles Beard, the sociologist
Robert MacIver, and the theologian Reinhold
Niebuhr, all of whom were associated with
Columbia University in New York City. When
Horkheimer visited the U.S. in May, 1934, he was
received by Columbia’s president, Nicholas
Murray Butler. Much to Horkheimer’s surprise,
Butler offered the Institute of Social Research
affiliation with the university, including offices
and classrooms in one of the university’s
buildings. As Martin Jay recounts the story...
Horkheimer, fearing he had
misunderstood Butler because of his limited
command of English, wrote a four-page
letter asking him to confirm and clarify his
offer. Butler’s response was a laconic “You
have understood me perfectly!” And so the
International Institute for Social Research,
as revolutionary and Marxist as it had
appeared in Frankfurt in the 1920s, came
to settle in the center of the capitalist world,
New York City. [Martin Jay, The Dialectical
Imagination (1973, 1993), p. 39.]
With that, the Institute of Social Research was
reestablished at Columbia University and became
a haven for Frankfurt School scholars throughout
the 1930s and until the end of World War II. In
the foreword of the first issue of the Institute’s
Studies in Philosophy and Social Science published in
America, Horkheimer acknowledged his and his
colleagues’ good fortune, and the peace and
security that the United States offered. In his
words...
Philosophy, art, and science have lost
their home in most of Europe. England is
now fighting desperately against the
domination of the totalitarian states.
America, especially the United States, is the
only continent in which the continuation of
scientific life is possible. Within the
framework of this country’s democratic
institutions, culture still enjoys the freedom
without which, we believe, it is unable to
exist. [Quoted in Martin Jay, p. 167.]
The great irony, of course, was that while
America was providing sanctuary to
Horkheimer’s group, they were working to
undermine the very traditions and “democratic
institutions” that accorded them safety and
security. Although Horkheimer portrayed the
Institute as a non-political “scientific” think-tank,
he and his associates applied the same principles
of Critical Theory they had developed in
Germany to American society and culture as they
focused on two priorities:
(1)A critique of German National Socialism
(Nazism), which they disingenuously caricatured,
along with Italian Fascism, as “right-wing”
totalitarian ideologies. In the process, they linked
Nazism and capitalism to the extent that
Horkheimer declared that those who refrained
from criticizing capitalism forfeited the right to
criticize Nazism.
(2)A critique of American authoritarianism,
including a withering attack on the evils such as
racism in American society and culture. Just as
classism had been the greatest vulnerability in
European society and culture, racism has been
America’s most persistent problem. In the early
1920s Trotsky predicted that just as the oppressed
proletariat constituted the revolutionary vanguard
in classical Marxist thought, oppressed blacks
could be formed into a revolutionary vanguard in
America. This was a form of Marxist revisionism
that Lenin (and later Stalin) would condemn as
heretical and “counter-revolutionary,” but
Horkheimer and his colleagues regarded it not
only as a concession to reality but an opportunity.
In classical Marxism the proletariat class was
the designated catalyst for bringing down the old
order and ushering in the new. But in the 1930s
labor unions had entered into collective
bargaining agreements with management, and the
material conditions in modern industrial societies
such as the U.S. were such that the working
classes had been co-opted by the allure of
materialism and the promise of a rising standards
of living. As such, they were no longer suited for
the revolutionary role, and Neo-Marxist
theoreticians no longer felt bound exclusively to
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 12
the interests of the proletariat. Instead, they were
willing to ally with any and all “progressive”
forces that were dedicated to the revolution.
As Horkheimer and his colleagues settled into
America in the 1930s, racial bigotry and
discrimination were pervasive and blatant. The
Frankfurt scholars viewed this situation as a
golden opportunity, and they effectively exploited
the situation in their efforts to forge a new
revolutionary alliance of victims – i.e., blacks,
Jews, and the traditional proletariat classes of
factory workers, farmers and menial laborers –
along with their sympathizers in academia, the
media, and in the Communist Party of the United
States of America (CPUSA). A standing joke
among Greenwich Village Communists in the
1930s was this exchange between two Party
members discussing an upcoming cell meeting:
“You bring the Negro, and I’ll bring the
folksinger.” They could have added, “And we’ll
ask another comrade to bring the Jewish
intellectual.”
All social and political systems are flawed, and
all are deserving of serious examination and
criticism. But there were two fundamental
problems with Neo-Marxist Critical Theory: First,
it is based on a seriously defective naturalistic
worldview that, among other things, provides no
philosophical basis for judging the morality or
goodness of anything; and second, Critical Theory
was exclusively a one-way street. While subjecting
America and Western Europe to intense and
withering criticism, Horkheimer and his
colleagues were incredibly naive (or simply
cowardly) when it came to the Soviet Union. In
this respect they were guilty of employing a
deplorable double-standard. While expressing
outrage over racial bigotry in the United States,
for instance, they found it excruciatingly difficult
to criticize Stalin’s totalitarian dictatorship. Even
in the late 1930s, after Stalin had murdered
millions of Soviet citizens in the Ukrainian Terror
Famine and the various Purges, they remained
almost totally silent, and in 1946 Horkheimer
declared that “at present the only country where
there does not seem to be any kind of antiSemitism
is Russia.” Almost as if on-cue, when
asked about Communist atrocities and Soviet
gulags, their typical response was, “But what
about the Negroes in the South?” – as if there was
a moral equivalency between the two.
When the Institute of Social Research
relocated in America, it lost much of its funding.
The costs associated with resettling and
employing more than a dozen refugee scholars,
along with poor investments in the stock market
and disastrous real estate transactions severely
strained the Institute’s economic resources. [Yes,
you read that right: the Neo-Marxist and anticapitalist
ISR invested heavily in the capitalistic
system.] In fact, had it not been for the financial
support of the American Jewish Committee and
the Jewish Labor Committee, the Institute might
have ceased to exist.
|
With the coming of World War II, several
associates of the ISR, including Herbert Marcuse,
found employment in Washington, D.C. in
government agencies such as the Board of
Economic Warfare, the Office of War
Information, and the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS – the forerunner of the CIA). During the
war most of the Institute’s members became
American citizens. A small staff, headed by Leo
Lowenthal and Friedrich Pollock, continued to
operate out of the Institute’s New York office
until June, 1944 when the building was turned
over to the U.S. Navy. At that point the ISR was
relocated in smaller offices in Columbia’s Low
Memorial Library, and by 1949 the Institute was
no longer associated with the university.
In 1941 Horkheimer and Adorno relocated to
Pacific Palisades near Santa Monica, California,
where they joined other German leftists such as
the playwright Bertolt Brecht. Unfortunately, no
substantive histories have been written that
explore their Hollywood connections during these
years or their influence in the movie and TV
industries. But in 1947, during the height of the
post-war “Red Scare,” the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) was sufficiently
concerned about Communist influence in the
Hollywood entertainment industry that it held
extensive hearings and subpoenaed more than 40
writers, directors, actors and producers. Ten of
those called before the committee – the infamous
“Hollywood Ten” – refused to testify and were
cited for contempt. Many of the others were
blacklisted by TV and movie studio bosses,
including the singer/songwriter, Pete Seeger, who
was kept off television for 20 years until he was
finally invited to appear on The Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour in 1967. With characteristic
defiance, he sang an anti-war song, “Waist Deep
in the Big Muddy,” dedicated to President
Johnson.
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 13
The Sixties
After World War II Horkheimer and Adorno
returned to Germany and reestablished the
Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt. Over the
next several years, approximately 50 scholars who
had been associated with the Institute obtained
faculty positions in American universities. Of
these, Herbert Marcuse emerged as the most
notable. Through his teaching and writings, he
became the key link between the Neo-Marxists of
the Frankfurt School and the American New Left
movement of the 1960s.
The New Left incorporated the seminal ideas
of Critical Theory in its critique of America as a
fascist and repressive state. For left-wing activists
in the Sixties, Critical Theory was far more
appealing than classical Marxism for 3 reasons:
(1)It provided a comprehensive deconstruction
of American culture as innately racist, sexist,
imperialistic, and consumer-obsessed;
(2)It incorporated the arts and popular culture
into the cultural revolution; and
(3)It celebrated sexual liberation and a
rejection of traditional moral values.
The single most
significant influence on
the ideology of the New
Left was Marcuse’s Eros
and Civilization,
published in 1955. In
the book, Marcuse
argued that most of the
angst and hang-ups and
neuroses that young
people feel are the result
of sexual repression.
The solution was “nonrepressive
society” in
which libertarian socialistic values prevailed – i.e,
an egalitarian society in which individuals were
free to pursue their own hedonistic instincts.
Marcuse coined the phrase, “Make love, not
war,” and his call for
sexual liberation is sometimes cited as the
inspiration behind popular Sixties’ slogans such as
“Do your own thing” and “If it feels good, do it.”
Such was his influence, both in America and
Europe, that during the student uprisings in
France in May of 1968, activists carried signs that
read, “Marx/Mao/Marcuse.”
The 1960s was one of the most turbulent
periods in American history. As Richard
Bernstein, a reporter for the New York Times, later
noted in Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and
the Battle for America’s Future (1993), “Thirty years
ago, something shifted in the national mind.”
Bernstein might have added that thirty years
earlier something also shifted in the rational mind
that set the stage for the chaos to come. Beginning
in 1960 with the formation of the premier New
Left student activist group of the Sixties, the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),
continuing through the Berkeley Free Speech
Movement in 1964 and the massive campus
disruptions of the late Sixties, and culminating
with the Kent State killings in the spring of 1970,
American society and culture went through
convulsions – the aftershocks of which are
still felt today.
Throughout
the ordeal, the
left gradually
gained strength
and expanded
its influence
through the
steady
infiltration of higher education, the media,
American Christianity, and other key areas of
influence in American public life. (In the
Frankfurt School, this strategy of infiltration and
cultural subversion was referred to as “the long
march through the institutions” – a reference to
Mao Zedong’s Long March to eventual victory in
the Chinese Civil War.) Throughout the 1960s,
with the escalation of the Vietnam War, many
college and university graduates enrolled in
master’s programs in hopes
of evading the draft, and some of the most radical
eventually earned Ph.D.’s with the intention of
transforming American society through the
education system. (Of all the Ph.D. degrees
granted by American universities from 1860-1970,
half were granted in the 1960s.)
By the mid-to-late 1970s many of these former
student radicals were moving into positions as
junior faculty and administrators, and by the early
1980s they were firmly entrenched in most
universities and attaining tenure. Gradually,
liberal arts faculties became more radical as NeoMarxists
began replacing older New Deal liberals
who retired, and over time a rigid left-wing
ideology prevailed in many departments. As
Martin Jay has written, “it cannot be doubted that
Critical Theory has achieved... a secure – perhaps
ironically even a canonical – status as a central
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 14
theoretical impulse in contemporary academic
life.”
Likewise, in radio, television and print media,
just as former Sixties activists came to dominate
in higher education, they moved into positions of
influence in the mainstream media. As their
power increased, they grew bolder and more
aggressive. Borrowing a key tactic from Lenin and
the cultural Marxists of an earlier period, liberals
and radical leftists began labeling conservative
ideas “politically incorrect.” The implication was
that only liberal elitists truly understood the
parameters of political orthodoxy, and that any
ideas outside those boundaries were ignorant,
unrealistic, and/or immoral.
Fascist Amerika
A basic premise of Neo-Marxist ideology is
that traditional America is innately Fascist –
hence, the spelling of “Amerika” with a ‘k’ in leftwing
propaganda. According to this theory, there
is a latent Fascism in the American soul as a
result of America’s heritage of capitalism, racism,
sexism, imperialism and Christianity. Several
prominent Frankfurt School scholars put forth this
idea, including Wilhelm Reich in The Mass
Psychology of Fascism (1933) and Eric Fromm in
Studies on Authority and the Family (1936), which
concluded that sado-masochism was the core
characteristic of the authoritarian/Fascist
personality. (Fromm later disavowed this thesis.)
Max Horkheimer also weighed in on the issue in a
1950 essay entitled “The Lessons of Fascism,” in
which he associated the authoritarian personality
with a set of generalized character traits that
included an acceptance of conventional values,
respect for authority, stereotypical thinking, “a
penchant for superstition” (i.e., religion), and
prejudice toward one’s opponents.
The most extensive study of the subject was
Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality
(1950), in which he sought to verify statistically a
theory of the prototypical Fascist personality as
linked to a particular set of conventional moral
and cultural values. According to Adorno, these
authoritarian traits, which are reinforced and
nurtured through the traditional patriarchal
family, contribute to certain character traits that
condition many Americans to accept Fascism and
socio/political repression.
The Authoritarian Personality promoted a view of
psycho-politics based on Freud’s dubious theory
of the unconscious. Despite such a scientificallyquestionable
foundation, Adorno argued
passionately and with an air of authority. He was
scathing in his contempt for conservatives and
traditionalists, whom he argued were not merely
wrong-headed but mentally disturbed. According
to Adorno, the only mentally healthy person is the
“genuine liberal” – fiercely independent, tolerant
(except, of course, toward traditionalists), and
committed to egalitarianism and “social justice”
(as defined, of course, by the radical left).
From a marketing standpoint, a major
attraction of the book was Adorno’s construction
of an “F-Scale” (Fascist-Scale) rating system
based on nine personality variables incorporating
several terms that are currently associated with
Political Correctness. According to Adorno, the
Fascist character type strongly identifies with the
following traits:
• Conventionalism. Rigid adherence to
conventional middle-class values.
• Authoritarian submission. A submissive and
uncritical attitude toward authority figures.
• Authoritarian aggression. The inclination to
apply or enforce conventional values on
others.
• Anti-intraception. Opposition to the
subjective, the imaginative, or the intuitive.
• Superstition and stereotypy. The belief in
the supernatural or mystical determinism,
and the disposition to think in rigid
categories (i.e., racial, ethnic and gender
prejudice).
• Power and “toughness.” A preoccupation
with dominance-submission, strong-weak,
leader-follower; identification with power
figures; exaggerated assertion of strength
and toughness.
• Destructiveness and cynicism. Generalized
hostility and the tendency to vilify others.
• Projectivity. “The disposition to believe that
wild and dangerous things go on in the
world” (i.e., a conspiratorial mindset).
• Sex. An exaggerated concern with
conventional sexual morality and a
preoccupation with other people’s sexual
practices. [Source: Martin Jay, p. 243.]
Borrowing from Freud and Fromm, Adorno
contended that the breeding ground for the
“authoritarian syndrome” was the patriarchal
family headed by a “stern and distant” father. In
such scenarios, he argued, children repress their
innate hostility while becoming passive/
aggressive, which produces serious mental
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 15
disorders such as sado-masochism. By contrast,
the families of mentally healthy children were
more matriarchal, less conventional, less statusconscious,
and less demanding. In such families
the parents were loving and affectionate, but the
mother, who was nurturing but also strong and
independent, was clearly dominant.
According to Adorno, this explained why the
Fascist personality lacked empathy and
compassion for others. Originally, he identified
the antithesis of the authoritarian Fascist as the
principled and mentally-healthy “revolutionary,”
but when he finally published his study he referred
to this alternative character type as a “liberal” or a
“democrat” – terms that were considerably less
controversial. The prototypical liberal was an
independent thinker who was committed to
“progressive social change” and who,
coincidentally, held the same values and bore the
same characteristics as Adorno and his
Neo-Marxist colleagues. Adorno had found
himself in his own research, which must have
come as a most pleasant surprise.
[NOTE: Many have pointed out the subjective
and problematical nature of Adorno’s research as
well as his simplistic caricature of conservatives.
For substantive critiques see Paul Gottfried, After
Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State
(Princeton University Press, 2001), and the notes
accompanying Martin Jay’s The Dialetical
Imagination. Particularly noteworthy are those
who criticized Adorno’s political bias in the study.
Edward Shils, for example, questioned why
authoritarianism was associated with Fascism
alone and not Communism, and why was the F
Scale not a ‘C Scale’ or a ‘T Scale’ (for
Totalitarian)? Obviously, despite all their rhetoric
about “toleration,” leftists such as Adorno were
every bit as biased and intolerant as the
conservatives whom they despised. See Martin
Jay, pp. 244-48.]
Adorno’s thesis that America is innately
Fascist is transparently self-refuting. The very fact
that radical leftists like him were free to propagate
their views contradicted his argument. If America
is so racist, xenophobic and repressive, why does
it continue to attract hordes of immigrants, and
why do virtually all those who come here (legally)
also choose to stay? The facts tend to speak for
themselves, and in fact there is no country in the
world where citizens in general, and racial and
ethnic minorities in particular, enjoy more civil
liberties, more opportunities, and a higher
standard of living than in the United States.
Rather than support the Neo-Marxist thesis of
Fascist Amerika, the evidence indicates that
Fascism and authoritarianism – such as the
McCarthy witch-hunt of the early 1950s, are
anomalies in American history. As the former
Sixties radicals Peter Collier and David Horowitz
point out in Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts
on the Sixties, the McCarthy phenomenon and the
Red Scare were merely a blip on the radar screen
of American history.
The history of McCarthyism shows how
alien the witch-hunt mentality is to the
American spirit and how superficial its hold
on the American psyche. Appearing in the
extraordinary circumstances of the postwar
period, McCarthyism was brief in its moment
and limited in its consequences. And it was
complete in the way it was purged from the
body politic. The Wisconsin senator’s strut
on the stage ended in a crushing repudiation
by his colleagues. [Peter Colier and David
Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second
Thoughts on the Sixties, p. 196]
From point of fact, as even the Neo-Marxist
M.I.T. professor, Noam Chomsky, has admitted,
the whole Fascist Amerika line is a fabrication. As
Chomsky concedes, the United States is “the
greatest” and “the freest country in the world.”
I don’t just mean in terms of limits on
state coercion, though that’s true, too, but
also in terms of individual relations. The
United States comes closest to
classlessness in terms of interpersonal
relations than virtually any society. [“Interview
with Noam Chomsky and Bill Bennett,” American
Morning with Paula Zahn. CNN (May 30, 2002).
Tim Adams, “Noam Chomsky: Thorn in America’s
Side.” The Observer (10/30/2003).]
A post-script: One obvious problem with
Critical Theory is that it is entirely an open-ended
strategy with no fixed point or realistic destination
or standard of measurement. At what point does
one find respite in the pursuit of utopian
perfectionism? All human systems are flawed, and
those seeking socio/political salvation in this
world will never find satisfaction. Even the
proponents of Critical Theory admitted that its
truths could not be assessed or critiqued, verified
or falsified, by reference to the present order for
the simple reason that the present order is
hopelessly flawed. This requires a leap of faith
that even Kierkegaard would have found foolishly
presumptuous.
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 16
Eric Fromm
At times, even the Frankfurt School itself has
been victimized by its own radical ideology. Early
in 1969 Frankfurt University was temporarily shut
down when student demonstrators called a
general strike and seized control of several
buildings. When students moved in to occupy the
facility of the Frankfurt School, the Institute’s
directors, Ludwig von Friedeburg and Theodor
Adorno, responded like contemptible bourgeois
administrators had done elsewhere in Europe and
America: they called for the police to expel the
barbarians. Then, a couple of months later,
several female protesters burst into a classroom
where Adorno was lecturing and staged a
symbolic protest, baring their breasts and
fulminating about sexist oppression. Adorno was
neither amused nor impressed, but for a brief
moment he was subjected to the kind of incivility,
harassment and street theater (or in this case,
stage theater) that Neo-Marxists have sponsored
and encouraged for decades.
The legacy of the Frankfurt School is a mixed
bag. While conservatives are unanimous in their
condemnation of the Institute and Critical Theory
for undermining traditional American values and
institutions, liberals and leftists are more
ambivalent. On the one hand, the Institute’s
brand of Marxist revisionism abandoned many of
the revered dogmas of Marxist theory, including
the revolutionary potential of the working class,
class struggle as the dynamic engine of history,
and the economic substructure as the basis of
social analysis. Perhaps most significantly, the
Institute, consisting primarily of leisured
intellectuals and tenured academics, severed the
connection between revolutionary theory and
praxis (or action). Yet in the 1950s more than 50
scholars associated with the Institute gained
positions in American colleges and universities,
and their influence helped spark the student
uprisings of the 1960s and the radicalization of
American higher education. And in light of
present political realities, it remains to be seen just
how far-reaching their impact will be.
For Martin Jay, the primary contribution of the
Frankfurt School was its preservation of the
“integrity” of the Marxist ideal at a time when
Stalinism threatened to delegitimize it. Most
Christians and conservatives would consider that
accomplishment alone to be the most damning
indictment of the Frankfurt School.
The Apostles of PC
A Left-wing Rogues’ Gallery
In conclusion, I have provided the following
brief biographical sketches of six of the most
significant and influential theorists in the history
of American cultural Marxism: Eric Fromm,
Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, C. Wright
Mills, Paul Goodman and Noam Chomsky. The
first three were Germans with direct connections
to the Frankfurt School, while the last three were
Americans whose works influenced the New Left
and the counterculture in the 1960s and provided
the philosophical basis for contemporary Political
Correctness.
Eric Fromm
Eric Fromm (1900-80) was a psychologist,
psychoanalyst, and humanistic philosopher who
was raised in an orthodox Jewish family. One of
his grandfathers and two great grandfathers were
rabbis, and an uncle was a Talmudic scholar.
Nonetheless, Fromm rejected orthodox Judaism
in his mid-twenties and became a committed
secularist.
As a student at the
University of Heidelberg,
Fromm studied sociology
under two renowned
scholars, Karl Jaspers and
Alfred Weber (a brother
of Max Weber). He took
his Ph.D. in sociology in
1922 and later trained in
psychoanalysis.
In 1930 Fromm joined
the Frankfurt Institute of
Social Research, and after the Nazi seizure of
power in 1933 he emigrated to America and
taught at Columbia University. In 1943 he cofounded
the Washington School of Psychiatry,
and 3 years later he co-founded the William
Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry,
Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. Fromm also
taught at Bennington College (1941-50), Michigan
State University (1957-61), NYU (1962-74), and
at the University of Mexico in Mexico City.
Fromm’s psychology was a mix of Marxism
and Freudianism. While Marx emphasized
economic determinism, Freud theorized that
human behavior is mostly the product of
biological drives and culture-based repression.
To this, Fromm added a third component: the
innate yearning for freedom – or as Abraham
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 17
Theodor Adorno
Maslow would later term it, “self-actualization.”
In 1941 Fromm published Escape from Freedom,
a seminal work in political psychology in which
he theorized that due to the insecurities of life, we
tend to gravitate toward authoritarian fascism
unless we “master society and subordinate the
economic machine to the purposes of human
happiness.” Escape from Freedom was a favorite
among left-wing ideologues and Existentialists
alike, and it was often required reading at colleges
and universities in the 1960s.
By the time Fromm published Escape from
Freedom, he had parted company with his
Frankfurt School colleagues over philosophical
differences. Thereafter, he devoted himself
exclusively to his clinical work and his subsequent
writings. He followed Escape from Freedom with
Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of
Ethics (1947) and The Art of Loving (1956), which
are essentially Existentialist in nature. No longer a
doctrinaire Marxist, he had come to believe that
individual self-fulfillment is the greatest good. He
defined a “true revolutionary” as an individualist
who has “emancipated himself” from loyalty to
his familial heritage, his nation-state, his race, his
party and his religion.
From Fromm’s perspective, classical Marxist
theory was psychologically naive, and he believed
psychoanalysis could provide the missing link
between a society’s socio/economic substructure
and its ideological superstructure. Nonetheless, he
always maintained that the greatest influence on
his thinking was Marx, not Freud, whom he
regarded as too bourgeois and patriarchal. When
Fromm wrote his autobiography in 1962 he
declared emphatically that “Marx is a figure of
world historical significance with whom Freud
cannot even be compared.” He also confirmed
that “I have always upheld the... point that man’s
capacity for freedom, for love, etc. depends almost
entirely on [his] socio-economic conditions.”
In The Sane Society (1955) Fromm called for a
“humanistic communitarian socialism.” He
spurned Western capitalism and Soviet
communism, both of which he considered to be
bureaucratic, dehumanizing, and alienating, and
argued that the “sane society” would be one in
which human freedom and the communal good
were the ultimate goals.
After severing his connections to the Institute
of Social Research, Fromm’s subsequent work
focused less on political and psycho-sexual issues
and more on the interpersonal components of
neurosis. He also emphasized the integration of
ethics and psychology, and in later years even
developed a fascination with Zen Buddhism.
Although no longer a Neo-Marxist
theoretician, Fromm didn’t totally divorce himself
from politics. In the mid-1950s he joined the
American Socialist Party, and he was a staunch
supporter of SANE, the disarmament group
aligned with the international peace movement.
In 1968 he supported Eugene McCarthy for
president, but gradually lost interest in politics
after the 1968 election.
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was one of the 20th
century’s premier Neo-Marxist social
philosophers. He grew up in a cultured family in
which his mother, a Catholic, was a gifted
musician, and his father,
a Protestant convert from
Judaism, was a wealthy
wine merchant.
Adorno studied both
music composition and
philosophy at the
University of Frankfurt,
writing his dissertation
on Kierkegaardian
aesthetics under the
direction of the Christian
socialist and liberal
theologian Paul Tillich.
In 1933 the Nazi government expelled him from
the university due to his non-Aryan ancestry and
Marxist ideology. The following year he sought
refuge in England and then came to America in
1937, where he worked closely with Max
Horkheimer at the Institute of Social Research at
Columbia University and as the head of the music
study division of the Office of Radio Research at
Princeton University.
In 1941 Adorno became co-director of the
Research Project on Social Discrimination at the
University of California at Berkeley, and after the
war he returned to Germany and taught at the
University of Frankfurt from 1949-69.
Adorno was a doctrinaire Neo-Marxist who
attributed the Holocaust to the influence of
Enlightenment rationalism, which he considered
to be the philosophical basis for modern
totalitarianism. Yet conversely, he was also a
gifted composer and a romantic at heart who
considered the arts to the be the key to human
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 18
Herbert Marcuse
liberation. But ultimately, ideology prevailed over
aesthetics, and he explained his disenchantment
with the arts with the comment, “To still write a
poem after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
As mentioned earlier, Adorno’s book, The
Authoritarian Personality (1950), was a seminal and
influential work in Neo-Marxist psycho-politics.
His “F-Scale” and strategy of associating
conventional middle-class values with fascism and
mental illness was as brilliant as it was dishonest.
In many respects it defined the rules of
engagement in the culture war, and succeeded in
putting conservatives (and most Christians)
clearly on the defensive.
Anticipating the rise of postmodernism,
Adorno put forth the theory that language and
dominant thought-forms are tools of political
power that the ruling class uses to control social
orthodoxy. As part of its control strategy, the
ruling class uses commercial popular culture to
pacify the masses, reinforce the dominant values,
and control “deviants” – i.e., social and political
dissidents. According to Adorno, all of this is
driven by the insatiable demands of a capitalist
economy that exploits people’s greed for more
material goods. That aside, his was not the radical
postmodernism of later theorists such as JeanFrancois
Lyotard and Jacques Derrida.
Throughout his career he remained a utopian
idealist who envisioned a political system and a
culture in keeping with his concept of social
justice.
As a musicologist, Adorno understood the
cultural and propaganda value of the arts –
particularly, music and movies. As mentioned
earlier, he was a scathing critic of commercial
popular culture which regards art as little more
than a marketable commodity, and he questioned
whether true art could survive in a capitalistic
world in which everything is driven by the profit
motive. Seeing art as a primary front in the
culture war, he believed that the only legitimate
art and music were those that challenged the
commercially-defined sensibilities of the middle
class.
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) was a
philosopher, social theorist, and political activist.
In terms of promoting cultural Marxism, Marcuse
was the key figure as he linked the Neo-Marxism
of the Frankfurt School with the New Left
movement of the 1960s. His influence was such
that the media dubbed him “the father of the New
Left.”
Marcuse, like most
of the early Frankfurt
School scholars, was
born into an affluent
family of assimilated
Jews. After serving in
the German army in
World War I he was
briefly involved in
politics with the Social
Democratic Party, but
he quit in protest when
the party renounced
revolutionary politics
and began cooperating
with the moderate
Weimar government. Marcuse studied philosophy
at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg, and
received a Ph.D. in literature in 1923. He later
studied under Martin Heidegger, and although the
two differed politically, Marcuse always
acknowledged Heidegger as the greatest thinker
and teacher he ever encountered. In 1933 he
joined the faculty of the Frankfurt School’s
Institute of Social Research, and the following
year he fled Nazi Germany and worked along
with Horkheimer and others at the Institute of
Social Research at Columbia University.
During the Second World War Marcuse
worked for the Office of Secret Services (OSS), the
forerunner of the CIA, and he later served in the
State Department as the head of the Central
European Office for Intelligence Research in the
immediate post-war period. In 1950 he returned to
academia as a lecturer in sociology at Columbia
University and a senior fellow at the Russian
Institute, and four years later he joined the faculty
of Brandeis University. Brandeis was a hotbed of
left-wing politics, and Marcuse became a popular
and influential professor. But he was also a
lightning rod for controversy, and when Brandeis
refused to renew his contract in 1962 he accepted
a position at the University of California at La
Jolla.
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 19
In 1955 Marcuse published his first major
academic work, Eros and Civilization: A
Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. The book was a
bold attempt to synthesize Marxism and
Freudianism, and it became the essential
connection between the cultural Marxism of the
Frankfurt School and the New Left of the 1960s.
Eros and Civilization was a wholesale repudiation
of Western civilization and a clarion call for a
cultural revolution, and it provided a pseudointellectual
basis for the sexual revolution of the
1960s. The book quickly became a favorite among
free-thinkers, Beatniks and bohemian hedonists,
and a few years later it inspired a generation of
young counterculture radicals in the Sixties.
Eros and Civilization is anything but
a practical guide for revolution, but it
set forth a libertarian and hedonistic social
philosophy that held great appeal to affluent Baby
Boomers in post-war America. Marcuse called for
a democratic socialist society based on the
principles of “non-alienating labor,” freedom, and
the pursuit of happiness – including sexual
liberation. As such, he rejected a central tenet of
Freud’s theory of social psychology. According to
Freud, civilized society operates according to the
“performance principle,” and therefore it must
necessarily be repressive by forcing its people to
spend most of their time and energy working
rather than gratifying their desires. Freud believed
that if human beings were freed from the
constraints of labor and traditional social and
moral taboos, civilization itself would collapse.
In contrast, Marcuse called for the
actualization of a “reality beyond the performance
principle,” and asserted that mankind could find
fulfillment “not through dominion and
exploitation [i.e., the tyranny of labor and the
“performance principle”] but through the release
of inherent libidinal forces.” His socialist utopia
would operate according to “the erotic
reconciliation (or union) of man and nature in the
aesthetic attitude, where order is beauty and work
is play.”
[NOTE: I’m reminded of a dialogue that took
place within a radical group in the late 1960s. The
leader had just proclaimed that henceforth the
group would abolish all social conventions,
including work. From now on, all they would do
is eat, sleep, have sex, and protest the war. That
sounded perfectly groovy until one of the
neophyte radicals thought to ask, “But who’ll
make the signs?”]
Marcuse called for sexual liberation,
“polymorphous perversity” and the abolition of
the monogamous and “patriarchal” family, and at
times he seemed perfectly enraptured by his own
psycho-sexual fantasies:
No longer used as a full-time instrument
of labor, the body would be resexualized,
(which) would first manifest itself in a
reactivation of all erotogenic zones and,
consequently, in a resurgence of pre-genital
polymorphous sexuality and in a decline of
genital supremacy. The body in its entirety
would become an object of cathexis, a thing
to be enjoyed – an instrument of pleasure.
This change in the value and scope of
libidinal relations would lead to a
disintegration of the institutions in which the
private interpersonal relations have been
reorganized, particularly the monogamic
and patriarchal family.
A “resexualized” body in which “all erotogenic
zones” would be “reactivated” along with a
“resurgence of pre-genital polymorphous
sexuality” and “a decline of genital supremacy,”
culminating in the “disintegration” of all cultural
institutions? Marcuse apparently enjoyed himself
immensely, but it’s hard to take all of this
seriously. Perhaps that is why many Sixties’
radicals preferred reading Eros and Civilization
while stoned. Yet the strangest part was that he
dedicated the book to Sophie Marcuse, his wife of
50 years.
Predictably, Eros and Civilization elicited strong
reactions even among those on the left side of the
culture war. Eric Fromm called the book
“nihilistic,” accused Marcuse of misrepresenting
Freud, and pointed out that his former colleague
lacked any practical experience with
psychoanalysis. More seriously, he charged that
the book promoted irresponsible hedonism. Like
Freud, Fromm was convinced that the tension
between hedonism and civilization was necessary
to curb the worst excesses of human behavior. It
was absurd, he argued, to think that widespread
“polymorphous perversity” was compatible with a
well-ordered society and culture. Certain practices
that Marcuse tolerated, such as sadism and
coprophilia, should never be socially sanctioned.
Furthermore, the loss of restraint and the
obsession with immediate gratification that
Marcuse advocated would break down all selfdiscipline
and render humanity easily
manipulated, as in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World.
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 20
Yet despite its radical and irresponsible
hedonism, Eros and Civilization was one of the
landmark books of the 20th century in terms of
igniting the sexual/cultural revolution of the
1960s. As William Lind observes...
Marcuse understood what most of the
rest of his Frankfurt School colleagues did
not; that the way to destroy Western
civilization... was not through abstruse
theory, but through sex, drugs and rock ‘n’
roll. Marcuse wrote other works for the new
generation that spawned the New Left...
but Eros and Civilization was the key work,
the one that put the match to the tender.
[William S. Lind, “Further Readings in the
Frankfurt School,” in Political Correctness: A
Short History of an Ideology.
Www.freecongress.org.]
In 1958 Marcuse published Soviet Marxism,
one of the first substantive critiques of Soviet
Communism by a left-wing intellectual. Using a
line of argument that would later become
standard fare in Neo-Marxist circles, Marcuse
charged that Stalin’s regime had perverted
orthodox Marxism and betrayed Lenin’s
revolution by the imposition of a totalitarian and
bureaucratic state. Like many Neo-Marxist
Western intellectuals, Marcuse departed from
rigid Marxist orthodoxy whenever it suited his
purposes, so he rejected the glorification of the
state that relegated the individual to
insignificance.
In his next major work, One -Dimensional Man
(1964), Marcuse criticized both capitalism and
Soviet-style communism. In place of classical
Marxism, he advocated a form of “libertarian
socialism” that glorified individualism and
humanistic values. Nonetheless, the final aim was
a radical cultural revolution that would transform
man’s basic existence. According to Marcuse,
man actualizes his potential in history through
revolution.
In his critique of capitalism, Marcuse argued
that, whereas early capitalist societies had used
human beings as units of production, advanced
capitalist societies thrive on over-production and
over-consumption. He contended that modern
capitalism is an unholy alliance and a tangled web
of exploitation involving capital investments,
industrial management, technology, mass
production, advertising, and mass consumption.
In such a mutually-exploitative matrix, human
beings become mindless consumers of
unnecessary products – consumption addicts and
pawns of modern advertising. As a result, the
working classes – those who ought to have a
revolutionary consciousness – are co-opted by the
seduction of mass consumption.
Marcuse argued that the end result is that
human freedom is sacrificed as people live to
work more so they can buy and consume more.
He considered production and consumption to be
an integral part of a “conformist society” that
suppresses individualism, but his primary concern
seemed to be that such mundane matters
interfered with more important things in life such
as the perfection of “polymorphous perversity.”
According to Marcuse, the solution to escaping
the robotic routine of modern society comes
through “the Great Refusal” – an intentional
rejection of capitalism, technology, and the cult of
consumption. Rather than being a mindless slave
addicted to production and consumption,
Marcuse called for liberation... through erotic
sexuality. As a leading advocate of sexual politics,
he contended that sexual liberation was an
essential aspect in the social and political
transition from capitalism to socialism.
However, since the traditional proletariat class
is innately conservative and religious, and because
it has been co-opted by consumerism, the
vanguard for any cultural revolution must come
from disenfranchised minorities, social rebels, the
liberal elite, and a radicalized intelligentsia.
Unlike most academicians who spurned
popular culture, Marcuse recognized its potential
impact on society and understood that a political
revolution is inextricably linked to a cultural
revolution. His theories influenced subsequent
generations of scholars who specialized in popular
culture as well as radical activists such as Abbie
Hoffman, co-founder of the Youth International
Party (YIPPIEs), and Angela Davis, a black
Communist whom Marcuse called “my best
student.” [NOTE: Davis also studied in Frankfurt
under Theodor Adorno.]
Marcuse’s 1965 essay on “Repressive
Tolerance” essentially defined what is now
considered Political Correctness. He declared that
capitalist democracies are innately totalitarian,
and therefore a selective or “discriminatory form”
of tolerance should be applied to ensure that the
opinions of marginalized minorities are
recognized. It is perfectly proper, he contended, to
silence “repressive” intolerance (i.e., conservative
opinions) in order to protect the rights of
minorities. Freedom of speech and freedom of
expression should be regulated in order to
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 21
C. Wright Mills
suppress intolerant conservative views and
behavior, and to promote a more fair and
equitable society. In Marcuse’s words, “Liberating
tolerance would mean intolerance against
movements from the Right, and toleration of
movements from the Left.” In the essay he
criticized mainstream liberals for failing to
confront conservative values and other “evils,” a
theme that New Left singer/songwriter Phil Ochs
incorporated into in his scathing satire of liberal
hypocrisy in “Love Me, I’m a Liberal.”
In 1969 Marcuse wrote An Essay on Liberation
in which he called for a systematic approach to
cultural subversion, including a linguistic
revolution to alter (and confuse) the meaning of
key words and terms. Sensing that the times were
indeed a-changin’, he celebrated all the liberation
movements of the Sixties from Civil Rights to the
counterculture, student rebellions, women’s
liberation, gay liberation, and even the Vietcong.
Skillfully exploiting racial politics, he demonized
white males as the source of America’s problems,
and called on blacks to rise up and become the
vanguard in a comprehensive social and political
revolution. Emphasizing the theme that Charles
Reich would incorporate into The Greening of
America, Marcuse called for a radically new
approach to the concept of revolution:
One can rightfully speak of a cultural
revolution, since the protest is directed
toward the whole cultural establishment,
including the morality of existing society....
There is one thing we can say with
complete assurance: the traditional idea of
revolution and the traditional strategy of
revolution has ended. These ideas are oldfashioned.
[Quoted by Raymond V. Raehn in
“The Historical Roots of ‘Political Correctness,”
in William S. Lind, Political Correctness: A Short
History of an Ideology. www.freecongress.org.]
Unlike Adorno, Marcuse didn’t buy into the
emerging postmodern consciousness in the 1970s.
As a hard-headed rationalist, he put forth a
revised version of the classical Marxist
metanarrative and promoted a kind of cultural
Marxism that was more comprehensive than
merely the economic component.
C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills (1916-62) was an American
sociologist who taught at Columbia University
from 1946 until his death in 1962. Like Marcuse
and Paul Goodman (see below), Mills was more
of a libertarian socialist than a doctrinaire
Marxist, but his contributions to New Left
thought and Political Correctness were
nonetheless considerable.
Mills shared the
same jaundiced view
of traditionalists and
conservatives as
Adorno and
Marcuse, but he
aimed most of his
criticism at the
American liberal
elite. In the process
he articulated many
of the themes that
later characterized
the ideology of the
New Left –
specifically, that an
undemocratic “power elite” dominated American
society, and that mainstream liberalism had lost
its social consciousness and now represented the
status quo. As an ardent opponent of post-war
U.S. foreign policy and the Cold War, he charged
that a small group of Washington politicians,
Pentagon officials and corporate barons controlled
the government. (Interestingly, President
Eisenhower would later warn of the dangers of an
unchecked “military/industrial complex that was
unresponsive to the interests of the American
people.) To show his disdain for the governing
elite, Mills traveled to Cuba in the early 1960s and
wrote a book praising Fidel Castro’s “social
experiments.”
Mills began his critique of American society in
1948 with The New Men of Power: America’s Labor
Leaders. Like most leftist intellectuals who bought
into Marxist conflict theory, Mills was troubled by
the fact that American labor leaders had lost their
radical edge and were willing to compromise with
the capitalist business establishment for the sake
of better pay, employment benefits and job
security. To Mills, this was tantamount to selling
out, and he considered it a tragic betrayal of the
union ideal. In his mind, they had become part of
the Establishment, and were therefore part of the
problem in terms of moving American society
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 22
Paul Goodman
farther toward socialism. In a follow-up book,
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951),
he applied the same analysis and critique to
mainstream white collar employees and the
corporate managerial class.
The Power Elite (1956) was Mills’ most
influential work, and it established his reputation
as a major social critic. Although based on some
dubious premises, it resonated with many
Americans in a time when Cold War tensions
were steadily escalating. It also provided fodder
for disaffected leftists who believed American
society was innately fascistic and oppressive.
Mills refused to call himself a Marxist, and if
pressed, he probably would have preferred to
describe himself as an independent libertarian
socialist. Nonetheless, his view of American
society and culture was certainly compatible with
the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, and
his basic philosophy incorporated traditional
Marxist dialectical themes regarding social and
political power relationships, alienation and
manipulation. Like Politically Correct leftists
today, his orientation was to politicize everything
in life, as he wrote in The Sociological Imagination
(1959): “It is the political task of the social
scientist – as of any liberal educator – continually
to translate personal troubles into public issues....”
Paul Goodman
Like Marcuse and Mills, Paul Goodman (1911-
72) provided intellectual inspiration for the New
Left, primarily in his enormously popular and
influential book, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of
Youth in the Organized System (1960). Goodman
was a sociologist and a co-founder of Gestalt
Therapy, but he is remembered primarily as an
influential New Left theoretician and activist.
Goodman attended Hebrew schools as a
youth, graduated from
the City College of New
York (CCNY) in 1932,
and then pursued a
doctorate degree in
sociology at the
University of Chicago.
He was a regular
contributor for several
years to Dwight
Macdonald’s left-wing
journal, Politics,
although he freely
admitted that he was
more of an anarchist than a socialist.
Goodman was a romantic and an idealist at
heart. In an interview of Studs Terkel, he
explained that his greatest challenge in life was
“to grow up as a human being into a culture
without losing nature.” As a bisexual, he was
involved in the gay liberation movement of the
late Sixties and early Seventies – his “out of the
closet” announcement coming in an essay
entitled, “Being Queer.” He argued that
homosexual relationships between males were
natural and healthy, and commented that “what is
really obscene is the way our society makes us feel
shameful and like criminals for doing human
things that we really need.”
As an anarchist, Goodman argued that even
liberal institutions were repressive forces in
American society. As an example, he contended
that schools stifle children’s healthy natural
instincts and subtly indoctrinate them with the
values of a materialistic and unhealthy society. He
charged that order, conventionality and
predictability took precedence over spontaneity
and creativity, memorization of trivial facts
trumped critical thinking, and the interests of
teachers and administrators took priority over the
needs of students. Similarly, he argued, all of
American society was governed by the same
perverse values. Large bureaucratic institutions –
both governmental and private – were run by
technocratic “experts” whose agendas ran counter
to the needs and interests of their employees and
the public in general. Centralized institutions were
inefficient, wasteful and predatory, and constantly
expanded their power at the expense of individual
liberty and the general welfare.
Goodman’s solution to the problems of
bureaucratization and centralization resonated
not only with the New Left but the Sixties
counter-culture as well. In opposition to the
conventional Establishment and the status quo, he
proposed intentional decentralization and a return
to small communities – a theme that Joni Mitchell
later expressed in her popular song,
“Woodstock.”
We are stardust, we are golden
We are caught in the Devil’s bargain
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the Garden.
[Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock.” Copyright 1969,
Siquomb Music.]
A History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness: Part 2 23
Noam Chomsky
Goodman had little hope that the older
generations would rebel against the established
order, but he was optimistic that young people
could change the culture through radical reforms
or by starting their own counter-cultural
institutions. Throughout most of the Sixties he
supported the Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) and the New Left agenda in general, but
eventually he disengaged from the movement as it
became increasingly erratic, strident and violent.
After a campus appearance in 1967 in which he
was heckled by a group of radical students, he
realized that an entirely new worldview was being
forged – but it was anything but the dawning of
the Age of Aquarius:
Suddenly I realized that [these students]
did not believe there was a nature of things.
[To them] there was no knowledge but only
the sociology of knowledge. They had
learned so well that physical and sociological
research is subsidized and conducted for the
benefit of the ruling class that they were
doubtful that there was such a thing as
simple truth.... I had imagined that the
worldwide student protest had to do with
changing political and moral institutions, and
I was sympathetic to this. But I now saw that
we had to do with a religious crisis. Not only
all institutions but all learning had been
corrupted by the Whore of Babylon, and
there was no longer any salvation to be got
from Works.
What Goodman was experiencing, of course,
was the dawning of the age of postmodernism –
a worldview devoid of morality that he and others
such as Marcuse and Mills had inadvertently
birthed through their systematic deconstruction of
Western culture and values. Revolutions often
end up devouring their own, and now it was
Goodman who was being dispatched to the
guillotine by the very radicals he had inspired just
a few years earlier.
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky (1928- ) has been the foremost
propagator of Frankfurt School-style Neo
Marxism for the past 50 years. Chomsky is a
philosopher and a political activist, and as a
professor at M.I.T. he taught in the Department of
Linguistics and Philosophy from 1955 to the
present. Chomsky was born and raised in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and his father was a
Hebrew scholar as well as a member of the radical
Marxist labor union, the I.W.W.
A self-described anarchist and “libertarian
socialist” (a term he borrowed from Marcuse’s
One Dimensional Man), Chomsky has also been an
outspoken critic fo U.S. foreign policy since the
1960s. He condemned the American involvement
in Vietnam and wrote that the U.S. should have
been prosecuted for war crimes. Other than the
United States, his
favorite target has been
Israel. Although an
ethnic Jew, he has been
a harsh critic of Israel
and an ardent supporter
of radical Palestinian
groups such as the PLO.
Following Nine-Eleven,
he wrote that “the U.S.
itself is a leading
terrorist state.” In his
book, The End of Faith,
the atheist apologist Sam
Harris chides Chomsky for drawing absurd
“moral equivalencies” between the U.S. and Iraq,
or between Osama ben Laden and Saddam
Hussein and George Bush and Tony Blair.
Paradoxically, in recent years Chomsky has
conceded that the United States is “the greatest”
and “the freest country in the world.” In a 2002
interview on CNN with Paul Zahn, Chomsky
declared...
I don’t just mean in terms of limits on
state coercion, though that’s true, too, but
also in terms of individual relations. The
United States comes closest to
classlessness in terms of interpersonal
relations than virtually any society.
[“Interview with Noam Chomsky and Bill
Bennett,” American Morning with Paula Zahn.
CNN (May 30, 2002). Tim Adams, “Noam
Chomsky: Thorn in America’s Side.” The
Observer (10/30/2003).]
24
Bibliography
Origins of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (Farrar & Rinehart, 1941).
Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality (Harper, 1950).
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Beacon Press, 1955).
Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System (Random
House, 1960).
C. Wright Mills, Xxxxxx (19- -).
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Routeledge and Kegan Paul, 1964).
Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance” (1965).
Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Beacon, 1969).
Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (Anchor Books/Doubleday & Company,
1968).
Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America (Bantam Books, 1970).
Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for
Social Research, 1932-1950 (University of California Press, 1973, 1996).
Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and
the Frankfurt Institute (Free Press, 1977).
David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (University of California
Press, 1980).
Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance (MIT
Press, 1995).
Angela Davis, An Autobiography of Angela Davis (Random House, 1974).
Lorenz Jager, Adorno: A Political Biography (Yale University Press, 2004).
Contemporary Political Correctness
Dinesh D’Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (The Free Press,
1991).
James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle To Define America (Basic Books, 1991).
Diane Ravitch, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
(Knopf, 1994).
Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America’s Future
(Knopf, 1995).
Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in
American Law (Oxford, 1997).
Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty
on America’s Campuses (HarperCollins, 1998).
John Leo, Incorrect Thoughts: Notes on Our Wayward Culture (Transaction, 2000).
William S. Lind, “The Origins of Political Correctness.” Accuracy in Academia (2000).
Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West (St. Martin’s Press, 2002).
David E. Bernstein, “You Can’t Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Anti-
discrimination Laws.” Cato Institute (2003).
25
William McGowan, Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American
Journalism (Encounter Books, 2003).
Miriam Grossman, Unprotected (Sentinel, 2007).
Satirical Critiques
Saul Jerushalmy and Rens Zbignieuw X, Politically Correct Manifesto (1992).
Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook
(1992).
James Finn Garner, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1994).
A Defense of Political Correctness
Jung Min Choi and John W. Murphy, The Politics and Philosophy of Political Correctness
(Praeger, 1992).
Jeffrey Williams (ed.), PC Wars: Politics and Correctness in the Academy (Taylor & Francis,
1994).
John Wilson, The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education |
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