Its been a real disappointment to see how Wikipedia has been coopted and politically weaponized over the past five years. I'm a huge fan of James Lindsay. The Grievance Studies Affair was both hilarious, and really instructive.
Marxism is essentially a "framework" used to think about politics, society, etc., and mobilize people based on various general calls to eliminate injustice (Marxists often specifically use the term "framework").
The details and specific claims are malleable, which is why Marxism adjusts so well to different societal/political contexts and keeps giving its proponents this veneer of plausible deniability (what you just labeled as Marxism is really not!)
Lindsay redefines Marxism and then calls all the postmodern variants Marxism. There’s a logic failing in his analysis. But he knows he is doing it because he makes clear what he is doing.
All of the leftists that I know, and most everyone I know is, are opposed to wokeism. You're really talking about contemporary "liberalism", or identity politics which has little to nothing to do with Marxism.
Same with me. Almost all of those on the left I know are also critical of the woke mentality. Too few are willing to speak up though. It’s time they did because otherwise the right will move into that gap, and that will not be healthy.
“The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.”
I could go through Pluckrose and Lindsay’s book for you but that makes me do all the work. See (hardcover edition) page 184-185 but look also at note 2, page 277 re many misconceptions including conflation of p-m with Marxism. “Although there are complicated connections…the claim is frequently simplistic…specious…Marxism was one of the metanarratives that postmodernism REJECTED” etc. etc.
I can’t say for sure what is in the mind of Pardy or Lindsay, but I can offer what the historical and analytical record show. And there is NO QUESTION that postmodernism departs from Marxism in several IMPORTANT ways. There is also a linkage, as I pointed out (3 times now?) which can be found in the Hegelian school. But look at the quote you chose from Pardy: “They [the neomarxists] broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as critical theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted.”
Note that some of this, the chatter about power and oppression being based on classes, is Marxist doctrine. But the key word is: “Broadened”? (Forget about class and property, now it’s all about identity politics.) Broadened or… Diverged from? Is different from? You choose. But Marxism’s core and essence is social class and conflict as the motor of history; and relations to means of production. Was the theory correct? I don’t know, and I don’t defend the theory.
But have a (re)look at Cynical Theories, by Pluckrose and Lindsay and you will see the careful analysis there of the origins of critical theory and wokeism. Pg 34-35 for example: reflecting on Lyotard’s famous description of postmodernism as ‘skepticism towards metanarratives’: “Scientific reasoning is construed as a metanarrative — a sweeping explanation of how things work — and postmodernism is radically skeptical of all such explanations. In postmodern thinking, that which is known is only known within the cultural paradigm that produced the knowledge and therefore representative of its systems of power. As a result, postmodernism regards knowledge as provincial and intrinsically political. This view is widely attributed to the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard WHO CRITIQUED SCIENCE, THE ENLIGHTENMENT, AND MARXISM. Each of these projects was, for Lyotard, a prime example of MODERNIST OR ENLIGHTENMENT METANARRATIVES.”
There are other locations in the Pluckrose/Lindsay book where Marxism is discussed further. Don’t take my word for it; reread it — I assume you’ve read the book? There’s an index.
“pitiable and delirious”. Try and write without insult. This is childish. I note you have conflated “the left” with “Marxism” below. All the same thing?
Always best to assume your opponent operates with good intentions even if you disagree with their views. Otherwise you come off as patronizing. Every time you engage with my viewpoints you launch ad hominems. Just stick to the context of the disagreements. That’s a far better way to argue your case. Lindsay is no dummy but he is wrong on this interpretation, including his use of the flawed genus-species analogy — as I explained. It only works if you insist on an a priori belief that woke=Marxism. I reviewed Pluckrose and Lindsay’s book Cynical Theories which in my view is excellent. There is no attempt to equate wokeism with marxism in that book. I assume, as I said, that Pluckrose wrote the pertinent “origins of” chapter where they refer to reified postmodernism, not neo-Marxism. I would bet Pluckrose disagrees with Lindsay’s argument on this. I am not defending marxism, something you repeatedly miss in your postings Mr M, and I suspect you have missed this throughout because you slip into stereotyping people into narrow categories (“anyone who disagrees with me must be a Marxist” for instance.) http://web.ncf.ca/fs766/CynicalTheories_CollinsReview.html
A talking point. Take this line you wrote, which is Lindsay’s argument and therefore also yours: “Marx' core direction was not essentially economic - it was social. ” How true is that? Marx certainly argued that the entire society was affected/transformed/dependent upon the economic underpinning — and that includes social-political- cultural-ideological etc — but few would agree that this meant “Marx’s core direction” was “social”. What exactly does Lindsay mean by this? That Marx did NOT see means and relations of production as the driver for everything else? I think we have an excellent case of Lindsay trying to ram the Marx he wants into the Marx that was. Reductionism, a priori thinking, confirmation bias, cherry picking. He has to do it because otherwise his theory that wokeism = Marxism fails. As I note, there are some common roots but the divergence severs them.
Robin Collins: Your take on woke, i.e. that it does not come from the left, that woke "is not left," is pitiable and delirious. Your repeated and ongoing attempts to play traffic cop with the word "Marxism" are pretentious and entirely unconvincing. You are an ant crawling on a flat piece of paper and attempting to lecture about the 3rd dimension. Everyone who sees through this posturing and gets on with the business of analyzing woke has done themselves a big favor.
Mr. M....Should I be mortally wounded by your convincing argument? I'm looking for the content which might challenge my own position but see nothing but ants and traffic cops. Reread Pluckrose/Lindsay's Cynical Theories, or read it for the first time, and see if your view or my view is defended within.
"Lindsay explains that the revolution's goal is to 'awaken a racial class consciousness that will organize a struggle to seize the means of cultural production, so that white cultural production is no longer the dominant mode.'" In a word, this is about resentment. What a future ahead of us? Racial war, if the woke are driven back into their intellectual caves.
I note your and Lindsay’s obsession with “white”. To me, this is irrelevant and isn’t a useful way to hone in on the problem of wokeism. The skin colour variant is only one of many identitarian problems with the woke mindset.
Derived from? Or different from but sharing specific analytical elements? Very different. You might find a proximity for both with Hegelian philosophy, and conflict analysis. That would apply to a whole lot of different isms.
Excellent read. I feel like we are letting people “off the hook” when we call them “woke”. There may be an argument that using the term “woke” is in itself “woke” because we are trying to soften what it really is. Communism.
Some quick responses. There are some basic errors in Lindsay’s argument. A key one (class) he seems to understand but continues to ignore. The marxist assumption that economic relations and property are the basis of human society may or may not be wholly true but that premise is certainly part of basic marxist thought, without which it ain’t marxism. Lindsay chooses instead to call marxism a genus and not a species (a questionable biological analogy) in which the sub groups of the “genus” Marxism (the exception being classical marxism) do not have as their basis economic classes, but instead they can be gender, sex, race, queerness, etc. Lindsay has redefined marxism so it fits his argument and biological hierarchy flowchart. He can then argue that wokeism is marxism (or a variant of it).
Strikingly, nowhere is postmodernism mentioned as a theoretical school in opposition to marxism that is the basis of critical theory. This is very odd because Cynical Theories which Helen Pluckrose co-wrote with Lindsay clearly shows how postmodernism is what is behind wokeism and critical theory (including its sea of variants). I suspect that Pluckrose wrote that chapter, not Lindsay!
Other basic errors include the claim that equity is about making everyone the same (equal outcomes), which he says is “socialism”. Probably the best known descriptor of socialism (Marx) is that socialism embraces the concept “From each according to his ability to each according to his work”. The higher level (ideal) communist society: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Note that “equal outcome” appears in neither phrase. In neither case is it making people “equal”, the same, or denying their differences. In one the more you work, the more you get. In the other what you get reflects your needs.
At the ~17:00 minute point of the linked video Lindsay says: “Marxism was able to evolve to abandon the working class”. There are no marxists I can think of who would agree that this claim -- essential to Lindsay’s argument -- is true or makes any sense to a marxist or would not conflict with their theory’s foundation. Lindsay attempts to rewrite the definition to fit his own conclusion. (That’s called confirmation bias; reductionism; fitting the facts into your theory.) he calls the new category “Identity-based Marxism”.
Conspiracy theorist? There are certainly some aspects that apply, including his claim that “Big Pharma profits off of puberty blockers” or that there’s a conspiratorial organized effort behind WEF/UN/SDG which = slavery. And there’s his long association with New Discourses funder, right wing Christian Nationalist Michael O’Fallon. But that’s another topic.
Robin Collins: The definition of "to dissemble" could not fit you better - "to hide under false appearance. Dissembling the facts." Lindsay's oration to be referenced below is available at this url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVZPYQS1dFA
You are by no means offering a perspective better than Lindsay's and Lindsay predicted you and Marxist apologists like you in the first 3 minutes of his speech. He described the dissembler's reaction: "you will certainly hear it is not [that woke is not Marxism], that it is different and that the professors and the philosophers will spend a large amount of time explaining to you why. "No, no, it's about economics when it's Marxism. This is social. This is cultural. This is different."
The quintessential Marxist reaction is to gaslight and feign ignorance of the ugliness of Neo-Marxism (and thereby, to attempt to absolve themselves of culpability).
Lindsay goes on to argue (4:30) that Marx' core direction was not essentially economic - it was social. Critiquing economy and captialism was a means to an end and that end was to recreate society itself. The logic of Marxism is therefore the recreation of society, Lindsay is saying, it is a means to reshape society and to reshape the units of society. All that is needed to counteract the (alleged) oppression of the higher strata of society is to awaken the underclass and coax them to revolution. Lindsay's argument is that all that is needed to get from the rhetoric of Marxism to the rhetoric of Critical Race Theory is a switch from a focus on class to a focus on race.
Lindsay gives the example of Critical Race Theorist Cheryl Harris claim that "whiteness"
constitutes a kind of cultural private property and that "whiteness" must be abolished. Compare the Marxist fixation on abolishing private property and note that the term "whiteness" proceeds from the work of black Marxist thinker Frantz Fanon. Lindsay's statement here is perfectly astute: "it's about creating a class consciousness against this form of property called whiteness."
Your objection to Lindsay stating that "Marxism was able to evolve to abandon the working class" at the 17:00 minute mark is absolutely asinine. You say "there are no Marxists I can think of who would agree with this claim" . The reason why you can't think of such a thing is because you willfully dissemble to the ways that Marxism has been adapted and re-tuned over the last 70 years. Neo-Marxism exists, and no, Lindsay isn't making it up. From the website Marxists.org (link below), you can read an early note from the late 1960s which details the relation between the New Left and the emerging academic Neo-Marxists (described in this document as "academics, scholars and specialists interested in bringing ‘the Marxist method’ to bear on their own research and writings. "). It mentions the wish of C. Wright Mills (incidentally, the sociologist who coined the term "New Left") that the New Left should "repudiate the idea that the working class is an historic agency of change."
Let it sink in: Lindsay is not the one who decided to rebrand Marxism with a new angle toward social revolution. That would be the Neo-Marxists. Lindsay's discussion reflects that reality, while your comments reflect NOTHING, if not obstinance. Everyone here ought to be capable of grasping that such things as Neo-Marxism, black Marxism, Critical Race Theory, Cultural studies etc. etc. can derive from Marxism in a certain capacity, can extend Marxism, without literally being Marxism to the letter. It's true no matter how hard you dissemble.
as I said and repeat here, I suggest you (re)read Cynical Theories, and see whose position is found there. Having listened to many podcasts of both Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, I would say pretty categorically that Pluckrose is the academic who gets it, and Lindsay is the ideologue trying to cram his version of marxism into the "woke" contagion.
From Queen's University Professor of Law, Bruce Pardy, in a National Post article published today. Oh yes, Bruce Pardy and James Lindsey don't get it, Robin Collins gets it:
"It all starts with Marx. Between the two world wars, scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt began to investigate why Marxism was failing to catch on in the West. They broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as critical theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted.
In the decades following its birth at the Frankfurt School, critical theory and its variations made an inexorable march through universities, influencing such disparate disciplines as sociology, literary criticism and linguistics, infiltrating professional schools like teachers’ colleges and law schools and dominating “grievance studies” programs such as women’s studies, gender studies and media studies. Today its reach extends to virtually every field in the arts and social sciences, and its final conquest is now underway inside science, technology, engineering and medical faculties.
Generations of university graduates, taught to believe in the premises of critical theory rather than how to think critically about it, now populate the workplace. In the universities themselves, job offers and research grants are now reserved for those who comport with critical theory’s prescriptions, narrowing the range of acceptable thought and stifling open inquiry. The new order has been established as the ascendant status quo.
As political tools, critical theory and its variations are brilliant. Any challenge to their legitimacy can be interpreted as a demonstration of their thesis: the assertion of reason, logic and evidence is a manifestation of privilege and power. Thus, any challenger risks the stigma of a bigoted oppressor. James Lindsay, an independent American critic of critical theory and social justice, calls critical theory a “kafkatrap.” “Notice race? Because you’re racist. Don’t? Because you’re privileged, thus racist.” If you deny that you are a witch, then you are a witch. And if you do not deny it, then you are a witch for sure."
His basic point about Marxism is that its basic premise is that the human experience is defined by conflict between groups, one group that has power, one that doesn't. Marx's starting point was to use socio-economic classes for group conflict. Cultural Marxism is the logical extension of applying that idea to other groups, based on cultural markers, race, etc.
I agree that power relations is a common theme of both Marxism vs postmodernism. That doesn’t make postmodernism a variant of Marxism. Correlation isn’t causation.
I'm not sure that's true (that Post-modernism ISN'T Marxism) given that the Post-Modern French 'philosophers' were all Marxists. but in any case I think his point is correct, that this is all about group power relations - as you say. Which is a really cynical and negative view of the world, but it is what it is. You probably could call it Cultural Marxism, Post-Modernism or both. Its all the same basic stuff.
No, I think we have to agree on definitions of basic terms or there isn’t much point in debating the finer points. “All the same thing”, “same basic stuff” isn’t quite the precision required. Is postmodernism the SAME as marxism or not. That surely isn’t hard to discern. Ask a marxist and ask a postmodernist. The fact that Foucault etc were once marxists doesn’t get you closer. They were once children and alive, too. So what. Most schools evolved out of earlier schools….to make the biological analogy that Lindsay loves, once two groups mutate from one another (and you need to identify what the common origin is precisely) then they become unique and separate species. They don’t reproduce viable offspring with their predecessors. But while power relations may be a common thread; it does not make the two different strands identical or even similar in other categories. As I noted, look to Hegel (the dialectic) for power relations or someone even earlier.
Sure. That's the narcissism of small differences. They are probably 'technically' different. What I can say is that Marx's writings are understandable. Post-modern writings are incoherent gobbledegook and sophistry, so in a sense, it would hard to determine that Post-modernsim is Marxism, or anything else, actually. Gobbledegook kind of lives in its own category.
I disagree with your premise. If postmodernism is anything it is the rejection of (skepticism for) grand narratives (“metanarratives”) in the famous language of Lyotard. Both Marxian communism and free enterprise capitalism are examples of idealistic future utopias that postmodernists reject. This probably explains why the word “postmodernism” didn’t appear in the Lindsay speech nor the Pew article (although I’d have to check again to be certain.)
Its been a real disappointment to see how Wikipedia has been coopted and politically weaponized over the past five years. I'm a huge fan of James Lindsay. The Grievance Studies Affair was both hilarious, and really instructive.
Marxism is essentially a "framework" used to think about politics, society, etc., and mobilize people based on various general calls to eliminate injustice (Marxists often specifically use the term "framework").
The details and specific claims are malleable, which is why Marxism adjusts so well to different societal/political contexts and keeps giving its proponents this veneer of plausible deniability (what you just labeled as Marxism is really not!)
Lindsay redefines Marxism and then calls all the postmodern variants Marxism. There’s a logic failing in his analysis. But he knows he is doing it because he makes clear what he is doing.
Wokeism is to Marxism like Islam is to Christianity: derived largely from it, but not it.
All of the leftists that I know, and most everyone I know is, are opposed to wokeism. You're really talking about contemporary "liberalism", or identity politics which has little to nothing to do with Marxism.
Same with me. Almost all of those on the left I know are also critical of the woke mentality. Too few are willing to speak up though. It’s time they did because otherwise the right will move into that gap, and that will not be healthy.
EXCREMENTUM VINCIT CEREBELLUM (Bullshit Baffles Brains)
“The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.”
― Ludwig Von Mises
I could go through Pluckrose and Lindsay’s book for you but that makes me do all the work. See (hardcover edition) page 184-185 but look also at note 2, page 277 re many misconceptions including conflation of p-m with Marxism. “Although there are complicated connections…the claim is frequently simplistic…specious…Marxism was one of the metanarratives that postmodernism REJECTED” etc. etc.
I can’t say for sure what is in the mind of Pardy or Lindsay, but I can offer what the historical and analytical record show. And there is NO QUESTION that postmodernism departs from Marxism in several IMPORTANT ways. There is also a linkage, as I pointed out (3 times now?) which can be found in the Hegelian school. But look at the quote you chose from Pardy: “They [the neomarxists] broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as critical theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted.”
Note that some of this, the chatter about power and oppression being based on classes, is Marxist doctrine. But the key word is: “Broadened”? (Forget about class and property, now it’s all about identity politics.) Broadened or… Diverged from? Is different from? You choose. But Marxism’s core and essence is social class and conflict as the motor of history; and relations to means of production. Was the theory correct? I don’t know, and I don’t defend the theory.
But have a (re)look at Cynical Theories, by Pluckrose and Lindsay and you will see the careful analysis there of the origins of critical theory and wokeism. Pg 34-35 for example: reflecting on Lyotard’s famous description of postmodernism as ‘skepticism towards metanarratives’: “Scientific reasoning is construed as a metanarrative — a sweeping explanation of how things work — and postmodernism is radically skeptical of all such explanations. In postmodern thinking, that which is known is only known within the cultural paradigm that produced the knowledge and therefore representative of its systems of power. As a result, postmodernism regards knowledge as provincial and intrinsically political. This view is widely attributed to the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard WHO CRITIQUED SCIENCE, THE ENLIGHTENMENT, AND MARXISM. Each of these projects was, for Lyotard, a prime example of MODERNIST OR ENLIGHTENMENT METANARRATIVES.”
There are other locations in the Pluckrose/Lindsay book where Marxism is discussed further. Don’t take my word for it; reread it — I assume you’ve read the book? There’s an index.
“pitiable and delirious”. Try and write without insult. This is childish. I note you have conflated “the left” with “Marxism” below. All the same thing?
Always best to assume your opponent operates with good intentions even if you disagree with their views. Otherwise you come off as patronizing. Every time you engage with my viewpoints you launch ad hominems. Just stick to the context of the disagreements. That’s a far better way to argue your case. Lindsay is no dummy but he is wrong on this interpretation, including his use of the flawed genus-species analogy — as I explained. It only works if you insist on an a priori belief that woke=Marxism. I reviewed Pluckrose and Lindsay’s book Cynical Theories which in my view is excellent. There is no attempt to equate wokeism with marxism in that book. I assume, as I said, that Pluckrose wrote the pertinent “origins of” chapter where they refer to reified postmodernism, not neo-Marxism. I would bet Pluckrose disagrees with Lindsay’s argument on this. I am not defending marxism, something you repeatedly miss in your postings Mr M, and I suspect you have missed this throughout because you slip into stereotyping people into narrow categories (“anyone who disagrees with me must be a Marxist” for instance.) http://web.ncf.ca/fs766/CynicalTheories_CollinsReview.html
A talking point. Take this line you wrote, which is Lindsay’s argument and therefore also yours: “Marx' core direction was not essentially economic - it was social. ” How true is that? Marx certainly argued that the entire society was affected/transformed/dependent upon the economic underpinning — and that includes social-political- cultural-ideological etc — but few would agree that this meant “Marx’s core direction” was “social”. What exactly does Lindsay mean by this? That Marx did NOT see means and relations of production as the driver for everything else? I think we have an excellent case of Lindsay trying to ram the Marx he wants into the Marx that was. Reductionism, a priori thinking, confirmation bias, cherry picking. He has to do it because otherwise his theory that wokeism = Marxism fails. As I note, there are some common roots but the divergence severs them.
Robin Collins: Your take on woke, i.e. that it does not come from the left, that woke "is not left," is pitiable and delirious. Your repeated and ongoing attempts to play traffic cop with the word "Marxism" are pretentious and entirely unconvincing. You are an ant crawling on a flat piece of paper and attempting to lecture about the 3rd dimension. Everyone who sees through this posturing and gets on with the business of analyzing woke has done themselves a big favor.
Mr. M....Should I be mortally wounded by your convincing argument? I'm looking for the content which might challenge my own position but see nothing but ants and traffic cops. Reread Pluckrose/Lindsay's Cynical Theories, or read it for the first time, and see if your view or my view is defended within.
"Lindsay explains that the revolution's goal is to 'awaken a racial class consciousness that will organize a struggle to seize the means of cultural production, so that white cultural production is no longer the dominant mode.'" In a word, this is about resentment. What a future ahead of us? Racial war, if the woke are driven back into their intellectual caves.
I note your and Lindsay’s obsession with “white”. To me, this is irrelevant and isn’t a useful way to hone in on the problem of wokeism. The skin colour variant is only one of many identitarian problems with the woke mindset.
Derived from? Or different from but sharing specific analytical elements? Very different. You might find a proximity for both with Hegelian philosophy, and conflict analysis. That would apply to a whole lot of different isms.
Glad to see your writing efforts on this topic and other issues.
Excellent read. I feel like we are letting people “off the hook” when we call them “woke”. There may be an argument that using the term “woke” is in itself “woke” because we are trying to soften what it really is. Communism.
Some quick responses. There are some basic errors in Lindsay’s argument. A key one (class) he seems to understand but continues to ignore. The marxist assumption that economic relations and property are the basis of human society may or may not be wholly true but that premise is certainly part of basic marxist thought, without which it ain’t marxism. Lindsay chooses instead to call marxism a genus and not a species (a questionable biological analogy) in which the sub groups of the “genus” Marxism (the exception being classical marxism) do not have as their basis economic classes, but instead they can be gender, sex, race, queerness, etc. Lindsay has redefined marxism so it fits his argument and biological hierarchy flowchart. He can then argue that wokeism is marxism (or a variant of it).
Strikingly, nowhere is postmodernism mentioned as a theoretical school in opposition to marxism that is the basis of critical theory. This is very odd because Cynical Theories which Helen Pluckrose co-wrote with Lindsay clearly shows how postmodernism is what is behind wokeism and critical theory (including its sea of variants). I suspect that Pluckrose wrote that chapter, not Lindsay!
Other basic errors include the claim that equity is about making everyone the same (equal outcomes), which he says is “socialism”. Probably the best known descriptor of socialism (Marx) is that socialism embraces the concept “From each according to his ability to each according to his work”. The higher level (ideal) communist society: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Note that “equal outcome” appears in neither phrase. In neither case is it making people “equal”, the same, or denying their differences. In one the more you work, the more you get. In the other what you get reflects your needs.
At the ~17:00 minute point of the linked video Lindsay says: “Marxism was able to evolve to abandon the working class”. There are no marxists I can think of who would agree that this claim -- essential to Lindsay’s argument -- is true or makes any sense to a marxist or would not conflict with their theory’s foundation. Lindsay attempts to rewrite the definition to fit his own conclusion. (That’s called confirmation bias; reductionism; fitting the facts into your theory.) he calls the new category “Identity-based Marxism”.
Conspiracy theorist? There are certainly some aspects that apply, including his claim that “Big Pharma profits off of puberty blockers” or that there’s a conspiratorial organized effort behind WEF/UN/SDG which = slavery. And there’s his long association with New Discourses funder, right wing Christian Nationalist Michael O’Fallon. But that’s another topic.
Robin Collins: The definition of "to dissemble" could not fit you better - "to hide under false appearance. Dissembling the facts." Lindsay's oration to be referenced below is available at this url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVZPYQS1dFA
You are by no means offering a perspective better than Lindsay's and Lindsay predicted you and Marxist apologists like you in the first 3 minutes of his speech. He described the dissembler's reaction: "you will certainly hear it is not [that woke is not Marxism], that it is different and that the professors and the philosophers will spend a large amount of time explaining to you why. "No, no, it's about economics when it's Marxism. This is social. This is cultural. This is different."
The quintessential Marxist reaction is to gaslight and feign ignorance of the ugliness of Neo-Marxism (and thereby, to attempt to absolve themselves of culpability).
Lindsay goes on to argue (4:30) that Marx' core direction was not essentially economic - it was social. Critiquing economy and captialism was a means to an end and that end was to recreate society itself. The logic of Marxism is therefore the recreation of society, Lindsay is saying, it is a means to reshape society and to reshape the units of society. All that is needed to counteract the (alleged) oppression of the higher strata of society is to awaken the underclass and coax them to revolution. Lindsay's argument is that all that is needed to get from the rhetoric of Marxism to the rhetoric of Critical Race Theory is a switch from a focus on class to a focus on race.
Lindsay gives the example of Critical Race Theorist Cheryl Harris claim that "whiteness"
constitutes a kind of cultural private property and that "whiteness" must be abolished. Compare the Marxist fixation on abolishing private property and note that the term "whiteness" proceeds from the work of black Marxist thinker Frantz Fanon. Lindsay's statement here is perfectly astute: "it's about creating a class consciousness against this form of property called whiteness."
Your objection to Lindsay stating that "Marxism was able to evolve to abandon the working class" at the 17:00 minute mark is absolutely asinine. You say "there are no Marxists I can think of who would agree with this claim" . The reason why you can't think of such a thing is because you willfully dissemble to the ways that Marxism has been adapted and re-tuned over the last 70 years. Neo-Marxism exists, and no, Lindsay isn't making it up. From the website Marxists.org (link below), you can read an early note from the late 1960s which details the relation between the New Left and the emerging academic Neo-Marxists (described in this document as "academics, scholars and specialists interested in bringing ‘the Marxist method’ to bear on their own research and writings. "). It mentions the wish of C. Wright Mills (incidentally, the sociologist who coined the term "New Left") that the New Left should "repudiate the idea that the working class is an historic agency of change."
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/young/1967/neo-marxism.htm
Let it sink in: Lindsay is not the one who decided to rebrand Marxism with a new angle toward social revolution. That would be the Neo-Marxists. Lindsay's discussion reflects that reality, while your comments reflect NOTHING, if not obstinance. Everyone here ought to be capable of grasping that such things as Neo-Marxism, black Marxism, Critical Race Theory, Cultural studies etc. etc. can derive from Marxism in a certain capacity, can extend Marxism, without literally being Marxism to the letter. It's true no matter how hard you dissemble.
as I said and repeat here, I suggest you (re)read Cynical Theories, and see whose position is found there. Having listened to many podcasts of both Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, I would say pretty categorically that Pluckrose is the academic who gets it, and Lindsay is the ideologue trying to cram his version of marxism into the "woke" contagion.
From Queen's University Professor of Law, Bruce Pardy, in a National Post article published today. Oh yes, Bruce Pardy and James Lindsey don't get it, Robin Collins gets it:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bruce-pardy-how-canadas-secular-religion-of-cultural-self-hate-took-hold
"It all starts with Marx. Between the two world wars, scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt began to investigate why Marxism was failing to catch on in the West. They broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as critical theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted.
In the decades following its birth at the Frankfurt School, critical theory and its variations made an inexorable march through universities, influencing such disparate disciplines as sociology, literary criticism and linguistics, infiltrating professional schools like teachers’ colleges and law schools and dominating “grievance studies” programs such as women’s studies, gender studies and media studies. Today its reach extends to virtually every field in the arts and social sciences, and its final conquest is now underway inside science, technology, engineering and medical faculties.
Generations of university graduates, taught to believe in the premises of critical theory rather than how to think critically about it, now populate the workplace. In the universities themselves, job offers and research grants are now reserved for those who comport with critical theory’s prescriptions, narrowing the range of acceptable thought and stifling open inquiry. The new order has been established as the ascendant status quo.
As political tools, critical theory and its variations are brilliant. Any challenge to their legitimacy can be interpreted as a demonstration of their thesis: the assertion of reason, logic and evidence is a manifestation of privilege and power. Thus, any challenger risks the stigma of a bigoted oppressor. James Lindsay, an independent American critic of critical theory and social justice, calls critical theory a “kafkatrap.” “Notice race? Because you’re racist. Don’t? Because you’re privileged, thus racist.” If you deny that you are a witch, then you are a witch. And if you do not deny it, then you are a witch for sure."
His basic point about Marxism is that its basic premise is that the human experience is defined by conflict between groups, one group that has power, one that doesn't. Marx's starting point was to use socio-economic classes for group conflict. Cultural Marxism is the logical extension of applying that idea to other groups, based on cultural markers, race, etc.
I agree that power relations is a common theme of both Marxism vs postmodernism. That doesn’t make postmodernism a variant of Marxism. Correlation isn’t causation.
I'm not sure that's true (that Post-modernism ISN'T Marxism) given that the Post-Modern French 'philosophers' were all Marxists. but in any case I think his point is correct, that this is all about group power relations - as you say. Which is a really cynical and negative view of the world, but it is what it is. You probably could call it Cultural Marxism, Post-Modernism or both. Its all the same basic stuff.
No, I think we have to agree on definitions of basic terms or there isn’t much point in debating the finer points. “All the same thing”, “same basic stuff” isn’t quite the precision required. Is postmodernism the SAME as marxism or not. That surely isn’t hard to discern. Ask a marxist and ask a postmodernist. The fact that Foucault etc were once marxists doesn’t get you closer. They were once children and alive, too. So what. Most schools evolved out of earlier schools….to make the biological analogy that Lindsay loves, once two groups mutate from one another (and you need to identify what the common origin is precisely) then they become unique and separate species. They don’t reproduce viable offspring with their predecessors. But while power relations may be a common thread; it does not make the two different strands identical or even similar in other categories. As I noted, look to Hegel (the dialectic) for power relations or someone even earlier.
Sure. That's the narcissism of small differences. They are probably 'technically' different. What I can say is that Marx's writings are understandable. Post-modern writings are incoherent gobbledegook and sophistry, so in a sense, it would hard to determine that Post-modernsim is Marxism, or anything else, actually. Gobbledegook kind of lives in its own category.
I disagree with your premise. If postmodernism is anything it is the rejection of (skepticism for) grand narratives (“metanarratives”) in the famous language of Lyotard. Both Marxian communism and free enterprise capitalism are examples of idealistic future utopias that postmodernists reject. This probably explains why the word “postmodernism” didn’t appear in the Lindsay speech nor the Pew article (although I’d have to check again to be certain.)
Lindsay is a serious intellectual.
Indeed. That is what very high IQ looks like,. Same with JBP.