The term “Cultural Marxism” is frequently used in political discussions, but its meaning is obscure. Those on the Right claim that it signifies the infiltration of Western academia by Jewish Marxists from the Frankfurt School. They argue that their goal is to undermine the United States and Europe by utilizing Critical Theory to advocate for feminism, multiculturalism, LGBTQ+ identities, anti-white racism, and other perceived societal problems. Conversely, the mainstream Left regards this as a baseless far-right conspiracy theory and draws a parallel to the term “Cultural Bolshevism” employed in fascist propaganda. While both sides offer some valid points about Cultural Marxism, neither provides a complete picture.

Critical Theory vs Marxism

“Critical Theory” refers to a social theory practiced by intellectuals from the Frankfurt School, associated with the Institute for Social Research in Weimar Germany.[1] These theorists expressed dissatisfaction with both capitalism and communism, leading them to develop a new ideology aimed at societal development. Max Horkheimer, in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory,” first defined Critical Theory as a social theory that goes beyond explaining society as it is and instead seeks to critique and transform it. Horkheimer outlined the fundamental principles of Critical Theory, which include the criticism of societal flaws, identification of agents capable of effecting change, and the provision of goals for social transformation.

According to Critical Theory, ideology serves as the primary driver of oppression,[2] and the objective is to analyze and overcome these ideas that hinder human freedom. In contrast, Marxism utilizes dialectical materialism to understand that these ideas merely reflect reality rather than determine it. In pursuit of the goal to liberate humanity from all forms of oppression, additional critical theories have emerged alongside various social movements, including the civil rights movement, feminism, and the gay and lesbian movement. However, a question arises: Do these critical theories genuinely aim to emancipate the oppressed masses, or do they in fact work to fragment the working class and divert revolutionary momentum?

Every successful socialist revolution has resulted in better material conditions for the entire working class, including women and ethnic minorities. However, a contrasting situation has unfolded in the United States, where critical theories have thrived within academia while capitalism remains the prevailing mode of production. Instead of progress, the majority of Americans have experienced a decline in their living standards, coupled with an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few. Despite its pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, Critical Theory has consistently served the interests of those who perpetuate human enslavement, while suppressing the achievements of Communist movements that have genuinely established societies oriented towards meeting the needs of the working class.

First, they came for the Communists …

Initially, when the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the Institute for Social Research chose to refrain from openly criticizing the government. Theodor Adorno believed that the regime would primarily target “the orthodox pro-Soviet Bolshevists and communists who had drawn attention to themselves politically”.[3] This observation was indeed accurate at that time, as the Communists were the first group to be sent to concentration camps. However, it didn’t take long for the Nazis to extend their persecution to the Jewish population. In the late 1930s, several Frankfurt intellectuals, including Horkheimer, Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, relocated to the United States to escape persecution due to their Jewish heritage. Walter Benjamin, on the other hand, did not join them. Benjamin relied solely on the Institute for his income, and one might expect that his colleagues would have taken his financial situation into consideration and made efforts to help him escape Nazi terror. However, evidence suggests that his fellow scholars had ideological motivations behind their decision to relocate to the US without him.[4]

Benjamin maintained a close friendship with Bertolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright who openly criticized the Frankfurt theorists. Adorno harbored resentment towards Brecht due to his ideological influence on Benjamin. In a letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, Adorno referred to Brecht as a “savage” and expressed his belief that Benjamin needed to be freed from his influence.[5] Two years later, Horkheimer informed Benjamin that he should anticipate a loss of funding from the Institute. Furthermore, Horkheimer claimed, shortly after transferring $50,000 to one of his own accounts, that he regretfully couldn’t provide financial assistance for Benjamin’s steamship ticket to escape to the United States and seek safety from encroaching fascist forces. In 1940, Benjamin tragically took his own life at the border between France and Spain, facing almost certain capture by Nazi forces. The leading Frankfurt intellectuals depicted his suicide as a tragic and incomprehensible personal decision, and claimed that they had tried to help him escape.

If Horkheimer were to rewrite Martin Niemoller’s famous poem, it would read something like this:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I hated Communists.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I fled to the United States,
leaving my more Marxist-aligned Jewish colleague to die.

It is possible that the Frankfurt intellectuals harbored animosity towards Brecht because he recognized their compromising stance, as summarized by Stuart Jeffries, as “prostitutes in their quest for foundation support during their American exile, selling their skills and opinions as commodities in order to support the dominant ideology of oppressive U.S. society”.[6] When Horkheimer became director of the Institute in 1930, the Frankfurt School shifted its research focus away from comprehensive analyses of class struggle towards abstract investigations of culture and authority.[7] This approach aimed to appease future donors by refraining from suggesting alternatives to capitalism or an end to imperialism. Upon Adorno’s initial emigration to the US, he worked for the Princeton Radio Project, which received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to investigate the impact of mass media on society.[8] Marcuse, meanwhile, served in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, during which he authored critical works on the Soviet Union,[9] which were later published in his 1958 book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis.

Supported by generous funding from the US government and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Frankfurt scholars were able to sustain their work throughout the early Cold War, eventually relocating the Institute back to West Germany in the late 1940s. The funds for this move were administered by John McCloy, who served as the US High Commissioner of Germany. In his earlier career as a Wall Street lawyer, McCloy had worked with various corporations operating in Nazi Germany, including IG Farben, the manufacturer of Zyklon B gas. Following the conclusion of World War II, McCloy granted clemency to several Nazi war criminals,[10] enabling them to retain a significant portion of their former wealth and influence. With the transition from a fascist regime to a US-supported anti-Communist government, West Germany provided a favorable environment for the Frankfurt School to continue its work and engage in new anti-Communist endeavors, as will be explored next in this series on Cultural Pseudo-Marxism.

*    *    *

After the Institute for Social Research relocated to Germany, its significance persisted just as it had in the United States. Fortunately for the Frankfurt intellectuals, they chose not to settle in East Germany. This decision stemmed not only from the government’s intolerance towards their counter-revolutionary activities but also from their desire to avoid encountering Bertolt Brecht, a close friend of the late Walter Benjamin, who had moved to the German Democratic Republic to contribute to socialist endeavors. Brecht continued his pointed critiques of the Frankfurt School in his play “Turandot” (The Whitewashers’ Congress), a satirical take on academics who compromise their intellectual integrity to manipulate reality in favor of the ruling class—referred to as “Tuis” by Brecht.[12]

Many assert that the Frankfurt Tuis were Marxists, driven by either ignorance or anti-Communist sentiment. If this were true, why were they embraced in West Germany while shunned in the GDR?

This misconception may have arisen from the fallacy that liberal democracies are in fact free and inclusive societies where individuals of all ideological stripes can freely express their convictions. In reality, the case of West Germany reveals that these principles of liberal democracy were, at best, selectively-employed. One could for example openly advocate for pedophilia,[13] but any praise for Stalin was met with contempt. The anti-Communist puppet government in the U.S.-occupied western region of Germany outlawed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) distanced itself from Marxism, and U.S. intelligence decided to use the Institute for their next big operation.

The “Compatible Left”: A CIA Creation

In June 1950, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was established in West Berlin.[14] Its members were mainly anti-Soviet leftists[15], but there were conservative participants too, like Irving Kristol[16], later known as the “godfather of neoconservatism”. With CIA backing, the CCF employed varied methods to spread anti-Communist propaganda: hosting conferences globally (primarily in Western Europe), publishing political and artistic journals, and awarding artists and musicians aligned with their goals. The CCF, guided by CIA agent Thomas Braden, cultivated what he called the “compatible”[17] Left—a faction rejecting Marxist analysis and criticizing actually-existing socialist countries.

As evidenced in Theodor Adorno’s correspondence, he worked closely with Melvin Lasky, the founder and chief editor of the CIA-backed publication Der Monat, and an original member of the CCF steering committee. Lasky offered to work with the Institute in any way possible, telling Adorno that he would quickly publish any works or statements from the Institute. Adorno took him up on this offer, going on to publish in Der Monat as well as Encounter and Tempo Presente. Given the backdrop of their prior collaboration, Lasky and the CIA were fully aware that the Frankfurt scholars were eminently suited for this role. Setting aside Herbert Marcuse’s career in US intelligence, the very ideology of the Frankfurt School was effective in neutralizing leftist sentiments while preserving somewhat of a revolutionary veneer.

Starting in 1930, when Max Horkheimer assumed the directorship of the Institute, the Frankfurt School shifted away from class analysis and instead delved into discussions on authority and culture.[18] Neglecting the crucial inquiry into which class holds authority, the CCF employed liberalism to narrow the focus exclusively onto individual freedom. Socialist realism in the Soviet Union was presented as “totalitarian” because it mandated artists to propagate constructive conduct within the working class. Conversely, in the US, an artist possessed the liberty to fling paint onto a canvas and deem it “art.” This contrast disregarded the reality that an artist’s success within capitalism rests entirely on the unpredictability of the market.

From 1944 to 1945, the Institute conducted a study titled “Anti-Semitism in American Labor”, concluding that the most anti-Semitic groups were Communist-led trade unions in the United States.[19] While Nazis received backing from capitalists for their genocidal acts, the Frankfurt scholars deemed certain American workers’ anti-Semitic views as a more urgent concern. The study served as an egregious example how identity politics can be employed to target Communists, a strategy still utilized by the Compatible Left. Furthermore, the Frankfurt School’s criticism of the notion of “authority” effectively discredited Communist parties and organized labor movements. The absence of authority renders revolutionary forces chaotic and vulnerable to counter-revolutionary assaults, aligning with capitalists’ desires to undermine the Left and uphold the bourgeois dictatorship of capital.

Critical Theory perhaps has some merit in scrutinizing ideology as a tool of domination. But the Frankfurt School deliberately obfuscates the role of class in analysis and portrays Critical Theory as immune to ideology. The capitalist class crafted Compatible Leftism as an ideological weapon to safeguard their control over the working class, neutralizing the Communist threat and upholding capitalism. It’s our duty as Communists to uphold the revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism and consign the regressive ideology of the Compatible Left to its proper place in the dustbin of history.

*    *    *

Some may be quick to believe that the New Left is entirely to blame on the Frankfurt School, with its identitarianism and “Anything But Class” analysis. There is a point to be made here, but the Frankfurt theoreticians had differing views on the New Left which emerged in the 1960s. Theodor Adorno believed that the progressive student movements at the time could lead to “left fascism,” going as far as to call the cops on students who protested at the Institute for Social Research, including one of his own students.[20] Herbert Marcuse, however, was much more openly sympathetic to the social movements of the ‘60s and had influenced various noteworthy left-wing activists of that time period.

Many supporters of Marcuse willfully overlook his involvement in United States intelligence, focusing instead on his supposedly revolutionary advocacy. An article published in CounterPunch titled “What’s Behind the Recent Attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” described Marcuse as “a staunch advocate of movements for revolutionary change, a Marxist critic of capitalism, and firm supporter of African American liberation and feminism,” going on to praise him for being “[h]ated by both Soviet Communists and the Vatican, [and] adored by revolutionaries around the world”.[21]

Following the logic of Marcuse and his fans leads to some particularly reactionary conclusions. It’s ironic that For Marcuse to work for the precursor to the CIA—the US Office of Strategic Services—and trash the greatest threat to US imperialism at the time – the Soviet Union – is “revolutionary.” But for the USSR to ensure the full participation of women in society, to call on the international community to condemn the horrendous acts of racism against Black Americans, and to participate in the African decolonization struggles are all acts of “totalitarianism.” It is no surprise that capital and its faithful servants continue to push such propaganda.

Marcuse and Petty Bourgeois Radicalism

After the Black Panther Party split into factions, one headed by Huey P. Newton and the other by Eldridge Cleaver, Henry Winston (CPUSA national chair and an African-American) wrote “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” as a criticism of the ultra-left ideological trends within the Party and their destructive effects.[22] Winston pointed out that the capitalist media had “popularized the caricature of Marxism-Leninism, appearing in the writings of Mao, Trotsky, Marcuse … and others,” and that many New Left radicals had adopted characteristics of this exaggerated image of what a “revolutionary” should be.

Published in 1971, Winston’s description of the ultra-leftists in the Black Panther Party is still quite relevant to the western Left in 2023:

“These Black and white radicals, including Cleaver and Newton, dismissed what they called “orthodox” Marxism. Taking a different direction from [Dr. Martin Luther] King [Jr.] (who promoted working class solidarity, as well as a popular front with the Church and with progressive elements of the middle class), they disdained the working class and glorified the super-”revolutionary” tactics of confrontation by an anarchistic elite. In this way, ultra-”revolutionaries” helped create an atmosphere in which the racist monopolists could falsely portray violence as coming from the Left—and cover up the fact that they themselves are the source of it.”[23] (Our emphasis—Ed.)

CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall wrote “The Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in 1970, highlighting many of the same issues which Winston describes.[24]

This article explained how as class conflicts intensify and the masses become more revolutionary, petty-bourgeois radicalism redirects this energy into futile, short-term endeavors, leading to frustration and demoralization. While not explicitly naming Marcuse, Hall implies that many prominent activists who were influenced by Marcuse introduced his “radical” ideas into revolutionary groups.

Angela Davis: We Remember When You Were A Marxist

Angela Davis, renowned for her feminist and anti-racist activism, studied under Marcuse before joining the Communist Party USA. Both right-wing critics and left-wing Marcuse supporters emphasize this fact to assert Marcuse’s radical Marxism. However, both sides often overlook crucial nuances in Davis’s activist career.

In contrast to many petty-bourgeois radicals, Davis did not overtly reject Communism, but her anti-communism had a subtler, more insidious character. During the era of Glasnost and Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Davis, following Marcuse’s lead, championed the pro-Gorbachev faction within the CPUSA. However, her motivations may have leaned more toward personal gain than Marcuse’s specific grievances against Soviet “totalitarianism”. Gorbachev’s policies were simply more financially appealing than those of Stalin which Marcuse vehemently criticized, and the activism of Davis in following decades has mainly centered around her career in academia. From selling her books and speaking at liberal college campuses, Davis has amassed a net worth of approximately $800,000 as of 2023.[25]

The Committees of Correspondence, formed during the 1991 CPUSA Convention, represented this faction but ultimately failed to steer the CPUSA away from Marxism-Leninism, eventually splitting from the party.[26] They emerged in opposition to Gus Hall and Henry Winston’s “conservative” stance of supporting efforts to preserve the Soviet Union against Gorbachev’s counter-revolution. This group attracted various liberal and “democratic socialist” elements within the CPUSA,[27] prioritizing surface-level identity politics over meaningful class analysis. Supporters of the Committees of Correspondence often point out their leadership’s greater diversity,[28] as if meeting arbitrary diversity quotas automatically translated into tangible benefits for their “represented” demographics.

Angela Davis’s alignment with the left wing of capital is evident in her history, ranging from supporting market liberalization during the Soviet Union’s final days to urging leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020.[29] She further demonstrates this alignment through her ongoing advocacy for ultra-left ideas, which may be less appealing to the working class but find favor with those who have trust funds and see the hammer and sickle as nothing but a trendy accessory. An example of this is advocating for prison abolition[30] without giving genuine thought to the victims of violent crimes.

Conclusion

Despite the Right’s belief in a radical Marxist takeover of academia, the concept of “Cultural Marxism” fundamentally contradicts Marxism itself. Critical Theory seeks to shift the discourse from class analysis to discussions of authority and culture. Key figures in the Frankfurt School played roles in producing and spreading anticommunist propaganda. And Marcuse’s influence on the Western Left has perpetuated the misconception that communists are elitist and disconnected from the working class. Today, we face a critical juncture in history. Western living standards are declining, multipolarity challenges US hegemony, and capitalists hope to confine communism to academic and niche social media circles. It is imperative for Communists to avoid repeating the New Left and modern CPUSA’s mistake of embracing a carefully crafted “revolutionary” ideal propagated by the ruling class and academia.

[1] Critical Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). ( March 8, 2005).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

[2] Geuss, Raymond, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1981.

[3] Müller-Doohm, Stefan, Adorno: A Biography; Polity: Cambridge, 2005, p. 181.

[4] Fries, U. (2021). “Ende der Legende Hintergründe zu Walter Benjamins Tod” in Germanic Review, 96(4), 409–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/00168890.2021.1986802

[5] Adorno’s letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, in Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 110.

[6] Jeffries, Stuart, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School; Verso: London. 2016, p. 136.

[7] Solty, I. (February 15, 2020). “Max Horkheimer, a teacher without a class.” Jacobin.

https://jacobin.com/2020/02/max-horkheimer-frankfurt-school-adorno-working-class-marxism

[8] Cavin, S. Adorno. Lazarsfeld & The Princeton Radio Project, 1938-1941.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/151660755/Adorno-Lazarsfeld-The-Princeton-Radio-Project-1938-1941#

[9] Herbert Marcuse official website. https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/

[10] John J. McCloy. (August 25, 2023). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._McCloy#US_High_Commissioner_for_Germany

[11]Saunders, F. (October 22, 1995). “How the CIA used modern art during the cultural Cold War”, Sott.net.

https://www.sott.net/article/413324-How-the-CIA-used-modern-art-during-the-cultural-Cold-War

[12] Script for Turandot by Bertolt Brecht. https://www.scribd.com/document/389599206/Turandot-Bertolt-Brecht-pdf#

[13] Gebhardt, W. (June 17, 2020). “The dark legacy of sexual liberation in Germany”, dw.com.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-allowed-pedophiles-to-foster-children/a-53839291

[14]Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949-1950 – CIA.

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-38-no-5/origins-of-the-congress-for-cultural-freedom-1949-1950/

[15] Saunders, Francis Stoner, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters; The New Press: New York, 2013, Chapter 3.

[16]Ibid., p. 148.

[17] Braden, Thomas W. “I’m Glad the CIA is ‘Immoral’.” The Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1967, pp. 10, 12, 14.

[18] Rose, Gillian, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno; Columbia University Press: New York, 1979, p. 2.

[19]Collomp, Catherine, “Anti-Semitism among American Labor: a study by the refugee scholars of the Frankfurt School of Sociology at the end of World War II”, Labor History, 52(4), 2011, pp. 417–439.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2011.632513

[20] Romano, Carlin,  “The Agitation of Adorno”, The Chronicle., June 20, 2008.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-agitation-of-adorno/

[21] Katsiaficas, George, “What’s behind the recent attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” CounterPunch.org, December 15, 2021. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/17/whats-behind-the-recent-attacks-on-herbert-marcuse/

[22] Winston, H. (1971, August). “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” in The Communist, Vol 2, 2022 pp. 17-37.

[23] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[24] Hall, Gus, “Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in The Communist, Vol 2., 2022, pp. 43.-51.

[25] https://pennbookcenter.com/angela-davis-net-worth/

[26] Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line. (February 1, 1992). CPUSA breaks apart (P. Saba, Ed.). Marxists Internet Archive.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/mlp-cpusa-split.htm

[27] Struggle for Democratic Socialism. (July 23, 1994). [Video]. C-SPAN.org.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?59374-1/struggle-democratic-socialism

[28] Marquit, E., & Marquit, D. G. (1992, February 19). Party survives, but as a shell.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070311011756/http://www.mndaily.com/daily/gopher-archives/1992/02/19/Party_survives%2C_but_as_a_shell.txt

[29] Telusma, B. (July 14, 2020). Angela Davis backs Biden because he ‘can be most effectively pressured’ by the left. TheGrio.

https://thegrio.com/2020/07/14/angela-davis-backs-biden/

[30]            Kelly, K. (2019, December 26). What the Prison-Abolition movement wants. Teen Vogue.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-prison-abolition-movement

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