Found this interesting after recently listening to a lot of Jordan Peterson talks - especially the latest Joe Rogan Experience episode #1006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G59zsjM2UI
Because that is the most prominent application of postmodernism: to push forward neo-Marxist ideology.
There's simply no evidence for it; Peterson's confusion is his own and I hope that others do not follow him on this and instead choose to do their own research into philosophy.
His evidence is presumably his own conversations with postmodernists, and his theory as to why this is seems based more in a psychological than philosophical framework.
'Cultural Marxism' is a pejorative term for the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. It was invented by fascists to dismiss the whole enterprise without engaging with it.
The Frankfurt School emerged in the 1920s/30s in response to the failure of the proletariat to overthrow capitalism in the way that Marx had suggested would happen, and as a response to the crude economism of a lot of early Marxism (i.e. where 'culture' was just an epiphenomenon rooted in the economic base of a society). It was a German school - its main sources were Hegel, Marx, Mannheim, etc.
Post-modernism, on the other hand, is a term for a very amorphous group of (largely French) thinkers who reacted against the dominance of structuralist social theory in the 1960s, which itself was a reaction to existentialism. Its sources are usually the canon of phenomenology, the structuralists before them, and Nietzsche.
The Frankfurt School is best known for its formulation of ideological critique, its critique of 'instrumental rationality', its holistic view of a critical social science, and its collected writings on aesthetics and mass media.
The post-modernists are best known for their rejection of a lot of the heritage of the Enlightenment, their focus on the fragility and contingency language, and their emphasis on 'play, metaphor, rhizomes', etc. But they are not a single school - they are FAR more varied than the Frankfurt School. For example, Pierre Bourdieu (who had a fairly empirical sociology of cultural hierarchy and class) is worlds away from Jacques Derrida (who was an abstract theorist that wrote very opaquely, and IMO is responsible for a lot of the bad reputation of post-modernism).
Its thesis is apparently that secret Marxists propped up post-structuralism/postmodernism because they knew communism had failed (in the 1960s? Yeah. Right.) and needed their ideology to be furthered via a new channel. Or something.
The author also has a hard-on for Ayn Rand, which coming from a philosophy professor I find funny.
It's odd that Peterson is very specific in some parts of his discourse, but has such lackluster premises. If I wanted to convince the world that postmodernism was bad, I would point people to a more established work. It's not like criticisms of postmodernism are rare, no?
> 'Cultural Marxism' in modern political parlance refers to a conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of an ongoing movement to take over and destroy Western society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marx...
No it wasn't (and no it isn't), it's aimed at abolishing the class structure.
>There are people who don't like the current structure and aim to replace it. How is this a conspiracy?
GP is referring to "cultural Marxism" being a conspiracy, and it is, not that Communists want to replace the class structure. The "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory posits that there is a group of people who want to destroy Western society. This is false. It relies on the idea that at some point Marxists changed to thinking in terms of gender or race rather than class - this is also false and lacking in evidence as GP also noted. The Wikipedia section really is a good overview of it.
So it was aimed at replacing the existing structure...
> The "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory posits that there is a group of people who want to destroy Western society.
How is this a conspiracy theory? There are people on the fringe left (and fringe right) who want to do exactly that. They wouldn't necessarily phrase it that way, but what they advocate for would accomplish that as a side effect. If the conspiracy theory is that these people are everywhere, then sure, but that such people exist is in no way a conspiracy theory.
> It relies on the idea that at some point Marxists changed to thinking in terms of gender or race rather than class - this is also false and lacking in evidence as GP also noted.
That is precisely what intersectional feminism is about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality#Marxist-femi...
If I told you that I'd be replacing your broken windshield, would you understand that I'd be simply removing your windshield and not putting anything in its place?
>There are people on the fringe left (and fringe right) who want to do exactly that.
I should have been more specific; the group which is accused of being "cultural Marxists" includes the Frankfurt School which did nothing you describe nor expounded any intention to. Of course they exist, but the people accused of being those people who exist are not those people.
>That is precisely what intersectional feminism is about.
That's true, though it does little to hold for Peterson's argument that "Marxists" in general have moved to such a position, or have mutated class theory rather than simply adding to it. Marxists, orthodox and otherwise, still think in terms of class.
That's not how societies work. You cannot have no social structure anymore than a person can have "no age". You can try to create a flat social structure, but that's still a social structure (and not a stable one, obviously).
> That's true, though it does little to hold for Peterson's argument that "Marxists" in general have moved to such a position, or have mutated class theory rather than simply adding to it. Marxists, orthodox and otherwise, still think in terms of class.
Intersectional feminism certainly seems to be by the most popular strand today. Of course some old school Marxists still exist.
Class is not equal to social structure; when Marxists talk about classes they refer to economic power relations, as in, there is no group of people with majority or exclusive control over the main social means of production. This is in contrast to today in which the social means of production are owned almost entirely by the bourgeoisie, as in, the capitalist class, which employs wage labour.
In higher stage Communism, there is free association of people and the method that may be chosen would likely be decentralised direct-democratic councils with random or rotating delegates.