Capitalist Marxism

Capitalism is fully compatible with ignoring, mocking, defaming, or canceling Christians and Christianity. Cultural tyranny trumps political and economic tyranny.

May 07, 2021

Dear friends and supporters,

If you’re about my age and lived through the Cold War, you’ll likely find the title of this e-newsletter not so much paradoxical as self-contradictory. At the root of the Marxism we have known almost our entire lives is the version instantiated in the old Soviet Union, Red China, and other defunct Communist bloc countries. That Marxism was fiercely anti-capitalist, always and everywhere. Its international mission, in fact, was the purgation of capitalism.

What I’ve called Marxism is Classical Marxism, the Marxism of Marx’s magnum opus Das Capital and implemented in all the communist regimes of the 20th century. Because Marx was a materialist, he believed that every factor of life could be reduced to the physical. This included religion, philosophy, ideology, all ideas, in fact. Economics was the source of all human existence.

But influenced by Hegel’s dialectics, Marx also believed that reality is constantly matter in motion, the material world in incessant conflict. The conflict between human beings (who are nothing but material) is always between oppressor and oppressed. As exclusively material beings, oppression itself is always material: economic.

If Marx didn’t invent the term capitalism, he certainly popularized it, and for him it wasn’t a clinically objective description but, rather, term of derision and disgust, much like the term racist today. The capitalists, identified as the bourgeoisie, were the economic oppressors who used their system of Western economic liberty to amass wealth by forcing other humans to sell their labor in order merely to subsist, but in the process generating increasing wealth for the capitalists. This is why the state must abolish free economic arrangements — as long as the greedy are free to amass wealth without virtuous guidance, they’ll oppress their fellow humans.

If humanity’s ultimate concerns are material and economic, then liberation from economic oppression must be the central objective of life. It certainly is for Classical Marxism.

Cultural Marxism

The generation of European Marxists just behind Lenin and Trotsky relied on Marx’s earlier Paris writings, which addressed reality and society on issues broader than economics. Individuals like the Italian Antonio Gramsci; the Hungarian György Lukács; the Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre; and Germans Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Wilhelm Reich devised revisions to Marxism that would posit a uniquely Western Marxism. It’s sometimes called Cultural Marxism, or even anti-economic Marxism, because while it doesn’t ignore economics, it doesn’t perceive material provision as man’s greatest objective. Material provision is a means to that objective.

The actual objective is maximum individual autonomy, particularly sexual autonomy. Marxists of all kinds have bitterly opposed what they believed was traditional society’s suppression of the individual’s “authenticity.” Society should be arranged, coercively if necessary, to encourage radical individual autonomy.

Collectivist individualism

We might, in fact, call this “collectivist individualism,” as self-contradictory as that expression might seem. Society is a vast collective of radical individualists. To do that requires a nearly unmitigated coercion, and that power is politics, the state. In other words, the state exists to smash all competing authorities that would crimp individual autonomy. Those authorities reduce largely to the family, the church, and business. (See my article “The Erotic Regime.”) Politics doesn’t so much tyrannize as it does keep the family and church and business from tyrannizing — that is, from making demands of citizens that thwart their autonomy.

The Partisan Shift

Or so it was until recently. Perhaps the most obvious way of understanding the shift to Cultural Marxism is observing the shift in the two major United States political parties.

The Republican Party over the last 50 years has been identified with big business. This is because the Republicans have strongly stressed economic liberty, in contrast to the Democrats, who have stressed economic equality. Liberals and Democrats have forever claimed that the GOP was always in the hip pocket of big business, because the latter stood to gain from Republican policies — tax breaks; deregulation; and, in too many cases, unfortunately, crony capitalism (which is actually the antithesis of economic liberty).

Alternatively, the Democratic Party since at least Woodrow Wilson, and particularly escalating with FDR‘s response to the Great Depression, has been the party of economic leveling. Conservatives and Republicans have referred to this party as socialist, but it’s more accurate to refer to it as aggressively interventionist. Higher taxation for both individuals and corporations was calculated to redistribute wealth to the allegedly less fortunate, meaning less equal. The fact that a significant portion of this politically confiscated wealth ended up in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians didn’t seem to bother the collective conscience of the Democrats all that much.

But a strange thing happened on the way to 2021. The Republican Party is increasingly hostile, and the Democratic Party friendly, toward big business. Why?

Destroyed Family, Transformed Culture

As early as 80 years ago, the Cultural Marxists recognized that the just society (as they defined justice, of course) wasn’t possible merely on economic grounds. What was really needed was a radical restructuring of the most basic societal institution, and that is the family. Classical Marxism in the Soviet Union and Red China wasn’t especially pro-family in theory, but it wasn’t aggressively anti-family in practice, either. The real enemy was the bourgeoisie. For Cultural Marxists, the bourgeoisie is possible only because of the family, or, more derisively, the “patriarchal family.” Marx and Engels believed this too, but they weren’t willing to embrace the more radical cultural measures of the Cultural Marxists to demolish it.

In Western societies, the best way to destroy the family is not politically and coercively, but culturally and instinctually — that is, through nearly unfettered sex, because the family rests on the creational norm (Genesis 1) of the physical bond of monogamy. Promiscuous sex loosens and eventually breaks this bond. To have that unfettered sex, it’s necessary to enjoy the affluence that gives sufficient wealth, leisure, and entertainment. Because Classical Marxism is economically impoverishing, it fails to provide these conditions of the just society.

But a properly harnessed capitalism can.

(continued below)

Our broad thinking about life doesn’t just shape our view of human sexuality. Our view of human sexuality shapes the rest of our thinking. Western society’s sexual views and practices over the last few decades haven’t changed so dramatically only because the prominent worldview of our society has changed; our society has changed because its sexual worldview has changed.

This book is about why and how that change came about, how injurious it has been to our culture, and what Christians can do to reverse it. A distinctively Christian strategy for reversing the sexual revolution and its worldview is a restoration of a full-orbed, biblical faith in every aspect of thought and life.

Get the book here.

(continued)

United States, Fertile Revolutionary Culture

In the mid-30s the German Cultural Marxist Wilhelm Reich published a book whose ideas have captivated the West. It was simply called The Sexual Revolution. Its thesis is that the West’s psychological, emotional, and spiritual hardships are rooted in repressed sexuality, that is, the sexual morals of Christianity (part 1 is titled “The Fiasco of Compulsory Sexual Morality”). Reich’s objective was to undermine this morality and replace it with what he called “the sex-principle” — unlimited sexual freedom, including for children and adolescents. If you structure a society that throws off virtually all sexual inhibition, humanity will be happy, content, and virtually problem-free.

In Classical Marxism the oppressors were the capitalists. In Cultural Marxism the oppressors are the church, fathers, families — and Christianity, folks who tend to keep the libido in check.

Fascinatingly, in the preface of the fourth edition (1949), Reich wrote this:

I am not saying that victory has already been gained. We still face decades of arduous dispute. But I do say that the basic affirmation of natural love [by this he means the abolition of sexual standards] is advancing inexorably, in spite of numerous and dangerous foes. To my knowledge, America is the only country where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are anchored in the Constitution. Let me assure the reader that I, too, am fully aware of reactionary trends in the United States. But here, as nowhere else, there is the possibility of striving for happiness and for human rights [ = the right to unfettered sexuality] … The present volume, The Sexual Revolution, has also been favorably received. In America, there are powerful and well-established parent-teacher organizations which defend the principle of self-regulation [sexual autonomy] and, with it, of sex-economy for the child [children decide when and where to have sex]. Universities teach the life principle, including its sexual elements. Here and there one encounters hesitation, silence, even hostility, but sexual hygiene [sexual autonomy] for the masses is making strong progress. (emphases supplied)

Because the United States guarantees political liberty, it permits sexual gratification as a life principle. For the Cultural Marxists, this principle is necessary to overturning the oppressive society. For this reason, unlike the Classical Marxists, the Cultural Marxists do not oppose capitalism, properly employed. As Augusto Del Noce writes:

… In the society coming after the sexual revolution, economic inequality can persist, even in the midst of universal well-being. On this point the sexual revolution can agree very easily with the ideas of the theorists of the affluent society.

Since it increasingly recognizes that capitalism alone permits the affluent society, Cultural Marxism is fully compatible with capitalism and, in fact, is now impossible without it.

Democrats, Republicans, and Sex

Joe Biden’s recent gargantuan economic proposal, veritable womb-to-tomb federal largesse, correctly elicited the protests of economic conservatives. It very much resembles good, old-fashioned socialism. But as my colleague Brian G. Mattson recently pointed out, there’s nothing surprising about this development. For the Democratic Party, Biden’s proposal is unprecedented only in scope, not in principle.

The Latest Democratic Party

What has changed for the Democratic Party is its full-on embrace of the Sexual Revolution since the 1970s, along with a willingness to incorporate the affluent society and the capitalism necessary to create it. This combination came to the fore with President Bill Clinton, who combined moderate capitalism with maximized libido.

The Latest Republican Party

On the other hand, Republicans and conservatives now find themselves on the other side of big business that can only guarantee satisfied employees and customers by caving into the widely successful Sexual Revolution. Business must meet market demand, and market demand in the West is becoming all sex, all the time.

Capitalist Harmony in a Socially Revolutionary Culture

The problem, as Jeffrey Sonnenfeld observes, is that big business wants social harmony. Why should this be a problem, since this is what big business has always wanted? A harmonious society tends to produce wealth; a disruptive society tends not to produce wealth. It’s a problem because while in the 60s and 70s, social harmony was being disrupted by Leftism (the Vietnam War, radical feminism, and the Sexual Revolution) pushing big business to align with Republican establishment conservatism, that 60s and 70s disruption has has been routinized today. Leftism is the establishment, and it is the conservative Republicans that are the disruptors for defending the family; a colorblind, free society; and legal elections.

In the eyes of major corporations, issues like voting rights, immigration and transgender-inclusive restrooms have economic impact, too. The millions of people alienated by those fights aren’t just their future customers, many of whom expect to support brands they believe in, they’re the companies’ employees.

Consider merely the fact that as recently as 10 years ago no major corporation would have been bullied by employees or customers to defend “transgender-inclusive restrooms.” Culture has shifted toward the sexual proclivities of the Democratic Party.

As the Sexual Revolution has become routinized, the sociopolitical concerns of big business have shifted.

Winning Economic Wars and Losing Cultural Wars

As the West vanquished Communism, it surrendered to sexualism. We could also say this: as the United States won the Cold War, it was losing the Cultural War.

The anti-liberty response

It would be a precisely wrong response to this unprecedented conundrum to oppose economic liberty, free markets, and capitalism, which never claimed to be a cultural panacea (See my article “Two Liberalisms, Two Anti-Liberalisms”). Economic liberty — like religious liberty and political liberty — is simply a moral framework no better or worse than the human actors operating within it. Depraved individuals will abuse political liberty, just as false teachers will abuse religious liberty. This is no argument against liberty. It’s an argument against bad actors. When these actors gain a majority in a society or a sphere (like big business), dislodging the evils they perpetuate isn’t easy.

A Tale of Two Tyrannies

Many conservatives are learning for the first time the danger of cultural tyranny as opposed to political tyranny, not that the latter has evaporated (see my “Separation of Church and Statism”), but it’s not the greatest tyranny we have to fear. That tyranny was articulated in the 1830’s by that most prescient observer of American society, the Frenchman Alexis to Tocqueville, and his famous segment “the tyranny of the majority” from his book Democracy in America. Here are the oft-quoted lines:

In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent of it if he ever steps beyond them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors of an auto-da-fe [Inquisitional persecution], but he is tormented by the slights and persecutions of daily obloquy. His political career is closed forever, since he has offended the only authority which is able to promote his success. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused to him. Before he published his opinions he imagined that he held them in common with many others; but no sooner has he declared them openly than he is loudly censured by his overbearing opponents, whilst those who think without having the courage to speak, like him, abandon him in silence. He yields at length, oppressed by the daily efforts he has been making, and he subsides into silence, as if he was tormented by remorse for having spoken the truth.

If this isn’t a 1835 prediction of cancel culture, I don’t know what is.

Conclusion

Application for 2021: When a majority of democracy’s citizens buy into the premises of the Sexual Revolution and Cultural Marxism, they gradually impose a soft tyranny that penalizes anyone who opposes the destruction of the family, the legalization of homosexuality, and the normalization of transgenderism.

This cultural tyranny cannot be uninstalled by political elections, precisely because it wasn’t installed by political elections. It was installed by “the long march through the institutions,” an expression wrongly attributed to Antonio Gramsci but rightly describing the agenda of Cultural Marxism.

Cultural tyranny is overturned by cultural liberty, and cultural liberty occurs with the gradual re-Christianization of culture and stress on institutional responsibility within God’s moral law — strong families, churches, businesses, and not merely strong individuals.

In other words, Christian culture, not Christian politics as such, is the only way to purge capitalist Marxism and Cultural Marxism in toto. This means recapturing cultural fulcrums like education, popular music, Hollywood, technology platforms, and elite law schools (for example).

But this agenda presupposes Christians committed to cultural reclamation, not simply revival in the family or church, and until a sufficient number adopt that comprehensive vision, we Christians will suffer the scourge of ever-increasing iterations of capitalist Marxism.

Will you consider a tax-deductible donation to CCL via PayPal or Venmo? Or mail a check to CCL, Box 100, Coulterville, CA 95311. God uses you to keep us going — and expanding.

Personal

I’ll be interviewed by several documentaries and doing podcast interviews the next few weeks. I’m also considering a new monthly CCL Zoom podcast with several guests. Please pray about all this.

We’re working on the cover of Defend the Faith: Christian Warfare for Our Time. I really do want to get Creational Marriage: Issues and Controversies out by the fall. It will address the evangelical lust for singleness, women in military and law enforcement, and why complementarianism and egalitarianism both fail.

Professor John Frame has granted permission to publish his 60+ sermons under the title Widen Your Hearts. I hope we can get this out by early 2022.

Do you pray fervently and frequently? While God is sovereign and acts as he wishes (only in line with his nature, of course), he often limits his work in the world in answer to his people’s prayers. In short, the world would be more God-honoring if more Christians prayed more often and zealously.

Prayer changes things.

Yours for the prayer-answering God,

Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership