Currently, one of the biggest and most important enemies of marxism is ideological postmodernism. This new wave of ideological decay has covered itself with a cloak of supposed modernity and progress, and they even pretend to give the image that it is a product of the evolution of Marxism itself. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Even fascists enter into this line of argument, mistakenly calling it "cultural marxism" (in the last years the term "woke" has also gained track). According to them, a conspiracy has been launched to destroy Western culture, and this would be the implementation of this "cultural Marxism", manifesting itself as the dictatorship of political correctness, the control of the media and educational institutions, promoting through them pessimism, liberalism, and the degeneration of society.
Looking at their description of "cultural Marxism," one can see that Marxism has nothing to do with it; in fact, it is antithetical. Marxism seeks to transform society, to end capitalism, and to bring humanity to a higher, more evolved stage. However, postmodernists (in all their variants) only patch up the system, advocating for supposed partial struggles that, when used by them, serve as a brake, not a pedal for advancing society. Like fascists, they do the dirty work for capitalists. They distort Marxism, achieving disunity and the absolute disorganization of workers, leaving them at the mercy of exploitation in a decadent, putrid, and degenerate society. Thus, fascists should find another name to define the postmodernist movement that defends the system, since, as fellow travelers, both fascists and postmodernists have the same interest in maintaining the hegemony of capital.
Fascists pin the beginning of this movement on the need of the left to destroy everything Western in order to achieve revolution, since they failed to lift up all of Europe in 1917. Therefore, work focused on this need would begin in 1930. It would begin with the Frankfurt School and supposedly develop to this day. Although they are right that it began with the Frankfurt School in 1930 based on misunderstood ideas of Antonio Gramsci, we must analyze the material conditions that led to this, since on this point they are clearly mistaken.
In 1930, the labor movement was stronger than ever, especially in Europe. The USSR had consolidated; through the Comintern and its sections, it had more capacity than ever. Therefore, was it impossible to make a revolution in Europe when it was more present and closer than ever? Clearly not, so it makes no sense to claim that it was a response by Marxism to a supposed inability, but rather the opposite: in the face of the revolutionary offensive and the failure of fascism, stopping it required other methods that would maintain the capitalist system in Europe and around the world. This was the emergence of ideological postmodernism, following the Frankfurt School, to degenerate Marxism and destroy the communist parties from within and without. This thought reached its peak in May 1968 in France and periodically promoted the birth of similar movements that only confirmed the condemnation of the working class to exploitation. These authors set themselves up as defenders of "critical" Marxism when in reality they critiqued it with the intention of defenestrating, dumbing down, and destroying it. Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jürgen Habermas were followed by Sigmund Freud, Louis Althusser, and, more recently, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Slavoj Žižek, and Immanuel Wallerstein. These are just a few of the most famous, but the list, unfortunately, is much longer.
A dictatorship of ideological postmodernism has been imposed. While economic control by capitalism has continued, the postmodern left has been allowed to set the pace of social "advancement," which in reality is nothing more than forcing consumption and behavior patterns in the way capitalism wants, degenerating society and increasingly oppressing the working class. Everything that isn't politically correct is subject to a media lynching that censors, or ("cancels") it. The old, working-class left has been overwhelmed by the "new left", by partial, meaningless, and aimless demands for progress. The old left has been dismissed as something old-fashioned and obsolete, something from the past that no longer makes any sense. They need to force the organizations that were once combative to adopt the new dogma, to the prevailing ideology, to not oppose that which is already a reality and can no longer be changed. For us communists, everything can be changed: nothing is stagnant, everything is in constant movement and subject to transformation. Since the destruction of the capitalist state is necessary for the construction of a new proletarian, socialist state, we should not leave any pillar of capitalism standing.
The persecution and influence of ideological postmodernism occurs at all levels of society, both individually and collectively: no association or organization of any kind is exempt from subjugation to the dogmas of postmodernism. Workers' associations and communist parties are no exception either, and they have suffered a major attack from these ideas and their champions. The saddest thing is that they have had great success in communist parties and organizations, which have introduced into their programs, to give just a few examples, a series of issues that clearly undermine the foundations of Marxism and that go against the transformation of society:
>Absolute renunciation of violence. Instead of seeing it as an instrument, they have accepted the discourse of the bourgeoisie so that it can perpetuate itself in power. A class that holds power will never give it up without a fight. They have fallen into the crudest idealism.
>Acceptance of liberal feminism's anti-communist, anti-worker, and anti-progress ideas, incorporating them into their "neomarxism", which perverts the ideology into a docile state, eliminating everything revolutionary about it. We're talking about illogical gender quotas, the promotion of queer theory, rejection of monogamy and nuclear family, support for prostitution and unhealthy promiscuity, the equation and even superiority of the so-called feminist struggle with the class struggle, and a long list of shameful issues promoted by the bourgeoisie and profoundly anti-Marxist in nature.
>Acceptance of bourgeois environmentalism, rejecting the concept of prioritizing production and industrialization so that the country can achieve independence and revolutionary development. Natural resources, and therefore the environment, must be protected, but not in a childish manner, without taking into account the country's productive needs at specific times.
>General demilitarization, one of the points of the program that all these communist parties and organizations have adopted at the behest of the bourgeoisie. How can a revolution defend itself without an army? It needs to be completely reformed, but thinking that they will be able to disband it without consequences is nothing more than falling back into the most absurd idealism.
>They completely renounce discipline, democratic centralism (some maintain it in name, but in practice only develop internal liberalism), and revolutionary vigilance in favor of assembly-based politics and the relaxation of militant life to the point of creating only amateurs who treat it as a hobby. With this, they have destroyed any capacity for combativeness in these parties: alcoholism and drug addiction are now accepted as something good or even, as something to be expected from a leftist.
(I say communist parties because they call themselves that; of course, they are not, they are merely part of the system and contribute to the disorganization of the working class.)
Class struggle is rejected with theories that are each more surreal than the last. Some also speak of a new phase of capitalism with the sole intention of perpetuating domination and oppression, but with a "human" face. Many of the defenders of these theories attempt to justify them by revising the revolutionary essence of Marxism. It is true that changes have occurred with the development of imperialism, but these variations do not affect its fundamental laws, and so we remain in the same historical phase. They magically transform the minority into the revolutionary or transgressive, the rare and marginal into the supposed vanguard of future transformations. They fail to realize that their scale of oppression is nothing more than a metaphysical construct destined to fail if its objective were to bring about real change and not to blur class consciousness and weaken working-class and revolutionary organizations. That a group, in this case a class, plays a revolutionary role is not due to the marginal, alien, non-normative, or minority character of certain individuals, but rather to the material conditions of that class, which inevitably lead it to play a revolutionary role in the transformation of society. The bourgeois class is a minority compared to the working class, and this does not make it revolutionary; on the contrary, it is parasitic and unproductive, while the working class is the one that produces wealth and is subjugated, since it does not own the means of production.
A new consumer culture has been created that presupposes individual liberation, as if it were possible to make changes individually and not as a collective entity that achieves progress by force. A culture of general depravity has been established in society, especially among young people, who, under the pretext of destroying tradition, are destroying everything to pave the way for the concepts of the new consumerism, drug and alcohol addiction, prostitution, pornography, and a life of excess and degeneration that instills a heightened consumerism that alienates and destroys consciences and identities alike. "We only have one life to live"; they don't realize that living involves being productive, educating ourselves, having interests, being healthy, reproducing our species, and contributing to the overall progress of society. Living is not being a nihilist who only follows trends and dogmas imposed by those in power. They've created the false illusion that communists who don't conform to this way of thinking are actually reactionaries, much more to the right than to the left. As if renouncing absolutely everything for the sake of social trends were more revolutionary. As if supporting the current general degeneration of society were something positive.
Being promiscuous, "lacking" a sexual identity, being a drug addict and advocating for it, dyeing your hair, or liberally claiming dogmas about partial struggles doesn't make you a revolutionary; what makes you a revolutionary is organizing yourself in a disciplined way to transform society. The new left continues their hidden defense of the capitalist system and the absurd justification of Western parliamentary democracies, which are the true drivers and defenders of the existence of such system. Unfortunately, we're all influenced by this postmodernism. It's normal to have fallen at some point throughout our lives under these dogmas, under the vices of consumption that they dictate to us. It's necessary to open our eyes, be self-critical, and see that they only want to destroy any possibility of transforming society and maintain current exploitation. Therefore, it's necessary to vehemently fight against this ideological postmodernism, realizing that postmodern revisionism is nothing more than another attempt by its proponent—the bourgeoisie—to eliminate working-class and revolutionary organizations, perpetuate their oppression, and destroy society.
albaniaAlbania