User talk:Jobrot/sandbox/Cultural Marxism (culture studies)

Class IS alienation, but alienation comes in material AND emotional forms.

Dubious difference between "Cultural Marxism" and "Cultural Studies"

Reviewing Cultural studies is seems dubious to me that whilst Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer and Habermas et al. were creating The Frankfurt School and The Birmingham School (which went on to constitute Cultural studies) they also and at the same time, secretly and without using it's name creating "Cultural Marxism". It is therefore my view that these two topics are one and the same, under two different names. With Cultural Marxism simply being an older term for Cultural Studies. --Jobrot (talk) 06:35, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Initial doubts

Comments made whilst submitting to review by two competent editors on N-HH's user talk page;

Well, this is what I have so far; User:Jobrot/sandbox/Cultural_Marxism_(culture_studies) I'm just not sure what to do with it (if anything). I suppose the next logical step would be to put it into draft space and see if any other editors want to make further improvements and clarifications. I've only really covered The Frankfurt School and Birmingham School as my introduction to this topic has been through them. At least there's some much needed levity near the end there, and perhaps it foreshadows just how perverse the topic can and has become. I'm still unsure as to whether the term warrants a formal page; as it still feels like an informal WP:UNDUE term to me. --Jobrot (talk) 10:26, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

By the way whilst researching the term Cultural Marxism I came across the term "Critical Marxism" being used as interchangeably to Critical Theory as seen here, I also came across the term "British Cultural Studies" here - which isn't too far off "British Cultural Marxism"... and then there's the report of Frederic Jameson's desire to reconceive of Cultural Studies as "Cultural Marxism" that can be read here - so I've become fairly convinced that "Cultural Marxism" was simply an interim term for "Cultural Studies" a contender for that neologism which was later discarded. So far I've seen little evidence that this isn't the case; leaving the whole debacle to be a glitch in historical linguistics that's been taken advantage of. But make of that what you will. --Jobrot (talk) 10:42, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Issues with first source (from George Ritzer)

My issue with this first source is that I recognize where it's from. It's from Douglas Kellner's 2003 essay "Cultural Studies and Cultural Marxism".[1] In the original essay which is somewhat longer, Kellner seems to be using Cultural Studies and Cultural Marxism somewhat interchangeably, and never gives a clear delineation between the two. On the contrary he cites the same groups of authors as being contained by both catagories. He also cites himself through out the essay, not that there's anything strictly wrong with that (and most of his self-cites are co-authored); but it still gives me a wariness about this source. --Jobrot (talk) 16:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I belatedly noticed that too. Either way though it's a good source: he's a noted academic writing a broad overview in a paper that has also been published in an edited book. The dismissal of it by random WP editors when it was brought up previously was astonishing, frankly. Plus I don't see where he says the two things are the same. He clearly differentiates between them, and uses the terms discretely, while noting that the Marxist tradition has been a major influence on cultural studies. N-HH talk/edits 09:13, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

The only two schools he talks about in relation to Cultural Marxism, and British Cultural Marxism are The Frankfurt School and The Birmingham School; the majority of sources used for this draft DON'T mention cultural Marxism at all, and are instead about those two schools. Hence my calling this draft a WP:COATRACK. --Jobrot (talk) 04:25, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, yes, he talks about those two schools, but he also talks about the original writings of Marx and the origins of cultural Marxism with the writings of "Lukacs, Benjamin and Adorno, who instituted a mode of Marxist cultural analysis". That's the point: it's a strain or tendency within Marxism, which is noted and described as such in multiple authoritative sources. An encyclopedia entry to cover the umbrella topic, based on overview sources such as this one, is no more a coatrack than the Renaissance article is a "coatrack" of the various regional elements and variations and the various artists who are said, retrospectively, to have comprised it. And if the sources used for the draft don't mention cultural Marxism don't mention it, the wrong sources are being used. As pointed out, there are plenty that do. N-HH talk/edits 08:50, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

And if the sources used for the draft don't mention cultural Marxism don't mention it, the wrong sources are being used. As pointed out, there are plenty that do - that would mean deleting most of the article. Also Benjamin and Adorno were part of The Frankfurt School (even though many sources who mention them don't use the phrase "Cultural Marxism" because it's an informal and seldom used term). But yeah sure; get rid of all sources that don't use "Cultural Marxism" whilst keeping the ones on The Frankfurt School; even though they're the ones which don't mention "Cultural Marxism"? Then again maybe this is just me "not understanding half of what I read" and not being "able to delineate concepts and ideas" again. --Jobrot (talk) 04:58, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Policy issues

The article as is, violates WP:COATRACK, as there are already articles on Cultural Studies, The Frankfurt School, The Birmingham School as well as biographical articles for their individual members. I cannot in good conscience submit this article to namespace. --Jobrot (talk) 06:39, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

This article may also violate WP:UNDUE as most of the sources don't use the term "Cultural Marxism" with only 7 or so sources who do, and 4 of those seem to be arguing AGAINST the term being legitimate. Most sources just use "Cultural Studies" when discussing the academic discourse which emerged from the Frankfurt and Birmingham School theorists. --Jobrot (talk) 06:42, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused. This seems to be your own draft, which you consider to be terrible? Rhoark (talk) 22:10, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

It's not terrible, and I believe it covers much of what's considered "Cultural Marxism"; it's just that it's already adequately covered elsewhere on Wikipedia. I've always argued that "Cultural Marxism" refers to the early development of The Frankfurt School; but considering there's already the Frankfurt School page and the Cultural studies page covering that, as well as numerous pages for the individual members of The Frankfurt School and Birmingham School; and that Cultural Marxism isn't a clear or well delineated movement, plan or ideology (hence the controversy around it); I just don't believe it's WP:DUE to reproduce information that can already be found elsewhere on Wikipedia. There's just no strong case for reproducing that information under a new title. I'd consider doing so to be an WP:UNDUE WP:COATRACK. Not something I could have predicted when starting to write the draft; but something that became more and more evident by the end of the drafting process; particularly when reviewing the Cultural studies article --Jobrot (talk) 22:47, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Do not create this

None of this stuff is 'Cultural Marxism', it is 'cultural studies', which we have an article on. Please don't start this nonsense again. We've discussed the texts you are using to justify this definition before, and they simply won't pass. Stop whilst your ahead. RGloucester — ☎ 14:55, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with you; I attempted to write an article on "Cultural Marxism" but just ended up with a WP:COATRACK comprised of The Frankfurt School, The Birmingham School, Cultural Studies and related thinkers. Don't worry, I don't intend to take it any further and have amended my edit request accordingly. --Jobrot (talk) 08:23, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

No, "cultural Marxism" is not the same thing as "cultural studies". The first is, very roughly, a strain/tendency within Marxism to focus on analysis of culture. Cultural studies is an academic discipline, albeit one orginally developed arguably by Marxist thinkers – it's a totally different type of thing to start with. It's almost as bizarre as saying Marxist economics is the same thing as economic studies. Not all cultural studies is Marxist; not all Marxists who have been described as as cultural Marxists fall under cultural studies. Also, topics can overlap and interrelate, be a subtopic of another, or be an umbrella term, all without being the same thing (that's why we have pages on socialism, communism, libertarian communism, anarchism, social democracy etc etc). This was all pointed out on my talk page, with quotes and citations from a few of the scores of more than passable sources.

This all seems a bit moot now as it looks as if you've decided to drop this Jobrot, but given the above, I'm a bit confused by the way the lead is framed. It does locate cultural Marxism firmly within cultural studies, when as noted, it's broader than that. It also seems to argue that it's not really Marxist either, which is a little odd. But I guess that all follows from your conclusion about cultural Marxism being exactly the same thing as cultural studies. Anyway, I suppose I'll just resign myself to the fact that it will be impossible to sort this out, especially given the history here and the noisy veto from some editors, and that like WP's coverage of most things political, the content on this point will remain irredeemably misleading and confusing, with a bizarre redirect to a wholly unsuitable subsection of another page. N-HH talk/edits 09:04, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

You can tell me your opinion (that Cultural Marxism is a separate subset of Cultural studies). An opinion I believe is based on the one extremely post-hoc definition we have, which boils down to the Original Research of Douglas Kellner as 'edited' by George Ritzner), but you can't tell me what my opinion is... and if you look closely at the Cultural studies page; you'll see that Cultural Marxism and Cultural studies parallel each other so incredibly tightly (both inspired by Gramsci and E.P Thompson, both contained in the same works of the same schools and authors) that it's in my view TOTALLY ABSURD to claim that The Frankfurt School and Birmingham School manufactured BOTH of these two extraordinarily similar histories and schools of thought at the exact same time. Just because one professor has a definition for Cultural Marxism doesn't negate all that history of similarity; and I've not seen any arguments made to the contrary. Hence my calling my own draft (which you'd have to agree, I've put extensive work into) a WP:COATRACK. I didn't create this draft lightly, nor do I throw it away lightly. --Jobrot (talk) 12:01, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

---

Main article: Cultural_studies § History

As Dennis Dworkin writes,[5] "a critical moment" in the beginning of cultural studies as a field was when Richard Hoggart used the term in 1964 in founding the Birmingham (UK) Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School.[6] The Birmingham School at the University of Birmingham thus became the world's first institutional home of cultural studies.

Hoggart appointed Stuart Hall as his assistant, and Hall was effectively directing The Birmingham School by 1968,[7] taking over formally as Director in 1969 when Hoggart retired. Thereafter, the discipline became closely associated with Hall's work.[8][9] In 1979, Hall left The Birmingham School to accept a prestigious chair in Sociology at the Open University in the UK, and Richard Johnson took over the directorship of the Centre.

In the late 1990s, "restructuring" at the University of Birmingham led to the elimination of The Birmingham School and the creation of a new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (CSS) in 1999. Then, in 2002, the University of Birmingham's senior administration abruptly announced the disestablishment of CSS, provoking a substantial international outcry. The immediate reason for disestablishment of the new department was an unexpectedly low result in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, though a dean from the university attributed the decision to "inexperienced ‘macho management.’"[10] The RAE, a holdover initiative of the Margaret Thatcher-led UK government of 1986, determines research funding for university programs.[11]

There are numerous published accounts of the history of cultural studies.[12][13][14]

---

See what I mean? --Jobrot (talk) 12:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

"It also seems to argue that it's not really Marxist either, which is a little odd." - that's a claim coming from the sources; "Nothing intrinsicaly Marxist, that is to say, defines "cultural Marxism," save for the evocation or hope of a postbourgeois society... ...The mistake of those who see one position sequeing into another is to confuse contents with personalities." -Paul Gottfried "when confronted by anti-Marxists, he [E.P. Thompson] defended Marxism, firmly. Yet when he met orthodox Marxists, he denounced them, angrily." -Edward Thompson on E.P. Thompson and Horkheimer's own goal "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them." in general these criticisms are taken to be criticisms of Capitalist culture and the mass production of culture; hence terms like the Culture Industry or Hoggart's "Massification"; and in Hoggart's case, his complaint was that cultural massification robbed local communities of their unique character; that was his criticism, not that it somehow required a specifically 'Marxist' solution. That's why people like Marcuse and E.P Thompson have their own criticisms of Soviet Marxism just as they do of Capitalism... and if you look at people like Raymond Williams he explicitly states that he was trying to create a new mode of analysis, namely Cultural materialism - so these guys were Historical materialists attempting to dialectically create a new mode of analysis that was neither Marxist nor Capitalist - and they were somewhat successful hence the existence of Cultural studies and Critical theory. You can argue that these new discourses are essentially Marxism; but it's not the widely held academic viewpoint as per WP:RS and WP:DUE. --Jobrot (talk) 12:41, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

The point of Synthesis under Hegelianism is to form something that is neither the thesis nor the anti-thesis, hence; "[Critical Theory] is neither Marxist nor Freudian; instead, it uses these two authors as sources of inspiration for a relevant criticsm of society." [2] --Jobrot (talk) 12:55, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

It's not just my opinion: there's no third-party confirmation in anything that "Cultural Marxism" and "Cultural Studies" are the same thing. As I said, they're even a different kind of thing. Nor am I trying to tell you what your opinion is: where it's unclear, I asked for clarification; where it was clear and I disagreed with it, I said so. As for Kellner's "original research", academics are allowed to do this, and we are allowed to use it; it's only WP editors that shouldn't do their own. There's no reason to knock his writing but accept at face value and highlight cherry-picked observations by others, including politically active right-wing authors (eg Gottfried, who in any event of course still uses the term to define his topic, even though he questions its relationship to genuine Marxism). And on that basis you've simply declared that there is an academic consensus that it is not Marxism proper, which is a) not the case and b) irrelevant anyway. As for the rest of it, you have utterly lost me I'm afraid with all that convoluted reasoning about what everything really is or means (which is genuine original research to be avoided btw of course). You've also repeatedly ignored my point about overlap: of course there are similarities and connections, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing. To be frank, I'm not sure you understand half of what you are reading and citing, or basic points about identifying, delineating and naming concepts and ideas. N-HH talk/edits 09:05, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

We have different opinions on the matter. That much is clear. As I've said before you're free to construct your own draft, based on your own sources and understanding of the topic. You clearly believe that "Cultural Marxism" is definitely a form of Marxism, and definitely believe it extends beyond Cultural studies (although you seem unclear as to where it extends to). If you look at the current section on The Frankfurt School page there's numerous authors who disagree with BOTH you and I, and say it's just a conspiracy theory (Jamin, Richardson, Feldman, Martin, Berkowitz, Berlet, Beirich). So lots of people say lots of things about this subject; there's not a lot of clarity out there to be found. Which is perhaps why the current section heading is the way it is (and there's a strong consensus to leave it that way). That's where I'm leaving the topic; because it's frankly a difficult area to find clarity on.

To be frank, I'm not sure you understand half of what you are reading and citing, or basic points about identifying, delineating and naming concepts and ideas. You're free to have that opinion, but obviously I disagree. --Jobrot (talk) 11:09, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

P.S There's also quite a few news articles using the term in the conspiracy sense (I'm actually keeping a list of them). So there's that "current events" aspect to the topic as well. --Jobrot (talk) 11:23, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, we agree to disagree. I'll probably just repeat myself if I try to answer any of the issues mentioned above, as I've discussed the points about sourcing, definition, clarity/scope etc at length already, so let's leave it at that. N-HH talk/edits 08:52, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Some slick pilpul being employed here. Note how Jobrot's claim boils down to this: 'Cultural Marxism' and 'Cultural Studies' came from the same academics at the same time. This must mean it must be the same thing. Just in case you're unsure, you were dealing with a knowledge gatekeeper who had no intention of arguing in good faith. 2A01:CB08:85CF:7300:78BE:40C0:FDAF:CF30 (talk) 01:36, 8 April 2022 (UTC)