One of the core progressive criticisms of Jordan Peterson is that Peterson is wrong to claim that the rise of reactionary political forces is a manifestation of cultural resistance to the deep and pervasive threat of cultural Marxism (or postmodern neo-Marxism). Though he may not have a Trump-size Twitter following, Peterson is not easily dismissed, given his stature as a well-respected psychologist and highly influential public intellectual. Progressive critics cannot ignore Peterson. Instead, they frequently insist that Peterson misleads us in identifying postmodern neo-Marxism as the scapegoat behind reactionary right-wing political movements. According to Matt McManus, Peterson misreads postmodern philosophers and unwittingly grants them more political clout than they deserve, while insulating neoliberalism from exposure as the true source of right-wing populism.
I agree that Peterson overstates the case. Indeed, a careful interpretation of various texts associated with critical theory and postmodern philosophy—some of which I have analyzed here, here, here and here—demonstrates that Peterson does not fully appreciate the many subtleties of postmodern philosophy. Nevertheless, while Peterson may not understand the important distinctions between Marxism and postmodern philosophy, he is not as widely off the mark as some progressives claim. He is not entirely incorrect in claiming that the excesses of Social Justice activism reflect a twenty-first century rendition of “postmodern neo-Marxism” and not simply a few extremist campus factions getting out of hand. I have explored the Marxist influence on social justice activism elsewhere. It is evident here, in Jason Barker’s piece in celebration of Marx’s birthday:
The key factor in Marx’s intellectual legacy in our present-day society is not “philosophy” but “critique,” or what he described in 1843 as “the ruthless criticism of all that exists: ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.” “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,” he wrote in 1845.
Professor Barker connects this “critique” to the modern Social Justice movement:
Racial and sexual oppression have been added to the dynamic of class exploitation. Social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo owe something of an unspoken debt to Marx through their unapologetic targeting of the “eternal truths” of our age. Such movements recognize, as did Marx, that the ideas that rule every society are those of its ruling class and that overturning those ideas is fundamental to true revolutionary progress.
Indeed, as I have discussed in a previous essay, neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci took up this task with an analysis of “cultural hegemony” and advocacy of a so-called “war of position,” in which partisan intellectuals strive to acquire positions of influence within the social hierarchy to advocate for the transformation of a culture that forms the basis of an allegedly oppressive social construct. Gramscian neo-Marxism, then, is a precursor to progressive activism in its call for political agitation and a revolutionary “war of position,” in the name of assuming control of the means of (cultural) production.
Postmodern philosophy may have eschewed metanarrative in favor of an epistemic skepticism focused on textual and cultural critiques, but Marx’s influence permeates postmodern culture’s obsession with social marginalization, especially as it operates at the level of the subconscious, even though the focus on false consciousness has been inverted—postmodernists claim that discourse makes power invisible to the powerful, rather than to the powerless. Ultimately, whether Marxian or postmodern, progressivism is obsessed with critiques of superstructures built on exploitative relationships between groups, sustained by false consciousness by way of ideology and/or discourse.
Political activism of the 1960s and 1970s—as books like SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale, Days of Rage by Bryan Burroughs, and The Critical Turn in Education by Isaac Gottesman have shown—contained the seeds of a long-term effort, by radical figures like Henry Giroux, Angela Davis, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohr and Kathy Boudin, to take refuge in the university and assume positions from which to pass on their virulent strain of progressive activism to a new generation of students. As Gottesman writes, this was already well underway in the nineties:
“To the question: ‘Where did all the sixties radicals go?’, the most accurate answer,” noted Paul Buhle (1991) in his classic Marxism in the United States, “would be: neither to religious cults nor yuppiedom, but to the classroom.” After the fall of the New Left arose a new left, an Academic Left. For many of these young scholars, Marxist thought, and particularly what some refer to as Western Marxism or neo-Marxism, and what I will refer to as the critical Marxist tradition, was an intellectual anchor.
It should come as no surprise, then, that research by Phillip W. Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research shows that “as of 2015, Marx stands nearly alone as the most frequently assigned author in American college classrooms, only surpassed by the ubiquitous Strunk and White grammar manual.” Given how wrong Marx’s theory of exploitation was, the activist streak of left-wing professors in a postmodern world seems to be among the most plausible explanations.
Few would dispute the prevalence of left-wing sentiment in Hollywood, the mainstream media and other prominent institutions that have exercised progressive “cultural hegemony” since at least the nineties. The rise of Rush Limbaugh and the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 afford perhaps the first transparent glimpses of what Matt McManus, following Peter Lawler, calls “postmodern conservatism”—not as a form of resistance against a neoliberal zeitgeist gone awry, but against a “war of position,” which has been waged since the sixties and which gained momentum when the west no longer had victory in the Cold War as a unifying objective. Peterson’s diatribes against “postmodern neo-Marxism” may obscure the subtle differences between Marxism and postmodern philosophy, but he is not wrong in tracing a long historical arc from Marxist agitation to the postmodern epistemic skepticism that galvanizes Social Justice activism in particular, and progressive activism in general.
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Jordan Peterson | Post-Modernism vs. Modernism at the Toronto Action Forum
Richard R. Weiner, 1981. Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology (SAGE Library of Social Research).
https://books.google.com/books/about/Cultural_Marxism_and_Political_Sociology.html?id=4G0XAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y
>A thorough examination and analysis of the tensions between political sociology and the culturally oriented Marxism that emerged in the 60s and 70s is presented in this volume.
Dennis L. Dworkin, 1997. Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Cultural_Marxism_in_Postwar_Britain.html?hl=de&id=dY1Cgg8NV64C
> In this intellectual history of British cultural Marxism, Dennis Dworkin explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought. Tracing its development from beginnings in postwar Britain, through its various transformations in the 1960s and 1970s, to the emergence of British cultural studies at Birmingham, and up to the advent of Thatcherism, Dworkin shows this history to be one of a coherent intellectual tradition, a tradition that represents an implicit and explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar British Left.
Cultural Marxism of Laclau and Mouffe
McManus has repeatedly smeared Peterson with the usual half truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies. I’ve posted this repeatedly in the comment section on this site, and, to be frank, the Left simply do not want to admit McManus is a partisan hack.
See anything he’s written on Peterson at Merion West, including his new book. The comment sections are full of people pointing out McManus’ drivel. He does not represent Peterson’s arguments correctly. And I don’t believe he even attempts to do so. Honestly if the author of this piece begins by referencing McManus’ work, I’m not even willing to read the other articles to which the author links, such is McManus’ intellectual dishonestly. Helen, ditch McManus. He only harms the Left, and I say this as someone who abandoned the Left a few years ago.
McManus’ “conversative postmodernism” is little more than him not being able to tell the difference between postmodernism and a BS artist (e.g., Trump). I wish I could find the video (but alas it’s 4pm on Friday, nearly drinks time) in which Peterson himself admits he knows neo-Marxism and postmodermism is quite different beasts, opposed to each other in many ways, and he elaborates that he can’t exactly explain what these are in the usual short interviews.
“Helen, ditch McManus.”
No, Helen, give us more McManus. Relax Steve. I’m a huge fan of Dr. P (BTW where is he lately?), but I also enjoy Matt’s articles greatly. I think he is a bit wrong — that is, I agree with your criticisms of him — but in the spirit of genuine intellectual thrust and parry, I think he’s in good faith and his challenges should be met cordially and in that spirit of genuine intellect. I expect that Peterson and McManus would enjoy each other’s company just as Peterson enjoys conversing/debating with Harris who is perhaps his greatest opponent. Don’t denounce Matt, just refute him.
Steve,
This may be the video you’re thinking of.
Jordan B Peterson on “But That Wasn’t Real Communism, Socialism, or Marxism!”
«McManus has repeatedly smeared Peterson with the usual half truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies. I’ve posted this repeatedly in the comment section on this site, and, to be frank, the Left simply do not want to admit McManus is a partisan hack.»
Sometimes motives of the person are much more prosaic than we think. May be, the main reason McManus attacks Dr. Peterson is because regardless of you agree or disagree with Peterson, but Peterson makes you think; he is interesting to people. McManus is not.
Perhaps this little publication might assist the author to dispel some glaring misunderstandings he obviously has about the nature of “Marxism” https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/marxism-revisited/
Read some history and economic theory, please. Quit posting this drivel from the Socialist Party’s PR department.
Modern SocJus is mainly indebted to Critical Theory (created by the Frankfurt School, an explicitly neomarxist project) and postmodernism via Foucault, Derrida et al. So yes, I don’t think he fully understands it but he isn’t far wrong.
I would make this «long historical arch» even longer.
From Inca Empire through catharism, Utopia of Thomas More, “Eternal League of God” of Müntzer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Conspiracy of the Equals of Babeuf, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao to modern SJW – this movement is always the same. Its hallmarks are the desire to destroy private property, religion and family, while the final goal is to wipe out the mankind.
Karl Marx was more honest – he admitted this «arch». Modern postmodernists are lying (for now…)
Postmodernism equally affects what are assumed to be opposite ends of the political spectrum, because they aren’t opposite. Fascism/Communism are not much different, much less polar opposites. Right/Left is irrelevant. Try Individualism/Collectivism as the opposites and it’s much clearer.
https://theotherclub.org/2017/12/the-right-hand-knows-full-well-what-the-left-hand-is-doing.html
The subtleties are only of interest to Progressive Professors and SJW activists as a means of avoiding association with the manifest failures of Marxism. Peterson’s point, in the simplest terms, is that because economic class warfare turned out not to be inevitable, new victim groups had to be invented.
Since *The Gulag Archipelago*, *The Black Book of Communism*, *Last Exit to Utopia*, *Heaven on Earth*, etc. it has not been intellectually feasible to pretend the problem with Communism was simply that the wrong people were in charge. Postmodernism offers a way out.
What “communism”? The Soviet Union was a system of state administered capitalism from the word go. It exhibited the core generic features that define capitalism -the accumulation of capital, the profit motive (enshrined in the 1936 constitution) . buying and selling and above all , generalised wage labour. Why dont people call a spade a spade. There was no communism in the Soviet Union , or China or all the other pseudo-communist states/ This is still one of the best books on the subject and its downloadable https://libcom.org/library/state-capitalism-wages-system-under-new-management-adam-buick-john-crump
So apparently your solution to the lack of communism in the old Soviet Union would be to abolish wages and the buying and selling of, what, anything and everything? That will be a fun place. Something like Atlanta in The Walking Dead, as wageless laborers wander the streets trying to find the government stooge who possesses what little exists in hopes that he will be actually willing to part with it.
David Alexander. I dont know warped concept of communism it is that you hold in your head but I suggest you do a little reading around the topic. Here’s a mice easy read for you to straighten out that muddled head of yours https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/from-capitalism-to-socialism-how-we-live-and-how-we-could-live/ BTW “socialism” in traditional Marxian usage means the same thing as communism
Yes. Wonderful. Thank you for the read. All the intellectual rigor of a Scientology advert with half the believability.
«What “communism”»? The Soviet Union was a system of state administered capitalism» – You definitely know nothing about the real “communism” 🙂
It’s amazing how the Socialists, Marxists and Communists in the west are so quick to heap praise on any and every new attempt at those ideologies. So slow to admit when or how they’ve gone wrong, or even acknowledge the inevitable body count. And yet so quick after the event to claim “that wasn’t real XXX-ism” and that it would have gone fine “if only…”.
It seems fitting to quote Dr. Peterson on “what they mean when they say that wasn’t real Marxism”:
“It means they think if ‘I were in Stalin’s position I would have ushered in the damn utopia instead of the genocidal massacres, because I understand the doctrine of Marxism and everything about me is good’.”
The work of Don Lavoie will help disabuse you of this idea, Robin Cox. It’s odd that you say the “Soviet Union was a system of state administered capitalism from the word go” when the early years were the most faithful application of Marx’s ideas, reducing their productivity down to about 10% of what it was in 2 years.
“His conclusion is that both channels of this river lead to the same bloody place in the end.”
Very well said. Dwelling on the nuances of the difference could end up being nothing but a distraction. Hitler and Mussolini were not exactly the same, but during WWII that distinction was not really what we needed to worry about.
And add Stalin and Mao to that list
Thank you. A worthy read and enlightening on the forces at play. I would agree, having heard from a number of post-modernists arguing the subtle distinctions between Marxist and post-modern thought, that Peterson generally ignores them. I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t understand the differences. I think it’s because he understands that they are, for his purposes, inconsequential. His conclusion is that both channels of this river lead to the same bloody place in the end. When they put a bullet in your brain for thinking the wrong things, or for being the wrong person, you don’t care what color pants they wear.