Dennis Dworkin, an intellectual historian who has written extensively on British Marxist thought, suggests that the writings of Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School were influential in the UK in the 1960s, and that they had a major impact on the development of cultural studies. Gramsci particularly influenced Raymond Williams and historian E.P. Thompson (Dworkin, Class Struggles, pp. 55-58). Right-wing culture warriors will go on employing the expression “cultural Marxism” (or “Cultural Marxism”) in a pejorative way, attaching it to dubious, sometimes paranoid, theories of cultural history. There is nothing I can do to discourage this usage, and nor can I deny that it includes grains of truth in, for example, associating a more culture-oriented approach to Marxism with the Frankfurt School. I assume that this weaponized usage will continue. Dennis Dworkin provides a careful and relatively comprehensive assessment of cultural Marxism’s emergence as a postwar British intellectual and political project, which developed around both history-writing and what came to be called cultural studies.” — Dan Schiller, Left History

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain - Google Books

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. More generally, serious intellectual history cannot ignore the complex cross-currents of thought within the Left in Western liberal democracies. The Left has always been riven with factionalism, not least in recent decades, and it now houses diverse attitudes to almost any imaginable aspect of culture (as well as to traditional economic issues). Many components of the Western cultural Left can only be understood when seen as (in part) reactions to other such components, while being deeply influenced by Western Marxism’s widespread criticism and rejection of Soviet communism. Schroyer was, and is, a genuine scholar presenting a thesis that was received and reviewed seriously. He seems generally correct in his description of Western Marxism’s departure from Soviet Marxism, with an emphasis on cultural critique and a different set of attitudes to culture itself. More specifically, the unmasking of culture as complicit in social domination of the individual was a central idea within the intellectual ambitions of the Frankfurt School. Similar ideas of unmasking and criticizing the role of culture can be observed more broadly within Western Marxism - and in what we might call “Western post-Marxism” - from at least the 1920s to the present day. As he develops his thesis, Schroyer explains the “crisis theory”, shared by the Frankfurt School with other “cultural Marxists”, as identifying a social process of rationalizing endless growth. This forces social-cultural processes to adapt in ways that undermine individual autonomy ( Critique of Domination, p. 171). More specifically, Schroyer explains the central idea of the Frankfurt School as follows: “As advanced industrial societies developed, the individual was more integrated into and dependent upon the collectivity and less able to utilize society for active self-expression” ( Critique of Domination, p. 227). Turner, Graeme (2002). British cultural studies: an introduction (3rded.). Routledge. ISBN 9780415252287.Richard Johnson was later director and encouraged research in social and cultural history. The centre staff included Maureen McNeil, noted theorist of culture and science, Michael Green who focused on media, cultural policy and regional cultures in the midlands, and Ann Gray, culture and media. Outside of historical scholarship, and discussions of the history and current state of Western Marxism, we need to be careful. In everyday contexts, those of us who do not accept the narrative of a grand, semi-conspiratorial movement aimed at producing moral degeneracy should probably avoid using the term “cultural Marxism”.

Duke University Press - Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain fills an especially acute need in the contemporary rassessment of the social roots and cultural contexts of avant-garde academic movements. . . . Dworkin assembles a convincing historical narrative of how a seemingly provisional reaction to the crisis of British welfare capitalism in the post-war period developed into a coherent and compelling subtradition of European Marxist social theory. . . . Dworkin’s new study manages to both creatively historicize a familiar—yet often misunderstood—recent academic and political formation as well as raise pressing methodological questions that cross the major disciplines of the human sciences.” — Alex Benchimol , Thesis ElevenIoan Davies. “British Cultural Marxism.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 4(3) (1991): 323-344. Dworkin, Dennis (1 June 2012). Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain. Duke University Press. p.116. doi: 10.1215/9780822396512. ISBN 9780822396512. As Vesa Oittinen expresses some of this in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought: “The British Marxist tradition has usually been described as ‘cultural Marxism,’ as an attempt to apply basic ideas of historical materialism on the analyses of culture (Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton), but Christopher Hill ( 1997 [1965]) and E. P. Thompson ( 1963) stay much nearer the original traditions of historical materialism” (Oittinen, “Historical Materialism,” The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, p. 2). Gramsci’s major body of work – his voluminous collection of Prison Notebooks – was not published until the 1950s, long after his death in 1937 and too late for him to exert any significant influence on the Frankfurt School. However, his ideas became increasingly influential in the 1950s and 1960s, and especially in the 1970s with the publication, in 1971, of an English translation of selections from the Prison Notebooks. Resistance through rituals: youth subcultures in post-war Britain. Hall, Stuart, 1932-2014., Jefferson, Tony. (2nd., rev. and expandeded.). London: Routledge. 2006. ISBN 978-0415324373. OCLC 70106758. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: others ( link)

Cultural Marxism Postwar Britain by Dworkin Dennis - AbeBooks Cultural Marxism Postwar Britain by Dworkin Dennis - AbeBooks

Unfortunate cultural tendencies, including those that manifest a left-wing style of authoritarianism, can usually be labelled in less confusing, more effective, more precise ways. By all means, let’s develop useful terminology to express whatever concerns we have about tendencies on the Left, but “cultural Marxism” carries too much baggage.All of these people had something important in common,they were mostly all secular humanists who promoted causes which championed the right to self-determination, for example, freedom of choice regarding sexual relationships & reproduction (abortions) etc, and they were deeply infatuated with Karl Marx. They were probably well meaning individuals and some of their theorising was quite noble,it had some genuine worth,however Marxism was their opium.They idolized a man who made it his mission to get rid of God [quote] "The Prussian political philosophers from Leibnitz to Hegel have laboured to dethrone God, and if I dethrone God I also dethrone the king who reigns by the grace of God." All the same, the term is widely used, often without explanation. As I stated in Part 1, it has become a familiar meme. Given the confusion surrounding it, it is worth getting together some information on how the term “cultural Marxism” has been employed – whether by right-wing culture warriors, serious scholars, or occasional individuals who might be mixtures of both – what circumstances and ambitions have motivated its use in different contexts, and what real or imaginary social tendencies it denotes.