JSPES, Vol. 43, No. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2018)
pp. 272-284

Cultural Marxism: Origins, Development and Significance   

K. R. Bolton
Academic Member Athens Institute for Education & Research

In this article, the author gives much valuable information about an intellectual movement that since World War II has had a profound effect on Western politics and culture.  He observes that “Cultural Marxism” (a method of analysis having its origins in “Critical Theory”) has become mainstream, and perhaps the dominant influence in the social sciences of the Western world. By combining Marxism with Freudian analysis, a doctrine was developed that “deconstructed” Western morality not just in economic terms, as original Marxism did, but questioned whether Western traditional morality causes neuroses and readiness to conform to social norms. The result has been to open Western morality not just to question, but to ridicule.  This paper examines the origins of “Cultural Marxism,” and in doing so poses an important question: whether the deconstruction of the West’s traditional morality serves a broad political/social/cultural agenda.