Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

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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). The new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology was unexpectedly and abruptly closed in 2002, a move the university's senior management described as "restructuring". [14] The immediate reason given 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 described the decision as a consequence of "inexperienced 'macho management'". [15] Students and staff unsuccessfully campaigned to save the school, which gained considerable attention in the national press and sparked numerous letters of support from former alumni all over the world. [16] Four of the department's 14 members of staff were to be "retained" and its hundreds of students (nearly 250 undergraduates and postgraduates at that time, many from abroad) to be transferred to other departments. In the ensuing dispute most department staff left.

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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 Eleven Shulman, Norma (1993). "Conditions of their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham". Canadian Journal of Communication. 18 (1).

In the upshot, all the talk of cultural Marxism from figures on the (far) Right of politics is of little aid to understanding our current cultural and political situation. At best, this conception of cultural Marxism is too blunt an intellectual instrument to be useful for analysing current trends. At its worst, it mixes wild conspiracy theorizing with self-righteous moralism. 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. Curtis, Polly (27 June 2002). "Birmingham's cultural studies department given the chop". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 December 2018.

Cultural Marxism and our current culture wars: Part 2 Cultural Marxism and our current culture wars: Part 2

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. In that historical and social context, the modern academic discipline of cultural studies emerged within the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham (hence the common references to a “Birmingham School” of cultural critique). Here, Raymond Williams became a leading figure, drawing on both Marxist theory and established forms of British literary criticism, especially that of F.R. and Q.D. Leavis (Davies, “British Cultural Marxism”, p. 329). Cultural theory is Leftist criticism of the culture we live in.Cultural theorists interpret the traditional and the normative as oppressive,as something that should be constantly analyzed opposed and challenged.Academics in this field counter the idea that a nation's culture is whole (homogenised) as they prefer it to be ever changing with lots of diversity.This is in line with the Marxist concept of 'repressive toleration',which is a tolerance for movements from the left, but intolerance for movements from the right.

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Dennis Dworkin. Cultural Marxism in Post War Britain: History, the New Left and the Origins of Cultural Studies. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997. In the upshot, the British tradition of Marxism, especially over the past fifty to sixty years, has been influenced by theorists who emphasize certain styles of critique, including the idea of popular and mass culture as complicit in social domination of the individual and the hegemony of bourgeois ideology. 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). Webster, Frank (2004). "Cultural Studies and Sociology at, and After, the Closure of the Birmingham School". Cultural Studies. 18 (6): 848. doi: 10.1080/0950238042000306891. S2CID 145110580. The Roots Of British Cultural Marxism ~ Author Believes It Made A Valuable Contribution To The Nation.

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

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." These remain vital organising ideas for the study and criticism of culture from Marxist or post-Marxist perspectives. Although the term “cultural Marxism” is used by mainstream academic figures, it has obtained greater prominence since the 1990s from its weaponized use by right-wing political commentators such as William S. Lind and Pat Buchanan.

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. 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 Schroyer describes the work of the Frankfurt School in analysing the contemporary “culture industry” (including philosophy, social theory, art, music, and literature) and contemporary manifestations of social institutions such as the state and the family. As expounded in The Critique of Domination, this body of cultural criticism, particularly the work of Horkheimer and Adorno, unmasks contemporary culture - and notably mass culture - as a system of social domination of the individual.