The Professor links to a lengthy post by Stacy McCain titled, “Indoctrination: What the Occupiers Believe and Why They Believe It,” and spotlights this quote:
If the Occupiers are in any sense Marxist, then, they have absorbed their Marxism by some mysterious process of cultural osmosis, because it is impossible to imagine any of those nitwits taking time to work their way through “Imperialism” or “What Is to Be Done?” (And forget about Das Kapital, a book so notoriously unreadable that I doubt even the most devout Communists ever got past the second chapter.) What is important to understand is that Marxism is a belief system, and that a person may be influenced by Marxist ideas without ever realizing the origins of these ideas.
Back in 2006, economics professor Arnold Kling wrote a two-part series for Tech Central Station (later TCS Daily, now known as Ideas in Action) on the two worldviews that pervade America and have been handed down over the last century via academia and popular culture, to the point where many people have no idea of their origin. In the first part of his article, Kling explored how Sigmund Freud’s ideas were omnipresent in the pop culture of the ’50s and ’60s, even though Freud himself had passed away in 1939. In the second, Kling referred to Folk Locke-ism and Folk Marxism. Try to guess which of those two ideologies dominates academia:
The vast majority of college professors are folk Marxists, even though they do not advocate for Communism. Their folk Marxism is dangerous because they do not even realize the extent to which it colors their world view. Although the academy is also the last bastion of avowed Marxists, it is not the overt Marxists who trouble me. They are not winning converts.
Every day, in big and small ways, academic speech reinforces the view that the world consists of oppressor classes and oppressed classes. In a way, the controversy over Lawrence Summers as President of Harvard reflects his defiance of folk Marxist orthodoxy. Folk Marxism is so automatic and so pervasive that it effectively goes unnoticed.
I would consider it a great step forward for liberals in the academic community to acknowledge the existence of folk Locke-ism and folk Marxism. If my liberal friends want to express support for folk Marxism, that is fine. If they want to criticize folk Locke-ism, that is all right, too. If they would like to give a less loaded name than “folk Marxism” to the oppressed/oppressor paradigm, I have no problem using a different label.
My concern with what I call folk Marxism is substantive, not rhetorical. To me, the danger of folk Marxism in the academy today is that it is implicit and unrecognized — and therefore unquestioned.
As the first quote in Stacy’s post highlights, it’s those who order us to “QUESTION AUTHORITY!” who invariably do so the least themselves — if only because they don’t even know where the ideas that drive authority derive from.
Marx was one of those minds who wanted a 2+2=4 view of history that was nice and neat and amounted to gross pedantry.
Marxism did not and cannot take into account humanity which, try as one might, cannot be pigeonholed into nice and neat accounts of rises and falls, one following the other as logically as night follows day.
The incredibly small numbers of protesters across the country partaking in OWS still shows commies to be marginalized and celebrities to not know the difference between a fad and a Red.
What you say here about folk Marxism in the university is quite true. I was in academia for 35 years and never found any fellow professors who had read any Marxist works. Nonetheless, many of my colleagues spouted standard communist theory about the oppressed classes. Folk Marxism is expressed nowadays as “social justice” in academia and is at the core of most teaching in faculties/departments/schools of education, where it is rammed down teachers’ throats. At the same time, the terms “communism,” “Marxism,” and “socialism” are never, ever mentioned in academia.
A novice would assume that “social justice” and “oppressed class” are concepts that have grown naturally out of the North American soil. That is why undergraduates do not realize the source of these concepts and accept their validity uncritically.
This is because the same general ideas have percolated from Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy into the educational system of the world.
It is the basis of political correctness, social consciousness without consciousness.
That’s a great point about Friere. When I read Friere’s book in the late ’90s, I was stunned by how unabashedly and openly communist it was in orientation. As I recall, there are many passage praising Mao and Che and Castro as the sort of leaders that Friere’s pedagogue should aspire to be. I couldn’t believe, in other words, that here was this work I had heard several professors and fellow graduate students praise when I was in graduate school, and yet it fully exposed the leftist agenda of their teaching for what it was.
Oops! Freire. Caught by my unfamiliarity with Portugese spelling.
And FWIW, “social justice” was the name of Father Coughlin’s magazine.
I think I actually would like to “QUESTION AUTHORITY” about “oppressor classes” and “oppressed classes”. My “question” references a little blast from the past that I have pasted below this paragraph (about an attempt last year to get a permit to protest at Zuccotti park that was denied)—and is along the lines of why some people can have their say with assurance that heaven and earth will be moved to make it happen, and others have to fight every step along the way to do the same? Can an American expect to ever be able to get full support from authorities only if he is a Democrat and/or useful to them? And is America going to be the nation where those who are willing to obey the rules will always be expected to do so (or face the consequences), while those who are Democrats and have no intention to ever do the same will nevertheless always be given a free pass (at least for a while)? Those are my questions–are we all equal before the law, or are we not? I say that in America’s cities, ran by Democrats, we are not. Pasted story follows (n.b.–the mosque issue is not one of my hobby-horses, I just note that those who wanted to protest against it at Zuccotti were denied a permit. I know the event eventually happened somewhere in NYC–in a civil fashion, incidentally).
Demonstrators Denied Permit for WTC Mosque Protest at Zuccotti Park
May 27, 2010 3:34pm | By Julie Shapiro, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — The organizers of a massive June 6 rally opposing the Ground Zero mosque are not allowed to protest at their planned location in Zuccotti Park, DNAinfo has learned.
The NYPD has not issued a permit for the D-Day demonstration by the group Stop Islamization of America, a Police spokeswoman said. And Brookfield Properties, the owner of Zuccotti Park, generally does not allow political protests on the plaza across from the World Trade Center site.
“A protest event will not be happening in Zuccotti Park,” said Melissa Coley, Brookfield spokeswoman.
A person with knowledge of the permitting process told DNAinfo the anti-mosque rally was initially pitched as a gathering for 9/11 family members, and the city approved it several weeks ago.
But once it became clear that the event would be a protest against Cordoba House, a 13-story mosque and community center slated to rise near ground zero, the city withdrew the permit, the source said.
Pamela Geller, executive director of Stop Islamization of America, said the protest would go forward as planned.
“We’ve cleared all the legal hurdles the city requires for a rally,” she said in an e-mail to DNAinfo.
Zuccotti Park is a privately owned public space, so both the city and Brookfield Properties have jurisdiction over what happens there.
U.S. Steel built the park back in the 1970s in return for a height bonus on One Liberty Plaza, an adjacent office tower. The park was then called Liberty Plaza.
Brookfield now owns both the tower and the plaza. Several years ago, Brookfield renovated the space using private money and renamed it for John Zuccotti, the company’s chairman.
Based on the online response to the rally so far, it appears that hundreds, if not thousands, of people could be planning to attend the June 6 rally. More than 400 people have RSVPed on Facebook so far.
Stop Islamization of America is helping potential attendees connect via its website. A post on carpooling has drawn 54 responses since Monday, with people planning to come from as far away as California, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri and Michigan.
Geller slammed the “insensitive” mosque plans at Community Board 1’s meeting Tuesday night.
“This mega mosque is going up on sacred ground,” she told the crowd of several hundred people. “This is an insult.”
Geller is the founder of AtlasShrugs.com, a conservative blog, and also launched a controversial ad campaign earlier this month on the city’s buses, purporting to help people who want to leave Islam.
While the number of people who will turn up at the June 6 protest is hard to predict, hundreds of people are discussing it on Twitter, YouTube and other sites, and more than 85,000 people have joined a Facebook group opposing the mosque.
Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/20100527/manhattan/wtc-mosque-foes-making-carpool-travel-plans-for-dday-protest-at-zuccotti-park#ixzz1eGjzBQqB
Marxist, primitive thought drives the idea that “Income Differences = Oppression”.
People don’t see oppression when a person working 60 hours/week earns 1.5 or 2 times what a person earns for 40 hours/week. That result is “understandable”. They don’t see oppression when top basketball players make 100 times the average wage; they understand his gifts and star quality. But, they see oppression when a CEO makes 100 times average wage; the CEO must be stealing his salary from others; it is inequitable.
The CEO is “working”, and so should not make much more than other people who are working. That is straight Marxist “Labor theory of value”, that something is always worth the labor put into it. That Marxist mistake causes much trouble.
Mistake: The value must be there. Our politicians thought that they couldn’t go wrong building more houses. They thought, even if poor people defaulted on their mortgages, then those houses must keep their value, because much work went into them. Wrong. A house that no one can pay for is as useful as a ditch that no one can pay for. The work that went into it is not the deciding factor.
Mistake: The value can’t be there. People think that “moving money around” is an idiotic profession, and can’t possibly justify making large salaries. This is confused by the cronyism and fraud supported by politicians. Following Marx, Wall Street workers are leeches on the only real productive class, the wage worker.
The educational, professorial elite sees no inequity in being paid for being smart. They don’t see the irony of criticizing people who move money around, while they are paid for moving ideas around. They see themselves as discovering useful ideas, while criticizing Wall Street entrepreneurs for discovering useful products and business arrangements.
“A protest event will not be happening in Zuccotti Park,” said Melissa Coley, Brookfield spokeswoman.
Paging Melissa Coley. Melissa Coley.
I’ve been using the term “Latent Marxists” for years. There are a whole lot of people out there who accept most of the premises of Marxism, even without knowing the vocubulary. Labor theory of value, historicism, dialectical materialism, and the whole oppressor vs. oppressed paradigm.
I teach with a whole bunch of ‘em. Nice enough folks, really, but they don’t think through the implications of their ideas.
Folk Marxism is another name for what I call small c communism.
Communism itself polls in single digits in this country. But small c communism is the safe haven for academia, Hollywood and the Journolistas to practice their craft.
Socialism doesn’t cut the mustard as an appellation, much less a description of the motives, intent and operations of small c communists. And “liberal”, “progressive” and “mainstream” produce an angry reaction in me…a little spark of fire..because they are propagandist tools to fool the eye and ear of an unsuspecting public.
I despise it when otherwise good people throw another log on the propaganda fire by passing these along unwittingly…or lazily.
Small c communist the the perfect descriptor for ACORN, SEIU, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright. Midwest Academy, Cooper Union, Frank Marshall Davis…virtually everyone of significant influence in Barack Obama’s life.
But communism, even of the small c variety…must be kept hidden behind a mask and a cloak…masquerading as something else…and creating phony and false names and descriptions. Hiding true intent and smearing and slandering anyone who looks under the cloak and mask.
Small c communism is here at our front doorstep. It’s not just in academia any longer.
“QUESTION AUTHORITY!”
“Says who?”
Who says? I do. Go ahead, ask me anything.
The link in the article for “Sigmund Freud’s ideas” goes to the page in archive.org. If anybody’s interested, the page on ideasinctiontv.com is http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2006/01/how-thinkers-influence-us.html
Thanks for finding that. I finished this post very quickly in a hotel room before heading out to catch a plane. I’ve replaced the link to part one of Kling’s article in the Wayback Machine with the active URL.
They want to stick it to the man.
The thing is, those in the university are the man.
As Ace said “A gallon of irony spilled and they didn’t get a drop on them.”
This whole thing was pushed to distract from the incompetent, corrupt policies coming out of DC and the Obama Administration.
Pelosi…”God bless them”….put I’m keeping my IPO
Corzine….long-time Dem…..bundler for Obama.
Folk Locke-ism and Folk Marxism can be combined. It’s possible to believe in both the rights of individuals and that there is an oppressor class. You can think of the result as Folk-Randism.
Do tell, what is the “oppressor class” you are talking about in Randism, folk or otherwise? Cite, or I call Folk-BS.
“As the first quote in Stacy’s post highlights, it’s those who order us to “QUESTION AUTHORITY!” who invariably do so the least themselves — if only because they don’t even know where the ideas that drive authority derive from.”
Basically these marxist professors want their students to question every authority, except for their own.