this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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So here I am finding out about instrumental and structural Marxism.

The problem is that the main promoters of both theories were anti soviet. So my question is. Are there any sources of either Marx, Lenin, Stalin or Mao and what they thought about it?

I can imagine that maybe the terms instrumental and structural could've been coined after their death. But I can also imagine they had some thoughts on similar concepts

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The anti-soviet marxists of the 1960s-1990s in Europe unfortuantly drank the kool aid about fascist and liberal propoganda.

They didn’t appear out of nowhere. Gabriel Rockhill: The CIA & the Frankfurt School’s Anti-Communism

They supported & promoted Hannah Arendt’s anticommunist construction of “totalitarianism” as well (also Rockhill): Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism

One of the centerpieces of the cultural cold war was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was revealed in 1966 to be a CIA front. Hugh Wilford, who has researched the topic extensively, described the CCF as nothing short of one of the largest patrons of art and culture in the history of the world. Established in 1950, it promoted on the international scene the work of collaborationist academics such as Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt over and against their Marxian rivals, including the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The CCF had offices in thirty-five countries, mobilized an army of around 280 employees, published or supported some fifty prestigious journals around the world, and organized numerous art and cultural exhibitions, as well as international concerts and festivals.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, great post. I recently deprogrammed a well meaning french friend on Hannah Arendt by sharing a collection of quotes from her describing how she is pro-american segregation, pro-south african aperthied, pro-zion and views Africans as sub-human.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hannah-arendt-white-supremacist-456007

The right to free association, and therefore to discrimination, has greater validity than the principle of equality,” wrote Hannah Arendt in 1957, in support of segregation in the US South.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Thanks! Added to my agitprop/debunking list.