Is there a philosophical basis for the conflation of the cultural left and the economic/fiscal left?

Question

In the U.S and most of the West, the cultural left (used loosely to include movements like feminism, secularism, being pro-diversity and pro minority-rights, the LGBTQ movement, being pro-immigration, etc....) and the economic left (socialism, marxism, pro-big government and regulation, etc...) usually go together, although there doesn't seem any a priori reason why that should be the case. In fact, in some cases, it seems contradictory to me, see "Does the idea of a welfare state fundamentally conflict with an open immigration policy?" for example.

I found several videos on youtube that put all of the cultural left issues I mentioned under the general heading of "Cultural Marxism" - and they claim that this is part of a more or less deliberate move by Marxist thinkers, who turned to cultural issues after the failure of traditional Marxism as exemplified by the failures of communism in the U.S.S.R and China. By bringing up social issues and challenging traditional values, these thinkers presumably wanted to undermine western society, eventually leading to its breakdown and finally paving the way for the foretold workers revolution. They all single out the Frankfurt School as being the main driver behind all this.

These videos, however, from their tone and language, all seem more like right wing conspiracy theories, than like any serious philosophical lectures.

Moreover, from what I've read and seen, several members of the Frankfurt school (Adrono, Horkheimer, and later Habermas) actually had something of a socially conservative bent, almost pining for earlier times, when western society had other sources of meaning and values besides capital (For example Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of mass media and its use of sexuality for marketing, and their somewhat elitist views on art). I didn't get the impression that they wanted to "do away with the family" or "drive today's youth towards sexual hedonism" - as many of the above mentioned videos claim.

My questions are then:

1. Is there a philosophical reason why cultural left and economic left go together, or is it a historical coincidence? Do they share any fundamental principles other than changing the status-quo?
2. It seems to me that Left Hegelians seem to align with the cultural left, and Marx started out as a Left Hegelian, before going to formulate Communism. Is there a relation between the two? Is that the origin of the correlation?
3. Is there any merit at all to the idea that the various aspects of the cultural left in today's Western discourse did indeed originate with the Frankfurt School? Did members of the Frankfurt school really want to overthrow Western values (and my reading of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Habermas is wrong) ?

Answer 1

I think there is a correlation basis, although I am hesitant to call it philosophical. Let me reframe the issue: there is no doubt that social/cultural and fiscal liberalism are logically independent, so the question is why they are correlated in populations statistically. The reason can be psychological, or historical, or philosophical, or all three combined. It is well known that what is called "economic liberalism" in Europe corresponds to "fiscal conservatism" in the US, and the US "liberalism" is known there as "social democracy". This reflects an older alignment, cultural laissez-faire used to go with economic one, so the current alignment is not permanent.

It seems that the ethical faultline of personal responsibility vs social solidarity does favor this alignment, but we should be careful with putting some "deep" philosophical basis under it considering how historically fleeting it is. Coleman's blog associates social/fiscal with negative vs positive rights, those requiring government to leave one alone vs those requiring government to act, and accuses the misaligned socially liberal fiscal conservatives of hypocrisy, “I support the plight of the marginalized, so long as I don’t have to do anything about it”. Similar emotional appeals were made by feminists, minority, working poor and LGBT advocates. Rorty, no Marxist but a leading philosophical post-modernist in the US, even suggested turning "solidarity" into a pillar of cultural politics, see Has, as Richard Rorty hoped, solidarity successfully replaced objective truth as the aim of cognition? But the extent of his political influence is questionable.

"Cultural Marxism" is a derogatory term coined by known conspiracy theorists, so I would not take their word seriously:

"This conspiracy theory hinges on the idea that the Frankfurt School wasn't just an arcane strain of academic criticism. Instead, the Frankfurt School was behind an ongoing Marxist plot to destroy the capitalist West from within, spreading its tentacles throughout academia and indoctrinating students to hate patriotism & freedom."

Moreover, the influence of the Frankfurt school in the US was minimal, but the realignment happened there as elsewhere. And we have a mirroring fiscal/social alignment on the conservative side as well, it is hard to credit the Frankfurt school for that.

The Economist did a non-scientific straw poll of Texas Republicans with the advantage that participants gave their own speculations as to the reasons for the alignment:

"Permissive social attitudes... lead to the kind of behaviour that causes outcomes like family breakdown, which in turn leads to government spending, which in turn leads to dependency. (Progressives, by contrast, would be more likely to argue that government programmes are a response to social problems, rather than a cause; this is an evergreen and perhaps insoluble debate.)

For others, both sets of issues came down to the argument that values and behaviour are mutually reinforcing. "We all only have one character inside us," said Bob Hall, a delegate whose business card described him as a Christian constitutional conservative. "It comes down to personal responsibility." Dwayne Collins, a delegate from Edith, echoed that view. "If you don't keep your financial house in order," said Mr Collins, "The whole thing will fall apart."

This seems to confirm the ethical responsibility/solidarity divide. But ethics and social psychology do not refract through the lens of political philosophy straightforwardly. Chen and Lind conducted a study The Political Economy of Beliefs: Why Fiscal and Social Conservatives/Liberals Come Hand-in-hand, and reached some nuanced conclusions:

"Religious provision of social insurance may explain why fiscal and social conservatism align in the times and places that they do. We find evidence that religious groups with greater within-group charitable giving are more against he welfare state and more socially conservative. The alignment disappears when there is a state church and it reverses for members of a state church (social conservatives become fiscal liberals).

This reversal is unlikely to be due to omitted variables: In two quasi-experiments, increases in church-state separation precede increases in the alignment between fiscal and social conservatism. We construct a model where elites increase church-state separation or create a constituency for lower taxes if religious voters exceed non-religious voters. Welfare state crowds out religious participation, leading to multiple steady states where some countries sustain high church-state separation, high religiosity, and low welfare state, and vice versa".

Answer 2

I'm sorry. I cannot give you a complete answer because it would take too long, but you yourself have taken an essential step just by your observations, and by asking your specific questions. First, I would say to read "Failure of a Revolution, Germany 1918/1919" by Sebastian Haffner. Library Press (1973), trans.of "Die Verratene Revolution", Scherz Verlag (1969). Then try to find and read this book: Title: Rubel on Karl Marx : five essays, Author: Rubel, Maximilien, Publisher: Cambridge Press,Pub date:1981. If you can find and read these books, from a library or wherever, then you will have what very few people have, and the other two hundred books you read on these subjects (Marxian studies, Marxism, socialism, communism, etc.) will make a lot more sense.

The progressive world ended in the months after WWI. After this time, real freedom, real choices, they were at an end. I think it will take a great shock before we can return to something like that lost world, if we ever do. In the meantime you have a choice of soft drink flavors, hamburger toppings, "political parties", car colors, floor coverings, shoe varieties, and things like that.

(This is another book I can highly recommend: Title: America enters the world : a people's history of the Progressive Era and World War I, Author: Smith, Page. Publisher:McGraw-Hill,Pub date:c1985.)

Frankfurt School: Here it is helpful to remember that Habermas was most fond of Marcuse. Peter Lind's book, Marcuse and Freedom is good. Adorno and Horkheimer: see, Habermas, Autonomy & Solidarity p. 78; Joan Braune's book on Erich Fromm is good. Martin Jay's interview of Leo Lowenthal (book) is good.

To your question no. 3: No. Overthrow how? What Western values are you talking about? Instrumental reason, a system of total delusion?

Habermas: p. 78 aforesaid; "Optimism? It is true that I do not share the basic premise of critical theory...the premise that instrumental reason has gained such dominance that there is really no way out of a total system of delusion*, in which insight is achieved only in flashes by isolated individuals." *Verblendungszusammenhang

As Habermas said indirectly, he was more optimistic than Horkheimer and Adorno at the time, and he develops his theory of communicative action, but as things have turned out as the years have passed since Autonomy & Solidarity, and his The Theory of Communicative Action, who knows? I have not kept up with Habermas's later work. Habermas offers a possible way out, The Theory of Communicative Action is on the shelf. See also: Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, MIT (1981).

Okay, enough of the Frankfurt School! Now to a quote on liberalism and property: "The individual that liberalism has sought to protect is always, so to say, free to "purchase" his freedom in the society it made; but the number of those with the means of purchase at their disposal has always been a minority of mankind. The idea of liberalism, in short, is historically connected, in an inescaple way, with the ownership of property." Harold Laski in "Rousseau and Marx and other writings", Galvano Della Volpe, Humanities Press (1979), p. 77.

No property, no money, and you can have all the rights in the world but you can't enforce them, and you can't enjoy your rights. Corporations, the rich etc, those with property have real rights. It's a public myth that lawyers take just about all cases on a "contingency fee". So it's an easy thing for politicians to grant rights, gay rights, women's rights etc., that for most people are merely formal. Under capitalism real rights are connected to property.

Answer 3

• Equality is probably the conceptual glue.

Marxism, well-intentioned but difficult to apply via human agents, particularly in pre-"information age" societies, was, in part, about reducing economic disparity.

Social liberalism has the same core motivation, with the emphasis on social normalcy, as opposed to material equality.

Answer 4

The "left" as we understand it is about equality. It makes little sence to be in favour of economic equality but for some reason be against the rights of Blacks, women, gay people, etc. It makes also little sence to defend equality between gay and straight aristocrats, or equality between poor men and poor women, but be against eliminating the inequality between the poor and the rich.

"Big government" only relates tangentially to the fight against inequality (the moderate left usually believes the State can be instrumental in lowering inequality levels - which is true in the short term). But many leftists are against any kind of State, even the "minimal" State of neoliberals.

I fear that Left Hegelianism faded into unimportance too early to have any relation to what you call "cultural left". The only Left Hegelian who seems to still attract some reading and discussion is Max Stirner, and while his followers may or may not partake the "cultural leftist" mores, they are hardly important in that context. The others seem to me to only retain a historic, academic, interest

"Cultural Marxism" is an invention of the far right (of Olavo de Carvalho, I think). It has nothing to do with reality, rather deriving from a very incompetent (mis)reading of either Gramsci (who never said or wrote anything similar) or Marcuse (who was a Frankfurt School member, though way more radical than Adorno or Habermas, but whose views of the "sexual revolution" of the sixties are quite critical - he was the coiner of the expression "repressive dessublimation", after all). Evidently, "the left" never gathered in some kind of congress to decide, "hey, political revolution isn't working, let's turn everybody gay and transex, this way we are going to sneak into power". The whole idea is indeed quite reminiscent of conspiracy theories of the "Learned Elders of Zion" kind and quality, to be honest.

Answer 5

Short Answer: The left right spectrum is about social hierarchies both cultural oppression and economic inequality facilitate a social hierarchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum

The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions characteristic of left-right politics, ideologies and parties with emphasis placed on issues of social equality and social hierarchy.

Much Longer Answer: "Left" and "right" are an antonym pair and as such suitable to describe a spectrum of ideas between two polar opposites. And it's origin is afaik in the French Revolution where in the national assembly people with similar ideas, interests and alignments grouped together creating a sitting order where the revolutionaries sat left and the monarchists sat right.

So yeah there is some arbitrariness in terms of these distinctions and different people looking at it see different spectra idk. Republicans vs monarchists, progressives vs conservatives, libertarians vs authoritarians, equality vs hierarchy, ...

But the French Revolution wasn't just an insurrection it came about in an era where there was a clash between systems. On the one hand you had the Ancien Régime and their feudal caste system and on the other hand you had for almost a century people philosophizing over very different ideas nowadays being called the "Age of Enlightenment".

So the narrative of the god given estate system was under attack from many angles: philosophically, people arguing over social contracts, restricting the absolute monarchs with constitutions, ideas about equality and challenging the social hierarchy, calls for emancipation (nowadays often associated with feminism but technically just the act of demanding one's agency and ending a tutelage) and pretty important: science providing alternative reasoning for how things work and threatening the monopoly of reason held by the church, which served as the legitimization of power (which is why many leftists argue for a "separation of church and state" (in the sense of keeping the church out of the state) because it's pretty hard to have a rational argument against god... or more realistically someone who claims to speak for him/her), while economically constant wars and a lavish lifestyle had bankrupted the country and made a middle class comparatively wealthy while denying them social and political participation and lastly even militarily as with the U.S. revolution and the French revolution the idea of just suppressing those ideas with force was no longer a safe bet.

So a long period of stagnation and snail-like incremental progress was followed suddenly by a period of "rapid" change and "almost anything goes". Like apparently initially people just demanded a constitution to limit the power of the king, but then the king or rather his entourage tried to flee and plot against the revolution and so they were executed one went from reforming a monarchy to abolishing it and establishing a republic (no king necessary at all).

For some "freedom" and "equality" were already realized with the abolition of the caste system and a rule of law that doesn't discriminate. While others probably felt a little underwhelmed by the "massive change". Like what's the point of the rule of law if you're a slave in the U.S. and the rule of law doesn't grant you any rights, but only serves as legitimization to restrict your freedom. Or what if you had the wrong reproductive organs and where technically seen as human but equal rights were still a few hundred years into the future? Just to name two groups for whom "equality" this whole grandstanding talk about freedom and equality might have sounded awesome but who might have thought what they actually got served was more or a joke. I mean that's hypothetical cause in the worst case they wouldn't even have heard the grandstanding talk directly, as they weren't the target audience.

Or what about the peasantry, poor and working class who were told that they are now free and equal citizens of the republic. And when hypothetically asked what changes because of that, got to experience that it was very little. They still had to work for someone else because they didn't own stuff. Just not because of feudal loyalty but due to employments and if they worked long hours their ability to politically participate might have also been more of a theoretical one.

So on the one hand you had a middle class for whom their higher than average income was their route to emancipation and who held that as pretty important. While you still had a lower class for whom that economic inequality was what kept them in servitude just of a different kind. So their "individual and economic freedom" was at best a purely theoretical.

Also "the state" became a more ambivalent role. Previously the state was simple, it was the repressive power structure that, for better or worse, kept things the way they were. But now you had, at least theoretically, democracy and a republic with equality among citizens, so "the state" is different. It's no longer an external repressive power structure (at least if you're part of a majority group and even then more in a theoretical sense), but you're part of that system. You're both oppressor and oppressed.

So you could reject this power and this monopoly of violence, because let's be real the state never abolished violence it just organized it, the police and military is allowed to do it (theoretically with strong restrictions and oversight) and apart from immediate self-defense, no one else. So do you make laws and rule over people with their enforcement or do you put that in the hand of the people and only accept a consensus and trust that people uphold what they decided themselves.

So the role of the state is ambivalent it can be used as a tool for change and for conservation and on a meta level the power itself to make people do things is not neutral.

Also keep in mind that the actual ideals of the state in a republic, democracy, equality and freedom, might differ drastically from what people might experience. So for some the state provides agency, while for others it denies agency. So it has a radically different meaning depending on which group calls for "less state" or "less regulations". Like if a monarch bound by a constitution complains about "regulations" and demands "freedom", what they're calling for is not "universal freedom" it's personal privilege to the point of tyranny.

So unless you're talking about universal principles that apply to everyone equally freedom can become a zero-sum-game where one person's freedom is another one's servitude. Similarly restricting someones excessive agency can be a necessity for someone else to have agency at all.

Essentially the ideas of the enlightenment won so thoroughly that any political party or movement that seeks popular support has at least to pay lip service to freedom and equality, but that also makes it crucial to look what they actually mean when using these terms. Are they talking about privileges for their peer group or themselves or are they talking about universal rights? Not to mention that you can do both at once as Anatole France exemplified:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.

Theoretically it's a universal law, practically it only serves to limit the freedom of one group.

So coming back to the left and right question. You can use them and they are used for all kinds of spectra to differentiate positions on a binary issue. But due to it's historic roots you can also identify a leaning towards Enlightenment ideals like universal freedom and equality on the left and classical conservative ideas like natural orders, hierarchies and elites on the right. Like a left winger would argue that all citizens have equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness while a right winger would either excuse or actively seek inequality based on a variety of reasons, money, nationality, sex, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, ...

So that is afaik the overarching theme for those. Usually looking at how much in favor or against social hierarchies a person, policy or ideological position actually is. Which is difficult because that can differ between decades and countries and there's theory and application so that people can say something very leftist and do something that would be characterized as right wing.

Also for obvious reasons in the western world the Enlightenment side has usually taken the cake so arguing openly in favor of hierarchical systems is quite frowned upon. It's rare for even right wingers to openly endorse a monarchy, state a believe in a natural hierarchy, argue for strong authoritarian leadership or repression of other ways of life. So sometimes the right is just relative to the right of the other parties. While in other cases the old ideals are just framed in the language of the enlightenment. So repressing other ways of life is framed as "exercising ones religion" or it's argued with equality of outcome vs equality of chance, so as to use the term equality while actually arguing for why inequality is actually legit. Similar with concepts of a meritocracy or a prosperity gospel. Or how freedom is only an issue when a privilege is at stake but seldom when essential civil rights are demanded, then it's an overreaching state.

So yeah these distinctions kinda fit in line but you've got to be careful with political statements as everyone tries to frame themselves as cool even if they do or want to do the opposite of what they say.

Answer 6

It's largely historic. If you look at the equivalent in the ex-Warsaw pact countries you see that (what you call) cultural right tends to align with economic left and vice versa. What you're mostly seeing is a split between a traditional/conservative grouping and a liberal/modernising grouping.

There are some logical connections though. For example, it follows that someone wanting to use laws to affect social change e.g. with LGBT rights, also is comfortable with the state being significantly involved in people's private lives. It is harder to reconcile a small government philosophy with significant anti-discrimination legislation though not impossible (I tend to that view for example).

Similarly, it is reasonable to assume that someone who wants to affect social inequality needs to be willing to use the state, and particularly the state's finances, to effect that change. Again, a small goverment/laissez-faire approach is hard to reconcile with, say, a significant welfare state.

Answer 7

Allow me to preface this by saying it is difficult to explain — much less argue against — polemical positions. The tendency of modern Rightist pundits to lump everything they dislike under the combined labels of liberalism, communism, and identity politics (reminiscent of the old 'commie-pinko-fag' slur of the McCarthy era) is specifically meant to be a bully tactic: troll-bait whose only goal is to assert that they are 'good' and others are 'bad'. It is demonstrably and superficially demeaning, on purpose; there's no real philosophical depth to it.

That doesn't mean it's senseless, just that we have to find the sense of it somewhere else.

That 'somewhere else' is in the arc of Liberal history. The original Liberal movement of the 16th-18th centuries (what's usually called 'Classical Liberalism') was primarily a conflict between wealthy commoners and the established European aristocracies. In short, an entire class of financiers, artisans, industrialists, commercial traders, and the like was growing in economic power, but was still subject to the political authority of landed gentry, titled nobles, and royalty. This meant they could have their wealth taxed or even expropriated with no political or legal recourse. Over a couple of centuries — in the European world, at least — wealthy commoners won this battle. The aristocracy lost the bulk of its political power, constitutions were written that enshrined individual rights within legal systems, and wealth that comes from commerce and industry gained protection from interference.

By the 19th century, however, it became clear that while Classical Liberal theory was couched in an ideal of universalism, in practice it really only empowered the wealthy and those with productive property: factories, cargo ships, land tracts... The agricultural serfs of the Feudal era became the miners, laborers, and mechanics of the Industrial era, which wasn't much of an advancement. The Natural Rights of Classical Liberalism were first and foremost intended to protect capital, commodities, and other generative property, things that most laborers didn't have. The more abstract notion of human rights was present in intellectual discussions, but not much practiced in the workaday world. This led to the beginning of socialist thought in the pre-Marxist sense: literally the idea that social entities like communities, ethnic groups, faiths, etc had rights just as individuals did, and the rampant greed of wealthy individuals (protected under the Liberal ideal) was destructive to societies. In this sense, socialism was the second wave of Liberalism, in which the non-wealthy, unpropertied masses tried to protect themselves from the exploitation and depravations of the newly-empowered wealthy commoners. This — while not a complete failure — was less successful than the Classical Liberal struggle, at least up to now (things are still ongoing there...).

In reality, the 'cultural left' is really a form of humanism, an expansion of the ideals of Classical Liberalism to all people, beyond the specific emphasis on individual property rights. It is not explicitly or necessarily aligned with Marxist thought, but is opposed to the more grievous failings of adventure capitalism, and against the political and legal mechanisms meant to protect adventure capitalism from interference.

Ah, footnote... I use the term 'adventure capitalism' to refer to the kind of cutthroat business model that is always looking to open and exploit new markets, at high risk with potentials for high profits, and with little to no regard for things like safety measures, waste, destructive practices, or the welfare of laborers or communities.

So first point: The correlation between the cultural left and economic left is mainly coincidence, and there are theories of humanistic capitalism out there in the world. But the coincidence falls nicely into the Rightist narrative.

Second point: Dunno. I'm not well-read on the left-Hegelians, so I'll let it slide.

Third point: The Frankfurt School was composed almost entirely of WW-II refugees, and their work was fueled by the inhumanity of the war. They were smart enough to recognize that German Fascism was inseparable from crony capitalism and democratic systems, and were looking for a philosophical approach that could deal with that problem. They adopted some of the aspects of the Marxist reasoning style without (for the most part) committing themselves to Marxist or socialist principles. They weren't revolutionaries, but they were keen on questioning the assumptions people make about Western society. I mean, these were people who watched a capitalist democracy with a well-educated populace collapse into a genocidal autocracy through perfectly legal processes. The Weimar Republic was the kind of thing Liberal philosophers would point to as an ideal case for democracy; that blithe confidence in the surety of modern institutions was (to the Frankfurts) a significant cause in the rise of fascism.