Social Justice: What's Marx Got to Do with It?
Introduction In my previous post we considered the underlying assumptions of the social justice movement. In this one, we will consider its Marxist origins. My contention is that social justice is best understood as a euphemism for what is variously called Neo-, Western, or Cultural Marxism. It’s called Neo -Marxism to distinguish it from Marxism in its original form, Western Marxism because of its adaptation to western societies, and Cultural Marxism because it takes the principle of class struggle in traditional Marxist theory and applies it to other social struggles in the broader culture. This last term is perhaps the most helpfully descriptive. But to understand Cultural Marxism, we must first understand Classical Marxism. Classical Marxism Classical Marxism is the name given to the social, political, and economic thought of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Ma...