Who funds 'cultural Marxism'? Three theories, zero evidence

'Cultural Marxism': three theories and no proof of its origin

Where does what half the world calls cultural Marxism actually come from? According to one of the theories in play, from nowhere Soviet: it would be an Anglo-inspired social engineering project, cooked up by elites and think tanks to replace classical Marxism within the left and dismantle the cultural identity of countries under Western influence. The hypothesis rests on three vectors — universities, cultural products and agencies — but runs into an awkward fact: Russia is today a capitalist country, and China does not fit the picture either. From there on, the disagreement is total.

What is being called 'cultural Marxism'?

The label bundles together a heterogeneous package: proge, certain feminist currents, multiculturalism, open-door migration policies, extreme environmentalism, gender activism and regionalism. The core argument is that this set has replaced real Marxism — the kind of the USSR or Mao — to the point that the institutional left no longer champions class struggle but identity fragmentation. The suspicion is that the goal is not to redistribute wealth but to break identities in order to weaken the receiving countries.

With that premise, the adversary stops being classical communism and becomes something far more diffuse. And the more diffuse the enemy, the easier it is to throw anything annoying into the mix.

The Anglo trail: from Hollywood to the Integrity Initiative

Under this reading, the channels are three. Anglo-American universities, which would export the framework to the youth of satellite countries. Cultural products — film, TV series, advertising, Netflix, Amazon, Hollywood — which would reinforce the doctrine through entertainment. And the political infrastructure: think tanks, agencies and intelligence services (the CIA and MI5 are cited), plus philanthropic networks of the Open Society type. The case put forward is that of Colonel Baños, supposedly neutralised through the Integrity Initiative. Whoever mentions it offers no documentation, and the claim hangs in the air.

The same happens with the Frankfurt School: it is asserted that one of its members, Marcuse, worked for the CIA — a claim thrown out without backing. Without papers, the theory works as a narrative, not as proof.

The Soviet trail: Bezmenov, Mao and divorce

The opposite camp holds exactly the contrary. The Soviet subversion plan described by Bezmenov would never have stopped, and the very people who today point at the Anglosphere would be unknowingly executing Moscow's script. The clues cited: the USSR pioneered divorce, abortion and women's liberation; and China's Cultural Revolution of the sixties would serve as a precedent for what is happening in the West. China in the sixties, the United States in 2020 appears as a recurring comparison.

From that Maoist campaign, the list of targets is remembered — clergy, university professors, landowners, reactionaries — along with the role of the teenage Red Guards of 1966, who went as far as killing their own teachers. It is even mentioned that the young Xi Jinping denounced his own family in that era, an episode used to illustrate the indoctrination. The objection is obvious: if Russia is capitalist, who is funding the package then?

The awkward theory: it is liberalism, not Marxism

A third current, the most uncomfortable for the two previous camps, holds that none of this is communist in the slightest. 'Proge is 500% neoliberalism,' one voice goes so far as to say, and another adds that anyone who actually reads Marx would be in for a disappointment, because cultural Marxism would be nothing more than Anglo liberalism of the basest kind. Under that reading, identity politics do not come out of a revolutionary cell but out of the market: capitalism found in social fragmentation a new consumer for every niche.

There is an even more awkward variant: the technological one. Its defenders argue that economic and technical changes alter the forms of socialisation by themselves, and that attributing it all to a deliberate plan is naive.

Those who see no plan at all: the label's inflation

The most cynical scepticism comes from those who stress that the label fits everything. If the local policeman is a Marxist for issuing a fine, the bank employee for closing a counter window and the teacher for how she teaches certain classes, then those who govern would also be Marxists, as would the opposition and even the head of state. By that standard, the term stops describing anything and becomes an insult.

Along the same lines, it is pointed out that part of this discourse needs a permanent culprit, and that after the fall of the Soviet bloc the narrative had to be recycled. It is worth noting that a minority fringe of that discourse drifts into conspiracy theories about international elites; these are claims without any evidence and do not hold up.

Who benefits from the mess?

Here the positions cross. Some answer with the classic question of who benefits: if the elites profit from the disorder, authorship matters less than the outcome. Others hold that the Anglo countries themselves are the first victims and that the victim-and-perpetrator diagnosis is inverted. And a third, perhaps the most productive, calls for trinc the money before trinc the flag.

Nobody, among all the arguments on the table, produces the document that closes the case. Everything is inference, analogy and more or less reasonable suspicion.

Who invented cultural Marxism? Depending on the camp you pick, it was the CIA, the KGB, Mao, Wall Street or the Frankfurt School. At this rate there will soon be more authors than readers of Marx.