Final answer:
Cultural Marxism is a term often used by the New Right to describe a perceived ideology based on the works of theorists like Gramsci and Marcuse, who critiqued how culture is utilized by the ruling class to sustain power. It is not an official school of Marxist thought but rather a collection of critiques pertaining to societal inequalities and race as constructs to maintain capitalist dominance.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cultural Marxism is a term used in contemporary discourse, often by social conservatives and the New Right, to describe a perceived ideology which suggests that culture must be challenged and changed as a means of creating a more equitable society. This term is based on the theorizations of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who articulated that the ruling class uses culture as a tool to maintain control over the workers. However, cultural Marxism is not a formal school of Marxism; rather, it encompasses a range of ideas from various theorists such as Herbert Marcuse and others that critique how culture is weaponized by the ruling classes to maintain social hierarchies.
According to these critiques, Gramsci believed that the ruling class "weaponizes culture against the workers," establishing norms that discourage revolutionary thinking and instead propagate a passive acceptance of the status quo through religion, media, and education, a concept known as hegemony. Herbert Marcuse later built upon these ideas, suggesting that minority and countercultural movements carry the potential to disrupt the capitalist status quo.
Some modern critiques argue that critical race and gender theory function similarly to Marxism by advocating for social change and maintaining a divisive "us versus them" mentality. Moreover, Marx's own analysis posited that racial divisions serve the interests of capitalists by dividing workers and preventing them from uniting against the capitalist system. Thus, Marxism and race are understood as interconnected, with the notion that 'race is the cultural clothing of capitalism.'