The Limitations of the Conservative “Anti-Woke” Grift

[ See my critique of PC/Woke/SJW/Totalitarian Humanism here: https://attackthesystem.com/can-anyone-define-woke-as-in-wokeness/ ]
This guy speaking in the video is a good example of why I think “conservative anti-woke” is, well, limited in its intellectual scope and critique. To the degree that various permutations of Marxism have influenced wokeism, it has only been through the cooptation and reworking of these. The primary factors have been the shift from industrial capitalism to digital capitalism, from the classical bourgeoisie to the neo-bourgeoisie, from Protestant pietism to modern or secular derivatives of Protestant pietism, and the parallel growth of the public administration state and managerial revolution.
None of the things depicted in the thumbnail have any inherent relationship to Communism: transgenderism, defund the police, the Palestinian cause, and postmodernism are not inherently Marxist or even leftist concepts. And “social justice” is a generic label that could also be applied to various papal encyclicals. Historic Communists would have considered transgenderism to be aristocratic and/or bourgeois decadence. Abolishing police is an ultra-liberal or anarchist idea, not a Marxist one. The Palestinians are mostly Muslims and Christians and include quite a few “unwoke” people. Postmodernism is not reconcilable with dialectical materialism. If anything, postmodernism bears a closer relationship to non-leftist thinkers like Heidegger and Nietzsche.
Of all the things about PC/Woke/SJW/TH that I find dangerous, the Malthusian implications of the environmentalist/climatist ideology may be the most significant. But Malthusianism is not Marxist. In fact, Marx and Engels hated Malthus and wrote polemics against him. Elites who fear being overbred and overrun by the lower orders have promoted Malthusianism for centuries. Its real purveyors have been interests like the Rockefellers and court intellectuals like Paul Ehrlich.

Todd Lewis has a good overview of the real origins of socialism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldPeAKgIVZo

My take on Marxism is the same as George Watson, Rothbard, and Bakunin. Marxism was a quasi-conservative reaction against the radicalism of classical liberalism, industrialization, capitalism, and the Enlightenment. Marxism was heavily influenced by German Idealism and French Romanticism. Socialist thinking in that era was a broad continuum, with Marxism being close to a centrist position within socialism influenced by the French Revolution. It was positioned between the “far left” (utopians, anarchists, radical liberals) and “far right” (the feudal, clerical, royal, and other “reactionary” socialists described in the Communist Manifesto).
Left-Marxists like Luxemburg, Hal Draper, and Chomsky were right that Leninism was a “right-wing deviation” from Marxism from their vantage point with its advocacy of the vanguard party and party dictatorship. Bolshevism in practice ironically very closely resembles Marx’s concept of “Bonapartism” as outlined in “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” But “tankies” are also correct that Lenin moved left in other ways with his critique of colonialism/ imperialism, which Marx and Engels had supported as historical progress. By the standards of today, Marx and Engels were good Victorian conservatives with their views on imperialism, race, homosexuals, Jews, etc.
Trotsky was right that the Stalinist regime was a right-wing departure from the original Bolshevism. I agree with anarchists like Troy Southgate and fascists like Kerry Bolton that Stalin was the equivalent of a fascist dictator with his nationalism, glorification of the military, law and order, “family values,” denunciation of “social parasites” and “rootless cosmopolitans,” etc.
As for the debates between anarcho-communists/syndicalists, social democrats, and Trotskyists over whether the USSR was “state capitalist,” “bureaucratic collectivist,” or “a degenerated workers state,” I’m largely indifferent to that question as it is primarily academic. Arguably, it was all three simultaneously. A case can also be made that the USSR is the logical outgrowth of Marx’s original theory, given his limited view of the state as a mere instrument of class power. Both Michael Parenti (Stalinist) and Murray Bookchin (anarchist) shared this view from opposite perspectives.
A case can also be made for the Maoist critique of the USSR as “social-imperialist.” However, I’m more inclined to just say “imperialist,” with the “social” part being more dubious. At the same time, the Stalinists considered Western social democratic parties like the German SPD and British Labour Party to be “social imperialist” because these parties claimed to be socialist but supported colonialism/imperialism. A case can be made for that viewpoint as well.
As for fascism, decades ago, I held to the Marxist view of fascism as a mere strong arm of capitalism. But that is way oversimplistic. Then, I moved toward the view of David Ramsay Steele and A. James Gregor that fascism was a socialist heresy. Eventually, I came to the view of Stanley Payne and Paul Gottfried that fascism was its own thing, with its own ideas and influences. I would consider it a form of “revolutionary right” as opposed to “traditional,” “conservative,” or “reactionary” right.
I do think a case can be made for Franco Freda’s view that Maoism is essentially the Asian world’s version of National Socialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi-Maoism And, of course, the most extreme Maoists were the Khmer Rouge, who, in practice, created a romantic medievalist eugenics-driven genocide state like the Third Reich. I tend to agree with Karl Wittfogel’s view of Stalinism, Maoism, and Juche as modern incarnations of traditional “Oriental Despotism” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_August_Wittfogel
A serious application of 19 century Marxist theory to 21st-century social classes would be something like this:
The collapse of capitalism that Marx predicted occurred during the worldwide depression of the 1920s/30s. The replacement of classical capitalism with the managerial revolution that happened in all industrial societies regardless of culture or ideology was the transition to more collectivist societies that Marx envisioned, though lacking some of the more utopian features he would have preferred.
Right now, it is very similar to the mid-19th century. The industrial capitalists, Sunbelt capitalists (in the USA), merchant right, lesser rich, petite bourgeois, and post-bourgeois proletariat are the modern versions of the declining historic nobility, clerisy, artisans, and peasants from 175-200 years ago. The Red Tribe are the “traditional” cultural sectors that were overrun by the Enlightenment.
Meanwhile, the digital capitalists, big rich, Brahmin left, professional-managerial class, hedge fund managers, new capital, knowledge industries, and ascending cultural sectors are today’s version of the classical bourgeoisie, gradually displacing the “old order.” The Blue Tribe are comparable to the rising social sectors of the 19th century (abolitionists, suffragettes, etc).
“Tankies” with a pro-Eastern, pro-Global South outlook are the modern equivalent of the Marxists of the 19th century, with the identity of the proletariat now shifting to the rising working classes outside of the West. One thing I am undecided on is whether there are any sectors in the West that parallel the historic proletariat, or whether the Western proletariat is a “labor aristocracy” that is being “swept away and made impossible” by various historical, cultural, and material forces like, for example, the artisans, craftsmen, and freeholders of past times.
It could be argued that migrants from the “Third World” to the “First World” who work in traditional industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and construction but who are experiecing relative upward mobility are the true “neo-proletariat.” If the declining working to middle classes are a “post-bourgeois proletariat,” then low-wage service industry workers might be a “lower proletariat” or merely a servant class. Those who make their living from a combination of the gig economy, side hustling, OnlyFans, and public assistance are the lumpenproletariat. A college-educated person working as a barista might be considered a “lumpen-bourgeois.”
The ultra-rich might be comparable to the royals and aristocrats of the past, like the Saxe-Gotha-Coburg dynasties, who successfully reinvented themselves as a capital class. Hence, the nominal embrace of the “woke” ideology by the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, Fords, and Kennedys.

Traditionally, brahmins were Hindu priests and teachers. The term brahmin comes from the Sanskrit brahman, which means “prayer” or “the universal soul.” People who were born into this caste in the traditional Hindu case system were expected to devote their lives to holy pursuits. However, French economist Thomas Piketty uses the term metaphorically to describe the current wave of educated upper-middle-class professionals and managers with “left-wing” political outlooks. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/GMP2022QJE.pdf

It’s fashionable among “anti-woke” influencers to characterize wokeism as Marxism, postmodernism, Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Satanism, atheism, Enlightenment rationalism, and all kinds of other things. Some of these are actual influences on wokeism, though usually on the periphery or in the relatively distant or even very distant past. Others may resemble wokeism in various ways, even if they aren’t direct or even indirect influences per se.
The central thrust of wokeism is more PMRC, Moral Majority, temperance, and social purity than Marxism. Do-gooders who fancy themselves to be crusaders against some real or perceived great evil or social ill end up being a bunch of obnoxious busybodies in the process—more Church Lady than Chairman Mao.
To the degree that various permutations of Marxism have influenced wokeism, it has only been through the cooptation and reworking of these. The primary factors have been the shift from industrial capitalism to digital capitalism, from the classical bourgeoisie to the neo-bourgeoisie, from Protestant pietism to modern or secular derivatives of Protestant pietism, and the parallel growth of the public administration state and managerial revolution.
I would begin by defining wokeness as the currently dominant ideological superstructure of liberal imperialism (replacing the “white man’s burden” or “American exceptionalism”), the new digital capitalist class, the neo-bourgeoisie associated with the professional-managerial class, and a cultural and psychological permutation of Protestant pietism. Historically, we can trace the philosophical and theological currents that feed into wokeness to Platonic dualism and Persian apocalypticism.
Prophetic Judaism and Jewish messianism certainly contribute but it is the expression of these in Christian universalism that provides the real foundation for what becomes wokeness eventually.
German Lutheran pietism and English puritanism provided the psychological framework of wokeness, and the blending of these with early modern capitalism created the material base that fed into the development of Protestant-dominated bourgeois culture and the coming to power of the Protestant-Jewish merchant class alliance under Cromwell. All of this gets exported to North America. New England puritanism then generated heresies like Unitarianism that fed into the development of Progressive Christianity, the religious zeal of the Abolitionists, and the Social Gospel.
Meanwhile, the public administration state was imported from Prussia to the USA. Progressive Christianity then flowed into secular progressivism fused with the public administration state and technocracy. Then, we start to see a growing Jewish presence within the power elite, influenced by the prophetic tradition, which gets fused with progressive Christianity (the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, as it comes to be called). Radical movements imported from Europe and Asia, like Trotskyism, Gramscianism, the Frankfurt School’s Western Marxism, and Maoism, began to give progressivism a sharper edge. However, it’s not so much that progressivism becomes these things as much as it borrows ideas from them and coopts and reworks them.
Meanwhile, the public administration state expanded during the managerial revolution and the rise of the “new class” of professionals and managers. The Information Age resulted in the development of the mass media as a cultural institution. Technological expansion necessitated the expansion of the educated classes, schools, and universities, with the media essentially replacing the church as the dominant inculcator of cultural values.
The cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in greater sociocultural integration, which was encouraged by a range of preexisting institutions, from the media to the intelligence services. Digital capitalism emerged, and a new power elite of tech oligarchs emerged along with media bosses. The “new Wall Street” consists of hedge fund managers, investment firms, and other products of financialization. As the political influence of these socioeconomic currents grew, they began cultivating a range of population groups as constituents, drawing on the Dutton strategy developed by the Democrats in the early 70s.
All of these things are rivers and streams that flow into the woke ocean. When the liberal wing of the ruling class returned to power in 2008, following 40 years of GOP rule and 28 years of Sunbelt capitalist rule, Woke was coopted by this ideological superstructure and adopted as a self-legitimating ideological superstructure. However, the liberal power elite were only capitalizing on pre-existing cultural currents that had previously worked their way into institutions and various cultural sectors from the periphery or from the bottom, though often with the aid or encouragement of elite interests trying to steer these toward their own purposes.
I have noticed a split in woke circles in more recent times. While sectors of the ruling class are perfectly happy to use “woke” as an ideological superstructure when convenient, there are forms of wokeism that conflict with ruling class interests. The woke paradigm has a right wing, center wing, and left wing. The furthest left sectors actually include things that actually threaten ruling class interests, like state security (“defund the police”), imperialism (e.g., wokesters with pro-Eastern views like the PSL types), Zionism (the Gaza protests), and actual capitalism. On this latter point, in the aftermath of Occupy, the corporate class went out of their way to refocus the political left away from anti-capitalism toward social issues. Vivek Ramaswamy goes into much detail about this in “Woke, Inc.” The Democrat Party went out of its way twice to essentially rig the party primaries so that even an FDR social democrat like Bernie Sanders, much less an actual Communist, couldn’t get the nomination.
“Anti-racism” is the secular white liberal’s religion, or part of it anyway. John McWhorter (a black liberal Democrat and atheist) breaks this down to a lay level pretty well in his book “Woke Racism.” In secular white liberal psychology, derived from Protestant pietism, racism assumes the role of original sin. MLK replaces JC as the sacrificial martyr for sins. Postmodernism is essentially Nietzschean in its worldview, not Marxist, as postmodernists are ethical subjectivists and moral and cultural relativists. Marxists have a strong inclination towards historicism, which Nietzsche criticized. That some postmodernists were also members of Marxist parties (like Foucault) or embraced Marxist social analysis (to some degree) merely means they’ve taken the things they subjectively like about Marxism and emptied it of its underlying philosophical or metaphysical foundations. It’s like “liberal” Christians who appeal to the supposed ethics of Jesus while not believing in miracles or a literal resurrection.
I tend to agree with Gottfried that calling thinkers like Butler “neo-Marxists” (whatever they call themselves) is problematic because once you remove historical materialism, class reductionism, and economic determinism from Marxism, you don’t really have Marxism. You have something else. I’m very aware of Bill Lind’s critique of the Frankfurt School’s “cultural Marxism”(and James Lindsay’s pale imitation of Lind) but the Frankfurt School’s analytical framework seems more Weberian than Marxist (the FS were heavily influenced by Weber) even if, like the “left-postmodernists,” they continued to hold to Marxist economic theory in a vague, abstract sense. I can only imagine what Karl and Fred would have actually thought of Foucault, Butler, or Leslie Feinberg. Some of the FS’s outlook is actually interesting, like Horkheimer’s critique of the “culture industry.”
As we know, critical race theory is derivative of the FS’s “critical theory” or “reverse Marxism” over whatever it would be called. I hold to the view that CRT is merely an analytical tool that might have some application in narrow aspects of the social sciences, like the many different contending schools of economics, even if the normal application is often extremely one-dimensional (as are many schools of analysis in the social sciences). I do think the Crenshaw, Bell, etc. paradigm created the foundation for a type of “anti-racist fundamentalism” of the kind that would appeal to pietistic white liberals. Hence, it’s popularity in those circles. Although I would make a distinction between the actual critical race theorists and outright frauds like Robin Diangelo (she is the equivalent of a New Age guru) and outright racists and/or racial supremacists like Ibram X. Kendi.