Are Eastern Bloc defectors considered a good source on the activies of the communist governments...

This: I expressed skepticism to the theory at first, but is there any reason for those left wing theories? Additionally, assuming cultural marxism doesn't exist and economic leftism and has nothing to do with social leftism, why do so many left-wing parties reject social conservatives? Virtually no left wing parties right now use religious appeals to groups like Evangelicals. The Democrats in the United States aren't reaching out to Hispanics on platforms of family values, despite Hispanics being very religious in both the Protestant and Catholic demographics.

I'm not even fully sold on cultural marxism, I'm just curious to see what your counter-argument to it is.

It references the shitty health care system. Regardless of your stance on health care reform, it's an objective economic fact that health insurance premiums would be cheaper if you allowed insurers to compete across state lines. Would that help drive down the cost of pharmaceutical drugs that are at the heart of the problem? No, but the fact that this kind of ban exists is just referencing government activity in the private sector hindering affordable health care.

I think that Medicare specifically in that sense would less so refer to Medicare as it exists currently and more so to how Bernie spoke about Medicare for all in his debate with Ted Cruz.

Why would you call it a cultural Marxism in the first place? It's a name made up by the right-wing, they never used it themselves.
Call it Western Marxism if you must. And let's not forget that many of them were very critical of the Soviet Union.

Basically, Golitsyn claimed in his books "New Lies for Old" and "The Perestroika Deception" that the Sino-Soviet split was a communist subterfuge to make the U.S. support China in order to counter the Soviet Union, while the two countries remained allied in secret.

There is no evidence other than his words, though some people in right-wing circles claim the relations between Russia and China after the end of the Soviet Union prove Golitsyn was "right".

I never made that connection lmao

Wait, who's keeping insurers from competing across state lines, the left wing or the right? This seems like one of those issues that both are responsible for in some fashion.
That is assuming that the picture is trying to equate communist subversion with the left wing.

What theory? There is no theory. Western Marxists were a group of intellectuals influenced by Marx. They weren't a collective and often disagreed with each other on the most fundamental questions.

Few people have ever used the term "neoliberal" applying to themselves. Heck, before the 1950s, few people even used the term "capitalist" this way. Both of these terms were created by the left-wing to describe phenomenoms they opposed, the same way the right-wing is doing regarding Cultural Marxism.

The name Western Marxism doesn't work that well because not all Western Marxists during this period applied all that importance to the superstructure. Ex: Louis Althusser.

Except it's not all right-wing but rather alt-right, borderline neo-Nazi parties created this term. It's nothing more but a conspiracy theory. They just don't want to use the term cultural bolshevism because of its clear connotation with a murderous NSDAP regime.

These men may have well BELIEVED they were truly correct while simply being let go for other purposes. You really think THE kgb would let a legit threat fly so easy?

4D chess

Intelligence agencies are so compartmentalized, meticulously locked by layers upon layers of "classified" and "need to know basis only". Most ground operatives barley know the overarching points of what they are doing and why let alone any other task forces. Not to mention the higher ups have to wilfully keep themselves ignorant of what ground ops does so active missions aren't compromised. Its a fucking complete mess and 90% of the time no one really knows what the hell is going on.

Only time will tell and even then it probably won't.

God give rest to his heroic soul

But why woudl you rely on defectors in firist place? Its not 1983, the communist block is no more, you can just research in these countriesthemtselves.

>It's nothing more but a conspiracy theory.

It isn't though. It's quite clear that the 68'ers wanted to infiltrate and change social institutions within capitalist societies, as an alternative to instill class consciousness by shock therapy through election of a Communist Party.

Rudi Dutschke famously said that in order to destroy Western capitalism and bourgeois culture, they had to "walk a Long March through society's institutions".

Using the word "Cultural Marxism" isn't correct, but it's quite clear that what is meant by the content of that word, is true to some extent.

>infiltrating something you can already join as a citizen
Lol whut

>infiltrate AND CHANGE

Do you suffer from reading comprehension?

infiltrate implies that the 68ers were not allowed to join the government in the first place which is odd to me.

I know what you mean by charge in the sense that they wanted to reform it from within

>I believe that the KGB engineered liberation theology and 60's counter culture because western European Marxist and post-marxist intellectuals emphasized the importance of the superstructure
wat

Leftism does concern itself with cultural issues. It promotes the autonomy and liberty of the common person, against economic domination and cultural domination. It dates back to the utopian socialists that imagined new ways of life that broke the traditional order, decades before Marx countered that economy was the main issue. The left had problems with the church before it had problems with the capitalists.

Because of that basic antitraditionalist principle, and because of that history, leftwing parties indeed don't try to rely on religion.
That being said
>democrats
>left wing

Well the reason the word "infiltrate" is used is because they had a political mission.

If the only reason you're joining an institution is because you want to change it ideologically and politically, it's obviously infiltration.

>If the only reason you're joining an institution is because you want to change it ideologically and politically, it's obviously infiltration.
That is Reform desu

Yeah, I'm sure you would say the same thing it if it was a bunch of Nazis that did it.

Yes I would?

Are you seriously going to argue that if there was 40 to 1 Nazis at universities in America, this would constitute "reform" ?

So trump infiltrated the us presidency ? That's a stupid definition.
Infiltration implies concealment.

> It's quite clear that the 68'ers wanted to infiltrate and change social institutions within capitalist societies, as an alternative to instill class consciousness by shock therapy through election of a Communist Party.
No it's not. First because the alternative you describe is a nonsensical scenario no one planned for : the election of a communist party can only be the consequence of a rise in class consciousness and not the cause.
Second because most 68'ers did not even try to infiltrate institutions. A lot of them got regular jobs, and sometimes, when they had the leeway to do so, they applied their political ideas, same as every human does in a democracy. They didn't hide or conspirate to destroy capitalist society by those means. On the other hand, capitalist society recycled some of these ideas into nonrevolutionnary politics and practices, but then again it was a mostly accidental process.

I thought we were talking about people joining government to change it from within?

So why are universities overwhelmingly liberal left in North-America? Do you honestly think it's just a coincidence that 68ers had that mission statement, and now universities are, depending on what discipline, swamped with leftists?

Because science and humanities are liberal.

how so?

Reality is liberal.

Universities are "swamped" with liberals because intelligent liberals are attracted to this environment and to these disciplines, while intelligent conservatives are more attracted to private business.
If liberals really wanted to take power that way, they would concentrate on law and criminology departments and business schools. When they join sociology departments, they just follow their personal interests.

Also, 68ers had a huge lot of divergent mission statements. Changing the system from within was not the dominant one, far from it.

how so?