---
Title: The degradation of culture
Date: 18/09/2020
Category: Critique of ideology
Tags: culture ideology petty-bourgeoisie racialism
URL: https://marxismo.school/communia/en/the-degradation-of-culture
---


ideology

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![](https://marxismo.school/communia/en/assets/encuestas-150x150.jpg)_The object of this article was chosen by the readers of our news channel in Telegram (@Communia)._

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The truth is that the cultural products, the _representative_ works and pieces of a certain historical moment, are not the result of any sudden collective enlightenment. None of them would reach even large audiences if it were not a choice of the cultural industry before anything else.

Accumulation

proletarianization|proletarianizes

But that is far from being the real problem. American [essayists](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/books/review/kurt-andersen-evil-geniuses.html) talk about how the first warnings of the crisis in the 1970s gave way to a massive _nostalgia_ which turned into _cultural apathy_ and resulted, starting in the 1990s, in the exaltation of an almost primeval version of the crudest and most cynical bourgeois morality.

feminism

> Richard Wagner: composer, conductor, playwright, poet, polemicist, anarchist, Teutonic nationalist, anti-Semite, feminist, pacifist, vegetarian, animal rights activist ‎...‎ Just as Herzl saw in Tannhäuser a way to strengthen his Zionist vision, Du Bois took the Wagnerian myth as a model for a new, heroic African-American spirit.

It is true that [some old popes get scared and protest](https://v.calameo.com/?bkcode=006357813fc08560d1c86&forceviewer=twittercard&page=1) before the inevitably censuring and authoritarian development of a puritanism now multiplied by a thousand irredentist identities. But it is so deeply rooted among the Anglo-Saxon liberal petty bourgeoisie, so _normalized_ already and integrated into the most pitiful chauvinism under the guise of a _culturalist_ disguise, that a [heavyweight of the academy like Joseph Henrich](https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/people/joseph-henrich) can publish a thesis according to which [Anglo-Saxon cultures have produced a different _brain configuration_ in their members](https://www.nytimes. com/2020/09/12/books/review/the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-joseph-henrich.html) making them authentically _western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic_; terms that, all together, form in English the well-known acronym WEIRD, _odd_, _particular_. As if the humor of this acronym Anglo-Saxon psychologists created to describe their own college students moderated Henrich's absurd anti-historical racism. The book was presented in the New York Times in style with a warning against ideological condemnation and an invitation to scientific criticism. Salvationist messianism and racism elevated to the fantasy of a higher brain configuration deserves no better treatment than flat-earthers and other delusions. That it claims its rights not to be mocked because it is a result of the ruminations of an evolutionary biologist and it is defended by a glowing review by a famous philosopher of mind written in the main American newspaper is more than just a red flag.

Let us combine all this with the [reactionary tendencies of the petty bourgeoisie](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/el-anticapitalismo-reaccionario), now well present in a revolt that cannot end even when it is exhausted in its own political impotence. Let us give it the inevitable [apocalyptic notes inseparable from the fathers of bourgeois morality](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/este-no-es-el-primer-fin-del-mundo). And the result will be simply [delirious](https://marxismo.school/communia/en/ideological-madness).

Government experts try [to explain the growth of conspiracy with psychological arguments](https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/how-conspiracy-theories-threaten-our-society-a-8185ac54-8181-4bb0-88e5-a9818a456719). But they should look at themselves first. The reality is that the blatant cynicism of an [official speech that claims to transcend history](https://marxismo.school/communia/es/lecciones-del-fin-de-la-historia-treinta-anos-despues), that no longer aspires to anything other than to continue as usual because [it cannot provide true development](https://es.communia. blog/the-impossibility-of-development-capitalist/), has alienated so many, has become so unbelievable and spread such moral despair, that for an increasingly relevant part of the petty bourgeoisie it is preferable _to believe in literally anything_ than to keep pretending to live in the best of all possible worlds. And that is what they do.

## But... what about the workers?

proletariat|struggle for the universal satisfaction of universal human needs