Serious Marxian and feminist theory, in any sphere.
In many academic fields (including some social sciences, although obviously not econ), Marxist theory is still considered the go-to theory for what most people would simply consider “the economic way of thinking”. This means that there’s an absolutely huge amount of “Marxist analysis” of culture and society with uncertain status, because economically-literate folks simply haven’t had a chance to look at it. Much of this analysis probably makes a lot of sense from the POV of modern economics; much of it is probably utterly nonsensical.
The situation when referring to other branches of “Continental” theorizing (and AIUI, this includes feminist theory) is roughly analogous, except that this particular kind of philosophy spans the range from utterly worthless stuff (“Uncle Bob’s musings on life, the human mind and society!”) to stuff which is probably valuable but we can’t understand it properly because we lack more modern tools wrt. these topics (Freudian psychology might actually be a case in point here, especially in the light of cognitive-behavioral theory, perceptual-control theory and similar) and stuff which just needs some sort of cleanup, like Marxist analyses.
Wikipedia seems to disagree, actually. It is used to refer both to a political strawman, and to a legitimate school of thought—which need not have political implications persay[1]. The generally used label seems to be “critical theory”, or even “theory” for short (talk about ambiguity!); which definitely includes Marxist ideas in addition to other stuff.
[1] Considering how ubiquitous the use of Marxian theory is in the humanities and social sciences, expecting everyone who uses such theories to be a radical socialist is kind of like expecting all business or econ professors to be extreme conservatives or libertarians.
In many academic fields (including some social sciences, although obviously not econ), Marxist theory is still considered the go-to theory for what most people would simply consider “the economic way of thinking”. This means that there’s an absolutely huge amount of “Marxist analysis” of culture and society with uncertain status, because economically-literate folks simply haven’t had a chance to look at it. Much of this analysis probably makes a lot of sense from the POV of modern economics; much of it is probably utterly nonsensical.
The situation when referring to other branches of “Continental” theorizing (and AIUI, this includes feminist theory) is roughly analogous, except that this particular kind of philosophy spans the range from utterly worthless stuff (“Uncle Bob’s musings on life, the human mind and society!”) to stuff which is probably valuable but we can’t understand it properly because we lack more modern tools wrt. these topics (Freudian psychology might actually be a case in point here, especially in the light of cognitive-behavioral theory, perceptual-control theory and similar) and stuff which just needs some sort of cleanup, like Marxist analyses.
Worth noting that as far as I can tell, the phrase ‘cultural marxism’ refers to a strawman, and a strawman alone.
Wikipedia seems to disagree, actually. It is used to refer both to a political strawman, and to a legitimate school of thought—which need not have political implications persay[1]. The generally used label seems to be “critical theory”, or even “theory” for short (talk about ambiguity!); which definitely includes Marxist ideas in addition to other stuff.
[1] Considering how ubiquitous the use of Marxian theory is in the humanities and social sciences, expecting everyone who uses such theories to be a radical socialist is kind of like expecting all business or econ professors to be extreme conservatives or libertarians.
Hmmm. I have never heard the exact phrase used in a non-politically-smearing context.