Marxist cultural analysis

Marxist cultural analysis is a form of cultural analysis and anti-capitalist cultural critique, which assumes the theory of cultural hegemony and from this specifically targets those aspects of culture that are profit driven and mass-produced under capitalism.

The original theory behind this form of analysis is commonly associated with Georg Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, and the Frankfurt School. It represents an important current within Western Marxism following the failure of Marx’s predicted communist revolutions in Western capitalist states, observing that these societies maintain cohesion and stability by reproducing a dominant culture. Marxist cultural analysis has commonly considered the industrialization, mass-production, and mechanical reproduction of culture by the "culture industry" as having an overall negative effect on society, an effect which reifies the self-conception of the individual.

The tradition of Marxist cultural analysis has also been referred to as "cultural Marxism" and "Marxist cultural theory", in reference to Marxist ideas about culture. However, since the 1990s, the term "Cultural Marxism" has largely referred to the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory popular among the far right without any clear relationship to Marxist cultural analysis.