As noted by the British Conservative politician Michael Gove in Celsius 7/7, whereas classical Marxism defines the revolutionary struggle in terms of the workers overthrowing capitalism and taking control of the means of production, neo-Marxism focuses on what has come to be called the culture wars. 

Gove associates the rise of neo-Marxism with the establishment of Germany’s Frankfurt School in the 1930s by a number of academics who realised the West’s workers would never be interested in taking to the streets and storming the barricades.  

As an alternative to Marxist theory Gove writes:  “The thinkers of the Frankfurt School revised Marxism as primarily a cultural rather than an economic movement.