I think that's true. But one of the problems is that a lot of those supposed values were coopted in the 30's by the Communists, who somehow seized all of the words. That is, they didn't value the meaning of the words, but they somehow were perceived as holding title to the words, with the result that anyone who was in favor of these things automatically had to be aligned with the left.
I couldn't agree more. One of the founding principles of postmodernism is that cooption of the language is cooption of power. That is one reason for its concentration in such former intellectual backwaters as literary criticism. It was a lot of earnest people believing with all their hearts that if only everyone pretended that the emperor had new clothing on, he really did. The power of the collective here was the power to create its own reality. It doesn't really, of course. Half of the Left still believes that it does and the other half is mortally resentful that it doesn't. For which we non-believers are to blame, naturally.