A Biological Foundation for Socialism?

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4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2021

⏱️ 106 minutes

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Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 41 The Critical Theorist and neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse was one of the most influential radical Leftist thinkers of the 20th century, and this fact is evident throughout his writing. The depth of his radicalism can be seen quite clearly in several of his essays, including his 1965 "Repressive Tolerance" (https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html), which has been featured on the New Discourses Podcast before in a four-part series (https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/how-not-to-resolve-the-paradox-of-tolerance/). It may stand out even more prominently in "An Essay on Liberation" (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1969/essay-liberation.htm), written in 1969. In this longer essay, Marcuse lays out what he believes liberation requires, especially at the level of what he refers to as preconditions for that utopian possibility. In this four-part series, James Lindsay presents "An Essay on Liberation" with his commentary. In this first part of the series, he reads through the introduction to the essay and its first of four parts, "A Biological Foundation for Socialism?", in which Marcuse makes the case that to achieve a liberated utopia, man will have to be changed at the level of his fundamental needs, his instincts, and his biology, and that this can be accomplished by making him live in a society that "introjects" a new critical morality into him. It's a truly alarming piece of work, and the resonances of it can definitely be felt today. Join James as he begins to explore this essay by Marcuse on the New Discourses Podcast. Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com/support patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: https://newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses https://newdiscourses.locals.com pinterest.com/newdiscourses linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-discourses/id1499880546 bit.ly/NDGooglePodcasts open.spotify.com/show/0HfzDaXI5L4LnJQStFWgZp stitcher.com/podcast/new-discourses © 2021 New Discourses. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome everybody.
0:22.2	You're listening to the new Discourses Podcasts and I'm James Lindsay and long promised
0:27.8	finally getting to this.
0:29.8	Going to start a series reading through Herbert Marcus' 1969 essay on Liberation.
0:37.4	So I previously on the new Discourses Podcasts at a series of Herbert Marcus' 1965 essay,
0:45.0	Repressive Tolerance.
0:46.5	I've quoted it lengthened a couple of other episodes here on the podcast from his 1964 book,
0:52.0	One Dimensional Man, which of course I haven't read the whole book and don't intend to.
0:56.9	But here we have his 1969 essay on Liberation.
1:01.4	So just to very quickly frame this out, I think this is going to be in four parts because
1:05.5	the essay is in four parts.
1:06.7	It's quite long, like Repressive Tolerance, in fact it's longer than Repressive Tolerance.
1:11.2	Give you a quick overview of who Herbert Marcus was and what Liberation is about and then
1:16.5	we're going to dive into this essay.
1:17.9	This is going to be the first part of the essay which covers, I'm not kidding, a biological
1:24.3	foundation for socialism.
1:26.5	And so this is a very chilling essay.
1:28.8	So Herbert Marcus just to kind of frame out who this guy was, if you're not familiar,
1:32.0	if you haven't listened to the Repressive Tolerance or other podcasts have done regarding
1:37.1	his work, was probably the foremost radical left thinker of the 1950s and 1960s.
1:44.4	He was the director of the Frankfurt School as they had moved to the United States.
1:51.6	But I would consider the heart of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, I kind
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