Herbert Marcuse and the Catastrophe of Solidarity

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4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2021

⏱️ 107 minutes

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Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 48 Liberation Series, Part 4 of 4 We live in Herbert Marcuse's world. In a previous series on the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay made that clearer than ever by reading through all of Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance" (https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html), which served as a basis for the strong double standard enjoyed by radical Leftism today (check out the first part in that series here: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/how-not-to-resolve-the-paradox-of-tolerance/). In this episode, Lindsay wraps up his four-part series reading through another of Marcuse's frightening essays, "An Essay on Liberation." This fourth and final part of "An Essay on Liberation" (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1969/essay-liberation.htm) focuses on the role of "solidarity" as the glue meant to hold together his new coalition for liberation, outlined in the first three parts of the essay. Understanding the works of Herbert Marcuse has never been more important. In this episode, join James as he reads through the final (shortest) part of this essay and connects it to the features of today's clownish world, from Antifa and other radical activism to divisive identity politics to stakeholder capitalism and sustainability metrics. Learn what Marcuse envisioned for his New Left to bring into the world and how it has finally, after fifty years, begun to come to pass. Also, don't miss the other parts in this four-part series on this important and chilling essay: Part 1 (A Biological Foundation for Socialism: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/06/biological-foundation-socialism/), Part 2 (A New Sensibility: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/07/herbert-marcuses-new-sensibility/), and Part 3 (Subverting Forces in Transition: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/08/marcuses-subverting-forces-in-transition/). Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com/support patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com pinterest.com/newdiscourses linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-…es/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 everyone, welcome to another exciting episode of the new Discourses podcast.
0:26.6	We are finally going to finish this monstrosity Herbert Markus' 1969 essay on Liberation
0:32.8	today to kind of summarize briefly for you.
0:36.0	This is a long essay that he wrote, like I said, in 1969, where he outlines what liberation
0:42.0	looks like, what it'll take to get to liberation.
0:44.1	It's broken into four parts and what we've been doing is a series kind of dragged out, not
0:51.8	as tight as my series on his 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance, dragged out, reading through the
0:58.3	four parts of an essay on liberation.
1:02.5	And the first part of this essay is horrifying, the second part is horrifying, the third
1:08.6	part is horrifying, and today we'll find out what the fourth part holds in store.
1:14.2	So far, the first part is titled a biological foundation for socialism, and in this part
1:19.8	of the essay, Markus argues that we need to change man at the level of his biological needs.
1:27.0	So what I think he means by this, because he says he doesn't literally mean biology.
1:31.7	What I think he means by this is psychological condition to make people psychopathological
1:38.6	as a matter of fact, to need liberation from the existing capitalist free society.
1:46.2	I think that because he claims he doesn't mean actual like eugenics biology, he says so
1:50.6	explicitly in a footnote, but not in the essay itself.
1:55.5	And then he talks though about changing people at the level of their needs, to make them
2:01.0	need a fundamentally different kind of world to live in, and that different kind of world,
2:06.0	of course, it's biological foundation for socialism.
2:08.5	So it would be to make them need to live in a socialist, super nanny state that's liberated
2:15.7	from all systems of oppression, to make it so that they are psychologically incapable
	...

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