Philosophy Series: Hegel, Marx, & Modern Life (Part 2)

Rev Left Radio

Breht O'Shea

Communism, Politics, Liberalism, Society & Culture, Philosophy, News, History, Leftwing, Socialism, Marxism

4.8 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Part Two: Breht listens to, comments on, and expounds upon a public lecture by the late professor of philosophy Rick Roderick from 1989 on Hegel, Marx, and modern American capitalism. Along the way he discusses the central role of reproductive labor, the dialectic of feminism in the US across the last century, identifying with your job under capitalism, reactionary psychology and understanding the joy they take in cruelty, the insane irony of "Make America Great Again" under both Reagan and Trump, the prescience of Professor Roderick, socially necessary labor, and more. Finally, Breht opines at length on a crucial and often overlooked dimension of a truly present, meaningful life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody, welcome back to Rev Left Radio.
0:08.7	This is part two of an earlier part one that I did on Hegel, Marx, and Modern Life,
0:16.2	a lecture that I'm reacting to in real time by the late philosopher Rick Roderick talking in
0:22.6	1989 or 1990 I believe was when he gave this lecture and I am commenting on and expanding
0:28.6	upon it deepening Marxist analysis and applying applying it to our own time 35 plus years after
0:34.4	he gave this really insightful prescient lecture on Hegel and Marks.
0:40.2	So this is part two. You could listen to this straight up and get something out of it for sure,
0:44.7	but it would probably be ideal if you went back and listened to part one. It does assume
0:49.4	some background knowledge of Marx and Hegel, which I assume most of you are at least somewhat familiar with.
0:55.2	I know more so Marx than Hegel, but either way, I'll link in the show notes to part one of this
1:01.8	lecture and response, and this is part two. Enjoy.
1:07.7	Let's be utopian. No, it's not utopian to demand in a world with this kind of technology
1:13.6	that as a moral demand of society feed, clothe, and house its people.
1:22.6	A society that doesn't do it with the kind of technology and the wealth we have is beneath
1:29.3	contempt and makes a mockery of all the previous history of civilization.
1:35.2	And to the extent that we're silent and among such brigands, we're brigands too.
1:41.9	It's despicable.
1:49.0	It's disgusting. Amen. And we've lived with it. And it seems like it's getting more support every day. I don't know. Looks like we're in a very dark time.
1:54.5	And when we look at the conditions I'm discussing today, we're not looking at abstract moral
2:00.3	conditions. I'm not offering
2:02.4	a grand abstract theory of them. I'm trying to give something like a rough account of the
2:08.0	fabric of daily life, a rough account of it, because it's too rich, especially in this country,
	...

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