Marxist Philosophy - Bryan Magee & Charles Taylor (1977)

In this program, Charles Taylor discusses Marxist philosophy with Bryan Magee. This is from a 1977 series on Modern Philosophy called Men of Ideas. You can find more interviews in this series here: • Modern Philosophy: Men...
You can also find the 1987 series on the Great Philosophers here: • The Great Philosophers...
#Philosophy #BryanMagee #Marx

[@davidstefan2458]

Finally! The long-sought episode.

[@eraserhead-prime]

So hyped

[@CaptainJasa]

😮

[@JohnSpawn1]

0:47 Magee's introduction 3:54 A Theory of Liberation 6:01 Inexorable laws out of human control 7:55 Alienation 8:37 Revolution and the human bent toward evermore freedom 9:28 Division of labor->becoming a means of production, being a fragment of the social process->alienation (2) 10:43 Liberation Theory (2) 12:48 The good elements of Marx' theory 17:30 The liberating aspect of Marxism vs communist dictatorships 19:04 Marxism, freedom and conflict 19:36 Finite resources and disputes 20:07 "Marxism is bad about freedom" 22:08 Marxism is very limited (three levels: individual, social and cosmic) 23:23 Marxism functions on the intermediate level of social existence 26:19 Marxism and violence 27:39 "Marxism is a perpetual theory of the Just War applied to politics and history." 28:38 Claims about the future 39:42 "The very idea, the very belief that one is gonna bring about a conflictless society ill-equips one to develop a model for how to work in conflict." 42:14 'Contemporary' Marxism

[@fastinbulvis2223]

Thanks!

[@user-gw9kq7qm2k]

Thank you.

[@andrewdaws7275]

Magee is brilliantly articulate, calm and clear. There is no 'conflict' in the discussion either. He is generous to his guest, and frames the debate clearly. Masterful.

[@50195876]

Agreed. I think I might've picked up some divergence in views when he was talking to Copleston on Schopenhauer (this was a while ago so don't ask me for specifics), but it was so mild I'm not sure it was even there.

[@benzur3503]

I found Magee to steer the discussion deep into the Cold War politiqing and abit away from the topic of the philosophy, but yes Taylor didn’t seem interested in anything but fairly considering the theory, and not necessarily blindly supporting it

[@SetTrippin82]

A much needed discourse within an age of platitudes and memes.

[@anthonynenna1697]

platitudinous comment!

[@nomanali8110]

Incredible interview.

[@newtheory785]

Fantastic video. Thank you!

[@derekewen1]

You found it! Thank you!

[@Osamailyas]

Very understandable accent especially for the non English speakers. You have explained very well in details. Thanks 😊❤

[@xxcrysad3000xx]

Try as I might, this idea of humanity regaining control over its collective destiny while simultaneously ushering in an unprecedented age of individual human agency and freedom just totally escapes me. The control-freedom dichotomy is just to opaque for me.

[@xorealslowmd]

I agree as well

[@mohammadhassan1649]

And so does a frog see the well as its encompassing universe.

[@xxcrysad3000xx]

@@mohammadhassan1649 heavy bro. heavy.

[@joelwesko1812]

Its like Dostoevsky had stated in his thought -- we are a complex creature - and theres no perfect formula that society can use to create a flourishing and prosperous inhabitants. Wanting to abolish suffering from the equation just doesn’t work - because it isn’t a one size fits all scenario. Of course I don’t agree with a system that causes suffering to others by any means. It just seems no matter what system is in place some group or people get left out or aren’t part of the equation -- I just think a utopia is something far past human reaching.

[@CosmicLion777]

There is no individual and freedom . You are just a disposable part of the collective. Marxists are basically cult members.

[@cheri238]

I miss Christopher Hitchen, journalist, and writer, although he got the Iraq wars wrong. I forgive him. He and Stephen Frye's debate against the Catholic Church was flawless. Lenin led the way on in his book on "Tolertarism." Rosa Luxembourg was a source of inspiration.

[@languagegame410]

i don't know what it is about Charles Taylor... but i just love listening to him talk... i think it's the rhythm of his particular way of speaking.

[@electricrussellette]

@@pixelricebowl Anglo-Montrealer

[@JRain234]

Great talk. It could have been much, much longer. Alas that it had been...

[@geopoliticsweekly]

I’ve only watched till 22:23 but I had this thought and wanted to post before I forgot it. I think it’s unfair to criticize Marxism as a theory by referencing the suppressions of Marxist regimes in the sense Marxism foresaw a division-less society. It’s unfair precisely because those Marxists never believed they had achieved communism. Mao even addressed this directly when he said yes, we want to abolish the state but cannot because society is still divided by class and susceptible to imperialist attack. The fact all Marxist regimes came to power in underdeveloped societies which were existentially threatened by Western capitalist nations are two points commentators on Marxism bring up far too rarely. It could still be argued Marxism as a liberation theory is unrealistic, but it’s not because of the experiences of “actually existing socialism.”

[@jackkelly1572]

Precisely. Judging the socialist experiments of the 20th century requires nuance, the material conditions must be considered.

[@danieljliverslxxxix1164]

No, it is justifiable to criticize Marxism if those who promote it see it as a means to justify the heinous acts that they do in the name of it. Marxism is evil and communism is a utopian stroke fantasy.

[@danieljliverslxxxix1164]

@@jackkelly1572 I like the unintentional irony of people who criticize capitalism yet defend Marxism and the atrocities that socialist countries committed in the name of emancipation of the working class. "B-but the material conditions." Ask the millions who lost their lives what they think about your material conditions. Fucking Marxists. Every single one of you...

[@nyakolliay]

Look for Kwame Ture's videos. He said you don't judge a system by the people but it's principles. You don't judge Christianity by Christians but by its principles. Same to Marxism/Socialism.

[@emilianosintarias7337]

It's fair to criticize marxism over repressive regimes, but for one reason nobody talks about: capitalism ensures great development gaps globally, meanwhile, people value economic development for its own sake. Therefore, poor countries who have a large chance of mostly failing at marxist revolution in the sense of achieving a more true democracy, will in that failure still have a good shot at development progress and economic independence. This creates a stalinist model that is then taken up by other poor countries ,increasing national economic freedom and decreasing most other kinds of freedom. In this sense, Marxists failed to predict that either capitalism will forestall its own development to the point where it can be overcome, or people will prize the personal benefits of development above other forms of liberty. Interestingly, this window is closed, and countries instead look to achieve development by betraying not just marx but bourgeois society also: gutting their liberal democratic structures and throwing out all sovereignty.

[@bosman1988]

Excellent discussion

[@jeffreyanthony6628]

The 1st half of this interview is pretty great and Taylor spent most of this time comparing the two competing theories undergirding Marxism that being what Taylor calls the ‘explanatory’ theory which is historical materialism (scientism/rational-ontological), and the ‘liberation’ theory as Taylor calls it. Taylor highlights that these two views are in fact in contradiction to each other and because of this there is a split in Marxist theory as if you are to accept historical materialism as Marx posits, it necessarily establishes a determinism within the system - a logic of capital, which negates the ability for autonomous action that can manifest the eventual liberation. Cornelius Castoriadis spent some time on examining this in his book The Imaginary Institution of Society and makes a very solid claim that historical materialism must be jettisoned if you want to have a theory of liberation. It is also interesting to hear this interview as it is roughly 10 years before the publication of the Sources of the Self where Taylor spends considerable space working through the ideas of the evolution of the modern identity and the importance of elevation of the artist and creativity. You can hear him articulating those ideas in parts of this interview. It’s a shame we don’t have space in our current marketplace of ideas for these sort of in depth discussions any longer. Ironically, the logic of capital M-C-M’ which necessitates an ever increasing pace in circulation of capital to ensure system equilibrium has relegated such discussions to history.

[@charlytaylor1748]

I think a lot of people are turning to longfirn interviews as a reaction to the TV glitter

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

I think your final paragraph makes a pretty good case for historical materialism.

[@Ryan-dz4si]

Hallelujah! At last!

[@harveyyoung3423]

Part 3/3 (D) In the discussion Taylor and Magee talked of the “advent” of communism and the science of economic necessity and historical determinism destiny and Marx thinking communism would start in London not in more primitive pre-industrial societies. The French left from the 1970s did much work on this increasingly talking about technical changes and their un predictability. My favourite example is from Philip Bobbitt though and the creation of new light mobile cannon around the time of the French revolution along with the French state to codify and register all people inaugurated a completely new form of Warfare and Empire and European political and social order. The cannon technology was not invented for this purpose it did not have his idea as an aim or in mind. Its contingent. Also it took the mind and imagination of Neapolitan to realise these changes and what could be done differently. The way the left had of putting this from Deleuzse from the mid 2000's, was that, in “the contemporary” the “Actual” there are possibilities as well as necessities. Sometimes the imagination can recognise in the contemporary the possibility of a radically new order of necessity what Foucault called an “historical a priori” in that it is just a architecture of a meeting collection, but Badiou an “Event” mathematically structured but with an hole in the middle. It’s all about seeing new possibilities emerging and recognising them. I think the determinism part in all this chance and contingency and imagination is that these possibilities are only actualised if they are at bottom more economically efficient. There remains kind of survival of the fittest from Adam Smith in Marx. But it might be rather Nietzsche’s eternal return not progress see Ibu Khaldun on this. As a note I started to read Hobbes and Leo Strauss after 911. Then in 2008 Hegel and Philip Bobbitt, and after the Financial Crisis, Marx and Carl Schmitt. Now in a recent interview Susan Niemen claims the new left are very interested in Schmitt and have been using him. I recommended to some in the far left back then, that they read him, but as an analysis and a warning not a how to manual.

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

Neapolitan? Ice cream has a mind and imagination?

[@saeed9999]

Finally! How did you do it? This is the missing episode!

[@mfalves11]

Finally!!

[@syourke3]

Marx didn’t predict a society without any conflicts; he only predicted a society that was not divided by class. Of course, that prediction has not come true.

[@emilianosintarias7337]

yes but society still exists, so maybe the time to look back hasn't come yet.

[@syourke3]

@@emilianosintarias7337 And Jesus hasn’t come back either but it’s only been 2,000 years, so it’s too soon to judge. g Come on! Get serious. Marx’s prediction of proletariat revolution was simply wrong.

[@emilianosintarias7337]

@@syourke3 I am serious, are you? Do you base that view on anything substantive? Marx laid out a history going back to antiquity. Marxists like Grossman applied value theory going back 700 years. Capitalism itself floundered and failed to get going for 1000 years, until it finally got a foothold 300-400 years ago. Abolition of slavery floundered for a centuries as well. The American revolution was a political failure from a progressive point of view in 1855, seventy years in. But it would've been wrong to say "get serious" then, despite such a long time passing, because that's not based on anything but years going by. Meanwhile , marx clearly outlined counter tendencies that, should they prevail, could stop proletarian revolution and stop the implosion of capitalism. I can name some things marx, and particularly engels that I think were wrong about, at least in my view, but it's premature to include the coming of post-capitalism.

[@davida.bishop4024]

​​@@syourke3 It's hard to achieve a proletarian class consciousness when the Western propaganda system is so strong. The rich elites put all their energy into assuring another 1917 never happens again. The jury is out. And judging how capitalism is in terminal decline in the West all bets are off as to what may happen in the future

[@anthonyesposito7]

​@@syourke3 What kind of take is this? The revolution is hasnt happened so it won't happen? There is no reason to logically think this. Plus there have already been proletariat revolutions throughout history since Marx so its not far fetched to think that a larger more influential one will come along especially as capitalist continues down this path.

[@pallabidutta968]

If I remember correctly, it is Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor who conferred the epithet of "Language animals" to homosapiens.

[@onestraw-zx1ph]

1. Mentioning alienation without mentioning exploitation of labor is IMHO too philosophical and misses the point: workers are not remunerated for the full value of their labor power. The wage of workers is equivalent to the value they produce in only part of the working day, say 4 hours, but since the working day is 8 hours, the value produced by workers in the other 4 hours is pocketed by the capitalist. The unpaid portion is termed as the surplus value, which makes up the profit of enterprise, interest paid to the money capitalist, and the rent paid to landowners and other members of the rentier class. 2. Marx stresses the historical "mission" of capitalism as the full development of economic conditions on a worldwide basis, in order to usher in the full contradiction of the material conditions of production (productive forces, productivity, science, technology, etc) AND its social forms, the specific historical form of relations of production, the antithetical relations between owners of the means of production and owners of labor power, the workers. This counterintuitive situation of a world of material abundance AND gross unequal distribution escapes the attention of many so-called Marxists. 3. I don't subscribe to the notion that it is violence from the working class that will bring about the initial stage of socialism. On the contrary, IMHO, the violence can just as easily be carried out by the capitalist class, as it desperately hangs on to power. Even now, 2023, countries which are leaning towards a socialist future are being violently confronted by imperialist powers. Thanks for reading.

[@MahmoudIsmail1988.]

I cordially thank you for exposing the superficiality in the pompous conversation between those two do-it-for-the-queen clowns..

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

Which countries are, "leaning towards a socialist future"?

[@RuthvenMurgatroyd]

​@@MahmoudIsmail1988. "do-it-for-the-queen clowns"? Just admit that you hate Anglos. We know that's what you want to say.

[@realchoodle]

i hate it when my philosophy is too philosophical

[@martinburrows6844]

😂😂😂​@@realchoodle

[@andrewvillalobos5686]

Hell fucking yeah! I can’t wait to hear what Taylor has to say on this topic.

[@bwizzle4194]

Lol great comment

[@slavenpuric3803]

Who reads a philosophical journal PRAXIS published in former Yugoslavia from 1964. to 1974. (in the Serbo-Croatian language, have and the international edition in English, French and German) knows what "development of Marx's through" means and how is possible...

[@jjbrewer1]

Just excellent 🤌

[@blairhakamies4132]

Top again👏

[@_KITE]

I long for the days in which these sort of high-level discussions were taking place. Nowadays, the quality of the discourse is so low that if one were to even invoke a term like 'Marxism', they would likely find themselves ostracised or in danger.

[@danieljliverslxxxix1164]

Good. Marxists have committed the most heinous crimes against humanity in the last century all in the name of progress. It is an evil ideology.

[@trevorcrowley5748]

I agree. This aired on the BBC, which is funded through mandatory state television licence. "[...] after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly-only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

[@streb6]

@KITE Agree totally 👊

[@nikolademitri731]

And half the time “Marxism” is being mentioned in modern discourse it’s hardly what it actually being talked about, if at all… I’ve heard things being called Marxism my whole life, and only really came to understand what that actually is by seeking out the information for myself. What I found was I’d never actually heard about Marxism before, just other things tangentially related (or not at all), being called Marxism/ist in some way… I’m sure this experience isn’t remotely unique.

[@sciagurrato1831]

Unfortunately, this is the Harvard effect (elite academic institutions control the intellectual discourse across all fields, humanities, science and professional education).

[@MLV79]

It's interesting that this discussion was recorded at a moment when the Soviet Union was about to begin its death spiral. Marxism is a rich philosophy for sure but Stalin once admitted that it has the disadvantage of being a complicated theory that is difficult for ordinary people to grasp. He said this was an advantage for nationalist & fascist movements.

[@EYEBALLKLOTT]

understood

[@niksatan]

Wow!

[@a_1081p]

It’s a shame that both of the Magee interviews about Marx (this one and the Peter singer one) are conducted w non-Marx specialists who are willing to entertain Magee’s Marx straw-men, esp. those conflating Marxism w the Soviet Union. I’d suggest those with a serious interest in Marx go read Allen Wood’s work.

[@cheri238]

Is it the upper British accent, or am I wrong? What accent does Charles have? Who teaches Marxism at Oxford in 2024, may I ask? I miss Christopher Hitchens, journalist and writer, although he got the Iraq wars wars wrong. He and Stephen Frye's debate against the Catholic Church was flawless.

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

Canadian

[@cheri238]

​@@Philosophy_Overdose Thank you, that explains everything!!

[@riggmeister]

Goodness, inflation is insane; a $64 dollar question from then would be worth $1M today...

[@sciagurrato1831]

Taylor is quite wrong imho in his understanding of Mao but that’s not unexpected as he seems deeply mired in the post-Hegelian outlook on what comprises “philosophy”.

[@nyroysa]

Charles Taylor looked like that... Time is a beast

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

And it's coming for you, too.

[@RK-fr4qf]

Some are more equal than others

[@CyberspacedLoner]

Back to the Future

[@cthoadmin7458]

My only criticism: too short. I'd have loved it if they'd kept the cameras running when Magee and Taylor (which I'm sure they did) had a general discussion about Marxism, unscripted. Not a complaint, we're lucky to have this.

[@epic6434]

He basically says Marxism is a liberation but in what sense? A liberation like Castro in Cuba? A liberation of knowledge and the people would only need to know is what they are and who does all the deciding because it's a big responsibility to make it in capitalism for sure the amount of knowledge a capitalist has is not just in the resources needed to produce a product that is useful throughout the world especially in their own country he'd need to persuade the people with the resources then calculate the cost for receiving it to produce the items he'd have to organize the workforce and meet with distributors to make his products available to people who want it and more importantly afford it that's why there are cooperation s I assume with all the legal and financial burdens business needs team's to be successful these day's the Marx theory seems to give those arrangements to the government so the labor force is satisfied with their lives and their government not being overshadowed by a person who has enough money to live like a king while they are living as subjects is that what I'm hearing or am I totally off base?

[@harveyyoung3423]

Part 3/3 (B) Now I want to outline a deep critique of Marxism though its structural similarity to Hegel but also its uptake by the existing Hegelian conceptions of the State and what is wrong with this. In fact I will draw on one of Charles Taylor’s papers “Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind” from shortly after this interview, published in 1981. Here Taylor coming from the tradition of The Philosophy of Acton from Wittgenstein, shows how the idea of first person immediate content in Hegel lacks the conditions necessary for its recognition by another. That is the self the agent in Hegel can only come to self-consciousness medially through a relation of recognition by another. The “private” experience and thoughts, subjectivity of content of a self then or soul is not a given to it in itself but only through a reflective relation to another, to the “public” realm, objectivity is necessary for subjectivity. Think perhaps you may have views on things and experiences but they only have real activity when recognised as legitimate by others by science by institutions, professionals, media maybe and or courts. Before that people can say it’s just your opinion, or just your feelings. “I don’t believe you”. Now Taylor then sees this as the Hegelian move of erasing or silencing the individual perspective the subjective. The Kantian finite “intuition” is now deflated and rejected for the infinite wide view of science and legal institutions. In Hegel its not expressed as a solacing of the private or erasing, he calls this public transformation a sublation, a taking up and pushing down, but in practice it means the institution is always right. Thus in a paradoxical way, emancipation freedom is actually the transference of the subject, the “private” into the institutional vocabulary of rules and laws and scientific measurements. Thus liberty here means, the deep observation of people’s inner lives and powerful system of instituional technical controlled regulations. This is done in the name of objectivity science progress efficacy and Right and Justice. If that wasn’t bad enough Hegel sees this process of recognition of the self, “for the Sefl” by another (institution) as necessarily a master slave dynamic structure of struggle and conflict. Indeed in his Phenomenology of Mind (Spirit) the move of sublation upwards to Absolute Reason and Freedom necessarily involves Terror and Violence. For the subject to be emancipated into liberty much pain will have to be endured in their correction. There is, from Foucault an image of discipline, of a tree growing while tied to a post to make it straight. But I would add if the tree is thought of as already grown and being bent already then force is required to straighten it. There are Aristotelian Hegelians now growth and nature, but it’s till grow according to the plan, we make of reason efficacy and justice, then you will be fit to be recognised and have a self. Now one problem we have in understanding Marxism in praxis, is we associate the necessary Terror in the cause of emancipation and freedom, as revolutionary Civil War military force semi or completely brutal in its emergency claims for the State and done by men with guns, police with torture. But this is really an historical accident a contingency the violence might well be sanitised subtle done gradually by educators and medical heath care, women with lap tops and thermometers. Any experiences and speech not in the forward direction of emancipation and progress to rights and recognition will not be recognised. I can then understand why in other talks that people might consider become spies and dressing up, so as to force them to recognise experiences and voice. But really they will only recognise where it congruent to them. Their rules and laws will not be persuaded to change by anyone proposing this exercise of freedom over the community laws rules since it will be a political Solidarity and democracy vote which you have to act and they will not agree with unhelpful suggestions. That the whole machine is run though systems of rules: an institution. No one is really responsible. They say we act or speak for the Solidarity institution and act under and out of its legitimate rules and laws and methods. That is to develop Taylor’s focus on the psychology and the individual in all this. Next I’ll discuss the social dimension.

[@g3ndim]

"The “private” experience and thoughts, subjectivity of content of a self then or soul is not a given to it in itself but only through a reflective relation to another, to the “public” realm, objectivity is necessary for subjectivity." Does Taylor answer how an agent or individual find their agency and individuality through action and/or thought? (After reading your comment, I realized I only know of how Hegel justifies Freedom in his dialectical method. There are ways of defining how individuality come to existence like adhering to God, dialectic, faculties of mind, or psychoanalysis. But I feel there still is a gap that I cannot put into words.)

[@williambunter3311]

Paragraphs PLEASE. Unreadable and indigestible.

[@harveyyoung3423]

@@g3ndim In Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit he first off rejects the empiricist view of an "immediacy" of the bare facts, and says these so called bare facts are really "mediated by consciousness or concepts. He thinks this is his corrected Kant with the "immediately" given sensible content removed. Then Hegel starts from Kant's self consciousness (developed from Descartes) and makes the claim that this is not immediate "I think" of a subject, but mediated by reflection. So Hegel thinks that Kant in trying to put together Empiricism (Experience of the world) and Rationalism (Descartes self as the "I think" and concepts)didn't go far enough and so the Hegel has removed the idea of experience and data independently of thought and reflection and also the self as an original self posited "I think" priori to reflection in the understanding and reason. Later in discussing Action and Reason again from Kant the self as agent cannot come to know itself "I think" immediately without mediation though another. That is reflection necessary for a self cannot be internal to its self. The idea now is recognition is required by another. that is i may subjectivity privately think something is true and even reflect myself as reasons and justifications but really i need an external public other as a criteria of justification that then recognises or not the legitimacy of my subjective claims and my subjective justifications and reasons. Reason is not in the individual as reflection and regulation it requires an externality. This externality is on the one hand there another self with which we are in a struggle of both requiring each other for recognition, but also that this involves a loss of freedom and an alienation of authority beyond ourselves alone. So what Hegel has done is taken all views of immediacy he sees in Kant and his predecessors and made them all dependent even mutually dependent. its like when people might question some claim of a persons account of a fact in the world, we might not recognise their claim as its stands to a fact being true without our Critical reflection it means nothing legitimate to us. Also a subject could claim that they have reflection and responsible criteria within themselves, but we might want to subject them to some external criteria. very quickly this will lead to a conflict of legitimacy and a struggle. In the struggle there is a structure and dynamic of mutual recognition and a development of the original positions of both parties. This is a process now a development of the notions not a fixed category and concepts functional s it was for Kant. It turns out that the facts and truth, now have to be institutionally valid (he means institutions of Science) and the people have to be in the social world of rules to have recognition (to be a self is to have a right though instituional laws). In a nut shell public Reason is institutional social as objectivity and is before prior or has privilege and president over any individual private persons sensibility and their person. has a process of progress its a political scientific and legal machine of Reason, that progresses by transforming the private subjective world into the institutional scientific and legal world called sublation. Now we read about the 19th century horrified Critiques of this, but at the time no one read them and Marx is more of a development of Hegel than a deep Critique guess. Hegel dominates the 19th Century rise of science and the State. In the 20th century people stop reading him but the basic view continues in many different from into modern liberalisms and socialisms. People forgot Hegel and thought the only problems were Fascism Communism and an extreme International Liberal Capitalism. We are all Hegelians now in one sense struggling in apparently different directions and interpretations of Reason but these are mere different moments and everybody is really going the same way to Absolute Reason and totality though more and more progress and institutions. eg international capitalism and international justice socialism are not opposites they face the same way. Even the supposed opposite "Environmental protection and back to care for nature is a moment of this. Some even explicitly claim now that they are Hegelians that it Hegel as interpreted as an Aristotelian Actuality of Potentiality of nature to reason. What Hegel means is all around us in the public sphere. Pretty soon it may be impossible to Critique Hegel because there will be no other to Hegel only movers inside will be recognisable. Thankyou for your question hope this was of interest.

[@harveyyoung3423]

@@williambunter3311 Yes i can imagine its horrible to read. These are really my own "private" notes i decided to post in case anyone in "public" might be interested. To deal with this Hegel Marx stuff at any real level is complex in the extreme. And so its not just my private writing that is esoteric, the public subject is necessarily esoteric too. I guess you are Right to say its esoteric and so grant me private no recognition though your public reflections, but I'm not an Hegelian. What can I say? Sorry, but it would take an immense amount of time and energy to get these ideas across in a digestible form, like writing a whole book.

[@williambunter3311]

@@harveyyoung3423 Sorry, harvey, but you're still not using paragraphs. By your not doing so, you deprive readers, or potential readers, of the opportunity to digest your statements and ideas one at a time. Many people will simply not bother to read lengthy paragraphs, not only for that reason but also because it is hard work for the eyes. So, unfortunately you are shooting yourself in the foot, which is a shame because I'm sure you have much of interest to say. As for being 'esoteric', i would say that, as with other sociologists, Marx's terminology may be such at times, but the ideas he puts forward are simple, indeed simplistic, and generally lack substance and accuracy. I remember in my student days, many years ago, our tutor saying that 'theory' is mainly telling you what you already know, in language you can't understand'. This may sound cynical, but when one considers the long-winded drivel put forward by 'thinkers' such as Marcuse, Lacan, Habermas and Deleuze et al, his statement contained much more than a grain of truth! A theory or proposition may be articulated in esoteric language, but it does not necessarily follow that it contains much of value, or even sense. Nor does it indicate that the author has superior understanding of the subject at hand, but is merely a 'chancer'. In truth it just makes apparent his lack of ability to express his ideas clearly, which further suggests that he is not very confident of their worth. Still, as long as he's getting a large university salary and the adulation of his wet-eared students....! Many an impressionable young student feels a sense of superior wisdom when he learns to mimic the language of his supposed academic mentors, regardless of whether he is aware of its ramifications or not (my younger self would have to plead guilty to that charge - sinful pride is ever ready and waiting to ambush all of us).Trouble is, some of them never grow up. You know the sort; sixty years old and standing on the street corner in his duffle coat and corduroy trousers, college scarf and bubble hat,, holding up a Socialist Workers Party banner bearing the slogan 'Victory to Afghanistan' or some similar epithet. Anyway, I've rambled on for too long now. So I'll just wish you well and take my leave.

[@GaariyeJ]

Woooo!!!! 😁

[@harveyyoung3423]

Part 3/3(A) additional note: I want to outline what I consider the central problem of Marxism. Is not really a problem with its science as such i.e. that it is a pseudo scienice. It certainly contains deep incites on systems as whole that is are not easily retrievable or expressible in positive sciences of data and rules and series. In the late 19th Century a new more sophisticated utilitarian economic science was developed called marginalism, which stressed that “Actual” exchanges changes in contracts happened on marginal utility understandings not absolute endowment, which they considered could deal with Marx while also leading to their own expression of inequality and the avoidance of Capital Accumulation and wage collapse, it would lead to arguments that a transfer of goods or utility from the rich to the poor would be small utility loss to the rich and a large utility gain for the poor and so an actual increase in overall or total utility. The original marginalism would only recognise the individual marginal loss by the rich person and it alone would drive their actions and intentions. Following this Marshal developed the idea of the “firm” and “supply/demand analysis greatly improving on the simple atomist view of aggregated individual agents creating new ontological structures. Some of the ideas of the utility transfers became popular after the Great Depression as Welfare programs but the Marxist and Socialists tended to think of these as “merely” patchwork devices to “preserve” and insulate the Capitalist System from collapse as kind of Capitalist reflection to constraint themselves for their self-interest: they need to improve the system to avoid collapse and social and political problems due to mass poverty and inequality. L. von Misses put forward the major attack on Marx by rejecting the idea of a social science of dealing with people as a whole as a system. He did this through a view of a priori economic structure of individual Human Action. In the decades that followed Human Action became a central concern in philosophy and of central relevance to social science politics and psychology. It was motivated by a cousin of Misses, Wittgenstein in his “Philosophical Investigations” drawing on leads from the Marxist economist Sraffa. cont...

[@Muzikman127]

You should really post your comments as one thread. That is to say, your first comment, then all other comments in reply to that. Otherwise, for everyone other than you, in the comments under the video, we will just see a few random parts of your comment in no particular order, and have no way to actually find the other parts, or read them in order

[@harveyyoung3423]

@@Muzikman127 Yes its a problem. I do sometimes comment on the comment in a replay, but usually if its to correct or clarify a particular part of that comment, like a note or a reference. My series of comments are done by memory live while I watch the show and then something else occurs and I add to it. So I often label each one with a time stamp where in the video i am up to when i make the comment. I used to make these notes for years to myself and then a coupe of years ago decided to post them, in case of interest, but didn't really think it through in the terms of a reader. Usually because i post them while watching they are consecutive in terms of time. i watcha bit, then post, watcha bit then post. I didn't know there was a convention of putting your own reply's and reply's to reply's as a way to continuous piece. I thought people might think that was kind of arrogant to do reply's to your own comments. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a go.

[@TheWaveGoodbye-Music]

This has to be the first interview with a Marxist I've seen where they aren't being shouted over every second sentence

[@matsuda1994]

Charles Taylor is no Marxist.

[@fede2]

I don't think it's biased to point out that this episode was more of a grill compared to the others. Really goes to show how deep-seated ideology can be even when the pretense is some sort of neutral or free-spirited exploration of ideas. Frankly, this is a point in Marx's favor.

[@jakkblades]

It certainly is more of a grill than other episodes, and I don't think that is biased to notice. If it were biased to notice facts, even about social things like this exchange, they wouldn't be facts. I don't think that counts as a point in Marx's favor. This is a show put on by the BBC in 1978 at the height of the Cold War--the U.S. just lost Vietnam, the Soviet Union is about to but has not yet invaded Afghanistan and thus begun its tailspin in view of the world. You don't need the concept of ideology to explain aggression toward the philosophy of the regime of a political opponent, especially when it's winning. It's just politics, which is to say its war by other means.

[@fede2]

@@jakkblades I'm not sure how any of this is meant to challenge what I said. Might have something to do with how we understand "politics" and "ideology", because to me it's just hair-splitting.

[@jakkblades]

My understanding of ideology in Marx’s sense is that it’s a “control over the facts, or what counts as facts.” I don’t think you need ideology in this sense to understand the conflict of nations spreading into the area of ideas. There can be objective facts of politics (something I understand the concept of ideology to deny), and one of these could be spiritedness or the desire to defend oneself and the political regime with which one identifies. If you have another understanding of ideology, I don’t mind hearing it, provided we stay civil and don’t begin to bore each other. I may well have already violated the latter, in which case, forget it.

[@fede2]

@@jakkblades The thing is, "spiritedness or the desire to defend oneself and the political regime..." isn't really a "fact", it's more of a goal or an intention. It's that intention that tends to undergird an ideology, which I use to mean, roughly, the way information and convictions are organized to convey a certain picture of the world. To be clear, while this is not Marx's definition, the phenomenon as I've described it is roughly how he lays out these things tend to work. What I was getting at in my original comment was how the dominant ideology tends to trump the pretense of neutrality and fair play when a core tenant is considered to be severely threatened. That's why it's noteworthy that this episode seems to be more on the offensive than most.

[@jakkblades]

@@fede2 Viewed as a process or a practice, politics would feature this spiritedness as one of the facts about it-close to the most essential fact. Politics is fighting, which means to a great extent fighting for “one’s own.” It’s not only that-it’s also fighting for one’s sense of justice, which may cut against spiritedness. But it’s fighting, and moreover there are things that appear over and over in politics, like spiritedness, which would be facts of politics.

[@jimmcmanmon]

I love the five-heads on display here😮

[@MACNAOIS]

I drank some very good beer I purchased with a fake ID, My name was Bryan Magee, I stayed up listening to Queen, When I was seventeen

[@gooseface2690]

We all have a formidable notion of perfection that exists within us. And yet, very little of that is seen manifested in reality. My friend Tony (a Philosopher) reckons that only Human Rights violations can bring out the best in mankind. Any views on that?

[@scythermantis]

Research Paul de Man, "Truth comes from Error" There's a couple Yale University lectures from Paul Fry on this on KZbin, around his 'Deconstruction I and II'

[@joejohnson6327]

I don't have "a formidable notion of perfection that exists within us" & I'm definitely not unique in that respect.

[@alexwisser]

Magee is a master of the provocation. He asks the challenging question in just such a register as to generate a robust answer that opens the subject rather than shutting it down in a ‘gotcha’ gambit aiming at an end game and a close

[@fastinbulvis2223]

Marxism = A grand theory bearing no relation to reality.

[@lorenzbroll0101]

Pity Taylor was not up to the challenge then?

[@mljrotag6343]

The liberation element is just a kind of secular religion.

[@gabrielnemirovsky421]

I always find this comparison quite funny. Marx himself compared bourgeois political-economy to a religion as well. Not to mention all the scholarship from Weber onwards on the connection between Calvinism and the development of capitalism. In the end, I think, we’re not deciding between the secular and the religious, but rather we again find ourselves in another war of religions. The question is which theory of liberation do you find more convincing?

[@paigemccormick6519]

@@gabrielnemirovsky421 Trust the science; be convinced.

[@davidalderson4980]

And those who argue, after Adam Smith, that the market will generate order are asserting a belief in Providence.

[@joshscott6914]

@@gabrielnemirovsky421 You are correct. It is a fool's game to try and find an essence of religion that will continue to prop up the ideological gerrymandering we've all just accepted. Because when you look closely what do you find? Sacred and profane. Over and over.

[@EyeByBrian]

@@davidalderson4980May I suggest that you reread Smith to add nuance here-and especially his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759, before WoN), which lays the ‘groundwork’ for the type of tacit trust between actors that protects (or so he believed) his economic system from outright susceptibility to exogenous ‘hands’ or what we would call (again inaccurately) market ‘forces’. Alas, as brilliant as the ToMS is-and it *is* brilliant-its leverage as a hedge is arguable indeed.

[@johnwilsonwsws]

Given the present breakdown of capitalism and consequent preparations for another world war we need a thorough discussion of Marxist philosophy. This was not it. Most of the discussion accepts uncritically Stalinism’s claim to be the continuity of Marx and Lenin and the two small reservations do not negate this. Engels explained in “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” (essential reading to understand Marxism) - “The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being.” (This is never discussed) - “The great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentality and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end-this great fundamental thought has, especially since the time of Hegel, so thoroughly permeated ordinary consciousness that in this generality it is now scarcely ever contradicted.” (This too is never discussed.)

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

That would probably be because they were discussing Marx, not Engels.

[@cheri238]

Lenin lead the way on Marism in his book on "Tolertarism." Rosa Luxembourg was a source of inspiration. Adam Smith known primarily for a single work- An Inquriey into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776, the first Comprehensive system of political economy, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Capitalism for the last 500 years with its detriment to all societies. What will happen in the elections in America in 2024? I will not vote for either side period.

[@czarquetzal8344]

Marx asserted history indispensable in understanding man but the very foundation of man and his state of being not yet alienated basically is stating implicitly that history itself is the reason why man faces the conflict between master and slave as Hegel contended.

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

Chuck interpreting the world in various ways. As for "eradicating superstition", it's said he now(2024) prays the rosary daily. Think I'll watch another Yanis Varoufakis video. For me, he's got a much better handle on this Marxism thing and why it's still relevant. You know, the whole, "changing the world" part of it. That bit appears to have been of great import to Marx, too. But don't wake Chuck to tell him.

[@petermcnamara7099]

Not sure about this discussion. Ordinarily, I quite like Bryan Magee. The other philosophical discussions that he has hosted (and that have been kindly uploaded by Philosophy Overdose) are excellent. But the lads seem a little insecure here. And Magee, who is usually wonderfully impartial, has nothing but attacks and criticisms for Taylor to rebut, which he does half-heartedly. Given it was filmed in 1978, maybe the depressive decade of the 70s (strikes, oil crisis, Vietnam, etc.) were getting to the west. When discussing the reason for the popularity of Marxism, neither speaker mentioned the word suffering, hardship, or exploitation once. Or the fact that those left-looking African and South American nations were in the fragile state they were (and largely still are) due to colonialism / global capitalism. Fascinating none the less. Thank you!

[@SamMcDonald83]

Feel like this panel could have benefited from Jon Cleese being there...

[@williambunter3311]

Sam McDonald: Fred Flintstone might have raised it a level or two!

[@SamMcDonald83]

@@williambunter3311 the more the merrier🙂

[@vallab19]

I am admirer of Marxism, My fundamental difference is its concept of "Labour exploitation" which I argue is does not give the full picture of the exploitation that the worker undergoes. I published in 1980; 'An alternative to Marxian Scientific Socialism; the Theory Reduction in working hours' which I today call "Zero Work". 'It claims; "Human labour relation in order to obtain their means of subsistence is the root cause of exploitation, results in all evils in the human society". It names 4 kind of labour exploitation. 1. Subsistence Sustenance exploitation (labour compulsion to earn livelihood) 2. Relative Labour exploitation 3. Productive labour exploitation 4. Absolute labour exploitation (total labouring hours) . Marxism deals with with only with the second and the third (surplus value) and ignores the first and the fourth, therefore it failed. Zero Work theory argues for complete abolition of work for wages (means of subsistence) with Universal Basic Income (UBI) should be the final goal. The progress in technology now the GPT can enable it.

[@rutessian]

sure it will. I'm sure a plumber would be happy to come and unclog your toilet and sink for free if he can stay at home and watch tv or play video games and receive a paycheck from the government. Typical marxist, you imagine a world where nobody has to work without thinking if such a thing is even achievable or what that world would actually look like beyond some general, superficial description.

[@harveyyoung3423]

Part 3/3(C)So on the Social Hegel is correct to claim, against the liberals that the social world is not a aggregate of atomistic individuals without structure or shape a topography. Economic life is not just contracts between individuals, the positive science analyses has to do some strange things to explain this. So for liberals exchanges within institutions of public duty and trust etc have to be analysed as the same as exchanges between people in law under those public institutions of law. There can be no duty or trust really only the force of law even within the institutions of the law eg rights over laws are just more laws applied within the legal institution itself, to itself, by the analysis. All contracts are “given in” self interest utility maximisation for the individual. It’s a system of individuals in self interest and the force of negative laws from institutions of other self interested individuals under other laws. This analysis has to go down to communities’ guilds and families. Its all really self-interested contract economic exchange for liberals. Family and friends relations have to be reduced to self interest and they are forced to make claims like “irrationality of reasoned self interest in holding a promise to a friend or family member. Or they talk of long run self interest in keeping promises etc. Hegel’s notion of a “community” an ethical life is much richer then in that it recognises the genuine differences here from simple positive analyses. These are not then contextual variation on self interest but the shape and character of ethical life. Family’s and communities have genuine belongings not available to the positive analysis of self interest. These days the view of Hegel here is akin to Aristotle people have ethical character and virtues are specific to someone’s “real”, Actual role and context. Hegel sees these Ethical shapes though as only having Rational Potential. To Actualise that rational potential in ethical life is to at once see them as finite and in place and moment, and to imagine and think them as under infinite space and time. That is the Universal is the full rational potential of the particular. The operation of Reason here is the application of Science of efficiency and law as Right into and onto Ethical life. The intention then is transform ethical life into measurable quantity out of quality and architecture of rules and the application of legal systems in and over them.in this way the finite ethical is transformed or sublated into a Moral instituional order. The immediacy of ethical relations operating primarily without force and fear of negative law becomes relations “dependent on” and mediated by an external legal institution of threat for violation of the rules. In modern terms from Foucault these laws are not mere regulative but production of new kinds of people and new architectures of observation and control into what was the private sphere. The public sphere slowly takes over the private sphere as safety over risk. It is the scientific rationalisation of human nature. Into law and rules externally applied. The promise of emancipation is recognition in another. And as ethical “what they call unwritten rules and duties”, is transformed into laws the idea of freedom and liberation is now we can change our lives by changing the now legal codification of what was that ethical life. The codification from ethics to morality is meant to given us freedom and mastery over our livers by making the implicit, explicit and then changing the rules as we or as efficiency and justcie sees as fit and right. Further, with the transformation of life into negative laws, we are now able to express Welfare or dependency in an economy: “unfreedom”,as positive law and right. So a place for care as universal as positive law, becomes a universal to the economic system of needs and justice. That is the synthesis of the thesis/antithesis in the contradictions in positive liberal economics. We are now protected by the State but completely dependent on it and it seeks to divide us and re arrange us under the laws. The Economic Crisis is Practical Critique, the degradation of the Crisis forces all pole into the Hegel system for the sake of moving from starvation to Welfare but at huge cost and human transformation. The Crisis is meant to be the moment of the universal over the individual when we all recognise we are all in the same boat whatever our different roles are in ethical life. Self-consciousness through social recognition of being essentially economically the same: skint. It is the event of “Solidarity” against individualism. This is not so different from liberalism Taylorism of efficiency and domestic science in the home and educational programs and external public child care industries. Early years training and Human Capital increase. Universal Child Care and all women to the work place. All the same in the pubic space.

[@otthoheldring]

Isn't this 1987 instead of 1978?

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

The original broadcast actually might have been earlier, in 1977 or even in 1976. But it definitely wasn't 1987.

[@hazelwray4184]

No. It looks nothing like 1987.

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

​@@hazelwray4184For one thing, everyone had shaved-off their sideburns by 1987. Even Margaret Thatcher.

[@waraylitz1614]

No mention of Castro or Che

[@RealDriver0]

I can't tell if marx was an envious man or truly cared about the people because there are many questions I have for socialist & communist

[@anthonyhuber-permanentlyre7808]

*Socialists don't give a damn about the poor, they just hate the rich.*

[@shannonm.townsend1232]

He put in the work

[@hazelwray4184]

... because what? Give a specific reason; stick to the point.

[@zacoolm]

Marx from his grave: the news of my demise are premature”

[@rpf100]

Marxism was not an end-in- itself system. Marx states that implicitly.

[@harveyyoung3423]

Part 1/3 This is great! I am inspired to write a comment its has turned out to be very long. Three parts posted together. Its correct to say that Marxism is a scientific economic materialism, but the understanding of science and social change there is from Hegel's logic (Alex Callinicos lecture). This is really a different notion of nature from Empiricism. Hegel distinguishes its difference from empiricism at the start of his phenomenology and in the logic. I think something like this Critique is still relevant to modern science as empiricism or pragmatism. Just to point out two differences: empiricism takes data as a fact in some sense as if it is an abstract fact, that is the fact is there "given" "immediate" independent of the architecture of apparatus the scientist virtues and duties and values and the scientific institutions and their regulations. This phenomenalism or positivism results in thinking say of an economic exchange between people as just a fact in a kind of abstraction from the laws of contract the difference between a coercive contract and a free contract and separate from really from all other contracts. The best part of Marx is the recognition of this as an error in liberal economic individualist behavioural science. The result is positive economics fails to have concern for the system as a whole Wischenscraften for Hegel and Kant means science as a whole a complete architecting system not separate induvial facts. The part of "Capital" that i think is correct is whereas each individual contract exchange might be rational as individual self interest, when you take these as a whole as a sense of such contacts as the structure of the whole economic system, its subject to a compositional fallacy (Henry Sidgewick). the whole is not the sum of its parts. Each contract is rational but as a whole it is not rational contradictory and so Crisis prone. This scientifically established Rational contradiction from the point of view of the whole is "the real" the "noumena" the "thing in itself" the positive atomistic multiplicities of rational(s) view(s) is "illusion" "mere phenomena" "thing as mere appearance". So this positivism of the science of pragmatic exchange in and though contract law are laws of competition which result in the accumulation of capital, not for its own sake but for each institution as a necessity to compete with others. Each institution to compete in the market must drive down wages to drive up profit so it can invest in more effect machines to cut production costs as understood as greater efficacy and survival. The contradiction in this system is that driving down wages and replacing workers with more productive machines kills off the ability for the workers to buy the goods utilities that are produced. There are many other contradictions such as the worker in production is selling their labour rationally in a contract market, but the very work they do, produces surplus and investment in new machine that puts them out of a job. What I think is great about this is as a kind of natural science you don’t need to add greed by the capitalists or some sinister conspiracy or deliberate by the middle class to the workers. Just the system itself is scientifically contradictory as a whole system. You don’t need the positive science and liberal individuals as a deliberate mask of deceit on the workers by the few owners. It’s a metaphysical and scientific error of abstraction. The positive ideology is not a lie just an error of abstract thinking and science and reason.

[@coimbralaw]

Nobody is gonna read this gibberish.

[@sciagurrato1831]

I might have read it had it been organized into cogent arguments. Sadly, the ability to write and the ability to think are not correlated (r-squared of 0.25).

[@RealDriver0]

No one's reading allat

[@harveyyoung3423]

Yes i can imagine its horrible to read. These are really my own "private" notes i decided to post in case anyone in "public" might be interested. To deal with this Hegel Marx stuff at any real level is complex in the extreme. And so its not just my private writing that is esoteric, the public subject is necessarily esoteric too. I guess you are Right to say its esoteric and so grant me private no recognition though your public reflections, but I'm not an Hegelian. What can I say?

[@harveyyoung3423]

@@coimbralaw Yes i can imagine its horrible to read. These are really my own "private" notes i decided to post in case anyone in "public" might be interested. To deal with this Hegel Marx stuff at any real level is complex in the extreme. And so its not just my private writing that is esoteric, the public subject is necessarily esoteric too. I guess you are Right to say its esoteric and so grant me private no recognition though your public reflections, but I'm not an Hegelian. What can I say?

[@electrolytics]

This Taylor has made a good living spewing this tripe for decades. At some point these charlatans must realize they're wrong but by then they realize it's a good gig, so they keep on bloviating.

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

I believe he was last seen praying the rosary, so there you go.

[@TheGuinever]

Greed and ambition result in the concentration of wealth and power REGARDLESS of which economic or political system any country operates under.

[@jabrokneetoeknee6448]

A stateless and classless future society does sound like utopian thinking. But looking at the development of human civilization, there does exist a trend across the centuries of wealth and power gradually becoming less concentrated. The great empires 2000 years ago operated on a slave economy, with class divided among masters and slaves; the feudal societies had lords and serfs; and today we have capitalists/financiers and the proletariat. At each phase, the relative power held by both groups became more equitable. Not because of some change in human nature, but out of material necessity. Likewise, although capitalism works better than any other economic or political system yet tried, capitalism is succumbing to its inherent contradictions and already humanity is suffering by its efforts to sustain this economic model which is doomed.

[@nigecheshire9854]

@@jabrokneetoeknee6448 sounds globalist elitism and boring to me.

[@harveyyoung3423]

Part 3/3 However, this is really too indebted to recent Hegelian thought, like John McDowell. I think Hegel did actually conceive of absolute reason and freedom as rational aims of progress. The escape from some natural limiting/normative state in part subjection to nature to a higher rational free state where we place ourselves under institutions of laws that have gradually “sublated” nature and our nature into human rules civic society and right, that is human laws of freedom. The problem of Reason in Hegel is not the science of nature but the science of right though institutions. Its seems here Hegel could not conceive that absolutely rational universal infinite laws can becomes a tyranny probably even worse than Hobbes nature in that it seeks to transform us not just constrain us negatively. The laws and sciences are themselves productive of the human being (Foucault, kind of.). The problem is not that we have no freedom and power in institutions to change and Critique the laws we are under. I mean in the old idea of a law of nature there is no hope of changing it only technology with it. The problem is only Absolutely Rational expression is qualified or legitimate speech as an act of freedom to change the laws we are under. That changes are reflective freedom any expression can be made out to be an error of un-freedom. Since absolute freedom and reason is a hope, a project and idea or a utopia to come, it cannot provide a criteria or standard for judging expression of it anticendentley. The Criteria being law like always makes the finite the local the place the moment subordinate to the infinite the global the special the end time to come. Hegel does not deny these mundace contexts only that they have to be improved with respect to wider and greater scope. Its always more laws bigger institutions dealing with more and more stuff more and more people to transform(I.Berlin and Foucault a bit here). Now, Marx lived at a time when Hegel was big over Europe, what they call now the Hegelian Right or Hegelian State Nationalism. That of course is just a stage towards internationalism without states really, but at his point Germany and then Bismark and U.S. Grant wanted transforms into being unifying sublating States. It is this Nation State Hegelian Political context that Marx is interpreted though both as a practical condition that is present in European States on which to bring about communism, and as a way of interpreting communism. It is the Hegelian State and the sublimating process of absolute reason and freedom as transformation into higher wider laws that is the problem. It is from this background already laid architecture and ways of thinking that both Fascism and Soviet communism emerged. I mean the problem is in Marx anyway, its analysis of system and of freedom and nature is much better than empiricism and pure reason but its deeply flawed in itself as an account of either. However how it went wrong and the way it went wrong is the uptake of it from within Hegelian State thought and political context. Its curious that when Charles Taylor is asked where the Marxist future is in 1978 he doesn’t mention Foucault Derrida and Deleuze, who must have been well known in philosophy circles. Many people associate its problems with revolutionary warfare civil wars State Terror as pseudo military violence and emergency powers as necessary as the very image of the problem. We are accustomed by repetition movies documentary to think the Terror of Freedom is “men” in uniforms, as military and police, hell bent on bringing about a kind of Toxic Patriarchal State run like a machine. We cannot seem to get our heads round the fact that the absolute reason in Hegel can be a legal institution fighting to protect all from risk and harm in the name of increasing freedom and protection, called Justice, and it will be women as carers and medical health risk science that will the method of rational security. On the journey to absolute equality freedom and security though the State and corporations transforming our world our lives and ourselves. Kant’s analysis of the way image thinking holds out mind from essences. The way association and repetition remove our freedom to see and reason is better that Hegel and Marx. Many thanks for posting this "Philosophy Overdose"

[@dennisfarris4729]

Amazing, it fell apart almost instantly! As it's based on a uniformity in society that has never been the case... Evolution is required.

[@jato72]

Real Capitalism has never been tried.

[@codyplatona6886]

why not :(

[@shannonm.townsend1232]

Your kinda right, it's usually a blend of capitalism and socialism

[@jimmcmanmon]

What people usually mean by “real capitalism “ is a unrealistic utopian fantasy. It’s better to stick to capitalisms as they have and do exist. Elite control enforced by a powerful state apparatus and military which controls most aspects of society through control of the necessities of survival. This system tightens it grip with each new advance in surveillance technology etc. most of the people complaining about being betrayed by the globalist elites are sadly mistaken about why that is. They fail to understand that they are no longer needed and simply an expense to be cut. It’s just business.

[@deanedge5988]

Shocking how this complacent bourguise chatter might have seemed to the similar class of the wholly admirable (otherwise) Magee in say Prague in 1978...

[@theghostofrodneydangerfiel9299]

Im not jocking mao and Lenin and Stalin, but something tells me Taylor never read them or maybe just a passage or two. He does not know what they said, it is obvious.

[@hazelwray4184]

You're not jocking Mao? - Jocking?

[@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry]

​@@hazelwray4184Yeah, you know. To make him into a Scotsman.

[@danielom8446]

For once, even the fearsomely brilliant Magee is the (relative to his interlocutor) ignorant party. Artfully done. What a pleasure.

[@danieljliverslxxxix1164]

Magee was sensible enough to see through the façade that Marxists hide themselves in.

[@plekkchand]

Where, exactly? And why should one be surprised that even the most brilliant might not find another who is literally ignorant - doesn't know- of something the other knows? I don't find Taylor surpassing fearsome brilliance, to say the least.

[@danielom8446]

@@plekkchand you misinterpreted

[@zachmorris-nq7uc]

Basic dialectics denies the end of conflict/contradiction. Its the entire basis of marxism and both presenters get it terribly wrong.

[@kelly980]

@@zachmorris-nq7uc how so? I tend to find Marxists use the word dialectics in different and incoherent ways.

[@mariosimas]

I think that Bryan Magee put it clearly at minute 8:30 when he said "when this magical act....." Says a lot to me of all marxism theory

[@brianvanvriends]

Mr Taylor, thank you for revealing the failings of Marxism. I suspect this wasn't your intention, but it is certainly the result. Great Series.

[@fortinbras47]

19:02 Magee saying Marxism posits a society without conflict 19:35 Physical resources are limited (hence conflict over their use) An even deeper example of a resource being "cruelly finite" is time. A life on Earth only lasts so long. I remember Prof. Gary Becker making this point that economic questions never disappear because someone's time is inherently limited.

[@brucesmith1544]

that's not a resource you can fight over though

[@fortinbras47]

@@brucesmith1544 ​ People certainly fight over time! A military draft or the police can explicitly seize it. In labor markets, people sell it. Forced labor expropriates it. Death destroys it. Waiting in line (i.e. queuing) can deliver goods for the price of time.There can be conflict and competition between family, friends, colleagues, the boss, and others over who gets your time.

[@fortinbras47]

@Bruce Smith Hundreds of thousands of men or more have left Russia because Putin is threatening to draft them and take their life and time. There's no way out of the reality that people's time is a scarce resource, that time can be spent in alternative activities, and there will inevitably be tough tradeoffs and dispute over how that time is spent. Furthermore, as a society grows more productive and wealthier, time actually becomes more and more valuable because it is *always* so constrained and scarce! In some sense, the economic problem for time becomes more difficult rather than less difficult as a society grows more technologically advanced! This is an absolutely fundamental issue that many early economists did not recognize.

[@brucesmith1544]

@@fortinbras47 I suppose you could look at it that way, but you were talking about lifespan, which you can't increase by taking someone else's. But I see what you mean.

[@arjunravichandran7578]

Then people should read Capital. Marx describes the struggle over time of labour in section on the working day Marx and later marxists posit one of the immediate goals of socialist transformation to decrease the time required to do necessary labour, but also how the labour should be planned in a participatory manner. This not only frees up time for humans to pursue higher pursuits and be leisurely, but also reduces the dreariness of necessary work.

[@joejohnson6327]

I want my utopia! 🤤

[@hotephetep947]

Eff member let's gather here..#politicalschool

[@harveyyoung3423]

Part 2/3 This lead to second advantage of Hegelian Marxist science. The Crisis of capitalism that result from the system contractions: manifest as mere symptoms such as “falling wages” problem, “fall in the price of goods produced” “over supply” “deflation” “unemployment”. Positivism seeks to deal with the symptoms bit by bit not as a systemic problem, but the positive and pragmatic science to predict outcomes and con sequences of actions breaks down becomes anomic, not law like, the system collapses since it is no longer a law like predicable system even for individual positive contracts. Thus positive science is contradictory in that its practical will over time make it impossible to apply as the system moves from being continuous symmetric covariant to contravarient to disordered. At this point there is no possibility of a science. They call it an anomaly: a result of an extrinsic anomalous event. But it is predictable with Hegel Marx as an intrinsic system contradiction. If there are then radical changes and the creation of a new system, positive science cannot understand or express the move or transition from one to another system. They have to talk of radical breaks, discontinuity, paradigm shifts in logic, reason, science, predictability and truth conditions. Relativism between incomparable incommensurable sciences that cannot be “translated” between and across each other. On the other hand Hegel and Marx, conception of processes in scientific systems as manifesting contradictions and then moving forward can. This is what has been called dialectic: thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis. An example might be if you get £10 you can buy a couple of pints of beer. If you get £100 you and your mate can go out clubbing. You get £1,000, you can go on holiday have load of beers and clubs. You get £10,000. You and loads of mates can go on a mega holiday. You get £100,000 and you can buy a pub, do it up, and run it with your mates as a club. You get a £1,000,000 you can buy a brewery and a chain of pubs. Now you get £10,000,000 and you can develop a city centre and then money from that and start to control and change the pub and alcohol laws through the people who live in your city. Then everybody is drunk and the whole thing collapses. Now for positivism his is really just an accident of nature that you cannot drink 1,000,000 bears in a life time. The process here are mere details and contingencies for positivism. From Hegel and Marx the gradual change in each additional £10 is also a category change a change, of state, or a phase change. The new state has new properties and attributes not present in the previous state but the movement is still expressible by degree. Now we can track a gradual material shift from being subject to the laws of contract, ie unfree in a normative sense under negative freedom and right, to been free over the very negative laws that constrain you. The key shift in Hegel and Marx is not the break from natural necessity to collective escape but subjection under a new higher class, as Taylor and Magee put it but the movement from what they might call being treated by the normative negative laws on limiting natural freedom. This is for Hegel and Marx the move from the laws treating us as if a mere object of nature and subject to science and law, and the move to freedom not as limited by law but freedom to change the very laws that would limit “us”. It is a move from being an “it” to a “someone”, that is freedom over our normative laws and subjection not freedom from nature and other natural persons. For Hegel and Marx this is freedom as reflection, the ability not so much to change the natural architecture but the legal and normative architecture. That is key to understanding the problem they discuss between nature and freedom in Hegel and Marx. Really the idea of a nature outside of human institutions and architecture, rule and norms is an abstraction for them and not really a real but a myth (Wilfred Sellars). In a way the opposite end of the cosmos the Sovereign or God in himself and independent self sustaining object that can act on the world with laws or force is also a myth of abstraction and the idea then of a person as either an individual object of nature under laws of nature or a radically free agent, free to act on the world both are unreal mythical abstractions abstractions that appear to metaphysically support the illusion of positive science. There is not really two incompatible spheres of nature (Newton) and norms (Laws) with people in between in some way in Hegel and Marx. The key is humans are at once in both, and the two cannot be thought separately without error and contradiction. There is no conflict between science of nature and the “desire” or “will” or striving for “absolute freedom”. Newton or positive science do not give us nature in itself, and the desire for “absolute freedom” is an mythical error.

[@robinblick9375]

This title is an oxymoron. Read 'The German Ideology' to see why.

[@seancidy6008]

Jordan Peterson

[@danielh5159]

love the show, but this is a weak episode-half the time is spent discussing the 'mistakes' or 'shortcomings' of marx. i guess that we the late '70's for you. this one certainly hasn't aged as well as most discussions in the series.

[@pitdog75]

I love how Magee, while being a great host, shows the gaping holes in Marxism during this exchange.

[@lpstreatstime1602]

Parasite on public money.

[@rinkydinky78]

What an irony he's tenured at all souls lol

[@musterionsurly]

So that's 1 for you 99 for me, 1 for you 99 for me, 1 for you 99 for me, stop complaining and get back to work ... haha

[@farrfarr5697]

Today the level of intellectual discussion has sunk down to the depths of "woke", the language of the inarticulate animal, but it will quickly pass as a "bad dream" and humanity will wake to dream better.

[@voxxiigen7797]

Beat up your straw man elsewhere.

[@casteretpollux]

This guy is not a Marxist and this talk doesn't cover Marxist philosophy (dialectical materialism) or even the analysis of the contradictions within capitalism. No alternative to reading for yourself if you want to find out about Marxism. Suggest the Communist Manifesto and the Introduction to Capital (on Marxist method) as baby steps.

[@williambunter3311]

The division of labour cannot be avoided, especially in large populations. We cannot all be artisans capable of single-handedly manufacturing goods in their totality. To say that a person working, for instance, in a car factory making steering wheels, is reduced to being merely a cog serving the interests of others, is to ignore the fact that others are serving that person's own interests in return. If he/she owns a car, then the tyres have been made for his/her car by someone else. So have the windscreen wipers, the brakes and all the other component parts of their vehicle. Specialisation does not produce alienation. Alienation has a deeper cause. It is true that the type of society and its mores and culture contribute towards the percieved social identity of its members. But this is not a unique fact recognised only by Marx, nor by him first. It is true, also, that employers, especially larger corporations, have a noticeable influence on the moral creeds of many of their employees, particularly on the impressionable ones who have no particular foundation of personal morality by which they abide. Today, for example, we see employers imposing diversity training on their staff. Or offering their employees rainbow-coloured i.d. ribbons to wear in the workplace and in their intercourse with their customers and with the public. The underlying message is, if you want to progress in your career with us, make sure you present yourself as ideologically Woke. And millions comply! Marx recognised the power of the pen, but one wonders if he could have foreseen the global impact that the mainstream media exercises today. The media is far less interested in giving information than in shaping the views of its readers or viewers. And, sadly, its success in moulding public opinion is due to the moral poverty, apathy and atrophy of the majority. Indeed, as I believe Churchill once stated, there in no such thing as public opinion - only published opinion. Yes, mankind has an identity problem. A huge one. It is lost and confused. The large number of philosophers and gurus who attract the following of multitudes who are eager to 'discover' self-awareness and self-realisation make this self-evident. And we see this alienation even more demonstrated today by those who 'choose to identify' their gender other than according to their biological sex. Such people are so ontologically unbalanced and unhinged that they ferociously grab hold of the confusions and insanities of postmodernism. Anything to either have an identity or, as a second prize, to deny the very concept of a stable identity existing at all. What is the answer? For me it is found in putting one's life into the hands of God, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. A long time ago something occured called the Fall, where the first man became alienated from God. True self-awareness was lost. And this loss was passed on genetically to all following generations. Christ alone can set someone free from delusion. The bible tells us that Christians will one day 'know as they are known'. Christ said that He came to free us from our alienation from God. All types of alienation, whether it be alienation between man and man, alienation from nature, between nations, or within the individual's self-perception, are the result issuing from man's alienation from his Creator.

[@garethbarry3825]

Sir, this is a brilliant comment- starting with one of the fundamental and inescapable criticisms of Marxism, and ending with the solution.

[@loudenlaffnite246]

Holy bait-and-switch, Batman! You actually sounded like a rational human being until that final paragraph -- and then: poof, magical thinking and Christian-apologist fantasyland.

[@williambunter3311]

@@loudenlaffnite246 I feel sorry for you.

[@loudenlaffnite246]

@@williambunter3311 Don't -- happy is he who faces the world head-on, without fantastical insurance policies.

[@williambunter3311]

@@loudenlaffnite246 You're not happy, Louden. Your way of speaking makes that clear. You need the Lord Jesus Christ to give you a true life.

[@yahyadiawlla673]

No sound

[@serhatboran3640]

No sound.

[@casteretpollux]

In due course, sound arrived. As, very likely, will social revolution.

[@davegaskell7680]

Great discussion. The big flaw in Marxism though is that some people are simply better than others (i.e. more creative, more talented, more hard working, etc) and these individuals are held back and therefore progress in general is stifled. That weakness of Marxism is precisely the strength of Capitalism.

[@maofas]

This is a common misconception by people who have not read Marx. Socialism does not attempt to give an equality of outcomes, only an equality of opportunity where your talent or hard work becomes the most important factor in your success rather than whether you can afford school or if your father owns the company.

[@casteretpollux]

Warning. No discussion of dialectical materialism (Marx's philosophy) in this talk and an inaccurate, limited and hostile presentation on Marx's politics.

[@amourdesoipittie2621]

Warning Marx never used the Dialectical historical materialism term to describe his own philosophy but only called it a true naturalism and humanism. There is an important component of dialectics. But it only be appreciated by being a true humanist and naturalist not by mouthing words of official communist parties.

[@stellamcnab4928]

Unpresidented social control.....

[@artlessons1]

Thanks for the interview. I am disappointed, though not surprised in reading the comments, that people are commenting on evaluating the speakers for their existential entertainment rather than commenting on the contents ,as is the point of philosophy. Marx replaces the x of Hegle's concepts ,, with his own version, then tries to snap it back into place for others ( ironically for his slaves to do the violent work ) after he is gone. So, to carry out his will , instead of being a free utopia without conflict, it became a disaster, crashing itself, not capitalism. Marx had a very exaggerated misunderstanding of the labour and management domain. Orion wisely pointed out that he sees through the eyes of the slave he holds on his shoulder. Hegel was influenced by this piece of wisdom. There is no conflict there, but it is created by Marx's interpretation. I find Charles Taylor to be a weak man, a Marx fanboy like a Nietzsche fanboy, who appears intellectually wise but, in fact, dumb and arrogant.

[@aaronwilkinson8963]

Marx cursed us all to hell

[@radscorpion8]

borrrringggggg

[@Frohicky1]

Saying that Marxism is rich is like saying a house is quaint or a woman bubbly.

[@frankbarron1907]

I’ve got a great idea! Let’s work out a system of trade that will help settle this debate. Let’s take millions of dedicated Marxist from the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and other parts of the West and swap them out for anyone in Cuba, Venezuela, and Hong Kong who want to leave those countries behind, in favor of life in the West. In this way we can create nations which are populated by nearly 100% marxists, while simultaneously freeing people who’ve been under the yoke of Marxism from those systems. Now with nearly 100% Marxist participation in Cuba, Venezuela, and Hong Kong we can measure the success rate of those nations against the economic success of those who’ve emigrated away. Those countries which the marxists moved to would face catastrophic failure on every level, leading to mass starvation and death. Meanwhile, the immigrants who moved to the Capitalist West would almost universally work to build themselves lives of comparative success and prosperity. Nothing would please me more than to see this happen.

[@rutessian]

Something like that would never happen because a parasite can't survive without a host.

[@frankbarron1907]

Well said.

[@ancientgamer694]

Then you ought to be fair and we also switch all defenders of 'free trade' and 'freedom of choice' and the 'liberal capitalist system' with the labourers in the third world that actually produce all the prized goods that make our Glorious West so prosperous. Those people that are subject to the iron laws of capital accumulation, profit margin and the endless drive of capitalists to extract more and more surplus value. Then we shall see what your freedom of expression or freedom of choice means when you slave away to earn your wage that cannot sustain you and your family. What will it then mean to have freedom to choose your employer when all of them crush your body, spirit and do not give you a life of dignity. When you see the movements that attempt to bring fourth actual liberation get crushed by American or otherwise Western intelligence agencies, while being labeled as terrorists. When you see that the corrupt politicians who only serve the interests of elites, will only be allowed to export raw materials or cheap labour, due to pressures by international monetary institutions and corporations. Then you would realise the wealth accumulation of the West is based on a lie, a stolen valor and a still oppressive system and you would have to admit all these notions of freedom are in fact, a justification of centuries of exploitation, ruthless despotism and colonial structures.

[@astralcowboy5511]

Fantastical utopian abstract bunk philosophy in failing repeatedly to work practically shocker

[@PsilentMusicUK]

See all the people in the comments talking about how the quality of intellectual discourse has fallen off a cliff in the last 40 years? You're the perfect example as to why.

[@astralcowboy5511]

@@PsilentMusicUK Wouldn’t you say actually you’re the example, given as you only employ a rather lazy and trite ad hominem without any attempt at ‘high brow’ debate. Prob because I’m not wrong, am I.

[@coimbralaw]

The philosophy of ENVY.

[@davidalderson4980]

Lazy, unthinking nonsense.

[@MK-nv8sl]

How pathetic to have talked about Marxism in 1978 and being cute and clever avoiding looking at the pile of tens of millions of corpses that directly resulted from this set of disastrous ideas. The corner stone of Marxism by Lenin’s definition was theory of surplus value. This scientific “breakthrough” was debunked as early as the end of 19th century: in the real world the value of anything is only in the eye of the beholder, the buyer who cares the least about how much labor went into the product or how much of it was labor, capital, etc. The value of bottled water in the dessert is hundred times higher than otherwise even though the amount of labor was the same to make it. So much for the surplus value, for the exploitation, etc. etc. And if there are several manufacturers competing to produce bottled water and it is available everywhere then it’s value goes down, with same amount of labor applied.

[@ally11488]

You'd love Liz Truss.

[@jimmcmanmon]

The corpse are still piling up from the current imperialist/corporatist system. Call it capitalism, if you like. Millions die every year from preventable causes exacerbated by hoarding by a parasitic elite and their bought for servants. History tells of genocide and domination in the pursuit of wealth. But I’m sure you’ll claim that is human nature not the action of an immoral system.

[@bankutsuuzumaki8534]

21:38 marx was right China did it most advanced country on earth soon tm ^^