The Actual Legacy of the Frankfurt School & Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man

Professors Jeremy Cohan and Benjamin Serby explore the influence of the Frankfurt School on the New Left and discuss what the left today can draw from Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (and what it should leave in the past).
Read their article in Catalyst: catalyst-journal.com/2021/09/...
Watch Part 2 of this interview: • Cultural Marxism, Debu...
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[@thedualtransition6070]

The Frankfurt School rejected historical materialism and political economy, calling it Marxist is like calling a burger without a patty a "non-patty burger". Many were employed by the US state (some the OSS the forerunner of the CIA) while in the US (maybe it should be called the Washington School), and much of their funding came from rich Americans, which would not have happened if they had kept the centrality of economic class. Gramsci integrated culture and materialism, most of the Frankfurt school were explicitly anti-communist. So we get "critical;" theory without the central dimension of class, nicely defanged.

[@tylerhackner9731]

Thanks for this discussion

[@sunalwaysshinesonTVs]

We're talking about critical theory, Frankfurt School & Marcus... so I think an appropriate comment give this forum would be, I really like Serby's back half-filled book shelf backgrounds. In addition to a new twist on the partial object, it's also a nice twist on the contrived groomed bookshelves, with the one or few prominently displayed titles.

[@RobinHerzig]

Thanx for helping me better digest Marcuse. I love it.

[@robbibittybob20]

I think Marcuse's best feature is his admission that ODM is an analysis of tendencies rather than a definitive prophecy. Its refutation is baked in; he admits fully that the affluent society could collapse under its own weight and the tendencies could reverse, the contradictions becoming explosive again. In this way ODM is the strongest indictment of Social Democracy and the golden age of capitalism written.

[@pauljackson1709]

M. takes a despairing idea - absorption of revolutionary class consciousness due to capitalism's powers of absorption (hedonism/individual rebellion in culture, reform in politics) - w/o total despair. Read it awhile back. Guess: he criticized 'beats' as bourgeois individualistic, v liked 60s rebellion as a political movement that seemed to embody his "great refusal."

[@fredwelf8650]

I didn't really like this presentation. I felt that Marcuse's revolutionary marxism was omitted, that is, that Marx was a revolutionary above all in his mature works which Marcuse identified. Marcuse in 'Reason and Revolution' addresses how consciousness is essential in the activity of ideology critique which Marx describes in the "German Ideology." Marcuse focussed on Marx's important categories of alienation, consciousness and labor but disagreed with the traditional interpreters of Marx that the economic reductionism was primary. Marcuse points out how consciousness is above the economic analysis which is not unimportant. The main issue is why the revolution has not occurred, what a revolution would look like in terms of strategy and tactics and its policy goals. The last thing anyone wants is a fascist police state led by authoritarian courts.

[@Walker-ld3dn]

I kept waiting for Moon Zappa to be called next. Where did he learn to speak? Like really?

[@adamkeeney398]

Why do your scholars have the cadence of 14 year-old girls from the San Fernando valley? It's really like um striking.

[@capitalistrealism7680]

Listening to Benjamin Serby had a hint of what Terence McKenna would be if instead of Botany he was doing Marx studies.

[@patrickholt2270]

To what extent was the Cuban revolution a point of reference for Marcuse? Given that it began with bourgeois and student putchists doing caudillismo, who for a variety of personal and contextual reasons converted themselves to Marxism in the process of pursuing revolution and guerilla war against then Batista dictatorship.

[@oeautobody3586]

Definitely critical people, so depressing.

[@_x__q]

Say “like” one more time please.

[@hotstixx]

The word ' Like' appeared 10,000 times in this video.Seriously,where and when did this valley girl intellectual thing get going ? - Its awful.

[@geoffreynhill2833]

Yes, it's a pity Capitalism hasn't collapsed but it's getting there. 😉