RadixJournal - January 07, 2018


Bowden! - 9 - Frankfurt School Revisionism


Episode Stats

Length

49 minutes

Words per Minute

135.81326

Word Count

6,730

Sentence Count

301

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary

In this episode, we look at cultural Marxism, critical theory, and the Frankfurt School, and how they all went hand in hand in the development of the Marxist project in the 20th century. Richard and Jonathan discuss the origins of cultural Marxism and critical theory.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Vanguard, a podcast of radical traditionalism.
00:00:24.560 Here's your host, Richard Spencer.
00:00:27.380 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Vanguard.
00:00:32.860 And welcome back, Jonathan Bowden, as well, my partner in thought crime.
00:00:38.420 How are you, Jonathan?
00:00:39.660 Yes, it's a pleasure to be here.
00:00:41.320 Yes. Well, I mentioned thought crime.
00:00:44.600 That's quite an apt term for the subject of discussion this week,
00:00:50.380 and that is cultural Marxism, critical theory, and the Frankfurt School.
00:00:55.800 Those are, of course, three distinct things, but they're obviously interrelated as well,
00:01:02.780 and I think they can be discussed as one.
00:01:06.220 Well, Jonathan, to get the discussion started,
00:01:10.160 I think it would be a good idea to look at cultural Marxism historically
00:01:16.180 and ask where it's coming from, and in particular, what was the milieu like in interwar Germany
00:01:27.140 where so many of these figures like Adorno and Benjamin and Horkheimer arose?
00:01:33.080 Yes. It's a sort of, I think you've got waves of feminism that we discussed in a previous podcast,
00:01:43.000 and now you've got waves of Marxism or waves within waves.
00:01:48.260 Marxism, when it started out, of course, had a lot of cultural theory attached to it,
00:01:52.620 and Marx was heavily influenced by utopian socialist theory early on
00:01:57.540 in the so-called Paris manuscripts and that sort of thing.
00:02:00.640 That was all junked, and Marxism became a heavily economically concentric discourse,
00:02:05.900 very reductive economically.
00:02:09.140 A sort of alleged science now regarded 150 years on from those events as a sort of pseudoscience,
00:02:16.000 and this remained in play until the early stages of the 20th century,
00:02:20.400 and Marxist parties tended to replicate that at a lower sort of political level.
00:02:25.720 But in and around the First World War, with Gramsci's ideas,
00:02:29.560 which he wrote down in the prison notebooks when he was interned,
00:02:33.420 a type of cultural discourse began to emerge,
00:02:37.440 whereby Gramsci had the idea that the superstructure and the base of society were disconnected
00:02:43.280 so that things could exist at a cultural level which were not totally economically determined
00:02:48.080 and couldn't be held completely to be economically managed.
00:02:53.320 also that, in order to discuss them, he needed a wider field of reference.
00:02:59.060 Partly, this was the desire of frustrated intellectuals who wanted to use Marxism,
00:03:04.020 who also wanted to discuss culture, which was their abiding source of interest.
00:03:08.520 But it was also an attempt to broaden the appeal of Marxian ideas.
00:03:13.140 And in the 30s and the 20s in Germany, schools of rioters began to emerge
00:03:20.020 that were only concerned with man in society, in John Flaminance's view, term,
00:03:26.860 were not concerned really with econometrics or economic determinism at all,
00:03:32.020 were only Marxian in this newfangled way,
00:03:36.140 and had a heavily theoretical take on life.
00:03:41.360 I remember a Marxian deconstructionist lecturer once telling me 30 years ago
00:03:46.820 that the bourgeois goes to life with common sense, the Marxist with his theory,
00:03:53.480 and this theoretical overload whereby everything in life has to be theorized
00:04:00.320 and every text that one comes across has to be subjected to critical analysis
00:04:05.540 or the theory of critique, critical theory,
00:04:08.900 gave rise to this school that was concerned with the examination of literary texts,
00:04:14.680 with cultural anthropology, with sociology, with social psychology,
00:04:20.320 with adaptations of most of the social sciences to life,
00:04:25.760 and was only vaguely concerned with economics.
00:04:28.860 For instance, Fritz Naarman's large bull bear moth,
00:04:32.580 which is an Marxian analysis of the economics of National Socialist Germany,
00:04:37.640 was one of the few books of economics that was ever written
00:04:40.320 that came out of the Frankfurt School.
00:04:42.860 Most of it was concerned with cultural critique and critical cultural theory
00:04:51.160 involving very outlandish areas, such as sociology of music,
00:04:57.000 which was a particular area of Adorno's concern.
00:05:00.720 Let me jump in here and mention a few things.
00:05:04.080 It's worth pointing out that the Marxist project had failed on its own terms by the 1930s
00:05:13.380 in the sense that Gramsci, and I believe Gramsci, some of his writings weren't really known
00:05:20.500 until much later, into the 50s.
00:05:23.020 But anyway, Gramsci was put in prison by fascists.
00:05:27.320 In a sense, in Italy, the fascists had won,
00:05:30.780 and they had defeated a lot of the Marxist parties.
00:05:35.220 They had some proletarian support, I'm sure, things like this.
00:05:39.960 The whole Marxian project of an economic determinism, of capitalism creating these contradictions
00:05:47.980 that create some kind of apocalyptic-like scenario, and then the proletariat rise up,
00:05:55.040 that really hadn't happened.
00:05:56.580 And also, with Frankfurt School members, at least ostensibly,
00:06:04.480 they were highly critical of what the Soviet Union had become,
00:06:08.400 that the Soviet Union really wasn't it.
00:06:11.940 It wasn't the utopia.
00:06:13.400 It was maybe something they deemed a perversion.
00:06:17.560 So those were certainly important factors.
00:06:20.540 And also, it's worth pointing out that in this,
00:06:23.040 if we're talking about the Frankfurt School milieu of Adorno and Benjamin,
00:06:27.840 you had people who probably weren't that interested in economics.
00:06:31.680 You know, Benjamin, some of his great writings are on 19th century culture in one book,
00:06:39.340 but aphoristic writings about life in the modern age.
00:06:43.380 And certainly, Adorno was kind of a classical music snob.
00:06:48.220 He was very interested in Beethoven and something like that.
00:06:51.860 So anyway, it's a very, very interesting milieu that all of this came out of.
00:06:59.900 But maybe, Jonathan, where did it, you know, or you can talk about two things.
00:07:04.920 Where was it going, and what was really the essence of their cultural project?
00:07:12.640 I think the essence of their cultural project was to revolutionarily change
00:07:18.580 the way in which Western culture was thought about and received.
00:07:22.140 So it was a grandstanding ambition, at any rate.
00:07:25.540 It was to totally change the way in which Western culture was perceived
00:07:30.020 by those who created it and by those who were the receptors of its creation.
00:07:34.020 I think this involved an attempt, basically, to go back to the theory
00:07:41.500 that pre-existed the French Revolution.
00:07:43.980 Because the big book by Horkheimer and Adorno,
00:07:47.080 The Dialectic of Enlightenment,
00:07:48.740 it's really about the pre-revolutionary theories
00:07:52.260 and is a critique of the Enlightenment from the left, not the right.
00:07:58.960 So they begin by going back, as radical theorists always do,
00:08:03.080 to first principles and criticise the Enlightenment.
00:08:07.120 And their criticism of the Enlightenment is essentially an attempt
00:08:09.960 by a scientific man, or would-be scientific man,
00:08:13.440 to place himself at the heart of the universe,
00:08:16.140 to dominate nature, and in so doing, enact an enormous revenge.
00:08:21.640 The great theory about fascism in A Dialectic of Enlightenment
00:08:25.320 by Adorno and Horkheimer is the idea that fascism represents
00:08:29.920 the revenge of a violated nature.
00:08:33.080 And it's the revenge of a sociobiological current
00:08:35.880 that would not exist if there weren't attempts
00:08:40.140 to entrap nature within the nexus of progress.
00:08:44.240 So already you're getting some strange ideas here.
00:08:47.300 You're getting a sort of anti-progressive leftism.
00:08:51.120 You're getting leftism which is critical of capitalism and modernity,
00:08:56.020 whereas classical Marxism is extraordinarily in favour
00:08:58.500 of capitalism and modernity.
00:08:59.880 They just wish to succeed it with another stage,
00:09:02.680 socialism and late modernity, if you like.
00:09:06.220 Or hyper-modernity.
00:09:07.240 I mean, they...
00:09:07.780 Hyper-modernity, yes.
00:09:09.200 Yeah.
00:09:09.780 Well, let's talk a little bit about this,
00:09:11.840 because as we were talking about off-air,
00:09:15.540 when we were first thinking about doing a podcast on this,
00:09:18.900 is that the mainstream conservative movement,
00:09:22.740 at least in America,
00:09:23.640 is actually somewhat familiar with the Frankfurt School,
00:09:27.680 at least its intellectuals are,
00:09:29.900 and they think they know it as, you know,
00:09:32.780 as the source of the 1960s and political correctness
00:09:36.100 and so on and so forth.
00:09:37.240 But I always feel that I don't really recognise cultural Marxism
00:09:41.600 in the way that it's often depicted by movement ideologues.
00:09:47.560 So let's talk a little bit about this,
00:09:50.060 put a little pressure on that idea of enlightenment
00:09:53.320 and dialectical enlightenment.
00:09:55.400 I mean, one of the key scenes, if you will,
00:09:58.440 in that book, which I guess is worth reading,
00:10:02.860 it's an extremely difficult text to read.
00:10:05.460 Just as an aside, I met this German when I was in graduate school.
00:10:09.440 He mentioned that he only read Adorno in translation,
00:10:12.280 in English translation,
00:10:13.240 because even in the original German language,
00:10:18.900 it's extremely dense.
00:10:22.580 But anyway, let's put a little pressure on it.
00:10:24.500 What is that?
00:10:25.000 Because, you know, Adorno and Horkheimer
00:10:29.340 aren't just seeing that, you know,
00:10:32.980 fascism is some reaction of capitalist forces
00:10:37.600 against the communist wave or something like that.
00:10:40.860 They're seeing fascism as coming out of a bourgeois world.
00:10:46.220 They're seeing something really wrong
00:10:48.780 at the heart of bourgeois modernity.
00:10:52.280 And I think they picture this in the form of Odysseus,
00:10:55.680 who wants to be bound at the mast
00:10:59.500 and is kind of going to renounce man's more natural being
00:11:05.980 and instead embrace a kind of stern, you know,
00:11:11.140 hard, you know, modern man of there's a world to be made.
00:11:16.640 We've got to go build it.
00:11:17.560 So maybe talk a little more about this,
00:11:20.160 this concept of enlightenment
00:11:21.960 on the part of Horkheimer and Adorno
00:11:23.700 and how this led to a kind of new left,
00:11:28.520 one that might even have some conservative tendencies
00:11:31.560 in the sense of being critical of the abuses against nature.
00:11:38.840 Yes, it's a sort of, it's an odd one, actually,
00:11:41.380 because it's a sort of would-be foundational leftism,
00:11:46.040 strongly influenced by Hegel,
00:11:48.220 strongly influenced by the early Marx,
00:11:50.480 strongly influenced by Plekhanov,
00:11:53.580 who taught Lenin a lot of his Marxism
00:11:55.400 and was a Menshevik, technically,
00:11:57.200 strongly influenced by Gramsci,
00:12:00.140 whose text would have been known
00:12:01.440 to Marxist intellectuals at that time,
00:12:04.020 strongly influenced by the cultural critique, you see.
00:12:10.420 Instead of seeing the Enlightenment as progressive,
00:12:13.240 they see the Enlightenment as an endarkenment,
00:12:15.320 as a period, it's proprietary to bourgeois revolutions,
00:12:19.300 which may not be entirely progressive,
00:12:22.440 and were afflicted with terror.
00:12:25.700 So they have a differentiated appreciation of these things.
00:12:30.300 They also have to find the enemy somewhere else,
00:12:32.940 because if the enemy is not really,
00:12:35.020 as classical Marxism depicted it,
00:12:37.440 and as Leninism and Stalinism led to the alleged resolution of,
00:12:42.180 they have to find their enemy somewhere else.
00:12:44.620 And the enemy for the new left,
00:12:46.700 influenced by the school,
00:12:49.060 is alienation,
00:12:50.140 alienation from modernity,
00:12:52.060 alienation from culture,
00:12:53.720 which is capitalist in its predicates,
00:12:56.060 alienation from what they call the cultural industry,
00:12:58.820 whereby modern man is totally trapped
00:13:00.880 within the cultural space created by the economy,
00:13:04.660 and where there is no room at all
00:13:06.460 for, in conservative terms,
00:13:09.140 and folk-based authenticity.
00:13:11.440 Yeah.
00:13:11.700 They would never use those sorts of terms, of course,
00:13:14.520 and they would consider them to be reactionary,
00:13:16.480 hubristic terms.
00:13:18.040 But because there is a cultural pessimism,
00:13:21.320 particularly about the cultural life of the masses,
00:13:24.940 under capitalist economics,
00:13:27.760 and even under socialist economics,
00:13:29.660 in the Eastern Bloc,
00:13:31.420 to a lesser extent,
00:13:32.720 there is an opening out
00:13:34.660 to vistas of cultural conservatism,
00:13:37.600 which is the Frankfurt School's inner secret.
00:13:41.280 I remember Professor Roger Scruton,
00:13:42.920 the conservative intellectual,
00:13:45.200 about 25 years ago now,
00:13:47.240 included conservative features of the Frankfurt School
00:13:50.380 under one of the headings of cultural conservatism
00:13:53.120 in his dictionary of political philosophy,
00:13:55.300 and this caused a little bit of a stir.
00:13:58.020 But when you look at the fact that,
00:13:59.880 although they sort of found Wagner
00:14:02.260 sort of rather loathsome
00:14:03.580 in relation to what they regarded it as leading to,
00:14:07.660 the classical sort of Schumann, Schubert, Mozart,
00:14:11.320 Beethoven, Bruckner,
00:14:13.500 sort of icons of Germanic,
00:14:17.140 Middle European culture
00:14:18.360 are exactly the icons
00:14:20.080 that in particular they're most in favor of,
00:14:22.860 just as classical Marxism is in favor of
00:14:25.220 bourgeois politics and revolutionism
00:14:27.340 over and against the mercantilism
00:14:29.580 and semi-feudalism that had preceded it,
00:14:32.700 as it looked to the socialism
00:14:33.820 that it thought was going to replace it,
00:14:36.300 they're in favor of radical bourgeois subjectivity,
00:14:39.560 epitomized by Beethoven,
00:14:41.620 in their view,
00:14:42.700 and his symphonies,
00:14:43.580 which proclaims the sort of sonority
00:14:47.000 of the bourgeois subject,
00:14:48.700 that moment when the bourgeois subject
00:14:51.160 feels itself to be empowered
00:14:53.280 and all-conquering
00:14:54.960 and the fleeting identification
00:14:57.440 of the meta-subject,
00:15:00.520 the subjectivity of the subject,
00:15:02.920 that Beethoven calls Napoleon Bonaparte
00:15:05.940 as he sees him to be
00:15:07.860 a sort of an embodiment
00:15:09.860 of the world of bourgeois man.
00:15:11.480 And all of these ideas are there
00:15:14.060 in Adorno's Sociology of Music,
00:15:17.240 which is in some ways
00:15:18.260 a sort of Marxian cultural appreciation
00:15:20.360 of great Western icons,
00:15:22.840 which could be considered
00:15:24.560 as slightly rueful
00:15:26.020 and slightly conservative
00:15:28.340 with a small c.
00:15:30.220 It's as if he arrives
00:15:31.540 at certain sensitive cultural conclusions,
00:15:33.960 which are themselves
00:15:35.180 outside of the nature of the theory,
00:15:38.260 which he's allegedly espousing.
00:15:39.600 He's certainly not alienated
00:15:41.260 by these sorts of musicologists at all.
00:15:45.180 The point, of course,
00:15:46.040 is that they are the springboard
00:15:47.520 for the modernist experiments
00:15:49.100 of Schoenberg, Weber, and Berg.
00:15:53.260 But that was a radical thing to say
00:15:57.680 when they said it.
00:15:58.920 That's now regarded
00:15:59.820 as an old hat statement
00:16:01.260 in classical music criticism.
00:16:03.400 But that's what they were
00:16:04.380 with Mahler as an intermediary
00:16:06.220 between the...
00:16:07.600 Mahler between Bruckner and Schoenberg,
00:16:10.360 that sort of thinking,
00:16:12.260 and a rejection of Sibelius,
00:16:15.240 who was insulted
00:16:16.460 quite severely by Adorno,
00:16:18.600 and the adoration
00:16:21.180 of early to late Schoenberg
00:16:23.260 as the future of music.
00:16:26.920 This is...
00:16:28.180 This became the standard repertoire.
00:16:31.140 So the irony is that
00:16:32.580 it's in culture
00:16:34.080 that their theory
00:16:35.440 has had its most direct impact.
00:16:37.920 Politically,
00:16:39.160 they've had very little impact.
00:16:41.500 It's in the politics of culture
00:16:43.100 that they have...
00:16:44.700 They've not conquered the board,
00:16:46.620 but they've entered into the fabric
00:16:48.300 of what now exists
00:16:49.440 at university level.
00:16:51.300 Yes, I agree.
00:16:52.420 Even in the fact
00:16:53.740 of criticizing Wagner,
00:16:55.480 the fact that you treat him
00:16:56.960 as this major figure
00:17:00.020 that must be confronted
00:17:01.140 is in a way reactionary
00:17:04.340 and has conservative tendencies.
00:17:07.740 I mean,
00:17:07.940 I don't see anyone
00:17:09.140 in the contemporary conservative movement
00:17:10.740 to have much interest
00:17:12.580 in these romantic titans at all
00:17:16.120 in that sense.
00:17:18.140 Let's talk a little bit
00:17:21.400 about the Frankfurt School's
00:17:24.140 journey to America.
00:17:26.660 And that's also quite
00:17:28.040 an interesting one.
00:17:29.060 You had...
00:17:30.280 Not only were...
00:17:31.560 The Frankfurt School
00:17:32.100 was almost entirely Jewish.
00:17:33.800 I don't know if there are
00:17:34.480 actually any exceptions to that.
00:17:36.320 There might be.
00:17:36.700 Yeah, there are.
00:17:37.340 It's unique in that sense.
00:17:38.920 It's always stereotypical.
00:17:40.840 Adorno was half Jewish.
00:17:42.260 Right.
00:17:42.420 And a few of the others
00:17:44.400 were this and that.
00:17:46.440 But basically, yes,
00:17:47.860 they were almost in total.
00:17:50.500 Right.
00:17:51.120 And not only were they Jews,
00:17:52.240 but they were Marxists.
00:17:53.180 So needless to say,
00:17:53.940 they weren't accepted
00:17:56.300 in the Third Reich,
00:17:58.360 although they weren't
00:17:59.680 really directly...
00:18:01.320 I guess the Frankfurt School
00:18:02.120 was shut down.
00:18:02.820 I don't think any of them
00:18:03.580 were at least
00:18:04.960 personally persecuted.
00:18:06.640 I know Adorno was even
00:18:07.580 traveling back to Germany
00:18:08.960 on occasion
00:18:09.700 in that time.
00:18:11.920 But anyway,
00:18:12.680 they did move
00:18:13.740 and they went to America
00:18:14.720 and there was actually
00:18:16.900 a kind of exile community
00:18:19.000 in which I believe,
00:18:21.420 you know,
00:18:21.680 Schoenberg and Tomas Mann
00:18:23.080 and Theodore Adorno
00:18:23.900 were all living together
00:18:25.380 in a Los Angeles suburb
00:18:26.920 or something like that.
00:18:28.640 It's quite interesting.
00:18:30.640 But they also were received,
00:18:33.960 ironically,
00:18:35.160 by the elite.
00:18:36.960 A lot of the Frankfurt School members
00:18:38.800 actually worked for the OSS,
00:18:41.760 which would eventually become
00:18:44.040 the CIA during the Second World War.
00:18:47.040 And they were also getting grants.
00:18:49.760 I believe Adorno got
00:18:50.940 a Rockefeller grant.
00:18:52.000 They were working
00:18:52.360 at the Columbia University.
00:18:54.740 They definitely,
00:18:55.700 they had a reception
00:18:57.840 by more elite American opinions.
00:19:00.720 I believe,
00:19:01.040 was it a Rockefeller grant
00:19:02.740 that actually sponsored
00:19:03.800 the authoritarian personality?
00:19:06.340 Yes, that's right.
00:19:07.400 Yeah.
00:19:08.040 So let's talk a little bit
00:19:09.540 about this.
00:19:10.060 They're kind of
00:19:10.880 the next stage
00:19:12.440 of their journey
00:19:13.160 when they became Americans.
00:19:16.420 Yes,
00:19:16.960 the American stage
00:19:18.120 was interesting
00:19:18.740 because in many ways
00:19:19.520 it contradicts
00:19:20.220 the pure theorizing
00:19:21.340 that they were into
00:19:22.700 because although
00:19:23.620 they were given grants
00:19:24.660 and cultural access
00:19:25.600 by these people
00:19:26.880 and seen as sort of
00:19:28.600 honorific,
00:19:29.440 sort of revels
00:19:30.480 against fascism,
00:19:32.040 they've had to be supported
00:19:33.360 in the war of ideas.
00:19:35.220 they had to change
00:19:37.620 and water down
00:19:38.220 their theory.
00:19:39.500 They also had to adopt
00:19:40.460 a lot more empirical studies,
00:19:42.900 which was an asthma
00:19:43.780 to people like Adorno
00:19:44.780 who hated empiricism.
00:19:46.580 But of course,
00:19:47.440 empiricism is the
00:19:48.300 Anglo-American way
00:19:49.220 of looking at things.
00:19:50.980 And they had to adapt.
00:19:52.620 It's adapt or die,
00:19:53.640 basically.
00:19:54.100 They had to adapt.
00:19:55.760 And they had to come up
00:19:56.940 with theoretically
00:19:58.360 based notions
00:19:59.180 that could lead
00:19:59.860 to epidemiological testing
00:20:03.860 and chronological
00:20:05.820 types of testing
00:20:06.880 and almost tick-box forms,
00:20:10.660 which ended
00:20:11.340 in the slightly
00:20:11.920 reductive program
00:20:13.140 known as the
00:20:13.900 sort of pursuit
00:20:14.780 of an authoritarian
00:20:15.920 personality
00:20:16.740 with its notorious
00:20:18.060 S scale,
00:20:19.540 S for fascism.
00:20:21.760 And many of these tests
00:20:22.820 are regarded
00:20:23.360 as slightly embarrassing
00:20:24.420 now
00:20:24.980 and are quite redundant
00:20:26.820 and also not very much use
00:20:29.260 because although
00:20:31.400 certain people
00:20:32.040 do have more
00:20:32.680 authoritarian
00:20:33.260 cast of personality
00:20:34.280 than others,
00:20:35.500 it's not really
00:20:37.100 a predicate
00:20:37.720 for political positioning
00:20:38.980 because there's
00:20:40.040 all sorts of
00:20:41.160 hard social democratic
00:20:42.920 positions
00:20:43.700 and authoritarian
00:20:45.480 far left positions,
00:20:46.860 for example,
00:20:48.280 which go with
00:20:49.860 more authoritarian
00:20:51.580 character structure
00:20:53.200 and don't elide
00:20:54.720 into the S scale
00:20:55.640 which these people
00:20:56.780 like to make out.
00:20:58.140 However,
00:20:58.940 they were very influential
00:20:59.980 in the rebuilding
00:21:00.880 of Germany
00:21:01.540 after the Second World War
00:21:03.500 and this is where
00:21:05.800 their theory
00:21:06.360 enters into
00:21:07.360 the mainstream
00:21:08.780 in many ways
00:21:10.000 because one of
00:21:11.480 their great points
00:21:12.480 is what you do
00:21:13.360 in a democratic society
00:21:15.260 with all the
00:21:16.460 institutions of control,
00:21:18.580 with all the
00:21:19.120 valences of
00:21:20.220 stateful
00:21:21.700 and other forms
00:21:22.440 of oppressiveness
00:21:23.240 as they would see it,
00:21:24.400 the military-industrial
00:21:25.400 complex,
00:21:26.040 the people
00:21:26.840 who work
00:21:27.260 in the security
00:21:27.780 services,
00:21:29.080 the people
00:21:29.440 who work
00:21:30.020 in analyzing
00:21:30.520 information
00:21:31.320 on behalf
00:21:32.460 of those services,
00:21:33.700 the people
00:21:34.040 who work
00:21:34.460 in the large
00:21:34.980 prison
00:21:35.480 and psychiatric
00:21:36.540 environments
00:21:37.700 that exist
00:21:38.580 in all societies,
00:21:39.980 particularly
00:21:40.300 in Western societies.
00:21:42.100 They always had
00:21:42.780 the view
00:21:43.060 that these people
00:21:43.620 needed to be
00:21:44.180 watched in a way
00:21:45.220 and needed
00:21:46.120 to be
00:21:47.200 prevented
00:21:50.520 from having
00:21:51.620 some of the
00:21:52.140 natural affinities
00:21:53.020 that they would
00:21:53.600 otherwise do
00:21:54.500 if you left
00:21:55.460 them outside
00:21:56.060 of the
00:21:56.360 remedial theory.
00:21:58.480 And this idea
00:21:59.920 that you almost
00:22:00.480 watch the
00:22:01.080 authoritarian gatekeepers
00:22:02.560 in society
00:22:03.420 for signs
00:22:04.780 of incorrectness
00:22:06.080 has entered
00:22:07.600 into the mainstream
00:22:08.480 very much so.
00:22:10.300 Yes,
00:22:10.920 I agree
00:22:11.860 that the
00:22:13.160 conservative movement,
00:22:14.720 the mainstream
00:22:15.220 view of the
00:22:16.360 Frankfurt School,
00:22:17.760 that view
00:22:18.680 is really
00:22:19.160 one of Adorno
00:22:20.520 and the
00:22:21.320 authoritarian
00:22:21.660 personality.
00:22:22.660 That's where
00:22:23.420 their criticism
00:22:24.640 really fits.
00:22:27.340 But of course,
00:22:27.960 there's so much
00:22:29.300 more to be involved.
00:22:30.340 But that's
00:22:30.720 certainly a way
00:22:31.800 where you see
00:22:33.360 critical theorists
00:22:34.920 most directly
00:22:35.640 attacking
00:22:36.640 normal
00:22:38.580 bourgeois
00:22:39.700 people.
00:22:40.280 if you have
00:22:42.820 some
00:22:43.100 what we
00:22:44.380 might call
00:22:44.820 healthy
00:22:45.300 patriotic
00:22:46.020 opinions,
00:22:47.600 that's high
00:22:48.760 up on the
00:22:49.220 F scale.
00:22:51.640 That's right.
00:22:52.920 Again,
00:22:53.360 so I think
00:22:54.000 in some ways
00:22:54.540 the authoritarian
00:22:55.740 personalities
00:22:56.320 probably Adorno
00:22:57.100 and the rest
00:22:57.540 of them
00:22:57.820 at their
00:22:58.420 most
00:22:58.840 cartoonish
00:22:59.820 or something.
00:23:00.620 It's not
00:23:01.020 really
00:23:01.340 the most
00:23:02.660 interesting.
00:23:02.920 That's right.
00:23:03.020 There's also
00:23:03.340 a sort of
00:23:04.380 theory by
00:23:05.100 explications
00:23:05.740 of that school
00:23:06.460 like Martin
00:23:07.100 Gay
00:23:07.400 and others
00:23:08.020 that
00:23:08.900 what they're
00:23:11.880 well known
00:23:12.420 for,
00:23:13.300 such as the
00:23:13.800 F scale
00:23:14.260 and so on,
00:23:14.780 was just
00:23:15.200 really a
00:23:15.840 concession
00:23:16.280 to their
00:23:16.860 friends
00:23:17.500 and the
00:23:18.240 people who
00:23:18.600 were giving
00:23:18.920 them grants.
00:23:20.180 Because what
00:23:20.540 really interested
00:23:21.320 them was
00:23:21.880 this
00:23:22.180 extraordinarily
00:23:23.540 elaborate
00:23:24.160 theory
00:23:24.900 whereby
00:23:25.680 everything in
00:23:26.480 life,
00:23:26.880 particularly
00:23:27.200 everything in
00:23:27.760 cultural life,
00:23:29.120 was theorized
00:23:30.100 in books
00:23:31.140 like Negative
00:23:31.820 Dialectics
00:23:32.660 by Adorno
00:23:33.300 and Aesthetic
00:23:34.640 Theory,
00:23:35.220 which was
00:23:35.520 unfinished
00:23:35.940 at his
00:23:36.340 death
00:23:36.680 and dedicated
00:23:37.220 to Samuel
00:23:37.900 Beckett
00:23:38.440 and his
00:23:40.360 support for
00:23:42.060 elements of
00:23:42.460 the avant-garde
00:23:43.120 and the
00:23:43.400 counterculture
00:23:44.100 during the
00:23:45.160 1960s,
00:23:46.280 which is a
00:23:47.020 perverse
00:23:47.540 Marxian
00:23:48.180 support because
00:23:48.920 it's not
00:23:49.440 based on the
00:23:50.140 fact that
00:23:50.460 it's radical
00:23:51.000 and that
00:23:51.880 it's coming
00:23:52.240 from the
00:23:52.640 edge and
00:23:53.620 that it's
00:23:54.040 countering
00:23:54.720 that which
00:23:55.100 exists
00:23:55.680 formerly,
00:23:56.660 although there's
00:23:57.160 a little bit
00:23:57.580 of that.
00:23:58.340 The reason
00:23:58.840 he supports
00:23:59.400 these things
00:23:59.980 is he
00:24:00.280 believes that
00:24:00.780 the cultural
00:24:01.440 industry is
00:24:02.060 so monolithic,
00:24:03.640 the culture
00:24:04.140 of entertainment
00:24:04.900 and the
00:24:05.300 degradation of
00:24:05.940 the masses
00:24:06.340 is so
00:24:06.900 absolute
00:24:07.420 that only
00:24:08.880 in these
00:24:09.340 little
00:24:09.680 fissures,
00:24:10.520 only in these
00:24:10.980 tiny little
00:24:11.500 spaces which
00:24:12.780 are opened
00:24:13.180 up by the
00:24:13.880 critical avant-garde
00:24:15.000 who often
00:24:15.980 deny easy
00:24:17.300 understanding
00:24:18.080 and deny
00:24:19.580 mediation
00:24:20.400 and deny
00:24:22.160 the audience
00:24:22.960 the collateral
00:24:24.140 of a closure
00:24:24.880 at the end
00:24:25.360 of a piece
00:24:26.040 so that people
00:24:26.940 go away happy
00:24:27.740 or satisfied
00:24:28.580 and that sort
00:24:29.640 of thing.
00:24:29.940 What they're
00:24:30.300 doing is
00:24:31.280 they're opening
00:24:31.740 a space for
00:24:32.760 genuine culture
00:24:33.660 to exist.
00:24:35.220 That's why I
00:24:35.940 dedicated it to
00:24:36.680 Beckett, you
00:24:37.180 say.
00:24:38.020 So underneath
00:24:39.080 a lot of this
00:24:39.840 theorizing there
00:24:40.660 is a pessimistic
00:24:41.500 despair, a
00:24:42.940 sort of
00:24:43.180 morphology of
00:24:44.020 despair and
00:24:45.840 that's very
00:24:47.200 unusual for
00:24:48.340 a leftist
00:24:49.040 position.
00:24:50.380 It's usually
00:24:50.840 associated with
00:24:51.920 a Spenglerian
00:24:52.840 conservative
00:24:54.120 cultural disdain
00:24:56.120 and pessimism
00:24:56.960 for the
00:24:57.740 degradation of
00:24:58.420 the masses
00:24:58.800 under all
00:24:59.400 forms of
00:24:59.880 life and
00:25:01.360 a wish that
00:25:01.940 culture, the
00:25:03.040 life of culture
00:25:04.600 could extend
00:25:05.340 and be deeper
00:25:06.060 and be more
00:25:06.720 transvaluated
00:25:07.940 than it is.
00:25:08.680 Right, you
00:25:09.600 know, this is
00:25:10.000 all quite
00:25:10.660 interesting and
00:25:11.540 at the risk
00:25:12.880 of pushing
00:25:13.560 this Adorno
00:25:14.420 as conservative
00:25:15.180 idea too
00:25:16.780 far, actually
00:25:18.260 recently there
00:25:18.960 was a book
00:25:19.840 of his music
00:25:21.480 criticism, I
00:25:22.120 guess it's not
00:25:22.420 too recent, it
00:25:23.020 was probably
00:25:23.280 published, it
00:25:24.240 was a book of
00:25:24.880 translations, it
00:25:25.560 was published in
00:25:26.220 2004 or so and
00:25:28.700 I remember reading
00:25:29.640 it and he had
00:25:30.340 an interesting
00:25:30.860 essay where he
00:25:31.900 in some ways
00:25:33.080 rethought
00:25:33.820 Wagner and had
00:25:35.100 a lot, many
00:25:35.940 more positive
00:25:36.620 things to say
00:25:37.140 about Wagner and
00:25:38.200 believe it or
00:25:38.580 not, he
00:25:39.080 actually had
00:25:39.480 positive things
00:25:40.180 to say about
00:25:40.660 Houston's
00:25:41.200 Stuart Chamberlain
00:25:42.080 in the sense
00:25:43.080 that, you
00:25:44.680 know, Houston
00:25:45.040 Stuart Chamberlain
00:25:45.780 was, you
00:25:46.140 know, a
00:25:46.540 racialist
00:25:47.360 thinker, a
00:25:48.880 kind of, you
00:25:49.540 know, god of
00:25:50.180 the far-right
00:25:51.100 racialist
00:25:51.640 right and he
00:25:52.620 was saying that
00:25:53.280 he saw one of
00:25:54.540 his reactions
00:25:55.200 against the
00:25:56.600 culture of
00:25:57.060 England and
00:25:58.100 his romantic
00:25:59.460 embrace of
00:26:00.340 Germany was a
00:26:01.140 kind of reaction
00:26:01.780 against the
00:26:02.500 tyranny of
00:26:03.860 industrialization
00:26:04.760 and that he
00:26:05.480 imagined a
00:26:06.600 more, you
00:26:07.540 know, unaliened
00:26:08.180 authentic world
00:26:09.760 in Germany
00:26:10.800 and that, you
00:26:12.280 know, almost
00:26:12.920 these right-wing
00:26:13.900 strivings were
00:26:14.760 that reaction
00:26:15.840 against capitalism
00:26:17.700 or something like
00:26:18.300 that.
00:26:18.500 So, again,
00:26:20.060 there are a lot
00:26:20.680 of complexity
00:26:22.440 to all of these
00:26:23.500 people.
00:26:24.120 They're not
00:26:24.600 easily pigeonholed.
00:26:26.800 But I do want
00:26:27.800 to talk about
00:26:28.640 the 1960s, but
00:26:30.500 before that,
00:26:31.820 let's just put a
00:26:32.580 little more pressure
00:26:33.300 on the culture
00:26:34.360 industry because I
00:26:35.300 think that's a
00:26:36.040 very, it's a
00:26:37.380 very useful
00:26:38.080 term for us.
00:26:39.880 I think that's a
00:26:40.560 term we should be
00:26:41.180 using and maybe
00:26:42.940 even using it in a
00:26:43.820 lot of the same
00:26:44.300 ways as Adorno
00:26:45.200 did.
00:26:45.600 But maybe just
00:26:46.520 talk a little bit
00:26:47.400 more about that
00:26:49.060 idea of the
00:26:50.260 culture industry,
00:26:51.060 what it is and
00:26:52.240 what Adorno was
00:26:53.880 seeing in, you
00:26:56.820 know, mid-20th
00:26:57.560 century America.
00:26:58.320 Yes, he
00:27:00.560 basically had the
00:27:02.200 view that the
00:27:02.680 masses were
00:27:03.220 totally degraded
00:27:04.300 by a capitalist
00:27:06.500 and market-driven
00:27:07.560 culture, whereby
00:27:09.620 from advertising
00:27:11.120 through to
00:27:12.740 popular cinema
00:27:13.640 to the popular
00:27:14.980 television that
00:27:15.720 was beginning
00:27:16.260 and that would
00:27:16.880 replace cinema
00:27:17.920 and add to it
00:27:18.840 as an extension
00:27:19.460 of it, you
00:27:21.060 have a totally
00:27:22.100 seamless environment
00:27:23.260 in which the
00:27:23.900 masses live,
00:27:25.200 which today will
00:27:25.960 be characterised
00:27:26.860 by the populist
00:27:27.740 internet, by
00:27:29.260 the big TV
00:27:29.960 channels, by
00:27:32.480 MTV, by
00:27:34.600 pop music
00:27:35.340 videos, by
00:27:36.600 pop music in
00:27:38.260 all of its
00:27:38.780 various forms.
00:27:41.640 Don't forget
00:27:42.600 Adorno was
00:27:43.380 extraordinarily
00:27:43.880 scathing about
00:27:44.800 jazz, which is
00:27:46.680 regarded as
00:27:47.440 deeply unprogressive
00:27:48.860 and his disgust
00:27:50.740 and distaste for
00:27:51.680 jazz is almost
00:27:52.560 visceral.
00:27:54.380 Racist?
00:27:55.960 Yes, almost.
00:27:56.620 in contemporary
00:28:02.340 terms and in the
00:28:03.100 terms of the
00:28:03.620 new left, there
00:28:06.240 is this sort of
00:28:07.340 despairing mid-20th
00:28:09.540 century Viennese
00:28:10.520 intellectual who
00:28:12.140 despises the
00:28:13.100 culture of the
00:28:13.640 masses and that
00:28:15.060 comes very close to
00:28:16.400 an elitist position.
00:28:18.120 It may be a
00:28:18.760 left-wing elitist
00:28:19.540 position, but it's
00:28:21.200 an elitist position
00:28:22.200 nonetheless and once
00:28:24.000 you admit elitism in
00:28:25.160 any area, even if
00:28:27.000 it's only the
00:28:27.500 cultural one, cultural
00:28:29.260 selectivity, you
00:28:30.900 begin to adopt
00:28:32.320 ramifications
00:28:33.640 elsewhere that are
00:28:35.000 unstoppable.
00:28:36.920 And that's,
00:28:38.340 although you can
00:28:40.280 never be seen as a
00:28:41.260 neoconservative
00:28:42.160 figure, you know,
00:28:43.440 these are people who
00:28:44.060 believe that the
00:28:44.620 family is a gun in
00:28:45.660 the hands of the
00:28:46.260 bourgeoisie, you
00:28:47.040 know, this sort
00:28:47.620 of, people, they
00:28:52.680 believe that
00:28:53.320 criminality is
00:28:54.500 directly proportionate
00:28:55.680 to its punishment.
00:28:57.020 In other words, you
00:28:57.560 get more criminality
00:28:58.340 because you punish
00:28:59.040 people who are only
00:28:59.940 victims anyway.
00:29:01.480 So don't forget,
00:29:02.520 these are the sorts
00:29:03.380 of conceits that the
00:29:04.240 Frankfurt School
00:29:04.920 believes in.
00:29:06.260 But the very
00:29:07.880 complexity of their
00:29:09.020 analysis alienates
00:29:10.940 them from populist
00:29:12.020 left-wing politics
00:29:13.260 and alienates them
00:29:15.300 from easy
00:29:16.960 sloganeering, which
00:29:19.740 is why they've been
00:29:20.360 taken up by
00:29:21.000 intellectuals and
00:29:24.040 yet not by
00:29:25.920 mainstream leftist
00:29:27.100 political movements
00:29:28.120 because their work is
00:29:28.980 just too difficult.
00:29:30.260 It's too abstruse.
00:29:31.740 It's too obsessed
00:29:32.620 with fine art and
00:29:33.960 high culture,
00:29:34.740 particularly musical,
00:29:36.580 but also in the
00:29:37.460 cinema.
00:29:38.940 They're going back
00:29:40.860 to an analyst called
00:29:42.160 Cracore in the
00:29:43.880 1920s.
00:29:45.980 The intellectual
00:29:47.000 analysis of
00:29:47.780 Weimar cinema and
00:29:50.140 expressionist cinema
00:29:51.320 at that was very
00:29:52.700 important to them.
00:29:54.280 And they saw that
00:29:55.040 type of cinema and
00:29:56.000 it's imaginative use
00:29:57.640 of the unconscious
00:30:00.000 as people would begin
00:30:00.960 to call it later in
00:30:02.540 the century after
00:30:03.360 Freud's cultural
00:30:04.320 influence.
00:30:04.740 led them into
00:30:08.540 sort of slightly
00:30:09.200 interesting and
00:30:09.900 creative cultural
00:30:10.900 vistas that
00:30:12.460 don't, are not
00:30:13.680 simple and are not
00:30:15.240 reducible to political
00:30:16.480 slogans, but they do
00:30:18.040 ultimately tend to a
00:30:20.520 type of rather
00:30:21.580 pessimistic ultra-left
00:30:23.100 post-modernism.
00:30:24.080 Yes.
00:30:25.640 Well, let's talk about
00:30:28.000 the 1960s and the
00:30:29.980 new left and the
00:30:31.620 hippies and the
00:30:33.400 68 violent
00:30:35.020 protests, so on and
00:30:36.000 so forth, because
00:30:36.540 what do you think the
00:30:38.860 connections are between
00:30:40.320 the two of them?
00:30:41.080 I know in,
00:30:42.380 supposedly, I wasn't
00:30:43.840 there, of course, in
00:30:44.740 Berkeley in 1968, they
00:30:47.020 were chanting
00:30:47.740 Marx, Mal,
00:30:49.240 Marcuse, and
00:30:50.760 Herbert Marcuse
00:30:52.660 was, of course, he
00:30:54.680 was from the same
00:30:55.460 milieu as Adorno.
00:30:56.760 He was, you know, a
00:30:58.060 Hegelian professor,
00:31:00.540 upper-bourgeois Jewish
00:31:02.320 background, but
00:31:04.440 particularly later, when
00:31:06.360 he, and he remained in
00:31:07.400 America, Adorno would
00:31:08.640 return to Central
00:31:10.920 Europe, but he
00:31:11.520 remained, and he
00:31:12.400 started writing books
00:31:13.200 like Eros and
00:31:14.240 Civilization that were
00:31:15.360 kind of Marxian,
00:31:16.840 Freudian, liberation
00:31:18.140 philosophy kind of
00:31:20.340 thing, that the future
00:31:21.560 was about, what was
00:31:23.220 it, polymorphous
00:31:24.120 perversity, I mean,
00:31:25.040 these kinds of things,
00:31:26.540 and certainly very
00:31:27.460 different than Adorno's
00:31:28.760 more kind of fastidious
00:31:30.480 bourgeois nature.
00:31:33.080 So what are the
00:31:34.100 connections between
00:31:35.400 the youth movement of
00:31:39.060 the 1960s and the
00:31:40.080 Frankfurt School?
00:31:40.600 Because in some ways,
00:31:41.320 it's a strange
00:31:42.100 bedfellas.
00:31:42.820 You have different
00:31:43.640 generations.
00:31:45.360 People who, you
00:31:46.400 know, the hippies and
00:31:47.820 anti-war protesters
00:31:48.780 probably couldn't spell
00:31:51.040 Hegel.
00:31:52.440 You know, a very
00:31:53.340 wide gulf between the
00:31:55.680 people like Adorno and
00:31:57.400 these new kids.
00:32:00.060 So what are the
00:32:00.700 connections?
00:32:01.320 Do you think, as the
00:32:02.580 conservative movement,
00:32:03.520 would like to believe
00:32:04.400 that the Frankfurt
00:32:05.540 School were kind of
00:32:06.300 prophets of 1968, or
00:32:08.940 is it a little more
00:32:10.680 difficult?
00:32:12.420 They are and they
00:32:13.460 aren't.
00:32:13.920 I think what happened
00:32:14.820 is that the
00:32:15.340 intermediate theorists
00:32:16.500 emerge, who are not
00:32:17.320 as complicated, and
00:32:18.780 his work can be
00:32:19.380 assimilated to
00:32:20.220 political struggle and
00:32:21.820 sloganeering.
00:32:23.120 And Marcuse is that
00:32:24.200 example.
00:32:25.380 Marcuse writes several
00:32:26.340 books, the most
00:32:26.940 prominent of which is
00:32:28.520 One Dimensional Man and
00:32:31.520 Eros and Civilization,
00:32:33.580 one of which is a full-on
00:32:36.060 left American attack on
00:32:38.820 modern corporate America,
00:32:40.220 where he advertises what
00:32:41.740 will come to be known as
00:32:42.700 the military-industrial
00:32:43.540 complex, and what was
00:32:45.380 called the welfare-warfare
00:32:46.800 state, whereby welfare
00:32:50.340 is paid in order to keep
00:32:51.880 the masses bedded down, and
00:32:53.600 at the same time, the
00:32:55.620 perfect society is always
00:32:57.080 engineered out of
00:32:58.040 existence by endless wars
00:32:59.620 in the second and the third
00:33:01.100 world, which are always for
00:33:02.140 the prospect of peace.
00:33:04.180 But the peace never arrives,
00:33:07.160 and there's always another war
00:33:08.320 just around the corner.
00:33:09.280 And, of course, the war is
00:33:10.580 to make profits for the
00:33:11.900 military-industrial complex,
00:33:13.640 which is increasingly
00:33:14.920 considered to be the most
00:33:16.300 advanced capitalist part of
00:33:17.940 America, in which the
00:33:19.320 political class is totally
00:33:21.040 embedded.
00:33:21.860 Right.
00:33:22.140 So what you're saying is
00:33:23.920 that they are absolutely
00:33:24.680 correct.
00:33:26.600 So it's a sort of...
00:33:28.420 Of course, there are many
00:33:29.820 similarities on the other
00:33:32.940 side, politically, because
00:33:34.560 Harry Elmer Barnes edited a
00:33:37.160 very large volume called
00:33:38.580 Perpetual War for Perpetual
00:33:40.020 Peace, which is very
00:33:41.900 similar from a revisionist
00:33:43.920 sort of school, whether
00:33:45.520 isolationist or American
00:33:47.120 nationalist or American
00:33:48.300 libertarian.
00:33:49.800 The people who contributed to
00:33:51.080 that book had a very
00:33:52.380 similar analysis to the one
00:33:54.040 that Marcuse would have of
00:33:55.200 American foreign policy.
00:33:58.600 Of course, this was occurring
00:33:59.960 in the era of a Cold War,
00:34:01.840 while the threat was seen to
00:34:02.840 be the Soviet Union and, to a
00:34:04.040 lesser extent, now is China.
00:34:05.480 And by arguing for pacifism
00:34:07.920 and for isolation, you're
00:34:09.780 arguing for communist
00:34:10.600 victory elsewhere in the
00:34:11.760 world by the logic of
00:34:13.420 power politics.
00:34:14.960 And that's how Cold War
00:34:15.960 warriors would have
00:34:16.780 responded, anti-communists
00:34:18.920 would have responded to the
00:34:20.220 Marcuse sort of front.
00:34:22.080 But Marcuse enabled
00:34:23.480 Frankfurt-related ideas to be
00:34:27.920 politically assimilated by the
00:34:29.800 growing forces of the
00:34:30.940 student new left.
00:34:31.940 and that's why they used
00:34:33.920 him as the theorist of
00:34:35.160 choice, because he's
00:34:36.520 expletable in student
00:34:38.640 terms.
00:34:39.180 He also put himself forward
00:34:40.360 as a student leader, at
00:34:41.980 least theoretically,
00:34:43.380 something which the other
00:34:44.280 Frankfurters were too
00:34:45.280 fey and too theoretical and
00:34:48.320 too abstract and abstruse
00:34:49.980 ever to do.
00:34:51.280 They never, themselves,
00:34:51.860 students were to listen to
00:34:53.080 their lectures, even if
00:34:54.940 they're talking Marxian
00:34:57.260 analysis.
00:34:57.760 Adorno, of course, died as
00:35:00.520 a result of a student
00:35:01.480 action in Germany in the
00:35:04.020 late 1960s, when the
00:35:06.300 lecture theatre or podium
00:35:07.960 was stormed by some action
00:35:10.460 front hippies or yippies who
00:35:13.300 embraced Adorno, whether
00:35:14.860 they had flowers in their
00:35:15.920 hair, I'm not too sure,
00:35:17.080 metaphorically, and they
00:35:18.600 chanted that as an
00:35:19.460 institution, Adorno is dead.
00:35:21.760 And Adorno collapsed and had
00:35:23.380 a heart attack relatively soon
00:35:24.700 afterwards and died.
00:35:25.840 Oh, gosh.
00:35:27.480 And this is taken as a sort
00:35:31.340 of metaphorisation in a way
00:35:33.160 that despite his would-be
00:35:37.240 sort of leadership role as a
00:35:38.760 theorist in relation to these
00:35:40.720 people, there were two
00:35:42.580 different universes.
00:35:44.340 And the Frankfurt School
00:35:45.100 intellectuals were deeply
00:35:46.160 shocked, actually, that the
00:35:47.280 West German popular press,
00:35:48.580 particularly the centre-right
00:35:49.540 press, held them responsible
00:35:51.400 morally for the emergence of
00:35:53.680 the terrorist organisations in
00:35:55.120 West Germany, such as the
00:35:56.820 Baden-Meinhof, which later
00:35:58.540 morphed into the Red Army
00:36:00.000 faction, or RAF.
00:36:02.400 And they, it's only, of
00:36:04.940 course, come out retrospectively
00:36:07.020 during the latter stages of the
00:36:08.260 Cold War and after the war
00:36:09.940 came down, that the Stasi,
00:36:12.200 when the traditional forces of
00:36:13.960 power in East Germany were
00:36:15.580 heavily behind the RAF, gave
00:36:17.980 them military expertise and
00:36:19.560 explosives, told them which
00:36:21.580 sites to attack and so on, so
00:36:23.840 they were as much an extension
00:36:25.340 of the oldest parts of the
00:36:27.540 old left as they were of the
00:36:29.640 newest parts of the new left.
00:36:31.860 Nevertheless, theorists are not
00:36:35.960 always insightful about how the
00:36:38.420 world will use their theory.
00:36:41.220 And the Frankfurt School is a
00:36:43.080 classic example of ivory tower
00:36:46.040 intellectuals who partly get a
00:36:49.100 little bit broken up and mangled on
00:36:50.800 the wheel of history.
00:36:52.300 But Narcusa is an intermediate
00:36:54.020 thinker who's the student left
00:36:56.020 are able to make use of because
00:36:59.640 they can understand what he's
00:37:00.780 saying.
00:37:01.780 Adorno and Hawkeimer and
00:37:04.340 Lernthal are too abstract,
00:37:08.440 basically.
00:37:09.200 They're on their own as theorists.
00:37:11.500 Yeah.
00:37:12.760 Jonathan, to bring the discussion
00:37:15.200 to a close.
00:37:17.300 What do you think is the legacy
00:37:19.480 of these thinkers?
00:37:21.280 And in some ways, it's a very big
00:37:22.600 question because I'm also kind of
00:37:26.660 asking what is the legacy of the
00:37:28.020 new left and all of this?
00:37:30.160 And what is political correctness
00:37:33.120 today?
00:37:33.980 What does it mean and how is it
00:37:36.240 connected with these 20th century
00:37:39.360 Marxisms?
00:37:41.320 Yeah, it's a difficult one because
00:37:42.440 it's so diffuse.
00:37:43.360 Yet I think what has happened is
00:37:45.860 that they've changed the entire
00:37:47.860 temperature which existed,
00:37:49.920 particularly the university level
00:37:51.680 and amorphously the general media
00:37:54.620 level that feeds out of that at the
00:37:56.600 higher end.
00:37:58.560 What's happened is that once they
00:38:02.220 lost the hard left accretions of
00:38:04.660 sympathy for the Soviet Union,
00:38:06.760 witness a text like Mark Hughes'
00:38:08.380 Soviet Marxism, which although are
00:38:10.320 very short, is extremely critical.
00:38:12.640 I mean, he'd have been sent to a
00:38:14.280 psychiatric unit or put in a camp for
00:38:16.220 a text like that had he produced that
00:38:18.020 inside one of those societies, as
00:38:20.600 Mark Hughes well knew.
00:38:23.120 Now, you've got this great sort of
00:38:28.060 uniformity and diffuseness of the
00:38:31.580 contemporary left, which has collapsed
00:38:33.960 into liberalism, seamlessly taken part of
00:38:36.800 its agenda over, is no longer associated with
00:38:41.320 apologetic statements about Stalinism,
00:38:44.760 distances itself from all left-wing atrocities
00:38:47.240 and has critiques of those societies as well.
00:38:51.260 It's part of the seamless liberal left discourse
00:38:54.680 that straddles the centre and goes right out to the
00:38:58.040 softer reaches of the far left, bifurcated from the hard left
00:39:02.340 beyond it. And in all of these institutions,
00:39:06.160 Frankfurt School views play a role.
00:39:09.860 They play a role in defeating the culture of conservatism
00:39:13.620 in all areas, racial and ethnic,
00:39:17.920 criminological and social,
00:39:19.400 areas as sort of police studies,
00:39:25.900 PhDs written about the prison service,
00:39:30.440 modern theories about cinema.
00:39:34.460 In all of these areas, in cultural studies,
00:39:37.420 there's a discourse which has only emerged from art
00:39:39.360 colleges in the last 20 years,
00:39:41.980 which is heavily saturated with
00:39:44.480 Frankfurt School-ish type of ideas.
00:39:48.100 You see the deconstruction and the breaking down
00:39:52.460 of the prior culture of conservatism.
00:39:54.940 They are the intellectual tip of the liberal society,
00:39:59.000 which has stepped away from the conservative society
00:40:01.900 of the 50s and pre-60s.
00:40:04.040 Up until the 60s in the West,
00:40:05.640 you had largely a stereotypical centre-right
00:40:09.020 to rightish conservative society,
00:40:12.160 polity, academy, media and culture.
00:40:15.840 And after that, you have a step change
00:40:19.080 to a liberal instead of a conservative society,
00:40:23.840 media, culture and culturally disseminating strata.
00:40:27.940 And this has continued throughout the decades since the 1960s.
00:40:34.420 We've had about 50 years now.
00:40:36.700 So you have a situation where over this 50-year period,
00:40:40.600 throughout all of the institutions that matter,
00:40:43.720 soft left theory,
00:40:46.060 theory without hard edges
00:40:47.940 and without endorsement of anti-humanist crimes committed by the ultra-left
00:40:54.140 all over the world,
00:40:56.040 has become the default position for many people in the arts,
00:41:02.720 in psychology,
00:41:04.420 in medical practice,
00:41:06.300 in psychiatric practice,
00:41:07.840 to do with nearly all institutions of the state,
00:41:13.020 with the exception of the military
00:41:14.880 and the raw force-based criterion,
00:41:19.560 that the areas of state power that rely on the use of force,
00:41:23.800 almost all other areas have been infected by these types of theory.
00:41:29.000 Psychiatric institutions have been.
00:41:30.760 And although it's a bit of a stretch,
00:41:33.120 the anti-psychiatric movement,
00:41:35.420 through R.D. Lange,
00:41:37.000 through Fromm,
00:41:38.260 and through Marcuse,
00:41:39.580 is heavily influenced by at least a proportion of these sorts of ideas.
00:41:45.180 But in the theory of Lyotard,
00:41:50.440 and in the theory of Deleuze,
00:41:53.980 is the bourgeois really insane?
00:41:56.740 It's schizophrenics,
00:41:58.060 the saints who walk amongst us.
00:42:00.820 You know,
00:42:01.340 Deleuze's turn guitarist text,
00:42:03.220 Antioedipus,
00:42:04.420 in which the schizophrenic is seen as the last readout of sanity
00:42:07.560 in a mad capitalist world,
00:42:09.980 which is,
00:42:10.840 by any rational credence,
00:42:12.720 insane.
00:42:13.660 Therefore,
00:42:14.140 you have to look to the insane to find the readout of sanity.
00:42:17.640 These sorts of ideas,
00:42:19.460 post-Foucault,
00:42:20.680 in the late 20th century,
00:42:23.740 are no longer that eccentric.
00:42:25.960 They were once
00:42:26.600 the most eccentric ideas you could have,
00:42:29.200 that conservatives essentially just laughed at.
00:42:31.900 Now they've taken over the institutions.
00:42:35.740 But it's in a gradualist,
00:42:38.280 in a would-be well-meaning,
00:42:40.600 and in a soft-minded sort of way.
00:42:43.240 Because this theory has taken over,
00:42:45.440 and cultural conservatives have retreated before it,
00:42:48.940 to such a degree that there's hardly any of them left.
00:42:52.220 I agree.
00:42:53.240 You know,
00:42:53.440 I might disagree with you slightly.
00:42:55.000 I think cultural Marxism has infected the military in the United States.
00:42:58.560 It's kind of incredible.
00:42:59.520 But we had a major army general claiming that diversity is the great strength of America's armed forces,
00:43:05.420 as they go overseas to bring women into undergraduate colleges.
00:43:10.440 So it's been quite a triumph.
00:43:13.320 You know,
00:43:13.500 one thing I would just mention,
00:43:14.900 picking up on all of these ideas you've put forward,
00:43:18.700 is that,
00:43:19.420 I've always thought about this,
00:43:20.720 there's this staying power of,
00:43:23.940 let's call it,
00:43:24.620 the post-modern new left,
00:43:26.560 or cultural Marxism.
00:43:27.700 It's had this long,
00:43:29.060 decades-long staying power.
00:43:30.660 And if you think about major avant-garde modernist movements,
00:43:37.740 they were quite,
00:43:40.280 they were a candle that burned really quickly.
00:43:44.280 They almost burned themselves out.
00:43:46.540 If you just look at,
00:43:47.620 just to pick one at random,
00:43:48.820 the Blue Rider group or something like that,
00:43:50.600 this is something that lasted maybe four years.
00:43:54.240 You know,
00:43:54.520 Dadaism would kind of make a splash,
00:43:57.720 and then dissipate,
00:43:59.760 go off in other movements.
00:44:00.660 And things like this.
00:44:01.740 If you look at the art galleries,
00:44:04.060 conceptual art,
00:44:05.540 post-modern art,
00:44:06.320 they've been doing the same stuff for maybe 40 or 50 years now.
00:44:12.420 If you look at,
00:44:13.560 you know,
00:44:14.300 women's studies,
00:44:15.520 African-American studies,
00:44:16.540 critical race theory,
00:44:17.660 all this kind of stuff,
00:44:18.440 Foucault.
00:44:18.900 I mean,
00:44:19.140 it's obviously changing,
00:44:20.940 so on and so forth,
00:44:21.560 but it's had this staying power,
00:44:24.640 that it's almost become conservative.
00:44:27.540 And I think this is a great irony.
00:44:30.060 And I don't know where art,
00:44:31.600 where avant-garde art can go.
00:44:34.480 You know,
00:44:34.700 I don't know how many times you need to,
00:44:37.840 proverbially speaking,
00:44:39.280 put a crucifix in piss.
00:44:40.980 It's just,
00:44:41.560 there's no,
00:44:43.560 they seem to,
00:44:44.740 it's one attempt to shock the bourgeoisie after another,
00:44:49.380 to the point that it becomes old and stale.
00:44:53.100 And,
00:44:53.540 and certainly institutionalized in the sense of,
00:44:55.800 you know,
00:44:56.020 millions of,
00:44:57.400 or not millions,
00:44:58.000 but many people will,
00:45:00.140 you know,
00:45:00.380 go get a master's of fine arts at all these institutions and,
00:45:03.500 and learn from the great masters of,
00:45:05.800 you know,
00:45:07.180 conceptual shock.
00:45:08.300 So this is a very,
00:45:10.040 it's a very strange thing about our culture where we have this,
00:45:13.500 this conservatism amongst postmodern cultural Marxism.
00:45:21.020 Do you,
00:45:21.440 do you think this is going to break down or,
00:45:23.900 or do you think that,
00:45:25.580 even maybe Jonathan,
00:45:27.880 because political correctness has become so obvious or,
00:45:31.500 or it's become,
00:45:32.220 it's,
00:45:32.700 it's something easily ridiculed that it's going to be overturned or,
00:45:38.300 or,
00:45:38.460 or at least come to an end.
00:45:40.080 Do you,
00:45:40.180 do you see that,
00:45:40.960 or is that,
00:45:41.700 is that being a little too optimistic?
00:45:44.720 It might be a bit too optimistic in the short run.
00:45:47.340 I think it's become institutionalized in a way which those art movements,
00:45:52.980 which you characterized earlier on,
00:45:55.500 have not been for several reasons.
00:45:57.960 One,
00:45:58.200 it's a sort of,
00:45:58.780 it's a non-fictional area.
00:46:00.320 It's an academic area,
00:46:01.460 and academics have tenure in mind.
00:46:04.920 Yeah.
00:46:05.980 And these art movements are sudden,
00:46:08.900 instantaneous,
00:46:09.820 bohemian,
00:46:10.340 and largely outsider movements.
00:46:12.500 They usually row intensely with the major figures who sort of break from each other over a finite period.
00:46:19.260 Surrealism almost came to an end when Breton insisted that they all join the Communist Party in France,
00:46:24.640 that many of them didn't want to do.
00:46:25.880 They joined it for discussion and for alcoholic treats and to meet women,
00:46:30.760 and that sort of thing,
00:46:32.020 and to have a chance to exhibit.
00:46:34.260 And that's what most people join art movements for.
00:46:36.960 And it's also not particularly concerned with creation either.
00:46:44.700 It's concerned with reflexive creativity academically.
00:46:48.240 So somebody will go through the process of a first degree, a second degree.
00:46:51.720 They'll get the PhD, which is influenced by one of these theoretical figures.
00:46:55.880 Then they'll become a tenured lecturer over time,
00:47:00.340 and they provide a paradigm or a model for their students as they come up.
00:47:05.760 So the thing becomes replicating over a career path.
00:47:09.120 What you've had is you've had a couple of generations who've now done this within the academy.
00:47:14.040 And they've also worked for a situation where there's very little kick against them
00:47:22.080 because there's very little right-wing left in the academy.
00:47:26.380 It's almost totally gone now.
00:47:28.660 It almost can't survive.
00:47:30.600 The pressure vows have been put on it to such a degree
00:47:33.720 that it's almost impossible for it to survive.
00:47:36.180 And this has meant the rather desert-like, arid terrain of the new left,
00:47:45.380 small end, small end, really, now dominates the tertiary sector of education.
00:47:52.500 This is why the left is so strong.
00:47:54.880 In a mass capitalist world where they feel that people are degraded by the cultural industry,
00:48:01.480 nevertheless, what you might call the PBS culture,
00:48:05.660 the National Endowments for the Arts Culture,
00:48:08.500 is completely saturated with this sort of material.
00:48:12.060 And there's little way to shake it at the present time
00:48:14.780 unless they're radically disfunded
00:48:16.860 or unless a way can be worked for forces of counterculture
00:48:23.780 to enter the university space again.
00:48:28.860 Probably only on the internet is the space that they can now adopt.
00:48:33.640 And that, of course, is what's happened.
00:48:35.340 All of these ideas, such as this podcast we're having today,
00:48:39.120 I've gravitated through the internet because it's the only space left.
00:48:43.120 Well, Jonathan, we are the counterculture.
00:48:45.560 I think that's one thing that's been clear to me for some time.
00:48:50.960 But thank you once again for being on the podcast.
00:48:54.460 This was a brilliant discussion, and I look forward to another one next week.
00:48:57.880 Thanks very much. All the best.
00:49:00.020 See you next time.
00:49:03.220 Thank you.