RadixJournal - Bowden! - 9 - Frankfurt School Revisionism

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, 1.00

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, 0.88

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. 0.84

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, 0.51

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 0.53

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 0.93

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 0.69

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 1.00

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? 0.94

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 0.62

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, 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.65

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 0.97

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 0.63

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 0.74

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 0.86

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, 0.78

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? 0.85

00:41:56.740 It's schizophrenics, 1.00

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. 1.00

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, 0.75

00:44:39.280 put a crucifix in piss. 0.97

00:44:40.980 It's just, 0.94

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, 1.00

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.

RadixJournal - January 07, 2018

Bowden! - 9 - Frankfurt School Revisionism

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