6 ms·

Marcuse-Anon: Cult of the Pseudo-Intellectual

10 points by andrenth 6y ago

kleer001 6y ago
Kinda reminds me of the thin and nonsensical swill from Marshall McLuhan. Make up your own words and world views then refuse to back them up with studies that can falsify them. Instant success.
zozbot234 6y ago
The excerpt is interesting but it isn't saying anything that people who are familiar with the history of social movements in the 1960s and 1970s didn't already know - "Marx, Mao, Marcuse!" was a routine slogan in the Paris 1968 protests, and yes the protestors very much had Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in mind. There were quite a few naïvely enthusiastic supporters of Mao's "Revolution" back then, even in Western countries. It's specifically people in the U.S. who are often unfamiliar with this craziness, because they were introduced to it quite late. To many others in the Western world, these ideas are, yes, genuinely worrying for obvious reasons, but also quite laughably old-hat.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Wow. So the proletariat aren't revolting, because the society has met their needs? And that's a problem? Only if you're more concerned about having a revolution than about the point of the revolution - to make peoples' lives better. And, the rights and freedoms that let the proletariat have a non-horrible life is therefore something to destroy, so that the proletariat will then have a reason to revolt? Yeah, um... "They eagerly seek you, not honorably, but they desire to shut you out in order that you may seek them." (From the Bible, actually.) Anyone who follows Marcuse in this is a friend of revolution, but not a friend of the human beings that the revolution is alleged to benefit.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  > Wow. So the proletariat aren't revolting, because the society has met their needs? And that's a problem? Only if you're more concerned about having a revolution than about the point of the revolution - to make peoples' lives better. Marcuse's point was that material goods, and the system that optimizes that freedom, comes at the cost of other freedoms, in particular of political dissent, autonomy, and freedom from total administration of the state. It would be better to consider the point Huxley was making as closer to what he was getting at. Marcuse tried to synthesize Marx's sociology (while maintaining that Marx's classical economic analysis has been superceded in modern capitalism) with Freudian social psychology. >And, the rights and freedoms that let the proletariat have a non-horrible life is therefore something to destroy, so that the proletariat will then have a reason to revolt? No, this was never Marcuse's argument. Instead he argued that not only are the majority of workers better off materially, within capitalism this comes at the cost of the loss of revolutionary potential. For Marcuse, the availability of goods in capitalism was one of its strong points, but the alienation and libidinal repression of workers was not. Marcuse did not argue for destruction, but rather for individuals to consider for themselves what are 'true' and 'false' needs. In other words, Marcuse thought there were problems with capitalism which are not captured purely in terms of the material wealth in Western countries. Marcuse was not very quotable, but this quote of his points to his rhetorical style: > “If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > > And, the rights and freedoms that let the proletariat have a non-horrible life is therefore something to destroy, so that the proletariat will then have a reason to revolt? > No, this was never Marcuse's argument. Instead he argued that not only are the majority of workers better off materially, within capitalism this comes at the cost of the loss of revolutionary potential. I fail to see the difference between "they don't have a reason to revolt" and "loss of revolutionary potential". Given who you are, I suspect that you're using the second term in a technical way. Could you define it, or expand a bit on what you mean here? > In other words, Marcuse thought there were problems with capitalism which are not captured purely in terms of the material wealth in Western countries. I agree, actually. We have fed the body, and left the soul starving. (Is this what Marx meant by alienation?) It's better than people physically starving, but it's still not good enough. I doubt that revolution is the answer, though, nor changing the means of production. It seems to me that the problem is that people are expecting material prosperity to satisfy them, and it doesn't. Merely changing the means of production isn't going to fix that.
    - claudiawerner 6y ago
      >I fail to see the difference between "they don't have a reason to revolt" and "loss of revolutionary potential". People, according to Marcuse, are more readily able to see the problems of the system when they are on the outside and the margins, and being on the outside usually entailed a lower standard of living, low wages, and soul-crushing work. Marcuse thought that there are serious problems with capitalism, ones which may be reason for revolt, but increasing material security and integration into the system in which the worker becomes part of the machinery of the establishment (sometimes quite literally in lock-step with the machines or even a particular brand of machine) leads to this conversation not arising. He argued that contra Orwell in which "war is peace, peace is war", the contradiction is hidden in the noun itself by unintentional ideological forces. This precludes even most conversations about freedom, never mind critique. The point is that people should have revolutinary potential even if they deliberate and decide not to revolt. I should have the potential to read a book, even if upon reflection and consideration using that potential I decide to watch a movie instead. He argued that the modern system and the state, with its educational system, dull critical thinking or fail to nurture it in the first place. People have fewer options, including the option to revolt. In Repressive Tolerance he argued that because these potentials and critical abilities have been dulled, core democratic functions of deliberation cannot meaningfully be carried out any more. The point probably also applies to, say, the Soviet system, its integration of the people into its state machinery, its totalizing ideology, and its propaganda which precludes informed deliberation among the majority of people.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > And that's a problem? It's a problem if being a revolutionary is part of your identity, as it invariably is (by definition!) for the radical left and most likely also the radical right. (As an aside, how can an article about Marcuse and *anon revolutionaries not mention Fanon? /s)
claudiawerner 6y ago
I've read Marcuse and I'm a little disappointed that, even in the excerpt posted here, the author hasn't elucidated why he thinks Marcuse was a pseudo-intellectual, nor has he substantiated the claim that his essay published in a book of three essays on critique of tolerance was as influential as he claims, especially outside academia. There were far more potent and forceful critiques of liberalism and particularly of free speech. It would be more accurate to say Catherine MacKinnon with her idea of speech that silences - and the modern litetature against free speech based of the development of her theory by Langton and Hornsby since 2000 have been far more influential. If you want to read about Marcuse's actual philosophy written by someone with an expertise in philosophy rather than a blogger with an axe to grind, check out the article on him of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/
- seertaak 6y ago
  I'm a little confused about your remark, "even in the excerpt posted here". Do you expect Taibbi to prove that Marcuse was a pseudo-intellectual, and also that his works were as "influential as [Taibbi] claims" -- all in the excerpt? Isn't that akin to demanding a movie trailer divulge the entire plot of a film? In any case, I did read the entire article, and I submit that Taibbi provides good enough proof on the pseudo-intellectuality claim. Here's a passage he quotes from Marcuse, on the "tyranny of affluence" > The systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence… When aggressive driving is offered as the terrible outcome of the tyranny of affluence, requiring suspension of basic civil liberties and freedom of speech, then for me at least there's sufficient proof that Marcuse has both feet firmly planted in BS territory. As for your second claim, that the excerpt doesn't prove Marcuse's influence, I think your case is stronger here. Thankfully, you provided a link from "someone with expertise in philosophy", and I will quote literally the second paragraph: > The Frankfurt School has had an enormous impact on philosophy as well as social and political theory in the United States and around the world. In the 1960s Marcuse ascended to prominence and became one of the best known philosophers and social theorists in the world. He was often referred to as the Guru of the New Left (a title which he rejected). During the late 1970s through the 1990s, Marcuse’s popularity began to wane as he was eclipsed by second and third generation critical theorists, postmodernism, Rawlsian liberalism, and his former colleagues Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. In recent years there has been a new surge of interest in Marcuse. "enormous impact on philosophy as well as social and political theory" "Guru of the New Left" "new surge of interest" As an aside, I note with amusement that an article, questioning the intellectual foundations of a social movement seeking to restrict free speech (and has already achieved much "success" in this area), has been flagged so as to reduce discussion. Bravo, very appropriate!
rex46 6y ago
I suggest the author consider connecting with one or several of Marcuse’s well known and respected students from the 1960’s. Angela Davis studied under Marcuse while he was at Brandeis University and later completed her PhD while he was a member of the faculty at UC San Diego. Another of his star students was Dr. Andrew Feenberg who completed his PhD at UC San Diego with Marcuse and was also with him in Paris in May 1968 and has written about their experience in an essay titled “Remembering the May Events”. Feenberg to my personal knowledge was well acquainted with Marcuse both academically and personally for his entire life and has written extensively about Marcuse’s philosophy. While Marcuse was a member of the faculty at UC San Diego, Feenberg was a professor of Philosophy at San Diego State University, SUNY, Buffalo and most recently at SFU-Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. The third former student of Marcuse at UC San Diego is well known journalist and former professor of journalism at UC Berkeley, Lowell Bergman. If the author is interested in acquiring a more personal understanding of Marcuse and his philosophy, I know that Angela, and Dr. Feenberg are still living and healthy and would very likely be happy to share with Taibbi. I’m not sure about Bergman.

10 points by andrenth 6y ago

Kinda reminds me of the thin and nonsensical swill from Marshall McLuhan. Make up your own words and world views then refuse to back them up with studies that can falsify them. Instant success.

zozbot234 6y ago

The excerpt is interesting but it isn't saying anything that people who are familiar with the history of social movements in the 1960s and 1970s didn't already know - "Marx, Mao, Marcuse!" was a routine slogan in the Paris 1968 protests, and yes the protestors very much had Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in mind. There were quite a few naïvely enthusiastic supporters of Mao's "Revolution" back then, even in Western countries. It's specifically people in the U.S. who are often unfamiliar with this craziness, because they were introduced to it quite late. To many others in the Western world, these ideas are, yes, genuinely worrying for obvious reasons, but also quite laughably old-hat.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Wow. So the proletariat aren't revolting, because the society has met their needs? And that's a problem? Only if you're more concerned about having a revolution than about the point of the revolution - to make peoples' lives better. And, the rights and freedoms that let the proletariat have a non-horrible life is therefore something to destroy, so that the proletariat will then have a reason to revolt? Yeah, um... "They eagerly seek you, not honorably, but they desire to shut you out in order that you may seek them." (From the Bible, actually.) Anyone who follows Marcuse in this is a friend of revolution, but not a friend of the human beings that the revolution is alleged to benefit.

claudiawerner 6y ago
> Wow. So the proletariat aren't revolting, because the society has met their needs? And that's a problem? Only if you're more concerned about having a revolution than about the point of the revolution - to make peoples' lives better. Marcuse's point was that material goods, and the system that optimizes that freedom, comes at the cost of other freedoms, in particular of political dissent, autonomy, and freedom from total administration of the state. It would be better to consider the point Huxley was making as closer to what he was getting at. Marcuse tried to synthesize Marx's sociology (while maintaining that Marx's classical economic analysis has been superceded in modern capitalism) with Freudian social psychology. >And, the rights and freedoms that let the proletariat have a non-horrible life is therefore something to destroy, so that the proletariat will then have a reason to revolt? No, this was never Marcuse's argument. Instead he argued that not only are the majority of workers better off materially, within capitalism this comes at the cost of the loss of revolutionary potential. For Marcuse, the availability of goods in capitalism was one of its strong points, but the alienation and libidinal repression of workers was not. Marcuse did not argue for destruction, but rather for individuals to consider for themselves what are 'true' and 'false' needs. In other words, Marcuse thought there were problems with capitalism which are not captured purely in terms of the material wealth in Western countries. Marcuse was not very quotable, but this quote of his points to his rhetorical style: > “If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  > > And, the rights and freedoms that let the proletariat have a non-horrible life is therefore something to destroy, so that the proletariat will then have a reason to revolt? > No, this was never Marcuse's argument. Instead he argued that not only are the majority of workers better off materially, within capitalism this comes at the cost of the loss of revolutionary potential. I fail to see the difference between "they don't have a reason to revolt" and "loss of revolutionary potential". Given who you are, I suspect that you're using the second term in a technical way. Could you define it, or expand a bit on what you mean here? > In other words, Marcuse thought there were problems with capitalism which are not captured purely in terms of the material wealth in Western countries. I agree, actually. We have fed the body, and left the soul starving. (Is this what Marx meant by alienation?) It's better than people physically starving, but it's still not good enough. I doubt that revolution is the answer, though, nor changing the means of production. It seems to me that the problem is that people are expecting material prosperity to satisfy them, and it doesn't. Merely changing the means of production isn't going to fix that.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    >I fail to see the difference between "they don't have a reason to revolt" and "loss of revolutionary potential". People, according to Marcuse, are more readily able to see the problems of the system when they are on the outside and the margins, and being on the outside usually entailed a lower standard of living, low wages, and soul-crushing work. Marcuse thought that there are serious problems with capitalism, ones which may be reason for revolt, but increasing material security and integration into the system in which the worker becomes part of the machinery of the establishment (sometimes quite literally in lock-step with the machines or even a particular brand of machine) leads to this conversation not arising. He argued that contra Orwell in which "war is peace, peace is war", the contradiction is hidden in the noun itself by unintentional ideological forces. This precludes even most conversations about freedom, never mind critique. The point is that people should have revolutinary potential even if they deliberate and decide not to revolt. I should have the potential to read a book, even if upon reflection and consideration using that potential I decide to watch a movie instead. He argued that the modern system and the state, with its educational system, dull critical thinking or fail to nurture it in the first place. People have fewer options, including the option to revolt. In Repressive Tolerance he argued that because these potentials and critical abilities have been dulled, core democratic functions of deliberation cannot meaningfully be carried out any more. The point probably also applies to, say, the Soviet system, its integration of the people into its state machinery, its totalizing ideology, and its propaganda which precludes informed deliberation among the majority of people.
zozbot234 6y ago
> And that's a problem? It's a problem if being a revolutionary is part of your identity, as it invariably is (by definition!) for the radical left and most likely also the radical right. (As an aside, how can an article about Marcuse and *anon revolutionaries not mention Fanon? /s)

claudiawerner 6y ago

I've read Marcuse and I'm a little disappointed that, even in the excerpt posted here, the author hasn't elucidated why he thinks Marcuse was a pseudo-intellectual, nor has he substantiated the claim that his essay published in a book of three essays on critique of tolerance was as influential as he claims, especially outside academia. There were far more potent and forceful critiques of liberalism and particularly of free speech. It would be more accurate to say Catherine MacKinnon with her idea of speech that silences - and the modern litetature against free speech based of the development of her theory by Langton and Hornsby since 2000 have been far more influential. If you want to read about Marcuse's actual philosophy written by someone with an expertise in philosophy rather than a blogger with an axe to grind, check out the article on him of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/

seertaak 6y ago
I'm a little confused about your remark, "even in the excerpt posted here". Do you expect Taibbi to prove that Marcuse was a pseudo-intellectual, and also that his works were as "influential as [Taibbi] claims" -- all in the excerpt? Isn't that akin to demanding a movie trailer divulge the entire plot of a film? In any case, I did read the entire article, and I submit that Taibbi provides good enough proof on the pseudo-intellectuality claim. Here's a passage he quotes from Marcuse, on the "tyranny of affluence" > The systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence… When aggressive driving is offered as the terrible outcome of the tyranny of affluence, requiring suspension of basic civil liberties and freedom of speech, then for me at least there's sufficient proof that Marcuse has both feet firmly planted in BS territory. As for your second claim, that the excerpt doesn't prove Marcuse's influence, I think your case is stronger here. Thankfully, you provided a link from "someone with expertise in philosophy", and I will quote literally the second paragraph: > The Frankfurt School has had an enormous impact on philosophy as well as social and political theory in the United States and around the world. In the 1960s Marcuse ascended to prominence and became one of the best known philosophers and social theorists in the world. He was often referred to as the Guru of the New Left (a title which he rejected). During the late 1970s through the 1990s, Marcuse’s popularity began to wane as he was eclipsed by second and third generation critical theorists, postmodernism, Rawlsian liberalism, and his former colleagues Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. In recent years there has been a new surge of interest in Marcuse. "enormous impact on philosophy as well as social and political theory" "Guru of the New Left" "new surge of interest" As an aside, I note with amusement that an article, questioning the intellectual foundations of a social movement seeking to restrict free speech (and has already achieved much "success" in this area), has been flagged so as to reduce discussion. Bravo, very appropriate!

rex46 6y ago

I suggest the author consider connecting with one or several of Marcuse’s well known and respected students from the 1960’s. Angela Davis studied under Marcuse while he was at Brandeis University and later completed her PhD while he was a member of the faculty at UC San Diego. Another of his star students was Dr. Andrew Feenberg who completed his PhD at UC San Diego with Marcuse and was also with him in Paris in May 1968 and has written about their experience in an essay titled “Remembering the May Events”. Feenberg to my personal knowledge was well acquainted with Marcuse both academically and personally for his entire life and has written extensively about Marcuse’s philosophy. While Marcuse was a member of the faculty at UC San Diego, Feenberg was a professor of Philosophy at San Diego State University, SUNY, Buffalo and most recently at SFU-Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. The third former student of Marcuse at UC San Diego is well known journalist and former professor of journalism at UC Berkeley, Lowell Bergman. If the author is interested in acquiring a more personal understanding of Marcuse and his philosophy, I know that Angela, and Dr. Feenberg are still living and healthy and would very likely be happy to share with Taibbi. I’m not sure about Bergman.