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Speaker 1: If you want to get the show early and ad free,

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Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me

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about this, even though I think on the last ad

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I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,

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support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.

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It's because of you that I can put out the

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amount of material that I do. I can do what

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I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together

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and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are

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doing together on kindinal philosophy, it's all because of you.

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And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank

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you enough. So thank you. The pekan Yonashow dot com.

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Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to the Peking

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Yona's show. Thomas's back and I pick up where we

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left off last time. So are you doing today, Thomas? I.

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Speaker 2: Well, thanks for hosting me, of course, I I don't

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remember exactly where I left off last time. The key

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iss just a significance. Though, with respect to the Frankfurt School,

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are two things. Like I said, even though there's some errors,

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I think in the way he described this phenomenon, and

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by this phenomenon I mean the impact of Frankfurt School

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ideology on the American political system and cultural life from

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a you know, the the Second World War and beyond.

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Speaker 3: But also.

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Speaker 2: You know, I think people wants understand that this isn't

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This isn't some theory of history or some attempt to correct,

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you know, some sort of ethically impoverished system in America

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has perceived and make things better. It's purely punitive. It's

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a doctrine of destruction, but not even creative destruction. And

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the idea is to tear down what exists. Because the

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people who ascribe to the cityology approach the American system

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or what traditionally was, you know, the the normative values

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and cultural practices the American system. They approach it in

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purely adversarial terms. And something also that irks me, these

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people like Pete Headseth and all these mega people, they

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talk about critical race theory. There is no critical race theory.

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There's critical theory, and there's an ontological account of what

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the significance of race is within that. But saying critical

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race theory, it's like it's like saying Marxist socialist theory,

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like it's a malaprophism. There's no such thing, you know,

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So that's important too. And also they're generally describing what

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amounts to it kind of random derivatives of this overall praxis,

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you know, like with some school board in Texas or something,

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is isn't documenting kids with in terms of false history

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and stuff. And I mean, don't get me wrong that

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that kind of stuff is insidious, but it's not. You know,

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people who don't really understand political philosophy, you don't really

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understand the source of ideological practice. They shouldn't just mouth

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off on it because they sound stupid, and it's it's

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just a fuse cakes the issue.

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Speaker 3: The uh, you know, now more or less.

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Speaker 2: Systemic psychological paradigm is what came out of the Frankfurt school.

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It wasn't some elaborated form of neo Marxism, you know,

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like I said last session, it these people basically broke

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with Merks completely, you know, the uh like, don't get

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me wrong, people like Max Horkheimer, Gaeorg Luke Gosh, Herbert,

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Mrkruseth or Adurnal they saw capitalist organizational models and the

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sociological aspects of those models as a profound source of

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psychological scarring.

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Speaker 3: But they didn't they didn't view it as some problem

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in and of itself.

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Speaker 2: And they didn't and they didn't view capitalist organizational modalities as.

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Speaker 3: Some primary.

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Speaker 2: Target that, once eradicated, would usher in some sort of

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perfect paradigm of social justice or something. They viewed it

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as very secondary. I mean, they weren't Merxist, cultural or otherwise,

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you know, they basically they basically viewed capitalist productive modalities

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as the kind of instrumentalization of an anti human system

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masquerading as a as a as the zenith of a

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rational human organization. And don't get me wrong, it's this

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important consider and Hidiger used to make this point in

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a different contests. These people were humanists. They just have

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a totally debased view of a human being. They basically

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view man as this sort of semi semi sapient animal.

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That's why they emphasize totally debased aspects of the human being,

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like you know, like and and they take something like

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sexual gratification and positive that is absolutely central to the

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human identity.

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Speaker 3: You know. So there's a.

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Speaker 2: You know, and the and the post modern right, and

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we'll get to this way in a nietzsch and Heidegger

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and schopenhowerd To some degree, the post modern right is

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in a lot of way as a humanist tendency, but

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it aims to elevate the human being, you know. And

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the humanist left is a very debased account of you know,

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the human condition, but that doesn't make it not a

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humanist tendency or something. And I realized in recent years

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that causes a lot of confusion with people.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: So the in other words, the Frankfurt Schools account of

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the capitalist system was that labor modalities being one aspect

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of systemic alienation, owes to you know, the philosophical turn

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towards scientism, which is another way that they deviated from

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the Marxian paradigm. Because Marxis held out their historical paradigm

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and the you know, and and the dialectical materialist process.

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They held this out as a scientific process. There's something

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that could be interpreted scientifically according to rational criteria. Horkimer

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in particular rejected that. He said that any total theory

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of society, you know, had to account for the basic

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irrationality of human desires and things, and as much as

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it's possible, these desires had to be sated, and social

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organization had to connect with them on some level that

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allowed them to flourish. And in his view and that

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of his comrades, in this revolution enterprise, you know, the

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the increasing rationalization of the then present situation and what

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he called the narrowing of rationality is one of the

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things that precluded not just human beings from accomplishing catharsis

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through their true desires, but it also precluded the possibility

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of meaningful social criticism because it winnowed away the potential

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avenues and criticism in conceptual terms, and all that remained

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was what was referred to as quote mere positivist descriptions

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of what was underway in social, economic, psychological spheres. Adorno

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himself and like I said, Grahams and Adorno were more

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sophisticated in terms of what they identified as correct evolutionary practice.

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In my opinion, and I don't think that's I don't

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think that's a particularly controversial take. But they suggested they

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were waging a lifelong battle against what they called quote

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administrative sociology, which what they meant by that was that

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the state and these structure is adjacent to the state,

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you know, whether you're talking about you know, public administration

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at scale, or whether you're talking about capitalists tutions that

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facilitate labor and production modalities. They were tailored to avoid

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allowing people to come to terms with inherent contradictions between

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human psychic needs and the satisfaction of those needs and

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what society had to offer by way of these rigid

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and oppressive social structures and administrative sociology. In their view,

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it was the entirety of the system that was tailored

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to preclude addressing these things in a constructively critical manner,

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you know. And again, this entire paradigm has nothing at

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all to do with marx you know, cultural or otherwise.

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It's something very different. And the fact that some aspects

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were informed by the reality the Cold War and the

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dialectical process and the centrality of Marxist to that entire paradigm. Well,

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that odu the Zeitgeist, because everybody was in dialogue with

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that reality to some degree or another. You know, that

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doesn't mean that being vastly situated in historical capacity makes

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the participant a Marxist of some heterodox sort. Gramsey's interesting,

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Antonio Gramsey, He's largely view as the leanand of the

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Frankfurt school. I think, more properly as the Mussolini of

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post Marxist revolutionary practice after Mussolini's March on Rome. I

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can't remember if I got any of this last time.

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Gramsey fled to Russia, and he actually got the attention

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of the of the Bolsheviks there because they viewed him

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as different than you know, they useful idiots of the

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schismatic left, and they viewed him as fundamentally different than

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some of these American journalists who, although not truly in

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line with the Bolshevik enterprise, they viewed themselves as being

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superficially adjacent, you know. And they they'd proffer this kind

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of copy uh that, and and propaganda in the English

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language media that that Lavizel is kind of praise on

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the Soviet Union as as uh the of centrally planned

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society that was remedying the potential for crisis modalities.

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Speaker 3: You know that that the.

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Speaker 2: That that that capitalism as it became increasingly relying on

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high finance was two. You know, Grahams he was writing

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far more serious stuff than that. And obviously he was

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choosing his subject matter carefully as he was in exile

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in the Soviet Union, because you could very easily end

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up dead if you were branded some sort of counter

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revolutionary element or disruptive personage. But the kind of stuff

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that he was he was writing his own kind of

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sam is that that was being smuggled out to Italy

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and other places where there was friendly cadres. And his

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big criticism was that the Soviet Union was only such

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that it was effective and such that this restructuring was useful.

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And mind you, Gramsey, unlike people like Trotsky, who, in

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their own right, you know, at odds as they may

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have been with Stalinism, were the orthodox Marxist. Unlike unlike Trotsky,

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Grams he didn't care about the fact that there wasn't

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a properly developed revolutionary class paradigm in Russia. His notion

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was that well, the only reason why this system is

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working in supervisial terms is because of this terror state,

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that is, you know, compulsory owing to the threat of

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violence and the ever present.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: Panopticon that you know, case people terrified of finding themselves

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within this punitive apparatus or being disappeared in the middle

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of the night, you know, which means to Gramsey, you know,

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any to Gramsey, any any kind of revolutionary praxis. I

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had to truly conquer psychological spaces, you know. You essentially

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had to not just indoctrinate people into the revolutionary enterprise

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by winning their sympathies, it went far beyond that. You

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essentially had to preclude the possibility of them entertaining any

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other potential modality, you know, and you can't do that

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through coercion alone. You know, the manner in which the

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psychological environments both you know, the inner life of the

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human being as well as the sort of collective psychological

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space wherein conceptual life occurs. It was essential for any

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revolutionary movement to appropriate and dominate those spaces. And there's

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got to be an entire constellation of incentives and disincentives

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to facilitate that and simply making people afraid or compelling

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obedience to terror, you know. And I believe in Gramsey

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believed too that there was a natural susceptibility of the

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Russian peasantry to this kind of coersion, you know. And

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Sultan needs to me that same point, you know, so

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that that further sort of corrupted the the system that

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was extant in the Soviet Union, and people who didn't

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understand these sociological nuances developed a very skewed perspective, you know.

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And Grams he made the point again again that you know,

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even the Czar, even at his lowest deb when you know,

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the the Russian army in the field was near mutiny.

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You know, even the Czar commanded more instinctive loyalty than

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the Bolsheviks, you know, and were he to re emerge

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somehow counterfactually in magic, we there there's there's every reason

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to believe that he probably could sweep away, you know,

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the the Bolshevik cadre which had taken charge of the country,

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and uh, that didn't speak well of the integrity and

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future posterity the revolution. There is an innoting question as

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to what degree the Great Patriotic War as the Russians.

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This they call it prolonged a lifespan of the Communist Party.

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It's that's hard to say. You can't really extricate political

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systems from the historical situations in which they exist. So

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it made be a kind of question begging that doesn't

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yield any.

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Speaker 3: Meaningful data.

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Speaker 2: But I I think that that's a fair point. I

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think there is something to be gleaned from that and

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entertaining counterfactuals where the Second World War did happened, or

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at least didn't develop the way that it did in

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actual history. But Gramsey Gramsey's conclusion, as far as the

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general postulates about the human condition and specifically about revolutionary

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potentialities and data relating the potentialities could be extrapolated from

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the Soviet example, he concluded that it was two thousand

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years of Christian culturization and the normative sort of moral

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paradigm they're in, and the sort of behavioral modalities and

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roles assign they're in. You know, that that was what

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accounted for the civilized world's resistance to a revolutionary imperative.

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You know, whatever whatever that imperative may be, whatever the

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substance aspects of it may be, so in terms of

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revolutionary practis, grahamsy said, and he quite literally wrote this

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in his private journals, was that Christian beliefs and values

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had to be overthrown and eradicated, and the roots of

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Western civilization had to be torn out if anybody wanted

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to devise an alternative to capitalist productive modalities, which in

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his view is really just sort of a shield or

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a prophylactic overlay or of the Western culture. He didn't

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view he didn't view productive forces and economic paradigms as

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representing the distilled essence of cultural activity and you know,

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the sociological expression of you know, the combined energies or

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the aggregate energies of a culture. Like Marst did, he

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viewed his things as not incidental.

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Speaker 3: We viewed them as intrinsic to.

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Speaker 2: The sociological situation and question. But again he viewed them

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more as a kind of overlay, you know, the core

253
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of behavioral modalities and psychological symbolic structures and conceptual horizons.

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You know, he viewed these things as basically derived from

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moral narratives and ethical postulates that were given life, as

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it were, within you know, cultural spaces and psychological horizons.

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You know, by way of you know again normative moral paradigms.

258
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So the really the only way to facilitated revolutionary praxis

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was to deculturate people, annihilate their religious belief structures, alienate

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them from what had come before, so that these things

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are no longer accessible in a linear way. And you know,

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attack basically the means by which people become habituated to

263
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these things, you know, emotionally, psychologically, conceptually and intellectual Italy

264
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and otherwise, you know. And Gramsey spent some time in

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uh prison. When he finally uh returned to Italy, he

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took up with the Communist Party, which had very much

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been driven underground Mussolini and the the internal security epparatus.

268
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The Kingdom of Italy was actually quite adept. People this

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idea that Italy, other than you know, the Cellar Republic

270
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and the final year and some months of access Europe's existence,

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has idea that well, you know, the Seller Republic was

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this police state in a state of emergency that was

273
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every bit as oppressive as they perceived the German Reich being.

274
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But they've got this idea, I think of the Kingdom

275
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of Italy otherwise being a relatively open society to employ

276
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the favorite nomenclatch or a contra the Third Reich. This

277
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really wasn't true, and I'm not saying it's punitively obviously,

278
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but Mussolini was very aware of the need to guard

279
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the revolution, and Mussolini had very he viewed the Fascist

280
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mandate is driving very much from a revolutionary imperative and

281
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sort of conventional terms in a way that the national

282
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Socialists didn't. National socialism is a very different thing. But

283
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the internal security apparatus in the Kingdom of Italy was

284
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constantly on the lookout for partisan actors and subversives who

285
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are looking to, you know, undermine the Fascist mandate or

286
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otherwise find a way to undermine the party state. And

287
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Musolini wasn't taking any chances, so he had he had

288
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Gramsey locked up. Gramsey was finally freed, but he died

289
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shortly before the onset of hostilities in World War Two.

290
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But his his prison notebooks were voluminous, and that Gramsey's

291
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prison notebooks kind of came to con that that's kind

292
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of like the Gramsey and equivalent of dos capital or

293
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you know, the equivalent of francis jaque is imperium. It's

294
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that it's it's not just his seminardeological statement, but it's

295
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really something of a blueprint for successful revolution in cultural terms.

296
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When you look at the American situation and the Frankfurt

297
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School partisans who ultimately came to America and these people

298
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who devised the social engineering regime that was implemented and

299
00:27:39,599 --> 00:27:45,000
continues to be and occupied in the bundest Republic, it

300
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:52,279
it's clear that in aggregate terms that this was based

301
00:27:52,319 --> 00:28:01,400
on Graham's these revolutionary musings and his roadmap for cultural revolution.

302
00:28:05,279 --> 00:28:11,319
You know, and Gramsey wrote extensively on the Russian situation

303
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:15,640
and what both what was unique about it and what

304
00:28:15,839 --> 00:28:20,400
was universal about the Russian Revolution that could be extrapolated,

305
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,759
but and he accounts for the fact that in Russia

306
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the body politic had something of a perverse relationship with

307
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the state. Going back a millennia, you know, Russia was

308
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very authoritarian. It was very much oriented towards what occidental

309
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:50,519
people would view as or and you know, oriental and

310
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oriental despotism depending on the epoch, you know, to the

311
00:28:55,079 --> 00:29:00,720
harder softer degrees. But you know, at even that said,

312
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you know, it was civil society that was paramount, even

313
00:29:05,839 --> 00:29:09,119
in a society like Russia, where the state had this outsized,

314
00:29:12,279 --> 00:29:20,119
corporeal and conceptual power over the body politic. You know,

315
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:26,640
even under those conditions, according to Gramsey, you've got to

316
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:31,839
capture civil society and you've got to dominate the psychological environment,

317
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you know. And of course he contrasted that with Western

318
00:29:37,759 --> 00:29:43,759
Europe and the UK and America because you know, although

319
00:29:43,799 --> 00:29:50,960
he stipulated America was the nuances there were distinguishable. But

320
00:29:51,079 --> 00:29:57,240
he said, throughout the occidental West, there's a proper relationship

321
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:02,279
between the state and civil society. It wasn't skewed, It

322
00:30:02,319 --> 00:30:06,880
didn't tend to actualomatically towards despotism. There was this nuanced

323
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:14,359
give and take that on the one hand, meant that

324
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the body politic was generally gonna be more sophisticated than

325
00:30:18,839 --> 00:30:22,400
we would find in Russia or in other Eastern domains.

326
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But at the same time, you know, there wasn't this

327
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obstacle of a leviathan state that was sort of acting

328
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:42,880
as a shield against any possible revolutionary ingress. You know,

329
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:51,079
in this this is very insightful, I think. So Gramsy

330
00:30:51,240 --> 00:31:01,200
argued that any revolutionary cadre in the West would be

331
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:07,680
setting itself up for failure if it aimed to seize

332
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:11,200
power first, you know, either by the rifle or by

333
00:31:11,279 --> 00:31:13,599
way of the ballot box. Then impose some sort of

334
00:31:13,599 --> 00:31:19,519
cultural revolution from the top down, as the Soviets were doing,

335
00:31:21,559 --> 00:31:30,519
you know, he said first, you know, anybody intending to

336
00:31:30,599 --> 00:31:36,240
dictate outcomes and a revolutionary capacity in the West would

337
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have to change the culture. And once these cultural conventions

338
00:31:43,319 --> 00:31:49,799
and these normative, conceptual and behavioral modalities were eradicated within

339
00:31:49,839 --> 00:31:55,079
a generation or two, power would fall into the hands

340
00:31:55,119 --> 00:32:00,559
the revolutionary cadre because nature abores a vacuum, if for

341
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,279
no other reason, and they would be the only people

342
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:13,000
who are actively creating a new modality of political existence,

343
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:23,599
you know. And all revolutionary practice is characterized in Wholer

344
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:28,359
in part by attention strategy and a crisis actor modality.

345
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,720
So that's something needs to be accounted for too. Like

346
00:32:31,759 --> 00:32:36,839
Gramsy wasn't talking about these things occurring amiss some sort

347
00:32:36,839 --> 00:32:43,640
of splendid stability, you know, He's talking about these things

348
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:53,160
being advanced within a paradigm of curated political warfare. So

349
00:32:53,319 --> 00:32:59,839
that's essential too, But even that is secondary, because the

350
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:05,279
the entire purpose of a revolutionary praxis the entire purpose

351
00:33:05,319 --> 00:33:09,599
the enterprise is to appropriate any of all conceptual and

352
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:14,200
cultural spaces, whether you're talking about the arts, you know,

353
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:22,119
and the cinema and transforming those things into propaganda platforms

354
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:29,039
to you know, then nascent electronic media, which you know

355
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:36,799
was radio and and the movie screen where most people

356
00:33:36,799 --> 00:33:44,359
in those days got their visual news schools and universities,

357
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:49,160
including seminaries, you know, newspapers and magazines and print media.

358
00:33:50,599 --> 00:33:56,319
You know, every aspect of cultural and intellectual life had

359
00:33:56,319 --> 00:34:01,200
to be conquered and appropriated and such that again there

360
00:34:01,279 --> 00:34:10,400
is this winnowing of discursive activity in conceptual terms to

361
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:14,840
the point where it simply people came to lack the

362
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:20,039
intellectual tools and the reference points they're in to discuss

363
00:34:21,159 --> 00:34:27,199
or consider any alternative modalities to those presented by the

364
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:35,000
revolutionary cadre. And this is what was attempted and largely

365
00:34:35,079 --> 00:34:41,039
succeeded in America. You know, there was not a Marxist

366
00:34:41,119 --> 00:34:46,800
revolution in America, and the institutions weren't appropriated by Marxists,

367
00:34:47,559 --> 00:34:53,960
you know, and these Frankfurt School ideologues weren't Marxist schismatics. Again,

368
00:34:54,079 --> 00:35:00,000
they parted the ways with Marxism. Really, in my opinion,

369
00:35:00,079 --> 00:35:06,440
in nineteen twenty. You know, So this continued insistence on

370
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:12,039
speaking in these terms as yet another reason why the

371
00:35:12,079 --> 00:35:15,639
official opposition in America, you know, which is the mainstream right,

372
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:19,440
they're they're just not they're not part of the conversation

373
00:35:19,679 --> 00:35:23,719
because they're describing things that don't actually exist, you know.

374
00:35:26,199 --> 00:35:32,760
And this isn't just academic. This is important, you know.

375
00:35:33,119 --> 00:35:44,199
And another another key pointed divergence, like I emphasized in

376
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:52,920
our discussion of Marx Marxist Leninists, and they're ideological airs,

377
00:35:53,039 --> 00:35:56,239
you know, people like Jackson Hinkle, like World systems theorists,

378
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:01,559
they viewed and viewed themselves as engaging in a scientific enterprise.

379
00:36:02,559 --> 00:36:11,519
This is essential, Okay. Frankfurt School theorists totally broke with that.

380
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:17,119
One of their part of their whole practice is a

381
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:21,639
radical critique of what they've viewed as over rationality because

382
00:36:21,679 --> 00:36:29,639
again they viewed the capitalist productive and conceptual schema and

383
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:36,239
the Marxist Leninist revolutionary paradigm. They viewed both these things

384
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:41,840
as arbitrarily rationalists and scientific. And again they view this

385
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:46,679
as anti human because human desires are not fundamentally rational,

386
00:36:47,679 --> 00:36:50,719
you know, Man, in their opinion, is basically a sum

387
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:56,880
total of these of these primitive drives and desires, some

388
00:36:56,960 --> 00:37:00,440
of which are grounded in reason, most of which aren't.

389
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:04,320
But the way to prevent the scarring of the human

390
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:14,239
being and to preclude destructive and injurious sublimation of these

391
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:26,519
core drives that demand catharsists and satisfaction, you know, the

392
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:31,840
the forcing of human beings to abide these overly rational

393
00:37:33,199 --> 00:37:39,719
behavioral and normative moral schema is one of their big things.

394
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:44,400
That that's bad, okay, And that this all the organizational

395
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:53,320
modalities and cultural pressures and social compliance and enforcement mechanisms

396
00:37:54,760 --> 00:38:02,840
that derive from rationalist organization. You know that that's an

397
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:07,239
enduring source of oppression and anguish to human beings. So

398
00:38:07,599 --> 00:38:11,760
no matter how no matter how many benefits of a

399
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:17,519
material nature it can be afforded to the individual or

400
00:38:17,559 --> 00:38:23,400
the collective body politic within a capitalist or within a

401
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:32,679
Marcist Leninist schema, this injurious process is not mitigated.

402
00:38:33,079 --> 00:38:33,280
Speaker 3: You know.

403
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:37,480
Speaker 2: The only way for the human consciousness to be fulfilled

404
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:46,480
is to liberation from these entire paradigms that preclude the

405
00:38:46,559 --> 00:38:55,639
meeting of desire desires with outlets for orgiastic catharsis, you know,

406
00:38:56,119 --> 00:39:00,360
and the only way to do that is to rip

407
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:07,960
out the root of a reason driven culture that instrumentalizes

408
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:20,239
capital and human potential to serve capital, you know, the

409
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:23,119
only way that's got to be ripped out in total.

410
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:37,280
And again that represents a fundamental digression from Marcus Lenin.

411
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:46,719
Is not just Marcus Leninis practice, but Marxian ontology and Horkheimer,

412
00:39:49,679 --> 00:39:56,239
who is very significant in terms of how he aimed

413
00:39:56,280 --> 00:40:04,920
at to pathologize the uh familial structure in the white

414
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:13,320
Christian occident. He basically, uh turned the Aristotelian model on

415
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:18,920
its head. He basically said that, yeah, the family unit

416
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:25,360
is a sort of a school of culture and normative

417
00:40:26,639 --> 00:40:35,079
behavioral paradigms. But it's it's it's this abomination that is uh,

418
00:40:35,599 --> 00:40:39,679
that that that inculcates people into fascist tendencies and things,

419
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:45,840
you know, and and breeds patriarchal and authoritarian personalities. And

420
00:40:47,199 --> 00:40:59,199
this is the original source of alienation in modern Western societies.

421
00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:08,400
So the only possible means of remedyating this curated process

422
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:11,679
of alienation is the destruction of the family, you know,

423
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:22,519
like ripping it out by its root, you know. And uh,

424
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:32,199
this underly Horricimer's entire theory of society. There wasn't really

425
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:40,519
any concern with the material conditions of people within these

426
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:48,239
within this paradigm, and uh, there wasn't any essential connection

427
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:59,679
of an ethical nature drawn between productive force dialectic and

428
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:05,840
economic considerations or political economy and the and the social dialectic.

429
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,599
You know, it was largely the former was largely incidental,

430
00:42:11,639 --> 00:42:20,679
you know. And you know, economics really did take a

431
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:28,400
back see in the American situation for this reason. And

432
00:42:28,599 --> 00:42:31,000
part of this os to there is a connection. I mean,

433
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:42,119
this was people like at Dorno, Gramsey, Horkheimer, Lucash. They

434
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:52,480
weren't particularly concerned with economic discourse anyway. But obviously after

435
00:42:52,519 --> 00:43:00,239
the war, the American situation became paramount, and you know,

436
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:04,079
economic socialism or trade unionism in America is a non

437
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:10,239
starter anyway, you know, like Werner Sombart explicated. So I

438
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:12,440
mean that was part of it too. I think some

439
00:43:12,559 --> 00:43:16,280
confusion arises because on the one hand, okay, the Frankfurt

440
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:23,360
School when it was literally situated in Frankfurt in the

441
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:29,159
Weimar era, Yes, there was a fundamental concern with Marxist

442
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:33,559
lenin Marxist Leninist dialectics, but that's because I mean that's

443
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:39,800
everybody was concerned with that subject matter, because that was

444
00:43:42,559 --> 00:43:45,960
the prime animating catalyst more than any other single political

445
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:50,960
or social tendency in Europe at the time, and that

446
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,559
really endured for most of the remainder of the twentieth century.

447
00:43:55,199 --> 00:44:02,119
But at the same time, this wasn't any intrinsic matter

448
00:44:02,199 --> 00:44:08,679
of emphasis or significance to the man who ultimately became

449
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:21,920
the revolutionary cadre that informed the radicals who brought the

450
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:26,400
revolution to America. But even were that not the case,

451
00:44:27,039 --> 00:44:31,199
you know, again, socialist politics are just a non starter

452
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:34,320
in America, and even they weren't even a hundred years

453
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:49,599
ago outside of comparatively narrow pockets of you know, of

454
00:44:49,639 --> 00:44:56,400
the country where there's unique pressures that sort of indoctrinated

455
00:44:56,519 --> 00:45:03,400
people into a labor centric radical perspective. You know, and

456
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:06,880
guys like el Smith and Upton Sinclair very much for

457
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:13,639
the product of some of these discrete environments, and they

458
00:45:13,679 --> 00:45:18,920
were universally respected by people on the left. But you know,

459
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:24,159
they they weren't leading the proverbial march as it were,

460
00:45:25,079 --> 00:45:30,960
you know, quite quite the contrary. You know, Upton Sinclair

461
00:45:31,159 --> 00:45:33,639
was viewed in his day not much different than he

462
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:34,880
differently than he is now.

463
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 3: Primarily is this kind of like literary figure, you know.

464
00:45:40,199 --> 00:45:44,079
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously people took people looked at Jungle way

465
00:45:44,119 --> 00:45:45,880
more seriously when it was released, because I mean, it

466
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:52,280
was a reality. It wasn't you know, obviously it wasn't

467
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,440
due as a period piece when it was contemporaneous. But

468
00:45:56,760 --> 00:46:00,559
at the same time, you know, these guys were national

469
00:46:00,639 --> 00:46:07,840
political figures because that didn't have any percentage at at

470
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:12,199
the time. The personage to hear you long is important

471
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,039
and I mean that's that's a subject matter for another day,

472
00:46:15,159 --> 00:46:19,920
but you know, and it becomes something of a note

473
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:25,079
true Scotsman exercise to argue over who was a real

474
00:46:25,159 --> 00:46:31,199
socialist or not. But you know, again, like I said,

475
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:41,400
we were discussing the case of James Burnham. Everybody was

476
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:45,880
a socialist of one type or another in the nineteen

477
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:52,559
twenties and thirties. That doesn't really tell us anything, but

478
00:46:52,679 --> 00:46:56,039
it's clear that you know, here you along was no

479
00:46:56,159 --> 00:47:00,880
dialectical materialist, nor was he some orthodox lib socialist. You

480
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:06,360
know that anybody who suggests otherwise doesn't really understand the

481
00:47:06,559 --> 00:47:08,199
conceptual environment of the era.

482
00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:15,000
Speaker 3: But you know, it was.

483
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:24,320
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty three is when the Frankfort School was

484
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:38,199
a kind of formally incorporated. It's lucatch and some schismatic

485
00:47:39,679 --> 00:47:44,760
elements of the KPD the set of shop at Frankfort University,

486
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:51,000
and originally they branded themselves under the banner of quote

487
00:47:51,039 --> 00:47:54,639
the Institute for Marxism, which was directly modeled in the

488
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:59,039
Merse Engels Institute in Moscow. I believe, at least in part,

489
00:48:01,519 --> 00:48:07,039
this branding was a way to attract funding and support,

490
00:48:08,599 --> 00:48:15,719
you know. I think that goes up saying after a

491
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:23,719
while they rebranded as the Institute for Social Research. It

492
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:26,480
wasn't so much to be less provocative, I don't think,

493
00:48:26,559 --> 00:48:33,800
but as they distinguished themselves as not just another sort

494
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:42,000
of academic satellite office of the common tern. But it

495
00:48:42,079 --> 00:48:46,360
really sort of found its identity around nineteen thirty and

496
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:51,320
that's when Horkheimer became the director of the Antigue for

497
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:57,280
Social Research and hoarchimer As I think I got into

498
00:48:57,519 --> 00:49:00,440
last session, he was a huge in mind or the

499
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:04,480
Marquis de Sade, and he was open about this, you know,

500
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:12,639
and he was open about his belief that there wasn't

501
00:49:12,679 --> 00:49:18,599
really any future in Marxism in terms of liberating the

502
00:49:18,679 --> 00:49:29,920
human being from these psychically injurious institutions. You know, horck

503
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:33,360
Geimer had a sort of haughty contempt for the working class.

504
00:49:35,079 --> 00:49:41,280
He didn't think they had potential as a revolutionary elements,

505
00:49:41,559 --> 00:49:47,519
certainly not as a vanguard. So there, I mean that

506
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:52,880
he was passing mortlogitement on them. But also Horkeimer wasn't

507
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:55,559
a stupid man. I mean he was, he was evil

508
00:49:55,599 --> 00:49:58,559
when he was a pervert, but he wasn't stupid. And

509
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:02,519
he made one of the same points that Sombart did.

510
00:50:03,039 --> 00:50:07,480
He said, you know, America being the model, and eventually,

511
00:50:07,679 --> 00:50:13,039
unless there's some sort of total collapse of capitalist social

512
00:50:13,119 --> 00:50:16,119
and economic scheme in Europe, you know, Europe's gonna come

513
00:50:16,159 --> 00:50:23,000
to look like America in terms of it's capitalist infrastructure,

514
00:50:23,119 --> 00:50:28,039
material and sociologically. And you know, he's like, workers are

515
00:50:28,039 --> 00:50:33,320
going to consistently enjoy a middle class life, if not

516
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:36,000
in terms of their status. You know, they're going to

517
00:50:36,079 --> 00:50:41,119
have you know, the disposable income and a level of

518
00:50:41,159 --> 00:50:48,320
material wealth you know sight unseen. You know, ever, and

519
00:50:49,199 --> 00:50:55,480
this is you know, basically the system is productive enough

520
00:50:55,519 --> 00:51:02,559
and lucrative enough, and via that even if it's already

521
00:51:02,599 --> 00:51:10,400
passed zenith, you know, there's just not the requisite pressures

522
00:51:10,599 --> 00:51:18,280
on the working class to facilitate molding them into a

523
00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:24,840
revolutionary cadre. And there was something to that. In my opinion,

524
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:30,079
it's more complicated than that. That wasn't the sole approximate

525
00:51:30,159 --> 00:51:37,519
cause by any means, but he wasn't wrong, you know, And.

526
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:41,480
Speaker 3: It was it was Harkimer who.

527
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:49,760
Speaker 2: Really directed the social research to dispense with the Marxist playbook,

528
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:54,599
you know, from that point onward, from nineteen thirty onward,

529
00:51:55,360 --> 00:52:03,039
the Frankfurt School and it's subsequent iterations, it treated Marxism,

530
00:52:03,119 --> 00:52:11,679
as you know, as a slightly less insidious version of

531
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:19,800
the American system, you know, just another productive modality that

532
00:52:20,559 --> 00:52:22,079
was unsuited.

533
00:52:23,559 --> 00:52:24,719
Speaker 3: The fulfillment of.

534
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 2: The essential and hedonic needs ake of the human being.

535
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:36,440
Speaker 3: And yeah, to be.

536
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:40,199
Speaker 2: Clear, such that there was I mean, I guess in

537
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:46,159
dialectical terms, hork Iiver didn't emphasize this as much, but

538
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:51,639
Grams he definitely did. In his prison writings, Grams he

539
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:55,639
identified as a quote absolute historicist, or he said that

540
00:52:55,679 --> 00:53:05,079
what he advocated was a quote absolute historicism, meaning that morals,

541
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:12,960
values of an ethical nature, and otherwise what people view

542
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:19,320
as true in both factual and ethical terms. All of

543
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:24,800
these things are the product of conceptual horizons that are

544
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:29,199
historically contingent. They're derived entirely from historical epochs.

545
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:31,360
Speaker 3: Okay. So that's why.

546
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:36,360
Speaker 2: In the Frankfurt school of view, which is in Grahamsy's view,

547
00:53:36,360 --> 00:53:39,039
if we're talking about storicism, you know it synonymous. He

548
00:53:39,559 --> 00:53:43,960
invented Frankfort school with storicism or radical purposes and conceptual terms.

549
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:50,840
Grahamsy would have said that, take for example, the Aztec Empire,

550
00:53:51,599 --> 00:53:58,159
which endured for a really long time. They practice ritual cannibalism,

551
00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:03,280
They cut people's hearts out to appease, you know, the

552
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:08,400
terror gods and things. They were this entire and like

553
00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:13,039
Spangler said, the Meso Americans, they accomplished genuine civilization. These

554
00:54:13,079 --> 00:54:18,639
people weren't savages, but they did horrifying things, and they

555
00:54:18,639 --> 00:54:23,559
were homicidal pagans, and they killed huge numbers of people

556
00:54:24,760 --> 00:54:32,199
for reasons of ritual practice and spectacle and things. So,

557
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:36,280
according to Gramsey, the only reason why, say, you know,

558
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:40,480
twentieth century white men would claim to consider that a

559
00:54:40,599 --> 00:54:47,280
borent is because it's expedient according to the demands of

560
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:54,599
you know, social and productive forces. And the schema built

561
00:54:54,639 --> 00:54:57,920
up around those realities within the culture that these modern

562
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,519
weite men come from, that they'd use some like that

563
00:55:00,599 --> 00:55:04,360
as being evil or deviant. You know, there's not any

564
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:11,079
sort of absolute moral standard that renders such things objectionable.

565
00:55:11,800 --> 00:55:18,159
You know, it's entirely relative to the demands of the

566
00:55:18,159 --> 00:55:25,480
epoch and the determinative aspects they're in, and the discrete

567
00:55:26,119 --> 00:55:32,719
course of the cultures that you know, inculcate people an

568
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:37,440
idea that what came before or is morally wrong, or

569
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:42,360
that alternative modalities are you know, somehow.

570
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:44,320
Speaker 3: Deviant.

571
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:50,559
Speaker 2: And I don't think that that's a convincing argument, but

572
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:54,639
it is internally illogical, and that is one thing that

573
00:55:54,840 --> 00:56:00,360
separates these true kind of Frankfurt School vanguardists and their

574
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,440
descendants in the present day from your kind of running

575
00:56:03,440 --> 00:56:08,239
the middle dummy liberal because the ladder like I have

576
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:19,519
no understanding of of matters of ethics and comparative analysis

577
00:56:19,519 --> 00:56:22,920
they're in. You know, people like Gramsey and again is

578
00:56:23,559 --> 00:56:33,559
the serious individuals among the current among the current crop

579
00:56:33,599 --> 00:56:39,440
of ideologues. You know, they they do present a fairly

580
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:48,480
sophisticated argument. But yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna end here.

581
00:56:48,599 --> 00:56:50,559
Some run out for me in a lane it's just

582
00:56:53,079 --> 00:56:55,519
my symtom pricking up today. Not to be an old bitch,

583
00:56:55,559 --> 00:56:56,599
but that's just the reality.

584
00:56:58,039 --> 00:56:59,079
Speaker 3: Well, let me ask you this.

585
00:56:59,559 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk about how back then everybody was some

586
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:07,079
form of socialism, because that's what is it today, that

587
00:57:07,199 --> 00:57:12,039
everyone is some not everyone obviously we aren't, but that

588
00:57:12,159 --> 00:57:15,400
the norm is that everyone is some sort of globalist.

589
00:57:17,079 --> 00:57:20,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, but today it's more that's the structural reality today.

590
00:57:23,639 --> 00:57:28,760
Back then, the degree to which all kinds of things

591
00:57:28,880 --> 00:57:32,920
underway in terms of economics at scale, like high finance

592
00:57:33,559 --> 00:57:44,119
was developing in ways that telecom and calculative technology couldn't

593
00:57:44,199 --> 00:57:53,039
keep up with. So there was always uncertainty because tools

594
00:57:53,039 --> 00:57:57,920
of analysis and situational awareness moment to moment, hour to hour,

595
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:00,519
even day to day couldn't keep up with the of

596
00:58:00,559 --> 00:58:01,480
money in capital.

597
00:58:03,519 --> 00:58:05,400
Speaker 3: So it seemed as if.

598
00:58:08,559 --> 00:58:15,480
Speaker 2: Economic maicro organomics had become too complicated, too nuanced, and

599
00:58:15,599 --> 00:58:20,320
uh there there was too many variables for this to

600
00:58:20,320 --> 00:58:24,239
be left a chance, because otherwise there'd just be one

601
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:29,280
crisis after another. So the idea was, well, you know,

602
00:58:29,719 --> 00:58:32,159
and especially ot the ninety twenty nine, the idea was,

603
00:58:32,599 --> 00:58:35,760
is obviously got to be some sort of regulatory mechanism

604
00:58:36,199 --> 00:58:40,679
to eradicate uncertainty as much as possible. But then as

605
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:46,000
technology mitigated these uncertainties, you know, the stuff as simple

606
00:58:46,039 --> 00:58:50,960
as advanced telecom went a long way towards that, and uh,

607
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:58,760
you know, computing technology and things and people learning to

608
00:58:59,119 --> 00:59:07,679
view capital and as as a fluid variable more and more.

609
00:59:08,920 --> 00:59:12,320
You know, that gradually changed things. And really that's what

610
00:59:13,159 --> 00:59:20,000
the deregulation trend was in the eighties, because you know

611
00:59:20,199 --> 00:59:23,559
that that was I mean, I think that kind of

612
00:59:23,559 --> 00:59:27,159
overregulation always slays the golden goose. I think that's an

613
00:59:27,239 --> 00:59:31,320
arguable but that's not It was just absolutely it was

614
00:59:31,360 --> 00:59:38,119
obsolescent to think in terms of imposing regulatory schema to

615
00:59:38,159 --> 00:59:40,400
mitigate uncertainty.

616
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:41,559
Speaker 3: You know.

617
00:59:41,760 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's related, but it's distinguishable. There just didn't

618
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:53,840
seem to be an alternative modality to state intervention in

619
00:59:53,880 --> 00:59:58,559
those days. Globalism is a lot more of a spontaneous reality.

620
00:59:58,840 --> 01:00:02,159
I mean, that's just the way things are organized inevitably,

621
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:06,000
and that doesn't mean that it's permanent. Globalism may totally

622
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:09,679
fall apart. I don't think that's gonna happen for a

623
01:00:09,679 --> 01:00:21,159
few centuries. If it does happen. But really, from the

624
01:00:21,199 --> 01:00:28,800
era of you know, nineteen ninety to today. That's really

625
01:00:30,559 --> 01:00:38,480
that's the trajectory of where political organization and social organization

626
01:00:38,559 --> 01:00:41,800
at scale has been moving in that direction since the

627
01:00:41,880 --> 01:00:47,079
seventeenth century, and we live like under its culmination. So

628
01:00:47,119 --> 01:00:56,159
it's more spontaneous and historically driven than the conceptual aspects

629
01:00:56,239 --> 01:00:59,199
of socialism in the mid twentieth century. It's a short answer.

630
01:01:00,239 --> 01:01:03,400
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I won't ask you for your plugs.

631
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:06,519
I'll tell people where to go. Go to Thomas with substack.

632
01:01:07,280 --> 01:01:11,760
It's real Thomas seven seven seven. I have the links

633
01:01:11,760 --> 01:01:16,719
to everything every way. You can support Thomas. He hasn't

634
01:01:16,760 --> 01:01:18,679
new buy me a coffee thing. I have a link there.

635
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:21,519
It'll be in the show notes and uh yeah, please

636
01:01:21,559 --> 01:01:27,199
go support Thomas and uh we'll be back for to

637
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:28,840
continue the series.

638
01:01:28,719 --> 01:01:29,480
Speaker 3: In a few days.

639
01:01:30,039 --> 01:01:33,239
Speaker 1: Thank you, yeah, thank you man, appreciate you.

640
01:01:33,840 --> 01:02:01,639
Speaker 3: Likewise st