The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 17
Repressive Tolerance Series, Part 1 of 4
We live in a crazy world today that seems to have gone off the rails. That’s because it is being driven by a broken logic, and, for all the flaws on the right, that broken logic is centered in the no-longer-tolerant left. The logic of the left today is overwhelmingly rooted in a single essay published in 1965 by the neo-Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. That essay is “Repressive Tolerance.” The thesis statement of this essay can be boiled down to “movements from the left must be extended tolerance, even when they are violent, while movements from the right must not be tolerated, including suppressing them by violence.” This asymmetric ethic has been the heart and soul of left politics in the West since the 1960s, and we’re living in the fruit of that catastrophe now.
To help people understand this vitally important and intrinsically totalitarian essay and its relevance to our present moment, James Lindsay walks the listener through Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” in a four-part lecture series. In this series, he reads the essay in full and attempts to make clear how it is the logic underlying the present moment. The goal is to explain the essay as Marcuse would have understood it, in his own context, and to show how his own logic has become dominant and the monster that he believed he was fighting.
In the first part, Lindsay begins by framing the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory to give background on Marcuse. He also explains that Marcuse seems to be attempting to give a solution to Karl Popper’s famous “Paradox of Tolerance,” which was provided as an aside in his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, which analyzed how fascism can arise and overtake liberal societies. Marcuse’s answer to this conundrum is that a “discriminating tolerance,” a “liberating tolerance,” must be practiced that offers favoritism to the left and actively suppresses the right, as he defines them (from a perspective of Critical Theory). Join Lindsay as he contextualizes and then brings the first portion of this essay to life, and stay tuned for Parts 2, 3, and 4!
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13 comments
James, great summary all around.
Could be wrong, but I slightly doubt that Marcuse would approve censoring public speech that made people “feel bad” as you articulated it at the end.
Unless I’m remembering my Frankfurt School incorrectly…. The woke rhetoric about hurting feelings isn’t really about feelings. It’s a rhetorical strategy (one that the Neo-Marxists would likely have approved as a tool). The “feelings” part of CRT and others just pander to our more emotional, feminized society in decadence, qualities that Marcuse and his ken didn’t quite predict.
This is a great article that really breaks down the current state of affairs. Unfortunately, the Left have not learned from history. All of their idols (Stalin, Hitler, Mao) went down in flames.
But that was before the surveillance state and technology made their appearance. None of those guys would have gone down if they had had quantum computers, voice of God technology, trillions of dollars, and the means by which to manipulate minds so thoroughly that humanity can’t think much for itself. In the hand of nearly every American, really every body on the planet, is a device that people willingly pay for to surveil them and to control them. Big tech owns the world now. And if a Stalin, Hitler, or Mao rises to power (coming soon to the theater or actual life near you!) nothing will stop them. Th world has become so convoluted and controlled and susceptible to control that we don’t have much hope.
I’d like to hear any thoughts/comments on the notion:
Rousseau ‘s belief that humans are corrupted by society helped to usher in Marxism ideology/Critical Theory. It’s ironic that Rousseau was the last or a later period Enlightenment philosopher.
You’re referring to his “forced to be free” quote in the context of people who won’t obey the ‘general will’?
NIght-
No, not referencing that quote nor any other single quote.
Specifically, I refer to what I believe was/is Rousseau naive conception as humans inherently good (the noble savage) before the forces of society corrupt them. He also discusses how society creates social inequalities.
I suspect Rousseau had no contact whatsoever with children. By the way, when I hear someone say, re: children, “they’re so honest!…they wouldn’t hurt anyone”, I assume they are childless. Unsocialized children typically, but now always become adults who harm others. The book, Lord of the Flies, exemplifies this: hardly an exemplar of goodness.
Rousseau clearly set the stage for the Romantic period thinkers and later thinkers too.
I probably sound cynical to some, maybe many. I suspect those people are not long practicing mental health counselors.
I believe Rousseau only thought that as a very young man. If he continued to think it, he certainly did not believe that society was a necessarily corrupting force.
I hardly think it’s verboten to ask how and why society produces inequality? However, I do see your point about Rousseau – in The Social Contract especially – laying the groundwork for more radical thought in the 19th century and beyond in Continental Europe.
An appeal to a ‘natural’ man didn’t start or end with Rousseau though. The idea of ‘natural rights’, for example, is just as naive as Rousseau’s noble savage. Personally, I think Hobbes is a better guide here.
Repressive tolerance = good old-fashioned hypocrisy. “We can be violent, but you can’t” “We can be intolerant of you, but you cannot be intolerant of us” “We can be rude and call you names, but you have to stay polite and refrain from name-calling”
I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Couple of points:
Fascism is basically the “right wing” version of Marxism. Fundamentally, the are little different. Both are totalitarian systems of government that punish anything outside the state. Mussolini was a socialist before becoming a Fascist.
Mussolini famously stated, “Nothing outside the state; everything inside the state; nothing against the state; everything for the state. Fascism and Marxism have elements of populism. Chinese Communism is populist. Both systems rely on central planning.
Fascism differs from Marxism in terms of who owns the means of production. Fascism is socialism with a capitalistic veneer.
The important aspect is that both control people’s behaviors and demand compliance.
Ironically, Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School hoped to understand authoritarian personalities and understand how Nazis were able to hold the power they did. Psychologists have discredited and vilified Adorno’s work on pre-Fascism, Fascism, and the Authoritarian personality. Adorno’s F-scale (Fascism scale) personality test has been roundly rejected.
Yet…..psychology has demonstrated time and time again its propensity for control and authoritarian tendencies. I know. I was once a member of the American Psychological Associated until I was told to be intolerant of intolerance. That was back in the early 1990s.
Once I read the APA’s position paper stating: it’s wrong to judge others because that’s intolerance; intolerance is bad. So you (APA member) must be intolerant of them. That’s not bad nor judgmental. Ipse dixit!
I never renewed my APA membership.
I’ve heard all the CT horseshit in my profession for years. It’s absurd!
Our society would be so much happier if people just minded their business.
“Associated” should read “Association” and “Fundamentally the” should read “Fundamentally they”. My error.
I think of the Left and Right spectrum as a circle rather than a straight line. You go Left far enough and you find yourself with the ‘Far Right’ and visa-versa.
Marcuse obviously has a way of making despotism sound palatable though a mangling of language. Anyway, whilst Popper was trying to figure out a way of preserving liberal democracy in the face of ‘historicism’ (i.e., totalitarianism and fascism), Marcuse, in contrast, was trying to usher in a Marxist utopia, only he wouldn’t have called it that per se since ‘utopia’ suggests an impossibility (utopia being derived from the Greek words for ‘not’ and ‘place’).
Interestingly, as James mentioned, Marcuse seeks to position himself (and others like him such as radical students) as part of an exclusive group who alone know what should and should not be tolerated on the road to the final unfolding of human history and freedom. Consequently, we’re back full circle to Popper and his withering attack on Plato in the Open Society and its Enemies; Marcuse sees himself as a Philosopher-king out of the Republic and peddles ideas that Popper tried to warn us about.