The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 48
Liberation Series, Part 4 of 4
We live in Herbert Marcuse’s world. In a previous series on the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay made that clearer than ever by reading through all of Marcuse’s 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” which served as a basis for the strong double standard enjoyed by radical Leftism today (check out the first part in that series here). In this episode, Lindsay wraps up his four-part series reading through another of Marcuse’s frightening essays, “An Essay on Liberation.” This fourth and final part of “An Essay on Liberation” focuses on the role of “solidarity” as the glue meant to hold together his new coalition for liberation, outlined in the first three parts of the essay. Understanding the works of Herbert Marcuse has never been more important.
In this episode, join James as he reads through the final (shortest) part of this essay and connects it to the features of today’s clownish world, from Antifa and other radical activism to divisive identity politics to stakeholder capitalism and sustainability metrics. Learn what Marcuse envisioned for his New Left to bring into the world and how it has finally, after fifty years, begun to come to pass. Also, don’t miss the other parts in this four-part series on this important and chilling essay: Part 1 (A Biological Foundation for Socialism), Part 2 (A New Sensibility), and Part 3 (Subverting Forces in Transition).
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2 comments
So Marcuse was an OSS agent? Tell me more!!
One minor correction… You mentioned that Marcuse expressed admiration for China’s Cultural Revolution, even as that movement was in the process of killing up to 100 million people. That statement conflates two different campaigns – the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Together those two killed up to 100 million, though 70 million is a more common estimate. Of the two, the Great Leap Forward killed by far the greater number.
The Cultural Revolution killed “only” a few million people at most. Needless to say, it was still a horrific episode that not only killed hundreds of thousands but also terrorized millions of intellectuals, disrupted countless lives, and crushed intellectual life in China.