Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks: Chapter 5: The Crisis of Socialism

This audiobook edition of Explaining Postmodernism is read by the author.

To download MP3s of the audiobook or for more information, visit Dr. Stephen Hicks's Explaining Postmodernism page:

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[xSundayMourningx]

This series is absolutely concise, searching, and thoroughly engrossing . What an achievement, to be sure !

[TheWhitehiker]

Stephen on the beam!
This history unknown by most Americans.

[xSundayMourningx]

Are we evaluating the work in and of itself ? Or, are these comments targeted at the philosophical components of the post modern domain ? The distinction is necessitated .
Anyway, great expository project . Cheers .

[RichardPhillips]

Liberalism has improved society socialism has done nothing but harm

[YashArya]

00:00 Marxism and waiting for Godot
2:08 Marxism's Three Failed Predictions
5:28 Socialism Needs an Aristocracy
11:58 Good News for Socialism: Depression and War affect Liberal Capitalist Nations
14:52 Bad News for Socialism: Liberal Capitalism Rebounds
17:47 Worse News for Socialism: Khrushchev’s revelations and Hungary
26:18 Responding to the crisis: change socialism’s ethical standard
28:22 From need to equality (From "capitalism fails to eradicate poverty" to "capitalism fails to eradicate inequality.")
From wealth is good to wealth is bad
39:51 Responding to the crisis: change socialism’s epistemology
46:06 Marcuse and the Frankfurt School: Marx plus Freud, or oppression plus repression
49:33 Sigmund Freud and it's application to Marcuse's understanding of Capitalism

Understanding the ideology behind the leftist-woke-socialist mode of operation today:
"Marcuse concluded, capitalism’s repression of human nature may be socialism’s salvation. Capitalism’s rational technocracy suppresses human nature to the point that it bursts out in irrationalisms—in violence, criminality, racism, and all of society’s other pathologies. But by encouraging those irrationalisms the new revolutionaries can destroy the system. So the first task of the revolutionary is to seek out those individuals and energies on the margins of society: the outcast, the disorderly, and the forbidden—anyone and anything that capitalism’s power structure has not yet succeeded in commodifying and dominating totally. All such marginalized and outcast elements will be “irrational, ” “immoral, ” and even “criminal, ” especially by capitalist definition, but that is precisely what the revolutionary needs. Any such outcast element could “break through the false consciousness [and] provide the Archimedean point for a larger emancipation."

“Marcuse’s reign as the pre-eminent philosopher of the New Left signaled a strong turn towards irrationality and violence among younger Leftists. “Marx, Marcuse, and Mao” became the new trinity and the slogan to rally under. As was proclaimed on a banner of students involved in closing the University of Rome: Marx is the prophet, Marcuse is his interpreter, and Mao is the sword.”

1:01:20 The rise and fall of Left terrorism
1:09:05 From the collapse of the New Left to postmodernism

"In 1974, Herbert Marcuse was asked whether he thought the New Left was history. He replied: “I don’t think it’s dead, and it will resurrect in the universities."

[designforlife]

Admit it, it's because of Peterson :)

[Menapho]

Their predictions are manifesting in our society before but surely ever since 2008. The downfall of capitalism will be in their reversal on sharing.

[LavishPatchKid]

LMAO
Meanwhile in reality, all of his predictions are now solidly true - via globalism.

[johnstewart]

This is 6 years old. I think the gig economy may be driving the proletariat -- those of us who have only our labor to sell for a living -- into deep misery. We may get to the revolution, yet.