Writing freely, as I think I should, I think privacy is still important as long as not everyone has sufficiently caught up. I want all to live, and many people fear without cause, still
But also, I saw that people spend a lot to ensure my safety. I pretty much dared all.
Today I saw my Shandong ex-wife who I helped start her job a the Confucius institute in my tiny hometown, clearly under the awareness of the rather right wing mayor and my rather right wing fellow party members.
Also, I often supported Socialists and Communists actualizing themselves even considering myself a Libertarian, and I try to empathize with every human being and love them all. Trump, ayatollahs, AfD members, Putin, Zelenskyy, you name them. Defo all the women and all the Trans people, and I looove the aesthetic appeal of dark skin while hoping that it's really not racist. Black is beautiful, isn't it?
When I do 180s this is because my working memory is limited. So much to do, see, be, so much I might not yet have caught up with. Stories have lots of appeal even when they seem so so wrong and I want to be caring and daring at the same time. And humorous, obviously.
Hmm, I want: a ring, baring as in being and seeing naked, caring, daring, maybe an earring?, faring as in traveling, what even is garing, so I want to look it up, haring as in enjoying the mirth that hares bring, jarring as in wake people up, karing as in now I take a break so I'm fit enough even to build a proper Karre in Germany again should I have to. Ford is fort from my new hometown...
I had fun compiling a list for student body elections that had on it names from Russia, Persia, India, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Germany... broad support from Christian fraternities, students from China, and shamefully even the independent press. I guess it _was_ an awesome list
I think if Chinese or Russians or Muslims or even some actually powerful syndicate wanted to off me, they would have. I think I have had guidance, protection and support from pretty much all the places for a long time, even without my awareness.
Part of the point is I'm a regular person full to the brim with love, ready to spread the word, hoping that so can you, and believing in you, too. Am I Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini? You may call me Tobi the cistranshumanist Aries who also loves bare open models
Oh and try hard to listen to and believe your significant other(s). I for one am a currently monogamous pansexual with ADHD, and won't follow my promiscuous urges before all my significant other(s) are okay with that. Faithful because of and despite all my love, ready to forgive and forget because I know that as a human, I err
I may sometimes appear to work miracles, but my theory currently is it's mostly others working their magic through me. Remember, any sufficiently advanced tech...
Typically the answer is "don't study it". In theory, the rule is that one may not study it until one is at least 40 years old and a learned scholar. And even then, the great sage Ben-Zoma went insane upon learning the secrets of Kabbalah.
Adorno's Minima Moralia is pretty readable and short. It doesn't give an overview of the Frankfurt School but it gives a taste. The line that stuck with me is : "Every visit to the cinema leaves me, against all my vigilance, stupider and worse." It really isn't any sort of groundwork for modern leftist thought, no one would risk saying that now, but you can see why he said it. Walter Benjamin's Illuminations is also readable and interesting.
Yet he apparently continued to go. Whose fault was that?
In my view most of modern Marxism is little more than a collective temper tantrum thrown by academics who had status anxiety in a world that was rapidly passing them by. "If the world fails to recognize my genius then that is an indictment of the world."
I watched a tv prog awhile ago about N azi Jazz - there really was an attempt to out-Jazz Black Jewish Degenerate Jazz - maybe those po mo's would have enjoyed it - I laughed because thank the Lord or Real Reality, We Won!!!
Once when my daughter was 3 years old we were sitting in Starbucks and the store was playing slow jazz. I asked her whether she liked the music. "It's whiny," she said.
If you've read any of the contemporary criticisms of jazz, Adorno is pretty mild by comparison. Looking back, it's hard for us to understand why everyone was getting their knickers in a twist about it, the best I can do is that in a German context it was maybe mixed up with that whole 'between the wars' Weimar Republic flavour of decadence, and even the people painting the subject didn't try and present it as "wow, this is so great!"
This is a great painting. But the subject isn't presented as a healthy person (I don't know what she looked like in real life, but this is the cadaverous. blue-white face of a tuberculosis patient):
Or here, where the war veterans of the previous war are begging and abandoned in the street, while the rich are (literally) jazzing it up:
"Our final painting is the triptych Metropolis, finished in 1928. This was not the first time Otto Dix used the compositional style of the triptych to put across his viewpoint. The center panel epitomizes the glamour and decadence of Berlin in the 1920s. Dancing, particularly American jazz and ragtime, was the pastime of choice, symbolizing the freedom felt by the people at the time. The whole scene vibrates with energy—the transvestite dancer in the center shimmers with her “wings” and feathers—the jewel colors of the dresses glow and catch our eye as the band plays syncopated jazz. Life is good!
However, the wings of the triptych tell a different story about Germany at this time: the war-wounded struggling to live, the prostitutes lining the alleyway, and, in the corner, peering around at them is the artist himself. The outcasts turn away from him. The right-hand panel shows the hedonists leaving their cosseted world, passing by the war cripple, ignoring his upturned hat."
Jazz is also *American*, the product of one of the Great Powers that thrashed Germany in the First World War. Is that also part of the revulsion, the idea that German culture is now supine before its literal conqueror, eagerly adopting the fads and trends of the trans-Atlantic hegemon? No idea, but it could be bubbling away in the background.
Condemnations of jazz came from all over, from within America itself, to Ireland, to even the Vatican:
"On New Year’s Day 1934, Fr. Conifrey led a march through Mohill, County Leitrim, in which demonstrators shouted “down with jazz” and “out with paganism” and called on the government to close the dance halls and ban all foreign dances in Ireland.
De Valera sent a representative to the rally and wrote a letter of support.
Jazz, the campaign argued, was “abominable” music that originated in central Africa and was exported to the West by “a gang of wealthy Bolshevists in the USSR to strike at church civilisation throughout the world.”
Jazz was an “engine of hell” deployed to do the devil’s work. The Gaelic League weighed in on the day with an attack on then-Minister of Finance Seán MacEntee, who, in allowing jazz to be broadcast on Radio Eireann, was “selling the musical soul of the nation for the dividends of sponsored jazz programmes."
By comparison with this, Adorno is positively restrained:
"Let me tell you why this campaign is the most important step taken by the Gaelic League for many years.
While the Irish music has died out it is being replaced by a foreign system of music introduced from savage Africa by people out to kill religion and destroy morality. This ‘jazz’ represents the sin of impurity and young people leave their homes every night to go to dances where jazz is practised.
All night jazz dancing is one of the greatest evils Ireland has ever seen. Jazz is an even greater evil than both intemperance and landlordism combined. It is a menace to religion and nationality and its objective is nothing less than to destroy virtue in the human soul.
The reason it has been tolerated and indulged in so far is because the public in Ireland do not understand its meaning and do not see the danger.
Now we still have some people asking what is jazz? Some have asked in good faith if it excludes waltzes and barn dances? My answer to that is that the 'anti-jazz campaign excludes no dance that is in keeping with public Christian decency. But no-one could make anything out of the jazz dancing, and there was no music in the jazz tin squealing.
A professor in Oxford University tells us that the word ‘jazz’ is a Central African word and means the acting in public of something that St Paul says should not be so much as named amongst us.
The dance and the music with its abominable rhythm was borrowed from Central Africa by a gang of wealthy International Bolshevists in America. Their aim is to strike at Christian civilization throughout the world and to steer Roman civilization inro the dust: they employed this jazz – this engine of hell – to do this devil’s work.
They laid their plans carefully. They employed mass suggestion. In the music they knew they had something that would appeal to debased sexual instinct. It’s superlative, savagely extreme use of syncopation, allied with the copulative beat, beat, beat of the drum, stirred up forces all over the world."
"ROME, Feb. 24.-Modern dances, with special mention of the "shimmy" and the "camel's step," are severely condemned by the Osservatore Romano, organ of the Vatican, in an article endorsing the recent stand taken by Cardinal Begin, Archbishop of Quebec. "Jazz" is also denounced in the article.
The article says one of the causes of recent flagrant immorality, perhaps most pernicious because the less apparent, is the modern dance. It is enough to recall the names of these dances to see in them an imitation of animal movements, particularly in the "shimmy" and the "camel's step."
Apparently referring to "jazz," the article declares that this new industry of the feet, performed by the stimulus of distorted, panting notes of orchestras, should be watched severely."
But not everybody disapproved of jazz - it seems Mussolini and Italian Fascism were comfortable with it, despite official bans (Mussolini's son was a jazz musician). As ever, it seems the Futurists were the ones who first adopted jazz:
"Jazz arrived in Italy via Montmartre’s dance-halls where ragtime had become the rage. By the early 1920s, Rome’s serene order was disturbed by an emerging jazz scene celebrated by supporters of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist movement. The city’s nightclubs were growing in number, many of those located in cellars and vaults. Set up in the way Parisian cabarets were run with an array of entertainment and a rich selection of food and wines, these venues were favored haunts of the avant-garde. The rhythm of jazz drew a curious clientele.
Inaugurated in 1921 by Marinetti, the “underground” Bal Tic Tac at Via Milano, close to the city center, was Rome’s first Jazz Age cabaret. Futurist designer Giacomo Balla prepared a colorful interior design, capturing the swirling movement of dance. The club’s jazz band led by Ugo Filipino with two violins, banjo, piano, saxophone and drums, offered unfamiliar sound patterns to visitors.
The cabaret was an instant success. The appeal of swing motivated Futurist composer and theorist Franco Casavola to publish his 1924 manifesto La musica futurista in which he stressed that the aesthetics of jazz should be the foundation of all new music.
Two years later he published a Difesa del Jazzband (A Defense of the Jazz Band) in which he proclaimed that the genre symbolized Futurist masculinity: ‘violent, domineering, brutal, optimistic, anti-romantic, anti-sentimental, and against that which is charming.’ Jazz had found an eloquent clique of urban supporters.
...The Nazis’ grasp on culture was far more insidious than that of Italian Fascists. In fact, Mussolini’s crusade against jazz was ambivalent and full of contradictions. Whenever applied, censorship in music was concerned with words rather than rhythms. Songs were ‘seized’ because their lyrics were immoral or anti-Fascist (from “Bandiera rossa” to “Nofrio bolscevico”). Jazz was considered ‘ballroom’ music and its rhythms were fashionable among the regime’s higher echelons.
Turin was a place where many jazz lovers met. In 1933, Alfredo Antonino had formed a “cenacle” of initiates at the Caffè Crimea. Owner of a discotheque of several hundred 78s, he organized musical gatherings, thus spreading the “word” of African-American music from the banks of the River Po. Antonino prepared the ground for Louis Armstrong’s concert in the city in February 1935, an event that was endorsed by Vittorio Mussolini and organized with support of the regime.
By November 3, 1937, La Stampa boasted that no other station in Europe “broadcasts as much jazz as the Italian radio.” Although the station’s “official” policy was to limit foreign music, the Orchestra Angelini & Rudy Vallone performed the first live radio jazz concert from Turin in 1931. Thanks to the programming of EIAR (Ente Italiano Audizioni Radiofoniche) jazz became part of the Italian soundscape.
If Mussolini’s cultural strategy was aimed at defending ‘traditional’ values from the threat of an American style consumer culture, it achieved the opposite. By the mid-1930s virtually the complete jazz repertoire could be broadcasted as long as minor adjustments were made that would signal the capability of Italian culture to appropriate alien elements.
American musicians were given Italian names so they could be shoehorned into the country’s nationalist and anti-foreign outlook. Louis Armstrong was introduced as Luigi Braccioforte, Benny Goodman as Benito Buonuomo, and Hoagy Carmichael as Ugo Carmelo."
I think modern jazz has been sanitised, in a way, so we don't realise the impact the original music had. Nobody now thinks of jazz as sexual music (I imagine) but the introduction of it to Europe was accompanied by risque performances, such as Josephine Baker the smash hit star of Paris:
"During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in its 1927 revue Un vent de folie caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the "Black Venus", the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", and the "Creole Goddess". Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. She adopted 12 children, whom she referred to as the Rainbow Tribe, and raised them in France."
There was a whole atmosphere of sensuality and unrestrained sexuality around jazz which we don't realise, given that we get the sanitised and carefully repackaged mass media performances by the likes of Louis Armstrong for radio and cinema and television (think "It's A Wonderful World").
I feel like the Adorno/Jazz thing is sort of like the Watson/Racial Realism thing.
The fact that the discoverer of DNA also believes black people are genetically inferior does not make it more true that black people are inferior, nor does it make DNA less real.
Everyone is a true expert on one or two things at most, and everyone talks about a million other things they're not experts on and often say stupid shit on those topics.
Combing through everything a famous intellectual has ever said on topics outside their expertise is a sort of pointless and dishonest exercise, whether you're looking for dumb shit from outside their expertise you can use to discredit their actual work, or looking for heterodox opinions you share with them and can use their acknowledged brilliance to support.
Adorno on Jazz just sounds like any public figure who was 40 the first time they heard Rap, or Rock & Roll. They dislike it because it's different from what they're used to and they no longer have the faculties to interpret it, then they use whatever language and frameworks they are comfortable with to justify their dislike. Pretty normal and unsurprising, and also irrelevant to the actual purpose and merit of the Frankfurt school as a whole.
I agree with you completely. 100%. Other than the implication that i am trying to diminish Adorno. I was not. I was being snarky as i love jazz. But in college i read all the big names from the Frankfurt School and was enraptured by it. Popper, Horkheimer, Adorno, etc. So stimulating. And yes, we are fortunate to be good and smart at one or two things and that is a blessing. As for Rap, I am not a fan. But I was and am a fan of Gil Scott Herron who was a progenitor or rap.
I have done a little reading of Adorno on jazz which i found 3 essays from the 30's to the early 60's and I have to say I think he was hindered by his and all peoples of the day of the experience of fascism and WW II. "..jazz could be transformed effortlessly into a march." .."jazz can be easily adapted for use by fascism".... Also it sounds like he was listening to jazz orchestras and linking them to military marching bands which post date the origins of jazz or where jazz went on and back to after Benny Goodman et al. The guy was just wrong.
Watson didn't make any moral judgements about the inherent worth of black people or state that they are inferior. I encourage people to read his statements for themselves and make up their own minds.
He said a bunch of stupid things. From a Sunday Times interview in 2007, [Watson is] “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really”. He says that while his hope is that everyone is equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”
He claimed he was misquoted, but he said the same thing on American Masters about a decade later, and Cold Spring Harbor stripped him of his chair.
Of course, Watson totally bought into the fraudulent data presented by Lynn and Vanahan. Call him naive, but I suspect he was predisposed to believe it. And then there's Rosalind Franklin. He didn't want to acknowledge her contributions to understanding DNA until the evidence forced him to admit she was a key contributor. I get the impression that he was sort of a jerk.
I think I understand rap better in my 40s than I did as a teenager, because the modern information landscape allowed me much later in life to discover and conveniently experience the funk, fusion and NYC DJ culture elements that created it and follow those throughlines. In the absence of that technology, I'd have needed an older producer to explain it all to me and let me borrow 200 records and spend an inordinate amount of time sitting next to the record player. A public figure who had George Clinton and Ron Carter records in the 70s should've had no problem understanding rap, whether or not he enjoyed that change in direction.
For a European to hear dance hall jazz for the first time, it's not surprising they got a lot of the origins wrong and couldn't understand it, it didn't come fully-formed from "deep in darkest Africa" or spring up as just a new fad unconnected to existing music, but they lacked the context in which to place it. And in the 1930s, unlike the 2020s, you had no easy way to gain that context short of being a musician yourself among that crowd and devoting a substantial portion of your time to it.
Now perhaps there is nevertheless something to the criticisms, jazz is a collaborative dialogue in real time between the instrumentalists and their rhythm section, and with the audience, and does offer an "illusion of freedom" in some ways where what seems like pure improvisation is actually occurring within structures that are very common and ordinary, the stereotypical ii-V-I sequences are peppered everywhere. Probably this stuff is/was capable of being discussed in those ways, whether or not Adorno himself hit on anything.
The Frankfurt Schoolpeople are—collectively—my Moloch.¹
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Doesn't that "apophatic progress" idea (the "well, just try a bunch of stuff, and try to notice weird things—like, I dunno, maybe how 'torturing war-captives is a bit harsh', say—and... uh, so on" technique) suffer from the problem that one still lacks the equipment—has no standard by which—to judge whether a given cultural mutation is even 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 correct? (E.g., what is to say that we ought not err on the side of being even 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗿?)
A random walk will surely just continue ever onward 𝘢𝘴 a random walk, if one has no spirit-level by which to notice the slopes of peaks & basins.
I don't quite understand this part:—all they need for 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵? For completing the F.S.'s Great Work, or for rendering valid the interpretation (criticism?) that possibly founders on the contention that the modern Tumblr leftist understands little of all this?
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¹Or, well, the postmodernists are, I guess—but if the latter are the infection, the Frankfurters (heh heh) seem sort of like the vector.
> A random walk will surely just continue ever onward 𝘢𝘴 a random walk, if one has no spirit-level by which to notice the slopes of peaks & basins.
Yes, but the core premise of classical Marxism is that there is such a level, and it lies parallel to productive capacity: a growing-yet-permanently-stable industrial society *is* an end of history on Marxist grounds, whether it fits the popular conception of communism or not, whether it is *desirable* or not. That class society is not stable is a separate, auxiliary hypothesis.
If there's moral valence to be found here it resides in the relation between that condition and the details of human nature; nothing about the theory promises utopia to any possible being. Marx especially makes no promises regarding AI takeover.
(There may be a better way, but I've just been using one of the various sites—e.g. yaytext.com/bold-italic/ or www.piliapp.com/cool-text/bold-italic/—that let you enter the text you want to "italicize", and return the "inherently italic" Unicode characters that correspond thereto.
(It's a bit of extra trouble, for sure—but sometimes worth it, if you have O̶C̶D̶ 𝘢 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦.*)
Search seems to work fine with it for me—or, at least, "Find" (Ctrl+F) works, and the blog's "search" function doesn't seem to pick up comments at all either way.¹
No comment on accessibility. *ahem*
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¹(...or possibly I'm mistaken about that? I tried searching, e.g., both for "postmodernist" & for "apophatic", though, and neither returned my comment.)
Who's switching fonts? But I know what you mean—though I don't 𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦: I both use & see used italicized text all the time in Reddit comments, actual published work, Substack posts, YouTube comments, ..., etc.—it's a pretty common formatting choice—and when lengthy quotes are interspersed throughout a long comment, it's hard to pick them out, visually, without something like the Italic Trick.™
If you use unicode-style italics, it is actually a different font (size, kerning), which is collage, not writing. In published work, italics are part of the font used for non-italic print.
I have a sensory disorder, for real, and shifting typefaces is a real issue. The people who design fonts spend a great deal of time on how the different stylings work together, and you don't get that issue.
Not that it's important, but because I'm a petty pedant with many mental prob–...ah... I mean, because I'm very into, like, typefaces and stuff: I think it's (possibly) incorrect to call it a different *font*¹—they're rather different Unicode characters entirely, though they may be *rendered* in a different font if that used for the rest of the text lacks the appropriate glyphs.
¹Testing with Chrome & Brave, they *appear* to be rendered in the same font as the rest of the text (i.e. if I type up a Substack note in which I use the in-app italicization & paste the Unicode italics next to them, they're indistinguishable—to me, at any rate... though perhaps you have an even finer aesthetic sense & can differentiate them even so!).
(*Edit:* ...or, possibly, you have regular text displayed differently (for accessibility reasons?), and so for you they really *are* rendered in a font from a different typeface altogether—in which case, my apologies for the difficulty in reading! I've used the ugly ol' asterisks here just in case.)
>one still lacks the equipment—has no standard by which—to judge whether a given cultural mutation is even 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 correct?
Why would this be the case?
Saying that you will fail if you try to logic your way into a solution to your problems, is not the same as being unable to notice whether a new proposal could solve your problems or not. People can verify and appreciate novel mathematical proofs which they themselves could not have produced from a blank page.
It's not a random walk, it's a random generation of next steps - but you can still discriminate over which of those steps to pursue.
(note, this is in a cultural context, where you have direct experience of the consequences of the next step. 'Apophatic philosophy' more often refers to the study of God, where yes everything is ineffable and you aren't going to 'learn' much no matter what approach you take.)
My thought there was that these things have to be, to some extent, symmetrical: if you have a metric by which to judge whether something is better or worse, you also have a basis upon which to (at least begin to) construct a positive program to achieve the better. E.g., if you can tell "this is a problem because people are unhappy", then you at least know "probably we should aim at making people happy", and can logic your way—again, at least to *some* extent (see footnote)—toward a state-of-affairs with happier people. If you deny the possibility of taking the first step—if you can *only* say "this is not the Good"—well, then, on what basis are you able to recognize that it isn't?
So: either there must be some feature(s) of the world by which said recognition is achieved—in which case, you can construct a philosophy around that (e.g., in the case of happiness: something like utilitarianism; or in the case of "people are not acting virtuously": virtue ethics; vel sim.), and probably¹ also concrete plans for reducing the bad feature(s) / increasing the good—or else there is not much justification for criticism, either (maybe this is *already* "God-Communism", for all we know!...).
¹...unless the idea is that one absolutely *can* build a kataphatic philosophy of The Good, and the problem is just that it's really hard to tell how the real world can be arranged such that it comes about. This could be (almost certainly *is*) the case... but from Scott's post I got the idea that, from the Frankfurt-School/Critical-Theory perspective, the issue is meant to be more fundamental than that—more a foundational aporia than an engineering puzzle.
(As you point out, though, my understanding here may be borrowing too much from the theological sort of apophasis. I have read like 0 texts by anyone in the Frankfurt School / Critical Theory / Deconstruction / Postmodern orbit—and, in truth, have viewed the whole movement[s] as consisting largely of nonsense: often elegantly phrased nonsense, granted, but still basically insightless—whereas I have some sort of frankly monomaniacal obsession with works on/of classical, Late Antique, and medieval theology & philosophy... so my interpretation of the former might not be entirely fair–
(Maybe I ought take a page from Scott's book & try to honestly engage with the stuff. If you think I've been unfair to the movement[s], or misunderstood them, I'd certainly appreciate any book recommendations you might wish to offer! I *do* like Walter Benjamin's work, if he counts...)
Yes, apophatic is primarily theological, but I would define it just a bit differently. Knowledge of God is defined by what we CANNOT say about Him, because all positive affirmations are inadequate and need a counterbalance. It is rather non-western, and popular in Orthodox and Zoroastrian thought. It relies on meditation on the nature of God and then subtracting that from the picture. If it sounds silly then think of it in terms of the stereotype of God-picturing. Some people thought of him as a bearded elderly man seated on a throne. If we take that away, what is still present about God?
> It was this horror that led fellow-traveler Antonio Gramsci to his famous maxim: “The old world is dead; the new world is not yet born; now is the time of monsters.”
1. "fellow-traveler" understates things, Gramsci was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy
2. The "time of monsters" quote has nothing to do with the Soviet Union or the general western leftist turn away from orthodox Marxism, which long postdates Gramsci's death. It's about loss of faith in *capitalism*, and more specifically in 19th century liberalism (everything else being dead ideologies walking with the arrival of the steam engine):
> The aspect of the modern crisis that is deplored as a "wave of materialism" is related to the so-called "crisis of authority." If the ruling class has lost consensus, that is, if it no longer "leads" but only "rules" — it possesses sheer coercive power — this actually means that the great masses have become detached from traditional ideologies, they no longer believe what they previously used to believe, etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum, morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.
"Fellow traveler" here is used skew to its usual meaning, short for "fellow traveler of the Frankfurt School" rather than "fellow traveler of communism." Gramsci had a lot of interest in cultural superstructures, but was not a Frankfurter and generally had a lot more interest in reality than they did
"Time of monsters" is also a paraphrase, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci#Misattributed says Gramsci's original comment translates to the less catchy "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
Intelligent and compassionate is not the same as intellectual.
So, what percentage of intelligent and compassionate people in overwhelmingly/culturally Catholic countries sympathized with the Catholic Church's position on the social question (see Rerum Novarum)?
I can only speculate - as the author does - from the basis of "I can find a lot of examples". I won't use the word "most", because it conveys a certainty I don't have. But I will say many intelligent and compassionate people in Catholic countries did sympathize with the Catholic Church's message.
"Also, around a third of people in the early 1900s Western world were Catholic."
And plenty of them had at least some communist sympathies. Note the small c -- the claim isn't limited to the Marxist mode of communism.
(Not defending the "most" claim -- I don't have the historical nous for that -- but the 20th century saw a lot of movements that were Catholic and small-c communist.)
> And plenty of them had at least some communist sympathies. Note the small c -- the claim isn't limited to the Marxist mode of communism.
I'm not sure why you interpret the claim that way. In general parlance, communism is understood as the Marxist mode of socialism. If the author meant to say something else, they should have used the proper adjective(s).
The claim is of communist sympathies, not socialist sympathies.
"Communist sympathies" would indeed indicate "agreeing with some parts of communist thought and thinking it might be good if it was somewhat more prominent", not "being a communist".
That's one possible interpretation of sympathies. Let's call it weak sympathy. Then there's strong sympathy, where sympathizers get together with other fellow sympathizers and discuss their sympathies, and discuss the merits of the political program of the movement they sympathize with, etc. They can even come up with a name for themselves, like Fabians, Febians, or whatever (I'm not implying Fabians were communists, by the way).
The author linked a review of History Of The Fabian Society, so I assume their using of sympathies corresponds to strong sympathy, not simply agreeing with some parts of communist thought.
Also, the author [EDIT: Scott!] didn't say anything about "being a communist", and neither did I.
I enjoyed reading Scott's review on the Fabians. Here's one helpful perspective on the nature of their work: "A set of Fabian demands called the True Radical Programme included an 8-hour workday, women’s suffrage, paying MPs a salary, capital gains tax, public education, school lunches, and railroad nationalization. Keep in mind that they called it the True Radical Programme because it was supposed to be more radical than various other groups’ Radical Programmes. They considered these totally insane fringe demands. And they got them all."
I recognize you're not calling the Fabians communists, but they don't fit neatly into a schema where you're either communist or socialist, either a "weak" or a "strong" sympathizer. They were a middle-class reform movement that called themselves socialist and had obvious sympathies for elements of communism. (Many of the early Fabians were averse to the name because they wanted to distance themselves not from Marx but from the religious connotations of "communion" in English.) They ended up playing a key role in the development of welfare state capitalism and social democracy.
What makes that "strong" sympathy for communism, rather than Tatu's definition that you call "weak"?
Their desire for communism (or something similar to it) to triumph?
If group A hates group B, and group B hates group C, and group C hates every other group, it doesn't follow that people who belong to C sympathize with A simply because they agree with them that group B is bad. C people hate A people, despite the agreement.
Why go through all this song and dance over the semantics of the word, when all you really wanted to say is that you don't like the fact that smart people believe in communism because it is threatening to your beliefs?
Smart people do believe in communism, of course. Every 20th century communist leader who ruled over a communist country was smart enough to do so. I only have a problem with the quantifier "most" as used in the original sentence.
Small-c communism didn't start or end with Marx, and the link to the Fabian Society makes clear the kind of broad definition Scott's got in mind. “Some communist sympathies” doesn't strike me as an unfair description of the 20c Catholic Left, whether we're talking Dorothy Day or Gustavo Gutierrez. Communism and Catholic social teaching have essential differences, but that didn't prevent a whole lot of 20c Catholics from thinking there were ideas to salvage from the former.
Early 1900s is not the same as the 20th century: Gustavo Gutierrez was born in 1928. Dorothy Day was born Protestant, in a mostly Protestant city, in an overwhelmingly Protestant country (also, why did she found a Catholic workers movement, when she could have joined any of the existing communist movements of the time which would have been closer in orientation to her "sympathies"?).
People salvage parts of what they consider a wreck or a dead end, not of a movement they sympathize with. If you sympathize with the movement, then join it.
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but...are you actually suggesting that the *Catholic Workers' Movement* represents some kind of Protestant American taint on Trve Catholicism, just because Dorothy Day was a convert?
I appreciate that Rerum Novarum has major differences with Marx's Capital...but they're a LOT closer to each other than either is to mainstream American Protestant ideology. The dominant tendency of the latter has consistently been to sanctify laissez-faire capitalism using religious language; and it tends to regard Catholic social teaching (solidarity, corporatism, just wages, the mediating role of the state) as providing much the same service to communism.
Dorothy Day didn't start a labor movement in a fit of unexpurgated Protestantism. She started it because the public papal response to industrial modernity was to emphasize the dignity of labor and call for among other things the formation of Catholic workers' associations (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html para 54ff). If you think she and her fellow founders interpreted that call mistakenly, fair enough; but they made that mistake as passionate Catholics, not as crypto-Prods.
Your original comment ("Also, around a third of people in the early 20c Western world were Catholic") carries the implication that Catholicism is in all times and places antithetical to "sympathies" for communism. I can well believe that you'd never sympathize with a movement you disagreed with; but a host of other people can, and do. Gutierrez and the liberation theologians with their explicitly Marxian readings of the Exodus story came (as you note) well into the 20c -- after the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward; right around the time of the killing fields of Kampuchea.
The early 1900s *were* different; as Scott notes, it was a lot easier then to sympathize with communism, when the failed experiments looked like New Harmony or Brook Farm rather than the gulags. And plenty of left-leaning Catholics did sympathize.
> Your original comment ("Also, around a third of people in the early 20c Western world were Catholic") carries the implication that Catholicism is in all times and places antithetical to "sympathies" for communism.
I wasn't trying to imply Catholicism is in all times and places antithetical to "sympathies" for communism. I was trying to imply that in most times, particularly the early 1900s, and in the overwhelming majority of culturally Catholic countries Catholicism is incompatible with sympathies for communism. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough.
Liberation theologians (who only showed up after 1945; not a coincidence) were a tiny minority of all Latin American priests.
Both New Harmony and Brook Farm were founded before The Communist Manifesto was written (and I doubt people in Catholic countries even knew they had existed). I can't say what Catholics (in Catholic countries) thought communism would look like in the early 1900s, at least before 1917-1921, but I assume they did not see their religion as opium based in the very small number of them who showed sympathies for communism.
> Also, around a third of people in the early 1900s Western world were Catholic.
Whether the percentage quoted is accurate or not (personally, I regard it as inflated), it is important to remember that the degree of Catholic conservatism and intolerance varied very significantly from country to country. France harboured both a hardcore ultra-nationalist Catholic movement and a significant number of liberal theologians and intellectuals. Spain, on the other hand, was (as was made all too clear by the savagery of both sides in the civil war) afflicted by the continent’s most extreme and intransigent Catholics.
I'm including Latin America as part of the Western world. That might explain the difference.
Regarding France, from the end of the First World War to 1939, the French Socialist party regularly garnered more than 30% of the vote. Even before that, the French Radical party (which included socialists) achieved substantial success in elections (~15%-20%). During the same time period (1920s, 1930s) the French Communist party got around 1%-2% of the vote.
I don't know whether you are implying that a large share of France's intelligent and compassionate people harbored communist sympathies at the time, but if that is the case, can you explain to me why did they voted for the socialist parties and not the communist party? (I'm assuming intelligent and compassionate French people were just as likely to be left-wing than right-wing)
Not addressing your main point, but the socialist/communist/Marxist distinctions probably vary a lot between different languages and different cultures. I've been told by avowed communists and avowed Marxists that "communism" is a kind of "socialism" and Marxism is a kind of "communism". But my most reliable Marxist interlocutor told me that these distinctions are not standardized at all, that some people use them with greater or lesser degrees of interchangeability, and that we have no basis in either common usage or socialist writings to claim they're using it wrong (or right).
> I'm including Latin America as part of the Western world. That might explain the difference.
A good point; I am nowhere near familiar enough with Latin America to risk anything other than generalities, and was essentially focussing on Europe.
As regards the reasons why left-wing French progressives in the 20s and 30s threw their electoral weigh behind the socialist parties rather than the communists, I would suggest that it was largely down to the influence of Léon Blum, whose anti-doctrinaire views were popular with the left; at the same time, the fundamentally bourgeois intellectual class were put off by the rhetorical violence of the French CP.
Dorothy Day co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in that time period, and certainly sympathized with the many Communists she knew, even though she ultimately turned away from some of their proposed solutions.
I should have said: "A third of people in the early 1900s Western world lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic country" (which is actually how I estimated the one third figure). My apologies.
> According to Marx, everything in society was downstream of its pattern of economic relations (eg feudalism, capitalism, etc). This included cultural artifacts like art, music, religion, architecture, etc. A symphony wasn’t great because of timeless aesthetic truths, it was great because it had some relationship to capitalism.
This is a bad misreading of Marx. The superstructure he's concerned with is at the level of law, politics, inheritance and family structure, etc.: the arts, on a narrow reading, may *express* facts about the base (there's no such thing as the democratic Gilgamesh, or the monarchical Walt Whitman), but that doesn't mean they have to play a functional role within it, or that their artistic value is limited to any such role. For example, from the Grundrisse:
> From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish? But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model. A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child’s naïvité, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm?
In this grim and uncertain universe, there are only two eternal and immutable constants on which we may always rely: one is that any given explanation of or reference to anything to do with Marx will be immediately claimed as a misreading or misunderstanding (often by two people at once, but in exactly the opposite directions); and the other is... uh... something else.
That's what happens when you talk about the singular totemic thing that your state, elite, and cultural propaganda are most virulently devoted to opposing and denigrating.
It's almost impossible for anyone in the US to talk about Marx and have anything like precise literal truth motivate the conversation. It's all buried under a century and a half of our most vehement and manipulative propaganda, politics, polarization, cultural rifts and riffs, paid advertisements, movements, counter-movements, wars, massacres, and etc.
Given that level of cultural baggage, the actual small handful of ancient books and biography has very little remaining influence on the conversation. On any side of the conversation.
You proposed two people correcting a statement about Marx is opposite directions, implying that they're probably both wrong. That's true, but you missed a crucial element - the statement they're correcting is almost definitely wrong, as well.
At some point, we just have to taboo the word 'Marx' and the man himself, and talk about we personally actually think and believe.
> You proposed two people correcting a statement about Marx is opposite directions, implying that they're probably both wrong. That's true, but you missed a crucial element - the statement they're correcting is almost definitely wrong, as well.
At this point, does it actually matter?
Ultimately, I judge a person on what he DOES, not on what he calls himself. If you are going to support -- or oppose for that matter, -- people who call themselves Marxists, it should be on the basis on actions and policies they actually carry out, not on whether or not they match some abstract concept of "Marxism" which even Marxists can not agree on.
I honestly don't see a lot of difference between what Scott said and what Amicus said. Essentially, economic and material incentives shape society, and everything else is somewhat shaped by that, including e.g. values which also influence aesthetic.
Example: the medieval poem celebrates knightly virtues because knightly virtues are the unwritten social pact that keeps together a society in which an elite needs to invest economic surplus into training and equipping itself as heavy cavalry, the state-of-the-art weapon of the day, and needs to keep its production base concentrated, thus generating a steady influx of minor sons who need to be content with their honor and status rather than any actual landed title. All a function of the productivity of agriculture, the cost of breeding and keeping horses, the cost of smelting steel, and the state of medical and reproductive technology in 1200 AD.
Of course one can argue that this vision is more or less complete (some elements of pure interiority, including for example romantic/sexual attraction, are probably too universal to human condition to be affected much by these external factors), but I don't really see such a dramatic different in interpretation unless one is really trying to nitpick.
Yes, but this cuts both ways. Because the conservative-liberal establishment so demonized Marxism, basically everybody who hated that establishment dressed up anything as Marxism that had nothing to do with it.
everything in this piece is a horrible misreading, based upon previous misreadings. there's no reason to engage with these people on topics like this. it's low-effort highbrow misinformation to the n:th degree, ironically enough.
The reason to engage is that thousands and thousands of people read this blog and if you have something worthwhile to say here they will hear it. Even if you don't expect a fair hearing from the author or most of the commenters, remember that lurkers outnumber posters ten to one.
Scott clearly advertises that he expects he's misreading them. In light of that, this piece has value as an example of someone with a certain prior view *making the attempt* to read them.
You seem to imply that at least some of his misunderstanding is because of other people's misunderstandings, as in, you think he read a bad book and should have read a different one.
Can someone with a layman's understanding of Marx and relatively little understanding of any writings following in his tradition gain much of an accurate understanding of the Frankfurt school by reading one book? (If so, which book? I'd love to read it.) Or is it simply the case that there's a lot more reading to get through before you have a good chance of understanding them?
Does it matter? Marxism is supposedly a mass ideology, one for the restructuring of society as a whole. If 99% of the people lack the ability to understand it unless they dedicate their whole lives to studying its holy texts like monks, then it doesn't sound like a very good mass ideology. The actual "lived on" Marxism, the one that matters, is filtered through understanding usually even more simplistic than Scott's. If five or six philosophers out there understand True Marxism and are still unable to communicate its ineffable complexities to the rest of us, that's basically irrelevant to the world.
Thank you. I've tried to soften that part. Do you think there was something about this superstructure-base relationship that the Frankfurters were objecting to, or am I getting that wrong too?
Yes, but not in any consistent way. "The Frankfurt School" is the wrong unit of analysis here, if you're taking the name at face value: Benjamin and Marcuse, for instance, are far more different from each other than Marcuse is from the liberal social movements of the late 20th century.
You might also consider softening the part about complete denial of "human nature"--Marx did believe our psychology is heavily shaped by society but he did not think it was infinitely malleable, if it was then the productive class could get shaped to be perfectly satisfied with their living conditions, and the persistence of dissatisfaction tells us something about what Marx sometimes called our "species-being". In particular he thinks it's generally true that people prefer conditions in which they have the opportunity to develop and exercise many different capacities and this is part of why the life of a specialized factory worker is not so good for their flourishing. There are a bunch of quotes on this in the paper "Marx on Full and Free Development" at https://www.jstor.org/stable/23560335?seq=1
On the base/superstructure relation, there was a short letter by Engels at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm that I thought did an especially nice job in clarifying how he thought it worked (and since he worked so closely with Marx it probably reflected his views as well, though it was written after Marx's death). In it he denies that "economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect", and uses a quasi-statistical metaphor for the idea that only on larger time scales and wider fields do economic factors have a dominant determining effect:
"The further the particular sphere which we are investigating is removed from the economic sphere and approaches that of pure abstract ideology, the more shall we find it exhibiting accidents in its development, the more will its curve run in a zig-zag. So also you will find that the axis of this curve will approach more and more nearly parallel to the axis of the curve of economic development the longer the period considered and the wider the field dealt with."
He also talks about the role of historically important individuals like Napoleon, and suggests the counterfactual that someone else might have filled a similar role (he even says this is true of Marx's role in the development of socialist theory). In general I think it's helpful to think of the claims of would-be scientific theories of history like Marx's (or others like Jared Diamond's) in terms of counterfactuals, the idea that even if you introduced a butterfly effect in the past and all the individuals born after were different, certain kinds of broad patterns would likely repeat as long as environmental/technological conditions were similar (the analytic Marxist Erik Olin Wright used this sort of thought-experiment, inspired by a similar one about biological evolution by Stephen Jay Gould, in the lecture notes at https://web.archive.org/web/20190228192616/https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/621-2013/Soc621%20lecture%2023%20&%2024%202013%20--%20Classic%20Historical%20Materialism.pdf -- see the section "the core intuition of the General Theory" starting on p. 3)
I think you have a point. Marx seems to be making two points at once here:
- The specific conditions that produced something like the Iliad are gone and unrecoverable. The mythology, oral tradition, the mythical relationship to nature - that's all gone and will never return. So if we didn't already have the Illiad it would be impossible to imagine a story like it.
- Epic poetry as a form is impossible after the printing press.
The first is true, but the second is maybe too strict. We can still produce art that follows the epic poetry form.
There is a weaker version of the point though that makes sense to me: storytelling was once largely an oral tradition. Stories used to rhyme and have a certain rhythm to help people remember them. But once you can write them down, print them, and if people can generally read, this eliminates the need for stories to have this rhythm and rhyme and so you end up with a different type of story. So epic poetry isn't going to be the same because if we do it, it comes from "imitation of a past form" and not from necessity or an alive tradition. So it's at best an imitation and not "the real thing". I'm not sure whether that's also what Marx meant
Yeah. It is trivially obvious to refute the argument that Epic poetry stopped being made after the printing press (Camões, Ercilla, Tasso, Spencer, Milton, Klopstock...), but the steelman, and I think it is a pretty good one, is *what are you really talking of when you talk of epic poetry*? For the most part, the idea is of an oral-formulaic living tradition with a subject-matter that is heroic, usually warlike, with mythical heroes of the tribe/community as its protagonists and with bards reciting evening-session snippets of poems that follow some thematic and metrical constraints but are very flexible in the implementation (adapting to audience mood, specific ties of the audience to figures in the thematic legendarium, etc...). Once you have a more sophisticated and literature society, this has already broken, even if texts 'like' the old epics are produced, so you can make the case that The Aeneid, for example, is not an epic poem of the previous sort (it is highly cultured, fixed in its text, meant to be read and a peak status signifier in a new hierarchy of literary genres). In the Middle Ages you get a partial regression to the first type of epic, but then the Renaissance goes back to the Virgilian model and produces that same type of epic with similar subject matter but 'adapted' to modern beliefs and deeds. And then Romanticism puts an end to epic as a genre to be indulged in and to be considered central, but at the same time fetishizes primitive epics as the unmediated, most direct access to the 'soul', Volkgeist, of the community and proto-nation-state. Side note, you still have oral-formulaic poetry in some societies, including Europe, up to the 20th century (i.e., the Kossovo cycle amongst the Serbians).
Arguably modern fantasy, Lord of the Rings onwards, tries to fish from that same well (though it's already not poetry any more at all), but now we're at the point where we've so jaded about the real world we need to make up invented fairy-tale worlds to reinvest them of that wonder and mystery. And then we went and started writing jaded stories about those invented worlds within half a century anyway.
I wouldn't call it a misreading - Marx just isn't consistent across all of his work. Usually he talks as if consciousness is decidedly downstream of material conditions and there's a 'scientific' 'logic of history' where bourgeoisie consciousness is just an epihenomenon.
Sometimes he also draws conclusions that contradict that thesis. But I think the *intention* for Marx was to do a clean materialist inversion of Hegel – and that's how the early socialist movements understood him. It explains their fanatical self-certainty, their belief that everything is permitted since they have been given the key to heaven and now they just have to get to the door *no matter what it costs*.
"Antonio Gramsci to his famous maxim: “The old world is dead; the new world is not yet born; now is the time of monsters.”"
This is Slavoj Žižek's florid rephrasing.
Here is the original and the usual English translation:
“La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati” [The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a wide variety of morbid phenomena/symptomps appear]
I don't see a significant difference in meaning there. Zizek just makes it easier to quote. I suppose "cannot be born" differs from "is struggling to be born/is not yet born" but ultimately the conclusion is the same
“morbid/deathly phenomena” and “monsters” are close enough to me. I don’t know, Zizek speaks English and Gramsci didn’t, I’m fine with him communicating the meaning in a way that’s more readable and interesting to anglophones
The meaning is the same, the vibe is just very different. Zizek's translation should be credited with being far more poetic, evocative and powerful; Gramsci reads exactly as I'm used to hear Italian intellectuals speaking - like bureaucrats filing a report.
Actually the italian version has a slightly different vibe to me though. If it was as you say I would use "non riesce a nascere"; but Gramsci merely said "non può", which is more neutral, conveys less the sense of a struggle and more that of a mere statement of fact: it is an impossible or unfeasible thing.
The difference is stark. "Not yet" implies inevitability; "cannot be born" draws attention to something specifically in the way of the future. The latter makes the point of Scott's essay more clear as the Frankfurters were apparently preoccupied with what stopped the rise of communism in the first place.
A goal involving radical social change...which is also supposed to be 'inevitable' (in my case, because life-years capture evo dynamics in finite time...and as Feynman said, 'Nature cannot be fooled', so I can offer a descriptive formalism even if you reject the explicit goals):
The potential new paradigms for evo, econ, and ethics, which both required much work and mental re-wiring on my part...and make fully communicating the ideas to others challenging:
Besides being entertaining, I think this is a good approximation of the truth. Myself, I read quite deeply into Frankforters (mostly Benjamin, excerpts, articles summaries and secondary literature for the others) and into the Western Marxist tradition while at uni. The way I'd have summarized myself would be something like 'Yeah, Really Existing Communism has failed and we got Fascism and consumer capitalism instead. We humans just fucking suck. But perhaps we can change our culture and ways of thinking so as to... suck less and be ready for immanentizing the eschaton'. And it also turns out to be a very convenient framework for university professors and researchers in the Humanities that can imbue their work with legit revolutionary value. I lack the charitable takes of Scott, but then again, I was once a Believer, which means I have an axe to grind. Besides, some of my best friends still espouse slight variations of this theme with some later incorporations (Debord and the Situationists, Deleuze and Guattari, Jameson and the drive to Utopia, Mark Fisher...). I had a very close approximation of a chat along these lines last Friday.
Hey, the Man himself! I am flattered to have an interaction with you!
What I would recommend is *not* reading about this line of thought, as I feel it is, at its core, both mistaken and toxic, and its only real use is to understand how the left intelligentsia sees the world (which granted, has its use). I'd also say some of these thinkers are relatively easy to follow and say interesting things from time to time, even if they seem them 'through a glass, darkly' (I am very fond of Walter Benjamin even today, and a bit less so, but still a bit, of Fredric Jameson). But still, if one wants to go down this rabbit hole, I'd need to know if what you're interested about: is it about texts of Western Marxism which are the most influential / easy to follow / aesthetically pleasing? Or maybe a more general analysis of the whole tradition? Or the more important offshoots that assimilate / develop / transform the line of thought?
For a short (c. 100 pages) and accessible overview, you probably can do no worse than Perry Anderson's Considerations of Western Marxism. Somewhat bulkier is a collection of articles originally published in the New Left Review and then in book form called Western Marxism: A Critical Reader. Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, volume III is also pretty good. If you move to texts by the authors themselves, a good place to start is Lukács, the father (and frequent critic) of all of them. History and Class Consciousness is a classic that moved much of the discourse from deterministic economese to the more philosophical part of Marx's legacy, is very Hegelian and coins the idea of reification that Scott was presenting here and all the Franfurkters enjoy (capitalism shapes an illusory reality, besides whatever economic explotation it engages in). Some selection of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks is good (I think they were recently translated as a whole to English?). He's the greatest political figure (actual leader of the Partito Comunista Italiano) and a good intellectual who tends to write with much more clarity (and optimism) than the Germans, and on how culture and hegemony are the tool for taking power in Western, 'civilized' societies. Walter Benjamin is a joy to read. His small volume 'Illuminations' has some of his best essays (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and the Theses on History).
Fair. Simplifying a bit, I'd say Critical Theory is just Frankfurt School + some offshoots that keep most of they key ideas intact but intermingle them with French Post-Structuralism and new antinomies for the oppressor-oppressed framework. There are readers that collect snippets from each thinker (Terry Eagleton's is focused on literary theory, but it's decent), but I think here it just pays to read some of the key authors/ books for each current: Said's Orientalism for Postcolonialism (very accessible), some Foucault (which also helps to see Said's priors). A good entrance point and exemplification of his further drives is Discipline and Punishment. Barthes's Mythologies. Zizek does a good job at being a Lacanian-Marxist and at making the Lacanian part minimally understandable. Can't really point to a book for the Feminist Critical Theory part, as Judith Butler is notorious for being unreadable. If you survive all these, Deleuze, Butler and Spivak are a good next stepping stone. Jameson is very literature-focused, but is quite accessible at any step.
Like with all modes of thought, things can be taken to an extreme. And, I grant that it seems that some people have taken (their understanding of) critical theory to a very cynical extreme, but I think the fundamental point that, in order to better understand society, one should seek to recognize and understand systemic power dynamics and their influence on society and the people of that society, sounds right.
Especially with respect to our understanding of what is true, I see critical theory as, in a way, an extension of Plato's Allegory of the Cave (particularly, the relationship between the prisoners and the puppeteers).
What is your take on Erich Fromm's works, like The Sane Society?
As I mentioned in a previous comment, I recognize that one might dispute certain facets of his argument, and/or his prescription, but his general understanding of what ails modern societies sounds much more plausible to many than many alternative accounts that I read (or the hypothesis that nothing ails modern societies, or, at least, that this is the best we can do)
I wouldn't disagree that its sounds reasonable to consider that the study of society and its power dynamics might be a useful endeavor, but the devil is in the details. Arguably, this is the program of sociology from Auguste Comte to now: the building of a science of society that does for man what natural science had done for nature. But there are a lot of plausible ideas that just fail to pay rent in practice, and this has been one of them: it has mostly proven mostly unamenable to rigorous scientific methodology and seems likely to continue that way for a long time into the future. In its stead, we get what mostly reduces to plausible, just-so stories where adjudication between competing claims just relies on how much one agrees a priori with the axioms / intuitions behind the story.
Critical theory as a branch of philosophy has all the same problems of social science but without even bothering to employ a minimal empirical, statistical and scientific methodology for its claims. Its name is a huge misnomer. To the degree there exists some 'critical theory', it is more likely to come from some mix of logical reasoning + statistics then from what essential boils down to a dogmatic assent given to certain Marxist axioms and un unfalsifiable framework and where the 'Critical' adjective has been boiled down to 'just being against the current social-political-cultural organization of our society'.
I have only read about Fromm from second sources (except some excerpt of his in readers and collective volumes; Hobsbawm has a very good essay about him which is the core of what I remember about Fromm), but I imagine the main thesis is that capitalism/consumerism is a psychological sickness that disempowers us and of which we are aware of at some (probably subconscious) level. And I get that that is a seductive story, among other things, because I used to believe in it myself (my very meagre academic published work from the noughties uses this as its foundation stone). I just find more plausible a different anthropology that starts from humans as creatures with infinite desires and finite resources, and with both societies and individuals having to confront trade-offs, so humans are just forced to live in the tragic and permanent mismatch between human wanting and the structure of reality. You can make the case that this belief is in itself somewhat axiomatic, anti-utopian and a just-so story predicated on my subjective experiences and reads, and although I think it models social reality better, I would not disagree.
would agree that the devil is in the details, and I agree, that, in the wake of the Scientific Revolution I think the Enlightenment project and it's descendents like Comte were trying to build a "science of man", and of society.
I think one of the great difficulties of sociology and the study of societies is that, among other things, it seems to me, you cant run anything close to a true experiment (at least hard to imagine how one could in a remotely ethical way), though, of course, I do think we can still try to form some plausible hypotheses based on correlational data.
As far as saying "Critical theory as a branch of philosophy has all the same problems of social science but without even bothering to employ a minimal empirical, statistical and scientific methodology for its claims", I'm not exactly sure what to make of this statement.
Critical theory is framework for thinking about things, and people using this framework have employed empirical, statistical, and scientific methodology in trying to analyze power structures and imbalances and their consequences.
That being said, of course there are aspects of that framework that are debatable, and attempts to operationalize concepts or their hypothesized relevant consequences, and to what extent those variables might contribute to those outcomes even if we accept they could be a factor, will be controversial, but that's a part, and a valuable part, of the process, having such discussions.
"what essential boils down to a dogmatic assent given to certain Marxist axioms and un unfalsifiable framework and where the 'Critical' adjective has been boiled down to 'just being against the current social-political-cultural organization of our society'. "
If the argument is that the framework can be carried to unreasonable extremes, again, I agree. It does seem to me that there are ideas that sprout up in the intellectual world, the ideas get corrupted over time by adherents, and/or adherents become too rigid or dogmatic, and/or they hit the popular consciousness and become highly distorted and misunderstood, etc.
But I don't think that those issues discredit the entire framework, or, at least, the parts of the framework that might merit consideration, even if there is a risk they could get taken to an unreasonable extreme.
As it is, modern American-style corporate capitalism and the ideology that legitimizes it is, in my opinion, an example of a relatively meritorious idea- the benefits of a market economy and the freedom to pursue one's economic interests (especially compared to the economic systems that came before)- being taken to an insanely extreme degree.
"I just find more plausible a different anthropology that starts from humans as creatures with infinite desires and finite resources, and with both societies and individuals having to confront trade-offs, so humans are just forced to live in the tragic and permanent mismatch between human wanting and the structure of reality"
1. I'm sorry, I'm not sure how this challenges the critiques of society made by Marxism or critical theory (which isn't to say those critiques are right, or wrong)
2. My best guess is that this is an attempt to challenge the idea that the proposed solutions, as you understand them, of these critics would be any better; that you believe they are ignoring relevant aspects of the human condition when developing their proposed reforms or alternatives, is that correct?
3. If that was the point, putting aside the critique itself (which I think is more fair or less fair depending on the critic and their proposed solution), I would just respond that I think we should try to separate our evaluation of the critiques vs our evaluation of proposed remedies.
I know I am sometimes guilty of this myself, and I'm trying to work on it, but I do wonder how often critiques of existing conditions or structures are accepted or rejected not because one does or doesn't really see any merit in the critique, but because a critique has become so closely associated with a given remedy (whether or not the critic actually mentions or supports the associated remedy), that the acceptance or rejection of the critique is more a reflection of the person's opinion on the associated remedy.
"I just find more plausible a different anthropology that starts from humans as creatures with infinite desires and finite resources..."
I think there are few issues here, and I would say I'm speaking in generalities, I'm sure there could be people who exist at extremes:
1. Do you humans have infinite desires?
Depending on how we define desire, I think that's probably true.
2. Do humans have infinite desires for finite goods and resources?
Again, probably, but that probably becomes pretty trivial at a certain point. It seems the marginal utility of additional material goods and resources likely drops off pretty substantially once someone feels financially secure (wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between what is considered the middle class standard of living in their society+ feeling relatively financially secure, and the flattening of the curve)
3. Is human well-being maximized by the endless pursuit of their infinite desires for finite goods and resources?
Doubtful, because of that marginal utility drop off after a certain point, at which point the time and energy spent on pursuing those material goods and resources (or the wealth to purchase them) would likely be better spent on the other contributors to human well-being
4. My starting point is that humans are likely the product of evolution, and my theory of human psychology is approximately Nayef Al-Rodhan's theory of Emotional Amoral Egoism, and that, of course we selfishly want to survive and reproduce, but, apparently, prosocial and cooperative impulses to help balance our selfish impulses were beneficial to our survival and reproduction (which makes sense to me, the benefits of teamwork).
It seems to me we have much richer emotional lives than just trying to satisfy materialistic desires, or even primarily seeking to do so once we have satisfied our basic needs and wants, at least if we weren't the subjects of relentless campaigns to promote materialism and consumerism.
5. What else influences human well-being? I would suggest another vital aspect of human well-being, for most people, is social connection- love, family, friendship, community, etc.
Humans have material needs and materially self-interested sentiments, but, it appears, they also have social needs and prosocial sentiments. And I think any system that pretends one or the other doesn't exist, or tries to emphasize and rely on one or the other too heavily, increases the risk of the society having an unnecessarily adverse impact on well-being.
The question, as I see it, isn't if utopia is possible, but if improvement is possible, is it possible to have a better fit between the human condition and the human environment, if the mismatch I suspect truly exists.
Of course, living in a hyper-capitalist, consumerist society, and the increasing commodification of more and more aspects of our lives, and the consciously transactional nature of ever more interpersonal interactions, and seeing people behave in increasingly self-interested ways, the erosion of family, community, and social connections, it might seem like "well, this how human beings really are, our culture is allowing people to drop the mask of any pretense of decency or prosociality so we can finally live Ayn Rand's dream of being shamelessly, nakedly selfish." Maybe that's the reality.
Or maybe it isn't. One of the reasons I have hope for humanity is because, it seems to me, this culture does have, in certain ways, such a negative influence on people, and doesn't merely seek to recognize or acknowledge, but actively encourages and idolizes, some of the worst impulses of human beings, and, in spite of it, we still see as much generosity and cooperation (and I mean voluntary, consensual, uncompensated cooperation, not "cooperation" compelled by economic transactions) as we do.
But, of course, also plenty to worry about. For instance, as an example of the dynamics incentivized by a society that revolves around maximizing shareholder profit, we can look at AI. AI companies have the incentive to make their products as addictive as possible, and people, generally speaking, enjoy sychophancy and being told they are right. So AI agents are relatively sychophantic. Now other humans become less attractive to connect with, because they usually aren't so sychophantic, so now people become even more reliant on AI agents for fulfilling social needs, and less able to build human relationships, further reducing genuine human social connection and any hope of working together to have a greater voice on the forces that shape their lives, ceding more and more control over our lives over to others.
Must it be this way? If so, why? We have countless examples of communities that don't revolve around maximizing shareholder profit that seem to be doing just fine, if not better, in terms of human well-being and satisfaction, even with less material wealth because there is so much more to life than material wealth.
I'm for letting people live their lives the way they want, and so if people feel like things are on the right track, power to them.
But, perhaps there might be some merit to subsidiarity, distributism, and local control, and maybe they might be worth a shot for some intrepid individuals.
Truthfully it is difficult for me to read articles like this and not be concerned that we have lost the plot
This is a lengthy and well-thought out post. I don't think I will be able to do it justice, but I'll try to clarify what we might agree and disagree on.
>I think one of the great difficulties of sociology and the study of societies is that, among other things, it seems to me, you cant run anything close to a true experiment (at least hard to imagine how one could in a remotely ethical way), though, of course, I do think we can still try to form some plausible hypotheses based on correlational data.
Yes. I think I am more pessimistic than you, because if one is reduced to plausible hypotheses based on correlational data, I feel you're really reduced to very little. I'll exemplify with the Brenner debate, which touches my academic studies at uni. This is a debate in medieval history on why did the transition from feudalism to capitalism took place, and why England started before the others. The data is very limited and we can't do experiments with alternative universes. In the gap, you can make perfectly plausible but inconsistent hypotheses, as was the case in the debate: Brenner says the decisive factor was class/property relations, whereas his opponents argued for either a commercialization model (capitalism emerged mainly from expanding trade and markets) or a neo-Malthusian/demographic model (it is the peculiarities of population growth/decline which explain the change).
>Critical theory is framework for thinking about things, and people using this framework have employed empirical, statistical, and scientific methodology in trying to analyze power structures and imbalances and their consequences.
Yes. So Critical theory is a *philosophical* framework that some people take for granted (it acts as a set of axioms that are just taken to be self-evidently true, i.e.social relations are deeply structured by power, domination, ideology, exclusion, and so on, and this is the key interpretative tool for understanding them) and then inform the priors of some researchers in the social sciences. But because of underdetermination and lack of any real falsifiability criteria, the previous, there's no way of ever disproving those axioms no matter what the evidence (which is too scarce most of the time to be actually able to do any disproving anyway), so prior theoretical commitments can end up doing a lot of the explanatory work.
>If the argument is that the framework can be carried to unreasonable extremes, again, I agree. It does seem to me that there are ideas that sprout up in the intellectual world, the ideas get corrupted over time by adherents, and/or adherents become too rigid or dogmatic, and/or they hit the popular consciousness and become highly distorted and misunderstood, etc.
No. The argument is that given what I've just mentioned about underdetermination and lack of falsifiability criteria, there really is no solid reason for taking the theoretical commitments of Critical Theory as 'true' in any privileged way viz a viz other, opposed ones, except on mostly vibes ('this feels like the true and convincing framework to me'). In fact, I'd further say that to the degree that one accepts parsimoniousness and the predictive track record of other frameworks, some of them make a rather more convincing case given the massive uncertainty involved.
>1. I'm sorry, I'm not sure how this challenges the critiques of society made by Marxism or critical theory (which isn't to say those critiques are right, or wrong)
2. My best guess is that this is an attempt to challenge the idea that the proposed solutions, as you understand them, of these critics would be any better; that you believe they are ignoring relevant aspects of the human condition when developing their proposed reforms or alternatives, is that correct?
I think that is mostly correct. The way it works as a criticism to Marxist thought in general and the Frankfurt school in particular is this: for the latter, there's the belief that desires can be classified into two buckets, i.e., 'natural, good' desires and ''unnatural, bad' desires that are artificially created in us by capitalism to control us. I just consider the definitional boundary of these is always arbitrary and not natural at all. All desires are 'natural'. It is true they can have diminishing results at the margin, but that doesn't create by itself any objective way of discriminating between them. Besides, when talking about desires I am not just thinking of material goods, but of other stuff like popularity, status, sexual and romantic charisma which are also impossible to satisfy. We are programmed to be in a hedonic treadmill, and will stay in one bar massive genetic and psychological tampering.
This also undermines utopian critiques of currently existing society from the Marxist/Frankfurt pov: there is no utopia where humans will be contented. Not only are our desires impossible to fully satisfy: many of them are winning in zero sum games, mostly of status, and a lot of our desires and preferences are inconsistent (i.e., wanting equality in general but also wanting a privileged status for ourselves). So I am not just saying that Marxism/FS offers criticism without solution: I am saying they criticize things that are human nature, not the result of an evil and distorted capitalist perversion of human nature that can be eliminated. There is no non-alienated human being whose desires would become basically sane if only the right social order existed.
>4. My starting point is that humans are likely the product of evolution, and my theory of human psychology is approximately Nayef Al-Rodhan's theory of Emotional Amoral Egoism, and that, of course we selfishly want to survive and reproduce, but, apparently, prosocial and cooperative impulses to help balance our selfish impulses were beneficial to our survival and reproduction (which makes sense to me, the benefits of teamwork).
I haven't read this author, but what you say seems something I can agree with. I tend to feel Haidt hits the nail on the head with his metaphor of us as 90% chimp, 10% bee, which is likely the same argument you're making here but with an extra skepticism on how significant and relevant is the natural anti-selfish impulse in men. I also value more things than satisfying material needs (and likely, status ones too), but that doesn't contradict their fundamental importance and priority. I don't think capitalism ignores the existence of these other needs. I do agree that no system is perfect, and capitalism, like everything, is a trade-off: you lose some things, you gain some things, and you have to weigh the pros and cons. Yes, under capitalism community and tradition gets undermined; yes, under capitalism lots of aspects of human life get commodified, including some we don't like to see commodified. One can bona fide criticize this and try to reduce or neutralize these effects. I still feel a lot of them just come as inevitable consequences of a more rationally organized, free and prosperity-generating organization of society (i.e., capitalism). I think it is also a bona fide statement to say: "Capitalism isn't perfect, but “show me the trade-off that beats it”. We have a really bad series of 20th century examples of all types of socialism.
>But, perhaps there might be some merit to subsidiarity, distributism, and local control, and maybe they might be worth a shot for some intrepid individuals.
Sure thing! I am for all types of experiments, as long as they don't involve coercion and impositions on others.
For the record, Felix Guattari (of Deleuze and Guattari), wrote "The Three Ecologies," which keeps the descriptive critique, drops the teleology, and adds the constructive program the Frankfurt School never had. There's no eschaton in it: no phase transition, no manifesting God through history.
In Deleuze and Guattari it think it means creating and experimenting in the here and now, as minorities (not in the woke sense really), instead of waiting for society at large to become revolutionary. The relevant opposition is between history (a focus of the frankfurt school) and becoming (becoming-/insert relevant predicate/). Not waiting for history to change course or break in half, but temporarily and locally exiting history as you experiment a new becoming, even though the becoming is doomed to "fall back" into history as it coalesces into an institutionalized form. Construction of a revolutionary becoming is possible anywhere anytime, and can be nothing but transient and fragile and it's good that way. Think of experiments like the La Borde clinic, a music band like Magma which functions as a school, or what Deligny did with autistic kids, or Freinet with kids in general, and so on). There is no attempt to "change society" directly at the majority scale, no attempt to "usher in a new era". But to desert all scales and all eras into precarious "agencements". That orientation explains why Deleuze and Guattari are never critical thinkers, which make them way more lively and enjoyable than Frankfurt Schoolers (except Benjamin, the mistreated one, I love Benjamin ... But he's more on the destructive program which also makes sense).
Well, there's a trivial and a non-trivial answer to this. Let's start with the trivial: the tradition goes wrong for me ab ovo, from the beginning, because it just relies on fake and wrong axioms (i.e., Marxism). It intelligently rejects *some* types of Marxism prevalent at the time (mostly, the telos-infused, deterministic, economics-based view on the inevitability of communism's triumph and the end of history), but it sticks to a lot of others (ideas of alienation, criticism of modern society, etc...) that are mostly just critiques of modernity.
The non trivial answer is... complicated. First, what does it mean for a tradition (and I am taking the Frankfurt school as a philosophical one) to 'go wrong'? I mean, from a dilettante's pov, I see philosophy as mostly being in the business of doing two things:
1) Show that some arguments are logically inconsistent and self-defeating (and therefore, not true)
2) Explore the p(space) of all possible rational explanations of everything, with a particular focus on areas where you have barely more than rational explanations to understand the subject (once you have the rudiments of science and a method in those areas, the philosophy just converts into 'science'). This p(space) is vast, and contains many contradictory rational explanations. After you've checked that opposing ones are not logically inconsistent, what remains is only to try to prove-disprove then in a more rudimentary and indirect way, like showing that accepting some explanations leads to lots of strongly counterintuitive conclusions that most people would reject. It is just a kind of sparring, in which it is very difficult, but not impossible, to be persuaded to change your pov. Empirical evidence doesn't really exist here, and you can draw your epicycles as fancily as you wish.
From this perspective, the Frankfurt school tradition 'doesn't fail'. It presents some interpretations of social, political and cultural phenomena, and you can't really disprove them, because philosophical theories are mostly not subject to falsifiability. It inspires other paths seeking to study the subtle and subterranean effects of different forms of domination and alienation, if you are into accepting and valuing these concepts. It legitimizes a type of academic, intellectual work which could otherwise feel as narcissistic and irrelevant as key to exploring the 'real realities' of capitalist society and the (im)possibility of transcending them. And so on.
Very interesting answer! I've recently been inspired by McIntyre to try put into words what "good" is more. I suppose to me philosophy has to help us navigate the world better, otherwise it risks becoming an empty language game for academics. That line is pretty thin though when it comes to things like critical theory (I know critical analysis =/= Frankfurter Schule, but I'm more familiar with it and I'm treating it as the modern version of it). On the one hand critical analysis of e.g. ideology is useful. Subjects should be aware of their own ideologies and the strengths and weaknesses thereof. Similarly with hidden power structures, or the many discontents with capitalism. But critical analysis can also very quickly become this lens that's divorced from what anyone outside of the discipline would call reality. So there's a point where it does "real work" and a point where it loses contact. When it can explain everything, predicts nothing and immunizes itself against any counter-example than it's gone too far.
It's similar to e.g. psychoanalysis. Some concepts are genuinely illuminating, but then very quickly it becomes so reductive as to become a new problem. Like one analysis of psychoanalysis I read: "you bring up old shit to work through, but then very quickly all this shit becomes a new lens through which you keep viewing your life instead of working through it".
So maybe it's hard to say that philosophy should be falsifiable, but it should have some practical connection. It should be recognizable as such to people outside of that specific viewpoint.
Marcuse: "So, about this speculative notion of a 'Machine Intelligence' which should be 'aligned' with the goals of the flourishing of humanity, freeing us all from toil, need and inequality forever..."
Adorno: "Say that aloud and capitalists will try to build it just to file documents and make jazz music to sell! We must keep it a close secret, until the day comes."
> What would you do if you were a primitive tribe who wanted to really, genuinely, invent capitalism?
It seems to me that negating seemingly non-capitalist aspects of a tribe would not obviously help capitalism along. Instead, it would just weaken institutions and allow something else a better chance at taking shape. Would this new thing be capitalism? Maybe. But there are many societal structures under the sun and the new thing could very well be further from capitalism than the status quo. You'd only think this would help capitalism if you believed that capitalism was in some sense a natural way for your society to develop, e.g. if you were a Marxist.
I'd guess that the Frankfurt School followed a similar logic, and it seems like they may have made two mistakes here:
First, Marxism frames communism as one of several economic systems that would develop naturally. Why could culture jam just communism when every other system developed naturally? Instead of questioning Marxist Theory itself, the Frankfurt School endorsed an epicycle.
Second, by implicitly accepting Marxism -- a school of thought which only emerged through a capitalist society, the Frankfurt School took a risk that they were wrong... And if communism was a naturally favored social structure, then Frankfurt Schoolers wind up as de facto accelerationists destroying the conditions under which their ideas could exist.
>a very convenient framework for university professors and researchers in the Humanities that can imbue their work with legit revolutionary value
This is something I have noticed, but I dunno whether it comes from the Frankfurthers: the general tendency that lefty political activism would be done in way that is actually getting a professor professional merit and advancement. Like when you are a linguist and you rename homeless people to unhoused persons, you both get progressive cred and cred as being a good linguist.
I remember reading Eros and Civilisation by Marcuse when I was 16 and thinking it was genuinely the most insightful thing I had ever read. My opinions have tempered since, but I still think that this era of philosophers were seeing something that the rest of us aren't.
In your passage on the sexual ecstasy everyone would get from gardening, although I understand that it's hyperbolic, this is still a perfect example of exactly what the Frankenfurters would have meant by our deprecated language. In the modern era the link between "erotic" and "sexual" is so close that people start to think they are literally synonymous. Even worse: "sexual" and "pornographic". You see people who are so reflectively uncomfortable with the words "child" and "sexual" being in the same sentence that they will more or less castrate (metaphorically) their own children, converting them into a parody of an adult's idea of childhood innocence. Children playing around naked together gets treated as a perversion, something that needs to be treated. In effect they deny their own children's *embodied* nature, which in turn denies their children any humanity.
When you imagine Utopia, do you imagine everyone wearing clothes? I don't. But to break out of clothes-wearing, and the culture and shame and perversions that surround it seems almost impossible without a total break from the Present, of the kind they're describing. In a more naked and human world, where gardening is as free an expression of bodily freedom as any other, I can easily imagine how gardening would be erotic. Not necessarily arousing in a sexual sense, but arousing of something else, more primal and liberating. Something close to the physical manifestation of freedom itself.
>"When you imagine Utopia, do you imagine everyone wearing clothes? I don't."
I'm not sure a world without clothes would automatically be more aesthetically pleasing than a world where people have some kind of wardrobe, even if everyone were sculpted like Adonis. But then I'm not sure utopia is achievable with a species that would be recognisably human.
What thing on a deeper, more human level do you have in mind? Humans have been wearing clothes for, at least, probably several tens of thousands of years, although our archaeological data doesn't give us a particularly narrow range. But since clothes are quite useful for, apart from aesthetics, adjusting to the climate of our environment, I think that *refusing* to wear clothes, on a society-wide level, is probably going to be a fairly unpragmatic commitment, and not one that dovetails well with what I normally think of as human nature.
For a certain value of utopia, that might be the case, but I think that might also rule out "utopia" as being something we could practically achieve with society. If it means that we have technology to take care of every possible need, I don't think that it would be a more human outcome for people to *want* to stop wearing clothes as a result.
I didn't say anything about refusing to wear clothes. If it's cold then sure, put on a sweater. But that's not the main purpose of clothing. I live in a place where in summer it often gets over 100 degrees F, and yet we still all wear clothes, despite it being extremely uncomfortable.
Clothes are *not* about practicality, they're about creating a physical barrier between people. Eg. If you're in a park, and it's a sunny day, have you never wanted to just lie there nude and bathe in the sun? But you can't do this, because our culture has built up an extreme discomfort with seeing people naked. So instead we funnel that natural desire to be nude into a socially sequestered and neatly enclosed box we call "sex", where being naked is allowed. As a result you get people thinking that wanting to be naked in a park must be some kind of perverse kink, rather than the default state of things.
And the same goes for sex itself: when you have sex, do you leave most of your clothes on and keep the lights turned off? If no, why not? If yes, why? I'll make a couple guesses and you tell me if they're right:
If yes, it's because it's more comfortable, and sex is about body-to-body connection, as a means to human-to-human connection. Having a physical barrier between your skin creates a psychological barrier that defeats the whole purpose. But this applies far outside the realm of sex. It could just as easily be applied to physical affection between a child and a parent. But again, our culture associates nakedness with sex, so if a parent and child ever hugged each other naked, it would be taken as some kind of ominous perversion.
And if you're the kind of person who needs the lights off, it's likely because you (or your partner) have some kind of hangup or shame or insecurity or discomfort with your own body. Our sexualization of nakedness is so extreme that even sex itself is made "unsexy" by the nakedness. The person is afraid to be seen for what they are because they've never been seen that way before, at least not without it being used against them. That psychological/spiritual disconnection manifests in a physical disconnection: eg. dead bedroom because the wife feels ugly/unloved/unlovable.
So the deeper more human thing I'm talking about is something along the lines of self-actualisation, or self-embodiment. The same thing in human nature that hates being handcuffed also hates having to cover itself from the sun and other people's eyes.
So, speaking as the sort of person who prefers clothes off and lights on for sex, I've also never once felt any inclination to take my clothes off to sunbathe, and I rarely find myself wanting to be naked even when I'm completely alone with no risk of being seen. And it's not like I'm especially insecure about being seen naked; I'm comfortable with my body, and I've volunteered as a nude artists' model before. But I think your claim that the same thing in human nature that hates being handcuffed also hates having to cover itself from the sun and other people's eyes is just untrue as a generalization. Some people dislike it, many other people don't, but usually preferring to cover one's genitals at least in public is a human cultural universal, or near to one. And I think there's a lot of hubris in presuming that if humans were *really* self-actualized, they would stop doing things that are human cultural universals.
I think that because humans generally *like* being able to compartmentalize relationships, clothes are valuable for people in terms of demarcating levels of intimacy. It's natural to enjoy sex with people we're attracted to and deeply emotionally intimate with, and also natural to dislike sex with people we find unattractive and lack emotional intimacy with; indeed, it can be deeply emotionally disturbing to be forced or pressured into sex with people we're not comfortable with. Just as we enjoy gestures of intimacy with people we're close to, we dislike gestures of intimacy with people we're not close to. And we need measures to enforce those standards of *non* intimacy with people we're not close to. I think that a psychologically achievable human utopia would not involve being naked around other people all the time, just as it would not involve having to have sex with everyone you know whether you like them or not.
Perhaps you're not inclined to sunbathing, but I don't think it's too much of a generalisation to say that, in general, people like sun-on-skin contact, when it's sunny. People will travel to beaches specifically to do this for hours.
> And I think there's a lot of hubris in presuming that if humans were *really* self-actualized, they would stop doing things that are human cultural universals.
Aren't basically all human failings also universals? Cowardice, self-centredness, etc. And yet we still aspire to overcome them. I don't think the pathway to a better world is everyone being psychologically the same as we are now, but with cooler stuff. There's a large element of human nature that needs overcoming as well. I don't know a single religion that doesn't centre self-transformation as being crucial to progress.
It sounds like you're equating being naked around people with being intimate with them. But even in our own culture, this is often not the case. If I'm in a changing room and I get naked, am I being intimate with the other people there? Changing rooms are a space where nudity is not sexualised, so getting naked becomes a non-event and there's no sense of intimacy. I don't see why the norms of the changing room can't be expanded to other places too. Same goes in reverse too: I've seen strangers naked before without feeling any sense of intimacy with them as a result. I just think your analogy of being pressured into sex doesn't map onto this at all. All you're doing is existing in proximity to someone else.
I have a picture of what a perpetual motion machine would be like, that doesn't make it either coherent or possible. The problem with utopia is that it's nothing but fantasy. People let themselves get inspired by fever-dreams and then try to make realistic arguments about unrealistic goals. It's like Star Trek nerds arguing about how warp drive works.
I seriously doubt you have a picture of what a perpetual motion machine looks like. Describe it to me. Not just "wheel that never stops turning", but an actual specific detailed blueprint.
On the other hand, I *could* describe my blueprints of utopia to you, and I imagine most of these 20th century utopians could too. It isn't just a fever dream, I think you're being very dismissive of a concept that, by the sounds of it, you don't really see in your own mind's eye, so of course it makes no sense to you.
You can probably imagine Heaven or Hell: when you read those words there's probably some corresponding image that comes to you. By the sounds of it when you hear Utopia you imagine something totally fanciful. But the entire point of Utopia is that it's not a transcendent otherworldly thing like Heaven, it's earthly: ie. achievable. Try to imagine the best possible achievable world you can. If the idea that comes to you is blurry and vague then I can see why you'd think the whole thing is BS. But if you have a sharp image of a world that is distinctly a tier above the one we live in now, then I think that constitutes a valid idea of Utopia.
In Utopia everyone is naked or clothed as they see fit, and of course what counts as "naked" varies because maybe some people have different, changed bodies (also as they see fit).
"In a more naked and human world, where gardening is as free an expression of bodily freedom as any other, I can easily imagine how gardening would be erotic. Not necessarily arousing in a sexual sense, but arousing of something else, more primal and liberating. Something close to the physical manifestation of freedom itself."
As a weekend hobby gardener, I can assure you it already is - it's a burning desire, a passion.
There seems to be a problem with Frankfurt-type thought in general, which is that it takes the absence of primal liberation as axiomatic, and assumes that everything for everyone is a fallen version of its true self. Nobody is free, therefore anything that *looks* like freedom must be a trick. If jazz is bad because it "gave a false sense of returning to nature, whereas in fact it was totally a product of social artifice", you could as well say the same of gardening, or hiking, or going to a beach. All of these things are arranged and enabled by social artifice in *some* way; if we grant the Frankfurter worldview, I'm not sure what's stopping us from saying that *any* desire or passion aroused by any of them is just an alienated facsimile of the True Desire, something no human alive has ever truly witnessed.
This is a failure mode of absolutist philosophies in general. There appears to be no one complete, comprehensive philosophy of life that solves all problems.
I think there's a distinction between a social utopia where humanity is in harmony and happily well-coordinated, but the natural world is still as is, and a stronger total utopia where the world itself has become tame and friendly, which is basically just Heaven at that point.
Cold is produced by capitalists, to make people buy more clothes. Have you ever noticed how e.g. Africa is much warmer than many so-called "developed" countries? It's quite ironic how we consider it normal that people spend all day working, instead of spending time with their families, so that they can afford warmer clothes, while other people - living on the same planet - can get warmth naturally from the sun?
In a communist society, there would be no need to clothes, and therefore no need for cold.
I feel like then maybe we just need different words because as far as I can tell "erotic" has meant something like what we do mean by it for far longer than capitalism (indeed, the Greeks distinguished between eros, philia and agape specifically to separate physical passion from other forms of affection).
I strongly recommend reading Raymond Guess', 'The Idea of a Critical Theory'. It's basically an Anglo-American/Analytic interpretation of the early Frankfurt school. I found it extremely clear and it's also a short book.
Yes! Can't recommend Geuss enough! His "Changing the Subject", more recently, is also a great one - a history of philosophy told through philosophers who, in his extended metaphor, chose to flip the chessboard and knock all of the pieces on the floor, rather than move, for example, Rook to A6. A fair bit on Adorno there, too.
"Even beyond that, there seems to be a Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sakes."
Maybe the Overton Window is the demystified, simplified manifestation of the vibe for today's normies. It's how I most often see people like me expressing the idea that critique on its own can make a valuable contribution, destabilizing an intolerable status quo and shifting the bounds of the thinkable. Overton-Windowism is similarly allergic to the compromise that moves society in a 1% more healthy direction, watering down critique with pragmatism; it prefers to imagine radical critique as a precondition for root-and-branch change in a future we can't even properly conceive until our collective Window has been moved a few feet leftward.
It is actively painful to read these hotdog philosophers who can't drive a steakshift. Makes me grateful for only ever dipping a toe in by dashing off two protest Bernie votes, before finding The Way and becoming enlightened about a more realistic path to enlightenment in our times.
Many things in the world are bad, but many are also good. Very fine phenomena on both sides. I see no need to start a communist revolution, even if we assume a spherical can opener that no instruction manual is needed, God will provide. Substack isn't not social media, per se, but also you can just put the phone down and not be on social media, directly experiencing life as it comes at you fast. Surprisingly (well, not to a Bayesian), sometimes it still sucks anyway! That's just the state of life though, not some artificial contrivance of capitalism. One must imagine wild animals happy, else so many of these utopian dreams founder on the rocks of realism. A flawless map with no contradictions no longer reflects any Earthly territory.
(Still abstractly looking forward to AI resolving the "central planning fails due to massive required computation" question to satisfaction. Deus ex machina, but in real life?)
One can resist centralization of power, wealth, and status without going full Communist (which has in historical practice just meant different centres of power, wealth, and status). I don't necessarily disagree with any particular given critique posed by leftists, assuming they're more comprehensible than Frank's disciples, because there are in fact many infelicitous elements of the modern world. I just think they're actual real problems like, you know, war and crime and poverty, not...jazz. And one doesn't have to believe in Copenhagen ethics to comprehend that smugly criticizing everything under the sun while providing no clear solutions is going to pattern-match very easily to complete bullshitting. Everyone's a Critic, AWCY? has no place in real life - if one actually cares about making the world better, instead of LARPing self-righteously.
You don't see the manipulation of mobs by well resourced populists as a form of centralized power? Many people lending their agency to one? Esp. as this seems to be accompanied by a significant increase in wealth and control over a party apparatus?
Much of what these hotdog philosophers said is influenced by Daoism - the post-Hegelians, Marx and Stirner et. al., were often influenced by the translations of Eastern philosophical texts that were finding their way into Germany during their lifetimes and being studied and lectured on in their universities. Lao Tze especially.
Marx’s contemporary Stirner said of his core concept the Unique (selfhood) that he enumerated in his 1844 book The Unique & Its Property, that “names cannot name it,” and that “I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.” Very clearly influenced by Daoism. His book in turn was massively influential on Nietzsche and Marx - the longest text Marx ever wrote was a direct reply to it. Not that Marx understood it, being so caught up in empiricism and materialism. But successors did, and Scott points out the mystical flavorings of the Frankfurt school in the essay. There’s more there than you are seeing.
Boy did they misundertand Taoism then! There is no Christian-like historical telos to be found there, Zuang Zi would have had a good laugh at such a notion and written 3 extra chapters subtly laughing at it.
There absolutely is, though? Taoism stresses the cultivation of De (virtue) through the harmony of body, mind, and environment. (The elimination of alienation)
Rulers proficient in De set examples for their natural environment and the people they rule over, which will be brought into increasing amounts of harmony together. That’s your telos.
What, exactly, do you think the philosophers above are getting at when they’re talking about us being alienated from ourselves and our pleasures, about how someone actually in tune with themselves could sense the erotic energies even in the mundane act of gardening?
Hey, thanks for the pushback, that's interesting. Classical Taoism does have a concept of virtue, a kind of inherent notmativity in the nature or flow of things. And virtue radiates, so a virtuous ruler makes for a harmonious society.
But as far as I can remember, it also really insists in the general principle that things readily turn into their opposites,[1] so harmony remains fragile and reversible. It's been a while since I read the Zuangzi and the TTK, but I do remember that it gently but surely mocked anyone who would try to box the tao, or claim to know which way the winds would blow in time. That sounds rather incompatible witht the kind of historical inevitably that Communism propounds.
It seems to me that, while Hegel &co might have gotten much of their mysticism from Taoism, their sense of inevitable historical direction must have come from somewhere else - probably the surrounding Christian culture, which also has it. Let me know if you think I'm still missing something, I'm certainly not a scholar of the Dao!
[1] That is a real insight. Much evil has happened not out of malice, but from hamfisted or unbalanced attempts to force the good.
Not a dig on you, but it's hilarious to me how all discussions about philosophy seem to end up with people claiming the others don't understand the meaning of Philosophy X.
I guess that's one of the reasons why philosophy is hard!
Yeah, see the comment below saying that I was the one misunderstanding classical Daoism.
It's not so easy to bring the author back from the dead to settle the Q, but these days you can ask Claude for a college-professor-level opinion, that's something at least.
I'd still rather be lectured by Buddhists to "just go meditatively touch grass, bro", and not just because there seems to be some actual empirical backing to the claims. If the Eastern mystic woo can in fact reduce blood pressure and stress, that's something at least, even if it's not levitation. Life's also far too short to worry about how enjoying the simple pleasures of Soil & Pimp Sessions is secretly part of a sinister plot to erase the very concept of individualism. Or whatever non-vanguard art we're not supposed to enjoy this week.
(Although I think a proper Buddhist probably wouldn't even lecture? Can't force someone onto The Way.)
Depends on the Buddhist's doctrinal inclinations, I think: the Original (Nikaya) Buddhists™, non-northeastern Mahayanikas, Theravadins, and (most) Vajrayanikas (with the notable exception of a lot of Dzogchenpas) *love* lectures & manuals & instructions!—thus Abhidharma, and the proliferation of Tibetan schools.
The Chan, Zen, and other Far-Eastern schools did go hard on the "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" & "the master slapped the student when he asked for instruction; thereby, he was enlightened" stuff, though—one reason I have always had much less interest in these variants of the Dharma, as compared to early Buddhism & (to a slightly lesser extent) Vajrayana.
(I keep meaning to write something up on why Zen & Dzogchen are dumb-dumb¹ tier Buddhism, and the True Mega-Chad Sangha® is that of the Sarvastivada & Theravada... the problem is just that I'm very lazy. I mean, that... uh... the time is not right for the lotus of my wisdom to bloom forth from the sludge of the Internet.)
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¹(okay, not *really*—one of my favorite Buddhist figures & authors of all time, Patrul Rinpoche, was totally into Dzogchen, and it certainly appears to have worked for him; and Zen is extremely broad, and covers a lot of perfectly fine Buddhism... I'm just, partly, exaggerating for effect; and partly possibly a bit biased, due to the greater fame of the Buddhist path that—I feel—is probably the *least* effective for the average individual & yet which has been spread most widely by a lot of... ah... "questionably wise" authors–)
I'm currently studying political science in an university, which means exposure to Frankfurters, them being a part of the development of political science. In most cases we’re talking about reading a variation of the same “Plato to NATO” (or, more correctly, Plato to Rawls) textbook on the development of political thought, with exactly one Frankfurter (sometimes Fromm, sometimes Horkheimer, sometimes Adorno) thrown in as a part of the general overview.
>You can’t say that they invented a new form of left-wing thought called Cultural Marxism. This would be (according to Wikipedia) the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, a “far right anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that misinterprets Western Marxism, especially the Frankfurt School, as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics, and political correctness”. You’re not supposed to dub them a transitional stage between Communism and postmodernism. You’re not allowed to speculate that a lot of the academic humanities, as they’re practiced today, descend from the Frankfurt School’s brand of critical theory. You’re not supposed to think of them as the point where the muscular pro-technology leftism of the early 1900s shattered into the pessimistic degrowth leftism of the present.
Apart from the phrasing "cultural Marxism" indeed being eschewed, I'm not sure who is stopping you from saying any of the rest of the following? All of these seem rather basic, even humdrum analysis, though it would be wrong to say that academic humanities descend *solely* from Frankfurters, instead of them being one of the sources.
Much of this text just seems like... anger that they're not communicating in a way that is legible to you? Obviously they're communicating from their own histories and experiences, which differ from what any of us has experienced. Also, it's not like the rationalist movement and it's chosen modes of discourse are always that legible to me, either, and I at least fulfill the primary requirement of being conversant with most of the Western science fiction canon.
Likewise, some of the obscurity is just Frankfurters having a lot of views and not always agreeing with each other. Adorno and Marcuse rather famously disagreed on the 60s student movement (https://hutnyk.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/adornomarcuse_germannewleft.pdf); it’s not clear that you can just say that Marcuse said openly what the other Frankfurters said in an obscure manner.
Within the context of academic studies, it becomes clearer why the cultural Marxism conspiracy discourse is there; it comes off less as "Hey, innocent student, read us, Jewish intellectuals, and let us brainwash you to become a communist" and "Hey, student who is a leftist, here's a method to do what you are probably already doing but also being open about doing this and express your biases and what you're trying to do right there instead of veiling yourself in neutrality and being-above-it-all". I mean, obviously if you are a non-leftist who hates academic leftists you don’t want them to get more tools to do what they do, but if they didn’t have critical theory, they’d probably just be doing something else to annoy you.
Also, much of what the Frankfurters were doing, in addition to criticizing capitalism and various related hierarchies, was based on the twin targets of dealing with the fallout of the Stalinist turn in Soviet Union – less evident now, of course, since their criticisms of Soviet Union now seem rather milquetoast compared to the reigning discourse on the topic – and trying to prevent fascism in the Western countries. Did they succeed in the latter? I’m reminded of the joke about a guy who sells a rock to keep away the tigers and when asked how it works responds with “Well, you don’t see any tigers around, do you?”, expect there does seem to be more of a hint of tiger smell, at least, than the last time I saw this joke.
In the latter sense, the Frankfurtians are also comparable to another group of often Jewish Central European emigres to US who saw evidence of developing totalitarianism in their new home country and reacted to it – Austrian School. And Adorno’s unexpected hatred of jazz and the rationalization of it reminds me of another similar Jewish émigré with an unexpected cultural opinion and the rationalization of it, Ayn Rand’s hatred of classical architecture and the love of modernism, and Randroid attempts to explain that no, of course she was not talking about *ugly* modernism but *pretty* modernism.
Edit: also, it has *always* been a characteristic of many leftist movements that you don't really have a clear vision of what the end point should be and are more concerned with what you want to do and how you want to organize right here in the now. Marx didn't want to "write recipes for the cook-shops of the future." "To me that which is generally called the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything" - Eduard Bernstein, the "father of revisionism". This is not an error, it's a whole different paradigm! And it often really seems like a a difficult paradigm for rationalists to wrap their head around?
>I'm not sure who is stopping you from saying any of the rest of the following<
I have seen it mooted (e.g., on Wikipedia talk-pages debates) that to say that "a lot of the academic humanities, as they’re practiced today, descend from the Frankfurt School’s brand of critical theory" is also a right-wing "conspiracy theory".
>Much of this text just seems like... anger that they're not communicating in a way that is legible to you?<
Does it? I didn't get any anger from it. In fact, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 seems like... an attempt to delegitimize this critique by imputing anger to its author!¹
>it comes off less as "Hey, innocent student, read us, Jewish intellectuals, and let us brainwash you to become a communist"<
I don't think (that many think) that it necessarily comes off as making this invitation; rather, the feeling is that this is the 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵.
That's probably fair—in fact, your original characterization, too, might be fair enough in my case, if not Scott's: I have perhaps assumed that they're not communicating 𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭—that they conceal a lack of any real insight by throwing up an obscuring cloud of empty verbiage, like so many degenerate octopodes—and it angers me; but maybe I've been too quick to judge, and if only I read enough Habermas and Derrida¹ the irritation would yield to an accreted pearl of new understanding...?
¹(not a Frankfurter, I know, but... they're all of a piece, right?–)
Well I would say it's been characteristic of leftist movements since Marx and Engels, who targeted a lot of their criticism at fellow leftists, e.g., the Saint Simonians, "utopian socialists," in their critique of the gotha program for being too explicit about their vision of the end points.
I think one interesting thing about those guys is that mass culture was new to them. Radio was invented the 20's. Talkies came around in 1929. They lived before the emergence of mass culture and preferred the way things were before mass culture's emergence. -- Plenty of people now lived before the emergence of social media prefer the way things were before. It is almost a cliche.
The Frankfurt connection to today's humanities is the part everyone fights over, but your "exactly one Frankfurter thrown in" detail is the real tell. A school whose whole method was negative dialectics gets flattened into a single survey-course name. Fitting that thinkers obsessed with what you can't say end up reduced to what you can fit on one syllabus line.
I'm not saying anything in favour of or against the Frankfurt school, so I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment.
I'm simply pointing out that the substack centrist gang has abandoned all intellectual standards recently when it comes to characterising and engaging with political enemies.
it should "work like this" for people who explicitly position themselves as the adults in the room, and have created a whole ideology centered on avoiding the usual cognitive errors and intellectual mistakes, I think.
I'd say the (relatively) recent interest in the Frankfurt school among historians of philosophy with an analytic background has made better and more detailed interpretations very easy to find. a few works: freyenhagen's book on Adorno, j.m. Bernstein's "disenchantment and ethics" (horribly written, but contains a lot of insight if read as supplementary material, rather than as a stand-alone source), Brian o'connor's books on Adorno for Rutledge and MIT, Jacob mcnulty's Rutledge book on Marcuse.
above all else, I think, it's important to read the Frankfurt people as following in the footsteps of lukacs. how great, then, that there's recently been an increasing interest in non-straw manned, careful interpretations of his work. two quick recommendations: westerman's "phenomenology of capitalism" and kavoulakos' "Lukacs' phenomenology of capitalism".
very little/none of the above work offers the sort of grand "well the Frankfurt people thought the central obstacle standing between us and a communist utopia in which gardening is likely to produce orgasms was culture and ideology" overview offered here.
>I'm not saying anything in favour of or against the Frankfurt school, so I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment<
Well, one could perhaps be forgiven for assuming that a comment about rationalists engaging with ideological opponents (like, say, the Frankfurt School & co.), that was appended to a rationalist's essay about the Frankfurt School, was meant to imply something about the rationalist approach to the Frankfurt School in particular...
...but even if it doesn't—even if you're as anti-Frankfurt as they come, or entirely neutral thereupon—Zanzibar Buck-buck McFate's (Jesus, what a username, heh!) comment can 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 be read generally: as saying that there's no need to read more than one very old book about a lot of intellectual currents—Frankfurter or otherwise—because to do more is akin to following the adherents thereof off intellectual cliffs.
(I.e., that's what it has to do... or, well, not to put words in Z.B-b.McF.'s mouth: what it 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 have to do... with your comment—like, ol' Buck-buck is saying "no, it isn't necessarily a beautiful possible world at all!")
I think that's a completely illegitimate inference, even in context. there's simply a very plausible alternative hypothesis one has failed to consider: that I'm simply very annoyed by quick and easy snipes at political opponents, and have gravitated to substack centrism and EA adjacent discussions mainly because they are less prone to precisely that. it therefore disappoints me when the standards decrease to this extent.
Imagine if your argument were actually substantial. This isn’t merely a review of a book; it’s clear that the author is advancing his own argument, drawing on the book where relevant.
In any case, “you need to read more books on this subject” is not an argument. If you’ve read those books and believe they support your position, you should be able to explain why and defend the point yourself rather than simply appealing to a reading list.
Nor is exhaustive reading always necessary for discussion. We don’t need to read every work ever written on a subject before commenting on it. It’s entirely possible to discuss an argument, claim, or interpretation without having consumed an entire literature.
Of course, someone can misrepresent a position. If that happens, the proper response is to identify the specific error and explain what is wrong with it. “You should read more authors who agree with me” does not, by itself, address the substance of the point being made.
Little things, like the fact Adorno wrote a 1000+ book an the psychology of authoritarianism, avoid mention, and that's what I usually see as a motivation behind this style of approach. Easier to just say they were weird than engage with their ideas (which can still be wrong!) in a substantial way. The same can be said of standard left wing/right wing political/economic folks, but you'd hope rationalists would put in the effort to have firm grasp on what it is they're rejecting. Marcuse's One Dimensional Man is a short enough book, he's the guy everyone is tilting at (probably correctly), why not read and refute that? It's take on technology is what I'd say is the dominant view of what leftists described as Cultural Marxists hold.
secondary sources of sufficient quality are completely necessary for contemporary people to engage properly with this stuff, I think. we should have some trust in the people who interpret Adorno for a living, like we would with regards to interpreters of any other major 20th century philosopher.
This seems weird. Why are you arguing in favor being less informed and reading less?
I'm an atheist, but the barrier to reading Aquinas isn't any fear of mine over "infohazards". (The barrier is that I'm lazy!) Like what, we're supposed to not read writing by people we currently believe to be incorrect, for fear of it making us less correct? That seems ridiculous.
Anyway, where would you recommend starting with Aquinas? :p
For personal edification? Absolutely fine. When writing as a refutation of someone else's work? Yes, I'd say relying solely on secondary information is insufficient. So if somone was writing a specific critique of Darwin's work, yes, they would need to read his actual work. If the idea was to critique the entirety of evolutionary theory then solely reading Darwin would be insufficient, because it's an entire field. A critic has to be widely read in the field before they are able to offer meaningful criticism. There's always going to be a limit to how much study someone can put into a topic, so missing Marcuse's marginalia on Marx's 38th letter to his Dry Cleaner would just be pedantic as a counter criticism. But I do think any critique requires more than a single intro level book, even at the university level.
Like I said, personal edification, conversations with others, perfectly fine. That's all informal communication. When you are posting something as a public critique, yes I think you should be informed on that subject. Read one essay from Adorno on jazz? Yep, you can now speak first hand on that essay, and can extrapolate from that essay (I don't think you have to read the entire corpus of a subject to gain some understanding of a writer). But reading Adorno's musical theory doesn't give someone insight into his prior work on authoritarianism. Which may in fact be obscurationist and ultimately horse shit. But they can't offer commentary on that without having read it. Should a writer want to speak to the Frankfurt School's writers on certain current academic departments, they should have read some linking texts. Dismissing Marcuse's misgivings on technology simply because he didn't support capitalism, for instance, isn't engaging with his work, and doesn't provide a substantial criticism. We have LLMs available to grind out second hand accounts of varying accuracy. First hand perspective and engagement puts above parrots. I'd rather have read a scathing attack on Marcuse, Adorno, or Benjamin then just thoughts on an intro text.
"Why don't you read <enormous work>, possibly in the original language (because none of the translators actually got the Real Meaning), before judging" is just a bad argument to me, and it gets deployed often. I've seen it used by religious types too, who will do it with their holy texts.
People don't have infinite time. If at first brush someone's ideas seem interesting, deep, or worth engaging with, I might dive in further. If they seem insane and contradictory I'll eschew them in favor of someone else. This is why making good first impressions and being clear are important virtues. If as a philosophers you have genius ideas that you fail to communicate to anyone, you're as pointless as someone who hasn't got a single thought.
No, it's "Why don't you acknowledge <whatever writer> wrote on <a central topic of said writer> when they wrote <book or books/articles on said topic>." That's it. Pretty low standard, imo, for a basic survey article.
Now, if you're looking to refute a particular writer's work, yeah, you do indeed need to cite the work in question. If you don't have time to do that, just pick another topic and write knowledgeably on that topic.
If you're going to allege there's a thing called 1) Cultural Marxism, that 2) originated in the Frankfurt School and then 3) infiltrated US colleges and universities, you would need to a) have a definition of what Cultural Marxism is b) how it was transmitted and c) specific references to where it's active today, all with references/citations.
It would be a big research project. Interesting from a historical perspective, but given that the people being labeled as Cultural Marxists deny that that's even a thing, I really don't think there's much practical value. I mean there are actual socialist parties, why hypothesize crypto-Marxists when there are real ones whose political thought is typically much more condensed and easy to access?
If this is ultimately all about "they wanna raise taxes!", then just cut to the chase and say that.
But he's not alleging that? He's saying "this is a common thing that's believed in right wing circles; left wing circles fiercely deny it; after reading this ONE BOOK (and he's very open about it being one book) that is just an introduction on the subject, my impression is that the thing that the right wing circles perceive is not some secret conspiracy but probably the general shape of things that were ideologically inspired by some of the things said in this time by these people, though in other ways it's very different and inspired by other branches of thought".
This seems to me roughly accurate. I'm sure it can be made more accurate and precise and detailed but I don't really see what's so *wrong* about it unless you adopt the classic intransigent leftist framing of "everything that I like is actually just the normal thing for people to do and say; everything I don't is the product of fascists and capitalists hijacking the narrative".
Again, you can't expect to always engage fully with every single thing written by one ideology to be able to say anything about that ideology, especially if we consider that sometimes a lot of that stuff is not even very relevant (or read by) most of the *proponents* of the ideology in like, daily life. Look at the flip side: do you feel like you need to be erudite in the works of Carl Schmitt and Julius Evola to be able to criticise the actual popular understanding of their ideas reflected in random neonazis being racist and illiberal? If a fascist said "no, actually, it's a lot more sophisticated than that, you should read The Theory", would you think that's really necessary or would you just assume all you'll find is high-minded rationalizations for what's ultimately a very simple and noxious set of beliefs? And even if you DID find such sophisticated ideas, would it matter when most of the adherents to that belief system clearly do not understand them, let alone live by them?
The question isn't even "what did Adorno and Marcuse really think". It's "how have Adorno and Marcuse's ideas, filtered through the lens of the dumbing down of popular culture and discourse, influenced modern politics". So if anything the superficial level should be just fine for that. If it's much more complicated than that, yeah, maybe Scott didn't understand it, but neither do most of the people who are to some extent still influenced by the overly simplified shadow of those ideas.
So, case A in my prior response. Where I dismissed your intentional misreading of what I wrote. So to recap: "how have Adorno and Marcuse's ideas...influenced modern politics" doesn't square with "While Adorno, Horkheimer, etc were doing insane obscurantist art criticism" (which, again, can be insane, so we can dismiss whatever leftism you're projecting), when Adorno did in fact write quite extensively about politics specifically. Which is where mentioning the 1000+ book comes in. It would have been discussed (if the table of contents I came across online is accurate) in Chapter 5, the 'Institut's Analysis of Nazism'. "While doing a lot of early work on Authoritarianism, Adorno moved into insane art criticism" would have made it less of a caricature. Which is how I read this, nothing more.
"Adorno: Jazz Hater, America Hater" would have been a perfectly fine and supported article, because Adorno's terrible opinions on music were well explored.
See Daniel Dennett's Four Rules of Good debate, Donald Davidson's Principe of Charity, for what I'd like to see as normative, rationalist writing.
The reason people do this less than you want is because every time someone tries, someone like you insults them for it. I'm proud of myself for pushing against that incentive to read a dense 350 page book from a field I normally wouldn't venture into, and reporting back (with a bunch of caveats that I don't know much about it and am just trying to present my thoughts). I hope to read more like this in the future, and in order to prevent myself from being discouraged (and because you've violated several rules, like being rude and insulting without explaining your criticisms, and dialing up the temperature by making controversial stereotypes of an entire movement when it's off-topic), I've banned you for this comment.
If you’re looking for recommendations, Fredy Perlman’s “Against Leviathan! Against His-Story!” is an extremely well written magnum opus of historiography looking at that “deep core wound” in society. It’s from 1983, and he uses very mythopoetic language and story telling to do a very similar thing to what you did with Meditations On Moloch, positing Leviathan as an egregore we made a bargain with in order to create civilization. He uses that metaphor to explore many of the concepts you review here. I think you would enjoy reading it as a follow up to Dialectical Imagination very much. Although, spoilers, Perlman doesn’t theorize that there’s a currently extant god of everything else to fight Moloch/Leviathan for the fate of civilization - he’s much more pessimistic and thinks we’re all going to die in the bowels of the hungry beast we created as it runs out of things to devour and has to start eating itself. Of course, he might just have not gotten that far - he died the year after it was published. And he was a Holocaust survivor, so, pessimism well earned I suppose.
The way you talk about Communism and communist sympathizers in the piece is pretty rude and dismissive, I guess you are trusting your audience to understand that you can mock an ideology you disagree with while simultaneously trying to understand it in good faith, but I've seen how you react when people talk similarly about rationalism and your hackles get pretty high.
I was very grateful for this and enjoyed having--as I am sure psychologists, bay area partygoers, and AI safetyists enjoy--my biscuits buttered. It's like the opposite of Gell-Mann amnesia.
Scott, I thought your roasting of the Frankfurt School in this book review was interesting and entertaining, perhaps because I have a knee jerk dislike of Adorno, Marcuse, et. al.
I thought Mjau Mjau's criticism of the review to be much less interesting and entertaining, in part because I don't share his apparent knee-jerk dislike of EA and rationalism.
I thought your banning of Mjau Mjau for his criticism to be a gross over-reaction, in part because I think that knee-jerk reactions are part of human nature, but that they need not lead to severe consequences.
This is pretty clearly a rhetorical tool to dismiss Scott's criticism, not an actual standard that can be met. There's no amount of reading that you or other Marxists will feel actually grants someone the right to disagree with Marxism.
This was shown pretty clearly in the Grievance Studies hoax. Those behind the hoax read so much critical theory that they successfully got papers published. They proved they understood it at a deep level. Yet not a single Marxist has given credence to their critiques in the aftermath.
I'm not sure if Scott was being ironic when repeating cliches about industrial work and Gilded Era capitalists or if he actually believes these cliches but by the early 1900s tightening screws in an assembly line was an amazing opportunity compared with most jobs a commoner would have to do in a pre-modern and early modern societies.
Even compared with other jobs from the early 1900's industrial work was better paid and offered more chances of social mobility.
Unfortunately centuries of cliches starting with Dickens and perpetuated by an endless litany of intellectuals has sullied the image of factory work and the crucial role it had in improving the living standards of Westerners back then and of many Asians these days.
No need to sugarcoat it. Striking workers were literally risking their lives against government-assisted repression. The worker rights of today were paid for in blood.
Maybe, or maybe they are the result of productivity increases and businesses competing for workers. Do you think googlers had to pay in blood their gourmet lunches? Launch wildcat strikes for high-end corporate gyms with indoor pools, climbing walls, personal trainers and massage therapists?
Not sure how helpful that comparison is. High-end employees have always had it better than the grunts, even long before industrialization. If you want to know the state of workers' rights in a country, you have to look at the low end, the most replacable.
It's a very helpful comparison. It destroys the idea that the worker-employer relationship is this one-way thing where the employer calls all the shots.
Capitalism (which has never been tried) is a system where everybody gets what they deserve.
One of the most infuriating things about the left is how they act like they are so horribly mistreated in their upper middle class jobs while advocating for the importation of millions of illegal workers to do things like clean the houses of the lefty professors for pennies, and then claiming "working class solidarity."
"Even beyond that, there seems to be a Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sakes. Leftists may criticize police while having little plan for an alternative law enforcement system, or reflexively thwart new development even when it seemingly serves their goals."
It's worth pointing out that this is exactly the kind of leftism a conservative establishment would want to promote as a way of sucking oxygen away from revolutionary leftism, if for instance they were worried about an expansionist USSR. And this might be another unsayable conspiracy theory but the Frankfurt School, and particularly Marcuse, had connections to US intelligence agencies.
The book Scott's reviewing is from the 90s, before a lot of the files detailing the connection between the CIA and influential figures and the New Left were declassified.
A later book about Cold War cultural engineering that's worth reading is:
Basically all the most influential Western thinkers you've heard of from that time were taking money from an organisation called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a front for the CIA.
Admittedly, as far as I know, the available evidence for the Frankfurt's school's involvement particularly is only circumstantial, but it's worth noting that they're the centre of a lot of rumours and suspicion.
Hard to say without knowing their personal motivations. Obviously if they had succeed in creating a liberal, Western socialist alternative to the USSR their legacy now would be much less fraught than it is in our timeline where they just contributed to a full spectrum defeat of socialism.
Lots of Trotskyist did shift to the right after the USSR collapsed, suggesting they were never very sincere leftist.
Either way I think it adds a lot of context to the questions the review is trying to answer about who they were and why they were so influential. And undermines the review's conclusion about alternate paths to communism.
> It's worth pointing out that this is exactly the kind of leftism a conservative establishment would want to promote as a way of sucking oxygen away from revolutionary leftism
Of course, but this is just the "behaving as if it were controlled by a cabal of enemies" thing.
By a wonderful symmetry, the conservative movement often behaves as if it it were secretly controlled by leftists intent on discrediting conservatism.
In this case the documented evidence of a cabal is strong enough you at least have to consider the hypothesis is my claim.
The same Congress for Cultural Freedom also worked to suppress fascism at the same time, so the symmetrical right-wing suspicions aren't completely baseless either in this instance.
I feel like most things of these sort are not examples of "they got paid to disseminate their intellectual sabotage" but merely at most "the CIA boosted the specific wacky ideologues they thought best served their interests, and they were useful idiots".
>Does this interpretation founder on the fact that most modern leftists don’t know any of this?
I think this is more a case of convergent evolution rather than direct lineage. My superficial understanding is that both the Frankfurt School and modern left-wing-coded art react strongly to the feeling "wow, none of our previous efforts have worked out, they seem to just strengthen the system".
In his history of the nineties, cultural commentator Chuck Klosterman explains how Nirvana and similar bands were conscious about how previous protest music ended up being commercialized and not achieving its intended effect of revolution. The response was sort-of to give up on sincere efforts to change things, and instead content themselves with ironic pessimism. This seems to me a broader example of the zeitgeist changing, and Adorno just being affected by it sooner.
That’s not what “negative dialectics” means. It’s negative because in Hegelian terms Critical Theory is applying an antithesis (the negative) without creating a synthesis (the positive). In other words, it is pure critique, pure hammer, pure destruction, without building anything. Adorno’s “Negative Dialectics” was a rhetorical justification of pure cultural destruction for his Hegelian/Marxist allies who may have been expecting a synthesis.
Can you tell me more? The impression I got from the book was that it involved a residual left over after the synthesis which the synthesis couldn't process.
First off, it is very hard to get much from the text of Negative Dialectics. It was not meant as an intelligible argument for outsiders but as a signal to insiders - Marxists steeped in Hegel.
I’ll cite the translators note from the version I have access to: “the enigmas piled up. I found myself translating entire pages without seeing how they led from the start of an argument to the conclusion.” He then gives some guidance to the reader, starting with: “The first key is the title. In his Preface, Adorno calls it paradoxical, explaining that one of his aims is to rid dialectics of such traditional affirmative traits as trying ‘to achieve something positive by way of negation.’” Here the translator says that the term “Negative Dialectics” from the title is about making it ok for dialecticians (read: Marxists) to engage in negation with no synthesis.
Adorno’s dialectics are all about the negation, so he isn’t saying to avoid negation - rather Adorno is signaling that the new Marxist critique has no need for a concrete synthesis.
Traditional Marxism required revolutionary action and gave a clear endgame - the classless proletarian utopia - and even made clear predictions about how this would come about. Unfortunately (for them) these predictions didn’t work out so well and Western culture was too contented to want a Revolution. Critical Theory’s genius innovation was to attack the incongruities of Western culture but without any positive predictions that might not come true, and without any positive vision that could itself be critiqued. Only when culture and institutions are destabilized would the Revolutionary Moment come. Traditional Marxists, steeped in Hegel, were probably confused at the lack of synthesis to accompany the destruction. Negative Dialectics came along when most Marxists were seeing the light that a new vision was needed for Marxism, and Adorno was trying to get them to buy in to Critical Theory and to see it as still connected to their Hegelian roots, rather than a rejection of Hegel. It worked pretty well I think.
Came here to write this. The synthesis or what this article calls 'normal hegel' is not at all normal because it is wrong and not what Hegel argued at all. Hypocrisy is the basis of civilization, the negative dimension & the unconscious are repressed in all these type summaries. We need alienation to get free; universality is a name of a kind of antagonism - a dimension only accessibly through the negative. Without it we merely are rebranding unfreedom as freedom, and symbolic identity as something positive when not finding yourself is the only way out of our predicament.
It's worth thinking more deeply about the question of instrumental reason. Alasdair MacIntyre and Christopher Lasch were thinkers who started off on the New Left and drifted over to the right, but they still agreed with the old notion of the pathologies of instrumental reason. That's part of MacIntyre's quest with After Virtue; without Natural Ends, modern moral philosophy is doomed to resolve itself into schools of egoism or emotivism. He was trying to recapture a sense of what substantive reason would look like.
Clearly relevant to your beliefs as well. If you think about AI risk, it's fundamentally a problem of substantive and instrumental reason. The classic AI apocalypse scenario is Clippy—which is just infinite reason as an instrument for an insane goal. Of course, it turns out you can't align an AI absolutely because if reason is just skill at making predictions then there's no room for ought to come in.
And it isn't "mystical" that the domination of nature leads to the domination of man. It's a simple observation that if the techniques of natural science can be used control nature, then they can be used to control human beings as well. If you understand electricity you can harness it, if you have an understanding of psychology, you can control people (in theory). Hence propaganda and social engineering and so on. This is the dark side of the modern conviction that science can be used to improve human society, it can also be used to control it. That's why dystopias are a modern genre: it's the same conviction behind 1984 and Brave New World and so on. In fact, the main reason this has failed to come true is the complete failure of the social sciences to actually produce actual knowledge!
I agree with the MacIntyre analogy - the link at "like some other philosophers" above goes to my review of After Virtue (which I also failed to understand or appreciate)
I would just like to point out that your post on McIntyre started out by talking about Rand's notes in the margin of her copy of Lewis's "Abolition of Man," a book which makes points very similar to Pseudo-Longinus's here.
There has to be some sort of deep meaning to this.
The first few hundred pages of Yuri Slezkine's amazing "The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution" make a good case that Soviet Communism was a re-imagining of the Book of Revelation. A break with history; a final victory of good over evil; violent in a good way as you destroy all the bad things in the world; no real knowledge of what lies on the other side, only that it is wonderful; even the same uneasy combination of determinism and free will: the revolution is inevitable and it will succeed but all good people should choose to help bring it about.
In the same way, the Frankfurt School seems like a re-imagining of Catholic social teaching. I couldn't help hearing echoes of Pope Leo's recent encyclical.
Agreed with the recommendation, at least for the first ~half of the book. "House of Government" is in large part a psychological or cultural-historical description & analysis of the revolutionary generation of Bolsheviks, their ideology, & some of their policy up to WW2. These are the same people that the Frankfurters (or Scott's understanding thereof) thought of as cargo cultists, & Slezkine basically confirms that while also giving a sympathetic view of why they followed their faith. (Some caveats: 1. The book assumes a decent knowledge of the history of Russia during the time period concerned. 2. It goes into great -- to most casual readers, probably excessive -- detail on the personal lives & writings of the Bolshevik intellectuals. 3. While Slezkine rightly points out that the conventional explanations for the failure of Bolshevik ideology to persist prove too much, his ultimate answer -- that it was because the Old Bolsheviks failed to inculcate the faith in their children, instead falling back on prerevolutionary High Culture -- is IMO not justified effectively by his own arguments.)
My memory of the book is that he thinks the failure of Bolshevik ideology to persist was that the prophesy didn't come true. The Revolution didn't lead to the final victory of good over evil but to a gray, bureaucratic society.
No, he explicitly rejects this: he notes that many millennarian religions that originally promised salvation in a short time survived the failure of this to occur: "The assumption that the Communist prophecy was uncommonly factual and therefore easily falsifiable seems insufficient: many millenarians set more or less specific dates for the end of the world, prepare accordingly, miss the deadline, weep from disappointment, postpone the inevitable, and continue to wait, more or less eagerly."
It reminds me of Thomas Sowell’s “a conflict of visions.” If you think reality itself is inherently unconstrained, it does make sense to bitch perpetually that things aren’t perfect. Any structures that do exist, should be torn down, because if they’re not perfect, they’re keeping us from perfection.
There is truth in that at some level, complacency with mediocrity prevents progress though in fairness, it also prevents regression. That line about perfect being the enemy of good is theoretically true but in practice it's generally uttered by defenders of the bad, i.e. "take your lumps and like it because it could be worse!!". Sure optimizing further at 99.9% is often a fools errand with a negative return but people uttering that IME are begroaning moving father than 0.00...1% capability where further gains are both immense, easy, and cheap..
It would make sense if bitching about imperfection actually led things to be better. Elon Musk was not happy that rockets were so expensive. He didn't bitch about it. He built a better one that you can reuse. The people who bitch about imperfection are typically losers and the "imperfection" they bitch about is typically that the government isn't taking enough money from successful people and giving it to them.
That is not the case. The people who built the better rocket that can be reused had been in the wind for decades before Musk slapped his name on it; Musk allocated the capital they required to build the better rocket.
The people bitching about imperfection are bitching because the best, most competent literal rocket scientists in the world cant do shit without a rich guy climbing his way out of the K hole to fund their shit, from his gains originating with the payment processor all of his code and decisions and branding had to be stripped out of before it became worth anything.
You know who could have funded those rocket scientists? NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, ULA. All those companies have experience building rockets and billions of dollars. But they didn't and Elon Musk did. You are right that he is not a rocket scientist. His skills are 1000x rarer and more valuable than that.
His skill is having lots of money and being so off his gourd he does dumb shit without thinking, is the thing. He's worse than a replacement level MBA at everything else. I used to have a boss who did the same shit as him; took long bomb risks at every opportunity, bought other companies, etc etc, but he didn't buy Tesla right before an advantageous tax regime made it profitable and degenerate gamblers sent it to the moon so he went bankrupt, even though he did the same things with the same logic.
If we go off his qualities; we should select who gets to allocate productive resource by scratch off; which might be better than our current system.
Criticism is not destruction. This is the fundamental misunderstanding of the right looking at the left.
All imperfect systems should be improved as and when possible, yes.
That statement is not identical to 'everything should always be carelessly destroyed at all times.'
You can and should criticize things you love, things you think should continue, things you would dedicate your life to preserving, and most of all yourself.
An uncritical, all-approving eye is how the rot seeps in unnoticed and destroys all that you love.
Entropy seems to do exactly this: destroy everything all the time. Only things which are loved get maintained, the end result of which is that universe trends towards love. The function of the constant bitching is to prevent those people from building worse systems. They are too busy complaining about imperfection to make things worse!
Back in his Thin White Reichsbürger era, Thomas Mann famously made a sharp distinction of Culture (Ancient Greek vibes where even the most humble farmer struggles heroically against the tragedy of the human condition) versus Civilisation (Roman vibes where even the poets and philosophers are rational, dispassionate professionals, seeking to improve things), with World War I representing the clash between Team Culture (with Germany as their largest representative) on one side and the nascent Civilisational hegemony represented by the Anglo-Saxon world that seeks to "rationalise" Europe. France was the battleground somewhere in the middle.
After the shock of WW1, Team Civilisation is winning across the globe. Fascists start portraying all Jewish intellectuals as secret agents for Team Civilisation, but in fact, the exact opposite happens! Émigrés (of all ideologies) fleeing oppression on the continent end up in Civilisation countries like Britain and the US, where they start despairing about how unserious, pragmatic and materialistic things are in their new environment. Nabokov's Pnin is an example of this trope.
They quietly drop whatever intellectual project they had back in Continental Europe and they start subtly nudging the Anglo-Saxon world towards their Weltanschauung, or indeed to advocate for having a Weltanschauung at all. They can't just say the "American middle class should be more like the German urban intellectual class" because that wouldn't go over well considering the wars and all that.
Instead they can, for example, keep up a leftist façade and criticise pragmatic, rational thinking as "consumerism," anything with a commercial (rather than deeply intellectual) motive as a "factory", et cetera.
Accidentally, this culture/civilisation mismatch gives them an air of quaint and harmless ineffectuality, so they are not seen as subversive, and do not trigger an immune response from Team Civilisation, and even collect a few fans by representing something exotic and incomprehensible.
Were these émigrés effective in trying to nudge the West to be more intellectual in the way they wanted? Probably not, but they succeeded in creating their own little academic bubble of comfort, which must have made their life a little happier. Ironically, that is just the kind of incremental, pragmatic, harmless measure that their arch-enemy, "Capitalism" advocated all along.
A friend who knows more about the relevant history suggested something I think of as opposed to this - that the Frankfurters acknowledged Germany had amazing culture, but were in despair because despite that culture it got one-shotted by Nazism (and therefore, can culture really be good?) In this model, the Frankfurters were trying to come up with some new concept of Culture that synthesized the thesis - the old concept of Culture and what was good and valuable in it - with the antithesis that it had been a total failure in building human character when it counted.
That's interesting, but Orwell's psychological theory seems . . . false? If promising people struggle and misery was what worked, surely someone would have figured this out in centuries of US elections. But the candidates keep promising people peace and a good economy, and the people keep voting for them based on whether or not they delivered.
True, but promising people violence against the outgroup works at least some of the time. And if your public is too sensible to believe that this will be easy and costless, then promising them violence against the outgroup while acknowledging that this will require struggle and misery makes you sound like a sensible pragmatist.
It may vary on circumstances. People may oscillate between optimist ("yes, just getting Good Things is possible") and pessimist ("everything is zero sum; everyone who promises Good Things for free a filthy liar; if we want anything, we must take it and pay for it with blood") moods based on circumstances. Germany after the WW1 defeat and consequent economic disaster must have been in a very dark mood indeed.
Perhaps what Orwell may have been trying to allude to is the appeal to glory and heroism. And, it seems, the appeal to struggle is often in the context of trying to convince people that they are under attack, besieged by "evil" forces from without and within, and so one either allows oneself to be overwhelmed, or you engage in the heroic struggle to save your nation from its "evil" enemies.
And, truth be told, I can think of at least one prominent American politician who offered Americans the opportunity to engage in a heroic struggle to save the nation from the "evil" forces that seek to destroy the nation and "real" Americans, and he won two elections, and probably only lost an election because he happened to be president when a pandemic hit.
I'm reminded of a couple of the things Eco said in his essay on Ur-Fascism:
"For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament...
In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
>And, it seems, the appeal to struggle is often in the context of trying to convince people that they are under attack, besieged by "evil" forces from without and within, and so one either allows oneself to be overwhelmed, or you engage in the heroic struggle to save your nation from its "evil" enemies.
Unfortunately for the US, it had pretty much ran out of enemies without by the late 2000s, so the only recourse was to come down with full force on enemies within, and as it turned out, they weren't lacking either in number or depravity, once you truly looked...
Your friend is likely right. But in the plain language of the proverbial One-Dimensional Man, 'building a synthesis' sounds just like a clever way of nudging attitudes towards the middle ground.
On that note, as terrible as it is to say in this particular example, expecting a cultural education to lead to objectively good (as opposed to merely Culture-perpetuating) ethical choices at all is something that I think is firmly on the Civilisation side of young Thomas Mann's Civilisation/Culture split, and not a natural assumption in early 20th century Germany.
In the "Civilisation" countries of the time, the ideal citizen must be familiar with literary classics to mentally prepare for making difficult ethical decisions when the time comes. The British even preferred their military class to be highly educated in Classics, but I suspect they expected them to learn from Achilles' mistakes, rather than wail over the death of the son of Peleus. Consequences over aesthetics.
In "Culture" countries, the ideal citizen is familiar with classics such as Antigone and Young Werther because habitual rumination on deep questions of humanity builds a rich internal life in the individual, and that rich internal life is a quasi-mystical terminal good, as well as the hidden force that holds families and nations together. Aesthetics over consequences.
Is that true, or just stereotypes? I don't know, but anecdotally my limited cultural education was very much in the continental/German tradition, and this split in attitudes seems to match my experience of literature teachers' attitudes even in the 2000s/2010, but I think there is some slow convergence.
The shock and dismay of these Western, mostly German, intellectual emigrés when they arrived in America has been much written about, a lot by themselves. Brecht, for example drips his most biting words of scorn for his reminiscences of his time as script-writer in LA: the crass materialism, the suburban lifestyle, the anti-intelectualism. He weaves it into his vision of Venice in The Life of Galileo (that's YOU he's pointing at, America!), as a vile place of merchants where knowledge and research are not appreciated unless they can be immediately transformed into money. From then to recently, Western Intellectuals (America, by Baudrillard, is a good example) like to keep replaying this trope with variations.
I wonder whether America was really less intellectual than Europe.
Here's a theory: in both Vienna and Los Angeles, 90% of the population is entirely uninterested in intellectual matters. But in Vienna they are just faceless NPC proles shuffling from their tiny flats to their dreary jobs and back, and they're part of the scenery, not something that you, as an intellectual with a slightly larger flat, need to worry about. But in America they're out and about driving Cadillacs and owning houses bigger than yours.
Actually I'm going to reply to myself and go one step further; the "proles in Cadillacs" phenomenon is behind the entirety of the whole left-wing intellectual movement.
Look at it this way: for thousands of years, intellectuals had not a word to say about the plight of the impoverished and oppressed, beyond Aristotle's "well some people just should be slaves I guess". Then along comes the Industrial Revolution and they won't shut up about it. Why? It wasn't because the industrial revolution made the plight of the poor worse than when they were peasant farmers.
But what the Industrial Revolution _did_ do was to create vast numbers of new rich and middle class people who suddenly had a whole lot of money and stuff, and the intellectual class absolutely hated this. Suddenly the intellectuals decided that they were deeply concerned very specifically with the plight of the poor workers who worked in the factories of these nouveau riche types.
You are dead on about the intellectuals. When they talk about "inequality" it's never about that between them and the proles, only between them and the billionaires. That is obviously their motivation.
It's not that intellectuals suddenly started talking about this, though, but rather that they suddenly came into existence. In a pre industrial society 90% of people are farmers. That's what it takes to feed everyone. And most of the rest are busy taking the wheat that the farmers grow and turning it into bread & beer or building farm equipment by hand. The only intellectuals then were members of the nobility or monks that had the inclination.
Also it's worth mentioning, what if the industrial revolution did make poverty worse? A poor factory worker may be technically richer than a peasant farmer, but being poor is just a much nicer condition out in the country than crowded urban poverty. And farm work has a seasonality to it, so you get long stretches of time off, and no night shifts ever. Factories, on the other hand, run 24/7. If I had the choice I would probably choose the peasant life.
I think the intellectual class has been with us for a long time, on and off, at least as far back as Ancient Greece. Some places and times had more of them than others but it's not that new a thing. There's plenty of thousand year old universities out there.
As for the peasant farmer's life being more pleasant than the factory worker's life, you might think so, but whether in 1800s England or 2020s China we observe that in practice people have always chosen to flow the other way, so I think we're just misestimating what the life of a manual farm labourer is actually like.
Once the intellectual class got Christianized, they *did* have words to say about the plight of the impoverished and oppressed, though, even if it was not the same as the ones they say now. The intellectual class of the antiquity was rather a different phenomenon from the one they have now.
Turchin's elite overproduction, I reckon. Anyway, great post, interesting commentary. I'm scrolling on, waiting for someone to mention the new frankfurt school, a bunch of really good satirists.
Are there people who criticize the enormous concentration of wealth because they are envious, and would actually be quite happy with it if they were wealthier? Almost certainly
Does that apply to some intellectuals? Probably.
Does that apply to most or all intellectuals? I'm skeptical
And, of course, the motivations of the intellectuals who critique society have little bearing on the merit of their arguments. I enjoy Thomas Sowell's ad hominem red herrings as much as anyone, but at the end of the day, we still have the arguments, themselves, to evaluate.
Someone with the best of intentions can be factually wrong and make a poor argument, someone with the worst of intentions can be factually correct and offer a sound argument
1. But, just as a matter of fact, it should be noted that it simply isn't true that "for thousands of years, intellectuals had not a word to say about the plight of the impoverished and the oppressed"
Even if we limit ourselves only to the West, which I'm guessing is what you meant, and taking the Bible as a semi-historical record (I'm an agnostic) , plenty of "prophets" recorded in the Bible were concerned with the plight of the impoverished and the oppressed, and the "prophets" often were the intellectuals of their time.
Do you believe that Jesus was just envious of the money-lenders?
Are you familiar with the Christian intellectuals who came after Jesus, who were also concerned with the plight of the poor, or the Renaissance humanists, like Erasmus and Thomas More?
2. Do you believe intellectuals like Tesla and Einstein weren't rich because they weren't intelligent enough to become rich if that was their aim in life?
Perhaps if someone has been indoctrinated into a highly materialistic, consumerist, morally corrupted society that worships wealth accumulation and tells people that that is the measure of success in life, and one has not been able to break free of those cultural precepts, it may become almost impossible for such a person to imagine that others, or an intellectual, might have different values, that they might have refused to surrender their empathy and compassion, or not want to waste their life on the hedonic treadmill, or that they wouldn't also confuse the means of life for the ends.
And, I think it is fair to imagine intellectuals would have a higher than average chance of emancipating themselves from those cultural precepts.
But perhaps it is comforting and flattering to some to believe that Dickens secretly envied people like Scrooge, rather than pitied them, and didn't actually care about children like Tiny Tim.
Imagine one devoting their whole life to the pursuit of wealth accumulation, and seeing it didnt fill the hole they hoped it would, they at least find some mild satisfaction in people being impressed, and then they encounter people who aren't impressed in the slightest, the ego will often want to defend itself by saying their opinion doesn't matter, or, that they are lying- they are secretly envious.🤷
3. As to the idea that, maybe they don't care about wealth, but status, once again, I think people maybe overestimate the extent to which genuine intellectuals value perceived status amongst the general population.
In fact, any intellectual well-versed in history would probably recognize being an intellectual is probably one of the worst, most dangerous ways to try to gain status in society, and, for much of history, it could be a struggle just trying to survive and avoid prison/exile because of how hostile societies can be to anyone who questions its precepts.
As David Hume once wrote:
"A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace."
As opposed to sophists and pseudointellectuals, but, of course, in the eyes of some, those are real intellectuals, and so it would look like "true Scotsmen"
Good comment about the early Christians and concern for the poor, but one objection: some of these supposedly high-minded intellectuals do in fact like to complain about other people wasting their lives in the pursuit of wealth accumulation and being very successful at it. I think it's perfectly reasonable to question the motives of these people, because I don't think it's any big secret these days that there isn't a fixed pool of wealth in the world; that it's created by human activity, and so the accumulation of wealth by person A doesn't come at the expense of person B except in some very limited circumstances, so there really isn't any reason to do much other than pity people stuck on the hedonic treadmill. In fact, if you really want to show you're a free-thinker and you really are concerned with the plight of the poor, you might consider the notion that misers like Scrooge are actually a great benefit to society:
1. Yes, we know that we can have positive sum exchanges where both parties are left better off than prior to the exhange
2. This really doesn't have much direct importance, and I know that people understand the difference, but I just want to remind ourselves that nominal value usually increases significantly more rapidly than real value, and, sometimes we may forget to adjust for that difference, giving us a false impression of just how fast the "pie" is growing.
3. Economics is study of the allocation of finite resources. Yes, technology can improve the real value we can produce from our finite resources, but, we should be honest that we are still talking about a relatively fixed pie of finite underlying resources, at least at this point- land and natural resources are relatively fixed and finite, human labor and human capital is relatively finite in the short term, etc, and one's relative share of material wealth has a very strong impact on one's ability to exercise control of those finite resources.
4. During COVID, I finally started hearing people admit that, of course, not everyone can be millionaires, at least not with the buying power that millionaires currently enjoy, because, yes, in fact, we are talking about the allocation of finite resources, and if there is that much money chasing a relatively fixed number of good and services, the price of those goods and services will rise until supply and demand get closer to equilibrium .
5. Just because there CAN be positive sum exchanges, and just because there CAN be increases to the real value of goods and services thanks to the impact of things like technological advancement does not mean that, necessarily, there must be no relationship to wealth inequality.
Power dynamics and imbalances can heavily influence the outcomes of even positive sum exchanges in ways that disproportionately disadvantage the less powerful.
Basically, rent-seeking behavior can and likely does occur, and those with more power are the ones best able to succeed at rent-seeking behavior.
6. I know people will argue vigorously that capitalism is completely different than feudalism, the point of this example is just to illustrate that you can have a growing pie, and that doesn't mean it benefits everyone or that it cant disproportionately benefit the more powerful.
Imagine if we live in feudal times, and someone said, "hey, I wonder if there might be a link between the wealth of the lord and the poverty of the peasants who work for the lord" and another person says "that's idiotic, the lord is clearly a job creator, the peasants would have nothing if it wasn't for the lord"
Then, one of the peasants or another of the lord's servants comes up with a technological advancement that increases the productivity of farming. The lord reasons that it is still his land and capital, he was the one with the "genius" to adopt the innovation, the peasants are still putting in the same effort and hours, and so, obviously, the entire increase in output belongs to him, and so it does go, entirely to him, and then someone says "don't you get that it's not a fixed pie, the lord is growing the pie!"
7. Besides the issue of growing the pie, there is still the issue of the distribution of the pie, either way, and what a just distribution of the pie would look like. Generally, it seems like most people believe, in view of fairness and practicality considerations, that it should correspond to someone's contribution, or at least, that's a good starting point (e.g. even if one believes that maybe "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a nice sentiment, they might have concerns about its practicality).
In economics, they talk of the marginal product, like wins above replacement in sports. But, if we add up the marginal product of every person (and the other factors of production) in the economy, it is likely we would end up with a total that is less than the actual value of the economy.
As we know, *cooperation* can make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. And even if we assumed that workers were actually paid their marginal product (which I think is questionable, especially in sectors where competition for workers is weak), and the other factors of production were paid their marginal product, if there was a residual left, how would it be divided?
I suspect there is a good chance there is a residual, and that residual is given to those in power because they are the ones empowered to distribute it and will, of course, usually just give it to themselves, and because they have the power to do so, they can craft many elaborate justifications for this, that will be believed by many, but, the reality is that it was the power imbalances that allowed them to do it and then came the post hoc rationalizations.
8. NAIRU: in our current economic paradigm, a certain level of unemployment is considered desirable and important to keep inflation in check.
I am sure you saw how upset employers were getting in the aftermath of COVID when they actually had to compete slightly more for labor, that labor wasnt desperate enough to accept any conditions of employment that were offered, and actually had a little more bargaining power, when they were so accustomed to even more massive power imbalances, and how grateful they were when there was finally some "slack" that put the peasants back in our place.(Reminds me of reading about the impact of the Black Death on labor markets)
9. Economic efficiency, the improved efficiency in maximizing shareholder profit does not necessarily mean improved efficiency of a society maximizing the well-being of the individuals of that society, and while it seems frequently supposed that they do equate, I believe that supposition deserves more scrutiny than it often gets.
And, I would offer the possibility that, generally speaking, the greater the power imbalances between individuals in society, at least with respect to bargaining power, the more likely we will see a disconnect because those with more power then, often, have more power to compel others to accept terms they would not accept if bargaining power was not so unequal, and serve as cogs in a wheel to further enrich and empower the powerful.
10. Speaking for myself, I don't care what the wealthy do.
Back to the feudal/manorial analogy, if we made the adjustment that peasants enjoyed freedom of movement and other land was available, if people want to be lords and lots of peasants happily wanted to serve their lords, and considered them to be great, benevolent, and generous benefactors and job creators, power to them, whatever makes people happy.
I would just say, if anyone actually wanted to work for the benefit of themselves, their families, their communities, rather than a master, then we should leave and create a community on new land, and divide up the land amongst ourselves as yeoman farmers.
(Modern equivalent, something like distributism, but, again, just for those who voluntary want to do it, if people enjoy working for giant multinational public corporations, whatever floats their boat.
Although, truth be told, I do have to wonder how many people genuinely enjoy this or would if they understood how it impacts things they are upset about, but, that, in part, goes back to beliefs I have that share concerns with Gramsci and critical theorists about the ways in which power imbalances and cultural hegemony pervade almost all aspects of our society and the public consciousness, to the benefit of ideologies that legitimize and even glorify those power imbalances.)
Of course many entire books can and have be written to expand further and explore other topics, especially with respect to rent-seeking vs adding real value, financialization, etc., but I'll leave it there for now.
I don’t have the time or the motivation to respond to all of that, so I'll just make a few points I think you're missing:
1. Trade is, generally speaking, positive sum for all parties involved, otherwise they wouldn't agree to trade. There are exceptions of course, such as those that involve fraud or coercion, but those are relatively rare "defect in the prisoners dilemma" type strategies that only work in the short run, if at all.
2. Surplus value created via trade is split between producers and consumers. The easiest way to think about it is this: when you buy something, you're typically not paying the maximum amount you'd be willing to cough up for that item, and likewise, the seller is usually not selling at the lowest price he's willing to accept. Instead, the two of you agree to some price in the middle somewhere. The difference between the max you'd be willing to pay and the amount you actually paid is referred to as the consumer surplus, and the difference between the minimum the seller is willing to accept and the actual price is the producer surplus. Read more here if you care to:
The implication of this is that someone who has done well for themselves has probably also done well in creating value for society. He gets his surplus, his customers get theirs. This is basic Adam Smith Wealth of Nations stuff. I would have thought someone calling himself Condorcet would be on board with this.
3. This applies to wage negotiations as well. You're probably working for at least a bit more than you'd be willing to accept to do your job, and your employer is probably paying slightly less than the maximum he or she would be willing to. This is called the employer or employee surplus.
4. These things are hard to measure, sure, but the implication here is that the real value we attach to goods or services is actually much higher than the nominal value, not the other way around, as you stated. You could think of something like tap water, for example. People need clean water to live, and the fact that a seemingly inexhaustible supply is piped into my house is super convenient compared to the alternatives, so I place great value on the water itself and the fact that the company that built my house tapped into the local water system when they built it. How much of my home's cost was tied up in the water pipes? And how much do I spend on water on a monthly basis? Almost nothing in both cases. That's a big win. I get a lot of value out of that for almost no cost.
> with World War I representing the clash between Team Culture (with Germany as their largest representative) on one side and the nascent Civilisational hegemony represented by the Anglo-Saxon world that seeks to "rationalise" Europe.
You know, if you asked me which side was which, I would've swapped them around. In the blue corner, you have Germany/Prussia, famous for its rationalising approach to everything, from forestry to war. In the red corner, you have Britain/England, famous for clinging to tradition, sending its sons to Oxbridge to study the classics and to Europe to steep in the culture.
I agree to an extent, this Culture/Civilisation thesis was in large part a self-serving exaggeration, constructed to justify a war that was quite hard to explain. Yet, I think there is some truth to it when applied to the attitude of literary and philosophical circles.
Most of the latinate (Lateiner) German intellectuals were quite averse to Prussia and its strict mindset (considering it a subspecies of 'Eastern despotism') and they were ineffectually speaking out against Prussian-dominated cultural uniformisation in the late 1800s Kulturkampf.
My reading of Thomas Mann's Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (that I referenced above) is that it marks the moment when a large strand of German intellectuals stopped being skeptical (or "Nonpolitical," as in the title) of the German Empire, and started justifying it as a blunt instrument to protect against the greater evil of Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. The moment of the Jedi Council grudgingly agreeing to use the Clone Army against the Trade Federation, several years late, I guess. Of course, I'm not sure that the actual German leadership cared for this kind of moral approval.
Scott, you should read the chapter 'Odysseus, or Myth and Enlightenment', from Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment! It's an extremely idiosyncratic and (honestly!) wryly funny reading of Odysseus as the World's First Pragmatist Natural Scientist - being cast from disaster to disaster, he calculates the exact quantity of sacrificial cattle he needs in every situation in order to subjugate a hostile but mechanistic cosmos and bend all of the minor nature deities to his will. Bizarre, esoteric, and great stuff!
I read a summary + some excerpts in this book, and was surprised how similar it sounded to my own (fake, deliberately silly) Odyssey review in the third part of https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/25/those-modern-pathologies/ . Maybe we're both on to something?
Two brief thoughts: my first exposure to Adorno was an essay on Don Giovanni, which I found revolting. Maybe if I revisited now I’d find that I’d misinterpreted it - a quick search tells me that scholars gloss him as treating the play and character as deeply ambiguous, whereas i recall him bending over backwards to praise the titular character.
Second, I’m surprised you didn’t bring up Teach. Sadly, Porn in particular seems like a contemporary example of weird, mystical, vía negativa if-I-told-you-what-I-meant-you-would-misinterpret-it argumentation, even as Teach, or his persona, is aggressively opposed to communism and left theory while also focusing on (a particular subset of) art criticism. Perhaps we should read the Frankfurt school backwards via that as a starting point?
"Even beyond that, there seems to be a Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sake."
Including when they're in charge. Since nothing can be truly fixed, the most important thing is to vilify the enemy. Of course, their opponents these days by and large also don't believe that fixing is a possibility, so they employ the same strategy.
"But why should we believe that manifesting God through History is a real thing?"
Because the alternative is the cosmic horror that few people can bring themselves to accept.
I don't think it's a cosmic horror. Modern Norway is pretty nice, which serves as a proof of concept that we can get nice things within the current paradigm without manifesting God through History. And it seems unlikely that it's the literal maximum niceness possible and it's impossible for the current paradigm do better. So what's so horrible about restricting ourselves to normal within-this-paradigm solutions?
A godless universe without a guaranteed utopia somewhere along the way is pretty horrifying. It's no surprise that even a century and a half after Nietzche pronounced God dead, humanity still clings to the holy corpse, and Norway is no exception. Like all of their first world peers, the ruling class there claims membership in the traditional church, and also worships Him in His Hegelian-Marxist hypostasis.
Somehow people managed without a guaranteed utopia before Christianity came along. Very few religions other than Christianity and Islam have anything like "manifesting God through History", and for those which do have it, such as Norse Ragnorok, it is a cataclysm to fear, not to look forward to.
With Nordics, you need to make a *giant* distinction between being members of the National Church and actually believing any of it. The *large* majority of the members of the National Churches are non-believers, most of them auto-added from birth or baptism.
Isn't Norway a perfect example of the lack of substantive reason and the dominance of instrumental reason. It is a cosmic horror, they just aren't facing it. Sure, the society Norway has managed to build up is sure nice for the norwegians, but is bought 100% with oil exports. Getting nice things in the current paradigm always means that someone else gets bad things.
The norwegian way: export the bad stuff, close the gates, enjoy cultivating your private garden. Someone else can fix the world.
I'm something of a Hegelian myself, though not necessarily a left Hegelian. I think you should give a bit more consideration to progress toward God.
You can see the Hegelian dialectic in a lot more than a few periods of history. It's in the formation of stars and planets, in evolution, and in the prehistoric development of language and societies. Some species developed pecking orders and the alpha male to negate anarchy; primates and especially humans synthesized those by developing majoritarian forms where the big man wasn't the physically strongest but the most popular through instincts for costly punishment and reciprocity.
Now we're trying to build machine gods; the problem for the dialectic to solve is how to maintain the light of consciousness when conscious beings may no longer be the highest form of intelligence.
The machine God thing is probably off. Maybe God is the light of consciousness spread through the reachable universe. It will take more dialectical iterations to figure out.
A combination of opposing physical forces (gravity, momentum from the universe's expansion, entropy) that have led to the development of more interesting and productive forms like planets and stars, which have produced life.
Of the things you mentioned only gravity is a force. You can get planets and stars just from gravity.
I guess a more reasonable way to say it would be that gravity is opposed by electrostatics, which is why we have interesting things instead of black holes. But I don't think we need to credit Hegel for every notion of "sometimes things counteract other things".
The notorious Hero's Journey (as hyped by Joseph Campbell) seems to address positive dialectics of achieving ultimate goods through mystic trials and adventures. Would Hegel appreciate?
It is perhaps not for immoderate critics to resolve dialectical contradictions and bring ultimate peace.
Sigh, this is what happens when you live in a world without wizardly magic. People long to *do* something with their intellect in a personally meaningful sense that engineering an object or proving a theorem that everyone can then use doesn't offer. They want the excitement of special knowledge and the drama of moral significance not the boring understanding of what might be true.
Ultimately, they settle for cosplaying at social change pretending their art has some deep importance in world affairs rather than being an entertaing diversion other people can drink wine while looking at.
I really wish we would distinguish between 'You can't say this because it's a truth that someone doesn't want you to know and they will punish you' and 'you can't say this because someone co-opted this language to use in a popular lie, and if you say it like this your audience will just hear the lie instead of what you meant to communicate'.
It's very appealing and righteous-feeling to say 'I should be able to say technically true things as much as I want, and it's my audience's fault if they misunderstand me because they fell for propaganda that misused the same terms and phrases'. But this just makes you a useful idiot on the side of the propagandists and liars.
Language isn't precise enough to say technically true things in many complex domains, because words have so many different meanings and contexts and understandings and associations that there isn't a single literal unambiguous interpretation of most sentences in those domains. If you come up with single precise idea in your head, say a sentence for which that is one of thousands of possible interpretations, and then say that sentence to an audience that is almost certain not to interpret it that way, then you haven't actually communicated.
> Even classic Hegel seems at least a little kabbalistic...
Hegel is very into mystical traditions. Here's a (short) segment from his lectures on the philosophy of history called "Kabbalah and Gnosticism". These lectures aren't his best work (historically, it's hard for someone in his age to get an inside read on other cultures) but they're much better than most of his contemporaries IMO
He's MUCH more mystical (and less eschatological) than people give him credit for IMO. There's a serious interpretive lineage (Magee/O'Regan type stuff) that puts that near the "core" of his thought, as opposed to the marxists who prefer him easily secular-izable.
Here's the last line of "Phenomenology of Spirit":
> "History (intellectually) comprehended, form[s] the recollection and Golgotha of Absolute Spirit, the reality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it were lifeless, solitary, and alone. Only the chalice of this realm of spirits foams forth to God His own Infinitude"
And another quote from his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences
> "God is God only so far as he knows himself. His self-knowledge is, further, a self-consciousness in man and man's knowledge of God, which proceeds to man's self-knowledge in God."
> If you take away the belief that history can phase transition into a utopia utterly different from and superior to modern life, then trying to improve things normally through human reason and human effort seems like the way to go.
Even with such a belief, incremental improvement is a sensible approach.
Evolution only ever operates in incremental improvements, and yet it still produces phase transitions.
You start off making one transistor to make your vacuum tube radios more efficient. Then a couple more. And it keeps working, until you find yourself surrounded by smartphones.
I believe in a technological singularity from superhuman AI. (Although, given the state of alignment, I'm not convinced it will go well). So yeah, I believe in (at least the possibility of, if we solve alignment) a phase transition to a utopia utterly different from modern life. (See friendship is optimal). But I still think these philosophers were being mostly useless here.
An interesting (and very short) read is the letter correspondence between Adorno and Marcuse, right before Adorno's death, on the student movement. Adorno seems to believe that actually oops we kind of caused left-fascism, while Marcuse does not.
A couple of points stand out for me. One about substance, the other procedural.
It should be obvious by now that the Frankfurt School (and all other dialectical philosophies) are substantively wrong about a key element of that approach: history is not moving toward some preordained end. Progress is not slowly revealing some sort of truth about human nature, the idea that there is ultimately one, and only one, correct way for humanity to live has no support. Isaiah Berlin (yes, another European Jew, but of a later generation) wrote extensively and persuasively about this: that there are a plurality of value systems that could make human beings happy, unfortunately they are not all compatible with each other, hence the necessity of choosing. The difficulty humanity has in choosing which of many equally plausible set of values is where war and conflict come from, would that we could find a better way. But the ultimate evil (says Berlin) is Absolutism--the insistence by one faction that their solution is the one and only Truth, and therefore they feel justified in imposing that "truth" on the rest of us, by force if necessary.
If history has no inherent direction, then phrases like "civilized" and "primitive" cannot adhere to their traditional meaning. So-called "primitive" people are, on an individual basis, just as cognitively complex and well adapted to their environment as we the more "civilized" ones are. Similar considerations apply to other subjective terms of value judgement when applied to entire categories of people.
The ideal society might then be defined as that within which everyone is maximally adapted to their environment. The problem is that we are all in competition with each other, trying to secure access to and control over social resources at each others' expense, so any one state of affairs is inherently dynamic and subject to change. There is no ideal society to strive toward--merely an arena in which the competitive advantage of large scale cooperation ensures that living conditions slowly and incrementally improve for most (though not all) people.
Procedurally, the purpose of social criticism, as practiced today, isn't to propose solutions to anything. It's to point out the way in which the distribution of power protects the status quo and hides itself behind cultural stories. Movies, music, clothing, narrative, aren't inherently *bad* per se, but they do conceal and protect the status quo, including unjust inequalities.
Because of it's focus on hidden power dynamics, it can seem a little mystical. Social criticism isn't an empirical science, it's a form of literary criticism, so they can't *prove* that, say, the commercial success of jazz indicates that it has been coopted by the studio industry and used to prevent more musicians of color from achieving success. They can only point to certain aesthetic patterns, and leave it to others to decide what that means. This seems inefficient, but what alternative is there?
So they are wrong on substance, and their procedure, while useful, has some weaknesses.
As for cultural Marxism, I don't know, it sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. But assuming it ever was a real thing, it must count as one of the most spectacular failures of intellectual history. I mean, I can't think of anything less Marxist than Hollywood.
Academic social criticism is blind to the hidden power dynamics of their own ingroup. Leftist criticism is just an attack against their outgroup which makes it worthless. Everybody dunks on their enemies. Nothing special.
>This seems inefficient, but what alternative is there?
Ditching the obscurantism fetish would be a good start. I doubt that it ever amounted to much more than signalling sophistication, which is a forgivable vice when you're an obscure friend group doing its own thing, but a catastrophic failure when it underlies the dominant worldwide intellectual milieu.
I wouldn't even call the Humanities the dominant worldwide intellectual milieu. To the extent that there even is a dominant form (these days that's questionable), that's probably journalism.
OTOH, you could make a strong argument that it's marketing.
Aren't journalists overwhelmingly humanities-educated these days?
I agree that marketing is dominant in its own way, but while it's happy enough to subvert the orthodoxy on the sly whenever it can get away with it, challenging it overtly is out of the question, on the global corporation scale.
While journalism students get exposed to their fair share of social criticism, obviously, they have their own history and traditions, not to mention writing standards. Neither the NYT nor the WSJ much resemble the Frankfurt school.
Marketing doesn't challenge the orthodoxy, it coops and subverts it. "The Revolution will be televised." Your unique individual capacity for self-expression has been commercialized. You better believe this is done deliberately.
I keep thinking (as an avowed Yudkowsky fan in many ways, tbc) that Yud's "just because I was early on AI doesn't mean I was wrong" rhymes a lot with the Left's "just because we were early on mass media/fascism/capitalism/etc. doesn't mean we're wrong." Could go either way!
"By the 1930s, people had started to notice that this wasn’t happening. Although capitalism had suffered some crises - World War I, the Great Depression - countries had responded with what the Marxists called state capitalism, a broad term for hybrid systems including New Deal America, Stalinist Russia, and Fascist Italy. Most people seemed to like their own country’s variety of state capitalism."
You are overlooking how bad the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression felt for intellectuals and artists in America, Germany, and Austria.
In 1920s America, prosperous businessmen had subsidized lots of colleges, museums, and highbrow magazines. Curtis Yarvin could no doubt explain how 1920s leftism like protests over Sacco and Vanzetti's execution was all a Communist front, but it seemed at the time more oriented toward civil liberties and anti-Prohibitionism.
By the early 1930s, almost all this capitalist money was gone. In response, there was a huge shift to the left on the part of highbrows, as can be seen in the 1930s phenomenon of Western intellectuals making pilgrimages to Moscow to meet Stalin and praise him, which had barely happened in the 1920s with Lenin or Stalin.
Do you think the position of labour dramatically shifting its relationship to capital was part of the motivation here? Recognize a real issue and look for ways to address it? Yes, there were hard-core ideologues who wanted to get in the way of it in any way possible. Yes, there was a political calculus vis-a-vis the United States and Russia that certainly confounds the issue. When you talk about high-level capitalists, and I'm thinking of Armand Hammer because that's the only name I really know, exploring this new paradigm, I tend to think of it as having a rather pragmatic streak along with the rest. There is a real financial incentive to get along better with your labour force. The Germans handled unionisation very differently than the Americans did. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, and I suppose I could go on if I had better information, but I think you get my drift. The British seem to mostly have made a complete hash of it somehow. But I think the political ramifications of the thing overwhelm them. There really were a bunch of hard-core communists and a lot of workers who were just by nature disgruntled. That last bit is speculation, of course, but I'm British, so I feel I'm allowed to. I'm also Irish, so I appreciate, after suffering through a long famine and being very keen to have the English out of their country, that communism was a useful handmaiden to that process. I have never met a truly communist Irishman. I don't really think it's in their nature.
Deisach! If you're listening, please give me your thoughts.
This analysis of the Frankfurt School makes me a little sad, because Benjamin's Arcades Project was beautiful and insightful, and Adorno's claim that modern society, driven by unquestioning technological and economic "progress", ultimately fosters human alienation and suffering is right.
And while the purported successors are guilty of obscurantism, DeBord's critique is smeared like molasses all over Trump's upcoming prizefights on the white house lawn.
Adorno's Jazz stuff is nonsense, and I hope we have left any form of teleology (whether eschatological or dialectical) in the dust by now. The school as a whole lives on a now-dead branch.
Perhaps we can separate the descriptive claim (capitalism does things to culture and psyche), the teleological one (history is heading somewhere utopian), and the prescription. The USSR's collapse (and modern science) wounds the second but barely touches the first, and the first stands fine once you stop backing it with prophecy.
The simplest critique of our system (I will call it the industrial juggernaut, as it encompasses both the tidy western market and the draining of the Aral sea) needs no dialectics: energy use over time, tightly correlated with environmental destruction, has gone up and to the right at a consistent or accelerating rate, regardless of the tuning of reform, bending only where humanity was overwhelmed: reforestation after the indigenous genocide in the Americas, the fossil-fuel dip during COVID.
The curve seems to resist policy. No need for god or for resolved tensions; it is simply capital and our own narcissistic desire creating an attractor basin that seems only escapable through crisis. There is an unresolvable contradiction between a growth-committed system and a finite substrate, and it requires no God manifesting through History.
The other branch is alive, and doesn't need the Hegelian nonsense: Georgescu-Roegen on entropy and economics; Foster's "metabolic rift" (the materialist, non-teleological Marx you wished existed); Saito's Slow Down; Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind for the instrumental-reason worry without Hegel. More process and immanence than obscure dialectics.
And yes, the master's tools won't demolish the master's house, and there are mercifully few "Deterritorialize this, bee-atch" t-shirts. But Bateson, Meadows, and Stengers are rigorous, legible, and hard to commodify at once — so opacity was never buying the subversion it claimed. Mostly, it bought irrelevance and an excuse to skip rigor.
Good to hear that saner people are doing good work there, because I have to agree that techno-modern alienation is real.
Do any of these guys have an evolutionary take on this? If something we now do provides great 1st-level benefits, but subtly grates on our being in ways we can't quite put our finger on, there's a good chance these subtler aspects of our natures have evolutionary origins of their own.
Isn't the answer that we simply weren't built for this? Humanity evolved under the assumption that they would be hunting, gathering, killing, reproducing, and then simply dying. There just hasn't been enough time for humanity itself to change, and with the current lack of selection pressures, no amount of time will be enough. Of course, evolution doesn't optimize for happiness, it optimizes for fitness, and humanity is doing very well right now. Perhaps there's no issue to begin with.
If you mean “capital”, then you are probably right. We cannot understand a system this vast and its attractor basins. If you mean the limited world, of course we are. Many societies have understood limits - it is just that the societies that invent capital destroy them
> Many societies have understood limits - it is just that the societies that invent capital destroy them
Isn't that just evolution in action? Even if genetic selection has failed to produce results, cultural selection has been working just fine. The result has been something incredibly powerful and productive. Even if the body has been left behind, evolution does not stop. Again, it's not optimized for happiness, because happiness is merely a means to an end. If you can get results without it, there is no reason for it to be selected for.
What works is right. Communism is not a viable ideology. There is no place for it in a world where more efficient systems exist. That's all there is to this.
Maybe the deeper issue than not understanding limits, is that we don't seem to have understood abundance. We collectively produce more than enough for every human to live comfortably, but cannot help perpetuating our hoarding and all kinds of advetsarial behaviors that are materially not helpful anymore.
>techno-modern alienation is real<. Absolutely true. Just ask the luddites. Or the people who used to make shoes. Or people like myself that used to edit physical film. I spent most of my youth learning all sorts of now arcane processes for doing that job, and every one of them probably isn't even worth putting in a museum. I'm certainly capable of boring you at a cocktail party, however.
>unquestioning technological and economic "progress", ultimately fosters human alienation and suffering.
This strikes me as a brief restatement of the lesson of the Garden of Eden and any other myth that documents the fall of humanity from grace. I don't think this is a new problem. It's just accelerating.
We've got to get ourselves back to the garden, say Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. At least they were clear about their intention.
>And while the purported successors are guilty of obscurantism, DeBord's critique is smeared like molasses all over Trump's upcoming prizefights on the white house lawn.
The purported successors are also guilty of Trump's popularity itself. It's all well and good to "critique" everything and everybody while you're an ivory tower outsider, but after decades of university indoctrination young "liberals" live and breathe these ideas, and eagerly try implementing them at first opportunity. I suppose that if the goal is the collapse of the "industrial juggernaut", it's all going according to plan...
When critique is the highest status endeavor, little work gets done on devising and implementing workable solutions. So the crisis continues on its merry way, and all the critiquers get to shake their heads and say - "see, it's exactly how we said it would happen!", maintaining their status and then some. So it goes.
It is such a tiny effect relative to casino capitalism, Fox News, private equity, insider trading, and so many more factors. Underpaid, irrelevant university associate professors did not create Trump, they predicted him. Neoliberalism and Okigarchic capitalism are the true parents.
And literally nobody (statistically) has read critical theory. It is a scapegoat, and a particularly revealing one, in that it is the most coherent critique of what is actually happening now (full-scale surveillance, spectacle, simulacra).
>Underpaid, irrelevant university associate professors did not create Trump
The causality chain is professors -> students -> "elite human capital" -> crazy "progressive" policies -> Trump. Of course, it's not the only cause, the brain death of conservatism also paved the way for him.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that capitalism fosters alienation and suffering to some extent, but I think your degrowth-style description of it is overly pessimistic and simplistic. In the wealthiest and most capitalist countries on Earth, we are seeing reforestation, endangered species being protected, and the rapid rise of renewable energy (even in places like Texas that aren't friendly to it).
I love all of that. Truly. And I believe that humans will eventually get their shit together.
However, if you look at fossil fuel consumption trends over the past 50 years or so, it has been a continuous, stable upward trajectory for all but one small period - COVID. When a million Americans and somewhere near 15 million humans died and the machinery of modern society went back to first gear.
The issue is that green investments are capital investments seeking return, so each remedy for extraction mandates even greater extraction in the future. I’m pro-solar and pro-wind, I just know that our mode of making everything a return-bearing investment more than cancels out the gain.
You are citing very positive, local gains, which elide far greater non-local losses.
I don’t “want” degrowth. We are going to get degrowth whether we want it or not. I want it to be thoughtful, not catastrophic.
I think you're eliding the fact that extracting solar energy from our environment is a lot less invasive than, say, coal. The light just literally falls from the sky, whereas fossil fuels, you have to dig through dozens, maybe thousands of feet of dirt to get at. Not great! Your comment about capital returns is a red herring. What matters is the externalities of producing the energy and the cost relative to alternative sources of energy.
I do not miss the point at all, and I get where the energy come from (point of fact, the energy in coal came from the sun too. It is a battery, not an energy source).
The point is that for the phenomenal success of solar, the use of fossil fuels is rising at essentially the same rate it has been for decades.
Okay, but widespread fossil fuel use itself is only about 200 years old, which in the broad sweep of history, really isn't that long, so I don't know that that trend is guaranteed to continue. Note that there has already been substantial change in use of fossil fuels during that time, as coal has largely been replaced by natural gas over the past ~40 years as the primary fuel for electricity generation. Technology is not static.
Sadly, no. Coal use has roughly doubled worldwide since 1989, from 4,400 MT to 8,400 MT, and continues to grow YoY after a brief dip during COVID.
There are projections that imagine coal decline as an orderly technological substitution. But coal is not merely competing with solar and gas on price. It is the reserve army of an energy system that refuses to be constrained. The Hormuz crisis has already made LNG less secure, while data centers are creating a new class of electricity demand that must be served continuously.
Where coal plants remain operable and productive seams remain profitable, few countries will leave the fuel in the ground. The issue is not whether renewables work. They plainly do. The issue is whether we are using them to replace extraction or merely to enlarge the total amount of energy available for consumption.
I'm not a hater of green energy. My house is covered in solar panels, and I work hard to reduce my energy. I'm just saying that green investment to save the world is pretty much a myth.
The things we ‘can’t’ say about things are precisely the things that need to be said. usually with urgency, because they are dangerous and secret things that criminals and politicians would rather remain in the dark. Their weapon is fear. Very ugly.
> The things we ‘can’t’ say about things are precisely the things that need to be said<
Unless you mean "won't say", I find it difficult to parse this statement.
I think that is why we invented the word "ineffable"; it. describes the things we sense, that cannot be said in words. According to the c of e Hymnal, God's love is ineffable. When and if it becomes completely effable, then it will join the discordant choir across the way. Let God stand in for anything that you might feel occupies the same place in yourself.
I'll fail all my math classes if I keep saying that 2+2=5, and that's not because of some dark conspiracy trying to hide the truth from the world.
Some ideas are unpopular because they're bad, some terms are unpopular because they've been co-opted. There are perfectly normal and reasonable reasons to have a negative reaction to someone saying a thing.
True . Since the original article seemed to revolve around the horrors of communism et al, I thought the gist of my comment made sense somewhat, but since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, I might agree that we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse, lest we create a word salad of ad hoc philosophy as the marxists did. We could be labeled ‘intellectuals’ and be the first in line for the Cheka… as many ordinary Russian citizens were. That’s why wise people keep their mouths shut when the insane are running the show. If they tell you 2+2 =5 you may have to agree to save your neck. Trotsky, Marx, Lenin, were born of Jewish heritage which I think illustrates the absurdity of runaway political and religious dogma.
Not sure what I just read and I think I caught about 10% it even on re-read but I thank you for writing it Scott, and timely too. I was trying to characterize your writing style to my daughter yesterday in a discussion about AI and this post nails it in what sort of opining by you brought me here many years ago.
> The greatest failing of the Enlightenment mentality was not its inability to create social conditions in which name and thing might be legitimately united, but rather its systematic elimination of negation from language…Language thus became, to use Marcuse’s later term, one-dimensional. Incapable of expressing negation, it could no longer voice the protest of the oppressed. Instead of revealing meanings, speech had become nothing more than a tool of the dominant forces in society.
This part confused me. At first I was confused by what the negation was. The way its written it sounds like the enlightenment removed the words no and not from langauge.
What I think it actually means after reflection is that the enlightenment destroyed people's ability to talk and therefore think about a possible (utopian?) alternative to current society. But I'm still confused because I think this is dumb. You can still use language to describe a utopia now, its just that people will ask you how we get there and try to say why it wouldnt work. But you can still express the idea with language!
I think I'm missing something here though, so please respond with where I'm wrong.
AI and robotics rendering human labor uncompetitive on the market, thus removing the proletariat's ability to support itself by selling its labor, will bring the contradictions of capitalism to enough of a climax that the paradigm shift to communism will this time finally manifest itself. Or it won't and everyone will starve. Either way, two more weeks comrades, trust the plan!
Capital isn't acting like a system racing toward its own climax. WR Berkley, AIG, and Great American wrote absolute AI exclusions into their liability policies, making uncontrolled deployment uninsurable. That's underwriters pricing the risk and moving on, not contradictions reaching a boil. The proletariat's labor may be getting cheaper, but the dialectic has been two weeks out since 1848.
“If, upon having their world destroyed and accepting exile in America, they pronounced the people they found there to be a inferior species - in the least-racist, most Communist language possible - were they remarking on this same difference from the opposite perspective? If so, do we have any reason to trust their diagnosis of what was lost?”
“Let us imagine some citizen born in Dresden around 1890 and educated for a life of culture and refinement in a stable world, as many there must have been. If he is still alive, which is fairly doubtful in view of all that has happened, how must the world look to him?”
Heidegger strikes again. No one can understand these people. Dedicated their lives to decade-long cope when their pet communist revolution never happened
To losely quote one somewhat obscure write – a dull mind will sink in those writetings like a flatiron in an ocean of shit while a sharp mind will sink like a Damascus steel sword in an ocean of the same substance.
So, let's assume I believe in hyper-federalism and arachno... sorry, anarcho-capihalism. Like the Frankfurt School, I don't have a clear picture of how the Glorious Future will operate in details, but also like them I see a multitude of issues in the current system. Should all my art to be right-wing propaganda then?
The Witcher 3 literally has a book jokingly extolling arachno-communism, though I originally read Maxim as espousing "anarcho-Caliphism" (the Islamic non-state?)
It's odd that we see right wing, sometimes very right wing figures such as Richard Spencer and Paul Gottfried having started with scholarship in the Frankfort school tradition. The journal Telos is another example having started in the Western Marxist tradition and migrating to paleo conservativism. Alex Karp the founder of Palantir, disliked by many for its surveillance technology, was a student of Habermas, Adorno's protege. So maybe the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theorists have it all wrong.
In the aftermath of the WWII, there hasn't been a right-wing intellectual tradition in the west (outside of theology and economics), so your choice is to either start with Marxism, or eschew academia altogether.
I would quibble and say that the Fabian society described themselves as socialist rather than communist. The Nazis also called themselves socialist, and thus their persecutions were more based on being rival socialists (hardly absent under Communist governments either). I also don't think the early Frankfurt school was quite so anti-Lenin, though divisions appeared to have increased under Stalin https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/chad_kautzer_marxs_influence_on_the_earl.pdf
> for a long time, heliocentrism was thought implausible because it would require the fixed stars to be unfathomably far away
It wasn't merely that such distances were hard to "fathom", rather their calculations of how large & far away stars are were inaccurate. On a related note, it wasn't until Tycho Brahe's more accurate data was available that Kepler was actually able to make a more accurate model (one with elliptical orbits, rather than Copernicus insisting on perfect circles) and heliocentrism actually triumphed (and then Newton was able to derive the law of gravity as the force that would cause such orbits).
> The Frankfurt School would have predicted my confusion. As a subject of late capitalism
The term "late capitalism" was actually coined by Werner Sombart, a former Marxist who became a Nazi (that's what he thought was replacing capitalism).
> Marcuse can fairly be accused of supporting this (not inventing it!)
I think it was Gramsci who invented it, and he was a "Western Marxist" though an Italian rather than German/Austro-Hungarian.
> Does this interpretation founder on the fact that most modern leftists don’t know about this?
Is the jazz thing as simple as "good art absolutely can't make you feel happy, other critics are praising jazz as good art despite it being a happy experience, so I need to bring the hammer down"? Other critics were highlighting its black origins as a political reason for praise, so Adorno needed to find some way (however absurd) to negate that point.
I think the jazz thing is just 'modern music is all noise and degeneracy', something that old people have been saying about new genres for a very long time.
TL;DR: The Frankfurt school did not influence Derrida or bring about postmodernism. Sorry for the long comment, I was nerd sniped.
Elif Batuman in the n+1 pamphlet "no regrets" writes that, during her time at college, folks were forced to decide between being either Frankfurters or Foucauldians. Faced with the same choice, I picked the French over the Germans. I don't have much, resultantly, to say about the Frankfurters, except to recommend Peter Gordon's work: he has a new book coming out on Adorno which I think may address some of your critiques. I do, however, have to quibble with the claim that the Frankfurt school in any way paved the way for Derrida, whose success in France and latterly in the US seems to me quite unrelated from the Frankfurt school's success, and who is, in my opinion, along with Foucault, more "at fault" for the proliferation through the US academy of critical theory than are Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse.
Derrida, and deconstruction as a result, was not descended, though it has its similarities with, Adorno's negative dialectical approach. Derrida's interest in the basic deconstructive operation of noticing slippages in the meaning of words can be traced as far back as his highschool (lycee) education, during which he, as a teenager, wrote an essay about the play of meaning resulting from the sound similarity between eprouver (to feel) and prouver (to prove). This is basically the same kind of trick he would pull throughout his career (consider, to take one of his most famous neologisms, la hontologie, which takes advantage of the exact same kind of pun). Long before it was a principled position, it was already a dispositional inclination.
Throughout his higher education, in philosophy (which in France was highly historical and not particularly marxist), Derrida focused on the then-hot field of phenomenology, particularly the work of Husserl (upon whom he wrote his first two books) and Heidegger. It is from this latter, and not from the Frankfurt school Derrida drew the idea of deconstruction. His own philosophy, for Heidegger, was to accomplish the destruction of Western Metaphysics, including the contributions made thereto by people like Hegel, and Derrida wanted to continue this project, though he modulates Heidegger in calling this extension deconstruction, as opposed to destruction. What's key is that this philosophical project is not in the first instance Marxist, nor is it concerned with doing art criticism. These days, when we talk about deconstruction, we mostly seem to defer to gestures made by works of art to "subvert the expectations" of their audience: Hans' rejection of Anna in Frozen, for instance, one often here's called a "deconstruction" of the Disney Princess genre. But Derrida was not art critic, at least, not to start.
What he was was a weatherman who knew which way the winds were blowing. Hence his celebrated nineties turn to the political, his savvy comments about the 60s student protests, which neither affirmed nor condemned, his early engagement with the rising vogue for psychoanalysis (his celebrated term "differance" was originally coined to resolve a dispute between two different Freudian factions). And hence, his turn, when he found himself installed in a literature department at Yale university, his turn to literary matters. This shift to literary matters was induced by his then colleague, the *decidedly* un-Marxist Paul de Man, who was himself practicing his own version of deconstruction which was primarily art critical, focusing on "undecideable" moments in poetry. It was through de Man's influence (influence both intellectual and geographical, bringing Derrida to the US) that deconstruction began to be conceived, as it is now primarily conceived, as an art critical strategy.
Derrida's arrival in the US also marks the beginning of poststructuralism, which is often what is meant when people talk about "postmodernism," generally, and while I don't think Derrida's brand of it was especially Marxist, the brand of his most prominent students, like Gayatri Spivak, and his peer, Michel Foucault, was closer politically to what I imagine people imagine when they think of the general philosophical tenor of these movements.
Poststructuralism was a breaking away from structuralism, which was a brief French vogue for focusing on the general content-agnostic rules that govern social processes over short periods (as opposed to looking in great detail at the particularities of social processes on their own terms, or looking at them over time) which was pioneered by Claude Levi-Strauss. Claude Levi-Strauss came to structuralism as a result of his attending in New York the lectures of the structuralist linguist Roman Jakobson, which led him to read Saussure, who he believed to be insufficiently marxist, and consequently in need of a dialectical reinterpretation (but crucially just a regular dialectical reinterpretation in no way related to the Frankfurt school's understandings of dialectics), and by the recommendation of his friends Simone Weil's brother Andre Weil who had been working on a structuralist mathematics (which was related to French analytic philosophy, several of whose key figures were killed during WWII, deepening the analytic/continental divide).
As humanities departments expanded in the 70s, the growing movement of people influenced by poststructuralism came with them, which spread this kind of critical theory across the academy. I think this was a phenomenon unrelated largely to the Marxist "long march" through the institutions, which was more discipline agnostic.
The integration of Adorno and Horkheimer with Derrida and Foucault into something that could be called critical theory was broadly accomplished, I think, in the nineties, and I think an interesting figure to look at here is Judith Butler. Butler is, of course, most famous for Gender Trouble, but she has described herself first and foremost as a "jewish philosopher," and her work knits together the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer, Derrida and Foucault, and others like Whitehead, and a million other people. Her original discipline, though, interestingly, is the same as Derrida's, phenomenology, and she trained under Maurice Natanson, a leading American phenomenologist, who himself trained under Alfred Schutz, at the New School in New York, to which institution Schutz had fled fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe. Schutz and his fellow emigres, brought phenemenology to the United States, and effectively established the conditions wherein later on a critical theory could flourish. If I was going to trace back the origin of critical theory in the United States, I might do it to the moment Schutz gave up investment banking to study with Husserl. (An interesting and I think the crucial and underacknowledged thing is that this American branch of continental philosophy flourished before its French counterpart.)
All of this to say several thigns. First, Derrida's intellectual trajectory, and the trajectory of his reception, did not cross the Frankfurt school at any point. Poststructuralism, resultantly, is not, consequently, descended from the Frankfurt school's ideas, even if Derrida did engage them at points in his career, and even if others after him tried to integrate all of their influences into one big amalgam called critical theory. This was an extraordinarily long, I'm realizing, comment to leave about one sentence in this post, but obviously this is something like, for me, a special interest, and I hope it will be of interest to at least one reader.
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
There was definitely some animosity between the Frankfurters and the early postmodernists. My own piece of anecdotal evidence: My father studied literature in Copenhagen under Frankfurt aligned professors in the 70s, took a year in Paris and listened to Foucault, went back to Copenhagen and finished his thesis... which was then rejected by the professors for containing heretical ideas (an extremely rare occurrence, the professors had not rejected a thesis for years.)
Another thing that people don't really get is that the critical theory isn't really driving the train on the stuff that conservatives don't like. Like everybody had a certain view of what Gender Trouble was saying and then trans rights came along and everybody just tossed that view away.
'his celebrated term "differance" was originally coined to resolve a dispute between two different Freudian factions'
What were the factions, and what was the dispute? Any recommended links/papers/books on how "differance" arose as a response?
'Poststructuralism was a breaking away from structuralism, which was a brief French vogue for focusing on the general content-agnostic rules that govern social processes over short periods (as opposed to looking in great detail at the particularities of social processes on their own terms, or looking at them over time)'
Roughly, the factions were a Lacanian faction that favored a "topographical" model of the psyche, where different levels of consciousness (like, the "unconscious") were "spatially" related, against a more orthodox faction which believed in an "economic" or "temporal" model of the psyche, where the layers of consciousness are arranged in time. Differance, which means both "difference" as in spatial difference, and "deferral," temporal difference, was a way to navigate between the two opposing views. It then made its way throughout his work. For more thorough coverage of this, I would look at Edward Baring's The Young Derrida and French Philosophy.
And yes, by shorter term vs longer term, I was referring to synchronic versus diachronic, but the stakes of structuralism were, when Saussure was originally lecturing in 1907, very different: for Saussure, the synchronic was a way to break out from the dominance of historical linguistics or philology. The key thing for structuralism blossoming in France across the disciplines in was the adoption of structuralism in anthropology by Levi Strauss in the Elementary Structures of Kinship.
We should now write it as God-Communism-Singularity, I believe, because the later shares the exact characteristic of being indescribable with the first two, only expressed in mathematical terms, rather than religious or Marxist. I wonder what Frankfurt School would say of it. On the one hand, it's the pinnacle of things they hated, I think - the alienating technical progress. On the other, it might be THE crisis of Capitalism Marxists were waiting for since forever.
Actually, Singularity is even better than Communism, because we can't even make guesses about post-Singularity: if Communism was always defined by "less work, more free time for personal development", post-Singularity hasn't even got such weak constraints, it could really be anything (maybe we all would work more and have less free time! Or maybe concepts of "work" and "free time" and "we" would become obsolete or meaningless).
My takeaway from this is that these people saw the failure of Marx's practical (in intent) utopianism and found that the only way to remain utopian was to abjure any hint of practicality, lest their worldviews founder upon the rocks as Marx's had. Anyone who wants to try to convince me that there's anything more to it than that is welcome to comment.
Amusing. But...they weren't just about mystical stuff. I have read all 700 pages of Adorno et al's The Authoritarian Personality (1950), and can confirm that it was the origin text of all the pol-psych BS ever since about conservatives being: fearful, stupid, (of course) sexually repressed proto-fascists. Don't believe me? Why not take the test, developed by the egregious Bob Altemeyer in 1981 (inspired by the Adorno F- for Fascism scale) and still used, in varying forms, today? Are you a Right-Wing Authoritarian? Take the RAW test and find out!
I think sexual repression is just a stand-in for the general repression of our physical being. Focusing it just on sex kind of clouds the issue, as far as I'm concerned. In general, I think that things of the body have been relegated to second-class citizens in our concept of ourselves. As a result, we don't listen to a lot of good information about the world we live in. I don't care to try and flesh this out because I'm sure I will end up in a quagmire.
All of these questions, seem to me, to be pretty strongly correlated with the temperament of the average RAW. Are you trying to say it is somehow off-base?
> So under communism, not only would people who loved gardening get to garden all day, but they would be having constant gardening-related sexual pleasure while they do so.
This is a good review, but I think it makes a few errors with respect to "Continental" philosophy (understandable for an analytic-head). I'm only mentioning these so comment readers get pushback on the implication they're mostly the same:
First, Hegel. The most famous interpretations of Hegel (including the one Scott mentions here about the "Final Manifestation of God being basically relabeled communism") come from a specific person, Alexandre Kojève. He was a marxist, and is usually considered.... let's say idiosyncratic by modern Hegel scholars.
In a personal letter to Tran Duc Thao, Kojève claimed to be more interested in the spirit of Hegel’s philosophy than its letter: “my work does not constitute a historical study – it mattered relatively little to me to know what Hegel himself meant in his book [...] I intended to write, not a commentary on the Phenomenology, but an interpretation”
Any claims that "The communists took Hegel and relabeled something " probably have the causality backwards. What mostly happened is that Communists became the "trusted interpreters of Hegel", and their "standard" interpretations were misrepresentations explicitly designed to line up with what they thought about communism (the end of history and the master-slave dialectic are particularly bad examples).
Second, Derrida and most of the French post structuralist are actually very different than the Frankfurters. They don't really come out of the same lineage.
The Frankfurters generally had to flee their homes to escape the Nazis (Walter Benjamin actually killed himself because he thought they would send him back). I don't like reading them too much, they get sort of hysterical about fascism (understandable given their lives, but it feels like they're working through trauma sometimes).
The French post-structuralists are different. They tend to write about systems of intelligibility and meaning more generally.
They're both smeared by the same people, but they don't really say the same things. Derrida specifically didn't "come from" the Frankfurt school in any meaningful way.
I may be wrong, but this is a book review from this year's competition - so it may be by Scott A, or more likely not. They're all anonymous for now, I think.
Perhaps Frankfurtian Hegelianism would benefit from a Strossian reading: The wheels of history are coming clear and God is manifesting Himself on Earth. I'll be waiting for him with a shotgun and I'm keeping the last shell for myself.
Manifesting the atheist God through negative theological politics, not bad for a mental contortion.
What I find most amazing about this is the lengths people will go to convince themselves that the arc of the future is predetermined. Is an open-ended future really that scary? I find it rather inspiring myself!
There’s always someone out there trying to give you something to worry about. The problem is fixed expectations don’t lock in the future do they? Cognitive dissonance should be a personal choice don’t you think?
Well, society is also what we all make of it, nothing wrong with a bit of participation in the sparring of better or worse ideas. Then you close the phone and go on with your life. But thanks for your concern :)
I think it's more that when you look backwards, it seems quite mechanical and predetermined. Maybe not in the fine details - one could imagine this or that technology being delayed decades, centuries, or, as was the case for the Olds Elevator, millennia - but in the broad strokes.
Looking at the Teaching Hunter Gatherers Capitalism story through a capitalist lens, it kind of falls apart.
9-5 factory jobs suck. Read Aella on the topic. If the alternative is a viable and familiar hunting and gathering lifestyle, and the incentive of taking the job is a small selection of industrial made toys, of course the answer is no. The only people who took the deal were those who didn't understand it or who thought they could put one over on the outsiders.
Then, instead of sweetening the deal like true capitalists, the colonizers brought in missionaries to try to propagandize the natives into believing that their Purpose was to serve. And in stead of admitting that they'd offered a bad deal and been rejected, they made up stories about how the natives didn't understand. Deep down, they probably had no belief in Freely Chosen Exchanges and lots in We Rule They Obey, but without the raw violence to make the latter happen
When genuine French capitalists mimed to Odawans “one metal axe for ten beaver pelts”, there was no issue with understanding.
> If the alternative is a viable and familiar hunting and gathering lifestyle, and the incentive of taking the job is a small selection of industrial made toys, of course the answer is no.
Yes, but that's not a real alternative. Civilization is a losing proposition on the personal level, but inevitably crushes all opposition on the geopolitical level. Of course, the choice isn't presented as "submit, or be utterly crushed", but those are the options.
If you're out to deny the physical realities of the world we live in, mystical obscurantism seems like a great way to go. Especially if you don't want to grapple with the fundamental issue itself. Anything that owes its existence to the abstractions the human mind is capable of coming up with will not address the underlying issue. My reading of this review tells me that the Frankfurters chose to walk around this obstacle rather than confronting it. But wasn't this the time when philosophers and scientists of all stripes thought they could build a comprehensive system that could completely reside within itself - before Godel came along and blew them up?
I am very surprised that you say this. It doesn't comport with the image I have been building up of you in my mind over these many months (am I the only person that does this? Slowly build up an outline of a person you only have communication with either over the phone or through text? I used to work for a temporary employment agency in New York, and the woman who managed me at the agency I only ever spoke to over the phone. I created quite an acute mental image of her, and then, after about a year and a half, I met her. No, I'm not claiming supernatural powers, she was nothing like what I had created in my mind.) Anyway, diversion...
I have incredibly catholic tastes when it comes to music. I listen to Schubert Lieder rght next to Led Zeppelin, and then Miles Davis comes on, and then God knows what else. And then if I'm lucky, Hank Williams. I love the roller coaster of it. I also get a cheap thrill of a song coming up that I really don't like. It's like eating at your mother's. You take what's put in front of you.
I suppose I need to know what range of music you're referring to when you say jazz. Maybe it's a much smaller subset of what I consider it to be. Then we could be friends again. heh
My problem with jazz is that it sounds like music that was generated by a Markov Chain, before Markov Chains were even invented. It has no melody, no plan, just stochastic rules for putting one note in front of the other.
My friend who really likes jazz claims that the beauty of it really comes through in participation: if you are one of the jazz musicians, then your performance becomes a sort of combination between dance and tennis, wherein you are trying to weave your own performance into that of your fellow musicians. I can see the fun in that, but I am no musician myself, so I can't participate in jazz. All I can listen to are recordings that all sound exactly like each other, because they all sound like procedural noise.
Okay, that's coherent. There is a lot of joy, jazz like that. To tell you the truth, I'm not a huge fan. The more it sounds like mosquitoes buzzing in my ear, the more intolerable it becomes. But I sure don't feel that way when I listen to Miles Davis playing "Miles Ahead". It's a completely different experience to me. Very rhythmic, very melodic. I also don't feel that way about Artie Shaw, but that's perhaps more swinging than jazz (although he did record a lot of things that I wouldn't completely put in the category of Swing). I do very much like Cannonball Adderley for some of the same reasons I like Miles Davis. Louis Armstrong. If I were to say I listen to fringe music that would be comparable to the kind of jazz you are referring to (I think) It is really more harmonically challenging, found noises, etc. Anouar Brahem comes to mind: an artist I currently am listening to quite a bit. Anyway, I take your point. Music is entirely personal. That's why it's so much fun to find someone else who likes the same things you do.
>My friend who really likes jazz claims that the beauty of it really comes through in participation: if you are one of the jazz musicians, then your performance becomes a sort of combination between dance and tennis, wherein you are trying to weave your own performance into that of your fellow musicians. I can see the fun in that, yeah, it is fun. I used to go to a bar that had jazz night every Monday, I believe, and guys would just show up with their instruments. There was a core group, but people came to do solos. It was enjoyable to watch them work that form. It was very, shall I say, traditional jazz. Not that Mosquito noise.
Speaking of consistency, I take this approach to all creative content that I consume, be it visual art, video games, music, movies, literature, etc.: I want the work to reflect the fact that its author put time, effort, and planning into it; that he had something to say, and some plan on how to say it -- as opposed to just stringing random items together. This is why I dislike Jackson Pollock or Michael Bay or pop music about as much as I dislike jazz. Sometimes the author tries to do something extraordinary and fails utterly; but I still respect that a lot more than putting random splashes of paint on canvas, or tiling the game world with uniform procedurally-generated trees.
Well, if part of the function of art is to challenge our assumptions, then I would say this is problematic. It's not really, because it's either something you like or something that pushes you in a direction you didn't expect, and you're willing to be pushed. I think of art as being an intuition pump in part.
I have no problem with challenging assumptions -- like I said, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I still respect the effort. I am just not willing to challenge my assumption that art is supposed to be distinct from non-art. If putting random paint splotches on canvas or random pixels on the screen or random notes on the soundtrack is art, then I am exactly as good of an artist as everyone else, so why should I pay attention to them ? To paraphrase Syndrome, "If everyone is an artist, no one is".
> ...what range of music you're referring to when you say jazz. Maybe it's a much smaller subset...
This. I would divide jazz into subsets - there's early Louis Armstrong style (which I prefer, being a "moldy fig"), then there's swing (Benny Goodman), classic (Dave Brubeck), be-bop (Bird and Diz) , free jazz (as awful as modern atonal classical music IMO). Jazz evolved from rag-time, with influences from African American, Cajun and Italian (yes, really) musics in New Orleans. There is a continuum from rag-time to early jazz - it might be interesting for you to explore just where your like/dislike border is. Do you like Scott Joplin? Jelly Roll Morton?
Yes, both. I like Coltrane as well (some of it.) Ella Fitzgerald, Even Mel Tormé. Stride piano, Thelonius Monk, The Dead Brothers, Artie Shaw. The Bird. Bill Evans. SunRa on a good day..
Do you know that story about Shaw and Goodman? They met and Goodman was keen to show Shaw all his gear-different barrels, etc. Shaw said “That’s the difference between us benny; you play the clarinet. I play music.”
Overall, I kind of agree with the Frankfurt School philosophers. I've always been a big fan of utopian philosophies such as Communism or Libertarianism. Both of them could indeed result in an Earthly paradise... but only if the Earth were populated by some beings other than humans, who thought in a very different ways compared to how real humans think. I can respect the Frankfurt School for daring to try and dream such beings into existence, despite the obvious futility of their efforts.
Sentence after sentence of what you write resonates with aspects of my life of 79 years or my reading or my suffering and/or my pleasures through the many aspects of the various awakening as one ages. Maybe it's something about being woke and knowing you're woke and being WEIRD at the same time at the same time. Whatever
I am just trying to think of a kindly, nice thing to say in reply to your good double-clicking into the issues of an engaged of modern life. Bingo: Don't stop! Write. Be a father. Suffer. Prosper. Be conflicted. And tell us what Theodore **AI**-dorno would say. ;-)
"Frankfurters hated jazz" sounds bizarre to me as well. But I think I've landed on a charitable interpretation.
Hypothesis: Adorno (et al) weren't reacting to Jazz qua music, they were reacting to *Swing*, as mass-produced for the airwaves.
Imagine you're a German living through the Great Depression of the 1930's. The Jazz and the Flapper Culture of the 1920's from across the Atlantic have become entirely commoditized by the 1930's. As a German, you don't see Harlem's wild improv, and Bebop hasn't crystallized yet (Bebop is a 1940's phenomenon). Instead you get safe, sanitized Swing (or Big Band). It's easy to listen to, it's "safe jazzy", and it pretends to be crazy and rebellious. But actually, it follows a very predictable structure. And radio-performances "improvise", but only within the confines of a narrow script.
Under this interpretation, Adorno was basically Ted Gioia, insofar as he complains about how Spotify has completely commoditized musicianship.
I don't know how to say this nicely, and I must preface it by saying that even though we have profound political differences I find your writing interesting and an interesting check/counter against things in my head.
But you seem so deeply uninterested in the book and its material you describe here. Every time the strange and alien attitudes here veer towards something that seems to touch on the insane contradictions of modern life, the review just kind of... changes topic.
So here's the big question: Is it possible for an individual or group to figure out what configuration of society, what set of rules, what form of government, etc. have the best chance of increasing total human wellbeing? My impression is that some extremely smart, goodhearted people have tried hard and been wrong as hell. Is it perhaps just not possible?
Also, here's a possible clue to how one makes a society work: My observation, in both large groups and small, is that if a fairly high percent of the group likes and trusts a fairly high percent of the rest of the group, the group does a good job at coming up with plans and policies for new issues and problems. I observed that, for instance, when I worked for several years at a big, famous psych hospital. I was hired staff at 2 of the dozen or so units there, and logged a lot of time doing various things at several other units. Most units had factions who disliked each other, big reservoirs of chronic anger about various things, pairs of people having affairs, rage that the unit had been saddled with a certain difficult patient, etc. So say I would be called in to consult on how to handle that one very difficult patient, and I would come up with a plan for the staff. . For one person, who babbled a constant word salad, I had found that it worked fairly well to sit with her and stare at the wall and ignore everything she said, until she said something that make some sense. Then I would make eye contact with her, smile, repeat the sensible thing she said, and ask more about the topic. Over the course of an hour, fraction of meaningful sentences went up from, say, 2% to more like 10%. So I would present some plan like that to whoever had called for my consult, and the person I was speaking with would laugh bitterly and say, “good luck getting people here to do that. They don’t believe we should ever have given this patient, and we’re working on getting her transferred to ward Z.”
The one really well-functioning unit I worked on was the OCD unit, inpatient care for people with severe OCD. You heard lots of friendly chat and laughter there all day, including in staff meetings. I don’t know why that place worked so well. The head of it, an MD, did not seem to be making any big effort to keep thngs organized. Most striking thing about him was how available he was. Emails to him tended to be get answers within 10 mins. And he just liked the patients. Used to come once a week and play basketball with them. Michael Jenike. Retired now, maybe dead.
Anyhow, seems like circular reasoning, I know: To build a society that works well, start with a group who mostly like and trust each other. Ha ha, good luck with that, esp. in the present day, right? I have sometimes seriously wondered whether it might be productive to give a small dose of ecstasy or some other love-and-trust-enhancing drug to groups of leaders before they meet.
Before rejecting that, consider the alternative. Now when these people sit down to meet, one comes out with a string of conventional pleasantries, followed by "and by the way, despite our temporary cease fire, I just firebombed an orphanage in retaliation for your allowing some of your troops to cross the river. Eat shit and die, buddy. But first, would you life some coffee of tea? And these scones are lovely. Or maybe a long-dead crayfish, which I understand is a delicacy in the shithole you rule?"
> Anyhow, seems like circular reasoning, I know: To build a society that works well, start with a group who mostly like and trust each other.
Well, you don't need to start with a group like that. You just need to remove everyone and everything that can't be trusted from the collective. Thankfully, people seem to have an instinctual desire to do this if you simply let them.
Yes. The Amish, for instance, shun people who have done certain things. I'm not sure what the things are, but if they're the usual culprits -- crimes, cruelty, doing stupid stuff without consulting others -- seems like a great system.
> My impression is that some extremely smart, goodhearted people have tried hard and been wrong as hell. Is it perhaps just not possible?
It is not, because humans are not capable of apprehending more than about the Dunbar's Number of other humans, so it's impossible to build any optimized society beyound that size. The best you can do is build a loose association of such small people-groups who are held together not by love and understanding (because each group will have their own distinct preferences and therefore hate all other groups), but by bonds of necessity.
This doesn't have anything to do with Dunbar's Number, given that individual connections aren't what ties a civilization together. What is necessary is a shared dogma. In fact, these small groups actually only hinder alignment by creating interest groups whose interests aren't aligned with the collective. Preferably, you want individuals to be as alienated from each other as much as possible, ensuring that their only faith is in society as a whole.
> In fact, these small groups actually only hinder alignment by creating interest groups whose interests aren't aligned with the collective.
Yes, exactly. Small interest groups will inevitably form, and will inevitably develop strong opposing views that cannot be reconciled (for example, group A believes that wearing white is abomination, and group B believes that wearing any other color is abomination). So forming a society based on some sort of mutual love and understanding is impossible. Alienating everyone from each other is probably also impossible (it's not how humans are wired biologically), but even if you could do it, you would just end up with a bunch of scattered individuals who can't cooperate on anything.
So the best you can really do is cultivate somewhat of a lazy attitude. Yes, those white-wearing heretics are abominable and should theoretically all be put to the sword... but maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile I've got fields to till and grapes to mash into wine, and by the way those heretics make really nice wooden barrels so we might as well give them some grapes in exchange...
I feel like it's pretty much a cliché, but it's important to remember that the existence of the Frankfurt School as a "superior species" was very much dependent on the fact that 99% of society had pretty much no possibility of social mobility whatsoever and were forced to serf away in squalor.
In many ways the extinction of this "superior species" is directly related to many of the ideals of socialists having been fulfilled.
How so? Scott explicitly pointed out that many of the key members were Jewish. Razing of the Jewish intelligentsia in WW2 was not a socialist project. Are you saying destroying the possibility of productive idle rich people was?
I'm saying that postwar US society was more egalitarian than prewar European society and that is related to you having less people who can eat a Sachertorte in the morning on their trader uncle's dime and spend the rest of the day in the club reading obscure philosophers and thinking about the nature of the One.
>or most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties
This is so true, and the reason why it is totally inapplicable to the Frankfurt School or any other school; they exist in a world of concepts, and you're cut off at the knees immediately. It's useless in that context. It's akin to trying to square the circle.
Freud's famous definition of sanity, to be able to love and able to work, is being challenged here by the notion of work becoming "extinct"(?).. (The ultimate promise of AI.) What does work become when divorced from the notion of self-sufficiency in the world? It's rather challenging.
No one can accurately imagine what the next 5 years will be like. Ideally in 2028 the US would have a leader that half the country doesn’t hate. Fat chance I guess. One side or the other has to be outraged it seems.
Yes, that does seem rather unlikely, given the way things are right now. I don't see how they will change enough in two years for your wish to come true. Two parties is a binary choice, and the way the system is set up, a third party doesn't really seem to have a chance. I suppose things will go on in this way until one of those parties is dominant enough to effectively quash the other now that the common ground is shrinking. But what's that got to do with work?
We are entering a period of turmoil with AI potentially turning things upside down. Human effort to produce value may become a thing of the past. I’d prefer we had a uniting figure at the helm as we grope our way through whatever lies ahead.
I wonder if the founders of the Frankfurt school felt the same as the AI safety community feels now? You have this complex nuance idea of the world that all the people get. Brick upon brick tell you get to the towering heights, and can act upon it in meaningful deep ways. Then it opens and the masses flow in and act as they do without understanding the deep truths.
I work some with Pause AI and I definitely see that here. Very few are familiar with the core texts. They are not of the sacred in circle, they are of the world, and they corrupt the ideas. It may be necessary to movement build, but without the proper indoctrination most simply won't "get it".
The ability to be rational when necessary is a hard-earned gift." Rationalism", on the other hand, is the same kind of tyranny of the mind that has ruined all these other philosophies. When something becomes a labelled identity, it exercises a tremendous amount of power. Saying that you identify as a rationalist carries the same weight with me as someone saying they are a psychic. And I don't mean they don't carry any weight. But I wouldn't use either one of them as the base for a statue I'm building.
the central point of all their criticism is that modern society is corrupt and barbaric for trying to unambitiously implement its little political reforms and improve GDP one percent, instead of trying to manifest God through History. But why should we believe that manifesting God through History is a real thing?"
Or, more importantly, a good thing? A tough question for a materialist. The Frankfurt School were really German aesthic snobs pretending to be Marxists who would think aesthetics is worthless.
As a somewhat traditional Marxist I have a lot of thoughts on this. So sorry for the overlong comment:
„Hegel only gives a nice story about how some historical periods seem to have embodied certain forms of intellectual progress; Marx only adds some bad economics and failed predictions.“
You always confound Hegel and Marx like this. Since Hegel’s philosophy is mystical and Marx is ‚based‘ on it, therefore, Marx supposedly must also be mystical. But Marx’ materialism was meant to be an 180 degree refutation of Hegel’s mysticism! While for Hegel, history is ‚moving‘ due to (seemingly) contradictory dynamics of divine will, for Marx history is ‚moving‘ because of physics and men’s interaction with the physical (/material) world in order to better serve their physical (/material) requirements. There is nothing mystical in Marx; it’s (meant to be) a refutation of mysticism. Socioeconomic orders are not changing due to mystical forces but due to changes in technology (/means of production) and the effects they have on economizing, exercising of power, and living in general. Thanks to this materialistic ‚paradigm shift‘ you could finally make informed, empirical predictions about the course of the future – predictions that could be empirically falsified! Marx’ dialectical materialism was meant to be a science like physics: When you observe the trajectory of a ball in midair, and you know the physical laws underlying its movement, you can predict where it’s going to land before it does. Thus, employing the same physicism/materialism to history, you could predict where it’s going, if only you knew the material/socioeconomic laws underlying the ‚movement‘ of humanity. Identifying such socioeconomic laws is what Marxism is all about. And both Marx and Engels wanted their ‚laws’ and predictions to be understood as falsifiable theories and not mystical orthodoxies.
To me, the two most convincing socioeconomic dynamics that suggest a progression beyond capitalism towards communism are:
1) As capitalist competition advances technology (/means of production), more and more of human labor will get transferred into specialized machinery, thus driving an increased social polarization into the owners of those machines and the rest, to whom only more and more menial tasks with little compensation will be left. Ultimately, this polarization will reach a point, where the few but ultra-rich owners wont be capable anymore to enforce their private property claims on the machinery/means of production/tech/capital. They will get expropriated and the machinery/means of production/tech/capital – which has always been produced as a collective social effort – will be managed collectively (in whatever good or bad way).
2) Whatever is effective is bound to eventually be adopted and what is less so to be discarded; especially so under a competition-based system like capitalism. Specific technologies perform better under specific social conventions. Due to this cultural evolution, as technologies (/means of production) change, so should social conventions be expected to change. At some point, technological progress may reach a point, where collective ownership of the means of production may outperform private ownership. So the blessings of technology may become more hampered than supported by their organization as private property. I think the internet and digitization may be understood as just such technologies. Nowadays, materially/technologically each and every person on the planet could access all book, movies, games etc. ever created by a click of a button. The reason they are not able to do so, is not technological but entirely legal: those book, movies, games etc. and the licenses around them are considered someone’s private property. Again: there isn’t really a technological limitation here, only the legal fiction of private property. Access to academic knowledge, such as research papers, should have made this painfully obvious to even the most die-hard capitalist sympathizers. So, private property does not unconditionally guarantee best economic outcomes. And the more technological and scientific progress depends on ever broader collaboration, it seem not implausible that at some point, private property (of the means of production and knowledge) may become a hindrance to economic development.
Of course there a criticisms to both points. To 2) What about the incentives of creating new things, without the creation being the creators private property? But capitalism is all about people (workers, employees) creating stuff, while someone else is the owner and seller of their creations. So personally I don’t worry about this too much. To 1) This has not happened, yet. But history has not ended >yet< (more on this below) and rationalism is all about predicting stuff that hasn’t happened yet. Capitalism has still always found new (geographical and metaphorical) areas to expand to, thus not only concentrating but also spreading its blessings. Also the white-collar ‚proletarian aristocracy‘ has proven to be broader and more resilient than Marx had expected. But outer space notwithstanding, capitalism is reaching its geographical limit of expansion – there is not much room left for ‚primitive accumulation‘. Also in the last decades the middle class of advanced economies has suffered and polarization of income and wealth has sharply increased. AI will, and AGI definitely would, put even more existential pressure on all those of us living from selling our labor. So I wouldn’t write off the Marxist polarization story yet.
Why don’t Marx and the Marxists provide us with an attractive, in-depth plan for what the communist, post-capitalist future is going to look like?!
Because doing so would be fundamentally incompatible with Marxism. Marxists don’t understand reality as the result of plans. That would be idealist not materialist. Complex social systems are never planned but are emergent. Modern capitalism didn’t come into being because some smart theorist or industrialist designed a rational plan for capitalism, advertised it and implemented it. Capitalism emerged over centuries due to unplanned, chaotic interaction effects of billions of human beings and the progress of scientific knowledge and technology (/means of production) that accompanied and enabled it. The same would be true for communism! Even the greatest rational theorists of the feudal past could not have accurately described our capitalist present, nor will the greatest rational theorists of the present be able to accurately describe the (communist) future – not even Marxists. But what can be done, is trying to ascertain certain socioeconomic ‚laws of movement‘ in the present and thus to get a probabilistic sense of the future’s directionality. And according to the ‚laws‘ identified by the Marxists, the general direction is communism. But given the dominance of the economic basis, the real-world instantiations of communism(s), will depend on the existing economic conditions of a given time and place. The same way our varieties of capitalism depend on existing conditions of a given time and place.
Rationalist tend to understand social systems in an idealistic way; for example they may believe that the division of power is a clever governance scheme devised and implemented by disinterested rational philosophers in the form of constitutions. But according to a Marxist, such constitutions do not create the sociopolitical system, they simply give legal form to already existing social structures: In complex modern societies (with complex pasts), power already is divided among conflicting socioeconomic factions and classes, none of which can dominate the others, thus they have to live and coordinate with one another and thus emerges a corresponding institutional structure. The human world is not the result of a plan but of unplanned economic, technological, social and cultural evolution.
So writing fan-fiction on future socialist/communist societies was the hallmark of pre-Marxist ‚Utopian‘ Socialists. For the reasons above, Marx rejected this. His conception was ‚Scientific‘ Socialism; meaning that the objective, empirical socioeconomic laws/dynamics seem to be pointing towards a socialist/communist future; but they cannot be specified in detail because they are emergent and consist of too many moving parts. Another super important facet of Marxist Scientific Socialism is that it is amoral! Marxist Scientific Socialism isn’t about convincing people of the superiority of socialism/communism. That the future will be socialist/communist is not a moral but a >causal< argument! Whether or not you think future communism will be better than current-day capitalism is entirely irrelevant to Marx’ theory! If you do happen to think that socialism will be superior, then from a Marxist perspective, convincing others may speed up the transition, but doing so or not can neither cause nor indefinitely suspend the transition (the Frankfurters may disagree with this!). Because historical socioeconomic transitions are neither caused by the will of god, nor the will of individuals, instead they are the cold results of technologically progressive economizing.
„the belief that history can phase transition into a utopia utterly different from and superior to modern life“
I find it funny you make fun of this. History having a phase transition into something utterly different from and superior to the present?! One must be crazy, naive, childish to believe in such things, right? No. This is precisely what happened in recent human history! Things (politics, economic, freedoms, living standards etc. etc.) becoming drastically better has been the common thread of the last 500 years of human history! Just compare the lives and social systems in the West from the years 1500, 1800, 1950 and 2026. Each time is utterly, disorientingly different from what came before. Marxists (as well as non-materialist dialectics) aren’t misguided by believing the future to be radically different from the present. No, you would be misguided by believing it would stay the same; by believing present conditions, such as capitalism, constitute the end of history.
„Human nature would do a 180 […]“
I consider this naturalization of capitalism, and thus the intended de-naturalization of communism, very strange and nonsensical. As far as I know, ‚human nature‘ in its current form has existed for around 300.000 years. Modern industrial capitalism for around 250 years (if we’re being kind). So humanity has been living ‚capitalistically‘ for less than 0,1% of its existence. So how exactly can modern capitalistic affairs be considered the most representative manifestation of human nature? I’d argue that throughout human history, humans have been living a lot longer ‚communally‘ than ‚capitalistically‘. So I don’t think the ‚human nature‘ argument is helping anyone here. I’d say transitioning from capitalism to communism takes just as many 180s of human nature as the transition from feudalism to capitalism did: none at all.
Why the terminology of Cultural 'Marxism' is misleading
Since Hegel is pure dialects and Marx is dialectical materialism, the Frankfurt approach of prioritizing the cultural super-structure over the economic base makes it more Hegalian than Marxist (which makes you making fun of them and their way to manifest God pretty legitimate). So calling them Marxist at all is rather strange because their whole thing is denying one of the main tenets of Marxism: the dominance of the economic base. This is also why most traditional, socioeconomically-focused Marxists aren’t fans of the Frankfurt School. Thus the Frankfurt School makes for a poor representation of what Marxism is or stands for.
Marxism is Longtermism
The Marxist perspective of dialectic materialism is by definition (#dialectic) longtermist. Of course, there have been disagreements about the magnitude of the time span of Marx’ predictions, but mine is the following: It took at least 400 years for feudalism to transition to capitalism. And even nowadays, we are still living with feudalistic elements (monarchies, inheritance, Ricardian land rents etc.). So the time frame we are looking at for a transition towards communism should similarly be several centuries. The question is, whether or not the laws/dynamics laid out above are correct or not. But even if they are incorrect, is it really more realistic to presume that capitalism consitutes the end of human development and will reign indefinitely? To me, it seems more likely that at some point it will transition to communism than that it will never ever transition to anything ever again. If anyone had predicted our capitalist present in the year 1600 they would have been considered a crazy person. Around 1850 Marx made his predictions that the world will, once again, be radically different in the future. Given this time frame, I would wait until 2250 to give my final judgment on him being right or wrong.
Or look at it this way: Since 1850, has capitalism become more capitalistic or more communistic? Considering our present capitalism with labor rights and welfare states, and given Marx’ ‘communist’ policies in the Communist Manifesto included such things as progressive income tax, abolition of child labor, and free public education, I’d say capitalism has indeed become somewhat more ‘communist‘ since 1850. So the arch of history may be more protracted than original Marxists might have thought, but it does seem to be bending a certain direction.
> So humanity has been living ‚capitalistically‘ for less than 0,1% of its existence.
If you define 'capitalistically' in a narrow sense that includes the existence of financial instruments, stocks, borrowing from future profits, etc., then yes it's only been that way for a couple hundred years. But I would argue that wealth accumulation in general has been a driving force of humanity for thousands of years, at least since the agricultural revolution. Pretty much every civilization has had markets, where commoners could exchange money for goods and services. Sure, sometimes prices would be set by guilds or artificially inflated or deflated by the monarchs, but ultimately market forces were still present, especially in places with a strong bartering tradition. If you mean specifically wealth accumulation by the owners at the expense of workers, that too has existed for thousands of years; it forms the basis of feudalism and the various slave trades throughout recorded history.
I'll grant you that anatomically modern humans have existed for about 300,000 years, and most of that time was spent in the pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer-forager era, where wealth was essentially nonexistant (all goods were ephemeral in nature), so really it's more like 4% of human history (12,000 / 300,000). Still low, but a lot higher than 0.1%.
> Considering our present capitalism with labor rights and welfare states, and given Marx’ ‘communist’ policies in the Communist Manifesto included such things as progressive income tax, abolition of child labor, and free public education, I’d say capitalism has indeed become somewhat more ‘communist‘ since 1850
At least in the U.S., most of those labor rights were won in the progressive era reforms (turn of the 20th century) and the new deal era (1930s). I would argue that things have been drifting to the right economically ever since then. More and more corporate mergers keep getting approved, wages vs. productivity has fallen off since 1971 (the famous graph), and corporate / top marginal income tax rates have been on a downward trajectory since the 1950s.
I don’t think it makes sense defining capitalism broadly as simply any state of affairs that happens to feature markets, money and wealth. It stretches the term to meaninglessness. Capitalism as a distinct social system is marked by the private property of the means of production in the form of transferable capital, and dependent wage labor as the dominant recourse of subsistence for the property-less masses. While primitive precursors have existed here and there, it has only become the dominant socioeconomic model in the West in the 19th century. But if you insist on choosing a maximally broad definition of capitalism, you should also do the same for communism. If you did so, every hunter-gatherer community and primitive agricultural society would automatically fall in the category of ‘communism’. So, I don’t think this would strengthen the ‘human nature’ argument in favor of capitalism. In general, I don’t think stretching definitions like this adds anything. Modernity is a very different beast to anything that came before it. Neither modern capitalism nor modern communism are helped by throwing around naturalization fallacies.
> Ultimately, this polarization will reach a point, where the few but ultra-rich owners wont be capable anymore to enforce their private property claims on the machinery/means of production/tech/capital.
If the ultra-rich own all the tech, that means they own all of the most advanced burglary countermeasures, automated drones, face id cameras, etc., that could neutralize any threat and (with a cooperative state) send any potential burglar to jail. It may even reach a point where they don't need a state because they own all the private prisons anyway. Although if there's no state, at that point they just become the state, take the monopoly on violence, and kill any intruders with advanced weaponry. I don't see this as a point in favor of communism being inevitable.
> At some point, technological progress may reach a point, where collective ownership of the means of production may outperform private ownership.
I think collective ownership of the means of production could work if it was widely distributed (meaning only the workers who work at a particular factory own that factory's implements, etc.) and universally adopted, but I think it would basically have to happen unilaterally to out-compete capitalist factories, because otherwise capitalist factories would always be able to offer goods at lower prices due to paying their workers less. Note I'm using "factory" in a metaphorical sense to refer to any place where productive work happens.
What you are describing is the fascist response. Where faced with an existential threat of communist revolution, the capitalist order switches into an emergency state, where all civil liberties are suspended and any consent is replaced by coercion and pure force. This is exactly the experience that the later Frankfurt School members had made and which disillusioned them so much. I, however, am more optimistic about this scenario. It doesn’t solve any of the underlying economic dynamics and thus doesn’t seem to be maintainable long term. Just think of what it would require: All these institutions and instruments of domination would need to be produced, maintained and put into action by someone – someone who is not the owners themselves. So one group of workers needs consistently be put to work to suppress all other workers. Given enough polarization and ugliness, the workers doing the suppressing for the owners might find that they have more to gain from joining their peers and ousting the owners instead. But yes, the specter of fascism did introduce the possibility that the future might plunge into pre-capitalist barbary, rather than progress to communism. This is a concern that Horkheimer and Adorno are voicing in Dialectic of Enlightenment.
> "Marxist Scientific Socialism isn’t about convincing people of the superiority of socialism/communism. That the future will be socialist/communist is not a moral but a >causal< argument! Whether or not you think future communism will be better than current-day capitalism is entirely irrelevant to Marx’ theory!"
I dunno man. It certainly feels like the purpose of the Communist Manifesto was to make a positive case for immanentizing the eschaton, not just an abstract scientific argument that things were generally headed that direction anyways.
You can definitely argue that capitalism has a long-run tendency toward concentration of wealth and ownership through either emergent oligopolies or economies of scale or both and thereby destroys internal competition and leads to it's own collapse, but there's at least as plausible an empirical-plus-theoretical argument that actually-existing attempts at implementing communism also destroy themselves and produce noticeably worse living standards in the meantime. That's not some grand, inevitable historical progression, it's two different mechanisms for social collapse feeding back into eachother. So what are self-described scientific socialists supposed to be doing in the present age?
The communist manifesto was a political polemic, not a philosophical/academic work.
It was part of that sets personal moral values and politics; it was informed by their philosophy but didn't really represent it 1-1.
>So what are self-described scientific socialists supposed to be doing in the present age?
For myself, it's harm reduction O-clock, trying to protect that shreds of liberalism that remain from the oligarchs and boot-lickers.
I at least see the progression that the post mentions.
EG, we were once governed by bloodless comparatists primarily concerned by the business of business, now that set has been replaced by feckless morons like Thiel and Musk who are direct detriments to the greater bodies they manage, but who have achieved capitalist escape velocity and accrued so much wealth and power it is actually impossible to limit or punish them in any way at all in the current system.
I constantly think about the private interviews with space X employees who's job it was to make colorful simulations and other such keys to jingle in front of Musk whenever he was around for the purpose of distracting him, so that Shotwell could actually run operations and prevent another cybertruck situation.
Of course the Communist Manifesto, as a manifesto, was (also) a prescriptive political program. Marx was not only a philosopher, economist and historian, but also a life-long political activist. He was deeply committed to the possibility that communism could be a vast improvement of human affairs compared to capitalism. This does bias his ‘objective’ socioeconomic laws, but it does not falsify them. And it doesn’t change anything about the fact that his ‘scientific’ arguments do not >require< moral judgment. So, I think, his causal arguments can and should be judged on their own merit.
And of course, future communism(s) would be subject to dialectical technological and socioeconomic dynamics themselves, just as anything else in our physical universe is subject to dynamic laws of change and motion. But in order to get a sense of their future, their own emergent dynamics would first need to be observed and understood. What self-described scientific socialists are supposed to be doing in the present age? What most of them traditionally tried to do is to ease the birthing and growing pains communism and smooth the transition. What I think they should do (first?) is to focus on improving one’s understanding of the capitalist present as much as possible.
Yes pretty much; as did Adam Smith and all the other Classical Economists. Labor is still the universal basis on which value could ‘objectively’ be quantified. The labor theory of value is often (purposefully) misunderstood in the sense that the more useless labor you’re adding the higher the value of the result is supposed to get. That’s not what the labor theory of value means, instead it proclaims that a products base value is the socially minimal amount of labor required to produce it. So it depends what kind of value you’re interested in: There’s the ‘subjective’ value of what amount of money something happens to sell for at the market, and there’s the ‘objective’ value of what amount of labor would minimally be required to (re)produce it. Both value concepts have their value. For example: A phone and a chair are for sale; let’s say both face the same demand; so what determines their value? How hard it is to make them, i.e. how much labor has to put into their production. Now let’s say the demand for the same chair, for whatever reason, gets way higher, so much so that its market price rises above the phone’s. Suddenly we have a divergence between the product’s (subjective) market price and its (objective) ‘natural price’, determined by the labor necessary to produce it. Comparing and understanding both can be enlightening. So, it kind of depends what your goal is: If you only care about the prices that goods happen to sell for at the market, then you don’t need the labor theory of value. But if you want a basis on which to assess and compare those prices, and to understand how and to what end society is using it’s labor supply, then you might be interested in the labor theory of value.
Both Classical Economists, and the traditional Marxists who followed them, were somewhat trying to imitate physics and thus to make economics (/political economy) a respectable ‘objective’ science, by providing it with an ‘objective’ measure of value. So it was thought, that if you were able to aggregate all required labor of a good or services, you could finally measure and compare value ‘objectively’, independent of the subjective, volatile moods of buyers and sellers. Of course economics should care about market prices and the physiological dynamics that inform them, but it was thought that economics should also try to get to the physical/material heart of value creation itself. Mainstream economists have long abandoned this goal, content with declaring anything’s value the price it happens to sell for, but Marxists are still old-school and try to determine value at the production stage rather than at the latter stage of exchange. In this sense, the labor theory of value can indeed add to one’s understanding of economic value.
>The labor theory of value is often (purposefully) misunderstood in the sense that the more useless labor you’re adding the higher the value of the result is supposed to get. That’s not what the labor theory of value means, instead it proclaims that a products base value is the socially minimal amount of labor required to produce it.
Well, the problem is that it's impossible to even approximately know what the "socially minimal amount of labor" to produce anything in a particular place could be at any point, because it depends on uncountable variables - how difficult is it to extract/acquire particular resources at this location, how educated/conscientious/skillful is the workforce, how developed is the technological process, how much does a particular society care about negative externalities of production, etc. etc. All of those variables are just as "objective" inputs to the value of the product as the amount of hours the average worker happens to spend to make it. The reason that Marx over-emphasizes labor above everything isn't because he loves objectivity more than everybody else, it's because he's willing to sacrifice objectivity and clarity in order to make his agenda more persuasive. (Of course, he's not alone in this, other people's biases also warp their supposedly objective theories.)
>Of course economics should care about market prices and the physiological dynamics that inform them, but it was thought that economics should also try to get to the physical/material heart of value creation itself. Mainstream economists have long abandoned this goal, content with declaring anything’s value the price it happens to sell for
Mainstream economics obviously cares a great deal about the physical/material heart of value creation itself. Initially through a monomaniacal concern with the aggregate labor productivity, and after the degradation of the environment became all too apparent, also with ways to ensure sustainable development.
This was a surprisingly complimentary treatment of the Frankfurt School; it actually made me appreciate the whole concept of "critical theory"! Which is probably not what you intended, but still.
I wonder: what is it about leftism that attracts those with such high verbal IQs? Is it just that WWII created an untouchable set of ideas to the far right, so the only place left in the Overton window was communist mysticism? It's hard to conceive of a fascist literature downstream from say, Schmitt, that has as much staying power.
At school, shape rotators and wordcels are both praised as smart. But then you get into the real world and the shape rotators succeed in business leaving the wordcels far behind; in response the wordcels assume something is horribly wrong with the world and it must be upended to put the wordcels back in their rightful place as class prefects.
I think this has more explanatory power today (value of a marketing job vs SWE) but not back then. I think back then (and also sort of now?) the highest earners are wordcels. Especially "capitalist" factory owner types.
Well, being a successful captain of industry requires mathematical skills, particularly back in the 1800s when you can't just use Excel.
But really I shouldn't have fallen back on the shape rotator meme; the people who really generate a lot of wealth, whether in the 1800s, 1900s or 2000s, are a third archetype, good at bossing people around.
Having been around such people for some time, they are all VERY able to rotate shapes, they just find it inherently unsatisfying. They look at people who take pride in the amount of vertices in the shapes they are currently rotating like that meme comic about how hard someone can piss.
IE, they would read your comment as cope, and think to themselves "imagine being so intellectually poor that you can't get transcendent pleasure from the life of the mind".
He argues not that wordcels/wordsmiths are impoverished under capitalism - in fact, many do quite well - but that the wealth and especially the respect they receive in the market are not commensurate with what they feel they deserve, based on the status they have received all their lives in the classroom.
Doesn't this argument work better the other way around? Engineers etc. are paid so well that they become incapable of noticing whether or not the world beyond their insulated private lives is horribly wrong or not? I.e. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Because when you have a high verbal IQ you excel in legal systems. If all of the world is run by bureaucrats then a wordcel can excel by out-arguing the bureaucrats. You don't become a successful businessman by telling consumers that the foundations of modern society are misaligned. To succeed in real endeavors you need actual ability,
Sure but writing narcissistic screeds is much easier than doing real work (cf. internet comments sections). Also once you've spent your 20's doing nothing but reading Marxist texts and committing yourself to getting tenure somewhere, you no longer have the option of doing much else. One of the reasons for the postwar rise of Marxism within academia was academia's status envy of businessmen: if there was any justice in the world then it would be run by them, the smartest nerds around, rather than by some uncultured merchant. People always strive to maximize their own status. Questioning the foundations of capitalism was how wordcel academics tried to maximize theirs.
I would never have guessed that a long essay about the Frankfurt School, one of the most depressing artifacts of modernity that there is, would keep me engaged to the end and make me literally (yes, literally) laugh out loud many times.
It's worth noting (see here: https://x.com/OttokarHochman/status/2052990737747239115 ) that Adorno is actually to my knowledge literally the only major (non-Russian, Russian discourse about this was weird) philosopher between Godwin/Condorcet and Bostrom to not only reject the entire trend of Heideggerian "finitude" nonsense but to actually, actively endorse the possibility and desirability of life extension technology.
I think people often confuse Adorno and Horkheimer's relentless negativism about progress, technology, the Enlightenment etc. for *opposition* to those things when the reality is that their entire method *was* being self-consciously negative about everything and everyone all the time because of what they thought to be the necessity of maintaining a critical posture. They thought that these things were *bad* but not that they were *worse than any other possible things* and they were consistently very hostile to the suggestion that any appeal to something *outside* of these things had any value at all. The actual posture towards "reason" in their work is ultimately actually surprisingly similar to most Rats, the difference is basically just that they think you should have a tragic mood about things which Rats have a celebratory mood about. When they say that "modern society is corrupt and barbaric for trying to unambitiously implement its little political reforms and improve GDP one percent, instead of trying to manifest God through History", what they actually mean basically *is* that modern society invests too much into treats and Marvel movies and not enough into life extension and AI alignment.
Your discussion of the residual made me think of the concept of reshimu in Lurianic Kabbalah after the ineffable absolute's contraction and witdhrawal (tzimtzum) and its role in the ultimate repair of everything.
The Italian Catholic philosopher Augusto Del Noce writes about how Marxism was originally composed of a positive and a negative element: the messianic-utopianism that promised overcoming all limitations and the hardcore economic determinism that said that man was entirely socially constructed and every element in his life and being was downstream of configuration of capital. Marxism failed to deliver on its promise but left us in a world where all subsequent generations carried the harmful mutation that had entered the bloodline, a world where the academy and thus almost everyone uncritically, naively believes in its various negations—no truth, no morality, no God. The bitter irony of this is that Marxism actually increases capitalist alienation by justifying and unleashing the last restraints that bourgeois society had in place against the absolute domination of social life by money.
None of these original negations (of God, of truth, etc.) had been achieved through honest thought, but through an ill will. The concept of God is perceived as limiting human freedom, so Marx and others like him rejected the concept.
The Frankfurt school is the perfect expression of this tendency towards alienation: they are thinkers who, due to their Marxist inheritance, cannot actually think. As you note, for all their critical theory, they all uncritically accept dogmatic Marxism as if Marx had brought down Das Kapital from Mt. Sinai. They are like the religious people whom atheists rightfully criticize as contriving tortured arguments, warping their own minds in the attempt to justify complete absurdities.
Because of this, they cannot think clearly, and so they cannot write clearly. They are all terrible writers. For all the bathos and ink spilled about that ridulous, fugly "angel of history" painting and Benjamin's turgid commentary on it, or the fascistic, conformist demand that every incoming freshman read "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" at some point before graduating college... these authors have no real staying power. Their popularity is forced, top-down, from the academy. They are the intellectual equivalent of corbusier/brutalism/bauhaus or, what is more fitting, atonal music.
For that matter, that is why the label "cultural marxism" sticks. Not that they were a kabbalah-cabal scheming to overthrow gentile society, but that they were the intellectually-castrated bellwethers of the hyperbourgeois post-marxist nihilistic attitude that would come to totally infuse every aspect of it.
I hadn't realized that cultural Marxism was an "antisemitic conspiracy theory" too! Ugh. This is a very tangential point to your wonderful review, I just must say I am blown away by what does (and simultaneously by what doesn't these days) count as antisemitism, at least in the authoritative voice of institutions that get cited in wikipedia.
'There exists a conspiracy theory about X which includes 3 Jews among other people' is not the same claim as 'X is an antisemitic conspiracy theory'. Imagine an article positing that a Jewish cabal had made up climate change, faked data, made a bunch of NGOs and UN taskforces and blah blah blah in order to destroy the global economy and replace it with [who cares], and that this article made a splash in some far right media. Maybe this even happened. Imagine if the result of this were a wikipedia article that begins "Climate change is an antisemitic conspiracy theory...", and that anyone bringing up greenhouse gases could expect to be accused at some point of recklessly engaging in dangerous antisemitic tropes and dogwhistles.
I think that hypothetical scenario is actually how deranged the argument has become around immigration, where pointing out that granting citizenship to 1M people of any given cultural background will result in 1M people of that group being able to vote in your country's elections is liable to get you accused of perpetuating the "great replacement antisemitic conspiracy theory". I wasn't aware before of the same phenomenon regarding ideological capture of institutions, and it makes me wonder, is there a bigger category of so-called antisemitic conspiracy theories that, in most cases which are labeled by experts as examples of the conspiracy theory, do not even posit a conspiracy, let alone a conspiracy of Jews? Does anyone have other examples?
You shouldn't be surprised if you've read any substantial history post about 1912, Cultural Marxism was actually the OG antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The Tzarists and Hitler started promulgating it as a primary reason that Jews had to be driven out/liquidated at the very beginning of modernity, and it has stuck around ever since; like many other conservative theories of the history because of how immune to evidence it is.
Surely they were primarily worried about vanilla Marxism in those days. But yes, Jews were everybody's bugbear - the Tsar, Hitler, Stalin, Henry Ford - all hated them, and blamed them for the bad thing du jour.
>many other conservative theories of the history because of how immune to evidence it is
Ah, Robert, into every life a little rain must fall. I like your toons. I am crass and odd, and like awful pictures too. Here's a link to a bunch of weird ones I managed to get out of Dall-e2, back when it was naive and primitive.
I don't understand why you keeping coming back to the Frankfurt school trying to instantiating God in history, restart the progress of history ect when Adorno famously said there "was no universal history" the thing Hegel was on about, except for the line from the slingshot to the atom bomb. Besides Marcus they had all rejected the idea of any direction of historical progress.
Also I don't understand why you keep associating Lenin with collective farming when Lenin was the one who gave the land to the peasantry in a decentralized way and it was Stalin who collectivized agriculture.
Lastly, if you actually want to read thought through plans for communism you should read Towards a New Socialism by Paul Cockshott or Aaron Benenav's Beyond Capitalism series in the new left review.
Finally an essay on something I know a bunch on! Scott did a good job, but there's one or two points that got glossed over.
Part of what makes the Frankfurt school hard to understand is that they don't really signpost how much Kant and Freud you need. Just as you can't read Marx without some familiarity with Ricardo, you need to have a conception of bourgeois political thought to grasp Adorno. In both cases the project imminent critique, starting from the given framework (labor theory of value for Marx, individuation and freedom for Adorno). Without that a lot doesn't make sense, or you think they thought it, but no, Freud or Marx or Kant did. Similarly for needing to know way to much about communist movements then.
Secondly they work over decades. Uber Jazz is in the 1930s, Sexual Taboos and the Law Today is postwar, Jurgen Habermas was publishing quite late. The art criticism really happens in the 1920's, and it's somewhat limiting to view it as art criticism: Benjamin devotes the Arcades project to examining the world of Parisian dandees. The nature of the world looks a lot different in the 1920's than in the 1950's, in part because of Benjamin's death but also the need to respond to the even deeper horrors of fascism.
The category of regression is incredibly important for the Frankfurt school: the foreclosure of historic possibilities. What was possible to imagine in 1914, is completely gone in 1918. You can talk about child sexuality in fin-de-sicle Vienna, but today we shout "pedo, pedo" while child beauty pagents happen. Some of this is in the essay, but I don't think the centrality is.
Lastly the New Left is incredibly complex, and you can't understand it without looking at the very particular problems. Ultimately postmodernism was conservative, but why we get Focault and late Fanon as big thinkers for the new left's aftermath is a complex story.
Eliezer Yudkowski wrote a parable where he imagines someone having trouble selling apples, so he started planning to sell "nonapples". The point was that this was too broad and vague to really be a workable plan. Robin Hanson commented on that post that economists deal with this all the time, saying an economic theory doesn't work for certain cases and then advocate doing the opposite.
I was at sea at the word dialectical. Last time I heard it spoken out loud was by George Clooney playing a dopey kidnapped actor talking to 40s Hollywood Marxists in “Hail Caesar”. One of the trilogy of dunces that he played for the Coen Bros as Clooney described it.
The word annoys the hell out of me, because it's the first word in "Dialectical Behavior Therapy" the famous DBT that works (well, sort of) to help people with Borderline Personality get themselves and their lives in control. There isn't really much logic to DBT -- it's a mishmash of techniques. But the creator of the damn thing used the word "dialecticai" as a way of making DBT treatment sound like some it has a symmetrical, woven-together yin-yang conceptual structure. Nope, it don't. Example, someone frantically hurt and angry might be advised by their DBT therapist to pour out their thoughts and feelings in a journal. Or, the prescribed remedy might be to wash some clothes by hand in slow motion paying close attention to every sensation of temperature, wetness, etc -- in other words, empty the mind if the disturbing topic, and meditate on sensation. Yeah, both techniques really can help someone calm down. But there is nothing dialectical about the fact that they are opposite approaches. If anything, it's evidence of how diverse states of mind and entire psychiatric illnesses really are.
BTW, nobody but me gives a shit about the ways DBT is dumb.
PPS: The director of my internship attended grad school with Marsha Linehan, creator of DBT, and his sole comment about her and her techniques was that she had an ego the size of a freight train.
I just looked the word up because I realised I had a very vague sense of what it means.
>a philosophical method of reasoning that seeks to uncover truth through the exchange of logical arguments and the resolution of opposing ideas; Greek Origin: From dialektikē, meaning "the art of argument", and dialektos, meaning "discourse" or "conversation". A Socratic Dialogue. It's a nice concept. I'm sorry it's being abused.
It is troubling that the culture that has had the greatest influence on modern political philosophy (viz. German) is exactly the culture that had the most disturbed and deranged historical experience in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Of the big names associated with the Frankfurt School, it seems to me like Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer (and later Habermas), often get the lion's share of the attention, but I would put a plug in for Erich Fromm.
I think The Sane Society (among other great books of his, like Escape from Freedom and The Art of Loving) is one of the best books ever written, or, at least, one of my favorite, and while one might not agree with every facet of what is he is saying, or with his prescription, on the whole, I think his diagnosis of modern society bears consideration, and sounds every bit as relevant today, if not more so.
In the age of AI, I think more and more of this quote about machines acting like men and men acting like machines (for context, he is very critical of Soviet-style Communism, which is what he is criticizing here)
"In the development of both Capitalism and of Communism as we can visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the process of automatization and alienation will proceed. Both systems are developing into managerial societies, their inhabitants well fed, well clad, having their wishes satisfied, and not having wishes which cannot be satisfied; automatons, who follow without force, who are guided without leaders, who make machines which act like men and produce men who act like machines; men, whose reason deteriorates while their intelligence rises, thus creating the dangerous situation of equipping man with the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it."
>You’re not supposed to dub them a transitional stage between Communism and postmodernism.
This is true. An analytical kind of Marxism is not Communism, and the transition happened later - Althusser. These guys were too German to be anything like Postmodern, that is, vague and performative. You gotta be French for that. They were very precise.
>You’re not allowed to speculate that a lot of the academic humanities, as they’re practiced today, descend from the Frankfurt School’s brand of critical theory.
They were one influence, often overstated importance.
>You’re not supposed to think of them as the point where the muscular pro-technology leftism of the early 1900s shattered into the pessimistic degrowth leftism of the present.
No, because they were analytical sociologists, not political activists, they had no political programme or goals. They were just not so interested in technology, as sociologists rarely are.
I think bidirectional basis-superstructure is obviously true? Like when people wokr 38.5 hours in Europe and 72 hours in China, that is culture, and that is really having an effect on the economy. Then the economy has an effect on the culture, like people who go from peasants to well-to-do really quickly will behave differently etc. etc.
1. Philosophers who expected a Marxist revolution didn't get it.
2. They turned to cultural criticism, found new innovations like jazz fascinating and started criticizing them.
3. Analyzing culture is quite engrossing and it never runs out so they kept doing it. They felt this needed a justification so asserted doing so would somehow make the revolution happen (for reasons unclear).
4. Generations later rightoid loons who also just want to rant about culture (the new He-Man movie looks gay and lame!) assert that they are stopping the communist revolution by ranting about culture. (Because if Disney just manages to make one more lesbian black jedi woman the coal mines will be nationalized and run by workers collectives?)
>Because if Disney just manages to make one more lesbian black jedi woman the coal mines will be nationalized and run by workers collectives?
Certainly not, as the workers never run anything under communism. But yeah the Frankfurt school people and the "rightoids" inspired by them both understand that culture matters. If you feel frustrated by their power and influence, maybe consider that they know what they're talking about.
The 'power' to discourse on culture endlessly? Nope.
The claims that this is somehow the secret mechanisms that unlock political dynamics. It doesn't. You either like jazz or don't. If you're voting for Trump/Vance in 2024 because something jazz (or more likely gay jedis or too many girl bosses in your MCU), you're objectively foolish.
Now if you want to talk about culture because 'culture matters', well then you can't bring up communism. If you're trying to win a culture war because you think that heads off a wealth tax or nationalizing a portion of Intel (oops, we just did that, awkward), then you're actually saying culture doesn't matter except as a means to some end. In that case just get to the end and give us your argument about wealth taxes or why Elon should have his pay package etc.
Culture, though, is interesting and if it matters to you because it's part of our lives just like food, clothing, sports....well I'm 100% there as well. But then we do have a reality that many theories that faltered greatly in the 'real world' have worked nicely in cultural criticism. Try to become a Jungian analyst today and you're likely to get a lot of pushback from insurance and the psychiatric profession. Want to write essays about archetypes in Star Wars and odds are you'll likely score with an essay that's above average.
If theories that falter in real life often work better in culture, well that tells me there's nothing much to fear from the "Marxist Analysis of Pride and Prejudice" article as there would be "Freud and Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings".
>If you're voting for Trump/Vance in 2024 because something jazz (or more likely gay jedis or too many girl bosses in your MCU), you're objectively foolish.
Doesn't matter, that vote counts the same as yours, and from votes flow political power.
As someone who enjoys a lot of Frankfurt School writing (mostly Adorno/Benjamin, not a Marcuse fan at all), I liked this review more than I was expecting to. I think you go astray in a couple areas by assigning to the Frankfurt School certain attitudes which were much broader within leftist circles at the time. E.g. the 'Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sake. ' This is just a characteristic of revolutionary/protest movements in general, and one that's in some ways more mild in the Frankfurt School than in, say, anarchism. Rosa Luxemburg makes the Frankfurt School seem peaceable and content. But I understand the impulse.
On the mysticism. I mean, for Benjamin it sometimes is mysticism, but even for him there's a lot more argumentation and reasoning than you'd think. His essay "The Storyteller" on the writer Leskov, for example, explores how storytelling means different things in modern vs. premodern societies. I wouldn't consider it mystical at all. I think you'd like it.
The image of negative theology is an interesting one, and probably one that neither Adorno nor Benjamin would have minded. I think the problem is that you begin to confuse the image of the thing for the thing itself. You miss their intellectual side. For example, part of the reason Adorno avoids characterizing the "ideal" future is that he doesn't believe that a static, totalized society would be ideal--you can't give a complete description of the ideal future, because the ideal will be in movement. There will continue to be disagreement and change. Gillian Rose's book on Adorno, The Melancholy Science, is good on this. Rose also does a good job relating Adorno to philosophers like Kierkegaard and Plato who used paradoxical, fragmentary forms.
You may be closer to them than you think, to Benjamin at least. An essay of yours like "Meditations on Moloch" feels close to some of what he was interested in doing--creating a picture of irrational nature of society without being itself irrational. "Theses on the Concept of History" is akin, if a bit more psychedelic.
"It means that God is so far beyond any human concept that any positive attempt to describe Him will necessarily fail; you can only highlight what He is not."
This is similar to how SCP-055 functions. (https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055) Who knew that God wasn't just mysterious, but actively anti-memetic? :P
> (for a long time, heliocentrism was thought implausible because it would require the fixed stars to be unfathomably far away; eventually we got other reasons to think this and resigned ourselves to the fact)
That problem was more subtle: our atmosphere smears out the stars. People didn't know that effect. When you multiply that bigger apparent size by the minimum distance required to explain the parallax data to within the error of measurement, you got unreasonably large sizes for the stars.
And not just 'unreasonable' in the sense of "wow, this is big", but in the sense of "orders of magnitude larger than the sun". That's because even the ancient Greeks had worked out the real size of the sun; and by the time of the heliocentrism vs geocentrism debase in early modern times, it was common knowledge amongst astronomers.
Oh look at this interesting and highly toxic poison. Although history has shown it to be invariably and catastrophically fatal, perhaps if we just experiment with it a little more instead of leaving it the f alone we might get a little positive use out it.
The Frankfurt School's conceptual toolbox is very useful for trying to explain the bizarre and dramatic metamorphosis of elite and mass culture during the Woke Era:
"Why is every NPR story about how the bodega of my abuela is threatened by gentrification and climate change? Why is every children's book and movie about a scrappy queer BIPOC disabled protagonist who boldly dismantles the forces of white supremacy? Why does every long review essay in prestige publications like the NYT and Atlantic uncritically take the Howard Zinn version of U.S. and world history for granted?"
And indeed, generations of people who spend their lives mainlining this stuff, and never "read an old book" or grapple with any thoughts emerging from outside the Approved Narrative, can only blink uncomprehendingly when they are questioned, and can only explain anti-wokism in terms of Misinformation and Hate Speech.
I believe that the tacit or implicit "stereotyped concepts" used to generate culture (e.g. "all lawyers are useless slimeballs" or "paradigm underlying Society is subtly flawed") are indeed powerful forces that explain the passion of Wokeists and Anti-Wokeists, and the Frankfurters were right about this.
An interesting subplot within high culture is the conflict (e.g. in art criticism and theory) between those who are true-blue heirs of the Frankfurters and genuinely committed to some kind of revolution, and those who are satisfied with just posting the right slogans on Instagram.
A typical diss from an echt-Adornian: "Sehgal is the kind of artist who—had he encountered Duchamp’s urinal in 1917—would have proposed to exhibit a kitchen sink the next year, fully convinced that he had become a radical artist overnight."
To put that in a rationalist framework for you, people in large groups requiring coordination for distributing credit and blame feel a strong need to justify themselves.
> the genital focus of sex would fall with it, in favor of a “polymorphous perversity of the body” where eroticism inhered in every activity
tumblr user choptail famously attributes this phenomenon to the exogenous suppression of traditional eroticism ("we have got to get regular porn back on this website")
My reaction to the review aligned with a number of previous commenters. That is, I read secondary and primary sources on the Frankfurt School as an undergraduate. I am not a specialist in Frankfurt School ideas. Adorno did make racist comments. I've read Martin Jay's monographs. I've also read additional books on the Frankfurt School, including one on its early reception amongst U.S. academics and students. Additionally, there needs to be more history of late twentieth-century historians (historiography) who researched and wrote on the history of the Frankfurt School.
My main problem was a recent discussion with a fan of this blog. After block quoting Jay's summary of Adorno's "jazz" arguments in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, Mr. Alexander doesn't quote Martin Jay's conclusion that, "in denigrating the black contribution to jazz, it might be argued that Adorno displayed a characteristic European ethnocentrism. Indeed, there was a provincial streak in his make-up that came out most clearly in his lack of interest in non-Western musical forms...still, what also must be remembered is that the jazz he was most concerned with was the commercial variety churned out by Tin Pan Alley, not the less popular variety rooted in black culture itself. Much of his apparent insensitivity came from his failure to make the appropriate distinction between the two" (Jay, 186-87). Mr. Alexander alludes to the "less popular variety" contention, i.e., **𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 contorts itself to rescue Adorno - maybe he heard the wrong kind of jazz? Maybe he only heard popular, capitalist jazz, and that was how he could make such an uncharacteristic mistake? But to me the whole thing seems so crazy...** That's only a facet of the above---and Jay follows that facet with a "failure" on the part of Adorno.
Mr. Alexander's choice not to quote the conclusion, and to only quote the summation, admittedly hit me from left field. Jay advanced this criticism of Adorno and jazz throughout his career---predictably, he garnered critics for resting a depiction of Adorno as "eurocentric" almost exclusively on his "jazz" writings. In 2010, Jay also goes on to lambast Adorno for replicating Walter Benjamin's ideas in an essay on "inauthenticity" and the "critique of genuineness" (an essay that I wished could've delved more critically into Benjamin and "inauthenticity", rather than Adorno). On top of that, Jay partially reverses his thoughts on Adorno's "eurocentrism" in a recent essay on Adorno and artifact repatriation (Jay still mentions that Adorno's praise of worldwide indigenous cultures was "eurocentric").
Mr. Alexander further invokes a caveat: "...having only read a single book on them, I will no doubt fall into all the failure modes that they and their successors warned us against. But here are the analogies, intuition pumps, and parables that I found helpful." I appreciate the disclosure, but since Jay later published an intellectual biography on Adorno, including a critical comparison with Marcuse, I'm not sure why he wouldn't read and review that one for this blog. I don't believe this review was intended to be comprehensive, but I have an interlocutor who thought that the "leaders" of the "Frankfurt School" were Adorno and Marcuse. That misconception is not Mr. Alexander's fault, although I'm slightly concerned about it.
It's always helpful to read someone's views on Kuhn's "paradigm shift" from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. I wasn't completely clear as to why an explanation and attempted recapitulation of "paradigm shift" was necessary here. Then again, the same statement could be made about every college seminar or section discussion over Kuhn taking place across the United States. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 becomes and became a haunting remembrance of the undergrad and grad experience.
More pressing is: "...my brain is already filled with enough analytic philosophy that I find the Continent hard to navigate, but maybe someone who learned it as their native philosophical dialect can understand these ideas much more easily than I could manage. Or maybe understanding isn’t necessary. Some habits are sticky...[critiques critical theory---'criticism of the criticism of the criticism']." I think venturing out of the "Continent" is important and even "necessary." That said, from what I've read of Mr. Alexander's writings, he seems anxiously engaged with dialectics---explicitly, implicitly, and when a given scholar breaks down a given blog post. I hope that the dialectic-of-the-dialogic-of-the-dialectic permits Mr. Alexander to be alive lol. In this review, it is to the point that, according to the author, "language" has ensared him in articulating his own observations (I'm sorry, that was classic). In that context, I find it hard to believe that Mr. Alexander both harbors doubts about understanding these ideas 𝘢𝘯𝘥 is inclined to think that "understanding isn't necessary."
My interlocutor attempted (not very successfully) to mimic the "understanding" comments, i.e., "maybe I'm not smart enough, but..." If possible, since he seems to be building a sizeable following, I hope that Mr. Alexander and additional public intellectuals (?) would elaborate and clarify such comments. Several news outlets (of course, the review expresses concerns about the author's own "Newspeak"---that was awesome) describe him as a "Democrat" with "libertarian" goals. Regardless of whether he's a "libertarian Democrat" who ponders "love and liberty," I do look forward to monitoring his influence and what he has to say and write. If not for anything else, people like Mr. Alexander prompt reading publics to become more aware that attempts to fully understand ideas and idealogues can sometimes be hard to manage.
Martin Jay and Mr. Alexander are more alike than pundits have come to believe. For instance, I wouldn't read Jay without first noting reversals, somersaults, changes in thought, and continuities in practice. Same w/ Mr. Alexander. That approach should facilitate the writing of a book review. Here's to being the nontrivial 600-nth commenter in a trivial key.
>Instead of accepting a four-hour work week, you go into the office on weekends so you don’t fall behind the Joneses on the all-important total-number-of-cruises-taken metric. And even if an individual sees through the ruse, society is so centered around this ethos that it’s hard for him to personally defect (eg there aren’t many high-powered jobs that let you work four hours a week, and if you got a low-powered job, the whole culture would unite to call you a loser).
Would the people here be much more sympathetic to this critique if Matt Levine made it?
You want to pay your people enough that they don’t leave for a more lucrative offer elsewhere, but not so much that they never need to work again. The financial industry has developed sophisticated tools to address this problem, tools like “your office rival has a house closer to the beach in Amagansett so you have to keep working to outdo her.” The main financial centers offer an enormous array of arbitrarily priced positional goods, and the apprenticeship model of finance teaches people to value them, so by the time you are making $20 million a year you will find it perfectly reasonable to think “man if I made $30 million a year life would be good.”
Thank you. I've been dimly aware of Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School since my college years (very long ago), but as an STEM student I never really understood wtf. A year ago I started wondering whether their occult writings somehow contributed to the mess we now face. Over the past couple of months I've tried harder to grasp their message and contributions, guided by Wikipedia and Claude, but without much success. Only with your witty and insightful text do I begin to grasp that indeed what might have begun as a well-intentioned inquiry into obscure lacunae of the humanities led to bonkers conclusions that have diffused with astonishing vigor into the left wing of a bipolar political instability that seems to be ripping us apart.
Really interesting insight into the Frankfurt school, Scott. But you seem to have made a small but crucial mistake. Hegelian dialectics uses immanent critique for analysis not thesis+antithesis = synthesis. Similarly Marx uses immanent critique to to criticize capitalism through its internal contradictions.
I am in all ways a novice in studying this but I did learn this information and though it probably doesn't have an effect on your critique on the Frankfurt school I hope it will encourage you to re-examine your understanding Marxism, maybe study it in more detail even if only better inform your opposition to it.
> The closest real-world equivalent to primitive tribes trying to invent capitalism from first principles is the cargo cult. The tribes knew that the thing they liked (US planes bringing them consumer goods) involved runways, signals, and wings.
This seems to rely on the popular definition of "capitalism" as meaning "whatever the United States is currently doing".
> But you could notice the hidden failures of the existing system, and then you would have learned something interesting about God-Communism - it’s the type of thing which could resolve these failures. Someone in the primitive tribe notices that their rain dances don’t work as advertised, and now they’re only ninety-nine steps away from inventing science.
This is a weird one. The final sentence is basically correct. Someone notices that the rain dances don't work, and they're one step closer to inventing science.
But it doesn't support the first sentence. You can't learn anything about communism that way. Sticking very closely to the analogy, science has brought us many things, but one thing it hasn't brought us is the ability to summon the rain. If your problem is that rain dances don't work, that may get you closer to inventing science, but it doesn't get you closer to a working rain dance, and it doesn't tell you anything about what you'll have once you've invented science.
I really enjoyed reading your essay. Thanks for taking the time to research, writing and sharing.
When I was younger (at uni) I was quite well versed in the authors. I still have a soft spot for Marcuse. As another great comment pointed out, critical theory owes more to Foucault than the Frankfurter school, although I personally believe we wouldn't have gotten Foucault and Derrida without the Frankfurters.
I think you nailed it in the thought where these are criticisms of modernity, borne from the frustrations the idealized visions of the progress of history not following Marx's script. Personally I think the entire idea of progress is the 'original sin', as it were, not so much because there isn't progress, but because none of us have a crystal ball and prognostications were back then just as hit and miss as they are today.
The problem for all of us is (borrowing from their terms) is we're bounded by the superstructure, and collectively are unable to ditch bad ideas partly because entire generations invested so much time and energy (and money) in studying these philosophies, that by the time individuals "progressed" from postgrad studies to tenured professors, decades go by, and individuals owe their station to the status of these philosophies, so it's just easier to keep the ball rolling than "denouncing" the hand providing the feeding. The same applies to Foucault or 2nd/3rd wave feminism. Society and university culture does not reward pointing out the theory doesn't work in practice.
The other interesting aspect, which has become more mainstream recently, but is lost on the boomer generation, is the behind the scenes manipulation by vested interests in promoting "new left" ideologies at home within modernity, which they criticize without going full Marxist revolution. In the post-ww2 reconstruction of Europe, we find the center for cultural freedom (CCF), an American NGO, very active in financing the Frankfurter school and various Left publications, which enabled aspiring theorists (incl feminists) to get wider audiences. In fact, it's an interesting question whether the entire cultural revolution of 1968 would have happened without these ideas circulating so broadly. The problem we face today is realizing the CCF was a front for the CIA (disbanded post Church committee 1975). The CIA itself says this is one of their most successful ops (the CCF gave the Frankfurter school seed money in 1947 and 49, it's mind-blowing) and say so themselves. Post Church committee the soft power ops were transferred to USAID and eventually privatized to Soros. I'm not writing this to say we should hate on anyone, just that it's important we be aware that if today in 2026 we're still discussing the relevance of certain ideas because of their prominence, we should at the very least be aware of why they occupied such prominent intellectual spaces, which perversely has nothing to do with whether they're good or bad ideas, and more to do with divide and conquer as a governance strategy. While these intellectuals were leading us down rabbit holes, the architecture and rules of the modern/post modern Western world was being created (lawfare bureaucracy and financialization), and no one noticed until today, where it becomes very costly and nearly impossible to change the vision of what we want Western liberal democratic societies to be about. At best we have analytical tools to criticize, but we have nothing to replace the current structure and for all intents and purposes are stuck within this postmodern virtual fantasy merging tech and finance.
Writing freely, as I think I should, I think privacy is still important as long as not everyone has sufficiently caught up. I want all to live, and many people fear without cause, still
But also, I saw that people spend a lot to ensure my safety. I pretty much dared all.
Today I saw my Shandong ex-wife who I helped start her job a the Confucius institute in my tiny hometown, clearly under the awareness of the rather right wing mayor and my rather right wing fellow party members.
Also, I often supported Socialists and Communists actualizing themselves even considering myself a Libertarian, and I try to empathize with every human being and love them all. Trump, ayatollahs, AfD members, Putin, Zelenskyy, you name them. Defo all the women and all the Trans people, and I looove the aesthetic appeal of dark skin while hoping that it's really not racist. Black is beautiful, isn't it?
I asked my ex-wife for no contact, she respects it, and today, I'd be fine with her contacting me again, which is just beautiful
Actually I saw her yesterday. Timezones and regular sleep are for hosers, and hosers are wonderful aren't they
I think my sarcasm and cynicism are mostly gone, and my stoicism greatly enhances my effectiveness, I think
When I do 180s this is because my working memory is limited. So much to do, see, be, so much I might not yet have caught up with. Stories have lots of appeal even when they seem so so wrong and I want to be caring and daring at the same time. And humorous, obviously.
Hmm, I want: a ring, baring as in being and seeing naked, caring, daring, maybe an earring?, faring as in traveling, what even is garing, so I want to look it up, haring as in enjoying the mirth that hares bring, jarring as in wake people up, karing as in now I take a break so I'm fit enough even to build a proper Karre in Germany again should I have to. Ford is fort from my new hometown...
I had fun compiling a list for student body elections that had on it names from Russia, Persia, India, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Germany... broad support from Christian fraternities, students from China, and shamefully even the independent press. I guess it _was_ an awesome list
I think if Chinese or Russians or Muslims or even some actually powerful syndicate wanted to off me, they would have. I think I have had guidance, protection and support from pretty much all the places for a long time, even without my awareness.
Part of the point is I'm a regular person full to the brim with love, ready to spread the word, hoping that so can you, and believing in you, too. Am I Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini? You may call me Tobi the cistranshumanist Aries who also loves bare open models
Oh and try hard to listen to and believe your significant other(s). I for one am a currently monogamous pansexual with ADHD, and won't follow my promiscuous urges before all my significant other(s) are okay with that. Faithful because of and despite all my love, ready to forgive and forget because I know that as a human, I err
If I become German chancellor, my first shall be that I can be my own first lady, but don't pass my own assessment process for that job
I may sometimes appear to work miracles, but my theory currently is it's mostly others working their magic through me. Remember, any sufficiently advanced tech...
Typically the answer is "don't study it". In theory, the rule is that one may not study it until one is at least 40 years old and a learned scholar. And even then, the great sage Ben-Zoma went insane upon learning the secrets of Kabbalah.
Adorno's Minima Moralia is pretty readable and short. It doesn't give an overview of the Frankfurt School but it gives a taste. The line that stuck with me is : "Every visit to the cinema leaves me, against all my vigilance, stupider and worse." It really isn't any sort of groundwork for modern leftist thought, no one would risk saying that now, but you can see why he said it. Walter Benjamin's Illuminations is also readable and interesting.
Yet he apparently continued to go. Whose fault was that?
In my view most of modern Marxism is little more than a collective temper tantrum thrown by academics who had status anxiety in a world that was rapidly passing them by. "If the world fails to recognize my genius then that is an indictment of the world."
I’ll be honest with you - they don’t sound like intellectual giants. contrast these guys with the scientists around them at the time.
Contrast what Adorno says on jazz to what those scientists said on jazz, I doubt one is better than the other.
I read all these people in college. Didn’t make me a communist. But Adorno is so off regarding Jazz.
TIL there’s a horseshoe of hating Jazz between those who hate it for being degenerate noise or not being degenerate enough
Agree. The Nazi’s banned but also confiscated “degenerate art” which was often modern or abstract or Jewish or god forbid both
Or, re jazz, modern and Jewish and black. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_music#/media/File%3AEntartete_musik_poster.jpg
If I click, do I get Leonard Cohen's 'Jazz Poleeeeece' arghghghghhhh!!!
I watched a tv prog awhile ago about N azi Jazz - there really was an attempt to out-Jazz Black Jewish Degenerate Jazz - maybe those po mo's would have enjoyed it - I laughed because thank the Lord or Real Reality, We Won!!!
I guess they "ain't got that swing" thank god
Once when my daughter was 3 years old we were sitting in Starbucks and the store was playing slow jazz. I asked her whether she liked the music. "It's whiny," she said.
A great criticism! It all depends on the kind of jazz, to be sure. She would have liked New Orleans tuneful stuff.
Starbucks jazz is a whole genre into itself
But did she like it?
haha
Scott obviously wrote the whole essay for the Miles Davis centenary.
No doubt.
If you've read any of the contemporary criticisms of jazz, Adorno is pretty mild by comparison. Looking back, it's hard for us to understand why everyone was getting their knickers in a twist about it, the best I can do is that in a German context it was maybe mixed up with that whole 'between the wars' Weimar Republic flavour of decadence, and even the people painting the subject didn't try and present it as "wow, this is so great!"
This is a great painting. But the subject isn't presented as a healthy person (I don't know what she looked like in real life, but this is the cadaverous. blue-white face of a tuberculosis patient):
https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/degenerate-world-otto-dix/
Or here, where the war veterans of the previous war are begging and abandoned in the street, while the rich are (literally) jazzing it up:
"Our final painting is the triptych Metropolis, finished in 1928. This was not the first time Otto Dix used the compositional style of the triptych to put across his viewpoint. The center panel epitomizes the glamour and decadence of Berlin in the 1920s. Dancing, particularly American jazz and ragtime, was the pastime of choice, symbolizing the freedom felt by the people at the time. The whole scene vibrates with energy—the transvestite dancer in the center shimmers with her “wings” and feathers—the jewel colors of the dresses glow and catch our eye as the band plays syncopated jazz. Life is good!
However, the wings of the triptych tell a different story about Germany at this time: the war-wounded struggling to live, the prostitutes lining the alleyway, and, in the corner, peering around at them is the artist himself. The outcasts turn away from him. The right-hand panel shows the hedonists leaving their cosseted world, passing by the war cripple, ignoring his upturned hat."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(Dix)#/media/File:Otto_Dix_-_Metropolis_(1927-28).jpg
Jazz is also *American*, the product of one of the Great Powers that thrashed Germany in the First World War. Is that also part of the revulsion, the idea that German culture is now supine before its literal conqueror, eagerly adopting the fads and trends of the trans-Atlantic hegemon? No idea, but it could be bubbling away in the background.
Condemnations of jazz came from all over, from within America itself, to Ireland, to even the Vatican:
https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/646072-jazz
"On New Year’s Day 1934, Fr. Conifrey led a march through Mohill, County Leitrim, in which demonstrators shouted “down with jazz” and “out with paganism” and called on the government to close the dance halls and ban all foreign dances in Ireland.
De Valera sent a representative to the rally and wrote a letter of support.
Jazz, the campaign argued, was “abominable” music that originated in central Africa and was exported to the West by “a gang of wealthy Bolshevists in the USSR to strike at church civilisation throughout the world.”
Jazz was an “engine of hell” deployed to do the devil’s work. The Gaelic League weighed in on the day with an attack on then-Minister of Finance Seán MacEntee, who, in allowing jazz to be broadcast on Radio Eireann, was “selling the musical soul of the nation for the dividends of sponsored jazz programmes."
By comparison with this, Adorno is positively restrained:
https://www.loughrynn.net/conefrey-anti-jazz
"Let me tell you why this campaign is the most important step taken by the Gaelic League for many years.
While the Irish music has died out it is being replaced by a foreign system of music introduced from savage Africa by people out to kill religion and destroy morality. This ‘jazz’ represents the sin of impurity and young people leave their homes every night to go to dances where jazz is practised.
All night jazz dancing is one of the greatest evils Ireland has ever seen. Jazz is an even greater evil than both intemperance and landlordism combined. It is a menace to religion and nationality and its objective is nothing less than to destroy virtue in the human soul.
The reason it has been tolerated and indulged in so far is because the public in Ireland do not understand its meaning and do not see the danger.
Now we still have some people asking what is jazz? Some have asked in good faith if it excludes waltzes and barn dances? My answer to that is that the 'anti-jazz campaign excludes no dance that is in keeping with public Christian decency. But no-one could make anything out of the jazz dancing, and there was no music in the jazz tin squealing.
A professor in Oxford University tells us that the word ‘jazz’ is a Central African word and means the acting in public of something that St Paul says should not be so much as named amongst us.
The dance and the music with its abominable rhythm was borrowed from Central Africa by a gang of wealthy International Bolshevists in America. Their aim is to strike at Christian civilization throughout the world and to steer Roman civilization inro the dust: they employed this jazz – this engine of hell – to do this devil’s work.
They laid their plans carefully. They employed mass suggestion. In the music they knew they had something that would appeal to debased sexual instinct. It’s superlative, savagely extreme use of syncopation, allied with the copulative beat, beat, beat of the drum, stirred up forces all over the world."
https://www.nytimes.com/1924/02/25/archives/vatican-organ-condemns-jazz-dances-as-immoral.html
"ROME, Feb. 24.-Modern dances, with special mention of the "shimmy" and the "camel's step," are severely condemned by the Osservatore Romano, organ of the Vatican, in an article endorsing the recent stand taken by Cardinal Begin, Archbishop of Quebec. "Jazz" is also denounced in the article.
The article says one of the causes of recent flagrant immorality, perhaps most pernicious because the less apparent, is the modern dance. It is enough to recall the names of these dances to see in them an imitation of animal movements, particularly in the "shimmy" and the "camel's step."
Apparently referring to "jazz," the article declares that this new industry of the feet, performed by the stimulus of distorted, panting notes of orchestras, should be watched severely."
But not everybody disapproved of jazz - it seems Mussolini and Italian Fascism were comfortable with it, despite official bans (Mussolini's son was a jazz musician). As ever, it seems the Futurists were the ones who first adopted jazz:
https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2022/05/jazz-mussolini-and-italian-fascism/
"Jazz arrived in Italy via Montmartre’s dance-halls where ragtime had become the rage. By the early 1920s, Rome’s serene order was disturbed by an emerging jazz scene celebrated by supporters of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist movement. The city’s nightclubs were growing in number, many of those located in cellars and vaults. Set up in the way Parisian cabarets were run with an array of entertainment and a rich selection of food and wines, these venues were favored haunts of the avant-garde. The rhythm of jazz drew a curious clientele.
Inaugurated in 1921 by Marinetti, the “underground” Bal Tic Tac at Via Milano, close to the city center, was Rome’s first Jazz Age cabaret. Futurist designer Giacomo Balla prepared a colorful interior design, capturing the swirling movement of dance. The club’s jazz band led by Ugo Filipino with two violins, banjo, piano, saxophone and drums, offered unfamiliar sound patterns to visitors.
The cabaret was an instant success. The appeal of swing motivated Futurist composer and theorist Franco Casavola to publish his 1924 manifesto La musica futurista in which he stressed that the aesthetics of jazz should be the foundation of all new music.
Two years later he published a Difesa del Jazzband (A Defense of the Jazz Band) in which he proclaimed that the genre symbolized Futurist masculinity: ‘violent, domineering, brutal, optimistic, anti-romantic, anti-sentimental, and against that which is charming.’ Jazz had found an eloquent clique of urban supporters.
...The Nazis’ grasp on culture was far more insidious than that of Italian Fascists. In fact, Mussolini’s crusade against jazz was ambivalent and full of contradictions. Whenever applied, censorship in music was concerned with words rather than rhythms. Songs were ‘seized’ because their lyrics were immoral or anti-Fascist (from “Bandiera rossa” to “Nofrio bolscevico”). Jazz was considered ‘ballroom’ music and its rhythms were fashionable among the regime’s higher echelons.
Turin was a place where many jazz lovers met. In 1933, Alfredo Antonino had formed a “cenacle” of initiates at the Caffè Crimea. Owner of a discotheque of several hundred 78s, he organized musical gatherings, thus spreading the “word” of African-American music from the banks of the River Po. Antonino prepared the ground for Louis Armstrong’s concert in the city in February 1935, an event that was endorsed by Vittorio Mussolini and organized with support of the regime.
By November 3, 1937, La Stampa boasted that no other station in Europe “broadcasts as much jazz as the Italian radio.” Although the station’s “official” policy was to limit foreign music, the Orchestra Angelini & Rudy Vallone performed the first live radio jazz concert from Turin in 1931. Thanks to the programming of EIAR (Ente Italiano Audizioni Radiofoniche) jazz became part of the Italian soundscape.
If Mussolini’s cultural strategy was aimed at defending ‘traditional’ values from the threat of an American style consumer culture, it achieved the opposite. By the mid-1930s virtually the complete jazz repertoire could be broadcasted as long as minor adjustments were made that would signal the capability of Italian culture to appropriate alien elements.
American musicians were given Italian names so they could be shoehorned into the country’s nationalist and anti-foreign outlook. Louis Armstrong was introduced as Luigi Braccioforte, Benny Goodman as Benito Buonuomo, and Hoagy Carmichael as Ugo Carmelo."
I think modern jazz has been sanitised, in a way, so we don't realise the impact the original music had. Nobody now thinks of jazz as sexual music (I imagine) but the introduction of it to Europe was accompanied by risque performances, such as Josephine Baker the smash hit star of Paris:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker
"During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in its 1927 revue Un vent de folie caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the "Black Venus", the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", and the "Creole Goddess". Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. She adopted 12 children, whom she referred to as the Rainbow Tribe, and raised them in France."
There was a whole atmosphere of sensuality and unrestrained sexuality around jazz which we don't realise, given that we get the sanitised and carefully repackaged mass media performances by the likes of Louis Armstrong for radio and cinema and television (think "It's A Wonderful World").
I don't think people were listening to the music.
I feel like the Adorno/Jazz thing is sort of like the Watson/Racial Realism thing.
The fact that the discoverer of DNA also believes black people are genetically inferior does not make it more true that black people are inferior, nor does it make DNA less real.
Everyone is a true expert on one or two things at most, and everyone talks about a million other things they're not experts on and often say stupid shit on those topics.
Combing through everything a famous intellectual has ever said on topics outside their expertise is a sort of pointless and dishonest exercise, whether you're looking for dumb shit from outside their expertise you can use to discredit their actual work, or looking for heterodox opinions you share with them and can use their acknowledged brilliance to support.
Adorno on Jazz just sounds like any public figure who was 40 the first time they heard Rap, or Rock & Roll. They dislike it because it's different from what they're used to and they no longer have the faculties to interpret it, then they use whatever language and frameworks they are comfortable with to justify their dislike. Pretty normal and unsurprising, and also irrelevant to the actual purpose and merit of the Frankfurt school as a whole.
I agree with you completely. 100%. Other than the implication that i am trying to diminish Adorno. I was not. I was being snarky as i love jazz. But in college i read all the big names from the Frankfurt School and was enraptured by it. Popper, Horkheimer, Adorno, etc. So stimulating. And yes, we are fortunate to be good and smart at one or two things and that is a blessing. As for Rap, I am not a fan. But I was and am a fan of Gil Scott Herron who was a progenitor or rap.
I thought that was Bob Dylan?
I have done a little reading of Adorno on jazz which i found 3 essays from the 30's to the early 60's and I have to say I think he was hindered by his and all peoples of the day of the experience of fascism and WW II. "..jazz could be transformed effortlessly into a march." .."jazz can be easily adapted for use by fascism".... Also it sounds like he was listening to jazz orchestras and linking them to military marching bands which post date the origins of jazz or where jazz went on and back to after Benny Goodman et al. The guy was just wrong.
Watson didn't make any moral judgements about the inherent worth of black people or state that they are inferior. I encourage people to read his statements for themselves and make up their own minds.
I'm interested in reading them, but not quite interested enough to look them up myself. Do you happen to have them handy and mind linking them?
He said a bunch of stupid things. From a Sunday Times interview in 2007, [Watson is] “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really”. He says that while his hope is that everyone is equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”
He claimed he was misquoted, but he said the same thing on American Masters about a decade later, and Cold Spring Harbor stripped him of his chair.
Of course, Watson totally bought into the fraudulent data presented by Lynn and Vanahan. Call him naive, but I suspect he was predisposed to believe it. And then there's Rosalind Franklin. He didn't want to acknowledge her contributions to understanding DNA until the evidence forced him to admit she was a key contributor. I get the impression that he was sort of a jerk.
I think I understand rap better in my 40s than I did as a teenager, because the modern information landscape allowed me much later in life to discover and conveniently experience the funk, fusion and NYC DJ culture elements that created it and follow those throughlines. In the absence of that technology, I'd have needed an older producer to explain it all to me and let me borrow 200 records and spend an inordinate amount of time sitting next to the record player. A public figure who had George Clinton and Ron Carter records in the 70s should've had no problem understanding rap, whether or not he enjoyed that change in direction.
For a European to hear dance hall jazz for the first time, it's not surprising they got a lot of the origins wrong and couldn't understand it, it didn't come fully-formed from "deep in darkest Africa" or spring up as just a new fad unconnected to existing music, but they lacked the context in which to place it. And in the 1930s, unlike the 2020s, you had no easy way to gain that context short of being a musician yourself among that crowd and devoting a substantial portion of your time to it.
Now perhaps there is nevertheless something to the criticisms, jazz is a collaborative dialogue in real time between the instrumentalists and their rhythm section, and with the audience, and does offer an "illusion of freedom" in some ways where what seems like pure improvisation is actually occurring within structures that are very common and ordinary, the stereotypical ii-V-I sequences are peppered everywhere. Probably this stuff is/was capable of being discussed in those ways, whether or not Adorno himself hit on anything.
He's not talking about Charlie Parker, but early big band/swing
are we sure? Jazz goes back way before big band/swing. But would it matter? A great thinker. Maybe not a great or broad music afficionado?
The Frankfurt Schoolpeople are—collectively—my Moloch.¹
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Doesn't that "apophatic progress" idea (the "well, just try a bunch of stuff, and try to notice weird things—like, I dunno, maybe how 'torturing war-captives is a bit harsh', say—and... uh, so on" technique) suffer from the problem that one still lacks the equipment—has no standard by which—to judge whether a given cultural mutation is even 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 correct? (E.g., what is to say that we ought not err on the side of being even 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗿?)
A random walk will surely just continue ever onward 𝘢𝘴 a random walk, if one has no spirit-level by which to notice the slopes of peaks & basins.
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>𝘖𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘳𝘺. [...] 𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥.<
I don't quite understand this part:—all they need for 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵? For completing the F.S.'s Great Work, or for rendering valid the interpretation (criticism?) that possibly founders on the contention that the modern Tumblr leftist understands little of all this?
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¹Or, well, the postmodernists are, I guess—but if the latter are the infection, the Frankfurters (heh heh) seem sort of like the vector.
> A random walk will surely just continue ever onward 𝘢𝘴 a random walk, if one has no spirit-level by which to notice the slopes of peaks & basins.
Yes, but the core premise of classical Marxism is that there is such a level, and it lies parallel to productive capacity: a growing-yet-permanently-stable industrial society *is* an end of history on Marxist grounds, whether it fits the popular conception of communism or not, whether it is *desirable* or not. That class society is not stable is a separate, auxiliary hypothesis.
If there's moral valence to be found here it resides in the relation between that condition and the details of human nature; nothing about the theory promises utopia to any possible being. Marx especially makes no promises regarding AI takeover.
How did you get that quoted text to show up in italics, btw?
(There may be a better way, but I've just been using one of the various sites—e.g. yaytext.com/bold-italic/ or www.piliapp.com/cool-text/bold-italic/—that let you enter the text you want to "italicize", and return the "inherently italic" Unicode characters that correspond thereto.
(It's a bit of extra trouble, for sure—but sometimes worth it, if you have O̶C̶D̶ 𝘢 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦.*)
Thank you for this, I must try it out.
I would advise against tricks like this; it's bad for accessibility and breaks the search function.
Search seems to work fine with it for me—or, at least, "Find" (Ctrl+F) works, and the blog's "search" function doesn't seem to pick up comments at all either way.¹
No comment on accessibility. *ahem*
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¹(...or possibly I'm mistaken about that? I tried searching, e.g., both for "postmodernist" & for "apophatic", though, and neither returned my comment.)
Probably varies by browser. Ctrl+F doesn't work for me on Firefox on either desktop or mobile.
Please, people, don't do this. Switching fonts is insanely distracting, and quotes serve perfectly well for quotations.
It makes what you write look like a fundraising solicitation for a political campaign.
>Switching fonts is insanely distracting<
Who's switching fonts? But I know what you mean—though I don't 𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦: I both use & see used italicized text all the time in Reddit comments, actual published work, Substack posts, YouTube comments, ..., etc.—it's a pretty common formatting choice—and when lengthy quotes are interspersed throughout a long comment, it's hard to pick them out, visually, without something like the Italic Trick.™
(And the *asterisk method* is just ugly!)
If you use unicode-style italics, it is actually a different font (size, kerning), which is collage, not writing. In published work, italics are part of the font used for non-italic print.
I have a sensory disorder, for real, and shifting typefaces is a real issue. The people who design fonts spend a great deal of time on how the different stylings work together, and you don't get that issue.
Not that it's important, but because I'm a petty pedant with many mental prob–...ah... I mean, because I'm very into, like, typefaces and stuff: I think it's (possibly) incorrect to call it a different *font*¹—they're rather different Unicode characters entirely, though they may be *rendered* in a different font if that used for the rest of the text lacks the appropriate glyphs.
¹Testing with Chrome & Brave, they *appear* to be rendered in the same font as the rest of the text (i.e. if I type up a Substack note in which I use the in-app italicization & paste the Unicode italics next to them, they're indistinguishable—to me, at any rate... though perhaps you have an even finer aesthetic sense & can differentiate them even so!).
(*Edit:* ...or, possibly, you have regular text displayed differently (for accessibility reasons?), and so for you they really *are* rendered in a font from a different typeface altogether—in which case, my apologies for the difficulty in reading! I've used the ugly ol' asterisks here just in case.)
>one still lacks the equipment—has no standard by which—to judge whether a given cultural mutation is even 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 correct?
Why would this be the case?
Saying that you will fail if you try to logic your way into a solution to your problems, is not the same as being unable to notice whether a new proposal could solve your problems or not. People can verify and appreciate novel mathematical proofs which they themselves could not have produced from a blank page.
It's not a random walk, it's a random generation of next steps - but you can still discriminate over which of those steps to pursue.
(note, this is in a cultural context, where you have direct experience of the consequences of the next step. 'Apophatic philosophy' more often refers to the study of God, where yes everything is ineffable and you aren't going to 'learn' much no matter what approach you take.)
My thought there was that these things have to be, to some extent, symmetrical: if you have a metric by which to judge whether something is better or worse, you also have a basis upon which to (at least begin to) construct a positive program to achieve the better. E.g., if you can tell "this is a problem because people are unhappy", then you at least know "probably we should aim at making people happy", and can logic your way—again, at least to *some* extent (see footnote)—toward a state-of-affairs with happier people. If you deny the possibility of taking the first step—if you can *only* say "this is not the Good"—well, then, on what basis are you able to recognize that it isn't?
So: either there must be some feature(s) of the world by which said recognition is achieved—in which case, you can construct a philosophy around that (e.g., in the case of happiness: something like utilitarianism; or in the case of "people are not acting virtuously": virtue ethics; vel sim.), and probably¹ also concrete plans for reducing the bad feature(s) / increasing the good—or else there is not much justification for criticism, either (maybe this is *already* "God-Communism", for all we know!...).
¹...unless the idea is that one absolutely *can* build a kataphatic philosophy of The Good, and the problem is just that it's really hard to tell how the real world can be arranged such that it comes about. This could be (almost certainly *is*) the case... but from Scott's post I got the idea that, from the Frankfurt-School/Critical-Theory perspective, the issue is meant to be more fundamental than that—more a foundational aporia than an engineering puzzle.
(As you point out, though, my understanding here may be borrowing too much from the theological sort of apophasis. I have read like 0 texts by anyone in the Frankfurt School / Critical Theory / Deconstruction / Postmodern orbit—and, in truth, have viewed the whole movement[s] as consisting largely of nonsense: often elegantly phrased nonsense, granted, but still basically insightless—whereas I have some sort of frankly monomaniacal obsession with works on/of classical, Late Antique, and medieval theology & philosophy... so my interpretation of the former might not be entirely fair–
(Maybe I ought take a page from Scott's book & try to honestly engage with the stuff. If you think I've been unfair to the movement[s], or misunderstood them, I'd certainly appreciate any book recommendations you might wish to offer! I *do* like Walter Benjamin's work, if he counts...)
Yes, apophatic is primarily theological, but I would define it just a bit differently. Knowledge of God is defined by what we CANNOT say about Him, because all positive affirmations are inadequate and need a counterbalance. It is rather non-western, and popular in Orthodox and Zoroastrian thought. It relies on meditation on the nature of God and then subtracting that from the picture. If it sounds silly then think of it in terms of the stereotype of God-picturing. Some people thought of him as a bearded elderly man seated on a throne. If we take that away, what is still present about God?
Then take that away.
It is the extreme of not having graven images.
> It was this horror that led fellow-traveler Antonio Gramsci to his famous maxim: “The old world is dead; the new world is not yet born; now is the time of monsters.”
1. "fellow-traveler" understates things, Gramsci was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy
2. The "time of monsters" quote has nothing to do with the Soviet Union or the general western leftist turn away from orthodox Marxism, which long postdates Gramsci's death. It's about loss of faith in *capitalism*, and more specifically in 19th century liberalism (everything else being dead ideologies walking with the arrival of the steam engine):
> The aspect of the modern crisis that is deplored as a "wave of materialism" is related to the so-called "crisis of authority." If the ruling class has lost consensus, that is, if it no longer "leads" but only "rules" — it possesses sheer coercive power — this actually means that the great masses have become detached from traditional ideologies, they no longer believe what they previously used to believe, etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum, morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.
"Fellow traveler" here is used skew to its usual meaning, short for "fellow traveler of the Frankfurt School" rather than "fellow traveler of communism." Gramsci had a lot of interest in cultural superstructures, but was not a Frankfurter and generally had a lot more interest in reality than they did
"Time of monsters" is also a paraphrase, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci#Misattributed says Gramsci's original comment translates to the less catchy "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
> In the early 1900s, most intelligent and compassionate people had at least some communist sympathies.
Did you men to say people in the Western world?
Also, around a third of people in the early 1900s Western world were Catholic.
What percentage of intellectuals were religious Catholics?
Intelligent and compassionate is not the same as intellectual.
So, what percentage of intelligent and compassionate people in overwhelmingly/culturally Catholic countries sympathized with the Catholic Church's position on the social question (see Rerum Novarum)?
I can only speculate - as the author does - from the basis of "I can find a lot of examples". I won't use the word "most", because it conveys a certainty I don't have. But I will say many intelligent and compassionate people in Catholic countries did sympathize with the Catholic Church's message.
And I don't have a problem with people sympathizing....as long as they don't expect to take my money to do it with. But that is never the case, is it.
They always demand your $ympathy. The church overstepped.
"Also, around a third of people in the early 1900s Western world were Catholic."
And plenty of them had at least some communist sympathies. Note the small c -- the claim isn't limited to the Marxist mode of communism.
(Not defending the "most" claim -- I don't have the historical nous for that -- but the 20th century saw a lot of movements that were Catholic and small-c communist.)
> And plenty of them had at least some communist sympathies. Note the small c -- the claim isn't limited to the Marxist mode of communism.
I'm not sure why you interpret the claim that way. In general parlance, communism is understood as the Marxist mode of socialism. If the author meant to say something else, they should have used the proper adjective(s).
The claim is of communist sympathies, not socialist sympathies.
"Communist sympathies" would indeed indicate "agreeing with some parts of communist thought and thinking it might be good if it was somewhat more prominent", not "being a communist".
That's one possible interpretation of sympathies. Let's call it weak sympathy. Then there's strong sympathy, where sympathizers get together with other fellow sympathizers and discuss their sympathies, and discuss the merits of the political program of the movement they sympathize with, etc. They can even come up with a name for themselves, like Fabians, Febians, or whatever (I'm not implying Fabians were communists, by the way).
The author linked a review of History Of The Fabian Society, so I assume their using of sympathies corresponds to strong sympathy, not simply agreeing with some parts of communist thought.
Also, the author [EDIT: Scott!] didn't say anything about "being a communist", and neither did I.
I enjoyed reading Scott's review on the Fabians. Here's one helpful perspective on the nature of their work: "A set of Fabian demands called the True Radical Programme included an 8-hour workday, women’s suffrage, paying MPs a salary, capital gains tax, public education, school lunches, and railroad nationalization. Keep in mind that they called it the True Radical Programme because it was supposed to be more radical than various other groups’ Radical Programmes. They considered these totally insane fringe demands. And they got them all."
I recognize you're not calling the Fabians communists, but they don't fit neatly into a schema where you're either communist or socialist, either a "weak" or a "strong" sympathizer. They were a middle-class reform movement that called themselves socialist and had obvious sympathies for elements of communism. (Many of the early Fabians were averse to the name because they wanted to distance themselves not from Marx but from the religious connotations of "communion" in English.) They ended up playing a key role in the development of welfare state capitalism and social democracy.
What makes that "strong" sympathy for communism, rather than Tatu's definition that you call "weak"?
Their desire for communism (or something similar to it) to triumph?
If group A hates group B, and group B hates group C, and group C hates every other group, it doesn't follow that people who belong to C sympathize with A simply because they agree with them that group B is bad. C people hate A people, despite the agreement.
Why go through all this song and dance over the semantics of the word, when all you really wanted to say is that you don't like the fact that smart people believe in communism because it is threatening to your beliefs?
Smart people do believe in communism, of course. Every 20th century communist leader who ruled over a communist country was smart enough to do so. I only have a problem with the quantifier "most" as used in the original sentence.
Small-c communism didn't start or end with Marx, and the link to the Fabian Society makes clear the kind of broad definition Scott's got in mind. “Some communist sympathies” doesn't strike me as an unfair description of the 20c Catholic Left, whether we're talking Dorothy Day or Gustavo Gutierrez. Communism and Catholic social teaching have essential differences, but that didn't prevent a whole lot of 20c Catholics from thinking there were ideas to salvage from the former.
Early 1900s is not the same as the 20th century: Gustavo Gutierrez was born in 1928. Dorothy Day was born Protestant, in a mostly Protestant city, in an overwhelmingly Protestant country (also, why did she found a Catholic workers movement, when she could have joined any of the existing communist movements of the time which would have been closer in orientation to her "sympathies"?).
People salvage parts of what they consider a wreck or a dead end, not of a movement they sympathize with. If you sympathize with the movement, then join it.
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but...are you actually suggesting that the *Catholic Workers' Movement* represents some kind of Protestant American taint on Trve Catholicism, just because Dorothy Day was a convert?
I appreciate that Rerum Novarum has major differences with Marx's Capital...but they're a LOT closer to each other than either is to mainstream American Protestant ideology. The dominant tendency of the latter has consistently been to sanctify laissez-faire capitalism using religious language; and it tends to regard Catholic social teaching (solidarity, corporatism, just wages, the mediating role of the state) as providing much the same service to communism.
Dorothy Day didn't start a labor movement in a fit of unexpurgated Protestantism. She started it because the public papal response to industrial modernity was to emphasize the dignity of labor and call for among other things the formation of Catholic workers' associations (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html para 54ff). If you think she and her fellow founders interpreted that call mistakenly, fair enough; but they made that mistake as passionate Catholics, not as crypto-Prods.
Your original comment ("Also, around a third of people in the early 20c Western world were Catholic") carries the implication that Catholicism is in all times and places antithetical to "sympathies" for communism. I can well believe that you'd never sympathize with a movement you disagreed with; but a host of other people can, and do. Gutierrez and the liberation theologians with their explicitly Marxian readings of the Exodus story came (as you note) well into the 20c -- after the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward; right around the time of the killing fields of Kampuchea.
The early 1900s *were* different; as Scott notes, it was a lot easier then to sympathize with communism, when the failed experiments looked like New Harmony or Brook Farm rather than the gulags. And plenty of left-leaning Catholics did sympathize.
> Your original comment ("Also, around a third of people in the early 20c Western world were Catholic") carries the implication that Catholicism is in all times and places antithetical to "sympathies" for communism.
I wasn't trying to imply Catholicism is in all times and places antithetical to "sympathies" for communism. I was trying to imply that in most times, particularly the early 1900s, and in the overwhelming majority of culturally Catholic countries Catholicism is incompatible with sympathies for communism. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough.
Liberation theologians (who only showed up after 1945; not a coincidence) were a tiny minority of all Latin American priests.
Both New Harmony and Brook Farm were founded before The Communist Manifesto was written (and I doubt people in Catholic countries even knew they had existed). I can't say what Catholics (in Catholic countries) thought communism would look like in the early 1900s, at least before 1917-1921, but I assume they did not see their religion as opium based in the very small number of them who showed sympathies for communism.
> Also, around a third of people in the early 1900s Western world were Catholic.
Whether the percentage quoted is accurate or not (personally, I regard it as inflated), it is important to remember that the degree of Catholic conservatism and intolerance varied very significantly from country to country. France harboured both a hardcore ultra-nationalist Catholic movement and a significant number of liberal theologians and intellectuals. Spain, on the other hand, was (as was made all too clear by the savagery of both sides in the civil war) afflicted by the continent’s most extreme and intransigent Catholics.
I'm including Latin America as part of the Western world. That might explain the difference.
Regarding France, from the end of the First World War to 1939, the French Socialist party regularly garnered more than 30% of the vote. Even before that, the French Radical party (which included socialists) achieved substantial success in elections (~15%-20%). During the same time period (1920s, 1930s) the French Communist party got around 1%-2% of the vote.
I don't know whether you are implying that a large share of France's intelligent and compassionate people harbored communist sympathies at the time, but if that is the case, can you explain to me why did they voted for the socialist parties and not the communist party? (I'm assuming intelligent and compassionate French people were just as likely to be left-wing than right-wing)
Not addressing your main point, but the socialist/communist/Marxist distinctions probably vary a lot between different languages and different cultures. I've been told by avowed communists and avowed Marxists that "communism" is a kind of "socialism" and Marxism is a kind of "communism". But my most reliable Marxist interlocutor told me that these distinctions are not standardized at all, that some people use them with greater or lesser degrees of interchangeability, and that we have no basis in either common usage or socialist writings to claim they're using it wrong (or right).
> I'm including Latin America as part of the Western world. That might explain the difference.
A good point; I am nowhere near familiar enough with Latin America to risk anything other than generalities, and was essentially focussing on Europe.
As regards the reasons why left-wing French progressives in the 20s and 30s threw their electoral weigh behind the socialist parties rather than the communists, I would suggest that it was largely down to the influence of Léon Blum, whose anti-doctrinaire views were popular with the left; at the same time, the fundamentally bourgeois intellectual class were put off by the rhetorical violence of the French CP.
Dorothy Day co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in that time period, and certainly sympathized with the many Communists she knew, even though she ultimately turned away from some of their proposed solutions.
I should have said: "A third of people in the early 1900s Western world lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic country" (which is actually how I estimated the one third figure). My apologies.
> According to Marx, everything in society was downstream of its pattern of economic relations (eg feudalism, capitalism, etc). This included cultural artifacts like art, music, religion, architecture, etc. A symphony wasn’t great because of timeless aesthetic truths, it was great because it had some relationship to capitalism.
This is a bad misreading of Marx. The superstructure he's concerned with is at the level of law, politics, inheritance and family structure, etc.: the arts, on a narrow reading, may *express* facts about the base (there's no such thing as the democratic Gilgamesh, or the monarchical Walt Whitman), but that doesn't mean they have to play a functional role within it, or that their artistic value is limited to any such role. For example, from the Grundrisse:
> From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish? But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model. A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child’s naïvité, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm?
In this grim and uncertain universe, there are only two eternal and immutable constants on which we may always rely: one is that any given explanation of or reference to anything to do with Marx will be immediately claimed as a misreading or misunderstanding (often by two people at once, but in exactly the opposite directions); and the other is... uh... something else.
> one is that any given explanation of or reference to anything to do with Marx will be immediately claimed as a misreading or misunderstanding
Yes, well, Marx was famously prolific, famously influential, and famously unclear, so what do you expect?
Isn't that just a function of being a German philosopher?
Jein!
Well, not all German philosophers were influential.
Isn't that just how the dialectical method works? Something something synthesis...
That's what happens when you talk about the singular totemic thing that your state, elite, and cultural propaganda are most virulently devoted to opposing and denigrating.
It's almost impossible for anyone in the US to talk about Marx and have anything like precise literal truth motivate the conversation. It's all buried under a century and a half of our most vehement and manipulative propaganda, politics, polarization, cultural rifts and riffs, paid advertisements, movements, counter-movements, wars, massacres, and etc.
Given that level of cultural baggage, the actual small handful of ancient books and biography has very little remaining influence on the conversation. On any side of the conversation.
You proposed two people correcting a statement about Marx is opposite directions, implying that they're probably both wrong. That's true, but you missed a crucial element - the statement they're correcting is almost definitely wrong, as well.
At some point, we just have to taboo the word 'Marx' and the man himself, and talk about we personally actually think and believe.
> You proposed two people correcting a statement about Marx is opposite directions, implying that they're probably both wrong. That's true, but you missed a crucial element - the statement they're correcting is almost definitely wrong, as well.
At this point, does it actually matter?
Ultimately, I judge a person on what he DOES, not on what he calls himself. If you are going to support -- or oppose for that matter, -- people who call themselves Marxists, it should be on the basis on actions and policies they actually carry out, not on whether or not they match some abstract concept of "Marxism" which even Marxists can not agree on.
thanku
I honestly don't see a lot of difference between what Scott said and what Amicus said. Essentially, economic and material incentives shape society, and everything else is somewhat shaped by that, including e.g. values which also influence aesthetic.
Example: the medieval poem celebrates knightly virtues because knightly virtues are the unwritten social pact that keeps together a society in which an elite needs to invest economic surplus into training and equipping itself as heavy cavalry, the state-of-the-art weapon of the day, and needs to keep its production base concentrated, thus generating a steady influx of minor sons who need to be content with their honor and status rather than any actual landed title. All a function of the productivity of agriculture, the cost of breeding and keeping horses, the cost of smelting steel, and the state of medical and reproductive technology in 1200 AD.
Of course one can argue that this vision is more or less complete (some elements of pure interiority, including for example romantic/sexual attraction, are probably too universal to human condition to be affected much by these external factors), but I don't really see such a dramatic different in interpretation unless one is really trying to nitpick.
Yes, but this cuts both ways. Because the conservative-liberal establishment so demonized Marxism, basically everybody who hated that establishment dressed up anything as Marxism that had nothing to do with it.
everything in this piece is a horrible misreading, based upon previous misreadings. there's no reason to engage with these people on topics like this. it's low-effort highbrow misinformation to the n:th degree, ironically enough.
The reason to engage is that thousands and thousands of people read this blog and if you have something worthwhile to say here they will hear it. Even if you don't expect a fair hearing from the author or most of the commenters, remember that lurkers outnumber posters ten to one.
Okay, so what would the correct reading be?
The future belongs to those who show up. If you want people to see things your way, you gotta tell them what that way is.
Maybe he doesn’t want to own the future
Scott clearly advertises that he expects he's misreading them. In light of that, this piece has value as an example of someone with a certain prior view *making the attempt* to read them.
You seem to imply that at least some of his misunderstanding is because of other people's misunderstandings, as in, you think he read a bad book and should have read a different one.
Can someone with a layman's understanding of Marx and relatively little understanding of any writings following in his tradition gain much of an accurate understanding of the Frankfurt school by reading one book? (If so, which book? I'd love to read it.) Or is it simply the case that there's a lot more reading to get through before you have a good chance of understanding them?
"Appropriately, the Frankfurt School has ended up defined by what you can’t say about them."
Does it matter? Marxism is supposedly a mass ideology, one for the restructuring of society as a whole. If 99% of the people lack the ability to understand it unless they dedicate their whole lives to studying its holy texts like monks, then it doesn't sound like a very good mass ideology. The actual "lived on" Marxism, the one that matters, is filtered through understanding usually even more simplistic than Scott's. If five or six philosophers out there understand True Marxism and are still unable to communicate its ineffable complexities to the rest of us, that's basically irrelevant to the world.
Thank you. I've tried to soften that part. Do you think there was something about this superstructure-base relationship that the Frankfurters were objecting to, or am I getting that wrong too?
Yes, but not in any consistent way. "The Frankfurt School" is the wrong unit of analysis here, if you're taking the name at face value: Benjamin and Marcuse, for instance, are far more different from each other than Marcuse is from the liberal social movements of the late 20th century.
You might also consider softening the part about complete denial of "human nature"--Marx did believe our psychology is heavily shaped by society but he did not think it was infinitely malleable, if it was then the productive class could get shaped to be perfectly satisfied with their living conditions, and the persistence of dissatisfaction tells us something about what Marx sometimes called our "species-being". In particular he thinks it's generally true that people prefer conditions in which they have the opportunity to develop and exercise many different capacities and this is part of why the life of a specialized factory worker is not so good for their flourishing. There are a bunch of quotes on this in the paper "Marx on Full and Free Development" at https://www.jstor.org/stable/23560335?seq=1
On the base/superstructure relation, there was a short letter by Engels at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm that I thought did an especially nice job in clarifying how he thought it worked (and since he worked so closely with Marx it probably reflected his views as well, though it was written after Marx's death). In it he denies that "economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect", and uses a quasi-statistical metaphor for the idea that only on larger time scales and wider fields do economic factors have a dominant determining effect:
"The further the particular sphere which we are investigating is removed from the economic sphere and approaches that of pure abstract ideology, the more shall we find it exhibiting accidents in its development, the more will its curve run in a zig-zag. So also you will find that the axis of this curve will approach more and more nearly parallel to the axis of the curve of economic development the longer the period considered and the wider the field dealt with."
He also talks about the role of historically important individuals like Napoleon, and suggests the counterfactual that someone else might have filled a similar role (he even says this is true of Marx's role in the development of socialist theory). In general I think it's helpful to think of the claims of would-be scientific theories of history like Marx's (or others like Jared Diamond's) in terms of counterfactuals, the idea that even if you introduced a butterfly effect in the past and all the individuals born after were different, certain kinds of broad patterns would likely repeat as long as environmental/technological conditions were similar (the analytic Marxist Erik Olin Wright used this sort of thought-experiment, inspired by a similar one about biological evolution by Stephen Jay Gould, in the lecture notes at https://web.archive.org/web/20190228192616/https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/621-2013/Soc621%20lecture%2023%20&%2024%202013%20--%20Classic%20Historical%20Materialism.pdf -- see the section "the core intuition of the General Theory" starting on p. 3)
Is Marx saying that no epic poetry has been written since the invention of the printing press? Because I'm pretty sure it has.
I think you have a point. Marx seems to be making two points at once here:
- The specific conditions that produced something like the Iliad are gone and unrecoverable. The mythology, oral tradition, the mythical relationship to nature - that's all gone and will never return. So if we didn't already have the Illiad it would be impossible to imagine a story like it.
- Epic poetry as a form is impossible after the printing press.
The first is true, but the second is maybe too strict. We can still produce art that follows the epic poetry form.
There is a weaker version of the point though that makes sense to me: storytelling was once largely an oral tradition. Stories used to rhyme and have a certain rhythm to help people remember them. But once you can write them down, print them, and if people can generally read, this eliminates the need for stories to have this rhythm and rhyme and so you end up with a different type of story. So epic poetry isn't going to be the same because if we do it, it comes from "imitation of a past form" and not from necessity or an alive tradition. So it's at best an imitation and not "the real thing". I'm not sure whether that's also what Marx meant
Yeah. It is trivially obvious to refute the argument that Epic poetry stopped being made after the printing press (Camões, Ercilla, Tasso, Spencer, Milton, Klopstock...), but the steelman, and I think it is a pretty good one, is *what are you really talking of when you talk of epic poetry*? For the most part, the idea is of an oral-formulaic living tradition with a subject-matter that is heroic, usually warlike, with mythical heroes of the tribe/community as its protagonists and with bards reciting evening-session snippets of poems that follow some thematic and metrical constraints but are very flexible in the implementation (adapting to audience mood, specific ties of the audience to figures in the thematic legendarium, etc...). Once you have a more sophisticated and literature society, this has already broken, even if texts 'like' the old epics are produced, so you can make the case that The Aeneid, for example, is not an epic poem of the previous sort (it is highly cultured, fixed in its text, meant to be read and a peak status signifier in a new hierarchy of literary genres). In the Middle Ages you get a partial regression to the first type of epic, but then the Renaissance goes back to the Virgilian model and produces that same type of epic with similar subject matter but 'adapted' to modern beliefs and deeds. And then Romanticism puts an end to epic as a genre to be indulged in and to be considered central, but at the same time fetishizes primitive epics as the unmediated, most direct access to the 'soul', Volkgeist, of the community and proto-nation-state. Side note, you still have oral-formulaic poetry in some societies, including Europe, up to the 20th century (i.e., the Kossovo cycle amongst the Serbians).
Arguably modern fantasy, Lord of the Rings onwards, tries to fish from that same well (though it's already not poetry any more at all), but now we're at the point where we've so jaded about the real world we need to make up invented fairy-tale worlds to reinvest them of that wonder and mystery. And then we went and started writing jaded stories about those invented worlds within half a century anyway.
I wouldn't call it a misreading - Marx just isn't consistent across all of his work. Usually he talks as if consciousness is decidedly downstream of material conditions and there's a 'scientific' 'logic of history' where bourgeoisie consciousness is just an epihenomenon.
Sometimes he also draws conclusions that contradict that thesis. But I think the *intention* for Marx was to do a clean materialist inversion of Hegel – and that's how the early socialist movements understood him. It explains their fanatical self-certainty, their belief that everything is permitted since they have been given the key to heaven and now they just have to get to the door *no matter what it costs*.
Should "... which meant he filed the serial numbers of God and called ..." use "off" instead?
Typos:
> filed the serial numbers of God
Presumably meant to read “off God”
> one member of the Frankfurt School, - Walter Benjamin,
Don’t need the hyphen on top of the comma.
> are useless slimeballs)
This closes a parenthesis that never opened.
> a coloristic effect." a If the
Redundant indefinite article – maybe a footnote in the original source?
Thank you, fixed.
"Antonio Gramsci to his famous maxim: “The old world is dead; the new world is not yet born; now is the time of monsters.”"
This is Slavoj Žižek's florid rephrasing.
Here is the original and the usual English translation:
“La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati” [The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a wide variety of morbid phenomena/symptomps appear]
I don't see a significant difference in meaning there. Zizek just makes it easier to quote. I suppose "cannot be born" differs from "is struggling to be born/is not yet born" but ultimately the conclusion is the same
It seems like the phrase "the time of monsters" is taking a lot of license with the original.
“morbid/deathly phenomena” and “monsters” are close enough to me. I don’t know, Zizek speaks English and Gramsci didn’t, I’m fine with him communicating the meaning in a way that’s more readable and interesting to anglophones
The meaning is the same, the vibe is just very different. Zizek's translation should be credited with being far more poetic, evocative and powerful; Gramsci reads exactly as I'm used to hear Italian intellectuals speaking - like bureaucrats filing a report.
"Cannot be born" comes off to me very different from "not yet born", the former evokes a woman in difficult labor which could lead to mortal risk.
Actually the italian version has a slightly different vibe to me though. If it was as you say I would use "non riesce a nascere"; but Gramsci merely said "non può", which is more neutral, conveys less the sense of a struggle and more that of a mere statement of fact: it is an impossible or unfeasible thing.
The difference is stark. "Not yet" implies inevitability; "cannot be born" draws attention to something specifically in the way of the future. The latter makes the point of Scott's essay more clear as the Frankfurters were apparently preoccupied with what stopped the rise of communism in the first place.
Noting in passing various intersections with my project - Ad Vitam Pragmatism (which I do intend to become a 'school'):
Via Negativa -> Negative Physicalist Axioms
https://pragmaticfutures.substack.com/p/minimal-physicalist-axioms-for-modern
A goal involving radical social change...which is also supposed to be 'inevitable' (in my case, because life-years capture evo dynamics in finite time...and as Feynman said, 'Nature cannot be fooled', so I can offer a descriptive formalism even if you reject the explicit goals):
https://pragmaticfutures.substack.com/p/the-life-years-movement
https://pragmaticfutures.substack.com/p/the-veil-of-future-heirs-holys-excerpt
The potential new paradigms for evo, econ, and ethics, which both required much work and mental re-wiring on my part...and make fully communicating the ideas to others challenging:
https://pragmaticfutures.substack.com/p/intro-to-on-the-units-of-utils
https://pragmaticfutures.substack.com/p/analyzing-the-anti-ruin-architectural
Besides being entertaining, I think this is a good approximation of the truth. Myself, I read quite deeply into Frankforters (mostly Benjamin, excerpts, articles summaries and secondary literature for the others) and into the Western Marxist tradition while at uni. The way I'd have summarized myself would be something like 'Yeah, Really Existing Communism has failed and we got Fascism and consumer capitalism instead. We humans just fucking suck. But perhaps we can change our culture and ways of thinking so as to... suck less and be ready for immanentizing the eschaton'. And it also turns out to be a very convenient framework for university professors and researchers in the Humanities that can imbue their work with legit revolutionary value. I lack the charitable takes of Scott, but then again, I was once a Believer, which means I have an axe to grind. Besides, some of my best friends still espouse slight variations of this theme with some later incorporations (Debord and the Situationists, Deleuze and Guattari, Jameson and the drive to Utopia, Mark Fisher...). I had a very close approximation of a chat along these lines last Friday.
What would you recommend as a next step in reading about this line of thought?
Hey, the Man himself! I am flattered to have an interaction with you!
What I would recommend is *not* reading about this line of thought, as I feel it is, at its core, both mistaken and toxic, and its only real use is to understand how the left intelligentsia sees the world (which granted, has its use). I'd also say some of these thinkers are relatively easy to follow and say interesting things from time to time, even if they seem them 'through a glass, darkly' (I am very fond of Walter Benjamin even today, and a bit less so, but still a bit, of Fredric Jameson). But still, if one wants to go down this rabbit hole, I'd need to know if what you're interested about: is it about texts of Western Marxism which are the most influential / easy to follow / aesthetically pleasing? Or maybe a more general analysis of the whole tradition? Or the more important offshoots that assimilate / develop / transform the line of thought?
Personally, "a more general analysis of the whole tradition?" is what I would find most useful.
For a short (c. 100 pages) and accessible overview, you probably can do no worse than Perry Anderson's Considerations of Western Marxism. Somewhat bulkier is a collection of articles originally published in the New Left Review and then in book form called Western Marxism: A Critical Reader. Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, volume III is also pretty good. If you move to texts by the authors themselves, a good place to start is Lukács, the father (and frequent critic) of all of them. History and Class Consciousness is a classic that moved much of the discourse from deterministic economese to the more philosophical part of Marx's legacy, is very Hegelian and coins the idea of reification that Scott was presenting here and all the Franfurkters enjoy (capitalism shapes an illusory reality, besides whatever economic explotation it engages in). Some selection of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks is good (I think they were recently translated as a whole to English?). He's the greatest political figure (actual leader of the Partito Comunista Italiano) and a good intellectual who tends to write with much more clarity (and optimism) than the Germans, and on how culture and hegemony are the tool for taking power in Western, 'civilized' societies. Walter Benjamin is a joy to read. His small volume 'Illuminations' has some of his best essays (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and the Theses on History).
Thanks! Though I meant on Critical Theory specifically.
Fair. Simplifying a bit, I'd say Critical Theory is just Frankfurt School + some offshoots that keep most of they key ideas intact but intermingle them with French Post-Structuralism and new antinomies for the oppressor-oppressed framework. There are readers that collect snippets from each thinker (Terry Eagleton's is focused on literary theory, but it's decent), but I think here it just pays to read some of the key authors/ books for each current: Said's Orientalism for Postcolonialism (very accessible), some Foucault (which also helps to see Said's priors). A good entrance point and exemplification of his further drives is Discipline and Punishment. Barthes's Mythologies. Zizek does a good job at being a Lacanian-Marxist and at making the Lacanian part minimally understandable. Can't really point to a book for the Feminist Critical Theory part, as Judith Butler is notorious for being unreadable. If you survive all these, Deleuze, Butler and Spivak are a good next stepping stone. Jameson is very literature-focused, but is quite accessible at any step.
Like with all modes of thought, things can be taken to an extreme. And, I grant that it seems that some people have taken (their understanding of) critical theory to a very cynical extreme, but I think the fundamental point that, in order to better understand society, one should seek to recognize and understand systemic power dynamics and their influence on society and the people of that society, sounds right.
Especially with respect to our understanding of what is true, I see critical theory as, in a way, an extension of Plato's Allegory of the Cave (particularly, the relationship between the prisoners and the puppeteers).
What is your take on Erich Fromm's works, like The Sane Society?
As I mentioned in a previous comment, I recognize that one might dispute certain facets of his argument, and/or his prescription, but his general understanding of what ails modern societies sounds much more plausible to many than many alternative accounts that I read (or the hypothesis that nothing ails modern societies, or, at least, that this is the best we can do)
I wouldn't disagree that its sounds reasonable to consider that the study of society and its power dynamics might be a useful endeavor, but the devil is in the details. Arguably, this is the program of sociology from Auguste Comte to now: the building of a science of society that does for man what natural science had done for nature. But there are a lot of plausible ideas that just fail to pay rent in practice, and this has been one of them: it has mostly proven mostly unamenable to rigorous scientific methodology and seems likely to continue that way for a long time into the future. In its stead, we get what mostly reduces to plausible, just-so stories where adjudication between competing claims just relies on how much one agrees a priori with the axioms / intuitions behind the story.
Critical theory as a branch of philosophy has all the same problems of social science but without even bothering to employ a minimal empirical, statistical and scientific methodology for its claims. Its name is a huge misnomer. To the degree there exists some 'critical theory', it is more likely to come from some mix of logical reasoning + statistics then from what essential boils down to a dogmatic assent given to certain Marxist axioms and un unfalsifiable framework and where the 'Critical' adjective has been boiled down to 'just being against the current social-political-cultural organization of our society'.
I have only read about Fromm from second sources (except some excerpt of his in readers and collective volumes; Hobsbawm has a very good essay about him which is the core of what I remember about Fromm), but I imagine the main thesis is that capitalism/consumerism is a psychological sickness that disempowers us and of which we are aware of at some (probably subconscious) level. And I get that that is a seductive story, among other things, because I used to believe in it myself (my very meagre academic published work from the noughties uses this as its foundation stone). I just find more plausible a different anthropology that starts from humans as creatures with infinite desires and finite resources, and with both societies and individuals having to confront trade-offs, so humans are just forced to live in the tragic and permanent mismatch between human wanting and the structure of reality. You can make the case that this belief is in itself somewhat axiomatic, anti-utopian and a just-so story predicated on my subjective experiences and reads, and although I think it models social reality better, I would not disagree.
would agree that the devil is in the details, and I agree, that, in the wake of the Scientific Revolution I think the Enlightenment project and it's descendents like Comte were trying to build a "science of man", and of society.
I think one of the great difficulties of sociology and the study of societies is that, among other things, it seems to me, you cant run anything close to a true experiment (at least hard to imagine how one could in a remotely ethical way), though, of course, I do think we can still try to form some plausible hypotheses based on correlational data.
As far as saying "Critical theory as a branch of philosophy has all the same problems of social science but without even bothering to employ a minimal empirical, statistical and scientific methodology for its claims", I'm not exactly sure what to make of this statement.
Critical theory is framework for thinking about things, and people using this framework have employed empirical, statistical, and scientific methodology in trying to analyze power structures and imbalances and their consequences.
That being said, of course there are aspects of that framework that are debatable, and attempts to operationalize concepts or their hypothesized relevant consequences, and to what extent those variables might contribute to those outcomes even if we accept they could be a factor, will be controversial, but that's a part, and a valuable part, of the process, having such discussions.
"what essential boils down to a dogmatic assent given to certain Marxist axioms and un unfalsifiable framework and where the 'Critical' adjective has been boiled down to 'just being against the current social-political-cultural organization of our society'. "
If the argument is that the framework can be carried to unreasonable extremes, again, I agree. It does seem to me that there are ideas that sprout up in the intellectual world, the ideas get corrupted over time by adherents, and/or adherents become too rigid or dogmatic, and/or they hit the popular consciousness and become highly distorted and misunderstood, etc.
But I don't think that those issues discredit the entire framework, or, at least, the parts of the framework that might merit consideration, even if there is a risk they could get taken to an unreasonable extreme.
As it is, modern American-style corporate capitalism and the ideology that legitimizes it is, in my opinion, an example of a relatively meritorious idea- the benefits of a market economy and the freedom to pursue one's economic interests (especially compared to the economic systems that came before)- being taken to an insanely extreme degree.
"I just find more plausible a different anthropology that starts from humans as creatures with infinite desires and finite resources, and with both societies and individuals having to confront trade-offs, so humans are just forced to live in the tragic and permanent mismatch between human wanting and the structure of reality"
1. I'm sorry, I'm not sure how this challenges the critiques of society made by Marxism or critical theory (which isn't to say those critiques are right, or wrong)
2. My best guess is that this is an attempt to challenge the idea that the proposed solutions, as you understand them, of these critics would be any better; that you believe they are ignoring relevant aspects of the human condition when developing their proposed reforms or alternatives, is that correct?
3. If that was the point, putting aside the critique itself (which I think is more fair or less fair depending on the critic and their proposed solution), I would just respond that I think we should try to separate our evaluation of the critiques vs our evaluation of proposed remedies.
I know I am sometimes guilty of this myself, and I'm trying to work on it, but I do wonder how often critiques of existing conditions or structures are accepted or rejected not because one does or doesn't really see any merit in the critique, but because a critique has become so closely associated with a given remedy (whether or not the critic actually mentions or supports the associated remedy), that the acceptance or rejection of the critique is more a reflection of the person's opinion on the associated remedy.
"I just find more plausible a different anthropology that starts from humans as creatures with infinite desires and finite resources..."
I think there are few issues here, and I would say I'm speaking in generalities, I'm sure there could be people who exist at extremes:
1. Do you humans have infinite desires?
Depending on how we define desire, I think that's probably true.
2. Do humans have infinite desires for finite goods and resources?
Again, probably, but that probably becomes pretty trivial at a certain point. It seems the marginal utility of additional material goods and resources likely drops off pretty substantially once someone feels financially secure (wouldn't be surprised if there was a correlation between what is considered the middle class standard of living in their society+ feeling relatively financially secure, and the flattening of the curve)
3. Is human well-being maximized by the endless pursuit of their infinite desires for finite goods and resources?
Doubtful, because of that marginal utility drop off after a certain point, at which point the time and energy spent on pursuing those material goods and resources (or the wealth to purchase them) would likely be better spent on the other contributors to human well-being
4. My starting point is that humans are likely the product of evolution, and my theory of human psychology is approximately Nayef Al-Rodhan's theory of Emotional Amoral Egoism, and that, of course we selfishly want to survive and reproduce, but, apparently, prosocial and cooperative impulses to help balance our selfish impulses were beneficial to our survival and reproduction (which makes sense to me, the benefits of teamwork).
It seems to me we have much richer emotional lives than just trying to satisfy materialistic desires, or even primarily seeking to do so once we have satisfied our basic needs and wants, at least if we weren't the subjects of relentless campaigns to promote materialism and consumerism.
5. What else influences human well-being? I would suggest another vital aspect of human well-being, for most people, is social connection- love, family, friendship, community, etc.
Humans have material needs and materially self-interested sentiments, but, it appears, they also have social needs and prosocial sentiments. And I think any system that pretends one or the other doesn't exist, or tries to emphasize and rely on one or the other too heavily, increases the risk of the society having an unnecessarily adverse impact on well-being.
The question, as I see it, isn't if utopia is possible, but if improvement is possible, is it possible to have a better fit between the human condition and the human environment, if the mismatch I suspect truly exists.
Of course, living in a hyper-capitalist, consumerist society, and the increasing commodification of more and more aspects of our lives, and the consciously transactional nature of ever more interpersonal interactions, and seeing people behave in increasingly self-interested ways, the erosion of family, community, and social connections, it might seem like "well, this how human beings really are, our culture is allowing people to drop the mask of any pretense of decency or prosociality so we can finally live Ayn Rand's dream of being shamelessly, nakedly selfish." Maybe that's the reality.
Or maybe it isn't. One of the reasons I have hope for humanity is because, it seems to me, this culture does have, in certain ways, such a negative influence on people, and doesn't merely seek to recognize or acknowledge, but actively encourages and idolizes, some of the worst impulses of human beings, and, in spite of it, we still see as much generosity and cooperation (and I mean voluntary, consensual, uncompensated cooperation, not "cooperation" compelled by economic transactions) as we do.
But, of course, also plenty to worry about. For instance, as an example of the dynamics incentivized by a society that revolves around maximizing shareholder profit, we can look at AI. AI companies have the incentive to make their products as addictive as possible, and people, generally speaking, enjoy sychophancy and being told they are right. So AI agents are relatively sychophantic. Now other humans become less attractive to connect with, because they usually aren't so sychophantic, so now people become even more reliant on AI agents for fulfilling social needs, and less able to build human relationships, further reducing genuine human social connection and any hope of working together to have a greater voice on the forces that shape their lives, ceding more and more control over our lives over to others.
Must it be this way? If so, why? We have countless examples of communities that don't revolve around maximizing shareholder profit that seem to be doing just fine, if not better, in terms of human well-being and satisfaction, even with less material wealth because there is so much more to life than material wealth.
I'm for letting people live their lives the way they want, and so if people feel like things are on the right track, power to them.
But, perhaps there might be some merit to subsidiarity, distributism, and local control, and maybe they might be worth a shot for some intrepid individuals.
Truthfully it is difficult for me to read articles like this and not be concerned that we have lost the plot
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/children-private-equity-sports/687222/?gift=UCPt2nAbGryXhK8Mxl2nP4BeMQT5FLfHFImNpaFrH4Q&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
This is a lengthy and well-thought out post. I don't think I will be able to do it justice, but I'll try to clarify what we might agree and disagree on.
>I think one of the great difficulties of sociology and the study of societies is that, among other things, it seems to me, you cant run anything close to a true experiment (at least hard to imagine how one could in a remotely ethical way), though, of course, I do think we can still try to form some plausible hypotheses based on correlational data.
Yes. I think I am more pessimistic than you, because if one is reduced to plausible hypotheses based on correlational data, I feel you're really reduced to very little. I'll exemplify with the Brenner debate, which touches my academic studies at uni. This is a debate in medieval history on why did the transition from feudalism to capitalism took place, and why England started before the others. The data is very limited and we can't do experiments with alternative universes. In the gap, you can make perfectly plausible but inconsistent hypotheses, as was the case in the debate: Brenner says the decisive factor was class/property relations, whereas his opponents argued for either a commercialization model (capitalism emerged mainly from expanding trade and markets) or a neo-Malthusian/demographic model (it is the peculiarities of population growth/decline which explain the change).
>Critical theory is framework for thinking about things, and people using this framework have employed empirical, statistical, and scientific methodology in trying to analyze power structures and imbalances and their consequences.
Yes. So Critical theory is a *philosophical* framework that some people take for granted (it acts as a set of axioms that are just taken to be self-evidently true, i.e.social relations are deeply structured by power, domination, ideology, exclusion, and so on, and this is the key interpretative tool for understanding them) and then inform the priors of some researchers in the social sciences. But because of underdetermination and lack of any real falsifiability criteria, the previous, there's no way of ever disproving those axioms no matter what the evidence (which is too scarce most of the time to be actually able to do any disproving anyway), so prior theoretical commitments can end up doing a lot of the explanatory work.
>If the argument is that the framework can be carried to unreasonable extremes, again, I agree. It does seem to me that there are ideas that sprout up in the intellectual world, the ideas get corrupted over time by adherents, and/or adherents become too rigid or dogmatic, and/or they hit the popular consciousness and become highly distorted and misunderstood, etc.
No. The argument is that given what I've just mentioned about underdetermination and lack of falsifiability criteria, there really is no solid reason for taking the theoretical commitments of Critical Theory as 'true' in any privileged way viz a viz other, opposed ones, except on mostly vibes ('this feels like the true and convincing framework to me'). In fact, I'd further say that to the degree that one accepts parsimoniousness and the predictive track record of other frameworks, some of them make a rather more convincing case given the massive uncertainty involved.
>1. I'm sorry, I'm not sure how this challenges the critiques of society made by Marxism or critical theory (which isn't to say those critiques are right, or wrong)
2. My best guess is that this is an attempt to challenge the idea that the proposed solutions, as you understand them, of these critics would be any better; that you believe they are ignoring relevant aspects of the human condition when developing their proposed reforms or alternatives, is that correct?
I think that is mostly correct. The way it works as a criticism to Marxist thought in general and the Frankfurt school in particular is this: for the latter, there's the belief that desires can be classified into two buckets, i.e., 'natural, good' desires and ''unnatural, bad' desires that are artificially created in us by capitalism to control us. I just consider the definitional boundary of these is always arbitrary and not natural at all. All desires are 'natural'. It is true they can have diminishing results at the margin, but that doesn't create by itself any objective way of discriminating between them. Besides, when talking about desires I am not just thinking of material goods, but of other stuff like popularity, status, sexual and romantic charisma which are also impossible to satisfy. We are programmed to be in a hedonic treadmill, and will stay in one bar massive genetic and psychological tampering.
This also undermines utopian critiques of currently existing society from the Marxist/Frankfurt pov: there is no utopia where humans will be contented. Not only are our desires impossible to fully satisfy: many of them are winning in zero sum games, mostly of status, and a lot of our desires and preferences are inconsistent (i.e., wanting equality in general but also wanting a privileged status for ourselves). So I am not just saying that Marxism/FS offers criticism without solution: I am saying they criticize things that are human nature, not the result of an evil and distorted capitalist perversion of human nature that can be eliminated. There is no non-alienated human being whose desires would become basically sane if only the right social order existed.
>4. My starting point is that humans are likely the product of evolution, and my theory of human psychology is approximately Nayef Al-Rodhan's theory of Emotional Amoral Egoism, and that, of course we selfishly want to survive and reproduce, but, apparently, prosocial and cooperative impulses to help balance our selfish impulses were beneficial to our survival and reproduction (which makes sense to me, the benefits of teamwork).
I haven't read this author, but what you say seems something I can agree with. I tend to feel Haidt hits the nail on the head with his metaphor of us as 90% chimp, 10% bee, which is likely the same argument you're making here but with an extra skepticism on how significant and relevant is the natural anti-selfish impulse in men. I also value more things than satisfying material needs (and likely, status ones too), but that doesn't contradict their fundamental importance and priority. I don't think capitalism ignores the existence of these other needs. I do agree that no system is perfect, and capitalism, like everything, is a trade-off: you lose some things, you gain some things, and you have to weigh the pros and cons. Yes, under capitalism community and tradition gets undermined; yes, under capitalism lots of aspects of human life get commodified, including some we don't like to see commodified. One can bona fide criticize this and try to reduce or neutralize these effects. I still feel a lot of them just come as inevitable consequences of a more rationally organized, free and prosperity-generating organization of society (i.e., capitalism). I think it is also a bona fide statement to say: "Capitalism isn't perfect, but “show me the trade-off that beats it”. We have a really bad series of 20th century examples of all types of socialism.
>But, perhaps there might be some merit to subsidiarity, distributism, and local control, and maybe they might be worth a shot for some intrepid individuals.
Sure thing! I am for all types of experiments, as long as they don't involve coercion and impositions on others.
so humans are just forced to live in the tragic and permanent mismatch between human wanting and the structure of reality. Right on, brother.
For the record, Felix Guattari (of Deleuze and Guattari), wrote "The Three Ecologies," which keeps the descriptive critique, drops the teleology, and adds the constructive program the Frankfurt School never had. There's no eschaton in it: no phase transition, no manifesting God through history.
What is the constructive program?
In Deleuze and Guattari it think it means creating and experimenting in the here and now, as minorities (not in the woke sense really), instead of waiting for society at large to become revolutionary. The relevant opposition is between history (a focus of the frankfurt school) and becoming (becoming-/insert relevant predicate/). Not waiting for history to change course or break in half, but temporarily and locally exiting history as you experiment a new becoming, even though the becoming is doomed to "fall back" into history as it coalesces into an institutionalized form. Construction of a revolutionary becoming is possible anywhere anytime, and can be nothing but transient and fragile and it's good that way. Think of experiments like the La Borde clinic, a music band like Magma which functions as a school, or what Deligny did with autistic kids, or Freinet with kids in general, and so on). There is no attempt to "change society" directly at the majority scale, no attempt to "usher in a new era". But to desert all scales and all eras into precarious "agencements". That orientation explains why Deleuze and Guattari are never critical thinkers, which make them way more lively and enjoyable than Frankfurt Schoolers (except Benjamin, the mistreated one, I love Benjamin ... But he's more on the destructive program which also makes sense).
Since you seem to know quite a bit about this, where do you think the tradition went wrong? Like what assumption led them astray?
Well, there's a trivial and a non-trivial answer to this. Let's start with the trivial: the tradition goes wrong for me ab ovo, from the beginning, because it just relies on fake and wrong axioms (i.e., Marxism). It intelligently rejects *some* types of Marxism prevalent at the time (mostly, the telos-infused, deterministic, economics-based view on the inevitability of communism's triumph and the end of history), but it sticks to a lot of others (ideas of alienation, criticism of modern society, etc...) that are mostly just critiques of modernity.
The non trivial answer is... complicated. First, what does it mean for a tradition (and I am taking the Frankfurt school as a philosophical one) to 'go wrong'? I mean, from a dilettante's pov, I see philosophy as mostly being in the business of doing two things:
1) Show that some arguments are logically inconsistent and self-defeating (and therefore, not true)
2) Explore the p(space) of all possible rational explanations of everything, with a particular focus on areas where you have barely more than rational explanations to understand the subject (once you have the rudiments of science and a method in those areas, the philosophy just converts into 'science'). This p(space) is vast, and contains many contradictory rational explanations. After you've checked that opposing ones are not logically inconsistent, what remains is only to try to prove-disprove then in a more rudimentary and indirect way, like showing that accepting some explanations leads to lots of strongly counterintuitive conclusions that most people would reject. It is just a kind of sparring, in which it is very difficult, but not impossible, to be persuaded to change your pov. Empirical evidence doesn't really exist here, and you can draw your epicycles as fancily as you wish.
From this perspective, the Frankfurt school tradition 'doesn't fail'. It presents some interpretations of social, political and cultural phenomena, and you can't really disprove them, because philosophical theories are mostly not subject to falsifiability. It inspires other paths seeking to study the subtle and subterranean effects of different forms of domination and alienation, if you are into accepting and valuing these concepts. It legitimizes a type of academic, intellectual work which could otherwise feel as narcissistic and irrelevant as key to exploring the 'real realities' of capitalist society and the (im)possibility of transcending them. And so on.
Very interesting answer! I've recently been inspired by McIntyre to try put into words what "good" is more. I suppose to me philosophy has to help us navigate the world better, otherwise it risks becoming an empty language game for academics. That line is pretty thin though when it comes to things like critical theory (I know critical analysis =/= Frankfurter Schule, but I'm more familiar with it and I'm treating it as the modern version of it). On the one hand critical analysis of e.g. ideology is useful. Subjects should be aware of their own ideologies and the strengths and weaknesses thereof. Similarly with hidden power structures, or the many discontents with capitalism. But critical analysis can also very quickly become this lens that's divorced from what anyone outside of the discipline would call reality. So there's a point where it does "real work" and a point where it loses contact. When it can explain everything, predicts nothing and immunizes itself against any counter-example than it's gone too far.
It's similar to e.g. psychoanalysis. Some concepts are genuinely illuminating, but then very quickly it becomes so reductive as to become a new problem. Like one analysis of psychoanalysis I read: "you bring up old shit to work through, but then very quickly all this shit becomes a new lens through which you keep viewing your life instead of working through it".
So maybe it's hard to say that philosophy should be falsifiable, but it should have some practical connection. It should be recognizable as such to people outside of that specific viewpoint.
School of Frankfurt secret meeting:
Marcuse: "So, about this speculative notion of a 'Machine Intelligence' which should be 'aligned' with the goals of the flourishing of humanity, freeing us all from toil, need and inequality forever..."
Adorno: "Say that aloud and capitalists will try to build it just to file documents and make jazz music to sell! We must keep it a close secret, until the day comes."
> What would you do if you were a primitive tribe who wanted to really, genuinely, invent capitalism?
It seems to me that negating seemingly non-capitalist aspects of a tribe would not obviously help capitalism along. Instead, it would just weaken institutions and allow something else a better chance at taking shape. Would this new thing be capitalism? Maybe. But there are many societal structures under the sun and the new thing could very well be further from capitalism than the status quo. You'd only think this would help capitalism if you believed that capitalism was in some sense a natural way for your society to develop, e.g. if you were a Marxist.
I'd guess that the Frankfurt School followed a similar logic, and it seems like they may have made two mistakes here:
First, Marxism frames communism as one of several economic systems that would develop naturally. Why could culture jam just communism when every other system developed naturally? Instead of questioning Marxist Theory itself, the Frankfurt School endorsed an epicycle.
Second, by implicitly accepting Marxism -- a school of thought which only emerged through a capitalist society, the Frankfurt School took a risk that they were wrong... And if communism was a naturally favored social structure, then Frankfurt Schoolers wind up as de facto accelerationists destroying the conditions under which their ideas could exist.
>a very convenient framework for university professors and researchers in the Humanities that can imbue their work with legit revolutionary value
This is something I have noticed, but I dunno whether it comes from the Frankfurthers: the general tendency that lefty political activism would be done in way that is actually getting a professor professional merit and advancement. Like when you are a linguist and you rename homeless people to unhoused persons, you both get progressive cred and cred as being a good linguist.
I remember reading Eros and Civilisation by Marcuse when I was 16 and thinking it was genuinely the most insightful thing I had ever read. My opinions have tempered since, but I still think that this era of philosophers were seeing something that the rest of us aren't.
In your passage on the sexual ecstasy everyone would get from gardening, although I understand that it's hyperbolic, this is still a perfect example of exactly what the Frankenfurters would have meant by our deprecated language. In the modern era the link between "erotic" and "sexual" is so close that people start to think they are literally synonymous. Even worse: "sexual" and "pornographic". You see people who are so reflectively uncomfortable with the words "child" and "sexual" being in the same sentence that they will more or less castrate (metaphorically) their own children, converting them into a parody of an adult's idea of childhood innocence. Children playing around naked together gets treated as a perversion, something that needs to be treated. In effect they deny their own children's *embodied* nature, which in turn denies their children any humanity.
When you imagine Utopia, do you imagine everyone wearing clothes? I don't. But to break out of clothes-wearing, and the culture and shame and perversions that surround it seems almost impossible without a total break from the Present, of the kind they're describing. In a more naked and human world, where gardening is as free an expression of bodily freedom as any other, I can easily imagine how gardening would be erotic. Not necessarily arousing in a sexual sense, but arousing of something else, more primal and liberating. Something close to the physical manifestation of freedom itself.
>"When you imagine Utopia, do you imagine everyone wearing clothes? I don't."
I'm not sure a world without clothes would automatically be more aesthetically pleasing than a world where people have some kind of wardrobe, even if everyone were sculpted like Adonis. But then I'm not sure utopia is achievable with a species that would be recognisably human.
I'm not really talking about aesthetically pleasing, I'm talking about something on a deeper more human level.
> But then I'm not sure utopia is achievable with a species that would be recognisably human.
Then most of this probably won't make much sense to you.
What thing on a deeper, more human level do you have in mind? Humans have been wearing clothes for, at least, probably several tens of thousands of years, although our archaeological data doesn't give us a particularly narrow range. But since clothes are quite useful for, apart from aesthetics, adjusting to the climate of our environment, I think that *refusing* to wear clothes, on a society-wide level, is probably going to be a fairly unpragmatic commitment, and not one that dovetails well with what I normally think of as human nature.
In a utopia there would, presumably, be no need to protect oneself from the elements.
For a certain value of utopia, that might be the case, but I think that might also rule out "utopia" as being something we could practically achieve with society. If it means that we have technology to take care of every possible need, I don't think that it would be a more human outcome for people to *want* to stop wearing clothes as a result.
I don't thing there is any inherent promise that utopia is supposed to be achievable.
I didn't say anything about refusing to wear clothes. If it's cold then sure, put on a sweater. But that's not the main purpose of clothing. I live in a place where in summer it often gets over 100 degrees F, and yet we still all wear clothes, despite it being extremely uncomfortable.
Clothes are *not* about practicality, they're about creating a physical barrier between people. Eg. If you're in a park, and it's a sunny day, have you never wanted to just lie there nude and bathe in the sun? But you can't do this, because our culture has built up an extreme discomfort with seeing people naked. So instead we funnel that natural desire to be nude into a socially sequestered and neatly enclosed box we call "sex", where being naked is allowed. As a result you get people thinking that wanting to be naked in a park must be some kind of perverse kink, rather than the default state of things.
And the same goes for sex itself: when you have sex, do you leave most of your clothes on and keep the lights turned off? If no, why not? If yes, why? I'll make a couple guesses and you tell me if they're right:
If yes, it's because it's more comfortable, and sex is about body-to-body connection, as a means to human-to-human connection. Having a physical barrier between your skin creates a psychological barrier that defeats the whole purpose. But this applies far outside the realm of sex. It could just as easily be applied to physical affection between a child and a parent. But again, our culture associates nakedness with sex, so if a parent and child ever hugged each other naked, it would be taken as some kind of ominous perversion.
And if you're the kind of person who needs the lights off, it's likely because you (or your partner) have some kind of hangup or shame or insecurity or discomfort with your own body. Our sexualization of nakedness is so extreme that even sex itself is made "unsexy" by the nakedness. The person is afraid to be seen for what they are because they've never been seen that way before, at least not without it being used against them. That psychological/spiritual disconnection manifests in a physical disconnection: eg. dead bedroom because the wife feels ugly/unloved/unlovable.
So the deeper more human thing I'm talking about is something along the lines of self-actualisation, or self-embodiment. The same thing in human nature that hates being handcuffed also hates having to cover itself from the sun and other people's eyes.
So, speaking as the sort of person who prefers clothes off and lights on for sex, I've also never once felt any inclination to take my clothes off to sunbathe, and I rarely find myself wanting to be naked even when I'm completely alone with no risk of being seen. And it's not like I'm especially insecure about being seen naked; I'm comfortable with my body, and I've volunteered as a nude artists' model before. But I think your claim that the same thing in human nature that hates being handcuffed also hates having to cover itself from the sun and other people's eyes is just untrue as a generalization. Some people dislike it, many other people don't, but usually preferring to cover one's genitals at least in public is a human cultural universal, or near to one. And I think there's a lot of hubris in presuming that if humans were *really* self-actualized, they would stop doing things that are human cultural universals.
I think that because humans generally *like* being able to compartmentalize relationships, clothes are valuable for people in terms of demarcating levels of intimacy. It's natural to enjoy sex with people we're attracted to and deeply emotionally intimate with, and also natural to dislike sex with people we find unattractive and lack emotional intimacy with; indeed, it can be deeply emotionally disturbing to be forced or pressured into sex with people we're not comfortable with. Just as we enjoy gestures of intimacy with people we're close to, we dislike gestures of intimacy with people we're not close to. And we need measures to enforce those standards of *non* intimacy with people we're not close to. I think that a psychologically achievable human utopia would not involve being naked around other people all the time, just as it would not involve having to have sex with everyone you know whether you like them or not.
Perhaps you're not inclined to sunbathing, but I don't think it's too much of a generalisation to say that, in general, people like sun-on-skin contact, when it's sunny. People will travel to beaches specifically to do this for hours.
> And I think there's a lot of hubris in presuming that if humans were *really* self-actualized, they would stop doing things that are human cultural universals.
Aren't basically all human failings also universals? Cowardice, self-centredness, etc. And yet we still aspire to overcome them. I don't think the pathway to a better world is everyone being psychologically the same as we are now, but with cooler stuff. There's a large element of human nature that needs overcoming as well. I don't know a single religion that doesn't centre self-transformation as being crucial to progress.
It sounds like you're equating being naked around people with being intimate with them. But even in our own culture, this is often not the case. If I'm in a changing room and I get naked, am I being intimate with the other people there? Changing rooms are a space where nudity is not sexualised, so getting naked becomes a non-event and there's no sense of intimacy. I don't see why the norms of the changing room can't be expanded to other places too. Same goes in reverse too: I've seen strangers naked before without feeling any sense of intimacy with them as a result. I just think your analogy of being pressured into sex doesn't map onto this at all. All you're doing is existing in proximity to someone else.
It makes sense, it just seems obviously wrong.
If you don't have a picture in your head of what a human utopia would be like then arguments over how it looks will seem arbitrary and pointless.
I have a picture of what a perpetual motion machine would be like, that doesn't make it either coherent or possible. The problem with utopia is that it's nothing but fantasy. People let themselves get inspired by fever-dreams and then try to make realistic arguments about unrealistic goals. It's like Star Trek nerds arguing about how warp drive works.
I seriously doubt you have a picture of what a perpetual motion machine looks like. Describe it to me. Not just "wheel that never stops turning", but an actual specific detailed blueprint.
On the other hand, I *could* describe my blueprints of utopia to you, and I imagine most of these 20th century utopians could too. It isn't just a fever dream, I think you're being very dismissive of a concept that, by the sounds of it, you don't really see in your own mind's eye, so of course it makes no sense to you.
You can probably imagine Heaven or Hell: when you read those words there's probably some corresponding image that comes to you. By the sounds of it when you hear Utopia you imagine something totally fanciful. But the entire point of Utopia is that it's not a transcendent otherworldly thing like Heaven, it's earthly: ie. achievable. Try to imagine the best possible achievable world you can. If the idea that comes to you is blurry and vague then I can see why you'd think the whole thing is BS. But if you have a sharp image of a world that is distinctly a tier above the one we live in now, then I think that constitutes a valid idea of Utopia.
In Utopia everyone is naked or clothed as they see fit, and of course what counts as "naked" varies because maybe some people have different, changed bodies (also as they see fit).
Check the modern gyms for a clue about clothless utopia: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4AZcrEr7ZZM
I cannot imagine utopia because, "out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
"In a more naked and human world, where gardening is as free an expression of bodily freedom as any other, I can easily imagine how gardening would be erotic. Not necessarily arousing in a sexual sense, but arousing of something else, more primal and liberating. Something close to the physical manifestation of freedom itself."
As a weekend hobby gardener, I can assure you it already is - it's a burning desire, a passion.
There seems to be a problem with Frankfurt-type thought in general, which is that it takes the absence of primal liberation as axiomatic, and assumes that everything for everyone is a fallen version of its true self. Nobody is free, therefore anything that *looks* like freedom must be a trick. If jazz is bad because it "gave a false sense of returning to nature, whereas in fact it was totally a product of social artifice", you could as well say the same of gardening, or hiking, or going to a beach. All of these things are arranged and enabled by social artifice in *some* way; if we grant the Frankfurter worldview, I'm not sure what's stopping us from saying that *any* desire or passion aroused by any of them is just an alienated facsimile of the True Desire, something no human alive has ever truly witnessed.
This is a failure mode of absolutist philosophies in general. There appears to be no one complete, comprehensive philosophy of life that solves all problems.
I quite literally could not agree more. A dedicated gardener already lives a profoundly passionate life. Deeply unfashionable, but very passionate.
Still, given the amount of mosquitoes where I live, it would never cross my mind to do gardening naked.
The same here. Nothing for the neighbours to watch, just a thick cloud of DEET mingling with the fragrance of roses.
In this utopia, wouldn't people get cold?
If they did, it wouldn't be utopia.
In that kind of utopia we're probably all disembodied thoughtforms. Clothes and gardening aren't even in the equation.
I like being cold, so a tropical utopia wouldn't be utopia for me.
Surely you realize that this point generalizes and renders the concept of utopia sort of meaningless in any practical sense?
Pretty sure the concept of "Utopia" isn't meant to be strictly practical.
Correct, it's nothing but fantasy.
I don't understand your use of "nothing" in this context. You seem to be implying that "fantasy" is unimportant.
I think there's a distinction between a social utopia where humanity is in harmony and happily well-coordinated, but the natural world is still as is, and a stronger total utopia where the world itself has become tame and friendly, which is basically just Heaven at that point.
Yeah, I think people can still get cold there.
Cold is produced by capitalists, to make people buy more clothes. Have you ever noticed how e.g. Africa is much warmer than many so-called "developed" countries? It's quite ironic how we consider it normal that people spend all day working, instead of spending time with their families, so that they can afford warmer clothes, while other people - living on the same planet - can get warmth naturally from the sun?
In a communist society, there would be no need to clothes, and therefore no need for cold.
This is the best thing I've read all week.
I feel like you're intentionally missing the point. Do you sincerely believe that's what I was saying?
I feel like then maybe we just need different words because as far as I can tell "erotic" has meant something like what we do mean by it for far longer than capitalism (indeed, the Greeks distinguished between eros, philia and agape specifically to separate physical passion from other forms of affection).
I strongly recommend reading Raymond Guess', 'The Idea of a Critical Theory'. It's basically an Anglo-American/Analytic interpretation of the early Frankfurt school. I found it extremely clear and it's also a short book.
Yes! Can't recommend Geuss enough! His "Changing the Subject", more recently, is also a great one - a history of philosophy told through philosophers who, in his extended metaphor, chose to flip the chessboard and knock all of the pieces on the floor, rather than move, for example, Rook to A6. A fair bit on Adorno there, too.
The Scott Alexander experience:
"Your enemies are not entirely wrong."
"Your friends are not entirely right."
Your enemies are not entirely your enemies (even if they think they are).
Your friends are not entirely your friends (even if you really want them to be).
"Even beyond that, there seems to be a Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sakes."
Maybe the Overton Window is the demystified, simplified manifestation of the vibe for today's normies. It's how I most often see people like me expressing the idea that critique on its own can make a valuable contribution, destabilizing an intolerable status quo and shifting the bounds of the thinkable. Overton-Windowism is similarly allergic to the compromise that moves society in a 1% more healthy direction, watering down critique with pragmatism; it prefers to imagine radical critique as a precondition for root-and-branch change in a future we can't even properly conceive until our collective Window has been moved a few feet leftward.
It is actively painful to read these hotdog philosophers who can't drive a steakshift. Makes me grateful for only ever dipping a toe in by dashing off two protest Bernie votes, before finding The Way and becoming enlightened about a more realistic path to enlightenment in our times.
Many things in the world are bad, but many are also good. Very fine phenomena on both sides. I see no need to start a communist revolution, even if we assume a spherical can opener that no instruction manual is needed, God will provide. Substack isn't not social media, per se, but also you can just put the phone down and not be on social media, directly experiencing life as it comes at you fast. Surprisingly (well, not to a Bayesian), sometimes it still sucks anyway! That's just the state of life though, not some artificial contrivance of capitalism. One must imagine wild animals happy, else so many of these utopian dreams founder on the rocks of realism. A flawless map with no contradictions no longer reflects any Earthly territory.
(Still abstractly looking forward to AI resolving the "central planning fails due to massive required computation" question to satisfaction. Deus ex machina, but in real life?)
Do you see any need to resist the ever increasing centralization of power, wealth and status? Or is that just inevitable?
One can resist centralization of power, wealth, and status without going full Communist (which has in historical practice just meant different centres of power, wealth, and status). I don't necessarily disagree with any particular given critique posed by leftists, assuming they're more comprehensible than Frank's disciples, because there are in fact many infelicitous elements of the modern world. I just think they're actual real problems like, you know, war and crime and poverty, not...jazz. And one doesn't have to believe in Copenhagen ethics to comprehend that smugly criticizing everything under the sun while providing no clear solutions is going to pattern-match very easily to complete bullshitting. Everyone's a Critic, AWCY? has no place in real life - if one actually cares about making the world better, instead of LARPing self-righteously.
So your answer is... yes?
Mu, I reject the framing.
Well, you can certainly say that, but the rest of us are stuck in a world where that is happening.
lazy response! cowardly! address their arguments if you're gonna try to argue with them, jeez.
I'm genuinely interested in knowing avalanche's point of view. Arguing isn't the only point of engaging someone in discussion (nor is winning).
the contrast between this comment and your previous two comments in the same thread is pretty funny
I don't see that this is the case at all. We are at the mercy of populists and their mobs.
You don't see the manipulation of mobs by well resourced populists as a form of centralized power? Many people lending their agency to one? Esp. as this seems to be accompanied by a significant increase in wealth and control over a party apparatus?
>manipulation of mobs
The mobs actually do have durable values and policy preferences all on their own.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4230288
Your link doesn't seem to be responding for me. Do you have a citation you can share?
https://iep.unibocconi.eu/sites/default/files/media/attach/Representation%20Gaps%20and%20Populism.pdf
Much of what these hotdog philosophers said is influenced by Daoism - the post-Hegelians, Marx and Stirner et. al., were often influenced by the translations of Eastern philosophical texts that were finding their way into Germany during their lifetimes and being studied and lectured on in their universities. Lao Tze especially.
Marx’s contemporary Stirner said of his core concept the Unique (selfhood) that he enumerated in his 1844 book The Unique & Its Property, that “names cannot name it,” and that “I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.” Very clearly influenced by Daoism. His book in turn was massively influential on Nietzsche and Marx - the longest text Marx ever wrote was a direct reply to it. Not that Marx understood it, being so caught up in empiricism and materialism. But successors did, and Scott points out the mystical flavorings of the Frankfurt school in the essay. There’s more there than you are seeing.
Boy did they misundertand Taoism then! There is no Christian-like historical telos to be found there, Zuang Zi would have had a good laugh at such a notion and written 3 extra chapters subtly laughing at it.
There absolutely is, though? Taoism stresses the cultivation of De (virtue) through the harmony of body, mind, and environment. (The elimination of alienation)
Rulers proficient in De set examples for their natural environment and the people they rule over, which will be brought into increasing amounts of harmony together. That’s your telos.
What, exactly, do you think the philosophers above are getting at when they’re talking about us being alienated from ourselves and our pleasures, about how someone actually in tune with themselves could sense the erotic energies even in the mundane act of gardening?
Hey, thanks for the pushback, that's interesting. Classical Taoism does have a concept of virtue, a kind of inherent notmativity in the nature or flow of things. And virtue radiates, so a virtuous ruler makes for a harmonious society.
But as far as I can remember, it also really insists in the general principle that things readily turn into their opposites,[1] so harmony remains fragile and reversible. It's been a while since I read the Zuangzi and the TTK, but I do remember that it gently but surely mocked anyone who would try to box the tao, or claim to know which way the winds would blow in time. That sounds rather incompatible witht the kind of historical inevitably that Communism propounds.
It seems to me that, while Hegel &co might have gotten much of their mysticism from Taoism, their sense of inevitable historical direction must have come from somewhere else - probably the surrounding Christian culture, which also has it. Let me know if you think I'm still missing something, I'm certainly not a scholar of the Dao!
[1] That is a real insight. Much evil has happened not out of malice, but from hamfisted or unbalanced attempts to force the good.
Not a dig on you, but it's hilarious to me how all discussions about philosophy seem to end up with people claiming the others don't understand the meaning of Philosophy X.
I guess that's one of the reasons why philosophy is hard!
Yeah, see the comment below saying that I was the one misunderstanding classical Daoism.
It's not so easy to bring the author back from the dead to settle the Q, but these days you can ask Claude for a college-professor-level opinion, that's something at least.
I'd still rather be lectured by Buddhists to "just go meditatively touch grass, bro", and not just because there seems to be some actual empirical backing to the claims. If the Eastern mystic woo can in fact reduce blood pressure and stress, that's something at least, even if it's not levitation. Life's also far too short to worry about how enjoying the simple pleasures of Soil & Pimp Sessions is secretly part of a sinister plot to erase the very concept of individualism. Or whatever non-vanguard art we're not supposed to enjoy this week.
(Although I think a proper Buddhist probably wouldn't even lecture? Can't force someone onto The Way.)
Depends on the Buddhist's doctrinal inclinations, I think: the Original (Nikaya) Buddhists™, non-northeastern Mahayanikas, Theravadins, and (most) Vajrayanikas (with the notable exception of a lot of Dzogchenpas) *love* lectures & manuals & instructions!—thus Abhidharma, and the proliferation of Tibetan schools.
The Chan, Zen, and other Far-Eastern schools did go hard on the "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" & "the master slapped the student when he asked for instruction; thereby, he was enlightened" stuff, though—one reason I have always had much less interest in these variants of the Dharma, as compared to early Buddhism & (to a slightly lesser extent) Vajrayana.
(I keep meaning to write something up on why Zen & Dzogchen are dumb-dumb¹ tier Buddhism, and the True Mega-Chad Sangha® is that of the Sarvastivada & Theravada... the problem is just that I'm very lazy. I mean, that... uh... the time is not right for the lotus of my wisdom to bloom forth from the sludge of the Internet.)
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¹(okay, not *really*—one of my favorite Buddhist figures & authors of all time, Patrul Rinpoche, was totally into Dzogchen, and it certainly appears to have worked for him; and Zen is extremely broad, and covers a lot of perfectly fine Buddhism... I'm just, partly, exaggerating for effect; and partly possibly a bit biased, due to the greater fame of the Buddhist path that—I feel—is probably the *least* effective for the average individual & yet which has been spread most widely by a lot of... ah... "questionably wise" authors–)
What is a steakshift and what is required to drive it?
It's an old and pretty corny dad joke about the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile not having automatic transmission.
Never heard of Oscar Meyer. The Wienie 500 sounds fascinating.
I'm currently studying political science in an university, which means exposure to Frankfurters, them being a part of the development of political science. In most cases we’re talking about reading a variation of the same “Plato to NATO” (or, more correctly, Plato to Rawls) textbook on the development of political thought, with exactly one Frankfurter (sometimes Fromm, sometimes Horkheimer, sometimes Adorno) thrown in as a part of the general overview.
>You can’t say that they invented a new form of left-wing thought called Cultural Marxism. This would be (according to Wikipedia) the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, a “far right anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that misinterprets Western Marxism, especially the Frankfurt School, as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics, and political correctness”. You’re not supposed to dub them a transitional stage between Communism and postmodernism. You’re not allowed to speculate that a lot of the academic humanities, as they’re practiced today, descend from the Frankfurt School’s brand of critical theory. You’re not supposed to think of them as the point where the muscular pro-technology leftism of the early 1900s shattered into the pessimistic degrowth leftism of the present.
Apart from the phrasing "cultural Marxism" indeed being eschewed, I'm not sure who is stopping you from saying any of the rest of the following? All of these seem rather basic, even humdrum analysis, though it would be wrong to say that academic humanities descend *solely* from Frankfurters, instead of them being one of the sources.
Much of this text just seems like... anger that they're not communicating in a way that is legible to you? Obviously they're communicating from their own histories and experiences, which differ from what any of us has experienced. Also, it's not like the rationalist movement and it's chosen modes of discourse are always that legible to me, either, and I at least fulfill the primary requirement of being conversant with most of the Western science fiction canon.
Likewise, some of the obscurity is just Frankfurters having a lot of views and not always agreeing with each other. Adorno and Marcuse rather famously disagreed on the 60s student movement (https://hutnyk.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/adornomarcuse_germannewleft.pdf); it’s not clear that you can just say that Marcuse said openly what the other Frankfurters said in an obscure manner.
Within the context of academic studies, it becomes clearer why the cultural Marxism conspiracy discourse is there; it comes off less as "Hey, innocent student, read us, Jewish intellectuals, and let us brainwash you to become a communist" and "Hey, student who is a leftist, here's a method to do what you are probably already doing but also being open about doing this and express your biases and what you're trying to do right there instead of veiling yourself in neutrality and being-above-it-all". I mean, obviously if you are a non-leftist who hates academic leftists you don’t want them to get more tools to do what they do, but if they didn’t have critical theory, they’d probably just be doing something else to annoy you.
Also, much of what the Frankfurters were doing, in addition to criticizing capitalism and various related hierarchies, was based on the twin targets of dealing with the fallout of the Stalinist turn in Soviet Union – less evident now, of course, since their criticisms of Soviet Union now seem rather milquetoast compared to the reigning discourse on the topic – and trying to prevent fascism in the Western countries. Did they succeed in the latter? I’m reminded of the joke about a guy who sells a rock to keep away the tigers and when asked how it works responds with “Well, you don’t see any tigers around, do you?”, expect there does seem to be more of a hint of tiger smell, at least, than the last time I saw this joke.
In the latter sense, the Frankfurtians are also comparable to another group of often Jewish Central European emigres to US who saw evidence of developing totalitarianism in their new home country and reacted to it – Austrian School. And Adorno’s unexpected hatred of jazz and the rationalization of it reminds me of another similar Jewish émigré with an unexpected cultural opinion and the rationalization of it, Ayn Rand’s hatred of classical architecture and the love of modernism, and Randroid attempts to explain that no, of course she was not talking about *ugly* modernism but *pretty* modernism.
Edit: also, it has *always* been a characteristic of many leftist movements that you don't really have a clear vision of what the end point should be and are more concerned with what you want to do and how you want to organize right here in the now. Marx didn't want to "write recipes for the cook-shops of the future." "To me that which is generally called the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything" - Eduard Bernstein, the "father of revisionism". This is not an error, it's a whole different paradigm! And it often really seems like a a difficult paradigm for rationalists to wrap their head around?
>I'm not sure who is stopping you from saying any of the rest of the following<
I have seen it mooted (e.g., on Wikipedia talk-pages debates) that to say that "a lot of the academic humanities, as they’re practiced today, descend from the Frankfurt School’s brand of critical theory" is also a right-wing "conspiracy theory".
>Much of this text just seems like... anger that they're not communicating in a way that is legible to you?<
Does it? I didn't get any anger from it. In fact, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 seems like... an attempt to delegitimize this critique by imputing anger to its author!¹
>it comes off less as "Hey, innocent student, read us, Jewish intellectuals, and let us brainwash you to become a communist"<
I don't think (that many think) that it necessarily comes off as making this invitation; rather, the feeling is that this is the 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵.
-------------
¹(𝘮𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘢𝘵—𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺 (𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘥𝘭𝘺)—𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯!)
Yeah, not a serious accusation, but it's still right, "anger" is probably the wrong word. Let's say "displeasure".
That's probably fair—in fact, your original characterization, too, might be fair enough in my case, if not Scott's: I have perhaps assumed that they're not communicating 𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭—that they conceal a lack of any real insight by throwing up an obscuring cloud of empty verbiage, like so many degenerate octopodes—and it angers me; but maybe I've been too quick to judge, and if only I read enough Habermas and Derrida¹ the irritation would yield to an accreted pearl of new understanding...?
¹(not a Frankfurter, I know, but... they're all of a piece, right?–)
I was briefly irritated by the beginning of your previous post, but as I read on there seemed to be a lot of good sense and good points. So thank you.
"Your delegitimizing my delegitimizing his delegitimization of that other guy."
Well I would say it's been characteristic of leftist movements since Marx and Engels, who targeted a lot of their criticism at fellow leftists, e.g., the Saint Simonians, "utopian socialists," in their critique of the gotha program for being too explicit about their vision of the end points.
I think one interesting thing about those guys is that mass culture was new to them. Radio was invented the 20's. Talkies came around in 1929. They lived before the emergence of mass culture and preferred the way things were before mass culture's emergence. -- Plenty of people now lived before the emergence of social media prefer the way things were before. It is almost a cliche.
The Frankfurt connection to today's humanities is the part everyone fights over, but your "exactly one Frankfurter thrown in" detail is the real tell. A school whose whole method was negative dialectics gets flattened into a single survey-course name. Fitting that thinkers obsessed with what you can't say end up reduced to what you can fit on one syllabus line.
I'm not saying anything in favour of or against the Frankfurt school, so I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment.
I'm simply pointing out that the substack centrist gang has abandoned all intellectual standards recently when it comes to characterising and engaging with political enemies.
it should "work like this" for people who explicitly position themselves as the adults in the room, and have created a whole ideology centered on avoiding the usual cognitive errors and intellectual mistakes, I think.
I'd say the (relatively) recent interest in the Frankfurt school among historians of philosophy with an analytic background has made better and more detailed interpretations very easy to find. a few works: freyenhagen's book on Adorno, j.m. Bernstein's "disenchantment and ethics" (horribly written, but contains a lot of insight if read as supplementary material, rather than as a stand-alone source), Brian o'connor's books on Adorno for Rutledge and MIT, Jacob mcnulty's Rutledge book on Marcuse.
above all else, I think, it's important to read the Frankfurt people as following in the footsteps of lukacs. how great, then, that there's recently been an increasing interest in non-straw manned, careful interpretations of his work. two quick recommendations: westerman's "phenomenology of capitalism" and kavoulakos' "Lukacs' phenomenology of capitalism".
very little/none of the above work offers the sort of grand "well the Frankfurt people thought the central obstacle standing between us and a communist utopia in which gardening is likely to produce orgasms was culture and ideology" overview offered here.
>I'm not saying anything in favour of or against the Frankfurt school, so I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment<
Well, one could perhaps be forgiven for assuming that a comment about rationalists engaging with ideological opponents (like, say, the Frankfurt School & co.), that was appended to a rationalist's essay about the Frankfurt School, was meant to imply something about the rationalist approach to the Frankfurt School in particular...
...but even if it doesn't—even if you're as anti-Frankfurt as they come, or entirely neutral thereupon—Zanzibar Buck-buck McFate's (Jesus, what a username, heh!) comment can 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 be read generally: as saying that there's no need to read more than one very old book about a lot of intellectual currents—Frankfurter or otherwise—because to do more is akin to following the adherents thereof off intellectual cliffs.
(I.e., that's what it has to do... or, well, not to put words in Z.B-b.McF.'s mouth: what it 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 have to do... with your comment—like, ol' Buck-buck is saying "no, it isn't necessarily a beautiful possible world at all!")
I think that's a completely illegitimate inference, even in context. there's simply a very plausible alternative hypothesis one has failed to consider: that I'm simply very annoyed by quick and easy snipes at political opponents, and have gravitated to substack centrism and EA adjacent discussions mainly because they are less prone to precisely that. it therefore disappoints me when the standards decrease to this extent.
Imagine if your argument were actually substantial. This isn’t merely a review of a book; it’s clear that the author is advancing his own argument, drawing on the book where relevant.
In any case, “you need to read more books on this subject” is not an argument. If you’ve read those books and believe they support your position, you should be able to explain why and defend the point yourself rather than simply appealing to a reading list.
Nor is exhaustive reading always necessary for discussion. We don’t need to read every work ever written on a subject before commenting on it. It’s entirely possible to discuss an argument, claim, or interpretation without having consumed an entire literature.
Of course, someone can misrepresent a position. If that happens, the proper response is to identify the specific error and explain what is wrong with it. “You should read more authors who agree with me” does not, by itself, address the substance of the point being made.
Little things, like the fact Adorno wrote a 1000+ book an the psychology of authoritarianism, avoid mention, and that's what I usually see as a motivation behind this style of approach. Easier to just say they were weird than engage with their ideas (which can still be wrong!) in a substantial way. The same can be said of standard left wing/right wing political/economic folks, but you'd hope rationalists would put in the effort to have firm grasp on what it is they're rejecting. Marcuse's One Dimensional Man is a short enough book, he's the guy everyone is tilting at (probably correctly), why not read and refute that? It's take on technology is what I'd say is the dominant view of what leftists described as Cultural Marxists hold.
secondary sources of sufficient quality are completely necessary for contemporary people to engage properly with this stuff, I think. we should have some trust in the people who interpret Adorno for a living, like we would with regards to interpreters of any other major 20th century philosopher.
This seems weird. Why are you arguing in favor being less informed and reading less?
I'm an atheist, but the barrier to reading Aquinas isn't any fear of mine over "infohazards". (The barrier is that I'm lazy!) Like what, we're supposed to not read writing by people we currently believe to be incorrect, for fear of it making us less correct? That seems ridiculous.
Anyway, where would you recommend starting with Aquinas? :p
For personal edification? Absolutely fine. When writing as a refutation of someone else's work? Yes, I'd say relying solely on secondary information is insufficient. So if somone was writing a specific critique of Darwin's work, yes, they would need to read his actual work. If the idea was to critique the entirety of evolutionary theory then solely reading Darwin would be insufficient, because it's an entire field. A critic has to be widely read in the field before they are able to offer meaningful criticism. There's always going to be a limit to how much study someone can put into a topic, so missing Marcuse's marginalia on Marx's 38th letter to his Dry Cleaner would just be pedantic as a counter criticism. But I do think any critique requires more than a single intro level book, even at the university level.
Like I said, personal edification, conversations with others, perfectly fine. That's all informal communication. When you are posting something as a public critique, yes I think you should be informed on that subject. Read one essay from Adorno on jazz? Yep, you can now speak first hand on that essay, and can extrapolate from that essay (I don't think you have to read the entire corpus of a subject to gain some understanding of a writer). But reading Adorno's musical theory doesn't give someone insight into his prior work on authoritarianism. Which may in fact be obscurationist and ultimately horse shit. But they can't offer commentary on that without having read it. Should a writer want to speak to the Frankfurt School's writers on certain current academic departments, they should have read some linking texts. Dismissing Marcuse's misgivings on technology simply because he didn't support capitalism, for instance, isn't engaging with his work, and doesn't provide a substantial criticism. We have LLMs available to grind out second hand accounts of varying accuracy. First hand perspective and engagement puts above parrots. I'd rather have read a scathing attack on Marcuse, Adorno, or Benjamin then just thoughts on an intro text.
"Why don't you read <enormous work>, possibly in the original language (because none of the translators actually got the Real Meaning), before judging" is just a bad argument to me, and it gets deployed often. I've seen it used by religious types too, who will do it with their holy texts.
People don't have infinite time. If at first brush someone's ideas seem interesting, deep, or worth engaging with, I might dive in further. If they seem insane and contradictory I'll eschew them in favor of someone else. This is why making good first impressions and being clear are important virtues. If as a philosophers you have genius ideas that you fail to communicate to anyone, you're as pointless as someone who hasn't got a single thought.
No, it's "Why don't you acknowledge <whatever writer> wrote on <a central topic of said writer> when they wrote <book or books/articles on said topic>." That's it. Pretty low standard, imo, for a basic survey article.
Now, if you're looking to refute a particular writer's work, yeah, you do indeed need to cite the work in question. If you don't have time to do that, just pick another topic and write knowledgeably on that topic.
If you're going to allege there's a thing called 1) Cultural Marxism, that 2) originated in the Frankfurt School and then 3) infiltrated US colleges and universities, you would need to a) have a definition of what Cultural Marxism is b) how it was transmitted and c) specific references to where it's active today, all with references/citations.
It would be a big research project. Interesting from a historical perspective, but given that the people being labeled as Cultural Marxists deny that that's even a thing, I really don't think there's much practical value. I mean there are actual socialist parties, why hypothesize crypto-Marxists when there are real ones whose political thought is typically much more condensed and easy to access?
If this is ultimately all about "they wanna raise taxes!", then just cut to the chase and say that.
But he's not alleging that? He's saying "this is a common thing that's believed in right wing circles; left wing circles fiercely deny it; after reading this ONE BOOK (and he's very open about it being one book) that is just an introduction on the subject, my impression is that the thing that the right wing circles perceive is not some secret conspiracy but probably the general shape of things that were ideologically inspired by some of the things said in this time by these people, though in other ways it's very different and inspired by other branches of thought".
This seems to me roughly accurate. I'm sure it can be made more accurate and precise and detailed but I don't really see what's so *wrong* about it unless you adopt the classic intransigent leftist framing of "everything that I like is actually just the normal thing for people to do and say; everything I don't is the product of fascists and capitalists hijacking the narrative".
Again, you can't expect to always engage fully with every single thing written by one ideology to be able to say anything about that ideology, especially if we consider that sometimes a lot of that stuff is not even very relevant (or read by) most of the *proponents* of the ideology in like, daily life. Look at the flip side: do you feel like you need to be erudite in the works of Carl Schmitt and Julius Evola to be able to criticise the actual popular understanding of their ideas reflected in random neonazis being racist and illiberal? If a fascist said "no, actually, it's a lot more sophisticated than that, you should read The Theory", would you think that's really necessary or would you just assume all you'll find is high-minded rationalizations for what's ultimately a very simple and noxious set of beliefs? And even if you DID find such sophisticated ideas, would it matter when most of the adherents to that belief system clearly do not understand them, let alone live by them?
The question isn't even "what did Adorno and Marcuse really think". It's "how have Adorno and Marcuse's ideas, filtered through the lens of the dumbing down of popular culture and discourse, influenced modern politics". So if anything the superficial level should be just fine for that. If it's much more complicated than that, yeah, maybe Scott didn't understand it, but neither do most of the people who are to some extent still influenced by the overly simplified shadow of those ideas.
So, case A in my prior response. Where I dismissed your intentional misreading of what I wrote. So to recap: "how have Adorno and Marcuse's ideas...influenced modern politics" doesn't square with "While Adorno, Horkheimer, etc were doing insane obscurantist art criticism" (which, again, can be insane, so we can dismiss whatever leftism you're projecting), when Adorno did in fact write quite extensively about politics specifically. Which is where mentioning the 1000+ book comes in. It would have been discussed (if the table of contents I came across online is accurate) in Chapter 5, the 'Institut's Analysis of Nazism'. "While doing a lot of early work on Authoritarianism, Adorno moved into insane art criticism" would have made it less of a caricature. Which is how I read this, nothing more.
"Adorno: Jazz Hater, America Hater" would have been a perfectly fine and supported article, because Adorno's terrible opinions on music were well explored.
See Daniel Dennett's Four Rules of Good debate, Donald Davidson's Principe of Charity, for what I'd like to see as normative, rationalist writing.
The reason people do this less than you want is because every time someone tries, someone like you insults them for it. I'm proud of myself for pushing against that incentive to read a dense 350 page book from a field I normally wouldn't venture into, and reporting back (with a bunch of caveats that I don't know much about it and am just trying to present my thoughts). I hope to read more like this in the future, and in order to prevent myself from being discouraged (and because you've violated several rules, like being rude and insulting without explaining your criticisms, and dialing up the temperature by making controversial stereotypes of an entire movement when it's off-topic), I've banned you for this comment.
If you’re looking for recommendations, Fredy Perlman’s “Against Leviathan! Against His-Story!” is an extremely well written magnum opus of historiography looking at that “deep core wound” in society. It’s from 1983, and he uses very mythopoetic language and story telling to do a very similar thing to what you did with Meditations On Moloch, positing Leviathan as an egregore we made a bargain with in order to create civilization. He uses that metaphor to explore many of the concepts you review here. I think you would enjoy reading it as a follow up to Dialectical Imagination very much. Although, spoilers, Perlman doesn’t theorize that there’s a currently extant god of everything else to fight Moloch/Leviathan for the fate of civilization - he’s much more pessimistic and thinks we’re all going to die in the bowels of the hungry beast we created as it runs out of things to devour and has to start eating itself. Of course, he might just have not gotten that far - he died the year after it was published. And he was a Holocaust survivor, so, pessimism well earned I suppose.
The way you talk about Communism and communist sympathizers in the piece is pretty rude and dismissive, I guess you are trusting your audience to understand that you can mock an ideology you disagree with while simultaneously trying to understand it in good faith, but I've seen how you react when people talk similarly about rationalism and your hackles get pretty high.
I was very grateful for this and enjoyed having--as I am sure psychologists, bay area partygoers, and AI safetyists enjoy--my biscuits buttered. It's like the opposite of Gell-Mann amnesia.
Scott, I thought your roasting of the Frankfurt School in this book review was interesting and entertaining, perhaps because I have a knee jerk dislike of Adorno, Marcuse, et. al.
I thought Mjau Mjau's criticism of the review to be much less interesting and entertaining, in part because I don't share his apparent knee-jerk dislike of EA and rationalism.
I thought your banning of Mjau Mjau for his criticism to be a gross over-reaction, in part because I think that knee-jerk reactions are part of human nature, but that they need not lead to severe consequences.
This is pretty clearly a rhetorical tool to dismiss Scott's criticism, not an actual standard that can be met. There's no amount of reading that you or other Marxists will feel actually grants someone the right to disagree with Marxism.
This was shown pretty clearly in the Grievance Studies hoax. Those behind the hoax read so much critical theory that they successfully got papers published. They proved they understood it at a deep level. Yet not a single Marxist has given credence to their critiques in the aftermath.
"The capitalism of the day was typically eighty-hour weeks" is an eggageration, it was less than 60 in the beginning of the 20th century https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165188908000997
I'm not sure if Scott was being ironic when repeating cliches about industrial work and Gilded Era capitalists or if he actually believes these cliches but by the early 1900s tightening screws in an assembly line was an amazing opportunity compared with most jobs a commoner would have to do in a pre-modern and early modern societies.
Even compared with other jobs from the early 1900's industrial work was better paid and offered more chances of social mobility.
Unfortunately centuries of cliches starting with Dickens and perpetuated by an endless litany of intellectuals has sullied the image of factory work and the crucial role it had in improving the living standards of Westerners back then and of many Asians these days.
https://www.studentsofhistory.com/strikes-labor-unions
No need to sugarcoat it. Striking workers were literally risking their lives against government-assisted repression. The worker rights of today were paid for in blood.
Maybe, or maybe they are the result of productivity increases and businesses competing for workers. Do you think googlers had to pay in blood their gourmet lunches? Launch wildcat strikes for high-end corporate gyms with indoor pools, climbing walls, personal trainers and massage therapists?
Not sure how helpful that comparison is. High-end employees have always had it better than the grunts, even long before industrialization. If you want to know the state of workers' rights in a country, you have to look at the low end, the most replacable.
It's a very helpful comparison. It destroys the idea that the worker-employer relationship is this one-way thing where the employer calls all the shots.
Capitalism (which has never been tried) is a system where everybody gets what they deserve.
One of the most infuriating things about the left is how they act like they are so horribly mistreated in their upper middle class jobs while advocating for the importation of millions of illegal workers to do things like clean the houses of the lefty professors for pennies, and then claiming "working class solidarity."
Related: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/did-unions-end-long-work-hours, https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever, and tangentially: https://xcancel.com/cafreiman/status/2000929036613386585#m.
"Gourmet" is not an adjective I have ever heard to describe the lunches at Google, but your overall point is dead on.
That just reinforces Scott's point - and the Frankfurt School's point, apparently - about how much the time sucked.
"Even beyond that, there seems to be a Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sakes. Leftists may criticize police while having little plan for an alternative law enforcement system, or reflexively thwart new development even when it seemingly serves their goals."
It's worth pointing out that this is exactly the kind of leftism a conservative establishment would want to promote as a way of sucking oxygen away from revolutionary leftism, if for instance they were worried about an expansionist USSR. And this might be another unsayable conspiracy theory but the Frankfurt School, and particularly Marcuse, had connections to US intelligence agencies.
The book Scott's reviewing is from the 90s, before a lot of the files detailing the connection between the CIA and influential figures and the New Left were declassified.
A later book about Cold War cultural engineering that's worth reading is:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1224206.The_Cultural_Cold_War
Basically all the most influential Western thinkers you've heard of from that time were taking money from an organisation called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a front for the CIA.
Admittedly, as far as I know, the available evidence for the Frankfurt's school's involvement particularly is only circumstantial, but it's worth noting that they're the centre of a lot of rumours and suspicion.
Hard to say without knowing their personal motivations. Obviously if they had succeed in creating a liberal, Western socialist alternative to the USSR their legacy now would be much less fraught than it is in our timeline where they just contributed to a full spectrum defeat of socialism.
Lots of Trotskyist did shift to the right after the USSR collapsed, suggesting they were never very sincere leftist.
Either way I think it adds a lot of context to the questions the review is trying to answer about who they were and why they were so influential. And undermines the review's conclusion about alternate paths to communism.
> It's worth pointing out that this is exactly the kind of leftism a conservative establishment would want to promote as a way of sucking oxygen away from revolutionary leftism
Of course, but this is just the "behaving as if it were controlled by a cabal of enemies" thing.
By a wonderful symmetry, the conservative movement often behaves as if it it were secretly controlled by leftists intent on discrediting conservatism.
In this case the documented evidence of a cabal is strong enough you at least have to consider the hypothesis is my claim.
The same Congress for Cultural Freedom also worked to suppress fascism at the same time, so the symmetrical right-wing suspicions aren't completely baseless either in this instance.
As it happens, a competing explanation could be just "everyone really is that stupid".
That should always be the alternative hypothesis.
I feel like most things of these sort are not examples of "they got paid to disseminate their intellectual sabotage" but merely at most "the CIA boosted the specific wacky ideologues they thought best served their interests, and they were useful idiots".
>Does this interpretation founder on the fact that most modern leftists don’t know any of this?
I think this is more a case of convergent evolution rather than direct lineage. My superficial understanding is that both the Frankfurt School and modern left-wing-coded art react strongly to the feeling "wow, none of our previous efforts have worked out, they seem to just strengthen the system".
In his history of the nineties, cultural commentator Chuck Klosterman explains how Nirvana and similar bands were conscious about how previous protest music ended up being commercialized and not achieving its intended effect of revolution. The response was sort-of to give up on sincere efforts to change things, and instead content themselves with ironic pessimism. This seems to me a broader example of the zeitgeist changing, and Adorno just being affected by it sooner.
That’s not what “negative dialectics” means. It’s negative because in Hegelian terms Critical Theory is applying an antithesis (the negative) without creating a synthesis (the positive). In other words, it is pure critique, pure hammer, pure destruction, without building anything. Adorno’s “Negative Dialectics” was a rhetorical justification of pure cultural destruction for his Hegelian/Marxist allies who may have been expecting a synthesis.
Can you tell me more? The impression I got from the book was that it involved a residual left over after the synthesis which the synthesis couldn't process.
First off, it is very hard to get much from the text of Negative Dialectics. It was not meant as an intelligible argument for outsiders but as a signal to insiders - Marxists steeped in Hegel.
I’ll cite the translators note from the version I have access to: “the enigmas piled up. I found myself translating entire pages without seeing how they led from the start of an argument to the conclusion.” He then gives some guidance to the reader, starting with: “The first key is the title. In his Preface, Adorno calls it paradoxical, explaining that one of his aims is to rid dialectics of such traditional affirmative traits as trying ‘to achieve something positive by way of negation.’” Here the translator says that the term “Negative Dialectics” from the title is about making it ok for dialecticians (read: Marxists) to engage in negation with no synthesis.
Adorno’s dialectics are all about the negation, so he isn’t saying to avoid negation - rather Adorno is signaling that the new Marxist critique has no need for a concrete synthesis.
Traditional Marxism required revolutionary action and gave a clear endgame - the classless proletarian utopia - and even made clear predictions about how this would come about. Unfortunately (for them) these predictions didn’t work out so well and Western culture was too contented to want a Revolution. Critical Theory’s genius innovation was to attack the incongruities of Western culture but without any positive predictions that might not come true, and without any positive vision that could itself be critiqued. Only when culture and institutions are destabilized would the Revolutionary Moment come. Traditional Marxists, steeped in Hegel, were probably confused at the lack of synthesis to accompany the destruction. Negative Dialectics came along when most Marxists were seeing the light that a new vision was needed for Marxism, and Adorno was trying to get them to buy in to Critical Theory and to see it as still connected to their Hegelian roots, rather than a rejection of Hegel. It worked pretty well I think.
Came here to write this. The synthesis or what this article calls 'normal hegel' is not at all normal because it is wrong and not what Hegel argued at all. Hypocrisy is the basis of civilization, the negative dimension & the unconscious are repressed in all these type summaries. We need alienation to get free; universality is a name of a kind of antagonism - a dimension only accessibly through the negative. Without it we merely are rebranding unfreedom as freedom, and symbolic identity as something positive when not finding yourself is the only way out of our predicament.
This was a stunning review.
Typo: Theodore Adorno -> Theodor
It's worth thinking more deeply about the question of instrumental reason. Alasdair MacIntyre and Christopher Lasch were thinkers who started off on the New Left and drifted over to the right, but they still agreed with the old notion of the pathologies of instrumental reason. That's part of MacIntyre's quest with After Virtue; without Natural Ends, modern moral philosophy is doomed to resolve itself into schools of egoism or emotivism. He was trying to recapture a sense of what substantive reason would look like.
Clearly relevant to your beliefs as well. If you think about AI risk, it's fundamentally a problem of substantive and instrumental reason. The classic AI apocalypse scenario is Clippy—which is just infinite reason as an instrument for an insane goal. Of course, it turns out you can't align an AI absolutely because if reason is just skill at making predictions then there's no room for ought to come in.
And it isn't "mystical" that the domination of nature leads to the domination of man. It's a simple observation that if the techniques of natural science can be used control nature, then they can be used to control human beings as well. If you understand electricity you can harness it, if you have an understanding of psychology, you can control people (in theory). Hence propaganda and social engineering and so on. This is the dark side of the modern conviction that science can be used to improve human society, it can also be used to control it. That's why dystopias are a modern genre: it's the same conviction behind 1984 and Brave New World and so on. In fact, the main reason this has failed to come true is the complete failure of the social sciences to actually produce actual knowledge!
I agree with the MacIntyre analogy - the link at "like some other philosophers" above goes to my review of After Virtue (which I also failed to understand or appreciate)
I would just like to point out that your post on McIntyre started out by talking about Rand's notes in the margin of her copy of Lewis's "Abolition of Man," a book which makes points very similar to Pseudo-Longinus's here.
There has to be some sort of deep meaning to this.
"the main reason this has failed to come true is the complete failure of the social sciences to actually produce actual knowledge!"
You're on to something there. But the attempt is ongoing.
Not only is it not advancing, it's regressing. The Republic is a superior work of social science than anything that comes out of a university today.
The first few hundred pages of Yuri Slezkine's amazing "The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution" make a good case that Soviet Communism was a re-imagining of the Book of Revelation. A break with history; a final victory of good over evil; violent in a good way as you destroy all the bad things in the world; no real knowledge of what lies on the other side, only that it is wonderful; even the same uneasy combination of determinism and free will: the revolution is inevitable and it will succeed but all good people should choose to help bring it about.
In the same way, the Frankfurt School seems like a re-imagining of Catholic social teaching. I couldn't help hearing echoes of Pope Leo's recent encyclical.
Agreed with the recommendation, at least for the first ~half of the book. "House of Government" is in large part a psychological or cultural-historical description & analysis of the revolutionary generation of Bolsheviks, their ideology, & some of their policy up to WW2. These are the same people that the Frankfurters (or Scott's understanding thereof) thought of as cargo cultists, & Slezkine basically confirms that while also giving a sympathetic view of why they followed their faith. (Some caveats: 1. The book assumes a decent knowledge of the history of Russia during the time period concerned. 2. It goes into great -- to most casual readers, probably excessive -- detail on the personal lives & writings of the Bolshevik intellectuals. 3. While Slezkine rightly points out that the conventional explanations for the failure of Bolshevik ideology to persist prove too much, his ultimate answer -- that it was because the Old Bolsheviks failed to inculcate the faith in their children, instead falling back on prerevolutionary High Culture -- is IMO not justified effectively by his own arguments.)
My memory of the book is that he thinks the failure of Bolshevik ideology to persist was that the prophesy didn't come true. The Revolution didn't lead to the final victory of good over evil but to a gray, bureaucratic society.
No, he explicitly rejects this: he notes that many millennarian religions that originally promised salvation in a short time survived the failure of this to occur: "The assumption that the Communist prophecy was uncommonly factual and therefore easily falsifiable seems insufficient: many millenarians set more or less specific dates for the end of the world, prepare accordingly, miss the deadline, weep from disappointment, postpone the inevitable, and continue to wait, more or less eagerly."
Yeah, now that you mention it ...
Spotted Toad had some blog posts on that book, before he deleted his online presence. The only Slezkine book I've read is "The Jewish Century".
For readers' convenience: https://web.archive.org/web/20220121023125mp_/https://spottedtoad.wordpress.com/2019/09/13/house-of-government/
Thank you for digging that up.
It reminds me of Thomas Sowell’s “a conflict of visions.” If you think reality itself is inherently unconstrained, it does make sense to bitch perpetually that things aren’t perfect. Any structures that do exist, should be torn down, because if they’re not perfect, they’re keeping us from perfection.
There is truth in that at some level, complacency with mediocrity prevents progress though in fairness, it also prevents regression. That line about perfect being the enemy of good is theoretically true but in practice it's generally uttered by defenders of the bad, i.e. "take your lumps and like it because it could be worse!!". Sure optimizing further at 99.9% is often a fools errand with a negative return but people uttering that IME are begroaning moving father than 0.00...1% capability where further gains are both immense, easy, and cheap..
It would make sense if bitching about imperfection actually led things to be better. Elon Musk was not happy that rockets were so expensive. He didn't bitch about it. He built a better one that you can reuse. The people who bitch about imperfection are typically losers and the "imperfection" they bitch about is typically that the government isn't taking enough money from successful people and giving it to them.
That is not the case. The people who built the better rocket that can be reused had been in the wind for decades before Musk slapped his name on it; Musk allocated the capital they required to build the better rocket.
The people bitching about imperfection are bitching because the best, most competent literal rocket scientists in the world cant do shit without a rich guy climbing his way out of the K hole to fund their shit, from his gains originating with the payment processor all of his code and decisions and branding had to be stripped out of before it became worth anything.
You know who could have funded those rocket scientists? NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, ULA. All those companies have experience building rockets and billions of dollars. But they didn't and Elon Musk did. You are right that he is not a rocket scientist. His skills are 1000x rarer and more valuable than that.
His skill is having lots of money and being so off his gourd he does dumb shit without thinking, is the thing. He's worse than a replacement level MBA at everything else. I used to have a boss who did the same shit as him; took long bomb risks at every opportunity, bought other companies, etc etc, but he didn't buy Tesla right before an advantageous tax regime made it profitable and degenerate gamblers sent it to the moon so he went bankrupt, even though he did the same things with the same logic.
If we go off his qualities; we should select who gets to allocate productive resource by scratch off; which might be better than our current system.
You've convinced me, sortition is the future!
Criticism is not destruction. This is the fundamental misunderstanding of the right looking at the left.
All imperfect systems should be improved as and when possible, yes.
That statement is not identical to 'everything should always be carelessly destroyed at all times.'
You can and should criticize things you love, things you think should continue, things you would dedicate your life to preserving, and most of all yourself.
An uncritical, all-approving eye is how the rot seeps in unnoticed and destroys all that you love.
Entropy seems to do exactly this: destroy everything all the time. Only things which are loved get maintained, the end result of which is that universe trends towards love. The function of the constant bitching is to prevent those people from building worse systems. They are too busy complaining about imperfection to make things worse!
Back in his Thin White Reichsbürger era, Thomas Mann famously made a sharp distinction of Culture (Ancient Greek vibes where even the most humble farmer struggles heroically against the tragedy of the human condition) versus Civilisation (Roman vibes where even the poets and philosophers are rational, dispassionate professionals, seeking to improve things), with World War I representing the clash between Team Culture (with Germany as their largest representative) on one side and the nascent Civilisational hegemony represented by the Anglo-Saxon world that seeks to "rationalise" Europe. France was the battleground somewhere in the middle.
After the shock of WW1, Team Civilisation is winning across the globe. Fascists start portraying all Jewish intellectuals as secret agents for Team Civilisation, but in fact, the exact opposite happens! Émigrés (of all ideologies) fleeing oppression on the continent end up in Civilisation countries like Britain and the US, where they start despairing about how unserious, pragmatic and materialistic things are in their new environment. Nabokov's Pnin is an example of this trope.
They quietly drop whatever intellectual project they had back in Continental Europe and they start subtly nudging the Anglo-Saxon world towards their Weltanschauung, or indeed to advocate for having a Weltanschauung at all. They can't just say the "American middle class should be more like the German urban intellectual class" because that wouldn't go over well considering the wars and all that.
Instead they can, for example, keep up a leftist façade and criticise pragmatic, rational thinking as "consumerism," anything with a commercial (rather than deeply intellectual) motive as a "factory", et cetera.
Accidentally, this culture/civilisation mismatch gives them an air of quaint and harmless ineffectuality, so they are not seen as subversive, and do not trigger an immune response from Team Civilisation, and even collect a few fans by representing something exotic and incomprehensible.
Were these émigrés effective in trying to nudge the West to be more intellectual in the way they wanted? Probably not, but they succeeded in creating their own little academic bubble of comfort, which must have made their life a little happier. Ironically, that is just the kind of incremental, pragmatic, harmless measure that their arch-enemy, "Capitalism" advocated all along.
A friend who knows more about the relevant history suggested something I think of as opposed to this - that the Frankfurters acknowledged Germany had amazing culture, but were in despair because despite that culture it got one-shotted by Nazism (and therefore, can culture really be good?) In this model, the Frankfurters were trying to come up with some new concept of Culture that synthesized the thesis - the old concept of Culture and what was good and valuable in it - with the antithesis that it had been a total failure in building human character when it counted.
A very short and very good read on culture and being "one shotted" by Nazis: https://bookmarks.reviews/george-orwells-1940-review-of-mein-kampf/
That's interesting, but Orwell's psychological theory seems . . . false? If promising people struggle and misery was what worked, surely someone would have figured this out in centuries of US elections. But the candidates keep promising people peace and a good economy, and the people keep voting for them based on whether or not they delivered.
True, but promising people violence against the outgroup works at least some of the time. And if your public is too sensible to believe that this will be easy and costless, then promising them violence against the outgroup while acknowledging that this will require struggle and misery makes you sound like a sensible pragmatist.
It may vary on circumstances. People may oscillate between optimist ("yes, just getting Good Things is possible") and pessimist ("everything is zero sum; everyone who promises Good Things for free a filthy liar; if we want anything, we must take it and pay for it with blood") moods based on circumstances. Germany after the WW1 defeat and consequent economic disaster must have been in a very dark mood indeed.
Perhaps what Orwell may have been trying to allude to is the appeal to glory and heroism. And, it seems, the appeal to struggle is often in the context of trying to convince people that they are under attack, besieged by "evil" forces from without and within, and so one either allows oneself to be overwhelmed, or you engage in the heroic struggle to save your nation from its "evil" enemies.
And, truth be told, I can think of at least one prominent American politician who offered Americans the opportunity to engage in a heroic struggle to save the nation from the "evil" forces that seek to destroy the nation and "real" Americans, and he won two elections, and probably only lost an election because he happened to be president when a pandemic hit.
I'm reminded of a couple of the things Eco said in his essay on Ur-Fascism:
"For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament...
In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
>And, it seems, the appeal to struggle is often in the context of trying to convince people that they are under attack, besieged by "evil" forces from without and within, and so one either allows oneself to be overwhelmed, or you engage in the heroic struggle to save your nation from its "evil" enemies.
Unfortunately for the US, it had pretty much ran out of enemies without by the late 2000s, so the only recourse was to come down with full force on enemies within, and as it turned out, they weren't lacking either in number or depravity, once you truly looked...
Your friend is likely right. But in the plain language of the proverbial One-Dimensional Man, 'building a synthesis' sounds just like a clever way of nudging attitudes towards the middle ground.
On that note, as terrible as it is to say in this particular example, expecting a cultural education to lead to objectively good (as opposed to merely Culture-perpetuating) ethical choices at all is something that I think is firmly on the Civilisation side of young Thomas Mann's Civilisation/Culture split, and not a natural assumption in early 20th century Germany.
In the "Civilisation" countries of the time, the ideal citizen must be familiar with literary classics to mentally prepare for making difficult ethical decisions when the time comes. The British even preferred their military class to be highly educated in Classics, but I suspect they expected them to learn from Achilles' mistakes, rather than wail over the death of the son of Peleus. Consequences over aesthetics.
In "Culture" countries, the ideal citizen is familiar with classics such as Antigone and Young Werther because habitual rumination on deep questions of humanity builds a rich internal life in the individual, and that rich internal life is a quasi-mystical terminal good, as well as the hidden force that holds families and nations together. Aesthetics over consequences.
Is that true, or just stereotypes? I don't know, but anecdotally my limited cultural education was very much in the continental/German tradition, and this split in attitudes seems to match my experience of literature teachers' attitudes even in the 2000s/2010, but I think there is some slow convergence.
The shock and dismay of these Western, mostly German, intellectual emigrés when they arrived in America has been much written about, a lot by themselves. Brecht, for example drips his most biting words of scorn for his reminiscences of his time as script-writer in LA: the crass materialism, the suburban lifestyle, the anti-intelectualism. He weaves it into his vision of Venice in The Life of Galileo (that's YOU he's pointing at, America!), as a vile place of merchants where knowledge and research are not appreciated unless they can be immediately transformed into money. From then to recently, Western Intellectuals (America, by Baudrillard, is a good example) like to keep replaying this trope with variations.
I wonder whether America was really less intellectual than Europe.
Here's a theory: in both Vienna and Los Angeles, 90% of the population is entirely uninterested in intellectual matters. But in Vienna they are just faceless NPC proles shuffling from their tiny flats to their dreary jobs and back, and they're part of the scenery, not something that you, as an intellectual with a slightly larger flat, need to worry about. But in America they're out and about driving Cadillacs and owning houses bigger than yours.
Actually I'm going to reply to myself and go one step further; the "proles in Cadillacs" phenomenon is behind the entirety of the whole left-wing intellectual movement.
Look at it this way: for thousands of years, intellectuals had not a word to say about the plight of the impoverished and oppressed, beyond Aristotle's "well some people just should be slaves I guess". Then along comes the Industrial Revolution and they won't shut up about it. Why? It wasn't because the industrial revolution made the plight of the poor worse than when they were peasant farmers.
But what the Industrial Revolution _did_ do was to create vast numbers of new rich and middle class people who suddenly had a whole lot of money and stuff, and the intellectual class absolutely hated this. Suddenly the intellectuals decided that they were deeply concerned very specifically with the plight of the poor workers who worked in the factories of these nouveau riche types.
You are dead on about the intellectuals. When they talk about "inequality" it's never about that between them and the proles, only between them and the billionaires. That is obviously their motivation.
It's not that intellectuals suddenly started talking about this, though, but rather that they suddenly came into existence. In a pre industrial society 90% of people are farmers. That's what it takes to feed everyone. And most of the rest are busy taking the wheat that the farmers grow and turning it into bread & beer or building farm equipment by hand. The only intellectuals then were members of the nobility or monks that had the inclination.
Also it's worth mentioning, what if the industrial revolution did make poverty worse? A poor factory worker may be technically richer than a peasant farmer, but being poor is just a much nicer condition out in the country than crowded urban poverty. And farm work has a seasonality to it, so you get long stretches of time off, and no night shifts ever. Factories, on the other hand, run 24/7. If I had the choice I would probably choose the peasant life.
I think the intellectual class has been with us for a long time, on and off, at least as far back as Ancient Greece. Some places and times had more of them than others but it's not that new a thing. There's plenty of thousand year old universities out there.
As for the peasant farmer's life being more pleasant than the factory worker's life, you might think so, but whether in 1800s England or 2020s China we observe that in practice people have always chosen to flow the other way, so I think we're just misestimating what the life of a manual farm labourer is actually like.
Once the intellectual class got Christianized, they *did* have words to say about the plight of the impoverished and oppressed, though, even if it was not the same as the ones they say now. The intellectual class of the antiquity was rather a different phenomenon from the one they have now.
Turchin's elite overproduction, I reckon. Anyway, great post, interesting commentary. I'm scrolling on, waiting for someone to mention the new frankfurt school, a bunch of really good satirists.
Are there people who criticize the enormous concentration of wealth because they are envious, and would actually be quite happy with it if they were wealthier? Almost certainly
Does that apply to some intellectuals? Probably.
Does that apply to most or all intellectuals? I'm skeptical
And, of course, the motivations of the intellectuals who critique society have little bearing on the merit of their arguments. I enjoy Thomas Sowell's ad hominem red herrings as much as anyone, but at the end of the day, we still have the arguments, themselves, to evaluate.
Someone with the best of intentions can be factually wrong and make a poor argument, someone with the worst of intentions can be factually correct and offer a sound argument
1. But, just as a matter of fact, it should be noted that it simply isn't true that "for thousands of years, intellectuals had not a word to say about the plight of the impoverished and the oppressed"
Even if we limit ourselves only to the West, which I'm guessing is what you meant, and taking the Bible as a semi-historical record (I'm an agnostic) , plenty of "prophets" recorded in the Bible were concerned with the plight of the impoverished and the oppressed, and the "prophets" often were the intellectuals of their time.
Do you believe that Jesus was just envious of the money-lenders?
Are you familiar with the Christian intellectuals who came after Jesus, who were also concerned with the plight of the poor, or the Renaissance humanists, like Erasmus and Thomas More?
2. Do you believe intellectuals like Tesla and Einstein weren't rich because they weren't intelligent enough to become rich if that was their aim in life?
Perhaps if someone has been indoctrinated into a highly materialistic, consumerist, morally corrupted society that worships wealth accumulation and tells people that that is the measure of success in life, and one has not been able to break free of those cultural precepts, it may become almost impossible for such a person to imagine that others, or an intellectual, might have different values, that they might have refused to surrender their empathy and compassion, or not want to waste their life on the hedonic treadmill, or that they wouldn't also confuse the means of life for the ends.
And, I think it is fair to imagine intellectuals would have a higher than average chance of emancipating themselves from those cultural precepts.
But perhaps it is comforting and flattering to some to believe that Dickens secretly envied people like Scrooge, rather than pitied them, and didn't actually care about children like Tiny Tim.
Imagine one devoting their whole life to the pursuit of wealth accumulation, and seeing it didnt fill the hole they hoped it would, they at least find some mild satisfaction in people being impressed, and then they encounter people who aren't impressed in the slightest, the ego will often want to defend itself by saying their opinion doesn't matter, or, that they are lying- they are secretly envious.🤷
3. As to the idea that, maybe they don't care about wealth, but status, once again, I think people maybe overestimate the extent to which genuine intellectuals value perceived status amongst the general population.
In fact, any intellectual well-versed in history would probably recognize being an intellectual is probably one of the worst, most dangerous ways to try to gain status in society, and, for much of history, it could be a struggle just trying to survive and avoid prison/exile because of how hostile societies can be to anyone who questions its precepts.
As David Hume once wrote:
"A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace."
"I think people maybe overestimate the extent to which genuine intellectuals value perceived status amongst the general population."
Are "genuine intellectuals" like "true Scotsmen"?
As opposed to sophists and pseudointellectuals, but, of course, in the eyes of some, those are real intellectuals, and so it would look like "true Scotsmen"
Good comment about the early Christians and concern for the poor, but one objection: some of these supposedly high-minded intellectuals do in fact like to complain about other people wasting their lives in the pursuit of wealth accumulation and being very successful at it. I think it's perfectly reasonable to question the motives of these people, because I don't think it's any big secret these days that there isn't a fixed pool of wealth in the world; that it's created by human activity, and so the accumulation of wealth by person A doesn't come at the expense of person B except in some very limited circumstances, so there really isn't any reason to do much other than pity people stuck on the hedonic treadmill. In fact, if you really want to show you're a free-thinker and you really are concerned with the plight of the poor, you might consider the notion that misers like Scrooge are actually a great benefit to society:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2004/12/what-i-love-about-scrooge.html
I think there are a few different issues here:
1. Yes, we know that we can have positive sum exchanges where both parties are left better off than prior to the exhange
2. This really doesn't have much direct importance, and I know that people understand the difference, but I just want to remind ourselves that nominal value usually increases significantly more rapidly than real value, and, sometimes we may forget to adjust for that difference, giving us a false impression of just how fast the "pie" is growing.
3. Economics is study of the allocation of finite resources. Yes, technology can improve the real value we can produce from our finite resources, but, we should be honest that we are still talking about a relatively fixed pie of finite underlying resources, at least at this point- land and natural resources are relatively fixed and finite, human labor and human capital is relatively finite in the short term, etc, and one's relative share of material wealth has a very strong impact on one's ability to exercise control of those finite resources.
4. During COVID, I finally started hearing people admit that, of course, not everyone can be millionaires, at least not with the buying power that millionaires currently enjoy, because, yes, in fact, we are talking about the allocation of finite resources, and if there is that much money chasing a relatively fixed number of good and services, the price of those goods and services will rise until supply and demand get closer to equilibrium .
5. Just because there CAN be positive sum exchanges, and just because there CAN be increases to the real value of goods and services thanks to the impact of things like technological advancement does not mean that, necessarily, there must be no relationship to wealth inequality.
Power dynamics and imbalances can heavily influence the outcomes of even positive sum exchanges in ways that disproportionately disadvantage the less powerful.
Basically, rent-seeking behavior can and likely does occur, and those with more power are the ones best able to succeed at rent-seeking behavior.
6. I know people will argue vigorously that capitalism is completely different than feudalism, the point of this example is just to illustrate that you can have a growing pie, and that doesn't mean it benefits everyone or that it cant disproportionately benefit the more powerful.
Imagine if we live in feudal times, and someone said, "hey, I wonder if there might be a link between the wealth of the lord and the poverty of the peasants who work for the lord" and another person says "that's idiotic, the lord is clearly a job creator, the peasants would have nothing if it wasn't for the lord"
Then, one of the peasants or another of the lord's servants comes up with a technological advancement that increases the productivity of farming. The lord reasons that it is still his land and capital, he was the one with the "genius" to adopt the innovation, the peasants are still putting in the same effort and hours, and so, obviously, the entire increase in output belongs to him, and so it does go, entirely to him, and then someone says "don't you get that it's not a fixed pie, the lord is growing the pie!"
7. Besides the issue of growing the pie, there is still the issue of the distribution of the pie, either way, and what a just distribution of the pie would look like. Generally, it seems like most people believe, in view of fairness and practicality considerations, that it should correspond to someone's contribution, or at least, that's a good starting point (e.g. even if one believes that maybe "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a nice sentiment, they might have concerns about its practicality).
In economics, they talk of the marginal product, like wins above replacement in sports. But, if we add up the marginal product of every person (and the other factors of production) in the economy, it is likely we would end up with a total that is less than the actual value of the economy.
As we know, *cooperation* can make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. And even if we assumed that workers were actually paid their marginal product (which I think is questionable, especially in sectors where competition for workers is weak), and the other factors of production were paid their marginal product, if there was a residual left, how would it be divided?
I suspect there is a good chance there is a residual, and that residual is given to those in power because they are the ones empowered to distribute it and will, of course, usually just give it to themselves, and because they have the power to do so, they can craft many elaborate justifications for this, that will be believed by many, but, the reality is that it was the power imbalances that allowed them to do it and then came the post hoc rationalizations.
8. NAIRU: in our current economic paradigm, a certain level of unemployment is considered desirable and important to keep inflation in check.
I am sure you saw how upset employers were getting in the aftermath of COVID when they actually had to compete slightly more for labor, that labor wasnt desperate enough to accept any conditions of employment that were offered, and actually had a little more bargaining power, when they were so accustomed to even more massive power imbalances, and how grateful they were when there was finally some "slack" that put the peasants back in our place.(Reminds me of reading about the impact of the Black Death on labor markets)
9. Economic efficiency, the improved efficiency in maximizing shareholder profit does not necessarily mean improved efficiency of a society maximizing the well-being of the individuals of that society, and while it seems frequently supposed that they do equate, I believe that supposition deserves more scrutiny than it often gets.
And, I would offer the possibility that, generally speaking, the greater the power imbalances between individuals in society, at least with respect to bargaining power, the more likely we will see a disconnect because those with more power then, often, have more power to compel others to accept terms they would not accept if bargaining power was not so unequal, and serve as cogs in a wheel to further enrich and empower the powerful.
10. Speaking for myself, I don't care what the wealthy do.
Back to the feudal/manorial analogy, if we made the adjustment that peasants enjoyed freedom of movement and other land was available, if people want to be lords and lots of peasants happily wanted to serve their lords, and considered them to be great, benevolent, and generous benefactors and job creators, power to them, whatever makes people happy.
I would just say, if anyone actually wanted to work for the benefit of themselves, their families, their communities, rather than a master, then we should leave and create a community on new land, and divide up the land amongst ourselves as yeoman farmers.
(Modern equivalent, something like distributism, but, again, just for those who voluntary want to do it, if people enjoy working for giant multinational public corporations, whatever floats their boat.
Although, truth be told, I do have to wonder how many people genuinely enjoy this or would if they understood how it impacts things they are upset about, but, that, in part, goes back to beliefs I have that share concerns with Gramsci and critical theorists about the ways in which power imbalances and cultural hegemony pervade almost all aspects of our society and the public consciousness, to the benefit of ideologies that legitimize and even glorify those power imbalances.)
Of course many entire books can and have be written to expand further and explore other topics, especially with respect to rent-seeking vs adding real value, financialization, etc., but I'll leave it there for now.
I don’t have the time or the motivation to respond to all of that, so I'll just make a few points I think you're missing:
1. Trade is, generally speaking, positive sum for all parties involved, otherwise they wouldn't agree to trade. There are exceptions of course, such as those that involve fraud or coercion, but those are relatively rare "defect in the prisoners dilemma" type strategies that only work in the short run, if at all.
2. Surplus value created via trade is split between producers and consumers. The easiest way to think about it is this: when you buy something, you're typically not paying the maximum amount you'd be willing to cough up for that item, and likewise, the seller is usually not selling at the lowest price he's willing to accept. Instead, the two of you agree to some price in the middle somewhere. The difference between the max you'd be willing to pay and the amount you actually paid is referred to as the consumer surplus, and the difference between the minimum the seller is willing to accept and the actual price is the producer surplus. Read more here if you care to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus
The implication of this is that someone who has done well for themselves has probably also done well in creating value for society. He gets his surplus, his customers get theirs. This is basic Adam Smith Wealth of Nations stuff. I would have thought someone calling himself Condorcet would be on board with this.
3. This applies to wage negotiations as well. You're probably working for at least a bit more than you'd be willing to accept to do your job, and your employer is probably paying slightly less than the maximum he or she would be willing to. This is called the employer or employee surplus.
4. These things are hard to measure, sure, but the implication here is that the real value we attach to goods or services is actually much higher than the nominal value, not the other way around, as you stated. You could think of something like tap water, for example. People need clean water to live, and the fact that a seemingly inexhaustible supply is piped into my house is super convenient compared to the alternatives, so I place great value on the water itself and the fact that the company that built my house tapped into the local water system when they built it. How much of my home's cost was tied up in the water pipes? And how much do I spend on water on a monthly basis? Almost nothing in both cases. That's a big win. I get a lot of value out of that for almost no cost.
> with World War I representing the clash between Team Culture (with Germany as their largest representative) on one side and the nascent Civilisational hegemony represented by the Anglo-Saxon world that seeks to "rationalise" Europe.
You know, if you asked me which side was which, I would've swapped them around. In the blue corner, you have Germany/Prussia, famous for its rationalising approach to everything, from forestry to war. In the red corner, you have Britain/England, famous for clinging to tradition, sending its sons to Oxbridge to study the classics and to Europe to steep in the culture.
I agree to an extent, this Culture/Civilisation thesis was in large part a self-serving exaggeration, constructed to justify a war that was quite hard to explain. Yet, I think there is some truth to it when applied to the attitude of literary and philosophical circles.
Most of the latinate (Lateiner) German intellectuals were quite averse to Prussia and its strict mindset (considering it a subspecies of 'Eastern despotism') and they were ineffectually speaking out against Prussian-dominated cultural uniformisation in the late 1800s Kulturkampf.
My reading of Thomas Mann's Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (that I referenced above) is that it marks the moment when a large strand of German intellectuals stopped being skeptical (or "Nonpolitical," as in the title) of the German Empire, and started justifying it as a blunt instrument to protect against the greater evil of Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. The moment of the Jedi Council grudgingly agreeing to use the Clone Army against the Trade Federation, several years late, I guess. Of course, I'm not sure that the actual German leadership cared for this kind of moral approval.
Scott, you should read the chapter 'Odysseus, or Myth and Enlightenment', from Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment! It's an extremely idiosyncratic and (honestly!) wryly funny reading of Odysseus as the World's First Pragmatist Natural Scientist - being cast from disaster to disaster, he calculates the exact quantity of sacrificial cattle he needs in every situation in order to subjugate a hostile but mechanistic cosmos and bend all of the minor nature deities to his will. Bizarre, esoteric, and great stuff!
I read a summary + some excerpts in this book, and was surprised how similar it sounded to my own (fake, deliberately silly) Odyssey review in the third part of https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/25/those-modern-pathologies/ . Maybe we're both on to something?
Two brief thoughts: my first exposure to Adorno was an essay on Don Giovanni, which I found revolting. Maybe if I revisited now I’d find that I’d misinterpreted it - a quick search tells me that scholars gloss him as treating the play and character as deeply ambiguous, whereas i recall him bending over backwards to praise the titular character.
Second, I’m surprised you didn’t bring up Teach. Sadly, Porn in particular seems like a contemporary example of weird, mystical, vía negativa if-I-told-you-what-I-meant-you-would-misinterpret-it argumentation, even as Teach, or his persona, is aggressively opposed to communism and left theory while also focusing on (a particular subset of) art criticism. Perhaps we should read the Frankfurt school backwards via that as a starting point?
Feels like watching someone politely audit a group of very serious wizards who swore their spells had nothing to do with the weather.
Negative dialectics: the original ‘don’t look behind the curtain’ heuristic. Delightful.
Forget Marcuse, et al. The happening was Cassirer. These social-politico musings are arbitrary,
Get under the symbol to figure out a way from this merry-go-round. Ditch symbols asap.
"Even beyond that, there seems to be a Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sake."
Including when they're in charge. Since nothing can be truly fixed, the most important thing is to vilify the enemy. Of course, their opponents these days by and large also don't believe that fixing is a possibility, so they employ the same strategy.
"But why should we believe that manifesting God through History is a real thing?"
Because the alternative is the cosmic horror that few people can bring themselves to accept.
I don't think it's a cosmic horror. Modern Norway is pretty nice, which serves as a proof of concept that we can get nice things within the current paradigm without manifesting God through History. And it seems unlikely that it's the literal maximum niceness possible and it's impossible for the current paradigm do better. So what's so horrible about restricting ourselves to normal within-this-paradigm solutions?
A godless universe without a guaranteed utopia somewhere along the way is pretty horrifying. It's no surprise that even a century and a half after Nietzche pronounced God dead, humanity still clings to the holy corpse, and Norway is no exception. Like all of their first world peers, the ruling class there claims membership in the traditional church, and also worships Him in His Hegelian-Marxist hypostasis.
Somehow people managed without a guaranteed utopia before Christianity came along. Very few religions other than Christianity and Islam have anything like "manifesting God through History", and for those which do have it, such as Norse Ragnorok, it is a cataclysm to fear, not to look forward to.
Or for classical Eastern cultures, yet another round of the same cycles within cycles. Maybe that was yet another cope to avoid true openness though.
With Nordics, you need to make a *giant* distinction between being members of the National Church and actually believing any of it. The *large* majority of the members of the National Churches are non-believers, most of them auto-added from birth or baptism.
Isn't Norway a perfect example of the lack of substantive reason and the dominance of instrumental reason. It is a cosmic horror, they just aren't facing it. Sure, the society Norway has managed to build up is sure nice for the norwegians, but is bought 100% with oil exports. Getting nice things in the current paradigm always means that someone else gets bad things.
The norwegian way: export the bad stuff, close the gates, enjoy cultivating your private garden. Someone else can fix the world.
I'm something of a Hegelian myself, though not necessarily a left Hegelian. I think you should give a bit more consideration to progress toward God.
You can see the Hegelian dialectic in a lot more than a few periods of history. It's in the formation of stars and planets, in evolution, and in the prehistoric development of language and societies. Some species developed pecking orders and the alpha male to negate anarchy; primates and especially humans synthesized those by developing majoritarian forms where the big man wasn't the physically strongest but the most popular through instincts for costly punishment and reciprocity.
Now we're trying to build machine gods; the problem for the dialectic to solve is how to maintain the light of consciousness when conscious beings may no longer be the highest form of intelligence.
The machine God thing is probably off. Maybe God is the light of consciousness spread through the reachable universe. It will take more dialectical iterations to figure out.
Can you explain what you mean by the Hegelian dialectic being in the formation of the stars and planets?
A combination of opposing physical forces (gravity, momentum from the universe's expansion, entropy) that have led to the development of more interesting and productive forms like planets and stars, which have produced life.
Of the things you mentioned only gravity is a force. You can get planets and stars just from gravity.
I guess a more reasonable way to say it would be that gravity is opposed by electrostatics, which is why we have interesting things instead of black holes. But I don't think we need to credit Hegel for every notion of "sometimes things counteract other things".
Surely Hegelian Dialectics means something beyond "sometimes stuff go in different directions"?
I think Hegel would reject that the stars forming is part of the dialectic.
Fair. Would it be more faithful to his vision to say the dialectic has at least proceeded since the beginning of life?
I've heard of people who've tried to merge predictive processing with Hegel
That would be interesting: have you heard these people's names?
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2019.00042/full
https://philpapers.org/rec/GIBHIE-2
I don't think so. See Hegel's Philosophy of Nature in the Encyclopedia.
The notorious Hero's Journey (as hyped by Joseph Campbell) seems to address positive dialectics of achieving ultimate goods through mystic trials and adventures. Would Hegel appreciate?
It is perhaps not for immoderate critics to resolve dialectical contradictions and bring ultimate peace.
That's a lot of words about some people with extraordinarily stupid ideas.
Fewer comments like this, please (and more taters!)
Sigh, this is what happens when you live in a world without wizardly magic. People long to *do* something with their intellect in a personally meaningful sense that engineering an object or proving a theorem that everyone can then use doesn't offer. They want the excitement of special knowledge and the drama of moral significance not the boring understanding of what might be true.
Ultimately, they settle for cosplaying at social change pretending their art has some deep importance in world affairs rather than being an entertaing diversion other people can drink wine while looking at.
Wonderfully informative and entertaining. Thanks for sharing.
When reading the portion about how the school failed to adequately communicate it's message to the late-stage capitalists, all I could think of was
>Universal Love, said the cactus person.
I really wish we would distinguish between 'You can't say this because it's a truth that someone doesn't want you to know and they will punish you' and 'you can't say this because someone co-opted this language to use in a popular lie, and if you say it like this your audience will just hear the lie instead of what you meant to communicate'.
It's very appealing and righteous-feeling to say 'I should be able to say technically true things as much as I want, and it's my audience's fault if they misunderstand me because they fell for propaganda that misused the same terms and phrases'. But this just makes you a useful idiot on the side of the propagandists and liars.
Language isn't precise enough to say technically true things in many complex domains, because words have so many different meanings and contexts and understandings and associations that there isn't a single literal unambiguous interpretation of most sentences in those domains. If you come up with single precise idea in your head, say a sentence for which that is one of thousands of possible interpretations, and then say that sentence to an audience that is almost certain not to interpret it that way, then you haven't actually communicated.
My favorite conspiracy theory is the one that says that Adorno wrote all the songs of the Beatles:
https://thebeat.ie/the-beatles-did-not-write-their-own-songs-theodor-adorno-conspiracy-theory.php
https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2019/sep/10/a-little-help-from-my-neo-marxist-philosopher-adorno-fifth-beatle-according-olavo-carvalho
All I can say is the Germans have *a lot* to answer for.
We Czechs say: "The Germans don't make small mistakes."
There's an understatement.
You Czechs haven't met me. My lady can list up a lot of small mistakes I made only this week.
> Even classic Hegel seems at least a little kabbalistic...
Hegel is very into mystical traditions. Here's a (short) segment from his lectures on the philosophy of history called "Kabbalah and Gnosticism". These lectures aren't his best work (historically, it's hard for someone in his age to get an inside read on other cultures) but they're much better than most of his contemporaries IMO
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpkabala.htm
Imho he was also into Meister Eckhart.
He's MUCH more mystical (and less eschatological) than people give him credit for IMO. There's a serious interpretive lineage (Magee/O'Regan type stuff) that puts that near the "core" of his thought, as opposed to the marxists who prefer him easily secular-izable.
Here's the last line of "Phenomenology of Spirit":
> "History (intellectually) comprehended, form[s] the recollection and Golgotha of Absolute Spirit, the reality, the truth, the certainty of its throne, without which it were lifeless, solitary, and alone. Only the chalice of this realm of spirits foams forth to God His own Infinitude"
And another quote from his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences
> "God is God only so far as he knows himself. His self-knowledge is, further, a self-consciousness in man and man's knowledge of God, which proceeds to man's self-knowledge in God."
> If you take away the belief that history can phase transition into a utopia utterly different from and superior to modern life, then trying to improve things normally through human reason and human effort seems like the way to go.
Even with such a belief, incremental improvement is a sensible approach.
Evolution only ever operates in incremental improvements, and yet it still produces phase transitions.
You start off making one transistor to make your vacuum tube radios more efficient. Then a couple more. And it keeps working, until you find yourself surrounded by smartphones.
I believe in a technological singularity from superhuman AI. (Although, given the state of alignment, I'm not convinced it will go well). So yeah, I believe in (at least the possibility of, if we solve alignment) a phase transition to a utopia utterly different from modern life. (See friendship is optimal). But I still think these philosophers were being mostly useless here.
We need a negative theology for Communism because it's metaphysically impossible to imagine the end of capitalism.
An interesting (and very short) read is the letter correspondence between Adorno and Marcuse, right before Adorno's death, on the student movement. Adorno seems to believe that actually oops we kind of caused left-fascism, while Marcuse does not.
A couple of points stand out for me. One about substance, the other procedural.
It should be obvious by now that the Frankfurt School (and all other dialectical philosophies) are substantively wrong about a key element of that approach: history is not moving toward some preordained end. Progress is not slowly revealing some sort of truth about human nature, the idea that there is ultimately one, and only one, correct way for humanity to live has no support. Isaiah Berlin (yes, another European Jew, but of a later generation) wrote extensively and persuasively about this: that there are a plurality of value systems that could make human beings happy, unfortunately they are not all compatible with each other, hence the necessity of choosing. The difficulty humanity has in choosing which of many equally plausible set of values is where war and conflict come from, would that we could find a better way. But the ultimate evil (says Berlin) is Absolutism--the insistence by one faction that their solution is the one and only Truth, and therefore they feel justified in imposing that "truth" on the rest of us, by force if necessary.
If history has no inherent direction, then phrases like "civilized" and "primitive" cannot adhere to their traditional meaning. So-called "primitive" people are, on an individual basis, just as cognitively complex and well adapted to their environment as we the more "civilized" ones are. Similar considerations apply to other subjective terms of value judgement when applied to entire categories of people.
The ideal society might then be defined as that within which everyone is maximally adapted to their environment. The problem is that we are all in competition with each other, trying to secure access to and control over social resources at each others' expense, so any one state of affairs is inherently dynamic and subject to change. There is no ideal society to strive toward--merely an arena in which the competitive advantage of large scale cooperation ensures that living conditions slowly and incrementally improve for most (though not all) people.
Procedurally, the purpose of social criticism, as practiced today, isn't to propose solutions to anything. It's to point out the way in which the distribution of power protects the status quo and hides itself behind cultural stories. Movies, music, clothing, narrative, aren't inherently *bad* per se, but they do conceal and protect the status quo, including unjust inequalities.
Because of it's focus on hidden power dynamics, it can seem a little mystical. Social criticism isn't an empirical science, it's a form of literary criticism, so they can't *prove* that, say, the commercial success of jazz indicates that it has been coopted by the studio industry and used to prevent more musicians of color from achieving success. They can only point to certain aesthetic patterns, and leave it to others to decide what that means. This seems inefficient, but what alternative is there?
So they are wrong on substance, and their procedure, while useful, has some weaknesses.
As for cultural Marxism, I don't know, it sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. But assuming it ever was a real thing, it must count as one of the most spectacular failures of intellectual history. I mean, I can't think of anything less Marxist than Hollywood.
Academic social criticism is blind to the hidden power dynamics of their own ingroup. Leftist criticism is just an attack against their outgroup which makes it worthless. Everybody dunks on their enemies. Nothing special.
They aren't the only ones blind to the power of their own ingroup.
Wow, this Isaiah Berlin sounds pretty sane! Thanks for the name, I'll look him up.
You're welcome! : )
>This seems inefficient, but what alternative is there?
Ditching the obscurantism fetish would be a good start. I doubt that it ever amounted to much more than signalling sophistication, which is a forgivable vice when you're an obscure friend group doing its own thing, but a catastrophic failure when it underlies the dominant worldwide intellectual milieu.
I wouldn't call it "dominant," except maybe in sociology. But yes, obscurantism is never efficient.
Admittedly this is "received wisdom", but aren't all of the humanities infested with obscurantist critical pomo?
I wouldn't even call the Humanities the dominant worldwide intellectual milieu. To the extent that there even is a dominant form (these days that's questionable), that's probably journalism.
OTOH, you could make a strong argument that it's marketing.
Aren't journalists overwhelmingly humanities-educated these days?
I agree that marketing is dominant in its own way, but while it's happy enough to subvert the orthodoxy on the sly whenever it can get away with it, challenging it overtly is out of the question, on the global corporation scale.
While journalism students get exposed to their fair share of social criticism, obviously, they have their own history and traditions, not to mention writing standards. Neither the NYT nor the WSJ much resemble the Frankfurt school.
Marketing doesn't challenge the orthodoxy, it coops and subverts it. "The Revolution will be televised." Your unique individual capacity for self-expression has been commercialized. You better believe this is done deliberately.
Marcuse did work for the OSS during World War II and the US State Department afterwards. There is a compilation of his and other Frankfurt School members work. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691134130/secret-reports-on-nazi-germany
Do you ever see your own people - that is, the quote-unquote rationalist movement - in these guys?
Because I'm not saying that Adorno is Yudkowsky, or anything, but I see a sort of symmetry here. A kind of sociocultural rhyme.
I keep thinking (as an avowed Yudkowsky fan in many ways, tbc) that Yud's "just because I was early on AI doesn't mean I was wrong" rhymes a lot with the Left's "just because we were early on mass media/fascism/capitalism/etc. doesn't mean we're wrong." Could go either way!
"By the 1930s, people had started to notice that this wasn’t happening. Although capitalism had suffered some crises - World War I, the Great Depression - countries had responded with what the Marxists called state capitalism, a broad term for hybrid systems including New Deal America, Stalinist Russia, and Fascist Italy. Most people seemed to like their own country’s variety of state capitalism."
You are overlooking how bad the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression felt for intellectuals and artists in America, Germany, and Austria.
In 1920s America, prosperous businessmen had subsidized lots of colleges, museums, and highbrow magazines. Curtis Yarvin could no doubt explain how 1920s leftism like protests over Sacco and Vanzetti's execution was all a Communist front, but it seemed at the time more oriented toward civil liberties and anti-Prohibitionism.
By the early 1930s, almost all this capitalist money was gone. In response, there was a huge shift to the left on the part of highbrows, as can be seen in the 1930s phenomenon of Western intellectuals making pilgrimages to Moscow to meet Stalin and praise him, which had barely happened in the 1920s with Lenin or Stalin.
Do you think the position of labour dramatically shifting its relationship to capital was part of the motivation here? Recognize a real issue and look for ways to address it? Yes, there were hard-core ideologues who wanted to get in the way of it in any way possible. Yes, there was a political calculus vis-a-vis the United States and Russia that certainly confounds the issue. When you talk about high-level capitalists, and I'm thinking of Armand Hammer because that's the only name I really know, exploring this new paradigm, I tend to think of it as having a rather pragmatic streak along with the rest. There is a real financial incentive to get along better with your labour force. The Germans handled unionisation very differently than the Americans did. Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, and I suppose I could go on if I had better information, but I think you get my drift. The British seem to mostly have made a complete hash of it somehow. But I think the political ramifications of the thing overwhelm them. There really were a bunch of hard-core communists and a lot of workers who were just by nature disgruntled. That last bit is speculation, of course, but I'm British, so I feel I'm allowed to. I'm also Irish, so I appreciate, after suffering through a long famine and being very keen to have the English out of their country, that communism was a useful handmaiden to that process. I have never met a truly communist Irishman. I don't really think it's in their nature.
Deisach! If you're listening, please give me your thoughts.
Capitalists became less fanatically laissez-faire after 1929 and more willing to compromise with labor to avoid the whole country going far left.
That worked out pretty well for a few decades.
yeah
Adorno is one of my favorite nominative-determinism examples (Adore? No! Seems to be a good summary of his writings)
This analysis of the Frankfurt School makes me a little sad, because Benjamin's Arcades Project was beautiful and insightful, and Adorno's claim that modern society, driven by unquestioning technological and economic "progress", ultimately fosters human alienation and suffering is right.
And while the purported successors are guilty of obscurantism, DeBord's critique is smeared like molasses all over Trump's upcoming prizefights on the white house lawn.
Adorno's Jazz stuff is nonsense, and I hope we have left any form of teleology (whether eschatological or dialectical) in the dust by now. The school as a whole lives on a now-dead branch.
Perhaps we can separate the descriptive claim (capitalism does things to culture and psyche), the teleological one (history is heading somewhere utopian), and the prescription. The USSR's collapse (and modern science) wounds the second but barely touches the first, and the first stands fine once you stop backing it with prophecy.
The simplest critique of our system (I will call it the industrial juggernaut, as it encompasses both the tidy western market and the draining of the Aral sea) needs no dialectics: energy use over time, tightly correlated with environmental destruction, has gone up and to the right at a consistent or accelerating rate, regardless of the tuning of reform, bending only where humanity was overwhelmed: reforestation after the indigenous genocide in the Americas, the fossil-fuel dip during COVID.
The curve seems to resist policy. No need for god or for resolved tensions; it is simply capital and our own narcissistic desire creating an attractor basin that seems only escapable through crisis. There is an unresolvable contradiction between a growth-committed system and a finite substrate, and it requires no God manifesting through History.
The other branch is alive, and doesn't need the Hegelian nonsense: Georgescu-Roegen on entropy and economics; Foster's "metabolic rift" (the materialist, non-teleological Marx you wished existed); Saito's Slow Down; Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind for the instrumental-reason worry without Hegel. More process and immanence than obscure dialectics.
And yes, the master's tools won't demolish the master's house, and there are mercifully few "Deterritorialize this, bee-atch" t-shirts. But Bateson, Meadows, and Stengers are rigorous, legible, and hard to commodify at once — so opacity was never buying the subversion it claimed. Mostly, it bought irrelevance and an excuse to skip rigor.
Good to hear that saner people are doing good work there, because I have to agree that techno-modern alienation is real.
Do any of these guys have an evolutionary take on this? If something we now do provides great 1st-level benefits, but subtly grates on our being in ways we can't quite put our finger on, there's a good chance these subtler aspects of our natures have evolutionary origins of their own.
Isn't the answer that we simply weren't built for this? Humanity evolved under the assumption that they would be hunting, gathering, killing, reproducing, and then simply dying. There just hasn't been enough time for humanity itself to change, and with the current lack of selection pressures, no amount of time will be enough. Of course, evolution doesn't optimize for happiness, it optimizes for fitness, and humanity is doing very well right now. Perhaps there's no issue to begin with.
Depends on the “this”
If you mean “capital”, then you are probably right. We cannot understand a system this vast and its attractor basins. If you mean the limited world, of course we are. Many societies have understood limits - it is just that the societies that invent capital destroy them
> Many societies have understood limits - it is just that the societies that invent capital destroy them
Isn't that just evolution in action? Even if genetic selection has failed to produce results, cultural selection has been working just fine. The result has been something incredibly powerful and productive. Even if the body has been left behind, evolution does not stop. Again, it's not optimized for happiness, because happiness is merely a means to an end. If you can get results without it, there is no reason for it to be selected for.
It is might makes right. That is a weak model of evolution.
What works is right. Communism is not a viable ideology. There is no place for it in a world where more efficient systems exist. That's all there is to this.
Maybe the deeper issue than not understanding limits, is that we don't seem to have understood abundance. We collectively produce more than enough for every human to live comfortably, but cannot help perpetuating our hoarding and all kinds of advetsarial behaviors that are materially not helpful anymore.
Absolutely! Whether homeostatic or homeorhetic, a process that is sustaining has to have a mechanism for “enough”
GLP for society
>techno-modern alienation is real<. Absolutely true. Just ask the luddites. Or the people who used to make shoes. Or people like myself that used to edit physical film. I spent most of my youth learning all sorts of now arcane processes for doing that job, and every one of them probably isn't even worth putting in a museum. I'm certainly capable of boring you at a cocktail party, however.
If we happen to coincide at the same cocktail party I'm happy to give it a try. I can be quite boring too!
>unquestioning technological and economic "progress", ultimately fosters human alienation and suffering.
This strikes me as a brief restatement of the lesson of the Garden of Eden and any other myth that documents the fall of humanity from grace. I don't think this is a new problem. It's just accelerating.
We've got to get ourselves back to the garden, say Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. At least they were clear about their intention.
>And while the purported successors are guilty of obscurantism, DeBord's critique is smeared like molasses all over Trump's upcoming prizefights on the white house lawn.
The purported successors are also guilty of Trump's popularity itself. It's all well and good to "critique" everything and everybody while you're an ivory tower outsider, but after decades of university indoctrination young "liberals" live and breathe these ideas, and eagerly try implementing them at first opportunity. I suppose that if the goal is the collapse of the "industrial juggernaut", it's all going according to plan...
Do they think that by describing what was happening, critical theorists manifested it?
When critique is the highest status endeavor, little work gets done on devising and implementing workable solutions. So the crisis continues on its merry way, and all the critiquers get to shake their heads and say - "see, it's exactly how we said it would happen!", maintaining their status and then some. So it goes.
It is such a tiny effect relative to casino capitalism, Fox News, private equity, insider trading, and so many more factors. Underpaid, irrelevant university associate professors did not create Trump, they predicted him. Neoliberalism and Okigarchic capitalism are the true parents.
And literally nobody (statistically) has read critical theory. It is a scapegoat, and a particularly revealing one, in that it is the most coherent critique of what is actually happening now (full-scale surveillance, spectacle, simulacra).
>Underpaid, irrelevant university associate professors did not create Trump
The causality chain is professors -> students -> "elite human capital" -> crazy "progressive" policies -> Trump. Of course, it's not the only cause, the brain death of conservatism also paved the way for him.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that capitalism fosters alienation and suffering to some extent, but I think your degrowth-style description of it is overly pessimistic and simplistic. In the wealthiest and most capitalist countries on Earth, we are seeing reforestation, endangered species being protected, and the rapid rise of renewable energy (even in places like Texas that aren't friendly to it).
I love all of that. Truly. And I believe that humans will eventually get their shit together.
However, if you look at fossil fuel consumption trends over the past 50 years or so, it has been a continuous, stable upward trajectory for all but one small period - COVID. When a million Americans and somewhere near 15 million humans died and the machinery of modern society went back to first gear.
The issue is that green investments are capital investments seeking return, so each remedy for extraction mandates even greater extraction in the future. I’m pro-solar and pro-wind, I just know that our mode of making everything a return-bearing investment more than cancels out the gain.
You are citing very positive, local gains, which elide far greater non-local losses.
I don’t “want” degrowth. We are going to get degrowth whether we want it or not. I want it to be thoughtful, not catastrophic.
I think you're eliding the fact that extracting solar energy from our environment is a lot less invasive than, say, coal. The light just literally falls from the sky, whereas fossil fuels, you have to dig through dozens, maybe thousands of feet of dirt to get at. Not great! Your comment about capital returns is a red herring. What matters is the externalities of producing the energy and the cost relative to alternative sources of energy.
I do not miss the point at all, and I get where the energy come from (point of fact, the energy in coal came from the sun too. It is a battery, not an energy source).
The point is that for the phenomenal success of solar, the use of fossil fuels is rising at essentially the same rate it has been for decades.
Okay, but widespread fossil fuel use itself is only about 200 years old, which in the broad sweep of history, really isn't that long, so I don't know that that trend is guaranteed to continue. Note that there has already been substantial change in use of fossil fuels during that time, as coal has largely been replaced by natural gas over the past ~40 years as the primary fuel for electricity generation. Technology is not static.
Sadly, no. Coal use has roughly doubled worldwide since 1989, from 4,400 MT to 8,400 MT, and continues to grow YoY after a brief dip during COVID.
There are projections that imagine coal decline as an orderly technological substitution. But coal is not merely competing with solar and gas on price. It is the reserve army of an energy system that refuses to be constrained. The Hormuz crisis has already made LNG less secure, while data centers are creating a new class of electricity demand that must be served continuously.
Where coal plants remain operable and productive seams remain profitable, few countries will leave the fuel in the ground. The issue is not whether renewables work. They plainly do. The issue is whether we are using them to replace extraction or merely to enlarge the total amount of energy available for consumption.
I'm not a hater of green energy. My house is covered in solar panels, and I work hard to reduce my energy. I'm just saying that green investment to save the world is pretty much a myth.
The things we ‘can’t’ say about things are precisely the things that need to be said. usually with urgency, because they are dangerous and secret things that criminals and politicians would rather remain in the dark. Their weapon is fear. Very ugly.
> The things we ‘can’t’ say about things are precisely the things that need to be said<
Unless you mean "won't say", I find it difficult to parse this statement.
I think that is why we invented the word "ineffable"; it. describes the things we sense, that cannot be said in words. According to the c of e Hymnal, God's love is ineffable. When and if it becomes completely effable, then it will join the discordant choir across the way. Let God stand in for anything that you might feel occupies the same place in yourself.
Yes ‘won’t say’ is the better choice of words. I suppose it depends on the courage of the sayer… and/or the temperament of the mediators or judges.
I'll fail all my math classes if I keep saying that 2+2=5, and that's not because of some dark conspiracy trying to hide the truth from the world.
Some ideas are unpopular because they're bad, some terms are unpopular because they've been co-opted. There are perfectly normal and reasonable reasons to have a negative reaction to someone saying a thing.
True . Since the original article seemed to revolve around the horrors of communism et al, I thought the gist of my comment made sense somewhat, but since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, I might agree that we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse, lest we create a word salad of ad hoc philosophy as the marxists did. We could be labeled ‘intellectuals’ and be the first in line for the Cheka… as many ordinary Russian citizens were. That’s why wise people keep their mouths shut when the insane are running the show. If they tell you 2+2 =5 you may have to agree to save your neck. Trotsky, Marx, Lenin, were born of Jewish heritage which I think illustrates the absurdity of runaway political and religious dogma.
I’m on the wrong track now I see. Sorry.
Not sure what I just read and I think I caught about 10% it even on re-read but I thank you for writing it Scott, and timely too. I was trying to characterize your writing style to my daughter yesterday in a discussion about AI and this post nails it in what sort of opining by you brought me here many years ago.
> The greatest failing of the Enlightenment mentality was not its inability to create social conditions in which name and thing might be legitimately united, but rather its systematic elimination of negation from language…Language thus became, to use Marcuse’s later term, one-dimensional. Incapable of expressing negation, it could no longer voice the protest of the oppressed. Instead of revealing meanings, speech had become nothing more than a tool of the dominant forces in society.
This part confused me. At first I was confused by what the negation was. The way its written it sounds like the enlightenment removed the words no and not from langauge.
What I think it actually means after reflection is that the enlightenment destroyed people's ability to talk and therefore think about a possible (utopian?) alternative to current society. But I'm still confused because I think this is dumb. You can still use language to describe a utopia now, its just that people will ask you how we get there and try to say why it wouldnt work. But you can still express the idea with language!
I think I'm missing something here though, so please respond with where I'm wrong.
one of the best zen enlightenment stories I have read. Thanks for sharing.
AI and robotics rendering human labor uncompetitive on the market, thus removing the proletariat's ability to support itself by selling its labor, will bring the contradictions of capitalism to enough of a climax that the paradigm shift to communism will this time finally manifest itself. Or it won't and everyone will starve. Either way, two more weeks comrades, trust the plan!
Capital isn't acting like a system racing toward its own climax. WR Berkley, AIG, and Great American wrote absolute AI exclusions into their liability policies, making uncontrolled deployment uninsurable. That's underwriters pricing the risk and moving on, not contradictions reaching a boil. The proletariat's labor may be getting cheaper, but the dialectic has been two weeks out since 1848.
the story of actual cargo cults is much weirder than the stereotype! see: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-road-belong-cargo-by-peter
Thanks for linking that so I didn't have to find it again.
“If, upon having their world destroyed and accepting exile in America, they pronounced the people they found there to be a inferior species - in the least-racist, most Communist language possible - were they remarking on this same difference from the opposite perspective? If so, do we have any reason to trust their diagnosis of what was lost?”
“Let us imagine some citizen born in Dresden around 1890 and educated for a life of culture and refinement in a stable world, as many there must have been. If he is still alive, which is fairly doubtful in view of all that has happened, how must the world look to him?”
— Richard Weaver (not a communist)
Heidegger strikes again. No one can understand these people. Dedicated their lives to decade-long cope when their pet communist revolution never happened
To losely quote one somewhat obscure write – a dull mind will sink in those writetings like a flatiron in an ocean of shit while a sharp mind will sink like a Damascus steel sword in an ocean of the same substance.
That sounds like a form of criticism, and therefore must be wrong and pointless.
You have cooked me
Heidegger strikes me as among the better obtuse German philosophers
Sachertorte isn't even good
So, let's assume I believe in hyper-federalism and arachno... sorry, anarcho-capihalism. Like the Frankfurt School, I don't have a clear picture of how the Glorious Future will operate in details, but also like them I see a multitude of issues in the current system. Should all my art to be right-wing propaganda then?
Arachno-capitalism: when genetically engineered sapient spiders own the means of production
We could do a lot worse
The Witcher 3 literally has a book jokingly extolling arachno-communism, though I originally read Maxim as espousing "anarcho-Caliphism" (the Islamic non-state?)
It's odd that we see right wing, sometimes very right wing figures such as Richard Spencer and Paul Gottfried having started with scholarship in the Frankfort school tradition. The journal Telos is another example having started in the Western Marxist tradition and migrating to paleo conservativism. Alex Karp the founder of Palantir, disliked by many for its surveillance technology, was a student of Habermas, Adorno's protege. So maybe the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theorists have it all wrong.
Hans Herman Hoppe was another student of Habermas.
In the aftermath of the WWII, there hasn't been a right-wing intellectual tradition in the west (outside of theology and economics), so your choice is to either start with Marxism, or eschew academia altogether.
I did enjoy Adorno's foray into anti-deathism as pointed out here https://x.com/OttokarHochman/status/2052990737747239115 (though had to get Claude to explain it to me)
I would quibble and say that the Fabian society described themselves as socialist rather than communist. The Nazis also called themselves socialist, and thus their persecutions were more based on being rival socialists (hardly absent under Communist governments either). I also don't think the early Frankfurt school was quite so anti-Lenin, though divisions appeared to have increased under Stalin https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/chad_kautzer_marxs_influence_on_the_earl.pdf
> for a long time, heliocentrism was thought implausible because it would require the fixed stars to be unfathomably far away
It wasn't merely that such distances were hard to "fathom", rather their calculations of how large & far away stars are were inaccurate. On a related note, it wasn't until Tycho Brahe's more accurate data was available that Kepler was actually able to make a more accurate model (one with elliptical orbits, rather than Copernicus insisting on perfect circles) and heliocentrism actually triumphed (and then Newton was able to derive the law of gravity as the force that would cause such orbits).
> The Frankfurt School would have predicted my confusion. As a subject of late capitalism
The term "late capitalism" was actually coined by Werner Sombart, a former Marxist who became a Nazi (that's what he thought was replacing capitalism).
> Marcuse can fairly be accused of supporting this (not inventing it!)
I think it was Gramsci who invented it, and he was a "Western Marxist" though an Italian rather than German/Austro-Hungarian.
> Does this interpretation founder on the fact that most modern leftists don’t know about this?
As to be expected of heretical strains https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2021/12/10/heresy/
Is the jazz thing as simple as "good art absolutely can't make you feel happy, other critics are praising jazz as good art despite it being a happy experience, so I need to bring the hammer down"? Other critics were highlighting its black origins as a political reason for praise, so Adorno needed to find some way (however absurd) to negate that point.
I think the jazz thing is just 'modern music is all noise and degeneracy', something that old people have been saying about new genres for a very long time.
TL;DR: The Frankfurt school did not influence Derrida or bring about postmodernism. Sorry for the long comment, I was nerd sniped.
Elif Batuman in the n+1 pamphlet "no regrets" writes that, during her time at college, folks were forced to decide between being either Frankfurters or Foucauldians. Faced with the same choice, I picked the French over the Germans. I don't have much, resultantly, to say about the Frankfurters, except to recommend Peter Gordon's work: he has a new book coming out on Adorno which I think may address some of your critiques. I do, however, have to quibble with the claim that the Frankfurt school in any way paved the way for Derrida, whose success in France and latterly in the US seems to me quite unrelated from the Frankfurt school's success, and who is, in my opinion, along with Foucault, more "at fault" for the proliferation through the US academy of critical theory than are Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse.
Derrida, and deconstruction as a result, was not descended, though it has its similarities with, Adorno's negative dialectical approach. Derrida's interest in the basic deconstructive operation of noticing slippages in the meaning of words can be traced as far back as his highschool (lycee) education, during which he, as a teenager, wrote an essay about the play of meaning resulting from the sound similarity between eprouver (to feel) and prouver (to prove). This is basically the same kind of trick he would pull throughout his career (consider, to take one of his most famous neologisms, la hontologie, which takes advantage of the exact same kind of pun). Long before it was a principled position, it was already a dispositional inclination.
Throughout his higher education, in philosophy (which in France was highly historical and not particularly marxist), Derrida focused on the then-hot field of phenomenology, particularly the work of Husserl (upon whom he wrote his first two books) and Heidegger. It is from this latter, and not from the Frankfurt school Derrida drew the idea of deconstruction. His own philosophy, for Heidegger, was to accomplish the destruction of Western Metaphysics, including the contributions made thereto by people like Hegel, and Derrida wanted to continue this project, though he modulates Heidegger in calling this extension deconstruction, as opposed to destruction. What's key is that this philosophical project is not in the first instance Marxist, nor is it concerned with doing art criticism. These days, when we talk about deconstruction, we mostly seem to defer to gestures made by works of art to "subvert the expectations" of their audience: Hans' rejection of Anna in Frozen, for instance, one often here's called a "deconstruction" of the Disney Princess genre. But Derrida was not art critic, at least, not to start.
What he was was a weatherman who knew which way the winds were blowing. Hence his celebrated nineties turn to the political, his savvy comments about the 60s student protests, which neither affirmed nor condemned, his early engagement with the rising vogue for psychoanalysis (his celebrated term "differance" was originally coined to resolve a dispute between two different Freudian factions). And hence, his turn, when he found himself installed in a literature department at Yale university, his turn to literary matters. This shift to literary matters was induced by his then colleague, the *decidedly* un-Marxist Paul de Man, who was himself practicing his own version of deconstruction which was primarily art critical, focusing on "undecideable" moments in poetry. It was through de Man's influence (influence both intellectual and geographical, bringing Derrida to the US) that deconstruction began to be conceived, as it is now primarily conceived, as an art critical strategy.
Derrida's arrival in the US also marks the beginning of poststructuralism, which is often what is meant when people talk about "postmodernism," generally, and while I don't think Derrida's brand of it was especially Marxist, the brand of his most prominent students, like Gayatri Spivak, and his peer, Michel Foucault, was closer politically to what I imagine people imagine when they think of the general philosophical tenor of these movements.
Poststructuralism was a breaking away from structuralism, which was a brief French vogue for focusing on the general content-agnostic rules that govern social processes over short periods (as opposed to looking in great detail at the particularities of social processes on their own terms, or looking at them over time) which was pioneered by Claude Levi-Strauss. Claude Levi-Strauss came to structuralism as a result of his attending in New York the lectures of the structuralist linguist Roman Jakobson, which led him to read Saussure, who he believed to be insufficiently marxist, and consequently in need of a dialectical reinterpretation (but crucially just a regular dialectical reinterpretation in no way related to the Frankfurt school's understandings of dialectics), and by the recommendation of his friends Simone Weil's brother Andre Weil who had been working on a structuralist mathematics (which was related to French analytic philosophy, several of whose key figures were killed during WWII, deepening the analytic/continental divide).
As humanities departments expanded in the 70s, the growing movement of people influenced by poststructuralism came with them, which spread this kind of critical theory across the academy. I think this was a phenomenon unrelated largely to the Marxist "long march" through the institutions, which was more discipline agnostic.
The integration of Adorno and Horkheimer with Derrida and Foucault into something that could be called critical theory was broadly accomplished, I think, in the nineties, and I think an interesting figure to look at here is Judith Butler. Butler is, of course, most famous for Gender Trouble, but she has described herself first and foremost as a "jewish philosopher," and her work knits together the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer, Derrida and Foucault, and others like Whitehead, and a million other people. Her original discipline, though, interestingly, is the same as Derrida's, phenomenology, and she trained under Maurice Natanson, a leading American phenomenologist, who himself trained under Alfred Schutz, at the New School in New York, to which institution Schutz had fled fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe. Schutz and his fellow emigres, brought phenemenology to the United States, and effectively established the conditions wherein later on a critical theory could flourish. If I was going to trace back the origin of critical theory in the United States, I might do it to the moment Schutz gave up investment banking to study with Husserl. (An interesting and I think the crucial and underacknowledged thing is that this American branch of continental philosophy flourished before its French counterpart.)
All of this to say several thigns. First, Derrida's intellectual trajectory, and the trajectory of his reception, did not cross the Frankfurt school at any point. Poststructuralism, resultantly, is not, consequently, descended from the Frankfurt school's ideas, even if Derrida did engage them at points in his career, and even if others after him tried to integrate all of their influences into one big amalgam called critical theory. This was an extraordinarily long, I'm realizing, comment to leave about one sentence in this post, but obviously this is something like, for me, a special interest, and I hope it will be of interest to at least one reader.
Yes, I’ve been fiddling around trying to figure out how these guys fit together (or don’t) for a while. This is an interesting perspective. Thanks 🙏
Thank you, very helpful!
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
Hey, this was a great writeup! Includes the major players, what they were doing, where the actual connections were between Europe and the US. Care to offer any assessment of the value of any of their work? Anything worth salvaging in your opinion, or should it all be chucked?
An impressive example of convergent evolution.
There was definitely some animosity between the Frankfurters and the early postmodernists. My own piece of anecdotal evidence: My father studied literature in Copenhagen under Frankfurt aligned professors in the 70s, took a year in Paris and listened to Foucault, went back to Copenhagen and finished his thesis... which was then rejected by the professors for containing heretical ideas (an extremely rare occurrence, the professors had not rejected a thesis for years.)
Another thing that people don't really get is that the critical theory isn't really driving the train on the stuff that conservatives don't like. Like everybody had a certain view of what Gender Trouble was saying and then trans rights came along and everybody just tossed that view away.
'his celebrated term "differance" was originally coined to resolve a dispute between two different Freudian factions'
What were the factions, and what was the dispute? Any recommended links/papers/books on how "differance" arose as a response?
'Poststructuralism was a breaking away from structuralism, which was a brief French vogue for focusing on the general content-agnostic rules that govern social processes over short periods (as opposed to looking in great detail at the particularities of social processes on their own terms, or looking at them over time)'
Is shorter term/longer term referring to Saussure's distinction betwen synchronic and diachronic analysis at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diachrony_and_synchrony ?
Roughly, the factions were a Lacanian faction that favored a "topographical" model of the psyche, where different levels of consciousness (like, the "unconscious") were "spatially" related, against a more orthodox faction which believed in an "economic" or "temporal" model of the psyche, where the layers of consciousness are arranged in time. Differance, which means both "difference" as in spatial difference, and "deferral," temporal difference, was a way to navigate between the two opposing views. It then made its way throughout his work. For more thorough coverage of this, I would look at Edward Baring's The Young Derrida and French Philosophy.
And yes, by shorter term vs longer term, I was referring to synchronic versus diachronic, but the stakes of structuralism were, when Saussure was originally lecturing in 1907, very different: for Saussure, the synchronic was a way to break out from the dominance of historical linguistics or philology. The key thing for structuralism blossoming in France across the disciplines in was the adoption of structuralism in anthropology by Levi Strauss in the Elementary Structures of Kinship.
We should now write it as God-Communism-Singularity, I believe, because the later shares the exact characteristic of being indescribable with the first two, only expressed in mathematical terms, rather than religious or Marxist. I wonder what Frankfurt School would say of it. On the one hand, it's the pinnacle of things they hated, I think - the alienating technical progress. On the other, it might be THE crisis of Capitalism Marxists were waiting for since forever.
Actually, Singularity is even better than Communism, because we can't even make guesses about post-Singularity: if Communism was always defined by "less work, more free time for personal development", post-Singularity hasn't even got such weak constraints, it could really be anything (maybe we all would work more and have less free time! Or maybe concepts of "work" and "free time" and "we" would become obsolete or meaningless).
My takeaway from this is that these people saw the failure of Marx's practical (in intent) utopianism and found that the only way to remain utopian was to abjure any hint of practicality, lest their worldviews founder upon the rocks as Marx's had. Anyone who wants to try to convince me that there's anything more to it than that is welcome to comment.
Why is the image for this post a hot dog? Is it a pun on "wiener"?
Frankfurter also means hotdog
D'oh. Should have realized.
Amusing. But...they weren't just about mystical stuff. I have read all 700 pages of Adorno et al's The Authoritarian Personality (1950), and can confirm that it was the origin text of all the pol-psych BS ever since about conservatives being: fearful, stupid, (of course) sexually repressed proto-fascists. Don't believe me? Why not take the test, developed by the egregious Bob Altemeyer in 1981 (inspired by the Adorno F- for Fascism scale) and still used, in varying forms, today? Are you a Right-Wing Authoritarian? Take the RAW test and find out!
https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RWAS/
I think Wilhelm Reich beat him to the punch with The Mass Psychology of Fascism in 1933.
I think sexual repression is just a stand-in for the general repression of our physical being. Focusing it just on sex kind of clouds the issue, as far as I'm concerned. In general, I think that things of the body have been relegated to second-class citizens in our concept of ourselves. As a result, we don't listen to a lot of good information about the world we live in. I don't care to try and flesh this out because I'm sure I will end up in a quagmire.
All of these questions, seem to me, to be pretty strongly correlated with the temperament of the average RAW. Are you trying to say it is somehow off-base?
This reminds me of vintage SSC. Great stuff.
Roshi potter and the gateless gate of rationality
> So under communism, not only would people who loved gardening get to garden all day, but they would be having constant gardening-related sexual pleasure while they do so.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was miles ahead of them https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8DMZ_ownSiM
1977, so he wasn't ahead theoretically but in practice.
#praxis
"In praxi" would be correct latin, I guess. I didn't remember how it translates to english, thanks.
This is a good review, but I think it makes a few errors with respect to "Continental" philosophy (understandable for an analytic-head). I'm only mentioning these so comment readers get pushback on the implication they're mostly the same:
First, Hegel. The most famous interpretations of Hegel (including the one Scott mentions here about the "Final Manifestation of God being basically relabeled communism") come from a specific person, Alexandre Kojève. He was a marxist, and is usually considered.... let's say idiosyncratic by modern Hegel scholars.
In a personal letter to Tran Duc Thao, Kojève claimed to be more interested in the spirit of Hegel’s philosophy than its letter: “my work does not constitute a historical study – it mattered relatively little to me to know what Hegel himself meant in his book [...] I intended to write, not a commentary on the Phenomenology, but an interpretation”
(Source https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11007-025-09710-5)
Any claims that "The communists took Hegel and relabeled something " probably have the causality backwards. What mostly happened is that Communists became the "trusted interpreters of Hegel", and their "standard" interpretations were misrepresentations explicitly designed to line up with what they thought about communism (the end of history and the master-slave dialectic are particularly bad examples).
Second, Derrida and most of the French post structuralist are actually very different than the Frankfurters. They don't really come out of the same lineage.
The Frankfurters generally had to flee their homes to escape the Nazis (Walter Benjamin actually killed himself because he thought they would send him back). I don't like reading them too much, they get sort of hysterical about fascism (understandable given their lives, but it feels like they're working through trauma sometimes).
The French post-structuralists are different. They tend to write about systems of intelligibility and meaning more generally.
They're both smeared by the same people, but they don't really say the same things. Derrida specifically didn't "come from" the Frankfurt school in any meaningful way.
I may be wrong, but this is a book review from this year's competition - so it may be by Scott A, or more likely not. They're all anonymous for now, I think.
Whoops, you're right! Thank for pointing it out
No, you were right to begin with, it's by me. Thanks for your thoughtful commentary!
I think this is explicitly by Scott, not part of the competition.
He typically prefixes the anonymous ones' titles "Your Book Review".
Perhaps Frankfurtian Hegelianism would benefit from a Strossian reading: The wheels of history are coming clear and God is manifesting Himself on Earth. I'll be waiting for him with a shotgun and I'm keeping the last shell for myself.
Manifesting the atheist God through negative theological politics, not bad for a mental contortion.
What I find most amazing about this is the lengths people will go to convince themselves that the arc of the future is predetermined. Is an open-ended future really that scary? I find it rather inspiring myself!
One way or the other, the future is impenetrable to you, so the distinction doesn't really matter, does it?
It does, because people wanting to lock the future with their fixed expectations and/or fears affect me here in the present!
There’s always someone out there trying to give you something to worry about. The problem is fixed expectations don’t lock in the future do they? Cognitive dissonance should be a personal choice don’t you think?
Well, society is also what we all make of it, nothing wrong with a bit of participation in the sparring of better or worse ideas. Then you close the phone and go on with your life. But thanks for your concern :)
Oh absolutely planning for various outcomes is a useful thing.
I think it's more that when you look backwards, it seems quite mechanical and predetermined. Maybe not in the fine details - one could imagine this or that technology being delayed decades, centuries, or, as was the case for the Olds Elevator, millennia - but in the broad strokes.
Looking at the Teaching Hunter Gatherers Capitalism story through a capitalist lens, it kind of falls apart.
9-5 factory jobs suck. Read Aella on the topic. If the alternative is a viable and familiar hunting and gathering lifestyle, and the incentive of taking the job is a small selection of industrial made toys, of course the answer is no. The only people who took the deal were those who didn't understand it or who thought they could put one over on the outsiders.
Then, instead of sweetening the deal like true capitalists, the colonizers brought in missionaries to try to propagandize the natives into believing that their Purpose was to serve. And in stead of admitting that they'd offered a bad deal and been rejected, they made up stories about how the natives didn't understand. Deep down, they probably had no belief in Freely Chosen Exchanges and lots in We Rule They Obey, but without the raw violence to make the latter happen
When genuine French capitalists mimed to Odawans “one metal axe for ten beaver pelts”, there was no issue with understanding.
> If the alternative is a viable and familiar hunting and gathering lifestyle, and the incentive of taking the job is a small selection of industrial made toys, of course the answer is no.
Yes, but that's not a real alternative. Civilization is a losing proposition on the personal level, but inevitably crushes all opposition on the geopolitical level. Of course, the choice isn't presented as "submit, or be utterly crushed", but those are the options.
Maybe the Frankfurters would have been better understood if they hadn't wrapped their work in fifty layers of mystical obscurantism.
Unironically, how did they get from "people will probably misunderstand us, which is bad" to "therefore we should be extra hard to understand"?
If you're out to deny the physical realities of the world we live in, mystical obscurantism seems like a great way to go. Especially if you don't want to grapple with the fundamental issue itself. Anything that owes its existence to the abstractions the human mind is capable of coming up with will not address the underlying issue. My reading of this review tells me that the Frankfurters chose to walk around this obstacle rather than confronting it. But wasn't this the time when philosophers and scientists of all stripes thought they could build a comprehensive system that could completely reside within itself - before Godel came along and blew them up?
Loved this. One of my favorite SSC/AC10 essays yet
agree
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and jazz is indeed abominable.
>jazz is indeed abominable.
I am very surprised that you say this. It doesn't comport with the image I have been building up of you in my mind over these many months (am I the only person that does this? Slowly build up an outline of a person you only have communication with either over the phone or through text? I used to work for a temporary employment agency in New York, and the woman who managed me at the agency I only ever spoke to over the phone. I created quite an acute mental image of her, and then, after about a year and a half, I met her. No, I'm not claiming supernatural powers, she was nothing like what I had created in my mind.) Anyway, diversion...
I have incredibly catholic tastes when it comes to music. I listen to Schubert Lieder rght next to Led Zeppelin, and then Miles Davis comes on, and then God knows what else. And then if I'm lucky, Hank Williams. I love the roller coaster of it. I also get a cheap thrill of a song coming up that I really don't like. It's like eating at your mother's. You take what's put in front of you.
I suppose I need to know what range of music you're referring to when you say jazz. Maybe it's a much smaller subset of what I consider it to be. Then we could be friends again. heh
My problem with jazz is that it sounds like music that was generated by a Markov Chain, before Markov Chains were even invented. It has no melody, no plan, just stochastic rules for putting one note in front of the other.
My friend who really likes jazz claims that the beauty of it really comes through in participation: if you are one of the jazz musicians, then your performance becomes a sort of combination between dance and tennis, wherein you are trying to weave your own performance into that of your fellow musicians. I can see the fun in that, but I am no musician myself, so I can't participate in jazz. All I can listen to are recordings that all sound exactly like each other, because they all sound like procedural noise.
Okay, that's coherent. There is a lot of joy, jazz like that. To tell you the truth, I'm not a huge fan. The more it sounds like mosquitoes buzzing in my ear, the more intolerable it becomes. But I sure don't feel that way when I listen to Miles Davis playing "Miles Ahead". It's a completely different experience to me. Very rhythmic, very melodic. I also don't feel that way about Artie Shaw, but that's perhaps more swinging than jazz (although he did record a lot of things that I wouldn't completely put in the category of Swing). I do very much like Cannonball Adderley for some of the same reasons I like Miles Davis. Louis Armstrong. If I were to say I listen to fringe music that would be comparable to the kind of jazz you are referring to (I think) It is really more harmonically challenging, found noises, etc. Anouar Brahem comes to mind: an artist I currently am listening to quite a bit. Anyway, I take your point. Music is entirely personal. That's why it's so much fun to find someone else who likes the same things you do.
>My friend who really likes jazz claims that the beauty of it really comes through in participation: if you are one of the jazz musicians, then your performance becomes a sort of combination between dance and tennis, wherein you are trying to weave your own performance into that of your fellow musicians. I can see the fun in that, yeah, it is fun. I used to go to a bar that had jazz night every Monday, I believe, and guys would just show up with their instruments. There was a core group, but people came to do solos. It was enjoyable to watch them work that form. It was very, shall I say, traditional jazz. Not that Mosquito noise.
Speaking of consistency, I take this approach to all creative content that I consume, be it visual art, video games, music, movies, literature, etc.: I want the work to reflect the fact that its author put time, effort, and planning into it; that he had something to say, and some plan on how to say it -- as opposed to just stringing random items together. This is why I dislike Jackson Pollock or Michael Bay or pop music about as much as I dislike jazz. Sometimes the author tries to do something extraordinary and fails utterly; but I still respect that a lot more than putting random splashes of paint on canvas, or tiling the game world with uniform procedurally-generated trees.
Well, if part of the function of art is to challenge our assumptions, then I would say this is problematic. It's not really, because it's either something you like or something that pushes you in a direction you didn't expect, and you're willing to be pushed. I think of art as being an intuition pump in part.
I have no problem with challenging assumptions -- like I said, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I still respect the effort. I am just not willing to challenge my assumption that art is supposed to be distinct from non-art. If putting random paint splotches on canvas or random pixels on the screen or random notes on the soundtrack is art, then I am exactly as good of an artist as everyone else, so why should I pay attention to them ? To paraphrase Syndrome, "If everyone is an artist, no one is".
> ...what range of music you're referring to when you say jazz. Maybe it's a much smaller subset...
This. I would divide jazz into subsets - there's early Louis Armstrong style (which I prefer, being a "moldy fig"), then there's swing (Benny Goodman), classic (Dave Brubeck), be-bop (Bird and Diz) , free jazz (as awful as modern atonal classical music IMO). Jazz evolved from rag-time, with influences from African American, Cajun and Italian (yes, really) musics in New Orleans. There is a continuum from rag-time to early jazz - it might be interesting for you to explore just where your like/dislike border is. Do you like Scott Joplin? Jelly Roll Morton?
Yes, both. I like Coltrane as well (some of it.) Ella Fitzgerald, Even Mel Tormé. Stride piano, Thelonius Monk, The Dead Brothers, Artie Shaw. The Bird. Bill Evans. SunRa on a good day..
Do you know that story about Shaw and Goodman? They met and Goodman was keen to show Shaw all his gear-different barrels, etc. Shaw said “That’s the difference between us benny; you play the clarinet. I play music.”
Overall, I kind of agree with the Frankfurt School philosophers. I've always been a big fan of utopian philosophies such as Communism or Libertarianism. Both of them could indeed result in an Earthly paradise... but only if the Earth were populated by some beings other than humans, who thought in a very different ways compared to how real humans think. I can respect the Frankfurt School for daring to try and dream such beings into existence, despite the obvious futility of their efforts.
So what you are saying: "Good ideology. Wrong species."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/04/14/species/
Hi Scott
OMG! (well why not OMG?)
TGIF!!! What a wonderful piece of Friday writing!
Sentence after sentence of what you write resonates with aspects of my life of 79 years or my reading or my suffering and/or my pleasures through the many aspects of the various awakening as one ages. Maybe it's something about being woke and knowing you're woke and being WEIRD at the same time at the same time. Whatever
I am just trying to think of a kindly, nice thing to say in reply to your good double-clicking into the issues of an engaged of modern life. Bingo: Don't stop! Write. Be a father. Suffer. Prosper. Be conflicted. And tell us what Theodore **AI**-dorno would say. ;-)
Cheers,
Theo
PS: Whenever you hear the word "aura" in relationship to art, it's because of Walter Benjamin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction
What an extraordinarily delightful post via an insightful and enlightened circuitous path in all the best ways. Thank you.
"Frankfurters hated jazz" sounds bizarre to me as well. But I think I've landed on a charitable interpretation.
Hypothesis: Adorno (et al) weren't reacting to Jazz qua music, they were reacting to *Swing*, as mass-produced for the airwaves.
Imagine you're a German living through the Great Depression of the 1930's. The Jazz and the Flapper Culture of the 1920's from across the Atlantic have become entirely commoditized by the 1930's. As a German, you don't see Harlem's wild improv, and Bebop hasn't crystallized yet (Bebop is a 1940's phenomenon). Instead you get safe, sanitized Swing (or Big Band). It's easy to listen to, it's "safe jazzy", and it pretends to be crazy and rebellious. But actually, it follows a very predictable structure. And radio-performances "improvise", but only within the confines of a narrow script.
Under this interpretation, Adorno was basically Ted Gioia, insofar as he complains about how Spotify has completely commoditized musicianship.
I don't know how to say this nicely, and I must preface it by saying that even though we have profound political differences I find your writing interesting and an interesting check/counter against things in my head.
But you seem so deeply uninterested in the book and its material you describe here. Every time the strange and alien attitudes here veer towards something that seems to touch on the insane contradictions of modern life, the review just kind of... changes topic.
So here's the big question: Is it possible for an individual or group to figure out what configuration of society, what set of rules, what form of government, etc. have the best chance of increasing total human wellbeing? My impression is that some extremely smart, goodhearted people have tried hard and been wrong as hell. Is it perhaps just not possible?
Also, here's a possible clue to how one makes a society work: My observation, in both large groups and small, is that if a fairly high percent of the group likes and trusts a fairly high percent of the rest of the group, the group does a good job at coming up with plans and policies for new issues and problems. I observed that, for instance, when I worked for several years at a big, famous psych hospital. I was hired staff at 2 of the dozen or so units there, and logged a lot of time doing various things at several other units. Most units had factions who disliked each other, big reservoirs of chronic anger about various things, pairs of people having affairs, rage that the unit had been saddled with a certain difficult patient, etc. So say I would be called in to consult on how to handle that one very difficult patient, and I would come up with a plan for the staff. . For one person, who babbled a constant word salad, I had found that it worked fairly well to sit with her and stare at the wall and ignore everything she said, until she said something that make some sense. Then I would make eye contact with her, smile, repeat the sensible thing she said, and ask more about the topic. Over the course of an hour, fraction of meaningful sentences went up from, say, 2% to more like 10%. So I would present some plan like that to whoever had called for my consult, and the person I was speaking with would laugh bitterly and say, “good luck getting people here to do that. They don’t believe we should ever have given this patient, and we’re working on getting her transferred to ward Z.”
The one really well-functioning unit I worked on was the OCD unit, inpatient care for people with severe OCD. You heard lots of friendly chat and laughter there all day, including in staff meetings. I don’t know why that place worked so well. The head of it, an MD, did not seem to be making any big effort to keep thngs organized. Most striking thing about him was how available he was. Emails to him tended to be get answers within 10 mins. And he just liked the patients. Used to come once a week and play basketball with them. Michael Jenike. Retired now, maybe dead.
Anyhow, seems like circular reasoning, I know: To build a society that works well, start with a group who mostly like and trust each other. Ha ha, good luck with that, esp. in the present day, right? I have sometimes seriously wondered whether it might be productive to give a small dose of ecstasy or some other love-and-trust-enhancing drug to groups of leaders before they meet.
Before rejecting that, consider the alternative. Now when these people sit down to meet, one comes out with a string of conventional pleasantries, followed by "and by the way, despite our temporary cease fire, I just firebombed an orphanage in retaliation for your allowing some of your troops to cross the river. Eat shit and die, buddy. But first, would you life some coffee of tea? And these scones are lovely. Or maybe a long-dead crayfish, which I understand is a delicacy in the shithole you rule?"
> Anyhow, seems like circular reasoning, I know: To build a society that works well, start with a group who mostly like and trust each other.
Well, you don't need to start with a group like that. You just need to remove everyone and everything that can't be trusted from the collective. Thankfully, people seem to have an instinctual desire to do this if you simply let them.
Yes. The Amish, for instance, shun people who have done certain things. I'm not sure what the things are, but if they're the usual culprits -- crimes, cruelty, doing stupid stuff without consulting others -- seems like a great system.
> My impression is that some extremely smart, goodhearted people have tried hard and been wrong as hell. Is it perhaps just not possible?
It is not, because humans are not capable of apprehending more than about the Dunbar's Number of other humans, so it's impossible to build any optimized society beyound that size. The best you can do is build a loose association of such small people-groups who are held together not by love and understanding (because each group will have their own distinct preferences and therefore hate all other groups), but by bonds of necessity.
This doesn't have anything to do with Dunbar's Number, given that individual connections aren't what ties a civilization together. What is necessary is a shared dogma. In fact, these small groups actually only hinder alignment by creating interest groups whose interests aren't aligned with the collective. Preferably, you want individuals to be as alienated from each other as much as possible, ensuring that their only faith is in society as a whole.
> In fact, these small groups actually only hinder alignment by creating interest groups whose interests aren't aligned with the collective.
Yes, exactly. Small interest groups will inevitably form, and will inevitably develop strong opposing views that cannot be reconciled (for example, group A believes that wearing white is abomination, and group B believes that wearing any other color is abomination). So forming a society based on some sort of mutual love and understanding is impossible. Alienating everyone from each other is probably also impossible (it's not how humans are wired biologically), but even if you could do it, you would just end up with a bunch of scattered individuals who can't cooperate on anything.
So the best you can really do is cultivate somewhat of a lazy attitude. Yes, those white-wearing heretics are abominable and should theoretically all be put to the sword... but maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile I've got fields to till and grapes to mash into wine, and by the way those heretics make really nice wooden barrels so we might as well give them some grapes in exchange...
I feel like it's pretty much a cliché, but it's important to remember that the existence of the Frankfurt School as a "superior species" was very much dependent on the fact that 99% of society had pretty much no possibility of social mobility whatsoever and were forced to serf away in squalor.
In many ways the extinction of this "superior species" is directly related to many of the ideals of socialists having been fulfilled.
How so? Scott explicitly pointed out that many of the key members were Jewish. Razing of the Jewish intelligentsia in WW2 was not a socialist project. Are you saying destroying the possibility of productive idle rich people was?
I'm saying that postwar US society was more egalitarian than prewar European society and that is related to you having less people who can eat a Sachertorte in the morning on their trader uncle's dime and spend the rest of the day in the club reading obscure philosophers and thinking about the nature of the One.
>or most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties
This is so true, and the reason why it is totally inapplicable to the Frankfurt School or any other school; they exist in a world of concepts, and you're cut off at the knees immediately. It's useless in that context. It's akin to trying to square the circle.
Freud's famous definition of sanity, to be able to love and able to work, is being challenged here by the notion of work becoming "extinct"(?).. (The ultimate promise of AI.) What does work become when divorced from the notion of self-sufficiency in the world? It's rather challenging.
No one can accurately imagine what the next 5 years will be like. Ideally in 2028 the US would have a leader that half the country doesn’t hate. Fat chance I guess. One side or the other has to be outraged it seems.
Yes, that does seem rather unlikely, given the way things are right now. I don't see how they will change enough in two years for your wish to come true. Two parties is a binary choice, and the way the system is set up, a third party doesn't really seem to have a chance. I suppose things will go on in this way until one of those parties is dominant enough to effectively quash the other now that the common ground is shrinking. But what's that got to do with work?
We are entering a period of turmoil with AI potentially turning things upside down. Human effort to produce value may become a thing of the past. I’d prefer we had a uniting figure at the helm as we grope our way through whatever lies ahead.
> Human effort to produce value may be a thing of the past.
This is the crux of it. It’s a challenging idea.
Try Habermas as the best development of the Frankfurters. Positive, moderate, and engaged.
I wonder if the founders of the Frankfurt school felt the same as the AI safety community feels now? You have this complex nuance idea of the world that all the people get. Brick upon brick tell you get to the towering heights, and can act upon it in meaningful deep ways. Then it opens and the masses flow in and act as they do without understanding the deep truths.
I work some with Pause AI and I definitely see that here. Very few are familiar with the core texts. They are not of the sacred in circle, they are of the world, and they corrupt the ideas. It may be necessary to movement build, but without the proper indoctrination most simply won't "get it".
The ability to be rational when necessary is a hard-earned gift." Rationalism", on the other hand, is the same kind of tyranny of the mind that has ruined all these other philosophies. When something becomes a labelled identity, it exercises a tremendous amount of power. Saying that you identify as a rationalist carries the same weight with me as someone saying they are a psychic. And I don't mean they don't carry any weight. But I wouldn't use either one of them as the base for a statue I'm building.
the central point of all their criticism is that modern society is corrupt and barbaric for trying to unambitiously implement its little political reforms and improve GDP one percent, instead of trying to manifest God through History. But why should we believe that manifesting God through History is a real thing?"
Or, more importantly, a good thing? A tough question for a materialist. The Frankfurt School were really German aesthic snobs pretending to be Marxists who would think aesthetics is worthless.
As a somewhat traditional Marxist I have a lot of thoughts on this. So sorry for the overlong comment:
„Hegel only gives a nice story about how some historical periods seem to have embodied certain forms of intellectual progress; Marx only adds some bad economics and failed predictions.“
You always confound Hegel and Marx like this. Since Hegel’s philosophy is mystical and Marx is ‚based‘ on it, therefore, Marx supposedly must also be mystical. But Marx’ materialism was meant to be an 180 degree refutation of Hegel’s mysticism! While for Hegel, history is ‚moving‘ due to (seemingly) contradictory dynamics of divine will, for Marx history is ‚moving‘ because of physics and men’s interaction with the physical (/material) world in order to better serve their physical (/material) requirements. There is nothing mystical in Marx; it’s (meant to be) a refutation of mysticism. Socioeconomic orders are not changing due to mystical forces but due to changes in technology (/means of production) and the effects they have on economizing, exercising of power, and living in general. Thanks to this materialistic ‚paradigm shift‘ you could finally make informed, empirical predictions about the course of the future – predictions that could be empirically falsified! Marx’ dialectical materialism was meant to be a science like physics: When you observe the trajectory of a ball in midair, and you know the physical laws underlying its movement, you can predict where it’s going to land before it does. Thus, employing the same physicism/materialism to history, you could predict where it’s going, if only you knew the material/socioeconomic laws underlying the ‚movement‘ of humanity. Identifying such socioeconomic laws is what Marxism is all about. And both Marx and Engels wanted their ‚laws’ and predictions to be understood as falsifiable theories and not mystical orthodoxies.
To me, the two most convincing socioeconomic dynamics that suggest a progression beyond capitalism towards communism are:
1) As capitalist competition advances technology (/means of production), more and more of human labor will get transferred into specialized machinery, thus driving an increased social polarization into the owners of those machines and the rest, to whom only more and more menial tasks with little compensation will be left. Ultimately, this polarization will reach a point, where the few but ultra-rich owners wont be capable anymore to enforce their private property claims on the machinery/means of production/tech/capital. They will get expropriated and the machinery/means of production/tech/capital – which has always been produced as a collective social effort – will be managed collectively (in whatever good or bad way).
2) Whatever is effective is bound to eventually be adopted and what is less so to be discarded; especially so under a competition-based system like capitalism. Specific technologies perform better under specific social conventions. Due to this cultural evolution, as technologies (/means of production) change, so should social conventions be expected to change. At some point, technological progress may reach a point, where collective ownership of the means of production may outperform private ownership. So the blessings of technology may become more hampered than supported by their organization as private property. I think the internet and digitization may be understood as just such technologies. Nowadays, materially/technologically each and every person on the planet could access all book, movies, games etc. ever created by a click of a button. The reason they are not able to do so, is not technological but entirely legal: those book, movies, games etc. and the licenses around them are considered someone’s private property. Again: there isn’t really a technological limitation here, only the legal fiction of private property. Access to academic knowledge, such as research papers, should have made this painfully obvious to even the most die-hard capitalist sympathizers. So, private property does not unconditionally guarantee best economic outcomes. And the more technological and scientific progress depends on ever broader collaboration, it seem not implausible that at some point, private property (of the means of production and knowledge) may become a hindrance to economic development.
Of course there a criticisms to both points. To 2) What about the incentives of creating new things, without the creation being the creators private property? But capitalism is all about people (workers, employees) creating stuff, while someone else is the owner and seller of their creations. So personally I don’t worry about this too much. To 1) This has not happened, yet. But history has not ended >yet< (more on this below) and rationalism is all about predicting stuff that hasn’t happened yet. Capitalism has still always found new (geographical and metaphorical) areas to expand to, thus not only concentrating but also spreading its blessings. Also the white-collar ‚proletarian aristocracy‘ has proven to be broader and more resilient than Marx had expected. But outer space notwithstanding, capitalism is reaching its geographical limit of expansion – there is not much room left for ‚primitive accumulation‘. Also in the last decades the middle class of advanced economies has suffered and polarization of income and wealth has sharply increased. AI will, and AGI definitely would, put even more existential pressure on all those of us living from selling our labor. So I wouldn’t write off the Marxist polarization story yet.
Why don’t Marx and the Marxists provide us with an attractive, in-depth plan for what the communist, post-capitalist future is going to look like?!
Because doing so would be fundamentally incompatible with Marxism. Marxists don’t understand reality as the result of plans. That would be idealist not materialist. Complex social systems are never planned but are emergent. Modern capitalism didn’t come into being because some smart theorist or industrialist designed a rational plan for capitalism, advertised it and implemented it. Capitalism emerged over centuries due to unplanned, chaotic interaction effects of billions of human beings and the progress of scientific knowledge and technology (/means of production) that accompanied and enabled it. The same would be true for communism! Even the greatest rational theorists of the feudal past could not have accurately described our capitalist present, nor will the greatest rational theorists of the present be able to accurately describe the (communist) future – not even Marxists. But what can be done, is trying to ascertain certain socioeconomic ‚laws of movement‘ in the present and thus to get a probabilistic sense of the future’s directionality. And according to the ‚laws‘ identified by the Marxists, the general direction is communism. But given the dominance of the economic basis, the real-world instantiations of communism(s), will depend on the existing economic conditions of a given time and place. The same way our varieties of capitalism depend on existing conditions of a given time and place.
Rationalist tend to understand social systems in an idealistic way; for example they may believe that the division of power is a clever governance scheme devised and implemented by disinterested rational philosophers in the form of constitutions. But according to a Marxist, such constitutions do not create the sociopolitical system, they simply give legal form to already existing social structures: In complex modern societies (with complex pasts), power already is divided among conflicting socioeconomic factions and classes, none of which can dominate the others, thus they have to live and coordinate with one another and thus emerges a corresponding institutional structure. The human world is not the result of a plan but of unplanned economic, technological, social and cultural evolution.
So writing fan-fiction on future socialist/communist societies was the hallmark of pre-Marxist ‚Utopian‘ Socialists. For the reasons above, Marx rejected this. His conception was ‚Scientific‘ Socialism; meaning that the objective, empirical socioeconomic laws/dynamics seem to be pointing towards a socialist/communist future; but they cannot be specified in detail because they are emergent and consist of too many moving parts. Another super important facet of Marxist Scientific Socialism is that it is amoral! Marxist Scientific Socialism isn’t about convincing people of the superiority of socialism/communism. That the future will be socialist/communist is not a moral but a >causal< argument! Whether or not you think future communism will be better than current-day capitalism is entirely irrelevant to Marx’ theory! If you do happen to think that socialism will be superior, then from a Marxist perspective, convincing others may speed up the transition, but doing so or not can neither cause nor indefinitely suspend the transition (the Frankfurters may disagree with this!). Because historical socioeconomic transitions are neither caused by the will of god, nor the will of individuals, instead they are the cold results of technologically progressive economizing.
Continuation:
„the belief that history can phase transition into a utopia utterly different from and superior to modern life“
I find it funny you make fun of this. History having a phase transition into something utterly different from and superior to the present?! One must be crazy, naive, childish to believe in such things, right? No. This is precisely what happened in recent human history! Things (politics, economic, freedoms, living standards etc. etc.) becoming drastically better has been the common thread of the last 500 years of human history! Just compare the lives and social systems in the West from the years 1500, 1800, 1950 and 2026. Each time is utterly, disorientingly different from what came before. Marxists (as well as non-materialist dialectics) aren’t misguided by believing the future to be radically different from the present. No, you would be misguided by believing it would stay the same; by believing present conditions, such as capitalism, constitute the end of history.
„Human nature would do a 180 […]“
I consider this naturalization of capitalism, and thus the intended de-naturalization of communism, very strange and nonsensical. As far as I know, ‚human nature‘ in its current form has existed for around 300.000 years. Modern industrial capitalism for around 250 years (if we’re being kind). So humanity has been living ‚capitalistically‘ for less than 0,1% of its existence. So how exactly can modern capitalistic affairs be considered the most representative manifestation of human nature? I’d argue that throughout human history, humans have been living a lot longer ‚communally‘ than ‚capitalistically‘. So I don’t think the ‚human nature‘ argument is helping anyone here. I’d say transitioning from capitalism to communism takes just as many 180s of human nature as the transition from feudalism to capitalism did: none at all.
Why the terminology of Cultural 'Marxism' is misleading
Since Hegel is pure dialects and Marx is dialectical materialism, the Frankfurt approach of prioritizing the cultural super-structure over the economic base makes it more Hegalian than Marxist (which makes you making fun of them and their way to manifest God pretty legitimate). So calling them Marxist at all is rather strange because their whole thing is denying one of the main tenets of Marxism: the dominance of the economic base. This is also why most traditional, socioeconomically-focused Marxists aren’t fans of the Frankfurt School. Thus the Frankfurt School makes for a poor representation of what Marxism is or stands for.
Marxism is Longtermism
The Marxist perspective of dialectic materialism is by definition (#dialectic) longtermist. Of course, there have been disagreements about the magnitude of the time span of Marx’ predictions, but mine is the following: It took at least 400 years for feudalism to transition to capitalism. And even nowadays, we are still living with feudalistic elements (monarchies, inheritance, Ricardian land rents etc.). So the time frame we are looking at for a transition towards communism should similarly be several centuries. The question is, whether or not the laws/dynamics laid out above are correct or not. But even if they are incorrect, is it really more realistic to presume that capitalism consitutes the end of human development and will reign indefinitely? To me, it seems more likely that at some point it will transition to communism than that it will never ever transition to anything ever again. If anyone had predicted our capitalist present in the year 1600 they would have been considered a crazy person. Around 1850 Marx made his predictions that the world will, once again, be radically different in the future. Given this time frame, I would wait until 2250 to give my final judgment on him being right or wrong.
Or look at it this way: Since 1850, has capitalism become more capitalistic or more communistic? Considering our present capitalism with labor rights and welfare states, and given Marx’ ‘communist’ policies in the Communist Manifesto included such things as progressive income tax, abolition of child labor, and free public education, I’d say capitalism has indeed become somewhat more ‘communist‘ since 1850. So the arch of history may be more protracted than original Marxists might have thought, but it does seem to be bending a certain direction.
> So humanity has been living ‚capitalistically‘ for less than 0,1% of its existence.
If you define 'capitalistically' in a narrow sense that includes the existence of financial instruments, stocks, borrowing from future profits, etc., then yes it's only been that way for a couple hundred years. But I would argue that wealth accumulation in general has been a driving force of humanity for thousands of years, at least since the agricultural revolution. Pretty much every civilization has had markets, where commoners could exchange money for goods and services. Sure, sometimes prices would be set by guilds or artificially inflated or deflated by the monarchs, but ultimately market forces were still present, especially in places with a strong bartering tradition. If you mean specifically wealth accumulation by the owners at the expense of workers, that too has existed for thousands of years; it forms the basis of feudalism and the various slave trades throughout recorded history.
I'll grant you that anatomically modern humans have existed for about 300,000 years, and most of that time was spent in the pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer-forager era, where wealth was essentially nonexistant (all goods were ephemeral in nature), so really it's more like 4% of human history (12,000 / 300,000). Still low, but a lot higher than 0.1%.
> Considering our present capitalism with labor rights and welfare states, and given Marx’ ‘communist’ policies in the Communist Manifesto included such things as progressive income tax, abolition of child labor, and free public education, I’d say capitalism has indeed become somewhat more ‘communist‘ since 1850
At least in the U.S., most of those labor rights were won in the progressive era reforms (turn of the 20th century) and the new deal era (1930s). I would argue that things have been drifting to the right economically ever since then. More and more corporate mergers keep getting approved, wages vs. productivity has fallen off since 1971 (the famous graph), and corporate / top marginal income tax rates have been on a downward trajectory since the 1950s.
I don’t think it makes sense defining capitalism broadly as simply any state of affairs that happens to feature markets, money and wealth. It stretches the term to meaninglessness. Capitalism as a distinct social system is marked by the private property of the means of production in the form of transferable capital, and dependent wage labor as the dominant recourse of subsistence for the property-less masses. While primitive precursors have existed here and there, it has only become the dominant socioeconomic model in the West in the 19th century. But if you insist on choosing a maximally broad definition of capitalism, you should also do the same for communism. If you did so, every hunter-gatherer community and primitive agricultural society would automatically fall in the category of ‘communism’. So, I don’t think this would strengthen the ‘human nature’ argument in favor of capitalism. In general, I don’t think stretching definitions like this adds anything. Modernity is a very different beast to anything that came before it. Neither modern capitalism nor modern communism are helped by throwing around naturalization fallacies.
> Ultimately, this polarization will reach a point, where the few but ultra-rich owners wont be capable anymore to enforce their private property claims on the machinery/means of production/tech/capital.
If the ultra-rich own all the tech, that means they own all of the most advanced burglary countermeasures, automated drones, face id cameras, etc., that could neutralize any threat and (with a cooperative state) send any potential burglar to jail. It may even reach a point where they don't need a state because they own all the private prisons anyway. Although if there's no state, at that point they just become the state, take the monopoly on violence, and kill any intruders with advanced weaponry. I don't see this as a point in favor of communism being inevitable.
> At some point, technological progress may reach a point, where collective ownership of the means of production may outperform private ownership.
I think collective ownership of the means of production could work if it was widely distributed (meaning only the workers who work at a particular factory own that factory's implements, etc.) and universally adopted, but I think it would basically have to happen unilaterally to out-compete capitalist factories, because otherwise capitalist factories would always be able to offer goods at lower prices due to paying their workers less. Note I'm using "factory" in a metaphorical sense to refer to any place where productive work happens.
What you are describing is the fascist response. Where faced with an existential threat of communist revolution, the capitalist order switches into an emergency state, where all civil liberties are suspended and any consent is replaced by coercion and pure force. This is exactly the experience that the later Frankfurt School members had made and which disillusioned them so much. I, however, am more optimistic about this scenario. It doesn’t solve any of the underlying economic dynamics and thus doesn’t seem to be maintainable long term. Just think of what it would require: All these institutions and instruments of domination would need to be produced, maintained and put into action by someone – someone who is not the owners themselves. So one group of workers needs consistently be put to work to suppress all other workers. Given enough polarization and ugliness, the workers doing the suppressing for the owners might find that they have more to gain from joining their peers and ousting the owners instead. But yes, the specter of fascism did introduce the possibility that the future might plunge into pre-capitalist barbary, rather than progress to communism. This is a concern that Horkheimer and Adorno are voicing in Dialectic of Enlightenment.
> "Marxist Scientific Socialism isn’t about convincing people of the superiority of socialism/communism. That the future will be socialist/communist is not a moral but a >causal< argument! Whether or not you think future communism will be better than current-day capitalism is entirely irrelevant to Marx’ theory!"
I dunno man. It certainly feels like the purpose of the Communist Manifesto was to make a positive case for immanentizing the eschaton, not just an abstract scientific argument that things were generally headed that direction anyways.
You can definitely argue that capitalism has a long-run tendency toward concentration of wealth and ownership through either emergent oligopolies or economies of scale or both and thereby destroys internal competition and leads to it's own collapse, but there's at least as plausible an empirical-plus-theoretical argument that actually-existing attempts at implementing communism also destroy themselves and produce noticeably worse living standards in the meantime. That's not some grand, inevitable historical progression, it's two different mechanisms for social collapse feeding back into eachother. So what are self-described scientific socialists supposed to be doing in the present age?
The communist manifesto was a political polemic, not a philosophical/academic work.
It was part of that sets personal moral values and politics; it was informed by their philosophy but didn't really represent it 1-1.
>So what are self-described scientific socialists supposed to be doing in the present age?
For myself, it's harm reduction O-clock, trying to protect that shreds of liberalism that remain from the oligarchs and boot-lickers.
I at least see the progression that the post mentions.
EG, we were once governed by bloodless comparatists primarily concerned by the business of business, now that set has been replaced by feckless morons like Thiel and Musk who are direct detriments to the greater bodies they manage, but who have achieved capitalist escape velocity and accrued so much wealth and power it is actually impossible to limit or punish them in any way at all in the current system.
I constantly think about the private interviews with space X employees who's job it was to make colorful simulations and other such keys to jingle in front of Musk whenever he was around for the purpose of distracting him, so that Shotwell could actually run operations and prevent another cybertruck situation.
Of course the Communist Manifesto, as a manifesto, was (also) a prescriptive political program. Marx was not only a philosopher, economist and historian, but also a life-long political activist. He was deeply committed to the possibility that communism could be a vast improvement of human affairs compared to capitalism. This does bias his ‘objective’ socioeconomic laws, but it does not falsify them. And it doesn’t change anything about the fact that his ‘scientific’ arguments do not >require< moral judgment. So, I think, his causal arguments can and should be judged on their own merit.
And of course, future communism(s) would be subject to dialectical technological and socioeconomic dynamics themselves, just as anything else in our physical universe is subject to dynamic laws of change and motion. But in order to get a sense of their future, their own emergent dynamics would first need to be observed and understood. What self-described scientific socialists are supposed to be doing in the present age? What most of them traditionally tried to do is to ease the birthing and growing pains communism and smooth the transition. What I think they should do (first?) is to focus on improving one’s understanding of the capitalist present as much as possible.
>What I think they should do (first?) is to focus on improving one’s understanding of the capitalist present as much as possible.
Do they still think that the labor theory of value is the correct explanation of economic value?
Yes pretty much; as did Adam Smith and all the other Classical Economists. Labor is still the universal basis on which value could ‘objectively’ be quantified. The labor theory of value is often (purposefully) misunderstood in the sense that the more useless labor you’re adding the higher the value of the result is supposed to get. That’s not what the labor theory of value means, instead it proclaims that a products base value is the socially minimal amount of labor required to produce it. So it depends what kind of value you’re interested in: There’s the ‘subjective’ value of what amount of money something happens to sell for at the market, and there’s the ‘objective’ value of what amount of labor would minimally be required to (re)produce it. Both value concepts have their value. For example: A phone and a chair are for sale; let’s say both face the same demand; so what determines their value? How hard it is to make them, i.e. how much labor has to put into their production. Now let’s say the demand for the same chair, for whatever reason, gets way higher, so much so that its market price rises above the phone’s. Suddenly we have a divergence between the product’s (subjective) market price and its (objective) ‘natural price’, determined by the labor necessary to produce it. Comparing and understanding both can be enlightening. So, it kind of depends what your goal is: If you only care about the prices that goods happen to sell for at the market, then you don’t need the labor theory of value. But if you want a basis on which to assess and compare those prices, and to understand how and to what end society is using it’s labor supply, then you might be interested in the labor theory of value.
Both Classical Economists, and the traditional Marxists who followed them, were somewhat trying to imitate physics and thus to make economics (/political economy) a respectable ‘objective’ science, by providing it with an ‘objective’ measure of value. So it was thought, that if you were able to aggregate all required labor of a good or services, you could finally measure and compare value ‘objectively’, independent of the subjective, volatile moods of buyers and sellers. Of course economics should care about market prices and the physiological dynamics that inform them, but it was thought that economics should also try to get to the physical/material heart of value creation itself. Mainstream economists have long abandoned this goal, content with declaring anything’s value the price it happens to sell for, but Marxists are still old-school and try to determine value at the production stage rather than at the latter stage of exchange. In this sense, the labor theory of value can indeed add to one’s understanding of economic value.
>The labor theory of value is often (purposefully) misunderstood in the sense that the more useless labor you’re adding the higher the value of the result is supposed to get. That’s not what the labor theory of value means, instead it proclaims that a products base value is the socially minimal amount of labor required to produce it.
Well, the problem is that it's impossible to even approximately know what the "socially minimal amount of labor" to produce anything in a particular place could be at any point, because it depends on uncountable variables - how difficult is it to extract/acquire particular resources at this location, how educated/conscientious/skillful is the workforce, how developed is the technological process, how much does a particular society care about negative externalities of production, etc. etc. All of those variables are just as "objective" inputs to the value of the product as the amount of hours the average worker happens to spend to make it. The reason that Marx over-emphasizes labor above everything isn't because he loves objectivity more than everybody else, it's because he's willing to sacrifice objectivity and clarity in order to make his agenda more persuasive. (Of course, he's not alone in this, other people's biases also warp their supposedly objective theories.)
>Of course economics should care about market prices and the physiological dynamics that inform them, but it was thought that economics should also try to get to the physical/material heart of value creation itself. Mainstream economists have long abandoned this goal, content with declaring anything’s value the price it happens to sell for
Mainstream economics obviously cares a great deal about the physical/material heart of value creation itself. Initially through a monomaniacal concern with the aggregate labor productivity, and after the degradation of the environment became all too apparent, also with ways to ensure sustainable development.
This was a surprisingly complimentary treatment of the Frankfurt School; it actually made me appreciate the whole concept of "critical theory"! Which is probably not what you intended, but still.
Scott, this is imo the best and funniest thing you have written this year; a hugely enjoyable read.
I wonder: what is it about leftism that attracts those with such high verbal IQs? Is it just that WWII created an untouchable set of ideas to the far right, so the only place left in the Overton window was communist mysticism? It's hard to conceive of a fascist literature downstream from say, Schmitt, that has as much staying power.
Simple envy.
At school, shape rotators and wordcels are both praised as smart. But then you get into the real world and the shape rotators succeed in business leaving the wordcels far behind; in response the wordcels assume something is horribly wrong with the world and it must be upended to put the wordcels back in their rightful place as class prefects.
I think this has more explanatory power today (value of a marketing job vs SWE) but not back then. I think back then (and also sort of now?) the highest earners are wordcels. Especially "capitalist" factory owner types.
The best wordcels rotate the shape rotators...
Well, being a successful captain of industry requires mathematical skills, particularly back in the 1800s when you can't just use Excel.
But really I shouldn't have fallen back on the shape rotator meme; the people who really generate a lot of wealth, whether in the 1800s, 1900s or 2000s, are a third archetype, good at bossing people around.
The most intelligent people have both.
Having been around such people for some time, they are all VERY able to rotate shapes, they just find it inherently unsatisfying. They look at people who take pride in the amount of vertices in the shapes they are currently rotating like that meme comic about how hard someone can piss.
IE, they would read your comment as cope, and think to themselves "imagine being so intellectually poor that you can't get transcendent pleasure from the life of the mind".
Way back in 1998, Nozick wrote up a thesis similar to this. Except instead of shape rotators and wordcels, he called them numbersmiths and wordsmiths.
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-do-intellectuals-oppose-capitalism
He argues not that wordcels/wordsmiths are impoverished under capitalism - in fact, many do quite well - but that the wealth and especially the respect they receive in the market are not commensurate with what they feel they deserve, based on the status they have received all their lives in the classroom.
Doesn't this argument work better the other way around? Engineers etc. are paid so well that they become incapable of noticing whether or not the world beyond their insulated private lives is horribly wrong or not? I.e. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Because when you have a high verbal IQ you excel in legal systems. If all of the world is run by bureaucrats then a wordcel can excel by out-arguing the bureaucrats. You don't become a successful businessman by telling consumers that the foundations of modern society are misaligned. To succeed in real endeavors you need actual ability,
Wordcels do have actual ability though
Sure but writing narcissistic screeds is much easier than doing real work (cf. internet comments sections). Also once you've spent your 20's doing nothing but reading Marxist texts and committing yourself to getting tenure somewhere, you no longer have the option of doing much else. One of the reasons for the postwar rise of Marxism within academia was academia's status envy of businessmen: if there was any justice in the world then it would be run by them, the smartest nerds around, rather than by some uncultured merchant. People always strive to maximize their own status. Questioning the foundations of capitalism was how wordcel academics tried to maximize theirs.
I would never have guessed that a long essay about the Frankfurt School, one of the most depressing artifacts of modernity that there is, would keep me engaged to the end and make me literally (yes, literally) laugh out loud many times.
It's worth noting (see here: https://x.com/OttokarHochman/status/2052990737747239115 ) that Adorno is actually to my knowledge literally the only major (non-Russian, Russian discourse about this was weird) philosopher between Godwin/Condorcet and Bostrom to not only reject the entire trend of Heideggerian "finitude" nonsense but to actually, actively endorse the possibility and desirability of life extension technology.
I think people often confuse Adorno and Horkheimer's relentless negativism about progress, technology, the Enlightenment etc. for *opposition* to those things when the reality is that their entire method *was* being self-consciously negative about everything and everyone all the time because of what they thought to be the necessity of maintaining a critical posture. They thought that these things were *bad* but not that they were *worse than any other possible things* and they were consistently very hostile to the suggestion that any appeal to something *outside* of these things had any value at all. The actual posture towards "reason" in their work is ultimately actually surprisingly similar to most Rats, the difference is basically just that they think you should have a tragic mood about things which Rats have a celebratory mood about. When they say that "modern society is corrupt and barbaric for trying to unambitiously implement its little political reforms and improve GDP one percent, instead of trying to manifest God through History", what they actually mean basically *is* that modern society invests too much into treats and Marvel movies and not enough into life extension and AI alignment.
Your discussion of the residual made me think of the concept of reshimu in Lurianic Kabbalah after the ineffable absolute's contraction and witdhrawal (tzimtzum) and its role in the ultimate repair of everything.
The Italian Catholic philosopher Augusto Del Noce writes about how Marxism was originally composed of a positive and a negative element: the messianic-utopianism that promised overcoming all limitations and the hardcore economic determinism that said that man was entirely socially constructed and every element in his life and being was downstream of configuration of capital. Marxism failed to deliver on its promise but left us in a world where all subsequent generations carried the harmful mutation that had entered the bloodline, a world where the academy and thus almost everyone uncritically, naively believes in its various negations—no truth, no morality, no God. The bitter irony of this is that Marxism actually increases capitalist alienation by justifying and unleashing the last restraints that bourgeois society had in place against the absolute domination of social life by money.
None of these original negations (of God, of truth, etc.) had been achieved through honest thought, but through an ill will. The concept of God is perceived as limiting human freedom, so Marx and others like him rejected the concept.
The Frankfurt school is the perfect expression of this tendency towards alienation: they are thinkers who, due to their Marxist inheritance, cannot actually think. As you note, for all their critical theory, they all uncritically accept dogmatic Marxism as if Marx had brought down Das Kapital from Mt. Sinai. They are like the religious people whom atheists rightfully criticize as contriving tortured arguments, warping their own minds in the attempt to justify complete absurdities.
Because of this, they cannot think clearly, and so they cannot write clearly. They are all terrible writers. For all the bathos and ink spilled about that ridulous, fugly "angel of history" painting and Benjamin's turgid commentary on it, or the fascistic, conformist demand that every incoming freshman read "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" at some point before graduating college... these authors have no real staying power. Their popularity is forced, top-down, from the academy. They are the intellectual equivalent of corbusier/brutalism/bauhaus or, what is more fitting, atonal music.
For that matter, that is why the label "cultural marxism" sticks. Not that they were a kabbalah-cabal scheming to overthrow gentile society, but that they were the intellectually-castrated bellwethers of the hyperbourgeois post-marxist nihilistic attitude that would come to totally infuse every aspect of it.
I hadn't realized that cultural Marxism was an "antisemitic conspiracy theory" too! Ugh. This is a very tangential point to your wonderful review, I just must say I am blown away by what does (and simultaneously by what doesn't these days) count as antisemitism, at least in the authoritative voice of institutions that get cited in wikipedia.
'There exists a conspiracy theory about X which includes 3 Jews among other people' is not the same claim as 'X is an antisemitic conspiracy theory'. Imagine an article positing that a Jewish cabal had made up climate change, faked data, made a bunch of NGOs and UN taskforces and blah blah blah in order to destroy the global economy and replace it with [who cares], and that this article made a splash in some far right media. Maybe this even happened. Imagine if the result of this were a wikipedia article that begins "Climate change is an antisemitic conspiracy theory...", and that anyone bringing up greenhouse gases could expect to be accused at some point of recklessly engaging in dangerous antisemitic tropes and dogwhistles.
I think that hypothetical scenario is actually how deranged the argument has become around immigration, where pointing out that granting citizenship to 1M people of any given cultural background will result in 1M people of that group being able to vote in your country's elections is liable to get you accused of perpetuating the "great replacement antisemitic conspiracy theory". I wasn't aware before of the same phenomenon regarding ideological capture of institutions, and it makes me wonder, is there a bigger category of so-called antisemitic conspiracy theories that, in most cases which are labeled by experts as examples of the conspiracy theory, do not even posit a conspiracy, let alone a conspiracy of Jews? Does anyone have other examples?
You shouldn't be surprised if you've read any substantial history post about 1912, Cultural Marxism was actually the OG antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The Tzarists and Hitler started promulgating it as a primary reason that Jews had to be driven out/liquidated at the very beginning of modernity, and it has stuck around ever since; like many other conservative theories of the history because of how immune to evidence it is.
Surely they were primarily worried about vanilla Marxism in those days. But yes, Jews were everybody's bugbear - the Tsar, Hitler, Stalin, Henry Ford - all hated them, and blamed them for the bad thing du jour.
>many other conservative theories of the history because of how immune to evidence it is
True conservatism hasn't been tried!
A lot of food for thought ant further reading, amazing, thank you all.
I for one have decided to submit at an application to KSU in Frankfort after reading here.
Orwell: The trouble with Capitalism is excessive greed, the trouble with Socialism is insufficient virtue.
What?!? My weird mystical art criticism isn't going to make society snap into a new polymorph?!!!!
Ah, Robert, into every life a little rain must fall. I like your toons. I am crass and odd, and like awful pictures too. Here's a link to a bunch of weird ones I managed to get out of Dall-e2, back when it was naive and primitive.
https://imgur.com/a/6vaTrHZ
Here's a story about world-ending AI I made:
https://bookreviewgroup.substack.com/p/the-dog
Here's my design for back of new Trump $1 bill
https://bookreviewgroup.substack.com/p/back-of-new-trump-one-dollar-bill
I don't understand why you keeping coming back to the Frankfurt school trying to instantiating God in history, restart the progress of history ect when Adorno famously said there "was no universal history" the thing Hegel was on about, except for the line from the slingshot to the atom bomb. Besides Marcus they had all rejected the idea of any direction of historical progress.
Also I don't understand why you keep associating Lenin with collective farming when Lenin was the one who gave the land to the peasantry in a decentralized way and it was Stalin who collectivized agriculture.
Lastly, if you actually want to read thought through plans for communism you should read Towards a New Socialism by Paul Cockshott or Aaron Benenav's Beyond Capitalism series in the new left review.
Finally an essay on something I know a bunch on! Scott did a good job, but there's one or two points that got glossed over.
Part of what makes the Frankfurt school hard to understand is that they don't really signpost how much Kant and Freud you need. Just as you can't read Marx without some familiarity with Ricardo, you need to have a conception of bourgeois political thought to grasp Adorno. In both cases the project imminent critique, starting from the given framework (labor theory of value for Marx, individuation and freedom for Adorno). Without that a lot doesn't make sense, or you think they thought it, but no, Freud or Marx or Kant did. Similarly for needing to know way to much about communist movements then.
Secondly they work over decades. Uber Jazz is in the 1930s, Sexual Taboos and the Law Today is postwar, Jurgen Habermas was publishing quite late. The art criticism really happens in the 1920's, and it's somewhat limiting to view it as art criticism: Benjamin devotes the Arcades project to examining the world of Parisian dandees. The nature of the world looks a lot different in the 1920's than in the 1950's, in part because of Benjamin's death but also the need to respond to the even deeper horrors of fascism.
The category of regression is incredibly important for the Frankfurt school: the foreclosure of historic possibilities. What was possible to imagine in 1914, is completely gone in 1918. You can talk about child sexuality in fin-de-sicle Vienna, but today we shout "pedo, pedo" while child beauty pagents happen. Some of this is in the essay, but I don't think the centrality is.
Lastly the New Left is incredibly complex, and you can't understand it without looking at the very particular problems. Ultimately postmodernism was conservative, but why we get Focault and late Fanon as big thinkers for the new left's aftermath is a complex story.
Eliezer Yudkowski wrote a parable where he imagines someone having trouble selling apples, so he started planning to sell "nonapples". The point was that this was too broad and vague to really be a workable plan. Robin Hanson commented on that post that economists deal with this all the time, saying an economic theory doesn't work for certain cases and then advocate doing the opposite.
This book review reminds me of that.
Is "nonapple" the opposite of apple? Or is it just every other kind of fruit?
In the logical sense, I understand it as "everything that is not an apple". Which is, approximately, everything.
Ahh, quite right.
This ^
I was at sea at the word dialectical. Last time I heard it spoken out loud was by George Clooney playing a dopey kidnapped actor talking to 40s Hollywood Marxists in “Hail Caesar”. One of the trilogy of dunces that he played for the Coen Bros as Clooney described it.
The word annoys the hell out of me, because it's the first word in "Dialectical Behavior Therapy" the famous DBT that works (well, sort of) to help people with Borderline Personality get themselves and their lives in control. There isn't really much logic to DBT -- it's a mishmash of techniques. But the creator of the damn thing used the word "dialecticai" as a way of making DBT treatment sound like some it has a symmetrical, woven-together yin-yang conceptual structure. Nope, it don't. Example, someone frantically hurt and angry might be advised by their DBT therapist to pour out their thoughts and feelings in a journal. Or, the prescribed remedy might be to wash some clothes by hand in slow motion paying close attention to every sensation of temperature, wetness, etc -- in other words, empty the mind if the disturbing topic, and meditate on sensation. Yeah, both techniques really can help someone calm down. But there is nothing dialectical about the fact that they are opposite approaches. If anything, it's evidence of how diverse states of mind and entire psychiatric illnesses really are.
BTW, nobody but me gives a shit about the ways DBT is dumb.
PPS: The director of my internship attended grad school with Marsha Linehan, creator of DBT, and his sole comment about her and her techniques was that she had an ego the size of a freight train.
I just looked the word up because I realised I had a very vague sense of what it means.
>a philosophical method of reasoning that seeks to uncover truth through the exchange of logical arguments and the resolution of opposing ideas; Greek Origin: From dialektikē, meaning "the art of argument", and dialektos, meaning "discourse" or "conversation". A Socratic Dialogue. It's a nice concept. I'm sorry it's being abused.
Wow, that was great. I learnt a lot. That's some crazy shit those guys were smoking.
It is troubling that the culture that has had the greatest influence on modern political philosophy (viz. German) is exactly the culture that had the most disturbed and deranged historical experience in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Why?
Of the big names associated with the Frankfurt School, it seems to me like Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer (and later Habermas), often get the lion's share of the attention, but I would put a plug in for Erich Fromm.
I think The Sane Society (among other great books of his, like Escape from Freedom and The Art of Loving) is one of the best books ever written, or, at least, one of my favorite, and while one might not agree with every facet of what is he is saying, or with his prescription, on the whole, I think his diagnosis of modern society bears consideration, and sounds every bit as relevant today, if not more so.
In the age of AI, I think more and more of this quote about machines acting like men and men acting like machines (for context, he is very critical of Soviet-style Communism, which is what he is criticizing here)
"In the development of both Capitalism and of Communism as we can visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the process of automatization and alienation will proceed. Both systems are developing into managerial societies, their inhabitants well fed, well clad, having their wishes satisfied, and not having wishes which cannot be satisfied; automatons, who follow without force, who are guided without leaders, who make machines which act like men and produce men who act like machines; men, whose reason deteriorates while their intelligence rises, thus creating the dangerous situation of equipping man with the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it."
The full book
https://historicalunderbelly.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/erich-fromm-the-sane-society.pdf
>You’re not supposed to dub them a transitional stage between Communism and postmodernism.
This is true. An analytical kind of Marxism is not Communism, and the transition happened later - Althusser. These guys were too German to be anything like Postmodern, that is, vague and performative. You gotta be French for that. They were very precise.
>You’re not allowed to speculate that a lot of the academic humanities, as they’re practiced today, descend from the Frankfurt School’s brand of critical theory.
They were one influence, often overstated importance.
>You’re not supposed to think of them as the point where the muscular pro-technology leftism of the early 1900s shattered into the pessimistic degrowth leftism of the present.
No, because they were analytical sociologists, not political activists, they had no political programme or goals. They were just not so interested in technology, as sociologists rarely are.
I think bidirectional basis-superstructure is obviously true? Like when people wokr 38.5 hours in Europe and 72 hours in China, that is culture, and that is really having an effect on the economy. Then the economy has an effect on the culture, like people who go from peasants to well-to-do really quickly will behave differently etc. etc.
I would sum up the school as follows:
1. Philosophers who expected a Marxist revolution didn't get it.
2. They turned to cultural criticism, found new innovations like jazz fascinating and started criticizing them.
3. Analyzing culture is quite engrossing and it never runs out so they kept doing it. They felt this needed a justification so asserted doing so would somehow make the revolution happen (for reasons unclear).
4. Generations later rightoid loons who also just want to rant about culture (the new He-Man movie looks gay and lame!) assert that they are stopping the communist revolution by ranting about culture. (Because if Disney just manages to make one more lesbian black jedi woman the coal mines will be nationalized and run by workers collectives?)
>Because if Disney just manages to make one more lesbian black jedi woman the coal mines will be nationalized and run by workers collectives?
Certainly not, as the workers never run anything under communism. But yeah the Frankfurt school people and the "rightoids" inspired by them both understand that culture matters. If you feel frustrated by their power and influence, maybe consider that they know what they're talking about.
The 'power' to discourse on culture endlessly? Nope.
The claims that this is somehow the secret mechanisms that unlock political dynamics. It doesn't. You either like jazz or don't. If you're voting for Trump/Vance in 2024 because something jazz (or more likely gay jedis or too many girl bosses in your MCU), you're objectively foolish.
Now if you want to talk about culture because 'culture matters', well then you can't bring up communism. If you're trying to win a culture war because you think that heads off a wealth tax or nationalizing a portion of Intel (oops, we just did that, awkward), then you're actually saying culture doesn't matter except as a means to some end. In that case just get to the end and give us your argument about wealth taxes or why Elon should have his pay package etc.
Culture, though, is interesting and if it matters to you because it's part of our lives just like food, clothing, sports....well I'm 100% there as well. But then we do have a reality that many theories that faltered greatly in the 'real world' have worked nicely in cultural criticism. Try to become a Jungian analyst today and you're likely to get a lot of pushback from insurance and the psychiatric profession. Want to write essays about archetypes in Star Wars and odds are you'll likely score with an essay that's above average.
If theories that falter in real life often work better in culture, well that tells me there's nothing much to fear from the "Marxist Analysis of Pride and Prejudice" article as there would be "Freud and Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings".
>If you're voting for Trump/Vance in 2024 because something jazz (or more likely gay jedis or too many girl bosses in your MCU), you're objectively foolish.
Doesn't matter, that vote counts the same as yours, and from votes flow political power.
As someone who enjoys a lot of Frankfurt School writing (mostly Adorno/Benjamin, not a Marcuse fan at all), I liked this review more than I was expecting to. I think you go astray in a couple areas by assigning to the Frankfurt School certain attitudes which were much broader within leftist circles at the time. E.g. the 'Frankfurt “vibe” across modern progressivism in its glorification of criticism and protest for their own sake. ' This is just a characteristic of revolutionary/protest movements in general, and one that's in some ways more mild in the Frankfurt School than in, say, anarchism. Rosa Luxemburg makes the Frankfurt School seem peaceable and content. But I understand the impulse.
On the mysticism. I mean, for Benjamin it sometimes is mysticism, but even for him there's a lot more argumentation and reasoning than you'd think. His essay "The Storyteller" on the writer Leskov, for example, explores how storytelling means different things in modern vs. premodern societies. I wouldn't consider it mystical at all. I think you'd like it.
The image of negative theology is an interesting one, and probably one that neither Adorno nor Benjamin would have minded. I think the problem is that you begin to confuse the image of the thing for the thing itself. You miss their intellectual side. For example, part of the reason Adorno avoids characterizing the "ideal" future is that he doesn't believe that a static, totalized society would be ideal--you can't give a complete description of the ideal future, because the ideal will be in movement. There will continue to be disagreement and change. Gillian Rose's book on Adorno, The Melancholy Science, is good on this. Rose also does a good job relating Adorno to philosophers like Kierkegaard and Plato who used paradoxical, fragmentary forms.
You may be closer to them than you think, to Benjamin at least. An essay of yours like "Meditations on Moloch" feels close to some of what he was interested in doing--creating a picture of irrational nature of society without being itself irrational. "Theses on the Concept of History" is akin, if a bit more psychedelic.
"It means that God is so far beyond any human concept that any positive attempt to describe Him will necessarily fail; you can only highlight what He is not."
This is similar to how SCP-055 functions. (https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055) Who knew that God wasn't just mysterious, but actively anti-memetic? :P
Fight Club should have used it to keep things on the down low.
> (for a long time, heliocentrism was thought implausible because it would require the fixed stars to be unfathomably far away; eventually we got other reasons to think this and resigned ourselves to the fact)
That problem was more subtle: our atmosphere smears out the stars. People didn't know that effect. When you multiply that bigger apparent size by the minimum distance required to explain the parallax data to within the error of measurement, you got unreasonably large sizes for the stars.
And not just 'unreasonable' in the sense of "wow, this is big", but in the sense of "orders of magnitude larger than the sun". That's because even the ancient Greeks had worked out the real size of the sun; and by the time of the heliocentrism vs geocentrism debase in early modern times, it was common knowledge amongst astronomers.
Oh look at this interesting and highly toxic poison. Although history has shown it to be invariably and catastrophically fatal, perhaps if we just experiment with it a little more instead of leaving it the f alone we might get a little positive use out it.
The Frankfurt School's conceptual toolbox is very useful for trying to explain the bizarre and dramatic metamorphosis of elite and mass culture during the Woke Era:
"Why is every NPR story about how the bodega of my abuela is threatened by gentrification and climate change? Why is every children's book and movie about a scrappy queer BIPOC disabled protagonist who boldly dismantles the forces of white supremacy? Why does every long review essay in prestige publications like the NYT and Atlantic uncritically take the Howard Zinn version of U.S. and world history for granted?"
And indeed, generations of people who spend their lives mainlining this stuff, and never "read an old book" or grapple with any thoughts emerging from outside the Approved Narrative, can only blink uncomprehendingly when they are questioned, and can only explain anti-wokism in terms of Misinformation and Hate Speech.
I believe that the tacit or implicit "stereotyped concepts" used to generate culture (e.g. "all lawyers are useless slimeballs" or "paradigm underlying Society is subtly flawed") are indeed powerful forces that explain the passion of Wokeists and Anti-Wokeists, and the Frankfurters were right about this.
An interesting subplot within high culture is the conflict (e.g. in art criticism and theory) between those who are true-blue heirs of the Frankfurters and genuinely committed to some kind of revolution, and those who are satisfied with just posting the right slogans on Instagram.
A typical diss from an echt-Adornian: "Sehgal is the kind of artist who—had he encountered Duchamp’s urinal in 1917—would have proposed to exhibit a kitchen sink the next year, fully convinced that he had become a radical artist overnight."
https://www.artforum.com/features/benjamin-h-d-buchloh-6-219512/
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/70/60551/a-farewell-to-totality
https://www.artforum.com/features/the-curse-of-empire-172176/
Those who don't believe in God appear doomed to reinvent him (paraphrasing Voltaire).
To put that in a rationalist framework for you, people in large groups requiring coordination for distributing credit and blame feel a strong need to justify themselves.
So it’s like the Christian idea of becoming more holy by going over all your flaws in excruciating detail until you stop having them
With the similar failure mode of becoming a neurotic nervous wreak
> the genital focus of sex would fall with it, in favor of a “polymorphous perversity of the body” where eroticism inhered in every activity
tumblr user choptail famously attributes this phenomenon to the exogenous suppression of traditional eroticism ("we have got to get regular porn back on this website")
My reaction to the review aligned with a number of previous commenters. That is, I read secondary and primary sources on the Frankfurt School as an undergraduate. I am not a specialist in Frankfurt School ideas. Adorno did make racist comments. I've read Martin Jay's monographs. I've also read additional books on the Frankfurt School, including one on its early reception amongst U.S. academics and students. Additionally, there needs to be more history of late twentieth-century historians (historiography) who researched and wrote on the history of the Frankfurt School.
My main problem was a recent discussion with a fan of this blog. After block quoting Jay's summary of Adorno's "jazz" arguments in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, Mr. Alexander doesn't quote Martin Jay's conclusion that, "in denigrating the black contribution to jazz, it might be argued that Adorno displayed a characteristic European ethnocentrism. Indeed, there was a provincial streak in his make-up that came out most clearly in his lack of interest in non-Western musical forms...still, what also must be remembered is that the jazz he was most concerned with was the commercial variety churned out by Tin Pan Alley, not the less popular variety rooted in black culture itself. Much of his apparent insensitivity came from his failure to make the appropriate distinction between the two" (Jay, 186-87). Mr. Alexander alludes to the "less popular variety" contention, i.e., **𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 contorts itself to rescue Adorno - maybe he heard the wrong kind of jazz? Maybe he only heard popular, capitalist jazz, and that was how he could make such an uncharacteristic mistake? But to me the whole thing seems so crazy...** That's only a facet of the above---and Jay follows that facet with a "failure" on the part of Adorno.
Mr. Alexander's choice not to quote the conclusion, and to only quote the summation, admittedly hit me from left field. Jay advanced this criticism of Adorno and jazz throughout his career---predictably, he garnered critics for resting a depiction of Adorno as "eurocentric" almost exclusively on his "jazz" writings. In 2010, Jay also goes on to lambast Adorno for replicating Walter Benjamin's ideas in an essay on "inauthenticity" and the "critique of genuineness" (an essay that I wished could've delved more critically into Benjamin and "inauthenticity", rather than Adorno). On top of that, Jay partially reverses his thoughts on Adorno's "eurocentrism" in a recent essay on Adorno and artifact repatriation (Jay still mentions that Adorno's praise of worldwide indigenous cultures was "eurocentric").
Mr. Alexander further invokes a caveat: "...having only read a single book on them, I will no doubt fall into all the failure modes that they and their successors warned us against. But here are the analogies, intuition pumps, and parables that I found helpful." I appreciate the disclosure, but since Jay later published an intellectual biography on Adorno, including a critical comparison with Marcuse, I'm not sure why he wouldn't read and review that one for this blog. I don't believe this review was intended to be comprehensive, but I have an interlocutor who thought that the "leaders" of the "Frankfurt School" were Adorno and Marcuse. That misconception is not Mr. Alexander's fault, although I'm slightly concerned about it.
It's always helpful to read someone's views on Kuhn's "paradigm shift" from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. I wasn't completely clear as to why an explanation and attempted recapitulation of "paradigm shift" was necessary here. Then again, the same statement could be made about every college seminar or section discussion over Kuhn taking place across the United States. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 becomes and became a haunting remembrance of the undergrad and grad experience.
More pressing is: "...my brain is already filled with enough analytic philosophy that I find the Continent hard to navigate, but maybe someone who learned it as their native philosophical dialect can understand these ideas much more easily than I could manage. Or maybe understanding isn’t necessary. Some habits are sticky...[critiques critical theory---'criticism of the criticism of the criticism']." I think venturing out of the "Continent" is important and even "necessary." That said, from what I've read of Mr. Alexander's writings, he seems anxiously engaged with dialectics---explicitly, implicitly, and when a given scholar breaks down a given blog post. I hope that the dialectic-of-the-dialogic-of-the-dialectic permits Mr. Alexander to be alive lol. In this review, it is to the point that, according to the author, "language" has ensared him in articulating his own observations (I'm sorry, that was classic). In that context, I find it hard to believe that Mr. Alexander both harbors doubts about understanding these ideas 𝘢𝘯𝘥 is inclined to think that "understanding isn't necessary."
My interlocutor attempted (not very successfully) to mimic the "understanding" comments, i.e., "maybe I'm not smart enough, but..." If possible, since he seems to be building a sizeable following, I hope that Mr. Alexander and additional public intellectuals (?) would elaborate and clarify such comments. Several news outlets (of course, the review expresses concerns about the author's own "Newspeak"---that was awesome) describe him as a "Democrat" with "libertarian" goals. Regardless of whether he's a "libertarian Democrat" who ponders "love and liberty," I do look forward to monitoring his influence and what he has to say and write. If not for anything else, people like Mr. Alexander prompt reading publics to become more aware that attempts to fully understand ideas and idealogues can sometimes be hard to manage.
Martin Jay and Mr. Alexander are more alike than pundits have come to believe. For instance, I wouldn't read Jay without first noting reversals, somersaults, changes in thought, and continuities in practice. Same w/ Mr. Alexander. That approach should facilitate the writing of a book review. Here's to being the nontrivial 600-nth commenter in a trivial key.
So, basically, it's a koan as to whether po mo is stupid or clever - I go with stupid ... then again how should little ol me know?
>Instead of accepting a four-hour work week, you go into the office on weekends so you don’t fall behind the Joneses on the all-important total-number-of-cruises-taken metric. And even if an individual sees through the ruse, society is so centered around this ethos that it’s hard for him to personally defect (eg there aren’t many high-powered jobs that let you work four hours a week, and if you got a low-powered job, the whole culture would unite to call you a loser).
Would the people here be much more sympathetic to this critique if Matt Levine made it?
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-06-18/lawyers-are-mad-about-salt
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You want to pay your people enough that they don’t leave for a more lucrative offer elsewhere, but not so much that they never need to work again. The financial industry has developed sophisticated tools to address this problem, tools like “your office rival has a house closer to the beach in Amagansett so you have to keep working to outdo her.” The main financial centers offer an enormous array of arbitrarily priced positional goods, and the apprenticeship model of finance teaches people to value them, so by the time you are making $20 million a year you will find it perfectly reasonable to think “man if I made $30 million a year life would be good.”
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Thank you. I've been dimly aware of Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School since my college years (very long ago), but as an STEM student I never really understood wtf. A year ago I started wondering whether their occult writings somehow contributed to the mess we now face. Over the past couple of months I've tried harder to grasp their message and contributions, guided by Wikipedia and Claude, but without much success. Only with your witty and insightful text do I begin to grasp that indeed what might have begun as a well-intentioned inquiry into obscure lacunae of the humanities led to bonkers conclusions that have diffused with astonishing vigor into the left wing of a bipolar political instability that seems to be ripping us apart.
Really interesting insight into the Frankfurt school, Scott. But you seem to have made a small but crucial mistake. Hegelian dialectics uses immanent critique for analysis not thesis+antithesis = synthesis. Similarly Marx uses immanent critique to to criticize capitalism through its internal contradictions.
I am in all ways a novice in studying this but I did learn this information and though it probably doesn't have an effect on your critique on the Frankfurt school I hope it will encourage you to re-examine your understanding Marxism, maybe study it in more detail even if only better inform your opposition to it.
Jazz-casual-enjoying leftist here! Yeah if it's 20s-40s or specifically Big Band then it's not-- *gets beat up by jazz-history-knowing music nerds*
> The closest real-world equivalent to primitive tribes trying to invent capitalism from first principles is the cargo cult. The tribes knew that the thing they liked (US planes bringing them consumer goods) involved runways, signals, and wings.
This seems to rely on the popular definition of "capitalism" as meaning "whatever the United States is currently doing".
> But you could notice the hidden failures of the existing system, and then you would have learned something interesting about God-Communism - it’s the type of thing which could resolve these failures. Someone in the primitive tribe notices that their rain dances don’t work as advertised, and now they’re only ninety-nine steps away from inventing science.
This is a weird one. The final sentence is basically correct. Someone notices that the rain dances don't work, and they're one step closer to inventing science.
But it doesn't support the first sentence. You can't learn anything about communism that way. Sticking very closely to the analogy, science has brought us many things, but one thing it hasn't brought us is the ability to summon the rain. If your problem is that rain dances don't work, that may get you closer to inventing science, but it doesn't get you closer to a working rain dance, and it doesn't tell you anything about what you'll have once you've invented science.
I really enjoyed reading your essay. Thanks for taking the time to research, writing and sharing.
When I was younger (at uni) I was quite well versed in the authors. I still have a soft spot for Marcuse. As another great comment pointed out, critical theory owes more to Foucault than the Frankfurter school, although I personally believe we wouldn't have gotten Foucault and Derrida without the Frankfurters.
I think you nailed it in the thought where these are criticisms of modernity, borne from the frustrations the idealized visions of the progress of history not following Marx's script. Personally I think the entire idea of progress is the 'original sin', as it were, not so much because there isn't progress, but because none of us have a crystal ball and prognostications were back then just as hit and miss as they are today.
The problem for all of us is (borrowing from their terms) is we're bounded by the superstructure, and collectively are unable to ditch bad ideas partly because entire generations invested so much time and energy (and money) in studying these philosophies, that by the time individuals "progressed" from postgrad studies to tenured professors, decades go by, and individuals owe their station to the status of these philosophies, so it's just easier to keep the ball rolling than "denouncing" the hand providing the feeding. The same applies to Foucault or 2nd/3rd wave feminism. Society and university culture does not reward pointing out the theory doesn't work in practice.
The other interesting aspect, which has become more mainstream recently, but is lost on the boomer generation, is the behind the scenes manipulation by vested interests in promoting "new left" ideologies at home within modernity, which they criticize without going full Marxist revolution. In the post-ww2 reconstruction of Europe, we find the center for cultural freedom (CCF), an American NGO, very active in financing the Frankfurter school and various Left publications, which enabled aspiring theorists (incl feminists) to get wider audiences. In fact, it's an interesting question whether the entire cultural revolution of 1968 would have happened without these ideas circulating so broadly. The problem we face today is realizing the CCF was a front for the CIA (disbanded post Church committee 1975). The CIA itself says this is one of their most successful ops (the CCF gave the Frankfurter school seed money in 1947 and 49, it's mind-blowing) and say so themselves. Post Church committee the soft power ops were transferred to USAID and eventually privatized to Soros. I'm not writing this to say we should hate on anyone, just that it's important we be aware that if today in 2026 we're still discussing the relevance of certain ideas because of their prominence, we should at the very least be aware of why they occupied such prominent intellectual spaces, which perversely has nothing to do with whether they're good or bad ideas, and more to do with divide and conquer as a governance strategy. While these intellectuals were leading us down rabbit holes, the architecture and rules of the modern/post modern Western world was being created (lawfare bureaucracy and financialization), and no one noticed until today, where it becomes very costly and nearly impossible to change the vision of what we want Western liberal democratic societies to be about. At best we have analytical tools to criticize, but we have nothing to replace the current structure and for all intents and purposes are stuck within this postmodern virtual fantasy merging tech and finance.
Sorry for writing so much.