Herbert Marcuse and the Great Refusal
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- Herbert Marcuse and The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory made ginormous impacts throughout the 20th century. As newer forms of repression stemming from the industrial revolution came to fruition, and the reactions to it, Marcuse set out to understand what has happened, and what was happening during the student protests of the 1960's. The Great Refusal was an evolution from prior existentialist and Marxian philosophy, but took focus on changing forms of human subjectivity of power, control and consumption, rather than just the larger systemic structures at play. In the video we go into detail about some major points of the Great Refusal and it's modern day under-examined relevance.
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Modern Slavery in America: • Slavery in the United ...
Absolutely wonderful and more detailed source on the subject: plato.stanford.edu/entries/ma...
Intro: 0:00
New Forms of Repression and Consumption: 1:34
Rick Roderick on Internal Contradictions Within Rationalism: 5:43
Modern Examples: 7:04
The New Sensibility and Potential for Change: 11:09
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![Rick Roderick on Marcuse - One-Dimensional Man [full length]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/WNAKr1TQ0xc/mqdefault.jpg)
Consider subscribing or dropping a like on the video if you really enjoyed this. This is such a small channel, and small things such as that truly helps in big ways. Takes a ton to get that algorithm on our side.
Why are you promoting an evil ideology?
@@paulborst4724 :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD someone completely missed the point
A man ahead of his time.
He was just sleazy with big words.
que didática incrível! obrigada pelo vídeo :)
I really like your videos, great overviews of thinkers.
Found your channel on Reddit and I’m really glad I did; your writing is really really good.
Great video mate!
Thanks for this :) Keep up the great work!
i keep rewatching your vids there so good
Really powerful, thanks.
Does anyone know the name of the song playing in the background during the end? Great video btw!
I can help with that! The song is Light Blue by Alan Špiljak. The dude makes extremely good music. Here is a link to a CZcams video: czcams.com/video/W89ReHO7yTk/video.html
@@epochphilosophy Thanks for your reply!
@@matiaslucas8933 Anytime, friend!
@@epochphilosophywhat about the first song
Obrigada! 💓
Thank you for your unapologetic defense of postmodernism. I've found a lot of interesting new ideas and concepts, not all of which I agree with, but I'm glad they exist out there and that there are still people interested in exploring and debating these ideas.
Thanks for the comment! Important to note: Marcuse and Adorno (critical theorists) are not really post-modernists, they are often lumped into the same "post-modern" category from reactionary individuals.
Yeah. I think Marcuse, Saussure and Derrida etc. were brilliant but don’t agree with a lot of their conclusions or politics. Still their ideas make you genuinely rethink things and I find that refreshing. Can, in the end create your own form of the great refusal or connect binary dots in your own way because of their work. Hegel still a mystic nutjob IMO. 😆
My problem with postmodernist theories is that there are theories which claim that literally truth doesn't exist. That makes no sense.
@@jonnymahony9402 who says that?
Beautiful video
Great video, you deserve more views ! Greetings from Switzerland
Thanks friend, appreciate that! Oddly enough, right as you commented this, I just uploaded the new video!
People aren’t ready for this truth.
GREAT WORK
I always shudder to think how many people were misled on postmodernism due to talking heads like JBP.
great video thanks
excellent video
Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed!
I don't write youtube comments. But this video is amazing
Great video
the thing is post modern perspectives are pretty rampant in america anyway, people just dont understand what postmodernism is like you said.
Thank you
I will look more into Rick Roderick. Thank you!
@Epoch Philosophy Ok so, a lil help would be great rn : I just don't get what paradox is Roderick talking about. I hear the "paradox of dions" which is dubbed "paradox of downs" in the subtitles, and neither of them exists on Wikipedia so wtf is that shit, am I deaf or something ?
Btw, those videos are great dude keep going, greetings from France
Paradox of paradigm
Thanks very good
Awesome, glad you enjoyed!
Such a beautiful video.. Thank you 💙
Max Stirner has said all this in a very better sense IMO.
Where exactly? The Ego and Its Own?
@@markoslavicek yes
can you elaborate? i thought the same at once, but haven't looked too much into stirner's work only knowing a bit of it.
Right on
3:00 Marcuse was interested in psychology and tried to integrate Freud into Marxism. I heard Marcuse say this talking to Bryan Magee.
very good video
This is well written!
Damn dude how does this not have more views???
Subscribed. You are underrated
Thanks so much! Comments like these make all the work much more rewarding!
@@epochphilosophy I am about to start my own soon. I have been working on a video called the Late Capitalism of Jake Paul and how he is a byproduct of both the system and culture of late capitalism.
@@Theorychad99 Ohh, that sounds really cool tbh. Hop in the discord I have linked on my channel and be sure to link that when you are finished with it. Sounds really interesting.
@@epochphilosophy Done! Look forward to more vids
Which author's or books would give me the most accurate picture of postmodernism
Snow Job. Love the snow. Or is it Herb's dandruff?
Ashes from Marcuse's stogie?
Beautifully presented. The “Great refusal” would not unconsciously be replaced by another division between self and other - indivisibly enveloped or driven by a procession of reflexive impulses of reformulated isms - but by a consciously awakened and deepened empathic impulse. Essentially, the maturation of man’s spiritual impulse beyond the threshold of competitive containers!
great stuff, but found it kind of funny that you could say hegemony correctly but moderninity got me chuckling
Yes, pls forgive me. This was before I scripted and recorded in one take, and said, "fuck it" when I realized said that word wrong.
(No joke, I used to get nervous before recording lol.) Thanks for the praise regardless.
@@epochphilosophyfriend, when people get such words wrong it is a sign of somebody who reads a lot and isn't surrounded by lots of educated well-read people who use these terms regularly.
I see it as a sign of somebody with an admirable spirit.❤
Great videos. I feel like your giving me a PHD level education in Philosophy. I binged the channel and hit subscribe and the notifications. 🙃🤗
HM seems dated and tired.
(He is no longer available in our bookshops.)
Great video but I can’t unhear “modern-ini-ty”
Yeah, sorry about that. This was when I did videos and audio in one take.
@@epochphilosophy ahhh shit man I should apologize, not you, wasn’t meant to be a gentle ribbing. You do fantastic work and I get a ton out of it.
Totally minimised the Marxist strain in Marcuse there
Solid as fuck
This is a great video. This is my first ever aesthetic comment on youtube as I really care for the information, primarily. The music around 09:10 is so jarring, it's inhibiting my ability to fully concentrate on your points.
Do you know the name of it?
Marcuse is CIA
Here's your problem, *ad plays*
Sorry about that. This was a bit of an older video of mine, (before I hit CZcams partner) and I didn't adjust the ad settings. Moved the mid-roll to a more fitting part of the video. Thanks for the comment!
@@epochphilosophy ah, no problem, thanks for the reply. I forgot that your channel is smaller, so I was a little shocked by the reply lol. In that case I will say, you're doing pretty well. I've seen your newer videos as well and they're pretty well done. I study theory/philosophy as an autodidact because I cannot afford to put myself back in college at this point in time. So your vids do help as a sort of video versions of readers for these texts. I do appreciate the deviation from your average breadtuber video. Really enjoyed your recent zizek video. You've come a long way from your older videos, keep up the good work.
youmayhavejustsavedmylife
5:55
מעניין
Marcuse was US intelligence
Fight Club (1999)
I really like what you put forward here and I see the millennial generation naturally rejecting the brutally competitive paradigm so popular with their parents, partially out of disrespect for the failure of their parents and partially because their parents, in their greed, left them a world completely destroyed (whether one looks at markets, social life, or even ability to make a living). I do have a question though, is capitalism the problem or is it rather the conglomeration of power and the lack of competing power structures? Secondly, what's the alternative? Where could I read more into the suggested remedies?
Capitalism itself is a power structure in which power rests in few hands. So it is not about competing power structures but about equitably shared power, which itself suggests possible alternatives. The real question is, how do we get there?
@@imagine07018 Crony capitalisim/ State Capitalisim has power in few hands. Free market capitalisim allows anyone to participate in the marketplace.
Socialism is the centralization of economic and political power solely within the state. There is no way to "seize the means of production" without a very powerful state. And now you've given that state an entire economy to manage as it wills as a representative of the people.
THAT is one of the most ripe for abuse ideas ever thought of.
I do think socialists are onto SOMETHING. And I think they've brought us alot of great ideas. A union. Is a great idea. They should be universal and democratic.
The JNU leftists here in India, took his idea of "repressive tolerance" really seriously.
Psychoanalysis of Marcuse and his ilk might be revealing. There seems to be a set of people who crave the mantle of being the instruments of systemic change and thereby attain a god-like status. The great refusal seems to rely on the great blinkering. To critique a system by focussing on failings is a critique without substance. In addition, the alternative being put forward has not been fully revealed and does not attract any scrutiny. It's also unsettling that most philosophers who seek to 'unchain' the working class have never been part of the working class, and yet seek to refute the working classes' support of liberal societies. The musical lament is quite distracting and overdone.
A lot I agree with, but a lot of things I seriously don't agree with.
speaking of us repressive system, even if uncle sam wants to change, do you think others would allow it? aka china or some others would take advantage of that and replace uncle sam and install them as a new king. i think it is kind of hard dilemma.
"Moderninity" (repeated twice, second time at 4:55) epitomizes the intellectual level of this uncritical paean to Herbert Marcuse and Critical Theory.
This global power keeps the socialist orbit on the defensive, all too costly not only in terms of military expenditures but also in the perpetuation of a repressive bureaucracy. The development of socialism thus continues to be deflected from its original goals, and the competitive coexistence with the West generates values and aspirations for which the American standard of living serves as a model. Now, however, this threatening homogeneity has been loosening up, and an alternative is beginning to break into the repressive continuum.
This video is insanely powerful. You always capture Marcuse’s words so potently.
Well done! Your Consumer Product is good, and perhaps will dominate a niche. Your power and influence may increase. (Stop now or you will become your own enemy?).
Consuming philosophers teachings and their. ideologies is no different than consuming CZcams and Instagram personalities
One could argue that the diet renders a different mind composition, but the act is only different in the form it consumes
Same shit different media. Language does allow for different types of thinking and I do think actually studying the books these people wrote is a better way to form an opinion on them. But you're still mostly correct I think.
Of course, the question is, who is producing the products people are consuming. Uyghur slaves in Chinese labor camps. That's who. The whole consumer society is immoral. US Treasury bonds are collateralizing your future earnings. You are literally in bondage to the central bank global government. That's slavery. It's immoral. Refuse. No is the most powerful word in language. Refusal exterminates slavery.
This video was made before the BLM protest last year but explains perfectly its rise and fall.
It fell because it's a bullsxxt idea.
@@richmrstonestone yur mom is
I don't have anything against postmodernism, but Marcuse is not a postmodernist.
Not at all. Nor was the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. But, they are considered the precursors to postmodernism. And many people have reactionary beliefs because of this.
Sorry if this wasn't more clear in the video.
@@epochphilosophy That's okay! I feel like the structuralists were more of a precursor, but I see your point.
That sheep argument is simplistic and weak....many of arguments here are. They ignore nuance in service of the authors bias.
Postmodernism, defined maturely and not through the lens of popular culture, can best be defined as Lyotard's "general skepticism of grand narratives." Thats it. Thats the fundamental premise that creates so many hysterical reactions.
Go to school work at a career for thirty years an catch a debilitating injury you learn all about modern slavery. They will ruin everything inthe life you created for yourself Word
So then . . . 'You don't know what postmodernism is.'
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
James Lindsay on his New Discourses podcast does a very good job of dissecting the claptrap sess pool that Marcuse injected into the minds of the disaffected would-be revolutionary. Bring back the gulags! (Joke)
Yes. But his videos are 3 hours long. By the time I get to the end I’ve forgotten the beginning.
James lindsay lmfao 😂😂
My favourite marcuse quote is that when asked what his better world would look like he just said no 😂 tear down everything, mumble mumble, utopia!
💯
James Lindsay has a series of short videos (~15 mins) that are easier to absorb and understand. Marcuse is a neoMarxist, the group of folks who realized that the proletariat wasn’t going to revolt, as Marx predicted. There were too many benefits of freedom and capitalism. So the neoMarxists changed the strategy from class warfare to identity warfare, which is why we now have identity politics and division based on race, gender, sexuality, etc. They basically swapped out class warfare for oppression warfare (oppressor-oppressed dynamic).
This is sophistry with a soundtrack. The school Mr. Marcuse came from had some valid points about the modern human condition. The question now, 50-75 years later is, does any of this have any relevance in our current circumstances?
Your editing is very well done and I love the soundtrack. However, the main point I got out of this was to blame all of our ailments on society as a whole. To not take stock of ourselves, or accountability. Capitalism is rife with flaws, but the outcome of Marcuse or Marx had was to replace it with just another oppressive hierarchical system. When we all open our minds and hearts, to embrace eachother as one. Connecting to the God consciousness(universe), we will become a better society naturally.
Both Marx and Marcuse knew this. They were both totalitarians. There is no such thing as a liberal Marxist.
“The outcome of Marcuse or Marx…” ugh. Word salad.
It’s funny that someone would accuse another of being cynical about post-modernism. 😂 PM is cynicism in a nutshell.
It funny how Mercurse’s modern children are a perfect example of the echo chamber he described.
Notice the rise of the teen suicide rate after the hippie era.
He acts like the world wasn’t dominated by violence and physical power for all of human history until it declined dramatically after the discovery of free markets.
Sports is a safe way to practice the tribal warfare and competitiveness that are part of our DNA.
The making stupid of ideologues is probably the thing that most deserves to be studied with extreme scrutiny.
8:05 of you're going to claim that certain economic systems reinforce racist ideologies demonstrate that other economic systems don't or can't also reinforce those ideologies. I don't buy it because it's fucking stupid.
Marcuse didn't buy it either, but it wasn't his intention to buy his own bullshit, but merely use it as a tool for subversion against the foundations of Western society. He was just another scumbag Communist who should never have been allowed into the US.
1:05: Do you want to suggest that Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas belong to Postmodernism? Sorry, but that's completely wrong. They're dialectical marxists and do not have that much in common with PoMos. They do not criticize rationality in the same way as the postmodernists do. Their work (especially Horkheimers) is against instrumental rationality and the ideal they were following was the sort of reason the enlightenment was proclaiming. Postmodernists (better term: Poststructuralists) like Foucault were criticizing rationality on a different basis and in a different methodological way, leading to other outcomes than the frankfurt school neomarxists. What you are doing is following Jordan Petersons absurd claim that there are "postmodern neomarxists" everywhere, which was fantastically debunked by Cuck Philosophy here on YT and also by Slavoj Zizek when he debated Peterson in Canada.
Sorry, I wasn't very clear in the video. You're ultimately preaching to the choir, my friend. There was a comment below stating this. I didn't elaborate too well on this in the video and it was my fault. I was trying to convey that critical theorists are often lumped into post-modernists, therefore get the same treatment as people like Derrida and Foucalt from the "anti-postmodern" Petersonian crowd you just described.
@@epochphilosophy Ahhh, thanks for making that clear. I could not find the comment because it was the last one and I had to scroll all the way down. No problem :)
Epoch Philosophy well, what is wrong with post modernist? wast faucoult some sort of important figure who warns about abusive power?
They are no dialectical and much less marxists. They are marxian at best.
I'm sure you're an intelligent dude who is acting in good faith here. However... you mispronounce: Marcuse, Modernity... and several other words all throughout the video which... along with using words such as, "ginormous," in the title section... just makes you look not intelligent and not acting in good faith. The internet has given the most powerful tool on Earth to the common man. Please do 20-30 more minutes of research before you drop right into adding the "moody piano" and all the Ken Burns'esque effects. If you spend more time on editing and uploading the video than you did in the research and scriptwriting phase, you are doing it wrong. Because... even if your ideas are incredible... you present yourself as an authority. You clearly are not. This is dangerous and becoming more dangerous by the day.
Nonsense
It's true that Marcuse was scum, of course. But where he differed from the other parasite, Marx was that Marcuse recognised that under capitalism workers could improve their position through hard work and talent, with a bit of risk. While under socialism, of course poverty and oppression are inescapable features.
So rather than a worker revolution, Marcuse focused on students who had never earned their living and were afraid of the responsibility for their position.
This payed off spectacularly.
Just go back to your Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro videos.
One thing Marxists get wrong is their take on social determinism. People create societies,first and foremost. The decision to get up in the morning is a product of your own personality as much as it is the product of any external force. It is determined by what you want. This is a values based decision. If you want to receive material rewards,then you engage in material actions. External forces may inform your decisions,but they do not force you,at least without something of your inner life manifesting in the process.
Things like racial Animus or bigotry are just as much the result of personal experience as the result of some abstract philosophy.
Mind you,those experiences may be the result of hearing about the experiences of others as the result of your own lived experience,but they are the result of experience. It is the result of the perception of these experiences.
The more I study Marcuse, the more I HATE this man. His philosopher outwardly destroys the institutions, calling for violent revolution for "tolerance's" sake (get your mind around that little nugget), all the while creating a Marxian dialectic of utopian nihilism. Marcuse might be deep (in the way that a quicksand is "deep") but only liars or ignoramuses would accept his philosophy as good or necessary.
Well said.
The more I read your comment, the more you showcase yourself as an absolute nutcase of a moron.
Don't hate. Just rejected move on. This person is not worth hating. Further you become what you hate.
This guy is just like any other Marxist. He will argue for a quality of result rather than a quality of opportunity and then argue that he and people like him should have god-like power to make everyone equal. He will also argue that that is the game without an end and all during that time he and people who think like him will be the most powerful people. Try searching and finding the equality of that. But all the while he will live high on the hog and have the best of everything while everyone else has nothing. Communism is a system where gray mediocrities can take away from the people of ability.
He even go so far as to say that you must reject the benefits of capitalism, IE the products which get better and better every year and which poorer and poorer people can now afford.
Capitalism has brought more people out of the grinding poverty on past that any other system in history.
Q here. We are one. 🇺🇸
.... Friend, I think you are on the wrong channel. More than happy to have dialogue, but, the idea that Trump is the answer to deep rooted money interests is hilarious. He is the swamp.
I think he had a lot of interesting and useful ideas, but at the same time, seems dangerously idealistic, short sighted , verbose and was definitely a CIA agent.
The CIA didn't even exist when he came here. He worked for the OSS during WWII helping the US fight the Nazis. The CIA came after he was gone. Your other claim - dangerously short-sighted (more so than this system that he critiques?) remains unsubstantiated. Make your point. Finally, verbose - having read the guy, I will give you that one.
@@imagine07018 sorry, should have specified, he did work for the OSS, Same thing (or rather, a predecessor). And he did work there after the war. He died in the late 70s, I think he might have done some intelligence work in the CIA considering how many of the 60s movements were CIA planted or manipulated.
This really lacks objectivity. When you are narrating, you speak as though what these philosophers wrote was accurate and reflected reality, when in fact, a lot of it was their subjective view, which in the case of Marcuse, was incredibly destructive to society, which we have seen in the past few years. Destroying society, capital, wealth, to produce what? More poverty?
Why do so many evil people come from Germany? Yikes.
@@lepidoptera9337 The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory is evil. I'm not joking, being facetious, or hyperbolic.
Like trump.
@@bobbiecat8000 Trump's not German, he's American.
I think you're perceiving capitalism in and of itself too negatively. It's based in nature more than you think. It's an extension of how we already are, It's not a result of the system.
oh dear read history
Marcuse. is a series of destructive ideas...
He enjoyed all expanding upon the failures of the enlightenment. Rousseau, Satre, and Marx. Working from a zero day man philosphy, he demanded man exist without nature.
Yes his comments on characteristcs and his comments upon behaviour are excellent contributions, but not within the binary he demanded or implied. it is a spectrum, a dilution beyond/laying of sets.
Lol. Sports are bad because they are competitive. Your competing four ideological territory by posting this video….
Oh come one. You have no idea what rural America is like. The food providers shouldn't be swept under the table, be careful of what you state.
Grew up in rural America, and have been all around rural America most of my life. I know it quite well. Different types of echo chambers exist everywhere: suburban communities and urban communities as well. Rural communities aren't an exception to this phenomenon.
This is a mere fact, not an erasure or degradation of some specific demographic in the United States.
I know all about Marcuse because I studied philosophy and Marxism under him at UCSD (1969-1973). Years later, I recognized his teachings as turgid drivel. Ayn Rand is a quantum leap more profound than Herbie, and she rightfully promotes capitalism and individualism while blowing holes in the (inherently fascist) Marxism that Herbie stumped for.
Ayn Rand died on Welfare
@@paulwells411 a LIE. She received social security, which is NOT an entitlement program, because she was FORCED to pay into it. I likewise receive social security.
Individualism is a precursor to fascism.
P. S. No one in academia takes Ayn Rand seriously other than oligarch funded libertarian think tanks.
@@bobbiecat8000 I don't take academics seriously. I've been around lots of so-called brilliant academics, and most of them are idiots, including my very famous cousin, Harvard professor Howard Gardner, (now 79 years old), a brainless libtard whose favorite politician is Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren. Fact is, I'm probably the foremost living philosopher, and I've only got a lowly B.A. from UCSD.
I highly recommend James Lindsay's New Discourses CZcams videos , which make mincemeat of Marx, Marcuse (a college professor of mine), and current cultural Marxism, which pushes DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity), CRT, and 'woke' insanity in all its forms. Classical Marxist-FASCISM, based on class warfare didn't work, so the Marxist-FASCISTS resorted tp race and gender identity warfare to foment their revolution against the GOOD - capitalism (the only moral social system) and inviolable anti-statist individual rights.
Keep the anti-Capitalism.
Drop the Globalism.
Embrace the Third Position.
So third way clinton
You own the means of production and this banal tripe is what you produce. Unfortunate. Extremely biased and myopic, I hope you find a higher calling in your life and use the power you do have for more significant ends. Yes, I looked at the world this way when I was an undergrad too...
EDIT: I will add, so as not to sound like a complete ass, that your videos are well done and summaries of thinkers/ideas solid. However, your real world examples and conclusion poor.
Best of luck to you my friend.
lol do you people ever think critically about the critical theory you read? People vote more conservative as they get older because they no longer buy the specious idealistic notions of their youth. How does self interest perpetuate racist ideology? You've not once critically thought about critical theory, you've accepted unthinking everything you read.
main problem is your input on what ever your videos are / your videos are great- that is a good idea however when you say something you deprive the viewer from his critical thinking something that now is quite rear in fact does not exist including Jordan Peterson./ somehow you exist on a upside-down realm and imposible to reverse at this point in time it cannot be reverse, only way is from the top down & the challenge is how to make those at the top to bent and understand, that unless they change it will be no-one left but a Jurassic park & a human experiment that did not work as expected the 99% is gone minds are collapsing and robotized / only a Yellowstone implosion & start 🐒📱all over again. some humans will survive evolve and procreate the intelligent way. HOPEFULLY. 🪐👽