If ever there was a writer that took up the cause of cultural Marxism and brought it to the forefront of popular culture it was Herbert Marcuse and his groundbreaking book, Eros and Civilization. Having just read and written a midterm paper on it myself, I can tell you with all honesty that it is one of the most intentionally confusing, obscure, and meandering books that I have ever come across.
Though the book is dense, its Marxist undertones are readily apparent even to the disinterested reader. Having read the book, I would venture to call the author, Marcuse, the father of the blue pill. While rambling on about Freudian pseudo-analysis of man’s true sexual nature, Marcuse advocates the overthrowing of 50’s era western society along psycho-analytic grounds.
Marcuse’s central idea
The fundamental point that Marcuse raises is the idea of surplus repression. The fundamental premise is that civilization with its traditions and its competition based performance principle repress man and require more and more work from him despite the fact that we could all readily live lives of far greater leisure. Furthermore, man is now alienated from the product of his labor and does not take joy in the production of, say, 1000 iPods as much as he would the production of one spear with which he could hunt for food.
According to Marcuse, civilization acts as a source of surplus repression that denies man the expression of one of his most basic drives, the Eros or love drive. According to this theory, man tries to reach out and connect to the entire world by engage in erotic love, or love of a non-sexual nature. Making friends and building communities, when not motivated by the performance principle, are all examples of Eros or non-genital love. The kind of work that society makes us engage in however, is non-erotically charged, repressive, and makes us all deeply unhappy.
Ok, pretty basic Freud stuff so far, whats next?
Marcuse makes the claim that genital intimacy has been elevated above all other forms of sexual intimacy; apparently we used to possess as children what Marcuse calls pre-genital polymorphous perversity in which we love without focusing on genital heterosexual release as a primary goal.
Marcuse’s vision:
No longer used as a full-time instrument of labour, the body would be re-sexualised… (which) would first manifest itself in a reactivation of all erotogenic zones and, consequently, in a resurgence of pre-genital polymorphous sexuality and in a decline of genital supremacy. The body in its entirety would become an object of cathexis, a thing to be enjoyed – an instrument of pleasure. This change in the value and scope of libidinal relations would lead to a disintegration of the institutions in which the private interpersonal relations have been organised, particularly the monogamic and patriarchal family.
Did you catch the last bit? The executive summary:
Intentionally grandiose language and theorizing to drive home the final point about how the monogamic and patriarchal family is repressive. Didn’t quite follow the logic? Don’t worry, that’s the point, but at least you’re convinced that some sophisticated thought processes went on to arrive at the final point that the nuclear family unit is bad.
Would you be surprised to learn that this is the guy that coined the phrase, “sex, drugs, and rock and roll?” Keep in mind that the work of men like Marcuse, Frankfurt school acolytes in general, formed the intellectual groundwork of the entire 60’s counter-culture movement. His platform promised a utopia of sex on demand with every single perversity of every single individual fulfilled because it was grounded in their childlike innocence.
True red-pillers know that all the betas marching around in berets were the first to lose out on the sexual bonanza promised by the “sexual revolution” as they found out that, much to their horror, women’s unrestrained sexual nature is hypergamous, and beta boy waving the hammer and sickle was the first victim of the laissez-faire sexual marketplace. God has a sense of humor, I suppose.
The repudiation of tradition
With Marcuse, tradition, with its guiding structures and underlying understanding of objective truth, is seen as something repressive and worth overthrowing. But the exploration of our animal curiosities is the key to our happiness as individuals and as a society. Somehow this repudiation of society built on humanity’s development of a super-ego, through a Great Refusal, as Marcuse puts it, will suddenly return us to children romping around free to engage in polymorphous perversity whenever we please. Oh yeah, and we’ll get to keep all the benefits of industrial civilization as well!
Truth, however incomprehensible it may be to us, should be the true motivator of society. Even if it isn’t, it will always rear its ugly head and remind us that social projects are by their very nature attempts to defy human nature. I hesitate to say more about Marcuse, except to mention that this was the popular voice of the 60s calling for overthrow of patriarchy, black revolt, and discarding of traditional values, all in the favor of something called the pleasure principle—the idea that humans live to experience erotic pleasure and that any digression from this pursuit is damaging and to be avoided at all costs.
Take that as you will. Personally the conflation of these disparate ideas seem to be a logical leap at best, but keep in mind that logical, systematized theory was never the modus operandi of Marcuse’s work. His was an emotional appeal, riding the populist indignation of worker exploitation to market completely disparate, unrelated and toxic ideals to upper-middle class white folks living in a baby boomer utopia and fundamentally divorced from reality.
The appeal to the counter-culture youth worked, and now we wonder why university students are the chubby-cheeked herbivores who march around in Guy Fawkes masks shrilly chanting “we r legiun, end raep cultur NAW!!!” If you ask me, guys like Marcuse had a lot to do with it. But I believe we may be nearing a tipping point—enough of us are waking up, and maybe it is high time for a counter-culture movement of our own.
Read More: Why The Ukraine Crisis Is A Red Pill Vs Blue Pill Superpower Clash
Jews have made a living out of creating the most evil things to destroy the Western civilization
I’d nuance that. I think it was Churchill who divided the Jews into three distinct categories:
1. National Jews, who are Jewish but are mainly just part of the nation they live in. For example, they’re British first and Jewish second, as most Christians in Britain are British first and Christian second. They are no threat at all, and are very valuable to the technological and economic development of the nations they reside in.
2. Zionist Jews, who are Jewish and define themselves mainly as Jewish. This sub-category wants a homeland of its own, and has since received that homeland. These Jews are a mixed bag – some take their religion way too far, but others are valuable allies in a geopolitical sense.
3. International and atheistic Jews. These are Jews who have, for the most part, forsaken both their national identity and their religious identity, but still tend to have access to the networks, skills and resources that they need to be influential in the world. Because they have neither a national nor a religious identity, they turn to the historical third – ideology. In this category, you could conceivably place Marx, Trotsky, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and countless others.
Finally, somebody makes some sense out of this very thorny topic.
Very interesting article!
But I’d say that the father of the blue pill was Gramsci, who died two decades before Marcuse’s book was published. Gramsci’s Marxist ideas about Cultural Hegemony were the seeds of today’s Cultural Marxism.
“Would you be surprised to learn that this is the guy that coined the phrase, “sex, drugs, and rock and roll?””
Not particularly, I remember the 60s. More to the point, I remember the 50s culture that Marcuse wished to overthrow, and I assure you, the blue pill was not only alive, but thriving.
You seem to think that Cultural Marxism is the defining characteristic of blue pill. It ain’t. Cultural Marxism is the child of blue pill, not its parent, and the free love movement dates back to Victorian England.
Cultural Marxism is uber blue pill. It basically invents it’s own critique and offers a fiction solution; humanism based on a shared social identity. Marcuse thought he was so ‘hip’ taking down the conservative culture of the 50s and replacing it with drugs, easy sex, and group hedonism.
In reality, to any man worthy of the title, Marcuse is the ultimate subversive. He wants to bring everything down to the animal ideal, stripped of honor and distinction … he views tradition as repression.
In reality, deconstruction is for weaklings who can’t deal with reality. It is the ultimate OMEGA MALE SLAVE UPRISING. Marcus honestly thought bourgeois women of the 50s were repressed slaves … compare that to liberated millennial women who, by 30 will be essentially destitute, std ridden, and government dependents. What success has ideas have engendered!
You can only be a leftist if you haven’t had to work for the things that you value.
When you have to work for something you truly love, you aren’t going to be cool with people trying to take a piece of what you put your heart and soul into, just because they’re too lazy to do it themselves.
Leftist is the opposite of value. It’s similar to R/K selection theory.
Where do you think the free love movement of the Victorian period came from? Marxist Revolutionaries of the day. Remember, this stuff has been fomenting since they stormed Versailles. It didn’t go away in the 19th century, only to reappear in 1917. Recall the Paris Commune. The Humanist Left has been plying it’s trade since the Enlightenment (at least).
Even so, you’re right in the sense that it was our own classical liberal idealism (equality, et al.) as well as our own individual inclination towards selfishness and self-destruction which served as the base element of our present degeneracy.
“Where do you think the free love movement of the Victorian period came from? ”
Marx hisself was living in London at the time. It was a hotbed of progressive intellectuals.
It occurred to me after I posted that I might have phrased it Free Love Movement ™, as the ideas of it go back rather farther than the French Revolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamites
The utopian theorists who can’t deal with the nature of reality and personal responsibility have always been among us. This is just the latest round.
Surely, this is just the timeline of the modernist incarnation of this timeless rebellion, but the utopians go back to Lucifer! (Alinsky certainly thought so.)
So those white people like Havelock Ellis, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, D.H. Lawrence, etc. had nothing to do with it propagandizing the idea of “free love”?
Not sure I follow you here. How does that conflict with what I wrote?
“I can tell you with all honesty that it is one of the most intentionally
confusing, obscure, and meandering books that I have ever come across.”
As it is with all Marxist literature going all the way back to the man himself, as anyone familiar with his labor theory of value will attest.
I once tried to listen to “Progressive talk radio” (if there could ever be) and it was like walking into a room with a bunch of college students, the kind who can’t finish a sentence, and they are all laughing at inside jokes that once you stick around to understand, wonder what the fuck they find so funny about it.
That their writings are no better is no surprise.
First 4 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mllRWv6uSXA
“enough of us are waking up, and maybe it is high time for a counter-culture movement of our own.”
Amen.
Soon, there shall be a Return of Kings! The old order shall be restored and the patriarchy shall return. The whores and degenerates will burn! Praise be to the Kings!
Why is it that these Marxists want to destroy civilization when it’s the only thing keeping us from fucking killing every last one of them?
The whole goal was to turn women into whores.
Mission accomplished.
Well, people have noted the role secular Jews have played in this. And if trends continue, secular Jews will all but disappear. So you can’t them having a suicidal urge is not somewhat accuraye
They think we’re born free (good) and that it’s civilization (and you) that’s holding us all back. If anything, you’re the one that’s expendable.
I’ve written about this before on here. I’ll try to distill it down. Basically, during the Cold War the USA and the USSR attempted to undermine each other’s governments. The USA used economic techniques, and the USSR used social techniques. American society, being an open society, was vulnerable to manipulation. The Soviets controlled their media specifically to prevent the Americans from using the same tactics against the Soviet people. The Soviet goal was to create instability in American society by convincing Americans that up was down and down was up. They hoped there would be a crisis, perhaps even a civil war, during which their the Soviets or their puppets could swoop in and “save” America.
During the 1980s a woman named Gerda Lerner wrote a book called, “The Creation of Patriarchy,” which rewrote the history of the genders in a “male oppressor/female victim” narrative, which we still have today. She was a well-known and proud member of the American Communist party, and essentially retold Marxist theory with “men” substituted for the bourgeoisie, and “women” substituted for the proletariat.
Essentially, modern feminism is part of a Marxist suite engineered to destabilize America. Convince women they are men, and men they are women. Such a backward culture would be easy to conquer. Note that feminism never caught on in Russia. Coincidence? The Soviet Union might have fell in the 90s, but the wheels they put in place during the Cold War are still turning.
thanks for this. do you know when the soviets banned no-fault divorce? It only existed for a few decades post- Bolshevik Revolution, right?
Is it safe to say no fault divorce causes empires to fall apart? people on this site have posted on how it wrought havoc on ancient Rome.
I’m dubious about the Soviets engineering cultural Marxism in America. What seems to have happened is the Hegelian dialectic* between “Capitalism” plus traditional American values, and “Marxism.” They’ve been synthesizing into what people today usually refer to as “socialism.”
People often talk about cultural Marxism as an invading idea, but it has arisen not just from the ideas of Communism, but also from traditional American values. Valuing individual achievement becomes valuing the individual fulfillment of desire. Political democracy becomes moral democracy. The strong rule of law used to ensure basic rights becomes the tool of ensuring an ever-growing set of entitlements. Christian virtues like charity and compassion become give-a-man-a-fish welfare and excusing people from responsibility of their actions.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic
You are dubious of Soviet engineering in America?
Perhaps you fail to appreciate what the communists know … a consumer society based on placating animal drives is the substrate to world communism, not concentration camps. Americans are equal, equally stuipd, ignorant, and virtually uncultured. All part of the plan of dialectical materialism.
The thing is 95% of people don’t have a clue what they or for that matter what we are talking about. Most people simply cannot think In abstractions. These ideas seep through our mass media in mainly visual form because these ideas took hold in the ivy leagues and the other top universities in the major western nations, where all the editors, writers, managers, media bosses, actors, directors, historians and academics studied. Is their a link between high IQ and gullibility?
I once heard a discussion on talk sport about how leftists were on average more intelligent than right wingers but right wingers had more common sense. One knows how to create software or build a dick sucking robot but is also more likely to try to reorganize a lion society and teach them about gender theory whilst drenched in BBQ sauce.
Certainly Soviets made attempts at subversion, but I don’t think the cultural revolutions here were solely or even mostly the result of Soviet interference.
Factors contributing to cultural Marxism either predate the Soviet Union or arise from America’s own efforts. These are factors such as industrialization and the corresponding erosion of family, a growing distance between fathers (the psychological archetype of authority) and children. Also, women in the workplace during WWII, and racial tensions because of the war (blacks fighting racist overseas and then having to come home to Jim Crow laws). Also, progressive politics, organized labor movements, and the prosperity (forerunner of decadence) following the war. Also, earlier feminist writings and the women’s suffrage movement(s).
Lastly, here’s a great article on how Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the materialism, individualism, and uncertainty (no class system) of American democracy lend themselves to creeping, soft kind of tyranny. Those same forces seem to drive feminism and race issues today.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-democracy-dies/
Actually as I recall a study came out last year I believe which indicates that those on the right are also more scientifically literate than leftists.
there is some sense in this theory, but it’s far from the entire picture.
in essence, the females of a society become worth less and less, the more abundance there is….
take for example a desert island, with only a few inhabitants, without the women, the civilization is finished…
thus men fought tooth and nail to defend women and children… the more women and children, the less their value, until today, women are desperate to turn themselves into men, as they have little value as mothers and wives.
Don’t forget, also, that the notion of ‘white privilege’ was developed by two American Communists. One of them is a name that might be familiar to those who are really red-pilled: Noel Ignatiev.
Do you have sources for this information?
It certainly doesn’t sound impossible…
From what I gather through some readings about history, when cultures prioritize feminism they tend to start falling apart… It makes sense to plug these values into a culture you want to take over.
Read Anthony Sutton… talks about how American finance built the USSR.
Or watch Jonathan Bowden on Youtube for commentary on cultural decline engendered by Frankfurt School.
listen to Nietzschean ideas by Jonathan bowden . It is required listening for all red pillers.
This is all very true and very important. The difficulty though with discussing the collapse of American society (and that of the West more broadly) is that the degeneracy began well before Cultural Marxism took form. Back through the Victorian era to the Enlightenment, to some degree to the Renaissance, and as kfg notes below, to well before that. As a Christian, I’d say back to the Garden of Eden.
That isn’t to downplay the role it played, but rather that it must be seen within the broader context of an imbalance between liberty and order, as well as the inordinate embrace of equality, a greater than realistic view of the innate goodness of humanity, and the errant belief in tabula rasa. Those flaws know no time or place. They seem timeless in their appeal to human vanity and rebellion from God.
Gerda Lerner was not just another Communist, but… surprise, surprise: a Jewess, like Steinem, Dworkin, Rosa Luxemburg…
You’ll never find the answer here as this site is afraid of conspiracy theories.
There is a theory that attributes their efforts to destroy western civilization (which is the only civilization they have a problem with) to ‘oikophobia’. Now, ‘oikophobia’ is the polar opposite of ‘xenophobia’ – it is being repulsed by what is familiar and afraid of one’s own cultural and national identity.
It’s also what, mostly due to the efforts of the Frankfurt School and their enormous influence in the social sciences after the student protests of 1968, leads the academia in the western world. It’s become less an idea and more an instinct, a pattern of values, something pathological that’s quite hard to grasp. People beat themselves up over what some of their ancestors may or may not have done? It’s because attacking their own identity feels good to them. People welcome mass migration of people from a radically different part of the world (in Europe, that’s Muslims) into their country? It makes them feel good, because those migrants don’t belong to the ‘oikos’ at all. People like modern art and architecture? It’s because modern art and architecture aren’t bound to a class or a nation, but are worldwide and more or less meaningless, so they make ‘oikophobics’ feel good.
Because the Jewish Marxist mindset is all about destroying us. In fact, Jews are in a cultural war against gentile society. Whether in the form of Frankfurt School Marxist or porn pedlar Al Goldstein, their aim is to destroy us.
Yeah those dirty rotten Jews Larry Flynt, Bob Guccione and Hugh Hefner.
All the original founders of the Frankfurt School were ALL JEWS, like Marcuse. And yes, im sure there are plenty of rotten non – Jews. But the gentiles you mention, pale into
insignificance to the damage JEWS have done on our culture. Hollywood is a prime example of this.
http://www.jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive/articled325.html?articleid=38
I had to look to see if Hugh Hefner was Jewish out of curiosity. Because I had never heard that. Only site that seemed to answer the question one way or another was this
http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=1352
Dunno anything about the site, hence why I am posting back. That way someone with contradictory information can point it out.
I am well aware of the tremendous contribution of some Jews to the porn industry. To the Bolshevik revolution. The establishment of the Frankfurt School. My problem is some of you have tunnel vision where they are concerned. Do you blame Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che, Castro, Hugo Chavez, I could go on and on, do you blame all of them on the Jews? I grew up in a heavily Jewish community in my elementary school years. The principal of my elementary school was a Jewish woman who ran the school with an iron hand and made sure we were indoctrinated properly. Indocrtinated into a love of our country, state, and city. We sang patriotic songs at our assemblies, and at our graduation ceremony. We were taught in such a way that would drive liberals crazy today. So when some of you want to paint all of them with the same brush and ignore all the other evil leftists who are not Jewish you leave me cold. A previous attempt to isolate and destroy them turned out to be a disaster for western civilization. Hitler part II would be fatal. Just attack Marxism in whoever and wherever you see it. It’s everywhere and its popularity cuts across all races, creeds and nationalities.
Hugh Hefner went to Sayre elementary and Steinmetz high school (class of 1944) in Chicago. At the time this was a solidly white middle class neighborhood. Hefner whose father was of German and English ancestry and mother Swedish, was raised a Methodist. I have seen him identified as a Jew on WN sites but that is incorrect. Most virulent anti semites I have found to be mostly inexperienced dealing with real live Jewish persons. The word “Jew” is just a red flag in front of a bull.
Yes. But without Jews there wouldn’t have been any Bolshevik revolution, communism or massive amounts
of Soviet espionage. And the spreaders of communism in China, were mostly Jews. I dont think you can separate Marxism and Jews.
The left is nothing but an organized mob of losers who hate their lot in life and want to take out that sense of disenfranchisement on their betters. Leftists (the intellectuals and street activist types) are almost always physically ugly and lacking genuine charisma. They are metaphysical pimps.
Cultural Marxism is about one thing: turning people into soulless robot slaves who live only to fornicate, stuff themselves with food, go to work, and the sleep. Wake up, repeat with no direction or inspiration.
I hate the cultural left and the filth they represent … they destroyed every institution that gave life meaning and replaced it with Walmart, the NFL, and Internet porn.
Ah, but they’re building a better world! From this slovenly mess we’ll build our utopia. Forward Comrade! ……………..unless this is as good as it gets………..
…
This Way to Progress… pointing to the right. Cool.
Ha! The irony is not lost on me…
ever notice how many of these cultural marxists are passengers on the fudge-tunnel express?
A little related. On sciencedirect there was a new study a little while ago. Didn’t get much attention for…some reason.
It was called something like Party Identification and Intelligence. But it found that republicans (in america to be clear) were smarter than democrats.
Which makes sense. Most democrat voters are dumb dregs whose poor life choices are rationalized by a few smart people.
Republicans tend to be middle class and more accepting of natural hierarchy. Which is easier when you know you will be towards the top.
Even the smart left wing academics hate natural hierarchy because they only do well in the controlled environment of academia. Hence why academic mobbing occurs and targets high achievers and reformers. Gotta maintain control.
And before racial hereditarians point out race, the study controlled for race.
I would recommend checking it out, but it is behind a paywall last I checked.
Don’t underestimate them though. A mob, as disorganized as they are, is still a dangerous force to reckon with. Especially if they are under the direction of an SJW demogouge. Once a bloodthirsty mob is unleased, no amount of logic or reasoning can dissuade them. The MSM also fuels their destructive capabilities as well. I believe that one of the best ways to fight them is to expose the hypocrisy and double standards of all the various SJW leftists out there so that the masses will turn on them instead.
HAHAHAHA
COMMUNISTS AND MARXISTS CREATED
NFL
WALMART
PORN
love the 27 likes you have gained,. shows how dumb Americans are
Yes, they did, you antifa chandala.
Oligarchical capitalism is communism by default. I guess you never read or understood the economic theory of Marx and Lenin involving monopoly and central banking.
Are you so stupid that you assumed the communist state would be an altruistic artifice run by angelic beings?
Apparently so.
Got any book/lecture series recommendations Orange?
I wish I knew more about political/economic philosophy but I don’t know where to start.
The list is too long. I actually enjoy reading Marx and Marxist theory because it’s interesting and highly intellectual … Gramsci and Adorno … Marcuse is stimulating as well.
The best critiques of capitalism and Marxism come from the European New Right.
I like Tom Sunic: “Against Democracy and Equality” and “Homo Americanus”. Also, Carl Schmitt was a genius political theorist I would also recommend who tears apart the idea of liberal capitalism as flawed and hypocritical.
Claiming they created these things is not accurate, for communists aren’t very good at creating or building things.
Stating that cultural marxists have co-opted and used these things to serve their own ends on the other hand…
And no, oligarchical capitalism is not communism by default. It is simply the final stage of a capitalistic cycle. They may have similar characteristics, but that is merely because capitalism and economic marxism are two sides of the same coin. Both agree that everything in life has an economic value, and that nothing outside of market forces exists (or shouldn’t exist). The only disputes between the two are how society should be structured to direct the flow of economic value, and who should have their hands on the levers of power.
Oligarchical capitalism is just capitalism that you got through years of neoliberal deregulation. There is no communism in the USA, you have got capitalism at its finest. NFL, porn and Wallmart are all entrepreneurial capitalist moneymaking machines.
There was never a ‘billionaire upper class’ in any European communist country. Do they feed you this nonsense in the US schools?
You should stop reading Koch funded foundation literature. You are a dumb monolingual who has never been outside of the USA. Only a country like the US can breed retards who believe in Paul’s libertarian bullcrap.
If you buy into standard Marxist economic definitions (stateless society) and believe the Cold War was real, I can’t help you. Let me give you a hint: Marxism is merely a front for the sole purpose of installing an oligarchy over a mass of slaves. You can’t study Marxist history and come to any other conclusion. Marxism is only partially about economics (critical theory)…
Marxism was more effective in Western Europe than the East.
Yes, that’s what I said. And Kojeve thought the same.
There is no such thing as “Marxist economics” … it’s all a farce. I’m not saying that some of Marxs observations aren’t interesting, but the intent was never to create a workers paradise in the way we conceive it. It’s an excuse for imposing slavery.
Your response is totally incoherent and incorrect (lol … there are hundreds of East European oligarchs and moguls equivalent to the Castro family). Also, I’m not a defender of classical liberalism as you assume.
But I don’t debate with low iq rabble (proles), so good riddens.
You assume I have low IQ but it is you who is a monolingual who still thinks there is communism in Eastern Europe.
Is that the best you have? Acting like I’m not aware the Berlin Wall fell?
Okay, let me try to sink to your level… you’re dick is small … QED!
I said that there were no billionaires in European communist countries and you replied that there are hundreds of oligarchs in Eastern Europe by which you implied Eastern Europe is still communist.
All of these billionaires were created through neo-liberal privatization in the 90s.
Lol. You really believe that there were no billionaires in the Soviet Union? It is curious why so many US tycoons and politicians were directly profiting from industries selling goods or operating in the USSR. I wonder if this wasn’t a two way street? Someone was making a lot of money.
The communist state was owned and operated by wealthy persons. Better look into that on your own time rather than assuming it was run autonomously by ideologues.
You need to do a little more research … Russian “privatization” was largely a farce and involving merging subsidiaries and selling off infrastructure … curiously the natural resources and industrial might were never up for a real auction. I wonder why?
It is maybe you don’t know about the privatization in communist countries. Russia had a large scale of industries privatized. From Gazprom to Norilsk Nickel and Novolipetsk steel. Yes, many industries merged prior to them being privatized like Surgutneftegas.
US were trading with the USSR government, not with individuals. I don’t understand why do you keep assuming I need to do research when in fact you are showing time and time again you know very little when in comes down to the Eastern Bloc. Remember, I am Slavic. You can’t tell me ‘there was no privatization of industries’ and think I will fall for that.
“Marxism is merely a front for the sole purpose of installing an oligarchy over a mass of slaves.”
Well no shit, Sherlock.
That is how it played out because it’s human nature to seek power over others will acquire and maintain it however they can, which is why Marx’s proposed economic system is a disaster. It completely ignores the realities of human nature. But that is not to say Marx, or many of his followers, didn’t genuinely believe in it. people latch on to all sorts of batshit crazy ideas. it’s another unfortunate reality of the human animal.
But oligarchy is not synonymous with Marxism. There are, and have always been, systems of oligarchy that have nothing to do with Marxism. Quite a few existed long before Marx was ever born.
as for your ability to “help” me, if you really believe WalMart, the NFL, and the pron industry were conceived as Marxist plots, you can keep whatever it is you call help. Just go back to checking under your bed and in your closet for the Marxists that are coming to get you in your sleep.
Marxism taken at face value ignores human selfishness.
On the real level it was an attempt to enslave the slavish for a master race.
You don’t understand Marxism because you haven’t read enough about the topic. I repeat, its primarily a social theory, not an economic one. You assume it has something to do with the Red Army, whereas I’m saying America is a closer approximation to Marxism than the USSR ever was. Alexander Kojeve, the great Hegelian Russian author, who grew up during the reign of Lenin and later Stalin (nearly escaping death), stated that the post war America was closer to Karl Marx’s workers paradise than the USSR.
A brief note: Lenin and Marx both observed that capitalism was necessary! It was a medium for SOCIALIZING the bourgeoisie and building the infrastructure for the Marxist state. So,capitalism is NOT separate or opposed to Marxism.
Porn, Walmart, and the NFL are directly related to the goals of the Marxist international of reducing the masses to the LCD in common “brotherhood” of equals. This sort of deconstruction of traditional hierarchy (which Marx was obsessed with) could have only been possible through excess and affluence, not prison camps. The masses become more pliable under conditions of surplus than want.
What I said goes against the common media portrayal of Reagan’s anti communism and the greatness of America’s capitalist powerhouse. That was all a myth.
The real wealth of Russia hasn’t changed hands in 100 years, perhaps longer … the “privatization” was, as I say, a farce… it was a small percentage of the real wealth of the state that was ever made available for auction (mostly transportation and infrastructure).
“US were trading with the USSR government, not with individuals.”
You are so naive about how international business works. You really think that the Politburo was an independent agency beholden to no one except low salaried (what the records show) bureaucrats? Cui bono?
I have disagreed with Dr. Orange from time to time but he has a much better handle on this than you and you greatly misread him here. He is in my estimation far from a libertarian.
Paine, i think doctor orange was suggesting that sort term gratification usually only serves to distract one to the real issues at hand. When a man’s need for gratification is given through vicariousness, their teeth and claws become blunt. They become soft,fat, stupid, gullible and complacent. They are mentally malleable.
Everyone (who apparently doesn’t read) assumes Marxism is about economics. Well, that simply isn’t true … Marx was mostly about economics, but his disciples were more interested in deconstructing culture. The Marxist state could never be imposed strictly by a state apparatus, there was too much social structure and traditonal residual standing in the way.
American consumerism is a better approximation of spiritual communism than the USSR ever was. Culturally, the USSR was quite consevative in contrast… high art and music were still preserved in the mainstream.
Who is spiritually healthier today, the Russians or Americans?
Doc, that’s an astute argument that you’ve made. Across the board, European and Asian countries have cultivated the arts and humanities whilst American culture cuts these programs and is producing a new generation that is void of a verifiable culture that isn’t being sold through popular media as well as lacking in independent thought and coping skills.
In essence, Europe. and Asia are cranking out better and more rounded human beings. This is something to be concerned. But i am going off topic.
The question would be better put, “who is spiritually healthy today?”
This begs the question-under which political system is there a populace that is spiritually healthy? Certainly communism left a very spiritually unhealthy people, but their leadership is turning the tide. Likewise democracy is leading the west down the same path towards degradation. Regardless of the political or economic institution, ultimately psychopaths come to power and society pays the price.
“The left is nothing but an organized mob of losers who” …are winning by default.
To be fair, every society has losers. Communist China, Imperial Rome, Nazi Germany. Winners tend to think the system is good, while losers tend to think it is not.
Yeah but under leftist rule everybody is a loser.
Jewish, Marxist, Frankfurt School. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
White European guys started this nonsense in the Enlightenment. For the popular version, read A Wicked Company, by Philipp Blom. The Others just adopted this damaging way of viewing society a few generations later.
Not so sure about that. Pretty sure it started with Marx who himself was a jew. That being said I’ve never looked at “A Wicked Company”. Maybe Marx took inspiration from it.
The irony is that the major thinkers of the Enlightment hated the people they pretended to work for.
Just read the work of Voltaire…
The Frankfurt school and the excesses of the Enlightenment are chronologically linked, but in terms of content the Frankfurt School was in a different league altogether. It was intentionally subversive, it intentionally spread a certain analysis which inevitably led to people adopting certain solutions to their problems, and its explicitly-stated goal was to establish economic Marxism not through revolutionary means but through cultural-evolutionary means.
How fortuitous. RockingMrE’s most recent video (which I saw today) mentions Marcuse. Good channel I recommend it.
Would be fair to say the blue pill and leftism in general are manifestations of slave morality?
perpetual victim morality.
That was how Nietzsche described it.
Focused on intentions, often trying to subvert power from those who practice master morality, promoting their weakness as virtue.
One dimensional Man is a better book. Eros is a nightmare.
Marcuse was a bit of a cunt though
Couldn’t help but notice his…tribal affiliations.
I can tell you with all honesty that it is one of the most intentionally confusing, obscure, and meandering books that I have ever come across.
Had never heard of him. Looked him up. Yep – jewish. No surprise.
“The fundamental point that Marcuse raises is the idea of surplus repression. The fundamental premise is that civilization with its traditions and its competition based performance principle repress man and require more and more work from him despite the fact that we could all readily live lives of far greater leisure. Furthermore, man is now alienated from the product of his labor and does not take joy in the production of, say, 1000 iPods as much as he would the production of one spear with which he could hunt for food.”
What an idiot. Lemme guess, Marcuse was self-sufficient in every way. He NEVER USED other people’s labor to produce heat; he chopped and burned the wood himself? He NEVER USED other people’s labor to provide food, he hunted / grew it all himself? He NEVER USED other people’s books to formulate his ideas, unless those books were hand-written by the author’s themselves on paper they self-produced with pens (probably burnt twigs, scratched onto discarded self-processed hornets nests) they self-produced?
And in his glorious self-sufficiency, he formulated his “surplus repression” thesis from the pure light of reason and no cloudy hypocrisy hanging over him?
Of course that’s what Marcuse did, which is why everyone should listen to him. Blue pill forever! Shut down ROK and be self-sufficient in the woods!
Everyone should begin by reading “I Pencil”. It’s an excellent antidote for this type of Marxist crap.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
this is an important topic. People tend to refer to ‘cultural marxism’ without necessarily knowing much about it and as such it can easily be dismissed as a a ‘right wing’ dismissal (i.e. calling everything marxism, but updated for the 1990s and beyond, as cultural marxism). Marcuse, Reich were key figures in marrying marxism with the psychoanalytic focus on sexuality, while Adorno & Gramsci amongst others worked on the cultural & ideological side of things (…if you like on the marketing).
The left often disavow the importance of this marriage with a view to disarming those who would trace continuity from marx to the present (i.e. it isn’t true marxism). But its absolutely central to what has happened since. Indeed everything that is now being presented as a natural evolution of society and politics can be traced back to the machinations of many of these radical social engineers.
Leftist/Socialist/Egalitarians are grown stunted children who refuse to
see reality as it is. They want to live in a Utopian paradise where no
one ever suffers from anything and everything is perfect and everyone
gets along. They also want technology to overcome their own natural
weaknesses and deficiencies. Completely stunted and sheltered minds who
can’t adapt to the world so they demand the world adapt to them and
their own selfish and self-centered desires. They see the entire world
as problem to be corrected instead of an challenge to be overcome and adapted to. They
believe the world owns them something just because they was born and
nothing more. They don’t believe they has to earn their keep like
everyone else. They probably never had a honesty day of work in his
life. Parasites in other words. Eternal children who hates work and just
wants to play outside all day. Because that is all children can ever
do, just play, all reward no work. Never to leave the emotional crib.
Absolutely. Even the highest towers stand in the mud. That is, society is built on a foundation of violence and personal sacrifice. It’s not pretty, and it’s not nice, but it’s true, The prosperity of our society has given way to decadence, and the values of liberty have become the values of the libertine.
”Oh yeah, and we’ll get to keep all the benefits of industrial civilization as well!”
That really is the crux of the whole argument, that is the only thing that leftists actually get wrong. I spent a few months in Africa, and I’ll tell you; there actually is something to be said for their lifestyle. They just live life at a more leisurely pace, nothing is as big a deal, the rules are all more relaxed. The price they pay for that is living in poverty and squalor. We actually could all live lives of relaxation and easy sex, we just would not have a civilization to show for it, if that is the trade you want to make, then be my guest. The great lie of the left is to deny that there will be consequences if we all just stop trying so hard. I mean why the hell did you think all this repression exists in the first place? It’s not like we’re doing it for our health, it gets results that’s the only reason any of us put up with it.
Feminists pulled a similar trick on women with the ‘have it all’ piece of bullshit. They knew most women would not actually trade a family for a career, they knew if women perceived the bargain as it was they would reject it. As such feminists simply claimed that there was no trade-off, you can have a high powered career and a family, women apparently were stupid enough to believe it.
Yeah and then they scream and scratch their heads when they wonder why they are getting paid less than the patriarchal male……when they’ve been absent for a year and a half or 2 years being mommy. But…but…I can have it all in my lifetime!
The philosopher John Stuart Mill, in the early-to-mid 1800s laid the groundwork for modern feminism, and, through Ricardian political economy, also helped lay the groundwork for Marx’s political economy… Don’t beat your kids and force them to learn utilitarian philosophy, otherwise they might invent feminism.
Paul Gottfried, one of his students said, he later came to regret the nonsense he wrote and taught. The smoke and mirror language dressed up as logic wasn’t what attracted the 60s generation to these sorts of ideas. The thought of a 24/7 sexual utopia appeals to every man’s animal nature. Say what you want about religion, and I’m an Atheist but I do believe that the men that wrote the various holy books were great observers of human behaviour and seen that certain urges and social structures led to a decline in standards. Is it any coincidence that the main religions advocate a form of patriarchy, dictate sexual etiquette and emphasize restraint.
one day these cultural marxist scum will be tried and executed for the crimes they have committed. the damage they have done on western civilisation and the world in general is beyond compare. If there ever was a hell, these people would be taken to the darkest depths to suffer for all eternity, and even then that would be a light punishment for the millions of families and peoples lives they have destroyed.
May they burn in hell.
No one man or small group of intellectuals can be blamed for social changes, as much as it might disappoint conspiracy theory types.. In some way, they had to have a message that the times were ripe for.
Just another teacher/alpha spinning in circles trying to come up with excuses for why banging starstruck coeds is somehow “good”
The use of sophisticated language is one of the marks of baloney.
Thanks for this article.
Guys, from a southern european perspective, I’m not so sure about the whole “cultural-marxism-subversion-agenda” theorem. I’m not trying to defend Marcuse here but bare with me for a few more lines. In my country, Greece, where the staunchly marxist-leninist communist party has a steady following of 8-9% there isn’t a single women’s course or a feminism degree in any of our univerities. Not even one! The aforementioned communist party is also a key player in resisting same sex marriage legalization, insisting that only nuclear families should be state sanctioned – single moms excluded! From practical, everyday experience I can’t correlate cultural marxism with these core traditinal values. Your take???
there’s long been tension between the old marxism, still focussed upon economics and the working man (the traditional proletariat) and the newer ‘cultural marxism’ which at the very least sees the institutions of culture and bourgeois ideology, particularly the nuclear family, as propping up the capitalist state, now re-theorised as a specifically patriarchal edifice. I don’t know anything about Greece, but as was seen for example with the UK labour party’s selling out of the traditional working class in favour of the beneficiaries of the new identity politics there is a conflict of interest here between the traditional workers (typically working class males) and the new beneficiaries, very often middle class women and formerly marginal groups (LGBTQ & racial minorities).
To put it another way ‘cultural marxist’ groups often seem to prioritise the oppression of women etc (sometimes explicitly as a gender proletariat but always as an omni-oppressed group) over economic oppression of workers, not least as they may even see women’s ‘labour’ e.g. filing their nails, as a more fundamental form of exploitation than toiling in a mind for 18 hours a day. The abandonment (or deferral) of such a direct focus on economic exploitation also makes it a whole lot easier for the left to sell out to the super-elite 1 per centers, who feel a lot less threatened, and can then buy into the whole thing in order to get cheaper rather more expensive labour from women entering the labour market (together with a state that finds the extra taxes empowering)
But what if the blue pill is really the red pill and the red pill is really the blue pill? At the very beginning this guy sounds like a red piller. society supresses the real man?
Civilisation took a wrong turn at the Enlightenment/French Revolution…All the ‘West’ stands for now is a dysfunctional financial system and ‘equality’. It’s beyond saving…better to just hold tight and ride the tiger.