[FRIAM] Herbert Marcuse & Bryan Magee (1978)

[Jochen Fromm]

Interesting video. Marx predicted Marxism, but what emerged in industrial societies in western European countries was fascism which failed in the most violent way in WW II. Marxism appeared and survived in Russia, but it turned out an economy does not work if independent companies are not allowed. There is no innovation if people have no incentive to be innovative. Therefore Marxism failed too.After communism collapsed everybody thought capitalism has won, but what emerged was authoritarianism in Russia and the Middle East where natural resources are exploited and totalitarianism in China where the social resources of the huge population are exploited relentlessly. They do not collapse because they offer something - cheap fossil fuels and cheap workforce - which the capitalistic neighborhood needs. They occupy a niche in the overall global system.I think the solution to understand it lies in considering society as a interconnected (eco)system of evolutionary systems where new systems can emerge but also merge and fuse with each other. It is an interesting topic which is not completely understood. -J.
-------- Original message --------From: Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> Date: 7/14/22  9:18 AM  (GMT+01:00) To: friam at redfish.com Subject: [FRIAM] Herbert Marcuse & Bryan Magee (1978) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U23Ho0m_Sv0&ab_channel=PhilosophyOverdose"The economic convulsions that wracked western societies...were seen at the time, by most Marxists, as being the breakdown of the capitalist system, which Marxist theory had always predicted. However, whereas according to the theory, this was supposed to lead to communism, in not one single such western society did communist regimes emerge, what did emerge in several of them was fascism."Bryan Magee opens in this discussion with Herbert Marcuse, and I am left wondering what Marcuse would think about the world today. One point of humour for me was to see that the Frankfurt school was so concerned with unconstrained penetration of the state into the economy, and today it appears that the reverse is what is so unbearable.
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