Is Jordan Peterson Correct About Postmodern Neo-Marxism?

the phrase post-modern neomarxism is one that has been used quite a bit in some contemporary discussions about about the academy and what's going on particularly in the left leading Academy today and and that phrase has been used primarily and most prominently by Jordan Peterson who has used it in a number of different places I mean if you watch his interviews or talks you you'll hear the phrase postmodern neo-marxism quite a bit and uh Ian a lot of the the discussions surrounding the arguments that he makes you know you find all of these videos on YouTube and podcasts where there are arguments made that this is just a fundamental misunderstanding that there's no such thing as post-modern neo-marxism and that this is basically a conspiracy theory which is dependent on a misunderstanding of post-modernity and a misunderstanding of Marxism and then more broadly a total misunderstanding of of the leftist academy so I I want to ask that question then is there such a thing as postmodern Neo Marxism now for those who don't maybe are watching this video and aren't familiar much with my work I've been doing a series called makers of the modern world where I essentially go through um some of the most prominent thinkers in forming our world today intellectually primarily leftist thinkers though I I started you know I've done someone Hagel and Contour a little more more broad than just uh you know leftist thought but um as I've I've begun to explore a lot of these figures and done a lot of reading I've I've thought through this question quite a bit is post-modern neo-marxism a thing or or is this just something that is the total misrepresentation of the of these various movements so I want to talk in addressing this about post-modernity first and say what exactly is post and dirty now in the series that I've that I've done I've explored a lot of marxist neo-marxist thinkers and then I kind of jumped from there into structuralism and then post-structuralism I'm going to be dealing with Foucault uh program soon these are like hour-long lectures um so I I don't have those talks up yet but I'm I'm currently preparing for those talks and as I'm preparing for those talks this question has repeatedly come to mind now that I've just read a bunch of marxists uh and and a neo-marxist in particular and now I'm going back and reading the postmodernists you know it's a question that I'm raising as I'm as I'm looking at this is is there a connection here what if there is a connection what exactly is the connection um so when you look at post-modernity now post-modernism is all of these movements are hard to Define and I think here's probably some of the difficulty we're talking about neo-marxism uh or or post-modernism or existentialism any of the intellectual movements that we're looking at in the 20th century they're broad terms they're broad terms that are defining a number of disparate thinkers that have some themes or ideas in common uh and so post-modernity like a lot of these other movements is not that easy to Define but essentially post-modernity if I'm going to give it one definition this is leotard's definition who is who is a post-modernist um but I think this this really does seem to capture more broadly the the ideas of post-modernity if you are going to quickly summarize who fits under that label uh post-modernity is defined by a a distrust of any notion of metanarrative or or a rejection of the idea of a metanarrative and so a metadarrative is a kind of broader story with a series of objective facts there is some kind of larger narrative that all of us fit into and we can we can take a bunch of objective facts and fit them you know within that narrative and understand everything through the lens of one particular objective story and post-modernists are not against narrative they talk all the time about narrative but but an objectively true historical meta-narrative is what they're opposed to so coming from my own Christian approach I would certainly say that Christianity is is a meta-narrative right we have a a story a story that that claims to be true about the nature of humanity the nature of sin what's wrong with us as well as what Redemption is what what is going to happen what is the end going to be like what are our problems what is the solution to that where is the general trend of History leading toward and that is the coming kingdom of God from a Christian approach and Marxism also has its own metanarrative now it's an alternative meta-narrative so Marxism posits a view of sin really if you're looking at Marx himself it's really economic inequality oppression those are the terms he uses they're the terms that kind of people put on it later but exploitation would be the I guess more Marxist term for Marx himself um but the exploitation of one class by another class this kind of exploitation then is going to lead to for Marx's View and his historical materialism uh what he calls a Scientific Socialism which is what Marx is expecting is that there is going to be this necessary Revolution it's just part of the development of world the world and development of culture there's kind of this Natural Evolution that we're in this capitalism and stage of our Evolution and that's going to kind of that that's eventually going to be superseded by these socialist revolutions that that occur so it is really dependent upon this very much this broader this broader narrative uh and one that is very hopeful now as you see the Bolshevik Revolution uh in you know the early 20th century by the middle of the the 20th century there are different takes on on the Bolshevik Revolution and what has happened uh with within communism and the Coleman turn the Communist International and various thinkers come up with with different ways of explaining how to deal with the obvious oppression that's happening and tyranny that's occurred in in the Soviet Union and in other places as well not just the Soviet Union um in that there's this expectation initially that you'll have these socialist revolutions and after that you're going to have this kind of Utopia uh just there's something like a Utopia developing and that obviously has not happened so some thinkers are still going to push for a very utopian Marxism others are going to grab onto or hold on to some key elements of of Marxism but they're not going to be quite as uh utopian they're not going to be quite as uh firm that there is in their belief that there is going to be some great synthesis that occurs uh you know which is Mark's taking from from Hegel who's his primary ideological influence so when you get to someone like like Theodore adorno for example he's not he's he's not very optimistic but he still is to some degree certainly a Marxist or we could probably call neo-marxist um and and he's from the the Frankfurt School so when people are talking use the phrase cultural Marxism they're probably usually talking about the Frankfurt School Antonio gramsci or the Frankfurt School maybe both of those of those movements intellectually so you have thinkers then that are influenced by Marxism but are not quite as utopian so you have why I'm outlining all of this is just to say when we're talking about Marxism especially neo-marxism we have to be clear that we're saying something Beyond just what Karl Marx or angles said um are there some classical marxists today sure but are there that many not really I mean most marxists today are really neo-marxists not all of them but most of them are neo-marxists to the question of post-modernity which is where I started here which is defining post-modernity and if we're defining post-modernity broadly as this this lack of rejection of a metanarrative well post-modernists can't be marxists in the fullest sense because Marxism is a meta-narrative it's a way to understand the world um I'm not going to get into the question of consistency of post-modernity because that would take me too long I think there's a total inconsistency I don't think there's such a thing as living without a meta-narrative I think we construct them even if we pretend they don't exist and and post-modernity I think is a bundle of contradictions but I'll leave that for my lectures on on Foucault when I get into that um so then we have seemingly two totally different ideas one is is Marxism which is this idea of exploitation which is leading to some kind of utopian future which is an overthrow of capitalist Society then we have this movement of post-modernity which essentially says there are there is no objective historical metanarrative where all truths can fit into this in fact there is no such thing as we might say capital T Truth at all what we have is people's various stories from different approaches and different perspectives and we don't really have any any access to some kind of objective rational thought like was assumed in the enlightened Midwest so if we have both of these movements it seems like they're basically contradictory so then is post-modern neomarxism just completely made up conspiracy theory uh and I'm going to say no it's it's not and I think this is clear the more I explore leftists thought because I think it is true when you look at popular talking points on the left it's pretty undeniable that there are certainly talking points that are taken from Marx and neo-marxism but there are also a lot of talking points that are taken from post-modernism or post-modernity now what I think you do find is in as you're talking to like you know say college students or people who are kind of formed by popular culture in one way or not all of us are just to some extent but we what we might call the Social imaginary the the general ideas or ideals of society and I think if you talk to most people we have some competing ideologies so that most people haven't thought through that you're kind of thinking through the lens of contradictory ideas people do this do this all the time um and I would I've outlined this this before where I've said they're kind of two contradictory ideas about human personhood that we find in the early early 20th century coming out of the 19th century too I think we could there are long routes to this but um there is a consistent questioning of the self and the reality of human nature this is something that we see in the enlightenment itself and and thinkers begin to question what is there such a thing as a human nature at all and there are various answers to this and one of those answers is going to be the existentialist answer which essentially says that we we're kind of self-created right I decide who I'm going to be who I really am is who I am inwardly inside and I do that decide that by my own actions uh then you have this alternative approach that you find in say the structuralist and the post-structuralists who are largely post-modernists where the self is just something that is socially constructed so you see this in someone like Foucault that there is no real self at all it's just it's just a social construct and oftentimes it's done in in kind of reaction or response to existentialism um so if there is no internal self the self doesn't really exist it's an illusion it's really just a societal construct so you see how these kind of two competing ideas of selfhood one idea of selfhood says I am who I really am inside that's the essence of who I am or another that says there is no real Essence at all all there is a social construct and social structure in linguistic structure which is part of social structure uh and I think you see this say in our in our gender debates today because you have these two contradictory ideas that often as people will kind of bounce back and forth and may probably not realize how they don't really fit together and one is well gender is a social construct so therefore you can there are kind of an infinite number of of genders or whatever because it's just socially constructed or you can choose to be this or that gender if you perform form in the right way right if you're looking at someone like Judith Butler and this idea of gender performativity but also a lot of the the rhetoric on these issues is but I really feel like I am gender X I feel like I'm this gender so therefore I am and you see there's these contradictory ideas so what is it are you who you are inwardly or are you just what you are as constructed socially now we're talking about that in an application of gender this this can be much broader just in terms of the self I think gender is probably the most obvious way that this plays out in our discussions at least today um so my point in in bringing that up is to say that it's not that uncommon for people to grab on to two ideas that are inherently contradictory and kind of take make a mishmash of these things and if you look at a lot of popular talking points today on the left I think it's it's undeniable that there are aspects of Marxism and aspects of post-modernity that have formed our social imaginary today in the way that people speak and the way that the people think through who they are and what's going on in society um so let's then take a figure that's I know Peterson largely cites and if you look at him uh in his discussions of these issues he tends to cite pucco and dareda more than anybody else and and there's reason for that I mean there's a hugely hugely influential figures um but in some of the the points the critiques that I've seen that people point out take Foucault and they say well Foucault was was very clearly not a Marxist I mean he he said he was he was not a Marxist now Foucault actually was in his early writings um or in his earlier life he was a Marxist he did eventually reject Marxism he became became an anarchist I mean fouca was kind of a wild guy in a lot of ways with with kind of a bit of a crazy life in a lot of ways but I will also say that Foucault was appointed philosophy professor of a new University in in Paris in 1968 and when he did that he appointed what he said were the best philosophers in in France and he did a point entirely a Marxist faculty and so he did say some negative things about Marx as well he got sick of Marx he said um but so Foucault was not you know take him out his word he's not a Marxist and some of his ideas certainly are contradictory with Marxism but it's not like he didn't flirt with Marxism in some profound ways as well so I think his earlier Marxist thought still formed him in some ways even throughout his later writings where he self-consciously rejects Marxism and and so there's an example of that he certainly respected leftist thinkers and he's impacting leftist thoughts certainly certainly not uh conservative thoughts at all but perhaps the the commonality then between someone like a Foucault or a lot of the postmodernists generally and they're they're very different so it depends on the post-modernist uh and Marx is this a more neo-marxism probably is this emphasis on power now Foucault does get this more so from Nietzsche than he does from Marx but you see that there is this this move toward power as as being the way in which the world is understood and I think this is a move away from classical realism and classical philosophy that leads to this it's a long story that that I'm trying to kind of tell as I'm doing this longer series trying to do a shorter video here and I know like trying to stop myself from going off on tangents but but as you're you're looking at like the development of philosophy in the 19th century things start to shift toward power power is a way to understand the world so you see that in Nietzsche you see that in Marx and then that shows up in in Foucault now Foucault's entire philosophy in some ways is an analysis of power and how power works and how power determines what it is that people see as normal for example if we look at at the madness so you look at his his history of of Madness and how he explores that um it basically says those we consider to be mad it's just kind of those in power have determined that that's the case um and you look at this with his views of sexuality as well which in many ways I think is really a driving force for a lot of what he has to say um so the power this this underlying understanding that power is the way that the world functions everything can in some ways be defined by power this is certainly a commonality between Nietzsche and then the neo-marxis and then it does show up in post-maternity as well so that's not to say that the ideas are exactly the same but there's a lot of overlap in these ideas so I think what what happens if you want to see where is post-modern neomarxism if it's a thing at all I'm going to say it is and that is read the post marxists and and so I think that the place you know to start is not it's important to read Foucault if you want to understand where we're at today absolutely but if you really want to see this kind of synthesis of a lot of Marx's critique uh then a kind of utopian Vision with a fukovian analysis of power in certain aspects of post-modernity and specifically critique of you know heteronormativity and all of this kind of stuff you want to look at the post marxists because the post-marxis are a group of thinkers that are drawing very much so from Foucault Foucault tends to be like the most cited figure for the Post Marxist and for Marx you see a lot of citation from the Frankfurt guys like horkheimer and adorno and yes you do see citations from gramshi as well I know a lot of leftists today try to at least in conversations I've seen try to downplay the influence of gramshi and and the Frankfurt School and uh I mean I'm just looking through academic journals they're excited quite a bit I mean I and there's a pretty extensive uh uh you know field of scholarship surrounding those those thinkers um so uh leclaw and moof for example are two of the most influential post Marxist thinkers and they've written extensively on on Antonio gramsci now I I want to mention a book and this is a book that I read this last year um it's called post Marxist theory an introduction by Philip Goldstein now it's not um it's not that much of a introduction okay it's it's not that easy of a text to read um and if you're not really familiar with you know post-modernity you're probably going to have some difficulty reading this text um there's also the the companion to Marxism and post-marxism but is it Blackwell put out um that is is also a really excellent uh volume summarizing the various well Marxist and post Marxist sneakers I am going to read something uh here from this book now this is this is at the end so this is kind of a summary of the text now I think as as you'll see this as I read this that it's pretty undeniable and you know this is a scholar on these issues he's not a Critic he's supporting these these movements I mean you know the author is somebody that's favorable toward toward these thinkers um but this is the this is the summary at the end he says the culture theory of Tony Bennett John Frau Toby Miller also reject the scientific theory of altuzarian tradition and had been in Miller's case develops a fukuian account of cultural practices post Marxist um altuzera is an interesting figure in this story as well and I didn't do a video covering him but I have to with a lot of the others um okay in general the work of Judith Butler Pierre massari Ernesto leclaude Chantal move Tony Bennett John Frau and Toby Miller suggests that unlike traditional Marxism which emphasizes the priority of class struggle and the common Humanity of oppressed groups the post-marxism deriving from altuzer and Foucault reveals the sexual racial class and ethnic divisions of modern Western Society those post-marxists who preserve the normative ideals of Freudian hegelian diridian or critical theory and dismiss the institutional context of their discursive practices forcefully justify the radically Democratic articulations translations or potential hegemony of oppositional or independent movements those postmarks will repudiate the ideals of theoretical critique and emphasize the sociohistorical context of modern discursive practices open these practices to political critique more precisely this anti-theoretical approach supports the progressive organizations that have been successfully established and as a result this approach too effectively promotes the progressive transformation of Western social life that's the end of this of this text now I think that pretty much sounds like the summary that you often hear of what post-modern neo-marxism is is a an activist movement that says that we want to radically transform the entirety of Western civilization and social life and it does this through its Reliance on Marx's categories and a foucaian analysis of power I mean you read this read the book you can read the whole book and I think it's a very helpful summary again you kind of have to have some philosophical understanding before you read the book or you're going to be kind of confused um yeah and this to me when you read these kinds of statements is really not fundamentally any different than what you find in you know Peterson's citations of uh postmodern neo-marxism so you know in terms of a reading of Foucault do I take Peterson's critique or reading of Foucault no I don't I I think that he reads Foucault in more of an activist sense than Foucault himself actually was however that doesn't mean that what he's saying is wrong about leftist Academia today and I think when you read the post-marxus that becomes extremely clear and you can look at any of the thinkers that I mentioned didn't look at them individually and I think you you just see that so I'm making this video just to say that there is such a thing as I think post-modern neo-marxism is that the best term to use I don't know you could just talk about post-marxism because that's the term that they use so that's the term that I'll use because I definitely think it's better to use the terms that people themselves select to describe their movement but if you're talking about this this Fusion of post-modernity Foucault's analysis of power and then an activist kind of Marxism it's absolutely real and yes it has a huge influence on universities and I don't really know how you could say that it doesn't so thank you so much for checking this out hopefully you found this helpful I'm happy to hear your comments critiques of what I have to say so leave those below make sure you subscribe check out our makers in the modern world series if you do want to see some more in-depth study of some of the Contemporary thinkers that form our world and uh we'll see in the next one God bless

Channel: Dr. Jordan B Cooper

Views: 7,423

Keywords: neomarxism, postmodern neomarxism, postmodern neo-marxism, postmodern neo marxism, neo marxist, Foucault Marx, Foucault Marxism, Foucault Marxist, Leftist thought, Jordan Peterson Postmodernism, Jordan Peterson, Neo-Marxism Jordan Peterson, Peterson on Marxism, Jordan Cooper Marxism, Post-Marxism, What is Post-Marxism, Frankfurt School, What is the Frankfurt School

Id: iwylzQNDiXE

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022