The video below is the fourth in a series about Marxist discourse by the Polish video commentator Krzysztof Karon (Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript (based on the original times):
40:30 | SEMANTIC MARXISM The Essence of the Conflict About Homosexuality | |
40:32 | The question of homosexuality | |
40:36 | is so special and so significant for the New Marxism — | |
40:40 | and for that reason it becomes increasingly important — that it reached boundaries | |
40:44 | beyond which a truly unsolvable conflict arises | |
40:48 | between minorities and the hetero-normative majority. | |
40:52 | I mean that, even if there’s no problem | |
40:56 | with tolerance for homosexualists, | |
41:01 | the majority of society still CANNOT conceptualize | |
41:05 | homosexuality as normal behavior, and even less | |
41:09 | promote it, because spreading of homosexual behavior | |
41:13 | is bound to bring not only society | |
41:18 | but the entire species to extinction. | |
41:22 | Limiting the reach of the phenomenon that | |
41:26 | is homosexuality ISN’T therefore a mandate | |
41:30 | of ANY kind of CULTURE, but it’s a warrant Homosexuality isn’t opposed to the culture, but it is opposed to the direction of evolution |
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41:34 | of evolution. And it doesn’t change | |
41:38 | the fact that this conflict exists and it is fuel for | |
41:42 | the formulating of accusations of the oppressiveness of traditional culture, | |
41:46 | faced with which [the accusations] the majority society — | |
41:50 | unless it wants to commit suicide — simply cannot surrender. | |
41:59 | Semantic Marxism Joseph Beuys The cadres of the new revolution | |
42:03 | The New Marxism, developing from the beginning | |
42:07 | of the ’70s, which I’m calling Semantic Marxism, | |
42:11 | has lost all the touch with the reality of the social life, and thanks to | |
42:15 | the Linguistic Turn, it concentrated on the domain of linguistic | |
42:19 | speculations. This is why the March Through Institutions needed a cadre | |
42:23 | which would be engaged to piecemeal un-define the institutions | |
42:28 | of traditional culture. Similarly, as at the end of the ’40s, | |
42:32 | this stage of revolution began in the domain of art, | |
42:36 | which formed the mentality of the social elites. | |
42:40 | Joseph Beuys is considered one of the most “Every man is an artist; on his way to a free formation of the social organism.” |
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42:44 | important artists of the 20th century. Educated | |
42:48 | as a sculptor, a follower of [Rudolf] Steiner’s esotericism by conviction, | |
42:52 | an admirer of John Cage by spirit. In the ’60s Beuys became | |
42:56 | one of the leading personalities of the Neo-Dadaistic | |
43:00 | movement Fluxus. In 1967 Beuys | |
43:04 | founded a German Students’ Party, whose goal, starting | |
43:08 | in 1970, was to spread political | |
43:13 | activity among all social groups in order to win their support — | |
43:17 | in the pedagogical process consistent with Plastic Theory — | |
43:21 | for individual and societal changes. | |
43:25 | Let me explain right away what this is all about. In 1972 | |
43:29 | or 1973 Beuys joined the Anthroposophical Society | |
43:33 | and — based on Rudolf Steiner’s theory — he developed | |
43:37 | the concept of an Expanded Idea of Art and a so-called | |
43:41 | Social Plastic. [Here plastic means art or creativity] It claims that the goal of an artist | |
43:45 | should not be the production of traditional works of art, | |
43:46 | Social Plastic. Materials about Joseph Beuys | |
43:49 | but the formation of the one and only important work, that is, society. | |
43:53 | Since such a conception of an artistic mission | |
43:57 | doesn’t require traditional qualifications for craftsmanship, | |
44:01 | everybody who in any way influences the form of social life | |
44:02 | Social Plastic: climate (thinking, feeling, wanting), every human is an artist, a carrier of certain gifts, [which]should be introduced in society. A work of art , sculpt shapes, Society, the whole piece of art] | |
44:05 | becomes an artist. In short: everybody is — | |
44:10 | or at least everybody could be — an artist. | |
44:14 | Joseph Beuys began the realization of this postulate as early as | |
44:18 | 1971, when — as a professor at the Fine Arts Academy | |
44:19 | Joseph Beuys’ class with sculpture students | |
44:22 | in Düsseldorf — he accepted into his workshop ALL the candidates | |
44:26 | who DIDN’T pass their entry exams to the University. And then — | |
44:30 | by occupying, together with the students, the Dean’s Office — he forced the authorities | |
44:34 | into matriculating them. In accordance with the Social Plastic idea, | |
44:39 | studying in Beuys’s workshop wasn’t about the mastering of the secrets | |
44:43 | of the craftsmanship of sculpture, but about ideological discussions | |
44:47 | and creating social projects. For those who know | |
44:51 | neither the work nor the person of Beuys, it is discussed more closely | |
44:55 | on my website. I’ll only add that despite | |
44:59 | his training as a sculptor, he became a famous performer, | |
45:00 | Joseph Beuys with a coyote in a New York gallery, Rene Block, 1974 | |
45:03 | and specialists described his style as “shamanism”; | |
45:07 | and Beuys himself considered the artistic creation, or rather artistic activity, | |
45:12 | to be conducting some sort of a social act of worshipping, which | |
45:16 | Opened spiritual areas full of myths, magic, rituals, | |
45:20 | and shamanic sorcery. The Marxist seal clearly | |
45:24 | marked the activity of Joseph Beuys when As long as Development Assistance is helping our industry more than the Third World, our prosperity is established thanks to the hunger of the others. Alternative: the Green Party |
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45:28 | in 1979 he presented himself as a candidate | |
45:32 | for the European Parliament from the — just then being created — Green Party, | |
45:36 | and he gained support from the — already familiar to you — leader | |
45:40 | of the ’60s student revolt Rudi Dutchmen. | |
45:44 | I mentioned some details from the history of Joseph Beuys, | |
45:48 | not without reason. Acting in a sphere of art which would be very difficult to measure, | |
45:53 | he came up with the model of a mechanism for the creation of new elites, | |
45:57 | the criterion for which wasn’t any real knowledge | |
46:01 | pertaining to the branch in which they were operating, but qualifications | |
46:05 | pertaining to the specialists in ideological propaganda and | |
46:09 | political officers [secret police, intelligence]. | |
46:10 | Semantic Marxism Recapitulation | |
46:17 | Because so many threads appeared in this part, | |
46:21 | it’s time for a short summary. | |
46:25 | The process called the March Through the Institutions had as its goal the imposition | |
46:29 | by a Leftist minority on a — mostly conservative | |
46:33 | and rational — society new rules of social life, | |
46:38 | which totally ignored the practical side of that life, | |
46:42 | and made impossible any effective production of goods that society needed. | |
46:46 | The effectiveness of this process depended on | |
46:50 | depriving the majority of society the capability of rational thinking | |
46:54 | and of reliable knowledge about reality. | |
46:55 | Semantic Marxism — Elements: Irrational Society | |
46:58 | In practice it meant spreading the belief that reality | |
46:59 | Magical Reality | |
47:02 | isn’t governed by objective laws, but that it can be freely | |
47:06 | transformed by using language, | |
47:10 | or some performative, magical spells. The March Through the Institutions | |
47:12 | Performative Spells | |
47:14 | was therefore supposed to lead to a change in the understanding of reality | |
47:18 | and the “un-defining” of all the ideas of traditional culture. | |
47:22 | This process was facilitated by the — occurring in the social sciences — | |
47:24 | Ritual Discourse | |
47:26 | Linguistic Turn, which removed reflection about reality | |
47:31 | from reality itself, and also the appearance of the new formula | |
47:35 | of social communication, or the formula of the Discourse. | |
47:37 | Mythical Truth about Progress | |
47:39 | In this formula a new picture of reality is being fabricated, | |
47:43 | called the Truth, independent from the reality of social life | |
47:47 | and from practical experience. The Coryphaei of this | |
47:49 | Intellectuals — Shamans | |
47:51 | Discourse were supposed be the “Shamans” who knew the secrets | |
47:55 | of progress and also knew the techniques of casting the spell on reality, | |
47:59 | and who would lead the animistic rituals of social life. | |
48:04 | In the plan for the March Through the Institutions those shamanistic elites | |
48:08 | were recruited at the beginning of the ’70s from the first generation | |
48:12 | of the Counter-Culture Revolution, following the template created by Joseph Beuys. | |
48:16 | Those elites — after graduating in the second half | |
48:20 | of the ’70s — began to climb the career ladder | |
48:24 | in Academia, and they constitute today the core of the scholarly-professorial | |
48:28 | milieu, while producing new generations | |
48:32 | of their critical heirs. | |
48:34 | Semantic Marxism Apology for Gramsci | |
48:40 | At the end of this part of the History of Marxism, I would like to explain why | |
48:44 | I skipped the personage of Antonio Gramsci, | |
48:49 | associated by most commentators with the March Through the Institutions, | |
48:53 | or even treated as its ideologue. | |
48:57 | Antonio Gramsci was an Italian communist who spent many years | |
48:59 | “Intellectuals and the Organization of the Culture” in “Prison Notebooks” 1926-35 | |
49:01 | in a fascist prison where he wrote down his thoughts in the so-called | |
49:05 | Prison Notebooks. Gramsci’s writings were published | |
49:09 | only after World War 2, and they became subject of studies | |
49:13 | above all in the English School of Cultural Studies — the forge of | |
49:17 | the Neo-Marxist New Left. However, the fact that | |
49:21 | the New Left studied Gramsci’s writings doesn’t mean | |
49:25 | that they understood anything from them, or rather that they understood from them | |
49:30 | what they WANTED to understand. | |
49:34 | Antonio Gramsci distinguished political power or the governing of a country | |
49:38 | from ruling over a society, and he thought that | |
49:42 | a lasting power will only be ensured by winning cultural hegemony or imposing | |
49:46 | on society [the Left’s] own system of values. Because only | |
49:50 | such hegemony would legitimize political power. | |
49:54 | It is, however, only possible when the new cultural offering | |
49:58 | responds to spiritual needs of the society. Therefore | |
50:02 | the template for a cultural hegemon was for Gramsci the Catholic Church. | |
50:07 | According to Gramsci, the method for winning cultural hegemony | |
50:11 | could be the creation of a proletarian culture as an alternative | |
50:15 | to bourgeois culture. That’s why he attached a great | |
50:19 | importance to education — including the education of adults — and | |
50:23 | to the role of the intellectuals, who were supposed to be to avant-garde of such a new culture. | |
50:27 | Gramsci claimed that everybody is | |
50:31 | a potential intellectual, but not everybody will — in a conscious way — | |
50:35 | take up the role of an intellectual. It is | |
50:39 | quire possible that therein lay the source of Joseph Beuys’ slogan, | |
50:43 | “Everybody is an artist”, because he formulated | |
50:48 | his political project and founded the German Students’ Party | |
50:52 | in 1967 when the first German translation | |
50:56 | of Gramsci’s writings was published. | |
51:00 | What’s with the misunderstanding concerning Gramsci, and what distinguishes him | |
51:04 | in a fundamental way from the New — anti-cultural — Marxists ? | |
51:08 | Well, it’s true that Gramsci | |
51:12 | was a fanatical and immature communist, | |
51:17 | which means that he sought to realize a social utopia — | |
51:21 | which would have to end in a catastrophe — and that | |
51:25 | he didn’t understand what a culture IS, I mean, | |
51:29 | he didn’t understand that there’s only ONE culture, understood as the mechanism | |
51:33 | motivating people for creative work. And he contrasted a “new proletarian culture” | |
51:40 | with some old bourgeois culture. However, Gramsci — | |
51:45 | because of his inability to precisely define culture — | |
51:49 | was never programmatically “anti-cultural”. In his | |
51:54 | program not only was there no deliberate destruction of the Work Ethic, | |
51:58 | but he sacrificed a lot of his attention to educate the proletariat | |
52:02 | and its elites. In contrast, the entire | |
52:06 | Marxist anti-culture — whose first manifesto was the Right To Be Lazy [by Paul Lafargue,1883] , | |
52:10 | and whose intentionally formulated program was Critical Theory — | |
52:14 | WAS and IS intentionally seeking | |
52:18 | freedom, understood as a liberation from | |
52:22 | any constraint, and to the destruction of the Work Ethic; | |
52:26 | to deprive people of respect for | |
52:30 | systematic, intentional and organized effort, | |
52:34 | which is essential for the functioning of ANY | |
52:38 | social system, if it is to be expected to provide | |
52:42 | people with the fulfillment of ALL their needs, | |
52:46 | whether sophisticated or elementary. | |
52:51 | Because it’s impossible that the actions which will inevitably cause — | |
52:55 | in practice — such a result [destruction of the Work Ethic], would be conducted by succeeding | |
52:59 | generations of Marxists without their realizing their consequences, | |
53:03 | a justifiable conclusion is that this consequence [destruction of the Work Ethic] | |
53:07 | WAS and IS the GOAL of Marxism. | |
53:11 | It wasn’t, however, Gramsci’s goal; that’s why, while I consider him as an immature utopian; | |
53:15 | I don’t consider him one of the forerunners | |
53:19 | of the March Through the Institutions, nor | |
53:23 | as the precursor of anti-cultural Marxism. | |
53:28 | Thank you for your attention, and I invite you to listen to the last part | |
53:32 | of the History of Marxism. | |
53:35 | Next part of Semantic Marxism 5/5 Eurocommunism, Spinelli Plan, Gender, EU | |
53:43 | Show this video to your friends, parents, teachers, promote social knowledge; found in your school a social knowledge discussion club |
I cannot view DTube but at 45:40 the name “Rudi Dutchmen” will, given
1. the year 1979
2. the fact that Karon is talking about Germany and
3. and the reference to “leader of the student revolt”
….. likely be rather “Rudi Dutschke”, photo and bio here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudi_Dutschke
Yes, I wrote Rudi Dutchke, and somewhere in the process, auto correct (aka Otto Korrekt) changed it into Dutchmen .
That Otto, eh? Just can’t trust him!
Well, they’ve arrived at their destination after their ‘long march’ which is the temple to gnostic awareness that was waiting for them after a millennia of standing vacant. The temple was, and is haunted by the demons who led astray the acolytes that came before them, acolytes that included those who laid the foundation for the Qur’an. One can only wonder what is being cooked up in their imaginations now. However, if the present trends of world events are any question, their contemplated future does not appear to portend a pleasant one for those outside the temple, and then those who are sheltering with the demons inside. Is it any wonder then why the temple was abandoned to decay in the middle of the spiritual desert? We are trying to get back to Eden on our own terms and refuse to admit that the way is barred by a Seraph with a flaming sword.