Read on Twitter
THREAD: Have you ever thought, "I feel miserable, is there something political about that?" Almost three centuries of theory says there might be - that capitalism remakes us.
I gave a long interview explaining those arguments, from Rousseau to Foucault https://musingmind.org/podcasts/barnaby-raine
I gave a long interview explaining those arguments, from Rousseau to Foucault https://musingmind.org/podcasts/barnaby-raine
Some teasers! First, a thinker sometimes praised as a proto-liberal or feared as proto-totalitarian but really he was a great revolutionary philosopher of freedom who worried profoundly about what private property does to us:
What does it mean to think about capitalism as more than just an economy, as a form of life? Durkheim's incisive worries about loneliness spoke to lots of students when I taught this class:
What, to Marxists, is so special about capitalism? Lukács answers that question and shows how capital produces not just goods and services but people too:
We are often told - by admirers and critics alike - that liberal capitalism is premised on individualism. For Adorno and Horkheimer, its real product is a dangerous homogeneity that makes fascism possible:
What lessons can Freud offer to radical politics? Marcuse thought the answer was, "plenty! But we have to turn him on his head to put him back on his feet":
To finish our galloping tour through the history of capitalism as a series of transformations of people - how has the demolition of welfare states over the last 40 years changed us? Foucault found answers when it was all just starting:
Has contemporary identity politics forgotten the emancipatory, universalist lessons of older anti-capitalist feminisms and anti-colonialisms? Lessons from Fanon and de Beauvoir about how power shapes and punishes all of us:
This podcast collects just a few lessons from my class on "Capitalism and the Self" taught at the amazing Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Follow them @BklynInstitute. I'll be teaching a new Zoom class - on Lenin! - in the new year and everyone can sign up when it's out.
