 Earlier this year, the renowned and celebrated Marxist academic, David Harvey, shocked a lot of people, including a lot of his fans, by saying that we should actively strive to save capitalism, that it would be very dangerous to have a revolution and we should fight against it. And this shocked people, as I said, and the obvious conclusion from this is that this is a very bizarre thing for an apparent Marxist to say. But for those of us who have followed in one way or another, the celebrity Marxist academics, like, not just David Harvey, but other people like, um, Zizek is probably the best example. If we if you follow them over a number of years, actually, this wouldn't really surprise you very much. For example, in 2013, Zizek said, regarding his support forum series in Greece, he said, and I quote, The task ahead is not some kind of crazy radical measures, but simply in a very pragmatic way, which we have, which will have very radical consequences to bring rationality to give people hope to stabilize the situation. What we need a true and reasonable alliances, not communist revolutions, but bourgeois parliaments that will bring results. I am ready to come to you and be some kind of voice for capitalists for Syriza. That would be my dream. Some of you may also remember that only last year, Zizek debated Jordan Peterson in what was billed the debate of the century. And a lot of people on the left, or people who think of themselves as Marxists were very excited about this because they thought, finally, the nonsense of people like Peterson is going to be seriously challenged and somebody who is a Marxist can put these ideas on the biggest stage, which obviously people don't get to hear normally. But it ended up being a very big disappointment because Zizek in the debate said very little of any consequence. And he actually said that he supported a regulated capitalism rather than socialism. And he actually agreed with with Jordan Peterson on that and a number of other points. So yes, this is not, this is, this is a, this is a phenomenon, basically what we're talking about. And that's why we're discussing it today. Now, Marxism is a theory first and foremost, it's a philosophy. And we take theory therefore extremely seriously. So, please don't understand this attack on academic Marxism as an attempt to say that we should just discard theory and that we should simply be activists. And we should be governed by, you know, moral, moral outrage at capitalism, rather than an understanding of what's going on. That's not the aim at all. I'm a materialist and that means that we see the material world as the only world and as prior to an independent of ourselves and what we think. Therefore, it's very important to get your theory correct. We can't just sort of will socialism into existence we have to understand the laws of society of capitalist society, and the real logic of events if you like, as much as we can. So, theory is very important for that reason, but Marx famously said also in what was a very profound criticism of philosophers but could also stand as quite a good criticism of academic Marxist had they existed in his day. He said the following the philosophers have only interpreted the world the point, however, is to change it that is the 11th thesis on Feuerbach in his thesis on Feuerbach, of course extremely famous is on his grave. Marxism is a philosophy, yes, but not one of sort of self satisfied contemplation, but a practical revolutionary action with dedicated to changing the world and of course helping the working class to achieve its liberation. So, for those reasons I think academic Marxism isn't really Marxism at all, because it isn't a guide to action it's it's basis isn't how do we, you know, how do we understand the main events in the world in order to to change it in the right way, but is rather a sort of niche in the academic community a career, basically, and it's therefore really a part of the status quo. The thing is, Marxism is, you know, I think Marxism is the most profound and most advanced theory that humanity has developed, not just about human society but also in general. And that isn't lost on a lot of people there's a lot of intellectuals who aren't really revolutionaries. And not in some cases aren't even on the left actually, but they do become aware and they have become aware in the course of, you know, especially in the 20th century that Marxism is a very, very serious very profound very rich philosophy and school of thoughts. And, you know, if you're a careerist in in that as an intellectual, it is a very fascinating subject which affords you a great deal of of insight and tools for understanding things. And so I think that, you know, a lot of people were attracted to Marxism to one degree or another, a lot of them wouldn't have called themselves Marxist other ones would have not so much because they were committed to overthrowing capitalism but before it's for its sort of theoretical gravity if you like. And for these people for a lot of these people who come from this sort of intellectual petty bourgeois milieu. Marxism, whilst being very, very profound and very, very interesting. They also the way they tend to look at theory is not as a tool for changing the world but as an interesting thing, you know, as something to almost for sort of dinner party conversation. And so for that in that outlook, you're more interested in sort of being able to comment on the latest developments in theory and sort of having your theory up to date so that you've got something to talk about. And I think it's for that reason it's very, very common to hear amongst such people that Marxism needs updating that Marxism has got a lot to say, but that ultimately it's a bit old fashioned. So probably the most common thing you'll hear is that it's economically reductionist. It reduces everything to just economic relations and that's too simplistic. And actually, in the end, human culture, and not plenty of other things as well have turned out to be enormously important capitalism is more creative than we great gave it credit for these sorts of things is very, very common things to hear said amongst other academic Marxists and and for those reasons I want to focus this talk on the Frankfurt School that's mainly what I'll be talking about their ideas and you know who they were basically. The reason is of course there's different schools of academic Marxism, and they don't all agree with each other but I think that the Frankfurt School is very emblematic of the whole thing. The attitude they have the sort of the mood that they were reflecting and the main conclusions they drew is extremely typical of academic Marx and even the academic Marxist such as David Harvey he would never describe as someone in the Frankfurt School or particularly influenced by it. I think it's like a kind of a real sort of microcosm if you like of the of the phenomenon. It is the most famous and most influential school of academic Marx and if you study Marxism at university, often a lot Marxist courses a third of it will be the Frankfurt School which is bizarre because they aren't even really Marxist but anyway. So, who are they and what do they think the Frankfurt School or to give it its proper name, the Institute for Social Research was founded in the 1920s as a sort of autonomous department of the University of Frankfurt. And that was a novel thing that hadn't really been done before and it was only made possible this arrangement by thanks to the riches of Felix Weil, who was the son of a very rich German capitalist, who gave him an inheritance and he decided to spend that on setting up an institute whose purpose was because Felix Weil himself saw himself as a Marxist. But he wanted a sort of original school of Marxism. And so the school was set up with the kind of on the basis that it would be independent of the sort of as they saw at the dogmas. And the constraints of the German labor movement, which they saw a term, they thought they sort of turn Marxism into very mechanistic sort of religious outlook, very narrow minded and needed freshening up and a bit of creativity so they thought that a school needed to be coming to existence that was truly autonomous from everything and just could sort of pursue Marxism and the study of society for its own sake. And therefore, as Stuart Jeffries writes, who is he has written a sort of recent biography of the Frankfurt School, he says that they, and I quote the intellectuals of the Frankfurt School turned Marx's 11th thesis on Feuerbach upside down. In other words, they said that the Marxists have tried to change the world the point however is to interpret it and that really could stand for really sums up academic Marxism in general but particularly the Frankfurt School. So what were their ideas their main idea probably the main conclusion they consistently came to and there's obviously different people in the Frankfurt School they pretty much all agreed on this one point, which is that the working class has lost its revolutionary agency that it's no longer capable of class consciousness and overthrowing capitalism essentially. And they gave different reasons for this as we'll see but the main reason in general that they tended to give was that the superstructure of capitalist society had now gained autonomy and was actually a determining factor maybe even the most determining factor in human history. So whereas Marx had said famously that the base, the economic base of society, the forces of production and the relations of production in the final analysis are the most determining factor in human history and that the superstructure that is culture, politics, etc. And in the final analysis those reflect the developments in the base the economic base. They said, actually now that may have been true in Marx's day but now the, the economic base gained autonomy and is arguably even more important so in other words, the working class, whose economic whose interests were defined by the economic base, were now sort of corrupted if you like, and beguiled by bourgeois culture by mass culture basically. And this because this was possibly even more important than the economic interest in contemporary society. And their interests were against capitalism because something more influential, which was bourgeois culture was acting upon them. Now it's fair to say that this idea has been hugely influential. And that's because it's very very useful to certain people. You will hear it amongst academics for sure. There are some intellectuals, particularly of them from middle class background but not only, you know, from your final working class activists who suffered defeats and draw similar conclusions. And in particular, so I think the conservative leaders of the labor movement, the trade union leaders, and the Labour Party leaders are very fond of this kind of conclusion that well these that you know people love their X factor that kind of cynical people would make its origins. I'm sure it's not the, the only origin but one of its main origins is in the Frankfurt school. And it was very influential for that for that reason because it's useful to certain people which I think gives the lie to the idea that they could be autonomous from everything. Their ideas had to be useful for somebody. Anyway. So, this was really first developed in 1927 by Hawkeimer who would become the director of the Institute and it's key intellectual alongside Adorno. He wrote an article then in 1927 called the impotence of the German working class. What's interesting about this article is that it comes to the exact same conclusions I've mentioned, but for the opposite reasons. And I think that shows that they were really more interested in this conclusion than the actual arguing of it. Because the argument in this article is that the reason the German workers are impotent is because the economic developments have created have created a schism in the class between a kind of permanently underemployed or underclass and a better off sort of aristocracy. And this is also a very common argument you find there's a kind of division in the working class for these economic reasons and he said that therefore they can't unite they don't have the same interests anymore, and socialism is impossible. So it's interesting to know as I said that it's a for a completely different reason, whereas later on the Frankfurt School argued it was for reasons of culture mass culture propaganda essentially corrupted the working class consciousness. Earlier on they concluded that it was for economic reasons that shows in my opinion that the real aim the consistent aim of the Frankfurt School is to show that the working class was impotent. And then they changed their arguing for that but that was this that was what remained consistent. And then in 1929 so just two years later Hawkeimer and Eric from who was another member of the school launched a project to research the apparent desire for the German workers for their own domination by authoritarian leaders. And unsurprisingly they concluded that yes, they do decide they're incapable of independent thought basically was the conclusion. Now what's very telling about this particular study in 1929 is the method, which took the form of a questionnaire sort of personality test so workers would answer questions and these questions would tell whether they desire to be dominated by a powerful leader or not. The method of this is frankly completely on Marxist and shows a complete sort of lack of understanding of the Marxist method. It's a very static a historical approach, very passive sort of one. Instead of fighting to change society. He famously said also I think it's in the German ideology, the point he said it's not what the working class thinks is what the working class is and will be compelled to do. That's the point but they this was lost on them for them it was exclusively the point exclusively was what was working class things and at this time. So it's like you instead of fighting to change society you stick a thermometer into the working class and you declare it to be fatally ill. Since lectures the working class have no agency they their consciousness is very very low, and they accept their fate. I'd like to just draw your attention to the era in which this was written. We're talking about the late 1920s here. This is quite an extraordinary kind of position to come to at that time. This is only is after the Russian Revolution. It's only about four or five years after the end of the German Revolution, one of the greatest movements of the working class in history and it's in their own country. You would expect to find some mention of these Titanic events if somebody wants to say that the working class is not revolutionary isn't capable of revolutionary consciousness, and actually desires to be dominated. It's just that you would have to to be serious you think you would have to study show what happened in the German Revolution show, at least contend with the the cap put you know the the giant strikes which shook society the fact that the workers created, you know workers councils all over society, and you had a situation of dual power, and you had a mass membership of two workers parties regardless of what you think of their leadership. You had a mass membership of these parties which were dominant in society at the time. You'd think you'd mention these things and, you know, come to terms with them in some way but they're not even mentioned in in this this article and in this study. And so these Titanic events which are, you know should be absolute bread and butter for any Marxist in that country completely passed them by none of them participated in any way in the German Revolution by the way. So yeah I mean that in itself is extremely telling, but you can also see this. And I'd really like to draw attention to this as well the mechanical determinism on display with this method, which is highly ironic, because the Frankfurt School and academic Marxist general tend to say, and I'm sure you'll have come across this argument before that Marxism is mechanistic is over time andistic. And what they said is we need to get away from economic determinism and look at culture more culture has a big influence that was the increase especially as the Frankfurt School went on that became their main argument as I've said. And, and they said also that what they, they often stress that they wanted their philosophy to be an open one they were against sort of closed systems of philosophy, which they implied Marxism or sort of orthodox Marxism was. Yet, despite this professing to be the sort of open minded more novel approach I think they actually reveal themselves as very crude determinists, you know, that they they sort of perform a personality test on a few people and declare that to be it. Rather than understanding that eat the period of history that they were in and that history would change again and with it consciousness which probably change in various ways. And understanding that they they just treat it as if this is a once and for all, you know, fixed thing that this is now how workers think. And I think that actually ironically this determinism is precisely a consequence of their escape from sort of traditional if you like Marxism's emphasis on economics and on the class struggle, and their flight towards cultural analysis. Without studying the concrete political and economic events that shook society at that period without studying that they are left with only sort of vague notions of culture and, you know, attitudes, which, you know, we see this time and time again in society, you know, these sort of studies of what workers think are produced all the time. And when you see that you know that these are always vague and speculative it's very hard to know really what the significance of a particular opinion is how widespread it truly is how strongly people are attached to it, etc. And how people would respond to a different opinion if it were put by a political force. They fled away from all of that kind of approach and sort of tried in my opinion to sort of overanalyze cultural forms, and tried to extrapolate from them, the cause for all of, you know, the failures of all revolutions and it got to really quite ridiculous levels of for example, the analysis of jazz took place where apparently the form of jazz music is kind of a form of castration and that's why workers are impotent because they listen to jazz and it's just absolutely kind of absurd speculative stuff that I think is aged very, very badly. But I think the point is, is that that's a consequence and you still get this today this this approach this attempt to ignore the logic of economics and the logic of class the political logic of class society, the contradictions, etc. And to focus on attitudes and culture is very very vague is very very speculative and it's unavoidably so. I ended up concluding that some things like the radio new inventions of course which like, which were new at the time like the radio the movies you know the cinema, and other luxuries. Again, I think it's quite important to point out they're writing in the 1930s, you know, in the middle of the Great Depression and they talk as if the working class is living a life of luxury, because they have a radio when there was mass unemployment and they had nothing to say about. Anything about the mass unemployment really. But yeah, they write about these things and they write the working, they say this is for them as their explanation of the conservatism of the working class they listen to the radio. They, they, they listen to adverts and they go to the movies and therefore they must be indoctrinated. And I'll give a couple of quotations just just to really show what I'm talking about. Both of them are from the dialectic of enlightenment. A major book by Adorno and Hawkeye were written in 1944, I think. So in the second world war. The first one is in an unjust state of life, the impotence and pliability of the masses grow with the quantitative increase in commodities allowed them. The materially respectable, but socially deplorable rise in living standards of the lower classes is reflected in the simulation extension of simulated extension of spirit. In other words, the simulated extension of spirit means like that people are watching films and are getting satisfaction from that rather than from their own lives. So in other words, it's socially deplorable that workers have a better living standard, although I think that's highly debatable in the 1940s, but anyway, it's this is socially deplorable. Workers should be poor because they're too stupid to know what to do with the luxuries basically. And the second quote is as follows, the regression of the masses today is their inability to hear the unheard of with their own ears. In other words, the culture industry the movies tells them what to see in here. Once again, exactly like one another through isolation in a forcibly united collectivity. The actual working conditions in society compelled conformism, the impotence of the worker is not merely a stratagem of the rulers, but is the logical consequence of the industrial society. So all as I've mentioned all the real events, the tumult of the German Revolution, and other events in this period of history very very stormy period of history very revolutionary period these are glossed over ignored as if they didn't happen. And instead fascism the rise of fascism is blamed on the gullibility of the workers, I'll give another quotation to that fact. They say fascism succeeded because it rightly takes people for what they are genuine children of today's standardized mass culture who have been robbed to a great extent of their autonomy and spontaneity so you know the workers basically don't have their own experiences they can't think for themselves they stay watch cinema and they're too stupid to realize that they have their own that they're exploited and poor in their own lives according to the Frankfurt School. But again the rigid determinism I would like to emphasize this is very clear, as well as course the contempt for the working class. And you know this, you know there's there's no sense that events will change. This is people watch listen to the radio and that determines their fate forever basically is the argument. And this is also a self fulfilling prophecy that again is enormously useful for conservative leaders of the trade union movement people who are, you know reformist basically who want an argument that the working class can't take power. We've heard it time and time again it's it is like a self fulfilling prophecy because the leaders of the labor movement don't want to take action in not taking action in betraying strikes and revolutionary events. Those events fail and then of course afterwards they have a ready made excuse which was that while the working failed because the workers consciousness was too low we told you that was the case and look it must be because the revolution failed. There is a low level of consciousness somewhere in the late movement for sure but it's not in the working classes in their leaders which should be the highest level of consciousness but unfortunately most of the time, they have a very conservative consciousness and a contempt for the working class which I think is reflected very clearly with the academic Marxist and not just the Frankfurt School will come on to show some. Yeah. What would genuine Marxists have done in this period well we analyze real events right we analyze the German Revolution and the Russian Revolution and we show why they failed we don't say because we're orthodox Marxist and the economy determines everything. The revolution is guaranteed to be victorious in advance or it failed and and it had to fail because economic development wasn't enough that's not the Marxist position. The Marxist position is to show that the economic basis is of course provides the general context. But then it's the concrete actions of individual political leaders individual parties that have to be analyzed in all of their detail which is exactly what we do. And in doing so we reveal that genuine Marxism is not mechanistic and fatalistic. We don't understand the element of accident in all of these events in other words by analyzing a specific leader and their mistakes we can also show how it would be possible to have alternative leadership. If you can build that in advance and therefore we can intervene in events and we can change events within certain limits of course. But Marxism is not that kind of rigid determinism on the contrary that lies I think actually ironically with the sort of petty bourgeois intellectuals who who loudly proclaimed Marxism to be too deterministic but don't notice their own determinism. And yeah this I'll just give one final example of this, not from the Frankfurt School, but as a sort of justification for this outlook. Louis Althusser is also a famous academic Marxist, very different in his ideas to the Frankfurt School, but regarding this study of history and the concrete events of history he said the following. Marxism as a theoretical and a political practice gains nothing from its association with historical writing and historical research. The study of history is not only scientifically, but also politically valueless. It's an extraordinary claim to make the reason he says that is because he sees Marxism as a sort of self sufficient perfect theory that doesn't need empirical evidence doesn't need to study concrete events because the ideas justify themselves it's a sort of perfect self contained theory. It's completely alien to Marxism which you know Marx and Engels themselves painstakingly studied real history, you know empirical data, and, and, you know, developed with the movement right and change their views actually as the with experiences like the Paris commune for example, as did Trotsky. This is the spirit of genuine Marxism. And yes, Althusser's ideas are very different to the to the Frankfurt School but they have this general feature in common. This tendency towards a sort of idealist kind of ivory sort of tower situation where the real concrete events of the working class struggle are disdained ignored and instead sort of abstract constructions are focused on and you'll find this as a tendency to dissent when they say they're not doing that. That is I think really inherent to academic Marxism. It's true that you get academic Marxists who do study history obviously specifically that will be their discipline. But even there you find it's the same problem because whilst they study history. They tend to do so because this is the character of academia in a particular niche right so they don't study what are the main events and the main lessons the working class needs right now. You know, but instead they tend to focus on a very specific niche that there's a spot for in some university department. And so, yes they study history but it's not really to arm the working class in order to change society I think. Now this this sort of layer of intellectuals is chronically pessimistic flow which flows from their social position will discuss that in a bit. Adorno actually summed up his ideas his outlook by saying that it was and I quote the idea of history as permanent catastrophe. So very cheerful outlook and very optimistic as you can see, this is a constant feature of academic Marxism because they see all the horrors of capitalism but again, they're very alien from the working class they see the working class as stupid as not as educated as them, and, and they're disappointed by the working class most of the time really. So in the case of the Frankfurt School this this out this pessimism led them to develop another important idea of this which was to discredit the enlightenment essentially and particularly its belief in progress and in this respect very influential the post modernists has got a lot in common with it here. And they actually blamed this for the rise of fascism so their argument essentially was particularly Adorno and Hawkeimers who are really the main thinkers. Their argument was that what defines the enlightenment is the belief in the domination of nature, which is their sort of negative spin on site the scientific revolution basically that with science we dominate nature and what they say is that this spirit of dominating nature very easily sort of morphs into the spirit of dominating man. And that is that the logical consequence of that is in fascism fascism is a kind of the crowning point of the enlightenment really, because it's you know dominating everything. Now this this argument I mean it's so much wrong with it. First of all it is a completely and thoroughly idealist argument right. As I said Marxism is materialist the material world is the foundation for human society, and the economic developments in human society are the most important facts are not very much not the only factor but the most important factor in the long run. But this here is an argument that reduces all of subsequent history to the basic structure of the idea of the enlightenment, which they never explained really where it comes from the temp to link it to miss and bizarre stuff I won't go into. But basically they don't give a coherent explanation for its origin why it appeared at that point in history, like all idealist arguments that ends up being arbitrary and vague. Why is this idea arriving at this time and not another idea. And of course if it's the case that we can say that the idea of the enlightenment is the domination of nature which I think is highly doubtful anyway. And even if that is the idea why does that become the domination of man. It's totally unclear why that would be the case. Why you know and it's the whole way they talk about it's completely abstract. They say man dominates nature and then man dominates man we think well which men. You know is it all men dominating nature equally, which is what is implied by simply saying man dominates nature and if so, presumably before the enlightenment there was no class society. And then somehow class society is created by the enlightenment. And how exactly that happened and who it was that became dominated is totally unclear. And why they allow themselves to be dominated is totally unclear. So it's an absurd position. I think it's pretty clear that a lot of domination and class society existed before the enlightenment and as far as I understand it. The other ideas of the enlightenment rejected domination and we're far more insightful than this simple assertion that we've got to dominate nature. And that that is always a good thing. There are some brilliant ideas and brilliant liberate, you know, the spirit of liberation and the ideas of the enlightenment is very profound and Marx and Engels paid credit to that. The problem with this approach is that no attention whatsoever to the fact that Marx and Engels clearly had their own explanation for for why the enlightenment failed essentially or why the ideas of the enlightenment didn't lead to liberation and the sort of perfect society. And that's because of for historical materialist reasons because of the class basis of these ideas it wasn't because the ideas were fundamentally wrong that there was an original sin in the enlightenment. Although there obviously are flaws that Marx and Engels analyzed a sort of abstractness to these ideas but that's not the point the main point for the reason the horrors of capitalism is because of the economic structure of capitalism because of the class contradiction that was there from the beginning, which is just ignored by the Frankfurt school so in this respect it couldn't be further away from Marxism factors it's direct negation. And they moved from this idealist position to an openly idealist position in their later lives. Adorno began to doubt whether objective knowledge of any kind is possible so he had to drift towards Kantianism. And he said that the whole is the false, the whole as in the WHOLE is the false, stressing that you know the whole meaning you know the collective and society at large they emphasized the sort of sanctity of the individual. They became essentially just liberals who found society and the masses to be absolutely horrifying. And Hawkeimer claimed that true materialism does not mean that there is an independent material world which as far as I understand is exactly what it means. And he said that matter is not ontologically primary. In other words it does not exist before humanity. Marcuse also said he's another major thinker in the Frankfurt school. It is meaningless to say if matter or spirit is prior. Again a direct negation of materialism and of Marxism. He also said that nature has no history at all the only human society has history which is scientifically false. Now this tendency towards idealism is very strong in academic Marxism. It reflects the social position that they have as sort of atomized intellectuals, not part of the main struggle and crushed between the two main contending classes in society. And it was very aptly expressed by another idea of the Frankfurt school that they developed which was that the category of labor was fetishized by Marx and actually wasn't very good or very important. In fact Adorno in 1969 said, and I quote, Marx wanted to turn the entire world into a workhouse, in other words into some sort of slave labor conditions. That's apparently what Marx understood by socialism. Marcuse also thought that Marx fetishized labor. And basically they said that utopia, they're fond of this idea that socialism is utopia. They never explained that Marx and Engels fought against utopian socialism and you'll find this in modern academic Marxist as well a lot they use the term utopia utopian project things like this. For example, Frederick Jameson and influential apparent Marxist in academia frequently just writes as if Marx and Engels were utopians and never mentioned that they were against it. Anyway, they say that utopia is freedom from labor. This is a perfect expression of their petty bourgeois intellectual base for them labor is horrifying working is horrible. None of them work today in their lives, by the way, ever. And none of them joined the labor movement at any point and never fought for it. And therefore for them, labor and work obviously was was was just a horrible thing. I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty transparent what they were, what they were really saying. They can't understand that for Marx, there's a profound difference a complete contradiction between alienated labor and the free labor that the workers will enjoy, or just people will enjoy under socialism, where he says that labor will become life's prime In other words, not something we, we, we hate and don't want to do but we'll be an enjoyable thing will connect us with other people will allow us to express ourselves and to change our own lives and the world around us for the better because we'll really be in control of it democratically. Because we own the means of production. That is something that they don't understand or really contend with the tool. And they just show that their prejudices very, very clearly here. As Mark said, social being determines consciousness and no Marxist can be immune from this. In other words, if you call yourself a Marxist, but you exclusively operate in a petty bourgeois environments you lead a thoroughly petty bourgeois life, and you never put your ideas at the disposal of the working class in any way. Then obviously, you know that's going to have an effect on your thinking, basically, you have if you're a Marxist you have to fight for the working class, you know you have to put your ideas at their disposal that's the main aims, the aim is should not be your career. And basically academic Marxists have to find some sort of justification for why they are, you know, in that world why that world is their main way of practicing Marxism, if you like. And I think it always ends up being something that is contemptuous of socialist organizations because they have to justify why they're not doing that themselves. And the Frankfurt School was very, very bourgeois. They said it was funded by a millionaire. And with the idea that they wanted to be free from the influence of the German labor movement as a sort of constriction on their free thoughts. He even justified his bourgeois lifestyle and the way that he lived with this parable he gave which is where a king offers a poet of sort of rebellious poets, the option to be the king's poet and will pay pay this poet lavishly. Or he will put the poet to death. And this parable is supposed to show how you have a conundrum as a socialist or as a sort of radical thinker, you can either become a kind of, you know, like a court thinker who's basically kept by the ruling class or you die. And there's no alternative, basically, it's a very telling choice of example of course. He shows their contempt for revolutionism for the working class. Being a revolutionary does entail hardship for sure and look at the life of Marx, for example, who lived much of his life in extreme poverty he didn't seek a career in the academic world he fought and built helped to build the world as an international, you know, and he put his ideas at the disposal of the working class and he, you know, he suffered a lot of hardship as a result. Well look at Lenin and Trotsky, you know, going into exile and risking their own lives in the case of Trotsky, literally dying for the revolution. And of course that isn't necessarily what the fate of every Marxist has to be. The point is it shouldn't be a life of luxury right. And that and if you pursue luxury then that's going to have certain effects on the rest of your on your thoughts. But the fact that they see being a revolutionary as equaling instant death is very, very telling for them, facing some hardship, a little bit of hardship is death because it isn't Marx didn't die. He was able to live and he was able to put his ideas out there and to change the world. So it is very much possible to go against the stream and to build a socialist organization and to fight for the working class. Thanks. Now in class society, there is no independence. That's the point that they didn't seem to understand. If you develop political ideas and you have some influence you either put those ideas at the service of the working class and you help the working class, or you do the opposite you help the ruling class and it's abundantly clear that the academic Marxist unfortunately are effectively doing the work. In the case of the Frankfurt school not only were they funded by a millionaire. They, they actually took contracts after the second world war from the German Ministry of Defense, and this had very direct political consequences, a young Habermas who was would become kind of second generation Frankfurt school thinker, and tried to publish a paper through the Frankfurt school in the post war period, which mentioned Marx and revolution favorably, and these were edited out by Hawkeimer and in justifying this he said the following. It is simply not possible to have admissions of this sort, in other words revolution in the research reports of an institute that exists on the public funds of this shackling society. In other words, he knew full well that they who were on which side their bread was buttered. They toyed with the idea of calling it the Marxist Institute for sorry the Institute for Marxism and they rejected the idea because it would put people off. Even way back in the 30s, Benjamin's articles he was another member of the Frankfurt school were edited by Hawkeimer to remove any mention of the working class and of socialism. In the war, Marcus actually worked for the forerunner of the CIA, the OSS as an intelligence analysis, and he actually became quite high up he became the head of the Central European Bureau of the State Department of the American States. And the Frankfurt school also conducted research into the antisemitism of the American labor movement paid for by a bourgeois organization, not by the working class but by an organization that was hostile to the working class. So this is this is the real background. This is a very clear example, but I think it does apply to academic Marxists in general. Tatsuki says in his introduction to the to the history of the Russian Revolution that, you know, is his analysis sort of biased and discredited because he was a participant in the events and because he obviously favored the revolution. And he says that no, in actual fact to a certain extent it's improved by that, because he had an interest in what was what on the outcome, and because he saw events with his own eyes. And it's not true that having an interest in a situation you know wanting a certain outcome is mutually exclusive from objective truth. If I want to make a certain jump. I'd better have an accurate sense of how big the gap is that I need to jump over right so the fact that I have an interest doesn't necessarily mean that I'm biased to the point of it being false. Is it a medical scientist or a doctor, somehow less scientific, because they're interested in helping people, and the whole point of their endeavor is to help people to survive or to live better. I would argue that it's precisely having that burning interest to help people stay alive that actually gives the science credibility that it motivates the science and gives them a reason to make it as accurate as possible. But that isn't that kind of the case with all science isn't really all science interested. In other words, we develop science to, I mean of course, capitalist developed science often for very bad reasons but we develop science in general to advance, you know the interests of the human race or in practice unfortunately often of the ruling class but the point I'm making is that science isn't some perfectly disinterested thing which just, you know comes up with objective truths out of its own, you know, sort of sheer brilliance but it's, it has an interest it has a reason a motivating factor for developing its ideas and that's precisely what can lead to it being objectively accurate. And I think that Marxism is like this Marxism is improved and it's made more realistic if you like, precisely because there's a real struggle, the, which is not made up but it's a very real struggle of the working class for its own liberation, which we draw ideas from and which we help. It's not against academic I might sound as if I'm deeply against academics, academics today, in fact, in Britain I'm sure in other countries, and many respects, sometimes at the forefront of the labour movement they've been going on strike, and their conditions are increasingly poor. So it's not, this is not saying that anyone who's an academic is some sort of class traitor. What this is an argument against is the idea that for some reason, although in Marx's day, or in Lenin and Trotsky's day. Marxism develops in political struggle in trying to form political revolutionary political organizations of the working class. For some reason today and I've heard this said by many people that I've met that sort of the main, you know, sort of arena for Marxism if you'd like is in the university. And if you're a serious Marxist you've got to follow all of the latest theories that different academic Marxists have put out there for me it's like well why aren't they putting their ideas at the service of the labour movement. Why aren't they striving to build a revolutionary organization, and yes develop theory of course, but develop theory that the movement needs, and that expresses the main needs that the movement has, rather than what the university allows them, and the academic industry allows them to develop if you see what I mean right. That is what we are arguing against. And I think the academic Marxism. I don't have time it may be in the summing up I'll give some further examples from David Harvey and others. Right, so it's not just the Frankfurt school, but I think the academic Marxism in general has this sort of character that it gets from the petty bourgeois milieu that is based upon of a kind of sneering cynical very pessimistic outlook. It's very disdainful of the working class, obsessed with originality because that's what academia demands academia demands that you publish all the time, and that you comment on the latest developments and so the outlook of our academic Marxist is is to see Marxist innovations, such as our own, as a bit gauche, a bit predictable, a bit almost a bit embarrassing, you know, sort of. Oh, you're, you're a bit old fashioned you don't know what the latest trendy theory is kind of approach and they get this from not the needs of the movement class needs, they get it from the atmosphere of the university, which is one of cutthroat competition of one of you know striving to be you know the superstar academic striving to have the trendiest and the latest idea getting it published in as many places as possible. That's the origin of that sort of cynical competitive outlook and that is alien thoroughly alien to Marxism. We're not preoccupied with being original for the sake of it, you know, or commenting on the latest trendy theory regardless of whether it has any use or, you know relevance to, to the movement, or to working class people to what's going on in society in general. You know prestige ego career these places have these things have no place in our struggle theory is vital yes and we need to not only conquer theory but also to develop it because the world is always changing. And that is absolutely true but it's not as an end in itself and it's not for our careers or to appear more original and cutting edge than everybody else is purely for to aid the working class in their struggle for emancipation. I'll stop there because I think I'm out of time there's a lot more I could say maybe in the discussion or when I'm replying to the comments I can give some further examples from beyond the Frankfurt School.