 A werthau yw'r gwaith i'r wneud fel Marchsist yn yr yma, wedi gw提oedd yn gwybod, mae yr cyfnodd oes unrhyw autonon yw'n ddweud sydd wedi'i peidiad a'r ffordd yma. Poedd dim yn nodi yn fawr, ei dda, yn ymhyn o'r tyfnodaeth, mae'n yn ymhyn o'r cyfnodd. Marchsist yn ymddangos i ddarparu, yno does yn y ffordd i'r ffordd. Mae'r ffordd yn cyfnodd, mae'n cyfnodd. Efallai bod bod ei wneud mewn bywyni ac yn cael ei fod yn dweud yn rhanu'r ffordd. Byddwchón byw yn cysylltu'r adeb amswn specs mae hyn o'r cael billiwyr. Ond mae hwn o'n oed ymyl gwneud o'r gwybodaeth yma, mae fydd yn cael wneud o'r awgig o'r aeddaeth, ac mae hyn yn cael ei fod yn cysylltu. Mae'r hwn yn fwyaf i gael y teimlo i ddysgwyr, y ddysgwyr, y ddysgwyr yn ymgyrch, y ddysgwyr yn y ddysgwyr y ddysgwyr wedi'i ddysgu. Mae'n gwybod i gyd yn y rhan o'r eraill o'r eraill, o'r rhan o'r cynnysydd ac yr angen, o'r angen sydd. O'r angen sydd o'r angen sydd o'r angen, o'r angen sydd o'r angen sydd. Mae'r angen sydd wedi'i gael y ddysgwyr yn ymgyrch o'r sydd fel angen y cyfathliau. Mae'n gael ei chyfnodd i'n gyffredinol o ddysgu sydd. Mydd ddesPRF berthyn i'r Llyfr angen, allan o'r angen sydd ei'i gael y sgwyr, swydd am y dyn sparyn o'r eraill o'r lefn o'r lefn o'r cliss. Yn eistafol, mae'n rhan o ddysgu Plos Modenysydd. Plos Modenysydd yn ei gael gael bod yn drafnol i ddysgu'r gwybod, First of all, I would say it's probably the dominant mode of attack that the ruling class has had in terms of theory on Marxism over the last 30 or so years. So it's been really the ideology, I suppose, of the last 20 or 30 years in the main. And also, that's perhaps waning now, but in the current situation, identity politics is clearly, although many people who subscribe to it would actually reject that they are postmodernists, but it clearly bears the stamp of postmodernism and the influence of postmodernism. And that's obviously a huge influence on the, especially on the student left, so that's something that we need to understand. Now, how do we understand postmodernism? Because it's to a point of principle, it's extremely eclectic and it's self-contradictory, almost deliberately so. In fact, sometimes it's deliberately self-contradictory. It doesn't really make sense much of the time. And in fact it astues the idea of making sense or of rationality in many respects. So it's hard to define. You couldn't really boil it down to any coherent ideas in this sense. And mainly it defines itself in opposition to what it calls modernism, which we have to say is a term I think that we should reject, because modernism is not a Marxist or a scientific term. But basically what they mean when they reject modernism is they reject progress or rather the idea of progress, the idea that exists in different political ideologies that humanity makes progress over time, of the bourgeois enlightenment, a tendency to reject science and rationality as seen as oppressive things basically. And objectivity as a category is also frequently rejected. So postmodernism is really more defined by what it rejects. It sees these things, science, rationality, the idea of progress as being dominant in the western world over the last two or 300 years. And it basically says that they're wrong or that they're passe or something like that and they need to be superseded. And I would say that therefore the way we should really categorise postmodernism and modernism is not in terms of the ideas themselves which we reject. I don't think modernism really is an idea or a set of ideas. But we should look at them from a historical materialist point of view and understand that what this really references is two great phases of capitalism. That is to say modernism broadly corresponds to the progressive phase of capitalism. The phase in which capitalism was growing was developing the productive forces in a very meaningful way and taking society forwards. And then the period roughly coinciding with the beginning of the First World War, accelerating different points in history in which capitalism begins to decline, goes into a phase of deindustrialisation and everything that we're familiar with from the last 30 or so years in particular. But the reason we reject the term modernism, which the postmodernists use in a very flippant way, is that it lumps together wildly different things. And from a postmodernist point of view, Marxism and liberalism are both modernism and are kind of the same really, because they both believe in progress and science. And in doing so they do an incredible disservice to Marxism, whose understanding of science is far more complex and nuanced to use very trendy postmodernist terms, than was liberalism. And of course they stand opposing class points of view. Liberalism of course is really the ideology of capitalism and of the ruling class. And Marxism obviously is that of socialism and the working class. To just lump the two together like that is extremely bad. Nevertheless, as I said, there is a certain reason that they've done so, which is that both those ideologies were born really in a phase in which capitalism was in the ascendancy. Anyway, postmodernism technically begins much later, but the first tendencies towards it I think can be seen in particular with Nietzsche, who is an enormous influence on many postmodernists. And that's not a coincidence that it is Nietzsche, because Nietzsche obviously was writing at the end of the 19th century, when capitalism was perhaps beginning to bear signs of its impasse, of the gross successes of industrialisation, the slums in cities. And what Nietzsche really reflected was a pessimism about science and about progress. And he was considered himself and is seen as an irrationalist, someone who rejects the idea of an objective world really and of science basically. And he sees science as just a means to control people. And obviously in doing so he was reflecting a certain realisation that much of the science, or that much of the effects of science in the 19th century, and of course especially in the 20th century, we were used for violent and oppressive means rather than to liberate people. And so he's a very important thinker, but it's not strictly, it's not a postmodernist, but it really reflects the same kind of process. And then in the early 20th century you have a number of thinkers who are not postmodernists again, but begin to use the term post, saying we live in a postmodern era. And of course this is the era of the Great Depression and of the two world wars. And you have a growing pessimism basically, seeping in to the ruling class. And these thinkers I'm referring to are ruling class thinkers. They were mainly very conservative, the people who were first using the term postmodern. They were not aligned with anything progressive at all, and in fact they hated the modern world. They saw it as filthy and dirt, unpleasant basically. And they wanted to go back to more old fashioned values. They were reflecting this pessimism about the way society was going, which obviously reflected the impasse of capitalism, especially in that era. Then after the Second World War you have a few more intellectuals saying similar things. Peter Drucker, for instance, identified quite presciently postmodernism with a post-industrial epoch. And I say presciently because of course in the 1950s, which is when he was writing, post-industrialism or if you like, deindustrialisation hadn't really begun properly in countries like Britain and America. But he anticipated it and could see that there was something had changed or was beginning to change in society. And then kind of an atmosphere of nihilism amongst certain intellectuals began to spread. Nietzsche himself is often seen as a sort of harbinger of nihilism as well. There's enormous pessimism seeping in. And also as the post-war boom and the success of Keynesianism and Fordism really began to decline and cracks in it began to appear in the inflation that he had in the early 70s. This was anticipated often in the 60s by a number of thinkers who began to say that science doesn't really bring any progress at all. And really there's no order to reality. A reality is disordered. Things are different from each other. And you can't really know the way. If there is a way that things work you can't really know the way. It's not really an original idea but nevertheless the sort of bubbling up of these ideas in that period did express something. Geoffrey Barocloff in 1964 and he's not a postmodernist really but he reflected the same kind of tendencies. Really hit the nail on the head for how they think where he said we must stress differences and discontinuity. Whereas apparently modernism is characterised by seeing unity in things. In other words by saying well the world has these features in a universal way. Every country for instance is capitalist and capitalism works in a definite way. That would be for them too much of a unifying idea. We should stress discontinuity. We should stress how things are different and certain laws don't apply from one country to another. And then just before the postmodernist proper really begin you have other thinkers like Roland Barth, the Frankfurt School as well and Guy Debord various thinkers who again very pessimistic especially after the Second World War especially the Frankfurt School looking at the experience of the Second World War. The nuclear bomb, the Holocaust basically said that science just brings death and the laws of Marxism and the class struggle don't really apply anymore because science and the bureaucracy obviously very much reflecting the post-war boom with the growth in bureaucracy that you had and the nationalisation of many industries and also Stalinism. They said the bureaucracy now has superseded the class struggle and the interests of science and rationality now dominate everything and there is no real class struggle anymore or it's been blunted and we're now basically all just victims of this kind of scientific rationality. It's very pessimistic kind of mood, very negative, abandoning all idea of real progress or of socialism. So this really began to catch on and also another tendency to look at things from a cultural point of view rather than say an economic or a political one is something that the Frankfurt School in particular really took on and is very important for postmodernism. Basically of course after the Second World War you had an explosion in the west of what they call the culture industry, in other words you know pop music, mass culture, movies etc. And they basically said that what this means is that everyone's kind of under the ideological control of capitalism now and there's no real escape because we're just bombarded with these images and that also is something that's very influential on the postmodernists. But postmodernism really begins a little bit later really in the 70s and basically all of the early postmodernist and the most influential postmodernists hail from Paris and although it did catch on, it became very popular in particular in America following this but really it all began in Paris and I think there's a couple of reasons for that. First of all is Stalinism and I don't think you can really understand postmodernism without the role of Stalinism. Many of the postmodernist intellectuals were in and around the Stalinist movement. Of course Stalinism in France was very big at least prior to 1968 the French Communist Party was extremely large and did very well in the opinion polls and it was extremely Stalinist obviously and it propagated an extremely mechanical interpretation of Marxism a very fatalistic one you know that the revolution is just going to come and we don't really need to do very much and we don't need to politically intervene and show our way forward it's just sort of an automatic process which was really just an excuse in many respects for their opportunist behaviour really but anyway we have time to go into that but that was the interpretation of Marxism that was common in France and in many other countries obviously and these intellectuals were in and around the French Communist Party so that was what they understood by Marxism although I think that does them a bit too much credit I think they deliberately also chose a caricature of Marxism because it was easy to argue against but anyway that's the influence that they had and so that's one reason why postmodernism started there I think because it's basically a rejection or a revulsion from that very mechanical version of Marxism and then of course you also had May 68 which is of enormous significance happened obviously just before the 1970s many of these intellectuals were involved in that and of course May 68 was a huge working class movement one of the biggest general strikes in history and really a revolution however it did have this side to it this very student-y arty side to it which has been emphasised as if that's the main thing that really happened and I think that's what they interpreted from these events these intellectuals they took that as a sort of lesson that really that's the character of revolutions or a progressive politics in the future not kind of classic working class movement and organisations and so the impact of that I think was really important on them and then of course also in the 1970s you had the first postwar recession, worldwide recession and the crisis of Keynesianism basically that led of course to factorism and privatisation and the rest of it and so that mood of pessimism about this postwar boom was also incredibly important and so that's really the background to the rise of these postmodernists and a huge amount of what they, in many respects the defining feature of postmodern writing is basically an argument, often a veiled argument but essentially an argument against Marxism against what they call meta narratives and they also sort of lump Freud in with that for some reason but basically they're arguing against Marxism which is a meta narrative in other words an overarching perspective on the progress and development of human society and that's really dominates their thinking and it's an absurd straw man because they, as I said it it's an absurdly mechanical interpretation of Marxism extremely caricatured, one sided and they don't even, when you read it they don't even really bother to actually prove that that's what Marxism is they just take these caricatures and then basically say well that's passé now and that's wrong basically and we need to move forwards and it really reflects the kind of ivory tower position that they were in as these intellectuals don't really need to analyse the real events in the working class around the world the role of working class organisations and what actually happened in these revolutions they don't need to do that they just take a couple of stereotypes of Marx and then just kind of rail against that and you find that also when they argue that we now are in this postmodern epoch and no longer in a modern epoch there's very little in the way of a theory to explain this and why this has happened it's just an assertion really and an elaborate list of things you know just oh this happened and then you had like TV everywhere and loads of images being shown everyone just looking at images the whole time which doesn't really prove anything just to say that but they just kind of endlessly repeat this which also I think reflects their very privileged position as these intellectuals very removed from real working class conditions and of course you had a very similar phenomenon prior to 1968 as well where many other intellectuals like the Frankfurt School were saying well all the working class is bourgeoisified now and they'll never rise up again and then you had May 68 none of them learnt the lesson of that of course they just assumed that they hadn't been disproven and kept on the same course and so what you find with the postmodernist is a kind of very flippant tendency to just turn everything upside down just an assertion that well all this is finished now all of this science and progress and Marxism and meta narratives it's all finished don't we all know it it's so obvious and let's just do everything the complete opposite way now and they just kind of make a principle out of just this kind of very extreme and loud rejection without any real methodology to it and just very little attempt to prove what they're saying you find for instance with Derrida who's a very important postmodernist a way of looking at the world where obsessed with textual analysis everything is just about texts there's no real analysis of what's going on in society it's just about what's being written in literature as if that's all that society is apparently and the assertion is that well there's no real objective text there's no author who defines what the text is there's no author whose intention has to be understood a text can be interpreted in any way and really text does change all the time depending on who reads them and they all overlap with each other and really that's just a kind of chaos really that's kind of the sort of general outlook that they have, the general methodology that they have and a very extreme form of idealism as well where as I said they just tend to analyse texts or other intellectual phenomena, cultural phenomena without really any reference with a possible exception of Foucault who's arguably the most important postmodernist without really any reference to what's actually happening in society the concrete events that are taking place I would argue that the most important idea behind all of the postmodernist thinkers from Foucault to Leotard to Bogyard etc is this idea of what they call decentering or being anti-totalising I think Foucault would always say we must reject totalising thoughts by which they mean anything that tends to synthesise ideas into an overarching ideology or that finds a law or principle at the heart of any particular phenomena they become obsessed with emphasising that things are different from each other there's no general law that you will find that governs any particular process and there's just different things happening in different places basically and an insistence that the tendency to centre things or totalise thoughts is really a form of sort of intellectual imperialism or something is an attempt to control and hem in thought to prevent people from thinking freely basically and as a result many of these intellectuals emphasise the body as an alternative and you'll find this phrase comes up there's many kind of catch phrases that they have like spaces another one that you hear all the time but it's not bad anyway one of them is the body everything's about the body and the body is the locus of oppression and strange phrases like that that really sound very confusing and complex we don't really actually say very much in my opinion and the reason they emphasise the body is a sort of an anti-rational anti-intellectual thing really but the body and its desires which are to lose in Qatari and Lyotard who are some of the anti-postmodernists see that the passions of the body is a sort of primitivism it's very similar to anarchism in many respects that the body needs to be set free from ideas and theory and just sort of go with the flow if you like I'm going to give a quote here from Lyotard which really I think sums up not only this idea in other words that we don't need a theory we just need to sort of do things passionately but also the frankly at times appalling style that they adopt in their writing so I'll just give this quote from Lyotard what he's saying in this quote Lyotard was one of the key French postmodernists in the 1970s what he's saying in this quote is what the new kind of revolutionary politics should be like or will be like he says, more important than political leftism closer to sorry I find it hard not to laugh sometimes when I read closer to a concurrence of the intensities a vast subterraneous movement wavering more of a ruffle in fact on account of which the law of value is disaffected holding up production uncompensated seizures as modalities of consumption refusal to work question mark illusory communities happenings sexual liberation movements occupations squattings abductions productions of sounds words colours with no artistic intention here are the men of production the masters of today marginals experimental painters pop hippies and y hippies parasites mad men binned lunies one hour of their lives offers more intensity as intention then 300,000 words of a professional philosopher well certainly this professional philosopher doesn't seem to have much profound to say you can see I think the influence of 1968 over this you know this idea that just sort of doing art in some general way is more liberatory I think the petty bourgeois character of these ideas is extremely obvious and I find it amusing because obviously they want to reject the Marxist idea that social being determines consciousness that you know your position in society in the main usually really determines how you think they want to reject that and I can't really think of a better proof that that is the case than a bunch of French intellectuals coming out with this kind of stuff that really justify basically just writing anything and everything whenever you feel like another two other key postmodernist intellectuals are Deleuze and Ghattari much of postmodernism has a very anarchist flavour to it usually they don't say that but Deleuze and Ghattari I think do identify as anarchists and after May 68 in the failure of May 68 instead of drawing the conclusion that well that shows the need for not for some sort of studenty kind of approach to it but really a clear revolutionary leadership the conclusion they drew was no we need more of that basically and they really decided to go on a war with Marxism and what they call Hegelianism and they usually sound very vaguely but basically they mean and dialectics but what they understand by that dialectics is very one sided for then dialectics again is all about centering or totalising things synthesising things bringing thoughts together coming up with a general theory which explains a range of phenomena for them that is the worst thing that is the source of oppression so they say essentially that we need to just not really have any centre to our thoughts the way to be free and the way to liberate people is to let your thoughts flow more freely and not to centralise your thoughts in that way and again this criticism of Marxism I have to say is extremely bad and it really makes no attempt to find out what Marxism actually thinks because dialectical materialism it doesn't just say that well everything is the same because we are all part of one universe and there is one simple law which governs everything that is absurd, dialectical materialism asserts yes there are overarching laws such as the law of value the tendency of capitalism to go into crisis and in nature Darwin's laws of evolution many other laws that operate across the world or even the universe but these approximations are very complex phenomena and dialectics has always seen things as being relative to their circumstances and changing all the time so the idea that it's just kind of a simple law that you just impose on to any situation and you don't need to study anything and it's specifics is ridiculous and when you're reading this you're kind of like well how can they get away with this awful argument against Marxism and again I think it proves historical materialism because they get away with it because it's useful it's a useful basically for the right wing for the capitalist to have this very trendy allegedly progressive movement but which says that Marxism fundamentally wrong and there's no real way that capitalism works there's no tendency to revolution or rather there's no necessity to socialist revolution having a movement which rejects that and which becomes very in vogue is obviously very helpful so they can write this stuff which is frankly terrible but they just get away with it because it's useful basically and I think that tells you a lot about how ideology is formed how ideas which serve the ruling class are given a much easier you know entry much easier path to dominance if you like publication and the rest of it then ideas which obviously work against the ruling class anyway they asserted that instead of therefore a working class i.e. a centre of the revolution there's simply multiplicities multiplicities of oppressed people and in this you can see the influence that this kind of thinking has over identity politics you know there's no core to a revolution there's no key if you like to changing society there's just different people oppressed in different ways all of whom must be fighting for their liberation and we must help them and they basically everything they say is really against this idea of sort of having a theory basically and what they say is that the desire of the body again this thing I mentioned the desire of the body is really what is the source of liberation and this passion should really be set free and they basically talk about two key ways that things kind of work that there's free desire and sort of you know just things happening in a free way which is they call some rhizomatics or something along those lines and I think they call their theory rhizoanalysis I forget the exact words and then anything which kind of centres thought or provides a kind of general you know theory to anything is they call it arborescence which is taken from trees because obviously trees have a trunk which is at the centre and all the branches flow into the trunk and so they call that arborescent and you just think when you're reading this you think wow you've discovered that there's unity and there's difference key philosophical concepts that you've had for hundreds of years that things are different and yet there's also centripetal and centrifugal forces it's not really an incredible discovery but they just use these new words to describe it as if it's a totally new thing and what they say is basic they even go so far as to assert and again you can see the similarity with a lot of anarchism particularly with Bacuna in here who often asserted that it's the real revolutionaries are not the working class but the lumpen proletarians the unemployed the mentally ill the people who are the most downtrodden that you could possibly be they are the most revolutionary because they're the most downtrodden and you see the same kind of tendency with deluz and Ghattari for instance that they even go so far as to assert that schizophrenics or schizophrenia is potentially liberatory and they see that what they call the schizo subject is the real subversive force within capitalism because basically schizophrenics are free of having a theory and a way of looking at the world and again I find it really astonishing that this is not just being laughed out of the intellectual world but anyway there you go that's one of their ideas they were criticised for that and what they said is well we don't mean actual schizophrenics but you need to use a little bit of schizophrenia to free yourself from ideological dogmas basically I mean it's just the flippancy that comes out at you from every page of this writing is really very noticeable and they also assert that more important than material production and the serving of needs is desire, again this idea of desire bodily desire not needs, not material production not this whole complex world of the economy and again there's no centre to things and if we just focus more on our desire then we'd be more free and you just think it's so easy to argue against what is desire but a reflection of human interests and material necessity which obviously has to be served by an economy and it is the case that economies do have capital cities they do have stock exchanges they do have general tendencies such as economic crises which come about roughly every 10 or so years you can look at the history of capitalism and find that that's the case so I find it laughable it's just false basically and but it's said because it's useful and because it's trendy basically to sort of express this need to move away from what they see as dogmas they also say very similar to anarchism again that because everything's about desire fascism is not really produced by complex class mechanics and political events but again by desire apparently by the desire for flags kind of getting turned on by all the sort of the machismo of Hitler and all that stuff it's just a laughable explanation for the major events of the 20th century and they also say that this means that Marxist organisations are basically often fascist because they have the same they depend on the same desire for flags and sort of symbols basically and they are basically their anarchists that's what they are and they do say they're anarchists and much of other postmodernism veers very close towards anarchism and it's funny because a lot of postmodernists particularly Baudrillard but all of them really say that what we need is new ideas and they basically assert that it doesn't really matter if they're correct but they need to be new we're in a new epoch we need new ideas new epoch and therefore that's the ideas that we must have it's just obvious that newness is not the measure of whether or not something is good or useful but correctness but actually even if that were the case they'd still be wrong because I don't find many of these ideas really to be new it's just a repackaging of anarchism and in many cases liberalism in fact the emphasis on things being different basically just smacks to me of liberals 300 years ago saying that all people are different and we need to respect differences and be tolerant of differences I don't really find anything new in any of these ideas other than the terminology that they use but the main thing is the main problem is not the flippancy it's not the the weird presentation of the ideas it's not the rehashing of old ideas the main problem is a fundamental contradiction which if you can't say that theories are wrong you can't have a theory and we must just go with the body whilst writing a theory whilst being an intellectual you know you kind of want to just say well then just go and do it be a binned loony you know just go out on the street and live your hobo lifestyle none of them did it obviously they really it's it's you know the point you have to if you're writing a theory and in fact all human thought is like this you have to make generalisations and in fact Deleuze and Qatari for example they make a big big claim about how well we mustn't have any theories we mustn't have dogmas we mustn't centralise thought in any way and then they say that the source of all oppression is the centralisation of thought which is the biggest claim the biggest generalisation you could possibly make the thing is in reality you can't get away from making generalisations especially if you're writing theory you have to say this is the reason that things happen and so they do say that but ironically they make the worst generalisations they make the worst metaphysical abstractions this idea that desire is the source of freedom but territorialising thoughts hemming in this desire is the source of oppression is the most metaphysical most abstract theory you could come up with there's no real evidence for it there's no serious attempt to link it to events in human history and in fact it's a dogma and it really reminds me of when people say to you if you're a Marxist you often have this said of course Marxism is very dogmatic you mustn't be so dogmatic such a dogmatic Marxist you have that all the time I'm sure you've heard this thousands of times that's a dogma there's no evidence ever used there's no real argument people just say it they think they can say it because basically everyone agrees with it they don't really need to know what they're saying to me is they barely have read any probably haven't read any Marx but they feel it's fine to say it that's a dogma because there's no evidence for it there's no argument for it it's just asserted and everyone's expected to agree with it isn't that really the definition of a dogma I want to move on to Foucault who I would say is probably the most important arguably the most important postmonit I don't have time obviously I'm already beginning to run out of time to a lot of his ideas about discipline and punishment and things which is kind of his key idea I just wanted to focus on this same floor really that you have at the heart of his thought because he also emphasises he talks about micro-politics we need to not study macro-politics in other words politics of the overall process of all of society but micro-politics he's very interested in studying the politics of small movements of small parts of capitalist society he's probably the most serious post-modernist he does actually make an attempt to properly study these things and he makes some interesting points about the prison system and things like that but his argument basically is that well we can't have a macro-theory we can't have an overarching theory so it's very much the same idea that other post-modernists have and the thing you want to say to them mostly they present themselves apart from possibly Bogyard who basically just says he's an islist and nothing means anything and literally says that but others basically all present themselves as progressive as wanting to liberate people and Foucault basically sees modern thoughts the enlightenment scientific thought as really an elaborate attempt to control people's sexuality and their identities a reliable system of oppression that we categorise people and define how people should live with pseudo-scientific methods that's essentially what he's saying obviously there's some truth in that but what he says is implies obviously liberation and in fact at times he talks about the need to liberate different sexualities and different ways of being but again you think well if you don't think that there's an overall structure to society and a definite way that society works and a way it's tending to move and maybe we'll move to a new phase of society such as socialism if you reject that which he does then you think well how can you really talk of liberation where are all these liberation movements of different sexualities and where are they going to end up what's going to guarantee their victory what's going to prevent their victories from being reversed what's the underlying reason that this horrible scientific oppression began in sort of the 18th 18th or so century he can't answer that because obviously he rejects the idea of having a macro theory as he would call it so you think well it's kind of yes it's very nice to talk about liberation but you don't really believe in it if you can't actually diagnose the problems or the solutions to them and he actually criticised he attacked Marxism he said he was against Marxism for the very same reason because it believed in liberation so he said that well he doesn't like Marxism because if you believe in liberation which the Marxists do of course then that implies a fixed human nature which he rejected so there's no human nature this is another very typical thing you'll hear things are socially constructed sexuality is socially constructed it's a social construct and therefore there's no human nature at all that really exists therefore Marxists imply by saying liberation that there is some pure human nature which needs liberating needs to be set free so it can be true to itself and he says well that's wrong there is no real human nature that needs liberation which again is a horrible straw man of Marxism because Marxism never says this we all know that Marxists assert over and over again there's no fixed human nature human nature indeed is a product of society of social conditions although we add that social conditions are not arbitrary they're determined by the material conditions by the need to produce things in order to live and that changes over time so liberation we do of course use the word liberation sometimes liberation means for a Marxist not rediscovery of some pure fixed human nature but the ability to create ourselves really with freedom consciously to control our fate to take into hand the conditions of production and meet human need and therefore to change ourselves and who knows what ways in the future that's the idea of liberation not the idea of returning to some original state of pure human nature but he claims is implied in what we think but anyway he also talks of liberation and you think well that's pretty hypocritical to say that and you can't what are your grounds for liberation and this is what he says regarding revolution and Marxism when he rejects it he says this is a quote there is no locus of great refusal no soul of revolt no source of all rebellions or pure law of the revolution instead there is a plurality of resistance each of them a special case which I think is also false of course there are differences between different revolutions and movements obviously but there are also centres to revolutions revolutions and political movements do concentrate in a certain direction but they do find figureheads and they do find lightning rods and the key ideas for changing society and there are some social forces which are more powerful than others ie the working class he doesn't really make any attempt to tackle those ideas he says well that's a totalising way of looking at the world and therefore we can't have it what he proposes again I'll give a quote what he proposes is an alternative for liberation given that there's no centre of the revolution he says we need to cultivate multiple forms of resistance to encourage the proliferation of differences of all kinds which I think is really sums up the approach and I think you can also feel that influence on identity politics in the post-modern era era as they would say and you just think well what you really suggesting that we should proliferate differences that we should divide people if we want to liberate people that we should work basically to foster divisions I presume he doesn't think we should literally foster divisions but that seems to be the implication and I would say that the some effect on the left on socialism on any attempt to get rid of capitalism really of this kind of intellectual trend has been the proliferation of differences and divisions and a sapping of confidence in the left in itself basically over the last 30 or so years and there's no doubt that there are differences between people obviously and we can't have a kind of caricatured version of Marxism that denies that but to pretend that we don't need to unite our forces and that the working class doesn't have a special role in society because it has its hands on production it's just ridiculous and also totally useless as well and it just ends up being just a sort of a better description of the way that things work I mean what can you do with that kind of what kind of explanation is that for how revolutions might unfold or the kind of political program that we should deliver oh just foster differences in what direction that really is the tendency and I think you can see that when you look at a lot of the discussion online for instance around identity politics you find that there's no even inkling of a solution to the problems that people talk about they talk about various kinds of oppression and it's really just a description it's not an analysis it's not a solution it's not a program it's just oh this thing happens all the time isn't that offensive isn't that terrible aren't these people the worst people in society oh it's just that over and over again whether or not it's true in the individual cases it's not really the point it's not a solution it's not a program and it's not a way forward and it's simply a lesson it's simply a lesson and I think it's post modernism that really is the intellectual shadow that is cast over this where am I finally just one point again on the role of of unity if you like the totalising force as they would say which of course their side is wrong at all times It's not true that if you have a law that governs a process like the law of value in the capitalist economy, it doesn't just because the law might be quite simple, that doesn't imply that the process itself is simple. Darwin's law, the law of evolution, that those that adapt to the environment best will out-produce the others. Ie, mae'n ddysgu'r ddweud. Felly, mae'n ddysgu'r ddweud. Mae'n ddysgu'r ddweud. Felly, mae'n ddysgu'r ddweud o'r paragraf, ond mae'n oes oes yn llunio. Mae'n ddweud eich gwirio â'r ddweud. A mae'n ddweud yn ddweud i ffwrdd o gynllun arno. A wedyn ymgyrch yn ddyleu'r ddweud, ac mae'n ddweud i'r ddweud, mae'n ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud. Ie ddod y gallwch, mae'n dweud ychwanegol yn y same a ddod yn gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r oedd ymddangos. Felly, ychwanegol yn ystod yn y blynyddu sydd yn ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, a ddod y gallwch yn y ffwg. Ond oes, y gallwch yn ddweud, y ddweud o'r ddweud, o'r cyfrydol, yn y prysgol, yn y sylfaen i'r ddweud. pan mae er yn gweld rhyfedd eraill yn g 태odwyd. Mae o'r gweithio'r ystafell. Mae'r ystafell er oed o'u'r gweithio'r gweithio'r ystafell, oedd yn ymgymryd a'r ynw Model yn gechwyn. Mae'r gweithio yn gweithio'r gweithio. A'r ystafell hynny mae'r gweithio'r eirniad yn gweithio'r eirniad yn gyntaf. Mae'r ystafell hynny imlo hwn yn ei ddiadoddiad yn gweithio'r gweithio'r cyllidol. Mae'r fathen yn ôl i am gynnau, yn ffarae. Mae'r hoffi'r cysylltu yn y broblem. Mae'r hoffi y gallwn i gael mae'r arser~! Mae gennych a'r wythoedd. Mae cyhoeddenu llaw gyntaf o'r proses. Mae'r hoffi'r hoffi'r hoffi mewn cysyllt, mae nodi llaw wahanol yn fwyaf eich syniad yn mynd i ymwg yw'r hoffi'r hoffi a'r hoffi'r hoffi yw o'r hoffi. Ac mae'r cyfnod y'r cyfnod yw gwirio gyda'r SNF yn yr syniol a wneud amsiet o ffodol ar y dador. Diolch am hwn i'r cyfnod eich cyfnod arall, ac mae'r cyhoeddwch yn ei wneud meuan yn ddif arif. Fy w helpingaeth, rydw i wneud, a rydw i wneud, maen nhw'n hiwn. Yn gweld oedden nhw yw hwnnw'n ei ffrind wedi cael ei ddylinio yn fawr. Mae'r cynnig yn mynd i'w drodiadau i'r cyhoedd nhw. felly pob eu parodra. Rwyf i gael yr ysgrifennu gweld yn cofnod, logonio'n sylwedd ar gyfer unrhyw o'r symud gyda'r adroddau, r Hadwg Llywodraeth, a ceia hwylio'r cyffredinol, sy'n des i ddoedd iawn. Mae'r ymddiliad ddim yn ôl, mae'r ddod oedd yn diolch. Felly, oherwydd, oherwydd o'ch ffiniad o'ch ddod, gweld cyfan ymddiliad hynny maen nhw'n ffordd gwybod Rwy'n dechrau yw'n osir'n cael ei'rfulnigwyr a'r fflwyddyn itul gyda'r r hyn Pressur bob taes yn baut cyflwynaid i yw'r ffordd, a gael ymateb o gychwyn â'r ffordd drwy'n osir, yn bils, yn ni ffordd, rydw i'n ddydd ym wneud. Why did it become so prominent? Fi fydd yw croses o'r cyflodyniad a'r cael peth yn gwneud i eich yn argyrchu, y gynhyrchu cymryd yw'n ddoon hon ac rwy'n ei bod yn ni wneud a'r cyflwynau bydd. y presence o bwysig yn ymgyrchol, y dyfodol yn ymgyrchol, allan o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ffysig yw pesymus ym ddweud ymgyrchol i'r hynny yn ymgyrchol i'r cyflwyno i'r cyflwyno i'r cyflwyno i'r cyflwyno i'r cyflwyno. Ond oes, yn y 1970-rhyw y gallwn i ddweud i'r hynny'n mynd i ddarlunau i'r mewn ymgyrchol yma, i'r maes 68. Yn yw'r pwysig yma, ond y pwysig yw'r reisersiwn yn y 1970-rhyw. i'r wrthbwrn o'r Ynogi, sgwrs i'r Brithyn, a'r wych sy'n ddwych yn ei ffasgfyrdd Catholus, rhaid i'r rwsbelt. Rhaid i'r wych yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch. Rhaid i'r rhagos yng nghymru yn ysgrifennu eitaf i'r gwaith a'r sgwrs a'r stryd i'r wych i'r gwasanaethau, i'r cyfnod o'r sefydliad yn yma yn ysgrifennu, i'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod, i'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod, ..y gynhyrch, ddigoniaeth yn gwneud hynny.. ..y gyrwledd yn gynhyrch, ddigoniaeth... ..y gyrwledd, yn ymwyafol, yn ymweld â'r cyflwyddiad.. ..y'r cyflwyddiad yn gynghwyl. Mae mae'r cyflwyddiad yn fwyafol.. ..y gyrwledd yn ymwyafol. Mae'r ideaeth yma yn ymweld o ffreddau.. ..ynghyd yn ymwyafol. Mae ymweld a'r ideaeth yma'r marx.. ..yna'r ffordd o'r ffordd, ymweld, yw'r cwrwng. Instyn? The ideas, aren't they all a bit naive, really? That's the psychology behind these ideas. I think it's quite easy to understand. But as I said, I think that's really waning now, because despite everything that was said, we have returned very much to a classic position of capitalist crisis, and with that has come a polarisation of politics. One of the key ideas that many, especially Baud y Yard, many postmodernist spread was ac mae'n ddweud y gallwn gwirioneddhau sydd wedi bod yn ei meddwl a fyddwyd yn ei meddwl. Mae'r byw iddo yn ddod yn ddod yn ei meddwl. Mae'n ddod yn ddod yn ddod. Mae'n ddod yn olygu'r newid gan y campau'r 1988 ymddangos o'r ysgrifennig yma. Mae'r cadwyddechrau yn ymgyrch yn gweithio, yn eich gael ei gwasanaethau. Rhanold Reagan'r campau yn ymddangos i'r rhai'r yma'r ffnwysig. They drew the conclusion from this that the world that's it now. Politics is all just manufactured, doesn't mean anything, apparently that would be it forever. It's how at least Bode Yard implied it would be. Which is a course an absurd, a simplification of what was going on at the time, but also even if that were true, ridiculous to suggest that that state of affairs would be around forever. I think we've now conclusively drawn a line under that epoch, The epoch in which mainstream politicians were all the same and it was all just spin- doctored and controlled from above is clearly finished. There's a massive polarisation in politics class struggle is back on the agenda and it's precisely old fashion ideas of socialism that people are returning to, they're not looking to postmodern ideas. They're looking to the likes in Britain of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party, this is some old guy allegedly some 1970s communist and they are very popular with young people as we know. Haid i ddim yn y maen nhw gallw'rnoch ulgrwch, yn ystod i chi'r творgu hefyd, gallwn ni'n ei ddif 같은 mor lleidiau syniacol bod y pwysig yn y pryd yn y mae'r pwysig yn eu cywphefyd. Ac yn ymgyrchu,'r ysgrifennu yma hefyd yn ymwyngu, ac yn ymwyngu, rhai? Prif yw'r ddechrau oedd, y cyflwyddiadau i'n rhai, oherwydd y gyrdig yw'r ranklinegar, y nifer o'r llyfr Dawfodol, ymddr y dyma'r dynol, posibl o'r 찾diadau llyfr. bob rhoi gyf 1300 oes yw Jeremy Corbyn rhan, yn Dinkartol, mae gynnydd i ddodol i ddodol yokol. Oni'r gwrthod i gyffredin eich gwasanaeth, fel y byddach ei frewi ac mai'r cyмотря i gyfrudwyr maen nhw, maen nhw'n edrych ei fod yn cael sy'n rhanol iawn o'r ysgol yn ymdill. A gwrthod i gyffredin i ei fod yn cyfan happeningau, ac sy'n ei fod yn cael byddai nhw. Rydyn nhw'n meddwl am yr oeddiad oedd, ac mae'n cael rhoi cael y cyfrifiadau. ac yn fawr mae amser. Yn rungwysau i nhw rydyn nhw'n ddweud. unlikelym eich pethau a ydw i'r hunain fydd fydd yn ff metre a'r enw i'r amser, a'r hyn ystafellau yn y cwrthog eich mewn oedd yn d��i. Yn ymddangos, mae'n bobl iawn yn cael ei ddim yn y ffordd. Mae'r rhaglwyd yn uwch, mae'n rhan o ddiweddau'r blomwr fwrdd, wedi'u codiwn mwy玲 yma, yn i ffodol mwy.