#1277 Matthew McManus: The Right Wants You Stupid, and Steven Pinker Is Wrong About Marxism

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lobs, and today I'm joined for a second time by Dr. Matthew McManus. Uh, Last time we talked about his book, The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, and I will be leaving a link to that in the description of this. This interview and today we're going to talk about his pieces, uh, The Right When You Stupid, which was published on liberal Currents, and Steven Pinker doesn't know anything about Marxism, which was published on Current Affairs. So Doctor McManus, welcome back to the show. It's always a pleasure to talk with you.

00:42 Matthew McManus: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, AND for those who are listening, um, obviously, I'm cheering for Canada in the World Cup, but it's also nice to see that, uh, Portugal's been doing pretty well, so.

00:54 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, let's see how it goes. I mean, I think that France and Argentina are doing better than Portugal, at least for, for the most part, but yeah, let's see. Uh, OK, so, um, let's, let's first talk about your piece, The Right Ws You Stupid. So, uh, you talk a lot about anti-intellectualism and how it's, uh, uh, associated with the right, at least in North America, it seems. So isn't the intellectualism something that has been historically associated with the right, or is it more of a recent phenomenon?

01:41 Matthew McManus: No, uh, actually, this is one of the things that I point out, right? Uh, SO it's important to kind of clarify the trajectory, uh, of Occidental thought here. Uh, SO what I point out, not just in this piece, but in my broader work on the right, is that this impulse that many leftists have to say that it's common sense to argue that all people are equal, or that we should live in a society where all people are at least civic equals. Uh, THAT'S a very modern idea, right? Uh, IN some respects, The right isn't wrong to have this kind of nostalgic view of the past, uh, because for most of Western history, it was taken for granted that people were fundamentally unequal, right? Um, SO just to give a couple of examples of this, the great quasi-conservative philosopher Leo Strauss, talking about the work of Aristotle, uh, in his book, The City of Man, points out that for Aristotle, it was very clear that human beings by nature were unequal, uh, and that these natural inequalities that existed between. Individuals ought to map onto social inequalities, right? Uh, AND the Canadian political theorist Charles Taylor in his book Modern Social Imaginaries, uh, characterizes this as a social imaginary predicated on what he calls hierarchical complementarity. Uh, BASICALLY, the idea was that society should be conceived as a pyramid, uh, where natural superiors were at the top of the pyramid, but natural inferiors were at the bottom of the pyramid. Uh, AND of course, it It was understood by all intelligent, um, figures in antiquity that every rung of the pyramid needed one another, right? You can't have a society of uh philosopher kings, unless you have people who are going to do the dirty work. Uh, BUT that was by no means the case that every rung of the pyramid, uh, consisted of beings of equal rank, uh, or that everyone possessed equal dignity. Uh, WITH the transition to modernity, this idea really changed. Uh, NOW, I want to point out this isn't purely down to liberalism, and it's certainly not purely down. Socialism, right? Uh, THERE are many antecedents to this egalitarian, uh, idea. You can find it, for example, in the Buddhist tradition, uh, going all the way back to Ashoka. Uh, MANY like Ntha Nosbaum have pointed out that stoicism, particularly Seneca stoicism, uh, really foregrounded this idea of natural equality, at least, right? The idea that, um, the Roman Emperor and the slave, uh, even if they were of a different rank in society, were naturally the equal of one another. And quite naturally, many conservatives or many uh right-winggers at least, have pointed out Christianity has a strong egalitarian core to it, uh, that has been profoundly influential in the Western world, right? The at least this idea that, uh, all individuals are equal before the throne of God. But I do have to give some credit to liberalism. This is what I talk about in my book on liberal socialism, uh, because it was really in the 17th and 18th century, that this idea of moral equality or the fundamental equality of all human beings. At least from a moral standpoint, uh, that gained revolutionary potential. If you think about things like the English Civil wars, of course, the American, French, and Haitian revolutions that broke out, uh, and then, of course, subsequently, the various revolutions that broke out over the course of the 19th century in continental Europe. Um. Eventually including uh Portugal, um, many, many decades later. Uh, AND conservatives responded to this greater push for moral equality, liberalism, basic rights for all, and of course, participatory government, uh, with a great deal of shock and anger. Uh, AND the reason they responded with shock and anger was because For them, uh, it was simply to be taken for granted, uh, that society consisted of beings of different rank, uh, and this has been long established, uh, in the best philosophy, the best works of, um, intellectual prestige, uh, that have been around for a very long time. Uh, A good book on this is, um, University of Michigan Press' um, Don Herzog's Poison in the Minds of the Lower Orders. Uh, AND this is to your point, by the way, about the rights, um, failing monopoly, uh, on intellectual prestige. Uh, AND what Hertzog points out is, if you were to go back to the Middle Ages, Much like, uh, Aristotle would spend an anti-egalitarian society, uh, so too would many Christian philosophers defend, uh, what he called the great chain of being, uh, that was also supposed to map on to society or be mapped on by society. Uh, YOU know, the great chain of being was basically An argument that nature was a hierarchical organization, right? There was God at the top, then angels and archangels, then human beings somewhere around the middle, and then there were plants, animals, and demons at the very bottom. And of course, the feudal system was understood to kind of be an isomorphic representation of the great chain of being on a much smaller level, right? Yeah, yeah,

06:11 Ricardo Lopes: it's, it's the idea of the natural order of society, right, that you also mentioned in your piece.

06:19 Matthew McManus: Exactly, right. This idea that there's a natural inequality between different human beings, much as there's a natural inequality between Different beings generally, uh, in the natural cosmos set by God. So, you know, the king, you have the lords, you have the, um, you know, knights and peasants, and all them kind of have their rank, uh, assigned to them by God. Uh, EVERY now and then you're allowed to disrupt that if the king is really tyrannical, but by and large, you're supposed to know your place. Uh, AND Herzog points out that scholastic philosophers. Pretty much defended this view, uh, not uncritically, um, but in broad strokes for hundreds and hundreds of years to provide a lot of legitimation to the feudal system, what later becomes known as the Austrian regime of Europe. So, conservatives and reactionary thinkers are genuinely shocked when And these revolutions break out. Evan Burke says, you know, uh, now all is to be changed by this all-conquering empire of light and reason. Uh, ALL the kind of old ways are to be blasted apart, and he's really quite apocalyptic about that. Uh, AND his tone is actually quite moderated next to somebody like Joseph De Maestro, who sees this as a truly demonic event. But what do they do, right? They say, something must have happened, uh, to disrupt the natural order of things. Uh, AND when you're faced with this, you really have two options, right? You can sit there and say, well, maybe the natural order of things wasn't so natural after all, right? We can organize society and Very different ways. Uh, THE kind of a feudal aristocracy of the Austrian regime is just one of them. Uh, BUT that option isn't really available to many conservatives and reactionaries, uh, because it delegitimates, uh, the social hierarchies that they think are necessary. Um. And natural, right, to the malfunctioning of any good society. So what they do instead is they decide to target intellectuals, uh, amongst others, right? Suggesting that were it not for these nebbish philosophs and intellectuals and liberals, uh, spreading their toxic and even demonic, uh, ideas, then you'd have a contented population that would still understand the role. That they were meant to play in society and they wouldn't question it too much. Uh, AND if you think about this, this is a very savvy move, uh, on the part of these conservative critics, uh, because they're able to divest actually existing societies from blame for the revolution, right? Um, BECAUSE of course, the liberals are saying the reason the revolutions are breaking out is because people are unhappy with the king, they're unhappy with the aristocracy, etc. And they're relocating blame in the fact that intellectuals are criticizing the society. So it's not what the intellectuals are criticizing that's the problem. It's the fact that intellectuals are criticizing, that's the big part of the problem.

08:47 Ricardo Lopes: So we're talking here about the time period around the American and the French revolutions. Is that it?

08:55 Matthew McManus: Yes, that's right. Um, SO, Just to give two examples that I bring up in my piece. Uh, I already mentioned Edmund Burke, and then we'll talk a little bit about Joseph de Maestro, right? Uh, SO, Edmund Burke, as is well known, responded to the French Revolution with Quite apocalyptic anger, right? Uh, I already mentioned his famous claim that all has to be changed and swept away by the all-conquering empire of light and reason. Uh, WHAT'S um less appreciated is who he blamed for this. Uh, AND this is one of the reasons why I thought the French Revolution was so damaging. He understood that it was not just a kind of um regime change, revolution, uh, where a couple of people wanted to replace the king with another king. Uh, IT was a philosophical revolution, as he understood. Uh, THAT has its roots in the spread of radical Enlightenment values, uh, propagated by different Enlightenment philosophers and their followers, the philosophers, right, these kind of coffeehouse popularizers of these different ideas. Uh, AND Burke was unrelentingly critical, uh, of them, uh, insinuating that they speculated wildly in these kind of metaphysical ways about natural rights and reorganizing society, uh. And how everyone was to be free and everyone was to be equal, and Burke would have none of that, right? He's very insistent that these kinds of rampant speculations are only going to be damaging to the cause of social order that he so cherished. And sometimes this anti-intellectualism could reach quite a fever pitch. So, around the time, a little bit earlier, if I recall correctly, I might be wrong about this though, uh, of reflections on the revolution in France, he was talking about um People inquiring into the origins of civil society, right? Um, HOW did this state emerge, how did that state emerge with its given social authorities? Uh, AND he says, it's a really bad thing when people spend too much time inquiring into the origins of their state. Uh, AND the reason he said is very clearly, clear, very clear, right? Uh, WHEN people spend a lot of time inquiring into the origins of the state, uh, what you do is desublimate the authorities that make up that state, uh, and they're all too human and even criminal and often violent origins become exposed, right? Um, AND this is, of course, what many of the, um, revolutionaries would do, right? Thomas Paine would sit there and say, uh, People hold the English monarchy up on a pedestal and suggest that it's some kind of divinely ordained institution. Uh, REALLY, what ended up happening is William the Conqueror sailed across the English Channel in 1066 with a band of mostly French, uh, mercenaries. Uh, HE killed the legitimate king of England, uh, at the time, Harold Godwinson, uh, murdered and butchered his way. Across England, uh, and then everybody just decided, OK, well, he's king now. Uh, AND, you know, Payne's point is, when you understand that that's the origin of the English monarchy, starts to look a lot less impressive and a lot less legitimate. So Burke didn't want people inquiring too deeply, uh, into these things. Uh, AND elsewhere in the book, Reflection on the Revolution in France, he actually suggests that, um, When man is gonna be put over man, uh, as the better character always should, what you want are social institutions that will ascribe sublime properties onto existing authorities. You really want to convince people that God wants the world ordered in this way, right? Um, WHICH is where, you know, these ideas of divine right and Providence, etc. BECOME important. And the reason is pretty obvious, right? Uh, Burke says, look, uh, if you think that Louis the 16th, King of France is just another man, uh, who happened to wind up on the throne of France because it happenstance. You might ask yourself why you should just obey any other man, right? But if you think that Louis the 16th, uh, is ordained by God to sit on that throne, uh, or let alone that he is the sun King, uh, you know, the man of destiny, you're much more likely to be willing to submit to him and obey his rule. Uh, SO, Burke says you always want social institutions, particularly religious institutions, to propagate this idea, uh, that, um, Providence requires that these people be in charge. Initially enough, he characterizes these at another point as pleasing illusions, right? So he's quite aware of the fact that it might not actually be true, uh, that Providence or God requires that social authority be instituted in this way. Uh, BUT it's better that we treat them, uh, as if they are, uh, because again, if people don't treat them like they are, they're far more likely to rebel against them and to engage in speculative exercises, uh, fostered by intellectuals, encouraging people to change.

13:08 Ricardo Lopes: So, so I mean it's very interesting because I mean if that's the case then they are willing, or I mean not maybe not willing, but perhaps at a certain point they even admit that the progressives might be right or telling the truth, but It's just that they don't think that telling people things or presenting things as they are to the general population is good because they want to make an argument for the preservation of social cohesion and social organization, is that it?

13:48 Matthew McManus: Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, at one point in reflections on the revolution in France, uh, when he's talking about pleasing illusions, he says, look, this all conquering empire of light and reason, uh, wants to strip away, uh, all the kind of super added imagery and ideas that we've attached to people in offices of importance, uh, and imply that a king is just a man, uh, a man is just an animal, uh, and not even a particularly dignified animal at that. Uh, AND Burke doesn't deny. THAT because it's true, right? You know, the reality is a king is just a man and any man is just an animal, uh, and that might lead you to ask why it is that this particular ape, uh, you know, naked ape, as it were, uh, should have such sovereignty, uh, over all the rest of you. Uh, BUT Burt, I wouldn't say that he would claim that the kind of, um, providential or sublime ideas that he attaches to them are untrue. They're untrue from a rationalistic perspective, uh, and they're untrue if you inquire. INTELLECTUALLY too deeply into them. And this is one of his points, right? They are useful, effectual truths. Uh, THEY'RE valuable if you treat them as true, even if you can't necessarily prove that, because they're useful and holding society together as a kind of social glue. And this point becomes even more clear and Joseph De Maestro, the other figure that I talked about at the beginning, uh, of the kind of modern period. So, Burke was a relatively Moderate conservative, uh, within certain kind of parameters. Um, OTHERS like Richard Borka pointed out that actually he held some quite extreme views, especially near the end of his life. Uh, WE don't need to get into that, but I kind of pushed back against the idea that he was just always for a kind of moderate, sensible, prudential politics. Uh, BUT Joseph Demeia, nobody's ever made that accusation or made that claim, right? Uh, HE is a full-throated reactionary, uh, characterized as the French Revolutionary, and I quote as a. Panic event, uh, that is without precedence in the world. Uh, BUT throughout his work, he also, like Burke says that one of the main problems with the French Revolution is it was very much an intellectually inspired revolution, right? You had these middle class intellectuals and philosophs and Rousseau, uh, who talked about how man is free, born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Can't have that, right? Uh, AND Joseph de Maestro says at various points, uh, well, this This goes to show you why it's very, very problematic to allow people the freedom to indulge in any kind of intellectual inquiry or any kind of critical inquiry that they want. Uh, AND he actually makes a fairly subtle point here. So I'm not dismissing it as just anti-intellectualism, because I think to a certain extent, he's right about this. He says, look, uh, the Enlightenment rationalists imagine that if you allow everyone to critically reason about society independently. Uh, WITHOUT reference to any kind of pre-existing authorities, or at least without deference to any pre-existing epistemic authorities, uh, then together we're gonna arrive at the best and most rational way of organizing society, right? Uh, THIS is the kind of claim that people like Kent would make, for example, right? You know, everyone's rational and everybody will will the moral law if you give them much time, and they don't bias themselves, putting it crudely. Uh, AND debater says that's not true, right? If you allow everyone, especially. Intellectuals, the freedom to endlessly criticize authority, uh, and to try to envision new and more legitimate kinds of authorities. They're not going to reach some kind of consensus on things. Uh, WHAT they're going to do is corrode existing authorities, and every one of them is going to come up with their own pet project about what should replace it, right? Uh, YOU know, the socialists would imagine, well, imagine we should have a socialist society. The Bolsheviks will say we should have a communist society. Kamala Harris will say, you know, we should offer. People, a first-time homeowners tax, uh, and that'll revolutionize everything. You get the idea, right? Uh, SO Demeestro says, this is why we should not allow people the freedom to intellectually criticize existing societies. All it's going to do is dissolve the basis of society, which is deference to authority or allegiance to authority, as Roger Scruton will put it sometimes. Uh, AND he says this is why you want people. To be, and I quote, surrounded by dogmas, uh, from the moment they're born. Uh, WHEN a person comes into this world, he should have every opinion he is ever going to have ready-made for him, uh, and he should treat the opinions that are ready-made for him, uh, as if they are absolute sacred truths. Uh, AND much like Burke, he says, you need institutions to be there over the course of life, particularly the church, to continuously reinforce. Uh, THIS idea. Uh, AND from the maestra's perspective, this is the only way you're going to have a solid enduring authority. This kind of combination of, um, what's sometimes called throne and altar politics. Uh, AND it's hard to emphasize just how anti-intellectual an idea this is, of course, right? You know, this idea that people are not gonna think too much, they're gonna be dogmatic, self-consciously, you know, he thinks, um, and they're gonna have every opinion ready-made for them, uh, it's kind of one of the most Interesting calls to shut down discussion, uh, that you're gonna find in the history of Western philosophy.

18:32 Ricardo Lopes: Do you think that, I mean, at least some of these ideas that these conservative thinkers you're referring to come up with are at least to some extent the ruling class coming up with sort of post hoc justifications for the societal order that benefits them.

18:58 Matthew McManus: I think we have to be careful here because what's interesting, particularly about Burke, uh, is Burke is a much more representative conservative figure in that he's certainly speaking for the ruling classes, right? Uh, AND he sometimes is quite self-conscious about this. Uh, AFTER reflections on the revolution in France, he was actually quite irritated, uh, that the British aristocracy didn't show him enough appreciation, given all the services that he had rendered for them. Uh, BUT Burke himself was a middle-class individual, uh, who was something of a social striver, right? Uh, Kind of risen through the ranks of the English aristocracy to occupy a position of relative preeminence, uh, but not, you know, complete preeminence, which was part of the problem. Uh, AND Joseph De Maestra came from a somewhat more auspicious background, right? He was part of the lower mobility. Uh, AND initially in his life, he had supported some very moderate reforms that would have allowed the lower mobility to have more of a say in the ASM regime, uh, which you can characterize as self-serving, and I would, right? Uh. And then he later on becomes just completely uh dogmatic, right? Uh, BUT, you know, what's I think is interesting about both of these figures is one of the reasons they're so insightful on this point, uh, is because they have a better appreciation for what the revolutionaries are doing and the philosophical dimension of these revolutions, uh, than a lot of the more hoary kind of, um, conservative figures who might have been working at the time, uh, who still think that you can appeal to Aristotle and Scholas. AND you're gonna convince the now literate middle classes, uh, to just kind of shut up, uh, and go back to doing their job. Uh, Burke and Demeester are very aware that these revolutions are the product of a fundamental change in how the world is being conceived as more and more people become literate, as more and more people become educated, and as more and more people consequently start to think of themselves as active citizens rather than passive subjects. Uh, AND what they want, therefore, is to develop new ways, uh. Trying to suggest that people need to once more kind of resign themselves or accept the world into which they are born uncritically. Uh, BUT I'm not sure that they would have been quite as original and thoughtful as they were on this point, uh, if they were man or born, uh, to the upper echelons of the ruling class. It's the fact that they had kind of 1 ft in what they were criticizing and could sometimes even appreciate and admire or they stand in awe of what they were criticizing that gave their criticisms their power.

21:16 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, but, but I mean, at least even if indirectly these kinds of narrow conservative narrative serve the interests of the upper classes.

21:29 Matthew McManus: Oh, OK, well if that's what you're talking about just in this kind of instrumental term, then without a doubt, right? I mean, again, you don't need to speculate. The upper, the upper aristocracy of Great Britain, uh, initially lauded Burke, uh, saying that he had done a service to gentlemen all across Europe, uh, by which they mean the aristocracy, uh, through publishing, reflections on the revolution, France, and other works critical of the French Revolution. Uh, Joseph de Maestra didn't initially receive quite as many, uh, shall we say, laudits, um, because, um, Napoleon came to power and he was kind of chased across Europe. Uh, BUT even he was able to kind of make it to, um, Russia for a long time, where he wrote some of his most famous works, uh, and was by and large treated very respectfully by the ultraconservative czarist regime, uh, once more for his services, you know, to the regime and aristocracies, uh, of Europe. Uh, AND in terms of the kind of thrust. Uh, OF what they're talking about. There's no doubt a hugely anti-egalitarian, uh, quality to it. Uh, Burke, for example, is very expressive about this when he's criticizing the idea of the rights of man. Uh, YOU know, Burke denies that there are such a thing as the rights of man, particularly this idea that all people are entitled to equal rights. He says, people are entitled to the rights they get because of convention. Uh, AND convention dictates that some people are gonna get more rights than others. The example that he gives a reflection on the revolution in, uh, France very clearly are political rights, right? Uh, SOME people are entitled to political rights and to be citizens and to actually have a say in how they are governed. Uh, OTHER people, and he singles out barbers of all people and other lower orders of people, uh, they don't need political rights and they shouldn't have them because they're only going to use them. To try to vote for restrictions on property or the redistribution of property, uh, or more agency for themselves. And he doesn't want that, right? So these are very much works that are intended to entrench kinds of class rule. But I just wanted to add that earlier comment because they're not thoughtless kind of defenses of class rule. They're, these are intelligent and interesting men. And I think that sometimes leftists and liberals, uh. Don't appreciate the creative dimensions of conservative thought. And one of the reasons that De Maestra and Burke were creative was precisely, uh, you actually don't see this in a lot of conservatives any longer, uh, because they came out of a lot of the same environments as the revolutionaries themselves. It's kind of a lower striving orders and reached very different conclusions to the revolutionaries that they would eventually criticize.

23:54 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so let me ask you now more about the American modern era and American contemporary society and politics. I mean, how has anti-intellectualism manifested in more recent times? In America, and do you think that America is particularly anti-intellectual when compared to other countries, or is this a phenomenon that we see across the board?

24:25 Matthew McManus: I don't think America is particularly anti-intellectual when compared to other countries, um, at least if you're talking about in a cliche sense, you know, um. Europeans and even Canadians, I should add, I'm from Canada, I will sometimes have this whole, um, you know, Americans are stupid, and, you know, all they do is watch Fox News and drink six packs and watch football and that's all they care about. I don't, I don't think that's true, right? Uh, I mean, uh, if you look at, um, the late 20th century, in particular, when you had figures like Lionel Trilling and William F. Buckley, uh, and, you know, even, uh, socialists like Michael Harrington, uh, occupy. POSITIONS of preeminence in the American, um, public discourse. And these are pretty impressive intellectuals, right? We're not talking about, you know, Heidegger or Rawls here, but, you know, they were very educated, knowledgeable, thoughtful people. Um, BUT I think definitely now, there's no doubt that American conservatism, uh, has leaned very heavily into anti-intellectual impulses that have always been latent within it, right? Um, SO, I'll give a couple of examples of this, right? But much like, um, their contemporary or their counterparts, uh, in Europe, many American conservatives have long been extremely wary, uh, of what an excessive intellectualism, uh, is going to do to American society, uh, and the way that inspires, uh, previously lower orders to start to think of themselves, uh, less as docile subjects or, um, Docile, um, you know, uh, beneficiaries of the existing social order, and more like active citizens who are entitled, uh, to change things. Uh, AND, you know, just to give two contemporary examples. Uh, YOU know, Donald Trump, of course, when, um, he was first running for office, used to say that he loved the less educated, right? Um, THAT'S kind of this populist gesture, but it's also revealing, right? That isn't, he didn't sit there and say, uh, I love blue-collar workers, uh, or I love the working class. It was the less. Educated, that he loved, right? Uh, OR more recently, JD Vance, uh, who himself is a very educated man, you know, went to Yale, uh, spends a lot of time imbibing the stranger, uh, forms of right-wing philosophy that are online right now. Uh, YOU know, he said that professors are the enemy, uh, much the way that Nixon used to, right? Uh, AND argue that, you know, the university system is breeding radicals who spread their ideas across the country. Uh, AND we need to put a stop to that. So, Again, this isn't, you know, some conspiracy theory.

26:37 Ricardo Lopes: I mean, and it doesn't stop at academia and university, right, because sometimes they even make claims about ideas that supposedly children are being indoctrinated with at school. I mean, a few years ago they were obsessed, for example, with critical race theory supposedly being taught at elementary school or something like that.

27:03 Matthew McManus: Oh, absolutely, right. And that was largely propagated by um a kind of quasi-intellectual, uh, more of an institution man called Chris Ruffo, right, uh, who was very overt about why he was doing that on Twitter, uh, where I said, you know, look, uh, we're just going to use critical race theory as a convenient label for all kinds of things that we don't like related back to the push for race. QUALITY. Uh, WE'RE gonna lump them all together under this label, constantly, you know, market it as a bad thing, uh, and eventually drive its popularity down. Uh, AND sure enough, that's exactly what he ended up doing, right? Uh, AND to your point, right, Ruffo is uh very, very, very insistent that Professors and academics and left-wing intellectuals and the broader liberal media generally, uh, are the enemy. Uh, AND he sees politics is largely downstream of culture and thinks that, uh, liberal intellectuals, uh, kind of dominate and artists, etc. KIND of dominate the culture right now, uh, which is why we need to check their power and their influence and replace them with uh more dogmatic, kind of conservative mouthpieces, right? Uh, BUT what I kind of point out in this article, uh, is again, what's interesting is that, um, This kind of uh insistence on anti-intellectualism has itself been theorized pretty pointedly uh by many conservative intellectuals in the United States. Uh, AND they offer reasons for why they think that everyone would be better off if, um, most intellectuals just kind of shut up, uh, and people kind of understood the role they're meant to play and didn't think too much about it. Uh, JUST to give two examples, um, we'll start with William F. Buckley, right? William F. Buckley, for your listeners who don't know, uh, is one of the kind of major architects of the modern conservative movement, uh, founded National Review in the 1950s, was a major, uh, promoter of, uh, Barry Goldwater's run in 1964, that kind of, uh, birthed the political conservative movement. Uh, AND in his, uh, early book, God a Man at Yale, uh, Buckley is very, very, very, very critical. Uh, OF the kind of liberal education that he saw himself as getting, uh, at Yale, right, uh, as an undergraduate student. Uh, AND he talks about how he was taught socialism and Keynesianism, uh, and anti-Christianity, and he doesn't like any of that, right? Uh, HE characterized it as, uh, I don't know if you don't remember if he used this term, but kind of brainwashing, right? Uh, BUT what's interesting is that you might think from reading that book initially, uh, that Buckley's solution to this would be, OK, well, we should teach differing perspectives, right? Uh, TO file the National Review to kind of make sure that conservatives are able to put their two cents into the public discourse. But that's not the solution that Buckley came up with, right? Uh, ACTUALLY, what Buckley said is he said, don't anyone mistake what I'm talking about and got a man at Yale as an argument for academic freedom, uh, and free academic expression, right? Uh, I don't think that academics should be free to propagate any ideas that they want or to teach just any ideas. Uh, HE says, I am for academic indoctrination. But I'm just for academic indoctrination from a conservative standpoint because our ideas happen to be the true one, and people should be taught the quote-unquote true ideas rather than the false ideas that are currently being spread in American academia. Uh, SO this is quite a shocking move if you think about it, right? Uh, Buckley isn't even pretending, uh, the way that some liberal academics might pretend, uh, to care about free inquiry, presenting all sides of the argument, right? Kind of understanding what the opposition has to say. Uh. In fact, he says, you know, we're not even gonna grant them the dignity of imagining their ideas might be true and trying to show why they're not, right? We're just gonna assert that conservative ideas are obviously the right ones. Uh, AND those are the ones that consequently should be taught and society would be better off, uh, if they were taught, you know, by universities and others. Uh, AND even more, uh, clear example of this would be, uh, Wilmore Kendall's essay, uh, on Socrates, right? Um, SO Wilmore Kendall was, uh, again, very right wing, uh. Conservative philosopher, um, and he wrote a quite shocking essay on Socrates. Uh, SO, most people, most thinking people have, uh, always held Socrates up, and I'm sure your audience is very familiar with this, uh, as a kind of secular saint, you know, you have Socrates, you know, whole thing where he was willing to die for the right to be a gadfly, uh, criticizing Athens and Athenian dogma, uh, by trying to inspire the Athenians to be more concerned with. Justice, beauty, all those good things, right? OK. So, most intellectuals over the course of Western history, uh, have also lauded Socrates, uh, as a brave and heroic figure. Uh, EVEN though some conservatives have been very, very critical of modern Socrates, uh, including, I should add, a lot of those kind of critical race theories that you're talking about, uh, and their antecedents like Martin Luther King. Uh, BUT what's remarkable about Kendall's essay is he's actually willing to go all the way on this point, uh, and say, look, Were the Athenians right to kill Socrates? And he says, yes, they were. Uh, WHY? Uh, BECAUSE he says Socrates, fundamentally at his core, uh, was a woke revolutionary, right? Uh, WHAT was he doing? He was undermining faith in the gods of the city. He was corrupting the youth of the city, and he was challenging the traditions and the dogmas, uh, that let the city run properly. And what's interesting about Kendall is he says, Socrates isn't wrong to say that many These are probably untrue. Uh, HE'S not, he's not even wrong to say that Athens wasn't a perfectly just society and that there were many problems, uh, in the Athenian Polis. Uh, BUT the problem is that if you're an Athenian elite, obviously, you're going to see Socrates as a threat to your authority. Uh, YOU'RE probably also going to recognize that the utopia that Socrates is positing or posturing to can never actually be. Realized, right? It's absolutely impossible to build a truly just city, uh, to allow open inquiry of the sort, limitless open inquiry, that's what they're talking about. So the best thing that the Athenian elites could do was to kill Socrates, silence his revolution, uh, or at least nip it in the bud, uh, and accept that, you know, and, um, that this is going to be not the perfect regime and not a free regime, uh, but perhaps the best regime that human beings are capable, uh, of establishing. Uh, UNDER the right elite that should be in charge, right? So, Kendall, again, is a very clear example, uh, of a conservative American intellectual who I think quite rightly is saying, look, we don't want too much free inquirer. We don't want little Socrates going all around our public, inquiring into, you know, the nature of justice and pointing out that American society doesn't embody that perfect justice. That's only going to undermine our, the authority of our beloved leaders. Uh, WE can't have that.

33:18 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So I mean, do you think that these the recent charges, and by recent I mean over these past 1015 years that we've seen leveled against what tended to be called social justice warriors, and I mean sometimes I get a little bit confused as to if when they use the term woke now they are referring to the same people they just rebranded them because woke is also a very diffuse and vague term and sometimes it seems to me that when whenever they call someone or something woke, it's just left wing ideas that they don't like. I mean, sometimes they're not even radical left ideas, they're just moderate left ideas. But anyway, but the charges that they leveled against SJWs, feminists, Marxists, the wokes, and even conspiracy theories like cultural. Marxism, and I mean, by the way, AJA Woods wrote and released very recently a fantastic book on the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. So I mean, do you think that all those charges that span those different or sometimes overlapping groups of people are part of these anti-intellectual trends that we see within the American right?

34:49 Matthew McManus: Oh, I think there's no doubt about it, right? Now, in fairness to them, uh, you know, and I'm willing to offer this olive branch, right? Um, THERE is a certain kind of what you might call woke ideology or woke attitude, uh, that could be censorious, right? That could kind of silence, um, certain kinds of inquiries and ideas. Uh, AND I think conservatives actually gained a little bit of traction, uh, certainly in the 2010s and the early 2020s, uh, and positing themselves as free speech warriors, uh, and dissidents. Kind of challenging, uh, this new kind of hegemony. Uh, I don't think any of that was sincere for reasons I'm going to get into. Uh, I don't even think it was particularly convincing on the face of it, right? Um, BUT this is one of the reasons why I think, and I'm happy to see that which seems to be shift right now, uh, liberals and certainly leftists should always be the most vigorous defenders of free speech, and the most courageous, uh, and willing to challenge, you know, uh, and examine all kinds of ideas, right? Uh, AND I'm kind of, um, An old fashioned John Stuart Mill advocate in that respect, right? Uh, BUT to your kind of broader point, uh, there is no doubt that they've now kind of been much more clear, uh, about what their ambition was, uh, which is, as Rufo said, to kind of lump any number of dissonant streams of thought under very easy pejorative labels, critical race theory, woke ideology, cultural Marxism, uh, which is, you know, the kind of point of, uh, the Woods book you mentioned, which is a great book, yeah. Solid pitch for that right now. Uh, AND you know, just say, oh this is bad, all this is anti-American, all this is dangerous, and so we should silence it, uh, to the extent possible. So just to give a, a couple of examples of this, right? Uh, WE mentioned Ruffo before. Uh, Chris Ruffo has been at the forefront with Ron DeSantiss of trying to remake, uh, the academic curriculum, uh, in Florida. Um, Particularly at the university level. Uh, AND one of their goals is to banish, uh, a lot of these streams of, uh, critical race theory, social justice inquiry, certainly kind of a socialist forms of argumentation and intellectual examination, uh, from the University curriculum, uh, and marginalize or silence them, however possible, right? Uh, AND, you know, sometimes this can actually take very characteristic Burkian kind of, um, forms, right? So let's talk about critical race theory. Uh, I mentioned how Burke pointed out consistently that he thought it was a real shame and pretty dangerous when people inquire too deeply into the origins of political authority because it exposes, it's all to human, uh, and often, um, Quite disappointing, uh, kind of source. Uh, WELL, you know, this advocacy against critical race theory is very much in the spirit, uh, of this kind of Burkian wariness. Uh, WHY? Uh, BECAUSE one of the things that the critical race theorists are very good at doing, uh, is undermining the kind of hagiographies that Americans love to, um, particularly conservative Americans, uh, love to identify with. Uh, ABOUT the founding, right? You know, um, and, you know, the United States since July 4th, right? Uh, YOU know, the founders are presented as almost these kind of saint-like beings, uh, or secular saints, uh, who inaugurated a new era or a new republic of freedom and equality, and, you know, basketball and hotdogs, you know, uh, for the whole world. Uh, AND well, what the critical race theorists point out is, Well, there might be a lot of merits to the American Republic, uh, but, you know, it's not exactly like it was perfect, uh, because there were millions of people who were in shackles. Uh, THERE were vast populations of people on the American continent, uh, whose land was going to be seized from them, and they were going to be displaced and driven out west and eventually killed through horrific genocides. Uh, AND all of this is continuous, uh sorry, continuing to have a very negative effect on, uh, many people in the country. I think about indigenous peoples or Latin people. Or, um, of course, African Americans, right? Uh, AND so by drawing attention to the deep flaws, uh, that were latent in the country at its origin, you know, critical race theorists undermine, um, not quite the legitimacy of the American state, but certainly the kind of sacred imagery that people like to associate with the American state and institutions, uh, as part of their calls for saying we need to reform things, we need to kind of do better. Uh, YOU saw a very good example of this with uh Zora Adani's speech about July 4th, uh, just the other day, right? Uh, AND so this Push against critical race theory, uh, is very much again, in this kind of Burkian vein, uh, trying to say, look, we do not want people undermining, uh, the fanciful stories that we tell, uh, about how great the country was from its founding, how it's never really done anything particularly badly, bad, uh, and consequently, you know, implying that existing institutions and existing inequalities aren't legitimate and moral in some way, shape or form. Uh, AND it's very telling that most of the critics of critical race theory, very, very obviously have not engaged with them in any. Substantial way, right? Um, Chris Ruffo is a bit of an exception to that. I read his book and he at least has kind of read, uh, glanced at some of the critical race literature, but most of them, you know, uh, haven't even picked up Martin Luther King, let alone Derek Bell or Kimberly Crenshaw. Let's just put it this way, right? Uh, BUT it's this instinct to say we just don't want people talking about that. Uh, THAT'S where the anti-intellectualism lies. Uh, OR to give one other example that I think is hilarious, uh, that kind of speaks to the Kendall point, uh, about Socrates. Uh, A professor was recently told. And Greg Abbott's, Texas, that he wasn't allowed to teach the symposium by Plato. Uh, AND he eventually left, uh, the university that I was working at. Uh, AND that's because, uh, he was told that the symposium deals with stuff like gender ideology and gender fluidity. Uh, AND even though Plato is part of the canon, Abbott and the other conservatives, uh, that run, uh, Texas public universities don't want students learning about that. Uh, SO, that is obviously a A hilarious and deeply disturbing example, uh, that shows you, even Plato is on the chopping block now, uh, since Plato, for all he has certain kind of conservative tendencies, uh, was at least courageous enough and thoughtful enough to say, sure, we should inquire into whether or not human beings are straight or gay or something else, uh, by nature. Uh, IT is worth examining the roots of what we think about gender, uh, and gender identity and examining whether or not they are permanent, enduring, or flourish, or, or fluid. A lot of conservatives don't want people thinking too much about those kind of things cause they might lead them in what they consider bad direction. So, apparently, you know, the symposium is no longer gonna be taught, uh, and, you know, Texas, uh, any longer, at least in its public universities. Uh, AND that is obviously an enormously, uh, disturbing example of anti-intellectualism that's very much in the spirit with what Kilmore, uh, Kendall was talking about when he said we should silent Socrates and applaud the people who killed them.

41:18 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I mean, I wanted to ask you more specifically now about universities and university campuses because we hear many times nowadays from conservatives that, I mean, liberals and left wingers at university are really the people who are against academic freedom because they don't want to. Allow or supposedly as the narrative goes, don't want to allow certain conservative ideas into academia or to be explored there, but I mean, are they really the conservatives? I mean really in favor of academic freedom and a supposed political neutrality at university campuses, because it seems to me. That, I mean, what they really want, I mean if you look at how they react to, for example, when they get across on social media or elsewhere ideas that are more prevalent on the left, like for example ideas espoused by people from cultural and social studies, I mean feminist studies, gender. Studies, women's studies and all of that and Marxist scholars, I mean then they tend to have a very negative reaction to that, so which I mean would be a reaction that doesn't, uh, I mean, apparently goes against academic freedom because they don't like those kinds of ideas explored in academia and When they tend to have a positive reaction is when they see, for example, academics talking about uh discredited ideas like scientific racism, eugenics, and, and things like that. So are they really in favor of academic freedom or are they only in favor of the the ideas that they like?

43:21 Matthew McManus: I mean, I think the answer is pretty clearly the latter. Uh, AND again, I don't need, you need to speculate. Uh, THE minute they got power, they decide they want to censor, uh, everyone they disagreed with, particularly on university campuses, right? Uh, AND I'll just give a few examples of this. Uh, AND there are many more that we could bring up. Uh, BUT, you know, just to kind of pay the devil their due, uh, I do agree with some conservative critics that circa the 2010s to the 2020s, uh, there was a tendency on the part of uh Subset, uh, of liberal and kind of what you want to call them woke, uh, academics and students, uh, to not want to discuss conservative ideas or to marginalize our silence conservative ideas. Uh, AND I think this was a mistake, right? Uh, I think that conservatism constitutes an interesting and long-standing intellectual and political tradition in the Western world, uh, and it's important for students to be exposed, uh, to those ideas, much like I would also insist it's important for Students to become aware of the basics of Marxism and socialism, and liberalism, and of course, critical race theory. Uh, YOU know, there are limitations to this because, you know, there's only so much time, uh, that we have. Uh, BUT you know, you should try to present a broad menu, uh, of ideas to students and allow them to, um, sort to themselves. Uh, AND, you know, I try to embody that, uh, in my own classes. Uh, SO, I'm not opposed, uh, to some conservatives, uh, charging with certain liberals and leftists, um. With hypocrisy, uh, for claiming to stand for free speech and critical thinking and radical inquiry, but not living up to that in practice, uh, by marginalizing or dismissing conservative ideas. Uh, THAT said, hypocrisy is the kind of, um, Praise, uh, that vice pays to virtue. Uh, AND it's notable that conservatives, oh sorry, that liberals and leftists have at least always claimed to be committed to free speech, uh, and cherished it as an important value. Uh, AND again, I think that things are rapidly moving back in the direction they should be, uh, which is, you know, where leftists and liberals are the ones who are at the forefront, uh, of, um, defending free speech, uh, particularly leftists, I should say, uh, when it comes to things like, uh, Palestine. Um. You know, in the United States and indeed elsewhere. Uh, AND what you're seeing is conservatives being much more honest now, uh, about what many of them have always wanted, uh, which is to weaponize concerns about free speech in order to gain power, uh, precisely so that they can then Crush it when they, uh, gain it, uh, gain power, uh, and then institute a program of ideological indoctrination that's gonna teach students exactly what they think they ought to be taught. Uh, AND again, you know, this is very much the kind of uh Buckleyan move that conservatives have been making since the 1950s, you know, uh, Buckley's got a man at Yale, opens by making people really angry about how students are being indoctrinated with leftist idea, they're not hurting the alternative side. Conservatives like him can't, uh, Get a break. Uh, AND then, you know, it ends with him sitting there and being like, oh, by the way, when we get in charge of universities again, uh, I don't think we should teach all sides of this argument. Uh, WE should absolutely just indoctrinate people in my views because mine happen to be the true ones, right? Uh, SO, I think that what you're seeing here is, um, a kind of uh not a realignment, but a, uh, a shift back to The natural order of things, uh, which is conservatives, as they always are, um, always have been, you know, uh, espousing kind of anti-intellectual program of indoctrination, uh, and liberals and especially leftists, rightly, uh, once again, recognizing that we need to be at the forefront of demanding free and open inquiry into the basic parameters of what our society should be. Mhm.

46:43 Ricardo Lopes: So let's get now into your other article. Steven Pinker doesn't know anything about Marxism, which was published again on Current Affairs,

46:52 Matthew McManus: and co-author with Ben Burgess, I said.

46:55 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, uh, and, uh, I mean, there you go through several different claims that you heard Pinker making, uh, particularly in the podcast with Puja Aurora and also in books like Enlightenment Now. So, uh, let's go through, uh, through, through some of them at least. So, uh, you talk about What he gets wrong, for example, about what Marx wanted society to be. So did he, did Marx really want a sort of a top-down regime of bureaucracy and centralized control? I mean, is that what he really wanted, as Pinker tends to claim.

47:37 Matthew McManus: No, uh, and it's simply wrong to imply that, um, which isn't to say that some Marxists haven't called for that, particularly Marxist Leninist, and obviously Stalinists, uh, right, but to blame Marx for what his alleged disciples did decades and centuries later, uh, I think is the height of anti-intellectualism in its own way, right? Uh, SO Marx wrote very, very, very little, uh, sometimes frustratingly little about what communism or socialism we're going to look like. Uh, AND this. It wasn't because he wasn't interested in that. It's because his own kind of historical materialist philosophy, uh, precludes him from spending too much time, as he once put it, writing recipe books for the cookshops of the future, uh, or if you prefer more modern terminology, blueprinting, uh, what things were going to look like. Uh, SOMETIMES it kind of takes a stab at speculating, uh, at what a new society was gonna look like. Uh, BUT it's very, very, very, very, very, uh, thin stuff, right? Uh, AND it changes quite a bit over time. Uh, SO, What most critics of Marx on this point, uh, myself as well, I should add, cause I'm critical of some aspects of this, uh, like Pinker, uh, we usually do is look at the Communist Manifesto, uh, and it's kind of, um, quasi vanguardist language, uh, to say, well, you know, this goes to show that he supported a dictatorship of the proletariat over society and that consequently, you know, the state was going to run everything. Uh, THAT'S a pretty clear misunderstanding. And I think that part of the problem lies in uh This language of, uh, you know, the dictatorship of the proletariat or the rule of the Workers' Party. Uh, YOU know, um, Marx anticipated that the proletariat or the workers were going to consist of the vast majority of people in any society that were ripe for revolution. Uh, SO when he says that the workers are going to rule, that, that there's going to be a dictatorship of the workers, what he means is that the vast majority of people for the first time in human history are going to be the ones that are going to govern human. Society, uh, as an attempt to kind of transition, uh, away from class role. Uh, SO if you think that the vast majority of people actually ruling society is, uh, anti-democratic, then, uh, you know, you might actually yourself be a bit of an anti-democrat. Uh, NOW, that said, I think that there are serious problems with the communist manifesto and the vision laid out in it, uh, not least because, uh, some of the language can be, uh, somewhat vanguarded, right, in the sense of, uh, agitating, uh, for, you know, uh, small elite or kind of a Malkenb to eventually kind of uh lead the revolution, uh, and then transition to, you know, the worker state, etc. ETC. And I think this uh provided currency for Marxist-Leninist, uh, to later do a lot of damage to Marxism, uh, by instituting, uh, authoritarian states. I don't blame Marx for that. Uh, I think it's just, you know, was something that, um, in hindsight, we could realize he might have been a bit more careful on. Uh, BUT, you know, in later works like the Civil War in France or the Critique of the Gothic Program, uh, he himself moves. Away from even this kind of um slightly vanguardish direction towards envisioning a hyper-democratic, hyper decentralized state, uh, of the sort that I personally think might be unworkable for other reasons, but very different reasons, really. You know, just to give an example in the civil war in France, he suggests, look, there should be a National Assembly that will run the country. Uh, IT'S going to be extremely democratic in the sense that you'll have representatives, but you can recall them at any given point, uh, which is a shocking idea. Right, you know, it's not we're not even talking about elections every 2 years. Uh, WE'RE saying that, you know, if your politician does something you're unhappy with, immediately, you're allowed to recall them, right? Uh, COULD be quite disruptive. Uh, AND then he suggests, look, this National Assembly should have certain powers, uh, granted to it to kind of run things for France or whatever it happens to be as a whole. Uh, BUT it shouldn't be too many powers, right? Uh, BECAUSE by and large, he also posited that local communes should be mostly self-governing and perhaps even self-sufficient, uh, for pretty obvious communist reasons. Right? He says, look, uh, hyper centralization in the hands of this National Assembly would mean that most people are kind of, uh, under an alien power, uh, that's highly distant from them. Uh, AND what we want is, you know, Bordeaux or Orleans or whatever to have their own local communes where citizens will actively participate, uh, in political and economic life, really organizing political and economic life, uh, both because that'll be less alienating and also because, um, that's what true communism is supposed to consist of. So you have this very Decentralized in a lot of way vision, uh, at least in these works of what communism or socialism would look like, right? A kind of loose national assembly that will have some powers for it, but a lot of power granted to local communists that are gonna be self-governing by all citizens, uh, which ironically is, uh, something that a lot of conservatives call for in a superficial way, right? You know, more local governance, less state intrusion, uh, From the center of that kind of stuff, right? Now, there are problems, I think with this vision also. Uh, I think that, you know, for instance, Marx could pay more attention to the importance of things like liberal rights, at least in the civil war in France, although he did elsewhere. Uh, I think, you know, uh, there's also reasons to be wary of to immediately recall any elected representative that you happen to appoint to office. Like many people, I don't like many politicians, and there's a certain part of me that thinks, uh, good, you know, stick it to them right away, right? Uh, BUT I think it'd be highly disruptive if you just have this kind of, um, National Assembly that has consists of a constantly rotating body of members, right? Uh, THAT don't have any kind of, um, permanence to them, right? I think that there's value in having elections every couple of years. If someone does something really bad, like a crime, yeah, that maybe recall them, right? Uh, BUT whatever else you want to say about that. This vision looks nothing like uh the authoritarian states that um Pinker boogeyman's about. Really what it is, uh, following Bruno Leopold and his, uh, seminal book, Citizen Marx, as a kind of radical republicanism, right? Uh, HYPER-CITIZEN involvement, uh, Very, very democratic, uh, in every kind of respect, uh, and, um, hugely participatory, right? Uh, IN the sense that people are supposed to be actively managing both their political and economic life at every level, uh, ideally.

53:19 Ricardo Lopes: So another thing that he likes to point out to discredit Marxism as an ideology has to do with the fact that he says or he claims that Marxism has been tried and it clearly never worked and of course we're we're already familiar with people pointing to society. Societies or countries like the former Soviet Union, Russia, China, Cuba, Cambodia, and all of those countries and saying, oh look, it's been tried, it clearly hasn't worked. Capitalism is clearly the way to go, and so on and so forth. But I mean, do you think it's fair to say that Marxism has really been tried in any society?

54:12 Matthew McManus: No, not in any kind of way. Uh, I mean, I take particular issue with the Cuban example whenever I see it raised, because I'm like, especially now, and it's like, well, you know, they've also been blockaded, uh, by the world's preeminent imperial and military power, and which has also done everything it possibly can to undermine, uh, the efforts to build socialism on that island, which is an excuse, you know, the, um, uh, human rights violations that have been carried out by the regime, you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. I have no sympathy for that. Uh, BUT, you know, we should put those kinds of things in context. Um. That said, you know, based upon what I just mentioned moments ago, it's not even really clear to me what they mean when they say, well, Marxism was tried and it failed, right? Uh, YOU know, Marx wrote a couple dozen pages over the course of a very long intellectual career about what communism or socialism might look like. Most of these comments are enormously speculative. Uh, Even shall I say, a little bit idealistic at points, and you wouldn't like me to say that, but it's true, right? You know, you get comments like, uh, well, under communism, the, uh, development of human powers will be an end in itself for the first time rather than simply a means, uh, or, you know, uh, under communism, the free development of each will be a condition for the free development of all. Uh, OR under communism, after we transition from socialism, this is the famous formulation in the particular Gothic program, uh, we'll move, you know, to The principle, um, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs, right? Now, I have a lot of sympathy for some of these uh more philosophical arguments, for instance, about um making the development of human capacities or human powers and ending itself for the first time, right? It's really not clear reading Marx, how this is meant to be implemented. Uh, AND again, that's in part because Marx didn't want to write a lot of blueprints about how this was meant to be implemented, right? Uh, HIS main job when he got up every day and went to the British Library to work on, uh, was examining and criticizing capitalism. And he was very, very good at that, right? Uh, WHY, you know, he wrote thousands and thousands of pages criticizing capitalism, and only a couple dozen pages speculating on what communism and socialism would look like. Uh, AND a lot of those are mostly directed against other communists and socialists, right? Uh, WHO he thinks just have wrongheaded ideas, uh, about what this is going to look like. So, it's not even clear to me what Marxism was implemented could possibly mean. Uh, Marxism isn't a kind of worked out political philosophy devised by someone like Karl Marx, uh, who said, you know, here's my views, do this, right? Um, It's a critique of political economy and capitalism, uh, that you can take up in many different ways, right? Uh, YOU know, for instance, many of the social democratic parties of Europe that are anything but authoritarian. If anything, they were kind of at the mainstays of push for pushes for, um, democracy and women's suffrage, etc. uh, WE'RE deeply inspired by Marx. Think about the SPD, uh, in Germany or the Socialist Party in France, uh, and, you know, They governed well and effectively in a lot of ways. There are certain problems, I think, with what they did, uh, but they're not authoritarian, uh, and it's kind of ridiculous to even kind of insinuate that. Uh, AND then, of course, there are people who have read Marx, uh, and his critique of capitalism in authoritarian ways. Uh, AND I think they were wrongheaded in doing this, you know, a good example of that, of course, be Lenin, uh, or Mao, uh, or Pol Pot or whoever it happens to be, uh, who Take a lot of the kind of um quasi vanguardist language usually that you would sometimes see in the manifesto, uh, and use that as a justification for their own political ambitions and Machiavellianism. Uh, AND I think that that really was very much uh against the spirit uh of Marx and Marxism, uh, because, you know, Marx himself was somebody who was very, very, very undogmatic, constantly willing to learn from opposing points of view, uh, cherished, uh, rights like freedom of. Expression. Uh, THIS is what I mentioned when it's like, when I pointed out that it's not like he was opposed to liberal rights in all respects. If anything, Marx was, um, from his very early career, uh, one of the most militant advocates for freedom of the press, for the very sensible reason that Marx himself was a, uh, intellectual, uh, and often a journalist who was censored constantly by the states of Europe. Uh, SO he very much treasured the right to kind of for socialists to, uh, kind of advocate for their positions without being censored by reactionaries. So, Just so much of what Pinker says and insinuates, uh, in that book and in that interview are wrong. Uh, BUT I think it's wrong in an interesting way, uh, and it's wrong in an interesting way for the reasons that we mentioned in the conclusion of our article. I think the only reason that people are allowed to get away with this, uh, in the year of our Lord 2026, uh, is central. Just liberals, center-right liberals, so the sort like Steven Pinker, I've just been allowed to get away with saying really, really shallow things about Marxism for a long time, uh, to, you know, applause, uh, from, you know, the pundit crowd, uh, and from, you know, people who just are opposed to socialism, uh, you know, in their bones. Uh, AND I think, you know, uh, if you want to criticize Marx and socialism, by all means do so, right? That's one of the virtues of freedom of expression, you should be allowed to do so. But for God's sakes, can't we just actually get quality critiques for a change, rather than this kind of, um, very vanilla reheated Reaganite cliches that are just rolled out, uh, 50 years after, you know, their peak, uh, for the 10 trillionth time to, you know, applause by people who've probably never picked up Dos Koppan all in their life.

59:14 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, I mean, when it comes to Steven Pinker's view of the Enlightenment, I, I mean at this point I find it really tiring, boring, and, and I mean looking at how he approaches the Enlightenment historically and philosophically, at best I think it's a very simplistic and surface level reading or understanding of the Enlightenment. And at worst it's actually historically and philosophically ignorant in the sense that I mean in the Enlightenment now and also in the better angels of our nature, he seems to always try to cherry pick which authors, which intellectuals, which philosophers, scholars are real Enlightenment figures and which aren't, and I I mean, conveniently enough, the ones that align with the ideas that he likes tend to be the real Enlightenment figures, and the ones which don't align with his ideas tend to not be Enlightenment figures or even be anti-Enlightenment figures. But I mean, of course, feel free to comment on what I've just said.

1:00:31 Matthew McManus: I would actually like to weigh in on that, right, because Sometimes he's been criticized for this, even by sympathetic audiences, which we mentioned, uh, in our article, right? Uh, SO, you know, the center-right magazine Quillette, uh, which I've written for and Ben has written for largely to espouse left-wing views and criticize some of the um bad takes on left-wing views in the, uh, you know, This is not a magazine that in any way, shape or form be described as sympathetic to Marxism. Uh, YOU know, most of them would think that John Rawls is beyond the pale, right? Uh, BUT, you know, even they put to Pinker, uh, in their interview, uh, on enlightenment. What could Marx be characterized as an enlightenment figure, right? You know, he was very much gleaned or raised in, you know, tradition of Western thought, you know, synthesizing German philosophy, French radicalism, and English political economy, constantly described what he was doing is trying. To gain a scientific understanding of the world. Uh, AND, you know, he argued in many cases that, you know, the transition to communism and socialism, uh, would mean the transition to a more rational and better ordered society of the sort that enlightenment philosophers have always advocated for. Uh, AND Pinker, to your point, just completely waffles on this, saying, well, you know, this isn't meant to be a book about the history of Enlightenment and who counts as an Enlightenment thinker, etc. ETC. Really, what I'm just doing is espousing certain kinds of principles, uh, that I think are going to To make the world go better. Uh, WELL, if that's the case, then don't try to claim the mantle of enlightenment for yourself. The Enlightenment was a very complicated movement that had many diverse and interesting and sometimes, let's be honest, quite weird strains. Uh, SOME of them, you know, uh, I personally have a lot of admiration for, like liberalism, like socialism, etc. uh, OTHERS of which I find, um, somewhat less laudatory, particularly a lot of the, uh, ethno-chauvinism, uh, and later moves towards. Scientific, quote pseudo-scientific racism, etc. ETC. You know, I don't have time for a lot of that kind of stuff, uh, cause I think it's just all hogwash, uh, you know, but this kind of rote dismissal, uh, of the complexity of the Enlightenment, and you have to kind of boil it down to, um, what an upper middle class, uh, Well-heeled professor, uh, thinks that the world ought to do, uh, it's just really reductive, uh, and, again, anti-intellectual in a certain kind of way.

1:02:39 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah. So I, I, I mean, in that sense, when he says or claims that Marx is an anti-enlightenment figure, I mean that that doesn't make any sense.

1:02:53 Matthew McManus: Well, he doesn't quite claim that Marx is an anti-Enlightenment figure. I mean, Per's smart enough to know that that would be a problematic claim to make. He just decides not to kind of draw attention to that, right? Again, when he's pushed on this by a sympathetic audience, he's just kind of like, well, No, I'm not here to sit there and say, who is an Enlightenment thinker, who counts as part of the Enlightenment or not. I'm just kind of espousing my own views. But I think that that's quite insincere, right? Because he's clearly claiming the prestige and legitimacy of the Enlightenment, uh, for his own center right project. Uh, AND if that's the case, then he owes it to his audience to explain why other strains of enlightenment thought that he's extremely dismissive of without apparently being all that knowledgeable of like Marxism, uh, don't count, uh, or shouldn't be considered. Yeah, he, he,

1:03:34 Ricardo Lopes: he was, he was the same with the figures like N Nietzsche. I mean, he has a very, a very surface, surface level reading of N Nietzsche.

1:03:44 Matthew McManus: Yeah, absolutely. Right now, I mean, I want to be clear, I think that Nietzsche is an anti-enlightenment figure. Uh, I think he's a brilliant philosopher, right? And I, I don't mean that as a pejorative, right? I personally disagree with him about a lot of things. Uh, BUT there's immense amounts that you can learn from Nietzsche. But this kind of superficial way of dealing. Uh, WITH seminal figures in the history of Western thought, uh, is deeply disrespectful. And I also think has not served the project of the Enlightenment well, uh, because if there's one thing the Enlightenment is supposed to stand for, it's supposed to be reasoned argumentation. Uh, AND part of reasoned argumentation is not creating figures, seminal figures like Marx, Nietzsche, whoever it happens to be cursorily, but actually dealing with their work in depth, trying to understand their perspective, recognizing their merits and their merits. And that's just not something somebody like Piger, um, Piner has time for.

1:04:29 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm, YEAH, yeah, I, I mean, I think that Pininker has larger issues. We're talking mostly about political ideology here and I mean, I guess a little bit of philosophy and history if we're talking about the Enlightenment. But I think that he has larger issues, particularly in the way he explores history, anthropology, politics, and economics in the better angels of our nature and enlightenment now, because it seems that he tends to follow very specific intellectual trends when it comes to how We should, uh, look at, for example, uh, the trends in violence across history, uh, violence in, um, prehistoric or traditional societies, and then again, his views on, uh, Marxism, more socialism versus capitalism and all of that. I, I mean, he, he, he's a great cognitive psychology. Linguists and so on, but when it comes to history, anthropology, politics, and economics specifically, he, he tends or he seems to be very superficial in his analysis.

1:05:52 Matthew McManus: Oh, without a doubt, right now, so look, I have no problem with people trying to engage in interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary work. Um, SOME figures can be really quite talented at that, right? Think about something like uh Noam. YOU know, uh, back in the day, or Nietzsche, right? You know, Nietzsche began as a philologist, and obviously, he's most well known for, um, his contributions to philosophy now, or, Marx, you know, Marx began as a philosopher and uh made seminal contributions to every discipline under the sun, right? Uh, BUT the thing is, if you're going to try to comment on these things, then it is incumbent on you and it shows respect to your readers to actually know something about them, uh, to engage thoroughly with all. Alternative points of view, uh, and to try to understand them prior to criticizing them, right? And I should add that that is part of this Enlightenment heritage that Pinker claims to espouse and to embody, right? And that's just not what he does. And he is not interested in actually looking seriously into any of these traditions, understanding them, criticizing them in any kind of meaningful way. Uh, Most of it is just rote dismissal. Uh, AND, um. Coupled with, you know, a kind of a pooh poo, powdery attitude, right? Uh, NOW, in fairness, uh, again, I agree with you that I think he's a great cognitive psychologist. Uh, I wrote a review of his book, um, Rationality Now for Art Digital, a long time ago, um, where, you know, he talks about people's inherent biases and the way that people tend to reason about, um, various issues. It's very interesting, right? Um, I couldn't comment on it much methodologically, uh, or scientifically, because that's not my wheelhouse, right? But I certainly learned a lot from it. And I thought it's a very good book, and I've recommended before. Uh, BUT I think that when you contrast the quality of rationality now to enlightenment now or any of his other contributor like uh contributions to politics and economics, uh, the distinction is very, very, very clear, right? Um, AND it's not because he's not smart enough to Write about Nietzsche or Marx thoughtfully or the history of Western thought thoughtfully. Uh, I just don't think he cares all that much. Uh, BUT if that's the case, then maybe don't do that. Uh, OR if you're going to do it, at least preface what you say by being like, look, I don't know shit about this. Uh, SO take everything I say with a gigantic grain of salt.

1:07:56 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so I, I have just one last question and leaving Pinker aside for a second, uh, who do, who do you think have been the best critics of Marxism and the ones that Marxists should contend with the most?

1:08:13 Matthew McManus: Yeah, that's a really good question, uh. Give me a second. I think Pierros Rafa, uh, the seminal, uh, economist, launched a very or developed a very, very powerful and potent critique of, uh, at least some versions, uh, of the labor theory of value, uh, particularly criticizing, uh, the idea that labor has special properties, uh, because only it can really, um, produce value in and of itself, right? Uh, IN itself is not produced by anything anterior to it. Uh. Straffo criticizes this by pointing out, uh, it kind of uh misconstrues, uh, the inputs that are required in order to create the laborer who can then labor, right? Uh, FOR instance, corn, uh, for example, uh, and it's a very technical point, but what Strafa argues is, uh, look, uh, once you kind of recognize that it requires more than labor to make a laborer, uh, you require inputs from things like corn, amongst other things, and water, etc. ETC. It kind of, uh, dissolves a lot of the special properties that some Marxists, uh, can ascribe to labor, again, following, uh, Ricardo. Uh, AND Rafa is notable in uh being pretty deeply knowledgeable, uh, of the Marxist tradition, right? He was friends with Antonio Bramsci. Uh, HE'S also quite sympathetic to other aspects of Marxism and socialism. Uh, BUT, you know, you don't need to take my word for it. Uh, David Harvey in his recent book on Marx, uh, singles Rafa out, uh, for praise, pointing out, look, you know, You don't have to agree with everything that he says as a criticism of Marx to recognize that you're dealing with somebody who's got a much more deep and probing analysis uh of the subject matter than uh most people. Uh, IN terms of another figure, let me think, um, I would say Roger Scruton. Uh, Roger Scruton, uh, was quite knowledgeable of Marx and the Marxist tradition. Uh, HE'S also quite, uh, familiar with leftist critical theory more generally, certainly more than almost any other contemporary conservative I can think of. Uh, YOU can read his book, Fools, Frauds, and Friarbrands. Uh, HE'S also quite sympathetic to Marx on various points, right? Uh, FOR instance, he points out alienation is real. Uh, AND Scruton points out, look, we need to recognize that if you're a conservative who genuinely does believe in preserving traditions, uh, capital. Capitalism can be a revolutionary mode of production in the way that Marx talked about, uh, which will disrupt, uh, a lot of those traditions. Uh, BUT scrutiny is very critical of Marx from a kind of right gellian standpoint, uh, appropriately enough, you know, given Marx's own, um, origins, uh, as a left galleon before transitioning to being a materialist. Uh, AND, you know, uh, Scruton points out that what Marxists and socialists sometimes misunderstand by the emphasis on materialism is, um, the spiritual dimensions, uh, of life. Uh, AND Scruton points out, look, You could potentially even design a better society. Uh, BUT a lot of those spiritual dimensions of life are not going to go away because, um, not only are they rooted in human instincts, but they're part and parcel of the human condition. Uh, SINCE even if you lived in the best possible society, we're all going to die, uh, which is going to raise existential questions for us about the Meaning of life, the meaning of existence, etc. Uh, NOW, in fairness, I think that Scruden often overstates his case against Marx and Marxism, uh, because I do think that Marx has interesting things to say, uh, about religion. Uh, AND I definitely think that many Marxists, including, uh, Christian Marxists, have tried to answer these kinds of objections. Uh, BUT he's not wrong, uh, in insinuating, uh, that a lot of leftists who are inspired by cliched, uh, understand the good Marx, you know, just dismissing, uh, religion as the opiate of the masses, uh, will sometimes lean in on, uh, dismissing, uh, the kind of spiritual needs of individuals, uh, and consequently undermining, uh, you know, the, um, legitimacy, uh, I should say of leftism in many eyes. So Scruton is a thoughtful critic of, um, the left generally, Marx in particular.

1:11:50 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I mean, let me just ask you about three specific names, not, not because I have anything really substantive to say about them. I mean, particularly because one of them, I'm not really that familiar with these later, later phases where perhaps he criticized Marxism a little bit more, and the other 21 of them I'm not familiar with his work at all, and the other one, I'm, uh, my familiarity with is. Very, very, very little, uh, but I mean, I, I have Marxist friends who are, uh, perhaps, um, much more knowledgeable about, uh, Marxist and anti-Marxist literature, and they told me that, uh, 3 people that Marxists have to contend with is uh Foucault, Anna Herron, and Carl Schmidt. I mean, do you agree with that, or?

1:12:46 Matthew McManus: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, um. So much to say about all three of those figures, right? Uh, SO Foucault had a very complicated relationship with Marxism, right? Uh, AT points, he could be extremely dismissive of it, uh, particularly the, uh, the kind of mechanistic, uh, Enlightenment versions of Marxism, uh, that he saw as being particularly popular in, uh, the 1960s in France. Uh, HE sometimes, uh, dismissed it as a 19th century economics in the bad sense, right, with nothing to teach 20th century. On the other hand, you know, on other points, Mark, uh, Foucault could be, um, quite overt about his own debt to Marx and Marxism, right? Um, I mean, uh, many people characterize discicipline and punish, uh, for example, which is probably His most well-known book as fundamentally materialist work, right? Uh, IN the sense that it argues that, uh, the contemporary carel apparatus that's emerged, uh, in many states, uh, owes a lot to the rise of modern bourgeois ideology, uh, or bourgeois discourse, uh, and of course, capitalism, right? And the need to kind of, uh, discipline the labor force. And, you know, Foucault was very overt about the debt to uh a kind of strain of Marxism, uh, in that work. Uh, IN terms of Iran, um, Iran had a very complicated, uh, relationship with Marxism. Uh, JUST to give two examples, uh, her work, the human condition, can be understood in many senses, um, as a critique, uh, of Marx's emphasis on labor, uh, as central to human nature. Uh, AND of course, um, emancipating labor as a precondition for human emancipation, right? Uh, NOW, I think that her understanding of Marxism is, um, One dimensional, uh, in this book. I don't think she really appreciates, um, how, uh, for Mark's part of, you know, the goal, uh, of, um, emancipating humanity, uh, was emancipating them from the need, uh, to labor, uh, as a kind of primary feature, um, of our life, our primary characteristic of human life, right? Uh, HE really has this kind of Aristotelian, uh, ethic, I think, uh, underpinning this work. That's about the development of different kinds of capacities. Um, THAT said, you know, there is no doubt that there's a kind of Marxism, uh, that Iran is taking aim at that I think she hits. Accurately. Uh, BUT on the other hand, if you read her book on revolution, uh, she pointed out that Marx was a brilliant political analyst, uh, who often was working at a far higher level than his critics, uh, which I always found funny because she's absolutely right about that. Uh, AND she also expresses quite a lot of sympathy for things like council democracy, right? Um, SHOCKINGLY, right? Uh, YOU know, says, you know, the Marxists might actually have a point on this. So again, Careful critic of Marx. Uh, IN terms of Carl Schmidt, right, uh, you know, Schmidt is, um, A difficult thinker, right? Uh, IN part because he moves in a very different kind of horizon, uh, than the other two, because, um, Schmidt is very much, uh, an irrationalist, uh, in many respects for all the kind of, um, steely realism that sometimes, uh, perceived to underpin his work. Uh, WHEN he was discussing Marx and Marxism, he wasn't afraid to characterize, um, It is basically a myth, uh, but not in a pejorative sense, right? You know, there's this myth that, you know, the contradictions of capitalism are eventually going to lead the working class to expropriate the expropriators, uh, and build the utopian society. Uh, AND, you know, Schmidt often could express a kind of, um, Begrudging but real admiration for the mythological power uh of this idea, uh, that a lot of conservatives and I'm even reactionaries, uh, aren't willing to appreciate, right? Cause he says, look, it changed the world. There's no doubt about it, right? It wouldn't have changed the world unless it tapped into something latent in human nature. Uh, AND Schmidt is also willing to admire Marx and Marxism, uh, for understanding, um, what we now call the agonistic dimensions of politics, right? Uh, IT was very critical of liberals who could imagine or who imagine that, you know, you can. Undo politics or get away from politics through uh parliamentary talk, uh, and rights. You know, he said the Marxists at least appreciate that politics is a contact sport, right? That the ruling class is oppressing the working class and the working class needs to seize the means of abduction, seize the state in order to win power. Uh, SO they're less naive than a lot of liberals. Uh, THAT said, right, um, he also was very clear that, you know, when Marx and Marxism and socialists, uh, talk about, uh, Society is eventually being governed by a rational, um, set of ideas, uh, or suggest that Marxism is a science of history. That's all kind of balderdash. It's a myth, the same as most political, um. Ideas, right? Um, AND you know, the question isn't whether or not it's scientific or not, but whether or not it's myths, uh, resonate. Uh, AND, you know, Schmidt was also very critical, and I think he's quite insightful here, uh, by pointing out that the Marxists are actually less different than the liberals than they imagine, uh, because even though the Marxists understand that class conflict is a motor for human society, uh, like liberals, they too dream of a world without politics, right? Uh, YOU know, world where Politics is overcome by the scientific management of society, where alienation disappears, uh, you know, where there's full harmony and where, um, yeah, you book this quote, uh, your free development is a precondition for my free development, so there's no more conflict between us. Uh, Schmidt imagined that this was just unbearably naive, uh, cause it shared a kind of enlightenment optimism, uh, with liberalism, right? Cause liberals also are dream of a world without politics. Uh, AND so, I think that, you know, in this respect, Schmidt is actually quite right, uh, to highlight, and, you know, this is my work on liberal socialism as about, uh, that there's a deep elective affinity on this point between Marxism and liberalism, uh, and he juxtaposed his own, um, irrationalist theological decisionism against both of them. Uh, I think quite correctly, even if, um, I have profound moral disagreements with what Schmidt was aiming for, obviously.

1:18:11 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so then you agree that those three figures should also be contented with, I mean, if someone is a Marxist, at least when it comes to refining their own ideas about Marxism.

1:18:24 Matthew McManus: Oh, without a doubt, right? I mean, um, particularly Hannah Rand has been a very generative sparring partner for a lot of Marxists, uh, in no small part because that book, The Human Condition, engages quite deeply, uh, with some core instincts that Marxist, uh, certainly mid-century Marxist held to, uh, you know, this emphasis on labor is the kind of characteristic human activity or even characteristic human essence, right? Um, SO, um, there's really no world, uh, in which you pick up their books and go through them, uh, where, Even if you remain a committed Marxist at the end, which I think you should, uh, you're not going to gain something, uh, from deep disagreement with these kind of figures. They're smart people, they're worth reading.

1:19:04 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Great. So, Doctor McManus, uh, thank you so much again for taking the time to come on the show. I mean, I will also be leaving the links to your, uh, pieces in the description of the interview. And would you like just to tell people where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:19:22 Matthew McManus: Sure, uh, you can add me on X, uh, at Matt Paul Prof, um, same thing, uh, on Blue Sky, uh, or you can just send me an email, uh, Matt McManus 300@gmail.com. Um, I do my best to respond to emails. Uh, JUST keep them relatively short if you can, right? Uh, BECAUSE, you know, sometimes people send me like these 4 page behemoths, and I'm like, oh boy, I definitely can't respond to all that.

1:19:43 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, no, thank you so much again for doing this. It's always a big pleasure to talk with you.

1:19:48 Matthew McManus: Yeah, you too, buddy. Take care of yourself.

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