This video is an excerpt of one of most obvious examples of just how deep the rabbit hole goes when it comes to the communist attack on the psychological make-up of the unsuspecting youth of the free world in the 60s and 70s. (The complete lecture is pasted below the jump thanks to marcuse.org)

Herbert Marcuse "the father of the New Left" and marxist revolutionary lecturing on "The Liberation from the Affluent Society" - just sit back and contemplate for a minute...  Why would a Marxist, otherwise obsessed with bettering the conditions for the working class by theft, suddenly be advocating a liberation from "affluence"?
  ... curious indeed.

The first 2/3s of the lecture consists of the average mesmerizing dialectics and sensualization of philosophical terms, so characteristic of "soft" marxist and post-modernist sophistry. This tend to bring people into a state of fascination and intellectual servitude. Hard-pressed to follow all the non-sequiturs they lose critical capacity and let themselves go. The below quote gives a typical example of this kind of retoric, and can also be observed in the facial expressions of the audience in the above video.

I believe that these factors are internally interrelated, that they constitute the syndrome of late capitalism: namely, the apparently inseparable unity - inseparable for the system - of productivity and destruction, of satisfaction of needs and repression, of liberty within a system of servitude - that is to say, the subjugation of man to the apparatus, and the inseparable unity of rational and irrational. We can say that the rationality of the society lies in its very insanity, and that the insanity of the society is rational to the degree to which it is efficient, to the degree to which it delivers the goods...

...yadda yadda yadda.

Now as the speech proceeds we find Marcuse being a bit more specific about what he really wants to happen: (my emphasis)

Here we are faced with the question: is liberation from the affluent society identical with the transition from capitalism to socialism? The answer I suggest is: It is not identical, if socialism is defined merely as the planned development of the productive forces, and the rationalization of resources (although this remains a precondition for all liberation). It is identical with the transition from capitalism to socialism, if socialism is defined in its most Utopian terms: namely, among others, the abolition of labour, the termination of the struggle for existence - that is to say, life as an end in itself and no longer as a means to an end - and the liberation of human sensibility and sensitivity, not as a private factor, but as a force for transformation of human existence and of its environment. To give sensitivity and sensibility their own right is, I think, one of the basic goals of integral socialism. These are the qualitatively different features of a free society. They presuppose, as you may already have seen, a total trans-valuation of values, a new anthropology. They presuppose a type of man who rejects the performance principles governing the established societies; a type of man who has rid himself of the aggressiveness and brutality that are inherent in the organization of established society, and in their hypocritical, puritan morality; a type of man who is biologically incapable of fighting wars and creating suffering; a type of man who has a good conscience of joy and pleasure, and who works, collectively and individually, for a social and natural environment in which such an existence becomes possible.

Let´s sum up the attributes of this great "New Man" capable of a "qualitative change" in the affluent capitalist society

1. He does not work
2. He is over-sensitized, devoting all his time to his own little joys and pleasures, with a good conscience.
3. Rejecting the "the performance principle", he is unwilling to better himself through training
4. He has no agressiveness, incapable of brutality
5. He is "biologically" incapable of fighting a war.


As Marcuse proceeds he sets out the already existing role-models for this "New Man", and finds them in the "provos" and the "diggers"

Before I conclude I would like to say my bit about the Hippies. It seems to me a serious phenomenon. If we are talking of the emergence of an instinctual revulsion against the values of the affluent society, I think here is a place where we should look for it. It seems to me that the Hippies, like any non-conformist movement on the left, are split. That there are two parts, or parties, or tendencies. Much of it is mere masquerade and clownery on the private level, and therefore indeed, as Gerassi suggested, completely harmless, very nice and charming in many cases, but that is all there is to it. But that is not the whole story. There is in the Hippies, and especially in such tendencies in the Hippies as the Diggers and the Provos, an inherent political element - perhaps even more so in the US than here. It is the appearance indeed of new instinctual needs and values. This experience is there. There is a new sensibility against efficient and insane reasonableness. There is the refusal to play the rules of a rigid game, a game which one knows is rigid from the beginning, and the revolt against the compulsive cleanliness of puritan morality and the aggression bred by this puritan morality as we see it today in Vietnam among other things.

At least this part of the Hippies, in which sexual, moral and political rebellion are somehow united, is indeed a nonaggressive form of life: a demonstration of an aggressive non-aggressiveness which achieves, at least potentially, the demonstration of qualitatively different values, a transvaluation of values.

 From this we can add a few more characteristics of the man who is to change the world.

6. He has a new sensibility against efficient reasonableness
7. He is rebellious refusing to play a rigid game
8. He revolts against puritan morality, promiscuios, unreliable
9. He is against the Vietnam war

Now, I know I am often viewed as a conspiracy theorist for asserting that the Evil Empire was somehow involved in this radical transformation of the young generation of the western world. Afterall, it could just be a stroke of luck that Herbert Marcuse´s ideas of the New Man came into being while the US was fighting the most brutal murderous enemy history has ever seen. But let us just for the sake of argument try and state the typical character traits the US army would be looking for in a good soldier


1. He works hard
2. He is rough with complete disregard of his own comfort
3. He is competitive, constantly bettering himself, a winner, who never gives in
4. He is aggressive and brutal when needed
5. He is biologically fit for fight
6. He applies efficient reasoning.
7. He obeys every order and plays by even the most rigid rules
8. His moral is high and pure
9. He wants to win the war in Vietnam

Wow, far out!... it´s almost like completely opposite dude!

(whole lecture below the jump)