Ideas Matter, Culture Wars: then and now, episode 11, 'Sixties Counterculture'

This talk examines the assumption that today’s ‘progressive left’ is a continuation of the left-wing politics of the 1960s. It's the 11th in our series Culture Wars:then and now, recorded at the Academy 2019 summer school that was organised by the Battle of Ideas (boi) charity.  

LECTURER
Dr Greg Scorzo, director and editor, Culture on the Offensive website and host of The Art of Thinking events

TALKING POINTS IN THIS PODCAST
• The Sixties civil-rights movement and Sixties counterculture are broadly at odds with the core political values of today’s progressivism.
• The differences between the Sixties movements and modern progressives summed up in four ways: equality of treatment vs equality of power; universalism vs anti-universalism; risk-taking vs regulating the private sphere; and pluralistic free speech vs anti-pluralistic free speech.

ADDITIONAL READING
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Daniel Bell, Basic Books, 1978
The Culture Industry by Theodor Adorno, Routledge, 2001

THE ACADEMY 2019
In the context of today’s instrumental approaches to knowledge, The Academy summer school is a modest attempt to demonstrate the value of scholarship, and of the worth of the university as a place of free enquiry dedicated to the pursuit of truth.

IDEAS MATTER PODCAST
Ideas Matter is a podcast that takes the most important issues of our times and explores the ideas and intellectual trends that have shaped where we are today.

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