In the age of the Enlightenment, the young, ascendant capitalist class began to stretch it’s wings against the spiritual dictatorship of the church, and the feudal monarchies that they propped up.
Breaking the chains of obscurantist medieval dogma, bold thinkers and pioneers like Locke, Newton, Diderot and Rousseau fought for rationality and science and in so doing, theoretically cleared the ground for the great bourgeois revolutions.
Today, however, the capitalism is decrepit and dying and the ruling class has turned away from the reason of its youth. In fact, the irrational capitalist system threatens to drag human society back to a new dark age.
In this episode, Ben will discuss and defend the Enlightenment, despite it’s limits was an enormous conquest for human thought. We as Marxists lay claim to the bold materialism and clarity of thought which characterised the Enlightenment as theoretical armaments in our struggle against our own rotten ruling class.
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