Exploring Political Theory: Liberal Socialism

Revolutionary Left Radio

Breht O'Shea

Communism, Politics, Liberalism, Society & Culture, Philosophy, News, History, Leftwing, Socialism, Marxism

4.8 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2024

⏱️ 131 minutes

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Summary

Professor and author Matt McManus returns to the show to discuss his newest book, "The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism". Together they explore the major themes of the book, hash out the disagreements they have between revolutionary Marxism and democratic socialism, explore critical thinkers like Karl Marx, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and John Rawls, wrestle with the questions of revolution and communism as the ultimate goal of socialism, and much more.

"Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of liberal socialism from a sympathetic but critical standpoint, McManus traces its core to the Revolutionary period that catalyzed major divisions in liberal political theory to the French Revolution that saw the emergence of writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine who argued that liberal principles could only be inadequately instantiated in a society with high levels of material and social inequality to John Stuart Mill, the first major thinker who declared himself a liberal and a socialist and who made major contributions to both traditions through his efforts to synthesize and conciliate them."

Check out our other episodes with Matt HERE

Outro Song: "Best of All Possible Worlds" by Ajj feat: Kool Keith & Kimya Dawson

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode we have
0:10.0	back on the show our good friend and repeat guest Professor Matt McManus to talk
0:16.6	about his newest book the political theory of liberal socialism and as we talk
0:22.4	about in the episode, of course, that term liberal socialism will strike some
0:26.1	on the Marxist left as anathema or incorrect or something that gets your hackles up and we go through it you know we work through
0:34.0	our differences there is certainly differences between me and Matt politically the
0:37.9	the theory of liberal socialism and forms of Marxist Leninism and Marxist
0:42.1	Leninism m Maoism.
0:43.5	We explore as much of that as possible,
0:45.3	but in general, we just sort of wrestle
0:47.4	with this idea of liberal socialism.
0:49.2	He explicates it, talks about its historical antecedents, some of the main thinkers in that
0:54.4	tradition, the revolutionary aspects of it, yeah, where we disagree, where we
0:59.8	agree, etc. and overall, as always with Matt Matt it's a deep philosophically informed
1:06.1	fascinating and always generative conversation and I love having
1:10.8	conversations with him and I hope our listeners love listening to these conversations because I really think they are so so rich and his depth of knowledge with political theory is really unmatched. I mean you know that I mean in the sense that
1:24.2	that it's very rarely a person I come across where I can just throw out like the most
1:29.3	off the wall difficult you know random questions about political theory. He just immediately
1:34.3	knows where to go with it, picks it up, and runs with it in fascinating ways. So I really
1:38.7	love the depth of his knowledge and it's always fun to go back and forth with him even
1:42.1	on those points of disagreement
1:43.9	between us but again always with Rev Left you engage with these episodes not always
	...

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