Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin in 1898. As a Jewish academic he had to leave\nGermany when the Nazis came to power and has been in America since 1934. He then became\nprofessor of political thought at the University of California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a short while after the first world war, Marcuse was a member of the German Social\nDemocratic Party but left after the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. He became an\nunattached left-winger with hopes and sympathies pro-Russia. In the 1930’s, in Germany and\nthen later in America, he was associated with a group of left-wing thinkers known as the\nFrankfurt School. They called their highly philosophical and Hegelian version of Marxism\n“The critical theory of society”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their interpretation was based on views Marx held in the 1840’s when he first became\ninterested in politics. Marx’s approach was then still largely philosophical. Because in\nGermany philosophy was generally acknowledged to have reached its peak with the theories\nof Hegel, Marx was a Hegelian. His criticism of orthodox Hegelian philosophy was that it\nmade the world of abstract ideals more real than the world of material things. The\nrational world which philosophy sought, Marx said, was not to be found by passive\ncontemplation, but by practical activity. As he later put it, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point\nhowever is to change it”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Marx, the world was to be changed in order to achieve this “rational\nreality” (which he eventually identified with Socialism) by the activity of the most\ndown-trodden and most suffering section of society, the proletariat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marx later went beyond this conception of the socialist revolution in which the working\nclass figured merely as the instrument of philosophy. However, The Frankfurt School\nrevived it and Marcuse essentially adhered to it. It was in fact one of the themes of his\nfirst book, “Reason and Revolution” (1941), in which he defends Hegel against\nthe charge of being a pre-cursor of fascism. Much of Marcuse’s theorising has been about\nthe role of “the critical theory” in a period when its instrument, the working\nclass, is not (or, as he believes, is no longer) revolutionary. His view is that its\nadherents should keep alive the idea of an alternative society even if this means\nappearing to be utopian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It is the task and duty of the intellectual to recall and preserve historical\npossibilities which seem to have become utopian possibilities.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What influenced Marcuse in this emphasis upon how different Socialism would be from\ncapitalism was his reading of Marx’s “Grundrisse” (1857-8). This lengthy work\nwas not readily accessible until the 1950’s and Marcuse must be given credit for\npublicising these writings in the English-speaking world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In these manuscripts, Marx emphasised the possibilities for social change opened up by\nthe coming of potential abundance. Widespread mechanisation and the application of science\nto industry, he argued, made it possible to reduce the working day and free people to\nengage in the activities of their choice. Marx held that this could only be achieved on\nthe basis of the common ownership of the means of production. Capitalism’s historic role\nwas to develop productivity by forcing people to produce an ever greater surplus over and\nabove their immediate needs; a surplus which could be used to build up the stock of means\nof production. This done, capitalism became historically obsolete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marx was, in effect, saying that soul-destroying toil had been necessary to develop\nproductivity to the point where toil could be abolished. Now Freud had said that the\ngrowth of civilisation necessarily involved human suffering and this coincidence has\nallowed Marcuse to combine the theories of Marx and Freud as in his “Eros and\nCivilisation” (1955), which many regard as his best book. Freud argued, at least in\nhis later writings, that men had a given amount of “instinctual energy” which\nwas divided between a life instinct, called Eros, and a death instinct. Civilisation had\narisen, he said, when the life instincts which drove men to seek pleasure were\n“repressed” and the instinctual energy behind them diverted to work. This\nrepression was imposed by external necessity – men had to submit to unpleasant toil\nbecause in the prevailing conditions of scarcity this was the only way they could obtain\nthe things they needed to stay alive. Thus civilisation was based on the repression of\nmen’s life instincts and, Freud added, had to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marcuse takes up the argument from here. He agrees that, in conditions of scarcity,\ncivilisation had to be based on repression but adds that not even then was all repression\nnatural (i.e. caused by natural scarcity). Some repression was, he argued, social (i.e.\ncaused by the way this scarcity was organised). This extra, “surplus-repression”\nwas imposed on the producers by the ruling classes of history. Further, Marcuse goes on,\nscarcity has now been conquered and abundance is possible. Automation means that\nunpleasant toil can be abolished, or at least very much reduced, so that men’s repressed\nlife instincts can be liberated and a world of pleasure established. Existing repression,\nin other words, is no longer imposed by nature but by society which, in the interests of a\nruling class, artificially preserves scarcity and forces most men to be mere instruments\nof production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is an interesting view (and a neat answer to those who say that Freud proved\nSocialism impossible), but whether it is valid depends on the validity of Freud’s theory\nof instincts. This theory is, in fact, pure speculation. Nobody has yet discovered in the\nhuman organism anything resembling the “instinctual energy” whose laws of\ntransformation the theory is supposed to describe. So there is no way of telling whether\nMarcuse is any more right than others; like Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm who in\nsignificantly different ways have tried to combine Marx and Freud. The safest attitude to\ntake is that all theories based on Freud, including Marcuse’s, are as yet only unverified\nsuggestions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, Marcuse still claims that Freud “discovered the mechanism of social\nand political control in the depth dimension of instinctual drives and\nsatisfactions”. How this alleged discovery has been put to effective use by the\nruling class is the basic theme of “One-dimensional Man” (1964). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This book has been described as “the most subversive book published in the United\nStates this century”. This is an exaggeration since a large part of it, including the\ntitle, must be incomprehensible to those unacquainted with the theories of Hegel. Hegel\nheld that everything was in the process of developing into something else. A thing\ntherefore had two dimensions; what it was at any given time (its positive side) and what\nit could become (its negative side). One-dimensional thought only sees what is and not\nwhat can and ought to be. Applied to social and political thinking it produces a man who\nsees no alternative to the present system. Marcuse argues that this “one dimensional\nman” has been deliberately created by the ruling class’s use of Freudian insights to\nbrainwash the working class. In his view, modern capitalism is just as totalitarian as\nfascism. The difference is that it relies on “the scientific management of\ninstincts”, rather than terror, to keep the working class down. This because\ntechnical progress has not only made possible a non-repressive society of abundance, but\nhas also provided the means for manipulating the masses into accepting and being satisfied\nwith the present system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In offering a psychological explanation for the continuing working class support for\ncapitalism and hostility to socialist ideas, Marcuse seems to have provided an answer to a\nproblem which has long concerned socialists – Why haven’t the working class become\nsocialist when socialism is so obviously in their best interest? On the other hand,\nplausible as this sort of explanation might be, it does challenge the view that material\ninterests are ultimately decisive in the actions of classes. For it is saying that\npsychology can be used to make workers permanently ignore their material interests.\nMarcuse, remember, is saying not simply that the workers have been taught to accept\ncapitalism (which is quite true), but that their psychological and even biological nature\nhas been changed so that they now really “need” capitalism. This unMarxist view\nput Marcuse in a dilemma from which he himself confessed to find no way out. He still\naccepts that, in the end, only a socialist working class majority can establish socialism.\nBut how can this majority ever come into being if the working class have been brainwashed\ninto needing capitalism as part of their psychological make-up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time he wrote “One-dimensional Man”, Marcuse was pessimistic. In his\ntypical philosophical manner he wrote, “The chance is that, in this period, the\nhistorical extremes may meet again – the most advanced consciousness of humanity and its\nmost exploited force”, and added, “It is nothing but a chance.” (“The\nmost exploited force”, by the way, was no longer the working class as a whole but the\npoverty-stricken victims of racial discrimination in the ghettos). He subsequently had\ncause to be a little more hopeful, with the growth of the student protest, black power,\nanti-Vietnam war, hippie and underground movements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marcuse has been interpreted as saying that these “outcasts and outsiders”\nwere becoming a new revolutionary class, but he himself explicitly repudiated this view.\nAll he seems to have meant was that their rebellion would be one of the factors which\ncould contribute to the downfall of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the same, Marcuse was fairly linked with the so-called “student\nrevolutionaries” because he provided a philosophical justification for almost\neverything they chose to do, from violent street confrontations with the authorities,\nthrough support for the Vietcong, to the suppression of points of view they find\nobjectionable. In what is perhaps the most dangerous of his writings, an essay on\n“Repressive Tolerance” (1965), Marcuse attempted to justify the denial of\nfreedom of speech, the press, assembly and organisation to <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism,\ndiscrimination on the grounds of race or religion, or which oppose the extension of public\nservices, social security, medical care, etc.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The views he lists are objectionable and should be opposed but Marcuse is saying more\nthan this: that they should not be allowed to be expressed. Although he does at least\nconcede that this would be “undemocratic” he justifies this censorship as\nnecessary in order to establish genuine democracy. Nor does he deny that it is an accurate\nresult when the overwhelming majority vote for capitalism in elections. What he claims is\nthat a genuine political democracy can only be said to exist when those who vote are free\nagents and that the workers who vote for capitalism are not free agents because they have\nunknowingly been brainwashed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marcuse’s conclusion that the enlightened minority are therefore justified in acting in\nan undemocratic manner is highly dangerous. In fact it has led him to toy with the idea\nthat the minority should even try to seize power and impose a temporary dictatorship\nduring which the working class could be “unbrainwashed” so as to become capable\nof establishing socialism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In “An Essay on Liberation” (1969) he writes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“True, such government, initially, would not have the endorsement of the majority\n‘inherited’ from the previous government – but once the chain of the past governments is\nbroken, the majority would be in a state of flux and, released from the past management,\nfree to judge the new government in terms of the new common interest.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and, in a talk given to Berlin students in 1967 (published in Five Lectures): <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You can of course say, and I say it to myself often enough, if this is all true,\nhow can we imagine these new concepts even arising here and now in living human beings if\nthe entire society is against such an emergence of new needs. This is the question with\nwhich we have to deal. At the same time it amounts to the question of whether the\nemergence of these new needs can be conceived at all as a radical development out of\nexisting ones, or whether instead, in order to set free these needs, a dictatorship\nappears necessary, which in any case would be very different from the Marxian dictatorship\nof the proletariat: namely, a dictatorship, a counter-administration, that eliminates the\nhorrors spread by the established administration. This is one of the things that most\ndisquiets me and that we should seriously discuss.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although Marcuse has never specifically advocated such a dictatorship he has never\nrepudiated it either. Such a view rejects the Marxist proposition that “the\nemancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”. It\nrevives an old-fashioned revolutionary idea which when tried, as in Russia after 1917, has\nled to the self-styled enlightened minority becoming a new ruling class. But then\nMarcuse’s views on Russia are ambiguous too. It is possible to detect in “Soviet\nMarxism” (1958) a sympathy with the Bolsheviks’ policy of seizing power first without\nmajority support for socialism and then trying to educate the people to socialism. Though\nhe is quite clear that Russia is not socialist. He writes in a footnote, “Use of the\nterm ‘socialist’ nowhere implies that this society is socialist in the sense envisaged by\nMarx and Engels.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though he was not a Trotskyist, , like Trotsky however, Marcuse thought that the\nexistence in Soviet Russia of nationalisation and planning meant that its economy had a\n“socialist basis” and that to establish socialism, only a “political\nrevolution” displacing bureaucracy was required, rather than a “full social\nrevolution” as in the West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marcuse also believed that the industrial development of Russia would be one of the\nfactors that would help undermine the Western capitalist economy. In view of this position\non Russia it is not surprising that he supported movements such as the Vietcong, calling\nthem “anti-capitalist forces” and “elemental socialism in action”.\nWhen he was not toying with the idea of a minority anti-repressive dictatorship, his\nvision of the establishment of world socialism involved western capitalism being\nundermined both from outside by the success of “anti-imperialist” guerrillas and\nthe growing strength of the Soviet bloc and also from within by movements such as those of\nblack people, students and hippies. The socialist revolution in the West would then allow\na political revolution to put Russia back on the socialist road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In all this Marcuse is typical of the assorted Trotskyists, Maoists, Gueveraists and\nothers who are supposed to follow him but who do not always recognise the intellectual\ndebt they owe him. What is of value in his writings is his emphasis on the possibilities\nof abundance and on the end of utopia. After all, the WSM has often been called utopian\neven by leftists and can fully agree with Marcuse when he says: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What is denounced as utopian is no longer that which has no place and cannot have\nany place in the historical universe, but rather that which is blocked from coming about\nby the power of established societies.” (An Essay on Liberation). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author: A, Buick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Please email your comments about this article to feedback@worldsocialism.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to the Socialist Writers Index<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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