7 Critical theory: the frankfurt school contributions of Herbert Marcuse

Shubhangi Vaidya

epgp books

 

1. Introduction

 

The earlier modules familiarized you with the important contributions of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in articulating the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. These scholars opened up the social and ideological foundations of the western capitalist society to intense scrutiny and critique and put forth the idea that in the guise of rationality, individuality and freedom, human beings are unwittingly becoming enslaved by the contours of contemporary capitalism which is based upon blind consumerism and the need to accumulate more and more material goods. Culture becomes commodified and the „totally administered society‟ regulates and controls the ways we think and act, blunting the possibilities of dissent and contestation. The present module will introduce you to probably the best known and most popular of the Frankfurt School theorists- Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) -whose seminal contributions and ideas influenced a generation of activists and scholars to critically question the direction in which contemporary society was going and pose a radical alternative. Marcuse is regarded as the „Guru‟ of the New Left and the student uprisings that took place in the USA and Europe in the latter part of the decade of the nineteen sixties; the decade of the „hippies‟ and non-conformist rebels who shunned the „bourgeois‟ family and its morality and consumerist capitalist lifestyles and domination of the non-west by the advanced western societies.

 

Marcuse was born in 1898 in Berlin. His mother was Gertrud Kreslawsky and his father was a well-off businessman, Carl Marcuse. His childhood was that of a typical German upper-middle class youth whose Jewish family was well integrated into German society. In 1916 Marcuse was called to military duty during the World War I (1914-1918). It was in the military where his political education began, although during this period his political involvement was brief. The experience of war and the German Revolution of 1918-1919 led Marcuse to a study of Marxism as he tried to understand „the dynamics of capitalism and imperialism, as well as the failure of the German Revolution‟ (Kellner 1984: 17).The German revolution was a consequence of the social tensions and economic crisis that the German Empire experienced after it was defeated in World War I; however, due the fragmentation and infighting between the left-wing parties, it failed in its objective of putting in place a new kind of socio-political system. Marcuse also wanted to learn more about socialism and the Marxian theory of revolution in order to understand his own inability to identify with any of the major Left parties at that time (Kellner 1984: 17). However, this study of Marxism would be brief. In 1918 Marcuse was released from military service. He then went to Freiburg to pursue his studies and completed a PhD in Literature. In his dissertation of 1922, „The German Artist-Novel‟, the artist represents a form of radical subjectivity. The novel as a literary form depicts the longing and striving of society and thus embodies a sense of alienation from social life. This orientation of thought was influenced by his encounter with Marxism. In simple words, the artist experiences a gap between the ideal and the real; on the one hand, through his artistic work he attempts to create an ideal world for humanity whereas in reality, the conditions of his life are far from ideal. This produces a sense of alienation in the artist which ultimately becomes the catalyst for social change. Explicating the radical function of art as an agent of transformation is an important contribution of Marcuse. However, just as art embodied the potential for liberation and the formation of radical subjectivity, it was also capable of being taken up by systems of domination and used to further or maintain domination. This aspect would be explored by him in his 1937 essay „The Affirmative Character of Culture‟. Culture, which is the domain of art, develops in tension with the overall structure of a given society. The values and ideal produced by culture calls for the transcending of oppressive social reality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

 

After receiving his Ph.D in literature in 1922, and following a short career as a bookseller in Berlin, he returned to Freiburg in 1928 to study philosophy with Martin Heidegger, considered one of the most influential thinkers in Germany at the time. While in Berlin Marcuse had discovered Heidegger’s newly published „Being and Time‟. His interest in philosophy had remained secondary to his interest in German literature up to this point. The excitement caused by „Being and Time‟ would lead him to a life-long serious engagement with philosophy. Marcuse’s first published article in 1928 attempted a synthesis of the philosophical perspectives of phenomenology, existentialism, and Marxism. Marcuse argued that much Marxist thought had degenerated into a rigid orthodoxy and thus needed concrete lived and „phenomenological‟ experience to revitalize the theory. Marcuse believed that Marxism neglected the problem of the individual and the possibilities of individual transformation and liberation. Marcuse continued to maintain throughout his life that Heidegger was the greatest teacher and thinker that he had ever encountered. However, due to Heidegger‟s growing association with the Nazis, Marcuse was disillusioned and thus parted company with his teacher. After completing a „Habilitations Dissertation‟ (a post-doctoral dissertation) on „Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity‟, he decided to leave Freiburg in 1933 to join the Institut fur Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) which was located in Frankfurt at the time, which later shifted base to North America during the period of the World War II. His study of Hegel‟s philosophy contributed to a resurgence of interest in Hegel‟s theories and was very well regarded by scholars at the time. In 1933, he also brought out the first major review of Marx’s „Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts‟ of 1844 which had just been published. The early works of  Marx,  hitherto unknown to the public, provided a rich repository of ideas which considerably enhanced scholarly understanding of his later works. Marcuse came to be widely regarded as an authoritative new voice in German philosophy. As a member of the Institute for Social Research, he became deeply involved in their interdisciplinary projects which included working out a model for critical social theory, developing a theory of the new stage of state and monopoly capitalism, articulating the relationships between philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism, and providing a systematic analysis and critique of German fascism. Marcuse was deeply identified with the „Critical Theory‟ of the Institute and throughout his life was close to Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, and others in the Institute’s inner circle (Kellner 1984).

 

2. Reason and Revolution 

 

In 1934, Marcuse fled from Nazi Germany to escape the victimization he would surely have faced as a Jew and a radical leftist thinker. He migrated to the United States where he lived for the rest of his life. The Institute for Social Research was granted offices and an academic affiliation with Columbia University, where Marcuse worked during the 1930s and early 1940s. In 1941, he published his first major work in English, „Reason and Revolution‟. The book explores the ideas of Hegel and Marx and their impact upon social theory. It demonstrates the similarities between Hegel and Marx, and introduced many English speaking readers to the Hegelian-Marxian tradition of dialectical thinking and social analysis. The text is regarded even to day as one of the best introductions to Hegel and Marx providing excellent analyses of the categories and methods of dialectical thinking (Kellner 1984). The purpose of dialectical or negative thinking is to expose the inherent contradictions that characterize advanced industrial societies and then to overcome them through revolutionary practice. Not only does society produce contradictions and the forms of domination that come with them, it also produces the social and psychological mechanisms that conceal or hide these contradictions. For example, the great social contradiction that is seen in capitalist societies is the co-existence of wealth and poverty. The rich, who own and control the means of production, grow richer, while the poor who toil in farms and factories grow poorer. The ideology underpinning capitalism is that the free market and the pursuit of wealth will ultimately result in prosperity for all and that the wealth and profit accumulated by the rich will „trickle down‟ to the poor eventually. This ideology conceals the inherent inequity underlying the system and the way in which it legitimizes monopolistic capitalism in which the largest and most powerful players eventually „swallow up‟ their competitors. According to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013), „The capitalist belief that unbridled competition is good for everyone conceals the goal of purging society of competition by allowing large corporations to buy out their competition‟. In the capitalist system, the role of the worker becomes reduced merely to that of an object, a cog in the wheel that is used to generate production and profits for the capitalist. The worker does not become a free and rational subject, is not able to actualize his or her potential as a free and rational human being but is instead reduced to a life of drudgery and toil in order to eke out the means for survival. The very society that is created by human beings oppresses and dehumanizes its creators. The „essence‟ of the worker is thus erased. The task of dialectical thinking is to bring this situation to consciousness. Once it is brought to consciousness it can be resolved through revolutionary practice. As the title of the book suggests, „reason‟ helps to distinguish between „existence‟ and „essence‟ and conceptualizes those norms and ideas that may be actualized through social practice. Kellner (1984) remarks that if social conditions come in the way, then reason calls for revolution (cf The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or SEP).

 

3.  Eros and Civilization 

 

Marcuse had a stint working in the U.S. government from 1941 through the early 1950’s. When he returned to intellectual work in the 1950s he published one of his best known works „Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud‟ in 1955. The book attempts a synthesis of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and those of Karl Marx in a new and original way. Psychoanalysis was an essential theoretical tool for the Frankfurt School from the beginning; Max Horkheimer was deeply influenced by it and he inducted psychoanalyst Erich Fromm after taking over as Director of the Institute in 1931. The aim was to use psychoanalytical concepts to understand the psyche of the working class and their reluctance to revolt against oppressive social and economic structures. Marcuse developed his own unique approach to and interpretation of psychoanalytic theory, combining it with a Marxist bent in his analysis of advanced industrial societies. Freud believed that much of human behavior was motivated by two driving instincts: the life instincts and the death instincts. The life instincts are those that relate to a basic need for survival, reproduction and pleasure. They include such things as the need for food, shelter, love and sex. He also suggested that all humans have an unconscious wish for death, which he referred to as the death instincts. Self-destructive behavior, he believed, was one expression of the death drive. Freud’s „Civilization and its Discontents‟ (1930) paints a bleak picture of the evolution of civilization as the evolution of greater and greater repression from which there seems to be no escape. The death and life instincts are engaged in a battle for dominance with no clear winner in sight. Marcuse responds to Freud‟s pessimism in his work. According to him, Freud fails to develop the emancipatory possibility of his own theory. Marcuse attempts to show that human instincts or drives are not merely biological and fixed, but rather, are social, historical, and flexible. He also attempts to show that the repressive society also produces the possibility of the abolition of repression (Marcuse 1955: 5 cf SEP). Marcuse argues that human instincts are shaped by society and social organization, and therefore are not „fixed‟ but subject to change. The transformation of „animal drives‟ into „human instincts‟ through the influence of society results in the transformation of the „pleasure principle‟ into the „reality principle‟. According to Freud, it is a hostile society that represses the free play of the „pleasure principle. For Marcuse, liberation means a freeing up of the pleasure principle. However, he realizes that if human beings simply act according to the demands of the pleasure principle, social existence will become impossible as the rights of others may be infringed.  Hence, there has to be a certain amount of repression, and human beings need to operate within certain mutually accepted boundaries in order that social life proceeds smoothly. In dealing with this contradiction between individual desires and social controls Marcuse suggests some creative modifications of Freud’s theory and introduces two new terms to distinguish between the biological and social dimensions of human instincts. Basic repression refers to the type of repression or modification of the instincts that is necessary „for the perpetuation of the human race in civilization‟ (Marcuse 1955: 35 cf SEP). Surplus repression, on the other hand, refers to „the restrictions necessitated by social domination‟ (Marcuse 1955: 35 cf SEP). The purpose of surplus repression is to shape the instincts in accordance with the present „performance principle‟ which is „the prevailing form of the reality principle’ (Marcuse 1955: 35 cf SEP). In capitalist societies, human beings and their labor are construed as a means to an end, namely, serving the interests of the system of production. They become alienated from the process and must still submit to it in order to survive. To use a sociological term, they are socialized into fulfilling the demands of a system in which their humanity and agency counts for nothing and where they are programmed to conform and thus perform their prescribed functions. This is what Marcuse means by the performance principle. In order to manipulate the worker to conform to the system, the libido is restricted and the individual must internalize the „laws‟ that govern the smooth functioning of the system. Individual desires must conform to those of the system. In other words, „he desires what he is supposed to desire‟ (Marcuse 1955: 46 cf SEP).

 

He writes:

 

„Society is stratified according to the competitive economic performances of its members.. their labor is work for an apparatus which they do not control, which operates as an independent power to which individuals must submit if they want to live. And it becomes the more alien the more specialized the division of labor becomes. Men do not live their own lives but perform pre- established functions while they work, they do not fulfill their own needs and faculties but work in alienation hope…Libido is diverted for socially useful performances in which the individual works for himself only in so far as he works for the apparatus, engaged in activities that mostly do not coincide with his own faculties‟ (1966:8 cf Wolin, 2006: 86).

 

Marcuse called for the end of repression and creation of a civilization which would involve libidinal and non-alienated labor free and open sexuality, and production of a society and culture which would further freedom and happiness. As Western society had more or less conquered the problems of hunger, want and the satisfaction of basic human needs was more or less assured, society could afford to let go its stranglehold on the desires and creativity of individuals and allow them to freely express themselves and their feelings. His vision of liberation anticipated many of the values of the 1960s counterculture which rejected the conformist, conservative values of the previous generations and believed in free love, gratification of desires and a communal life based upon mutual sharing rather than accumulation and competition. Marcuse became a major intellectual and political influence during the decade that has come to be known in popular parlance as the „swinging sixties‟. His criticism of western philosophy was based on the  fact  that  philosophy  tends  to treat  human  beings  as  pure,  and  possessing  abstract consciousness. The body and its passions are to be subdued by reason or logos. Marcuse did not intend to subjugate logos (reason) to eros (desire). He wanted to return Eros to its proper place as equal to logos, as the driver of life.

 

While his radical critique of existing society and its values, and his call for a non-repressive civilization made him a hero among the young generation of students and activists, he was strongly criticized by his former colleague Erich Fromm who accused him of „nihilism‟ (toward existing values and society) and irresponsible hedonism. Marcuse on the other hand accused Fromm of conservatism and the heated debate that resulted between these two eminent intellectuals of the Frankfurt School was an unpleasant consequence of the publication of the book.

 

4.  The ‘One Dimensional Man’ 

 

In 1958, Marcuse joined Brandeis University and became one of the most popular and influential members of its faculty. He published a wide-ranging critique of both advanced capitalist and communist societies in ‘One-Dimensional Man‟ (1964) a text which acquired iconic status as a classic of critical theory. „This book theorized the decline of revolutionary potential in capitalist societies and the development of new forms of social control. Marcuse argued that “advanced industrial society” created false needs which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption. Mass media and culture, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought all reproduced the existing system and attempt to eliminate negativity, critique, and opposition. The result was a “one-dimensional” universe of thought and behavior in which the very aptitude and ability for critical thinking and oppositional behavior was withering away‟ (Kellner 1984).

 

The first chapter of „One-Dimensional Man‟ begins with the following sentence:

 

A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress‟ (Marcuse 1964: 1 cf SEP).

 

One-Dimensional Man’ analyses the decline of dialectical thinking which is capable of understanding the contradictions by which society is constituted and the forces of domination that sustain it. The person who thinks critically demands social change. One-dimensional thinking does not demand change nor does it recognize the degree to which the individual is a victim of forces of domination in society.

 

The idea of a „democratic unfreedom‟ refers to the free acceptance of oppression and surplus repression. Marcuse questioned two of the fundamental postulates of orthodox Marxism: the revolutionary proletariat and inevitability of capitalist crisis.   He uses the insights of Freud in„One-Dimensional Man‟ and in ‘Eros and Civilization‟ to understand why the working class who Marx predicted would rise and revolt do not actually do so and the manner in which they are psychologically controlled by the system through surplus repression. Freud„s theory of the „super- ego‟ explained how individuals in society internalize the norms and values that they learn from„authority figures‟ (parents, teachers, priests, etc.) who exercise control over their thoughts and actions. According to Marcuse, in advanced, industrial societies the authority figure is no longer needed as the super ego becomes depersonalized and domination no longer requires force. So how does this insidious system of social control and regulation work? First, the system must make the citizens to feel freer than they really are. Second, the system must provide the citizens with enough goods to keep them pacified. Third, the citizens must identify with their oppressors and fourth, political discourse must be put under erasure. To give a simple example, when people across classes watch the same films or television programmes or hear the same songs or are constantly fed with the idea of a certain way of life or value system that the nation shares, they are lulled into forgetting the contradictions within the system and become victims of one- dimensional thinking that does not permit them to critically see the total picture.

 

Even though he was skeptical about the working class revolution predicted by Marx, he believed that by inculcating radical thinking and social critique amongst those who were dispossessed or oppressed by the system, forces of domination could be challenged and overthrown. He was particularly impressed by the feminist movement and its radical questioning of the gendered institutions that create and nurture sexism and discrimination. Because of his support for new, emerging forces of radical opposition, he was hated and reviled by the „Establishment‟ who saw him as an anarchist and rebel who stood against all the values of Western capitalist society.

 

One-Dimensional Man ‟ was also severely criticized by orthodox Marxists and yet it had a deep influence on the„ New Left ‟as it articulated their growing dissatisfaction with both capitalist societies and Soviet communist societies where Marxism had taken the form of a rigid, bureaucratic system where the dictatorial state crushed any kind of critical or oppositional thinking and ruled with an iron hand.

 

5.  Marcuse: The Public Intellectual 

 

One-Dimensional Man‟ was followed by a series of books and articles which articulated the politics of the New Left and their critique of capitalist society. The famous and controversial essay „Repressive Tolerance‟ (1965) is another example of the problem of one-dimensional thinking. Here Marcuse shows how terms, ideas, or concepts that have their origin in struggles for liberation can be co-opted and used to legitimate oppression. The concept of tolerance was once used as a critical concept by marginalized social groups. According to Marcuse, the term is co- opted and used by the Establishment to legitimate its own oppressive views and policies. It is the idea of pure tolerance or tolerance for the sake of tolerance that puts under erasure the real concrete social conflict out of which the concept emerged. Rather than pure tolerance, Marcuse calls for discriminating tolerance (SEP).

 

An Essay on Liberation‟ (1969) celebrated all of the existing liberation movements of the sixties from the Viet Cong who were fighting to overthrow an oppressive political regime to the hippies in the U.S and Europe who rebelled against bourgeois morality and the excesses of capitalist societies. While it was hailed as a revolutionary piece by many radicals it ended up alienating Establishment academics and those who opposed the movements of the 1960s.

 

For Marcuse, the specter of liberation haunted advanced industrial societies. One might even say that Marcuse’s own critical theory was haunted by the specter of liberation. That is, at one level Marcuse engaged in a critique of oppressive social structures so that the door for revolution and liberation could be opened. At another level, Marcuse would modify his theory to make room for various form of resistance that he saw developing in oppressive societies. Marcuse was at once a teacher of revolutionary consciousness and a student‟ (SEP).

 

In the Preface to „An Essay on Liberation‟ while reflecting on the student revolt of 1968 Marcuse writes:

 

In proclaiming the “permanent challenge,” (la contestation permanente), the “permanent education,” the Great Refusal, they recognized the mark of social repression, even in the most sublime manifestations of traditional culture, even in the most spectacular manifestations of technical progress. They have again raised a specter (and this time a specter which haunts not only the bourgeoisie but all exploitative bureaucracies): the specter of a revolution which subordinates the development of productive forces and higher standards of living to the requirements of creating solidarity for the human species, for abolishing poverty and misery beyond all national frontiers and spheres of interest, for the attainment of peace‟ (Marcuse 1969: ix–x cf SEP).

 

The student protests of the 1960s were a form of the „Great Refusal‟, in which the younger generation said „NO‟ to multiple forms of repression and domination. This Great Refusal demands a new, free society and the flourishing of a new kind of sensibility or thought process. While Marxism restricts itself to changing power relations, Marcuse makes a mental leap and speaks of new forms of subjectivity. Human subjectivity in its present form is the product of systems of domination. Once these forms of subjectivity are erased, the systems of domination it engenders will also cease to exist. When a new form of subjectivity which respects freedom and rejects domination emerges, a new and liberated form of society will also come into being. He speculated that:

 

Prior to all ethical behavior in accordance with specific social standards, prior to all ideological expression, morality is a disposition of the organism, perhaps rooted in the erotic drive to counter aggressiveness, to create and preserve ever greater unities of life. We would then have, this side of all “values”, an instinctual foundation for solidarity among human beings- a solidarity which has been effectively repressed in line with the requirements of a class society but which now appears as a precondition for liberation‟ (Marcuse 1969:19 cf Wolin 2006:79).

 

In 1965, Brandeis  University refused to renew Marcuse‟s teaching contract. He received an appointment at the University of California at La Jolla where he remained until his retirement in the 1970s. This was his most influential period in public life, during which he published many articles and gave lectures and advice to student radicals all over the world. He travelled widely and his work was often discussed in the mass media, thus becoming one of the few American intellectuals to have such a mass appeal and limelight. He was always respected and even idolized by his students, and soon his students began to gain influential academic positions and to promote his ideas, making him a major force in the intellectual landscape of the U.S. and beyond.

 

In his last book, ‘The Aesthetic Dimension‟ (1979), Marcuse returned to his earlier passion of art. He looked at the emancipatory potential of aesthetic form in so called „high culture‟. Marcuse thought that the best of the bourgeois tradition of art contained powerful indictments of bourgeois society and emancipatory visions of a better society. Thus, he attempted to defend the importance of great art for the projection of emancipation and argued that Cultural Revolution was an indispensable part of revolutionary politics. He takes a polemical stance against the problematic interpretation of the function of art by orthodox Marxists. These Marxists claimed that only proletarian art could be revolutionary. Marcuse attempts to establish the revolutionary potential of all art by establishing the autonomy of authentic art. Marcuse states: „It seems that art as art expresses a truth, an experience, a necessity which, although not in the domain of radical praxis, are nevertheless essential components of revolution‟ (Marcuse 1978: 1 cf SEP).

 

In this context it is important to bear in mind that for Marcuse and the Frankfurt School there was no evidence that the proletariat would rise up against their oppressors as predicted by Marx. Their theorizing attempted to uncover the social and psychological mechanisms at work in society that made the proletariat complicit in their own domination. The student revolts of the 1960s confirmed much of the direction of Marcuse’s critical theory by showing how the need for social change includes class struggle but cannot be reduced to class struggle. There is a multiplicity of social groups in contemporary society that seek social change for various reasons. There are multiple forms of oppression and repression that make revolution desirable. Hence, the form of art produced, and its revolutionary vision may be determined by the various subject positions. Each subject as distinct from other subjects represents a particular subject position. For example, white women and the working class women. However, these individual features operate within a structural matrix, i.e. in a given society gender, race, class, level of education etc, are interpreted in certain ways. Experiences and the opportunities provided by them are often affected by subject and structural position and produce what Marcuse calls „the inner history of the individual‟ (Marcuse 1978: 5 cf SEP).

 

Subject positions of oppression do not refer to class oppression alone and hence radical subjectivity and art may come from any of these positions. Economic class is just one structural position among many. Hence, it is not only the proletariat who may have an interest in social change. Marxist ideology by focusing merely on the proletariat ignores the importance of radicalizing human subjectivity in creating a revolution.

 

„The subjectivity of individuals, their own consciousness and unconscious tends to be dissolved into class consciousness. Thereby, a major prerequisite of revolution is minimized, namely, the fact that the need for radical change must be rooted in the subjectivity of individuals themselves, in their intelligence, and their passions, their drives and their goals‟ (Marcuse 1978: 3–4cf SEP).

 

5.  Conclusion 

 

As we have seen, amongst all the Frankfurt School thinkers, it was Marcuse who carved out an indelible place in the public life and contemporary revolutionary discourses of the times. He engaged with the fundamental debates of the time, namely, war and dominance, illiberal politics, consumerist culture and the alienation of human beings from their inner core and their manipulation by a system they simply did not have the capacity to understand, as they had been socialized into conformity and become „cultural dopes‟. Western society had conquered the pressing human problems of hunger and want, but it had also created a dehumanized society where the inner core of individual personality and subjectivity, the libidinal drives that contributed to human creativity and self-expression were systematically repressed  and neutralized. He urged for a freeing up of these creative energies and the free play of eroticism, sensuality, creativity and human liberty. In a socio-political milieu where Western capitalist societies were waging war and supporting repressive regimes, and where the youth felt frustrated and alienated from the value system of the older generation, Marcuse‟s ideas seemed fresh, exciting and liberating. Moreover, unlike other „armchair‟ academics, Marcuse was always ready to engage with and lend support to protest movements and politics. Marcuse’s work in philosophy and social theory generated fierce controversy and polemics; however, it reanimated these disciplines in a fresh and fundamental way. Marcuse is also credited with reopening Marxist theory to a more nuanced reading by highlighting Marx‟s early works which were fundamentally concerned with the problem of human self-realization and alienation. He emphasized the core philosophical foundations that lay at the heart of Marxism; it was not merely a programme for social and economic change but a philosophical engagement with the very essence of human life. Similarly, Marcuse reopened Freudian concepts to new and exciting interpretations; rather than the gloomy, pessimistic view that society and civilization necessitated repression and taming of human drives; he saw these very drives as instrumental in forging a new kind of social solidarity based upon mutual respect, liberation and self-actualization. Marx and Freud meet in the work of Marcuse and contribute greatly to our understanding of ourselves and our world.

 

6.  Summary 

 

Let us look at the main points of this module:

  • Herbert Marcuse‟s (1898-1979) contributions and ideas influenced a generation of activists and scholars to critically question the direction in which contemporary society was going and pose a radical alternative. Marcuse is regarded as the „Guru‟ of the New Left and the student uprisings that took place in the USA and Europe in the latter part of the decade of the nineteen sixties.
  • Marcuse’s first published article in 1928 attempted a synthesis of the philosophical perspectives of phenomenology, existentialism, and Marxism. Marcuse argued that much
  • Marxist thought had degenerated into a rigid orthodoxy and thus needed concrete lived and „phenomenological‟ experience to revitalize the theory.
  • Marcuse believed that Marxism neglected the problem of the individual and the possibilities of individual transformation and liberation.
  • Marcuse considered Heidegger as the greatest teacher and thinker that he had ever encountered. However, due to Heidegger‟s growing association with the Nazis, Marcuse was disillusioned and thus parted company with his teacher.
  • In the 1950s he published one of his best known works „Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud‟ in 1955. This book attempts a synthesis of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, and those of Karl Marx in a new and original way.
  • Marcuse developed his own unique approach to and interpretation of psychoanalytic theory, combining it with a Marxist bent in his analysis of advanced industrial societies.
  • Marcuse called for the end of repression and creation of a civilization which would involve libidinal and non-alienated labor free and open sexuality, and production of a society and culture which would further freedom and happiness.
  • He published a wide-ranging critique of both advanced capitalist and communist societies in ‘One-Dimensional Man’ (1964) analyses the decline of dialectical thinking which is capable of understanding the contradictions by which society is constituted and the forces of domination that sustain it.
  • The idea of a „democratic unfreedom‟ refers to the free acceptance of oppression and surplus repression.   Marcuse questioned two of the fundamental postulates of orthodox
  • Marxism: the revolutionary proletariat and inevitability of capitalist crisis.
  • Even though he was skeptical about the working class revolution predicted by Marx, he believed that by inculcating radical thinking and social critique amongst those who were dispossessed or oppressed by the system, forces of domination could be challenged and overthrown.
  • Marcuse’s work in philosophy and social theory generated fierce controversy and polemics; however, it reanimated these disciplines in a fresh and fundamental way.
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7.  References