Key Series: Psychology and Society
[Publisher’s Note: A special note of thanks to Arnon Zangvil, whose donation helped fund the publication of this article.]
Abstract: In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse could find no strong political path to human emancipation. The clues and concepts for an exit from the technological juggernaut, and the vicious circle it creates and enforces, are to be found in Eros and Civilization, which points us to the following vision of subjective liberation: the human mind is a continuous, three-dimensional entity seeking joyous self-determination, and the Cartesian ego, standing alone, sword in hand, so to speak, against others, against Nature, and against parts of itself is a world-destroying myth or ideology, but this is something that must be experienced and known from within. Even the genius Sigmund Freud uncritically adopted a false egoic-self (the unhappy historical product of Capitalism), but not Marcuse, who outlined a new kind of individual as the necessary precondition for revolutionary change, and a new type of social movement composed of inwardly emancipating Subjects.
By Glenn Parton
1) From One-Dimensional Man to Eros and Civilization
In One-Dimensional Man (1964) Marcuse tightly formulates his concept of a “vicious circle,” and it remains one of the most important ideas of his political philosophy. This major political insight is that qualitative or revolutionary change in advanced technological society is blocked by false needs and desires (on the part of the vast majority of people) that sustain the production and consumption of goods and services, the entire established way of life, that creates these false desires and needs in the first place. To find a way out of this vicious circle is a primary concern of One-Dimensional Man?
Toward this end, Marcuse defends dialectical reason, as opposed to technological reason, because it grasps the world divided between false and true, appearance and essence, is and ought, and it pushes or pulls everything toward fulfillment, realization, completion. This kind of Reason is an inherent force within human beings, as well as the larger reality that moves us from the established society to one that is higher and better. The problem is, according to Marcuse, that the control and manipulation of consciousness and unconsciousness in advanced industrial society has increasingly undercut dialectical reason as a material force for change, leaving ontological truth intact, but outside and above historical reality, with no subject, except a few philosophers and artists, to comprehend it, and no real practice to transform ourselves and society according to it.
According to Marcuse, the dialectical logic of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Husserl—although vastly superior to Formal Logic, Analytic Philosophy, and the contemporary Philosophy of Science—are not firmly rooted in the desires and needs of the masses, who have to spend their lives in the realm of necessity. Marx was the first to realize that the entire history of Western philosophy elevates itself above the everyday life of the vast majority, but Marx’s dialectical materialism also fails to explain, and make possible, the rise of radical consciousness and revolution, which is why Marcuse turned to Freud in his earlier book, Eros and Civilization (1955).
Marx argued that the miserable lives of working people under Capitalism contradicts, and will eventually explode, the Hegelian notion that the Real is Rational, but when the “consciousness” of the working class becomes integrated into the false whole, Marcuse argued, then revolution is (indefinitely) postponed. In a 1967 lecture entitled, “Liberation from the Affluent Society,” Marcuse evokes Freud: “Liberation seems to be predicated upon the opening and the activation of a depth dimension of human existence, this side and underneath the traditional material base…a dimension even more material than the material base, a dimension underneath the material base.”
The point of the matter is that the profound thinker Herbert Marcuse, with his unsurpassed knowledge of the history of Western philosophy, and his early radical political interpretations of Heidegger and Hegel, as well as his creative exploration of the early Marx, could ultimately only find in Freud the basis for a theory of human liberation that explains both why a revolution has not happened (due to internal domination), and how a revolution might happen (due to the subversive power of Eros). It is possible to view One-Dimensional Man and Eros and Civilization as two sides, negative and positive, of a dialectical analysis of contemporary society rooted in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, but the clues and concepts for a “solution” to the vicious circle are to be found in Eros and Civilization.
When Marcuse wrote One-Dimensional Man it appeared to him that “repressive de-sublimation”—the release of sexuality in partial, localized and intensified ways that contact or compress overall erotic energy—had captured the original energy and emancipatory direction of the life-instinct. However, by the time he published “An Essay on Liberation” five years later, he saw Eros fueling a rising subculture of young people who were initiating a higher civilization. The central concept of Eros and Civilization, “non-repressive self-sublimation”–the extension of the impulse to obtain pleasure from zones of the body to higher pleasures not confined to the corporeal sphere—was actualizing an alternative America in the Sixties. This subversive instinctual force is still the key to breaking the vicious circle, and it has become, combined with a new a form of opposition that Marcuse emphasizes in his last article, “Protosocialism and Late Capitalism,” historically relevant again, I will argue.
2) Three-Dimensional Human: Marcuse’s Ontology of Liberation
There is no longer any “out there” that people are concerned about. An electronic universe, a virtual reality, offers itself as the very essence of human and non-human being. Husserl and Heidegger lamented the loss of the life-world, the existential environment, and warned against its replacement by an abstract, mathematically constructed social edifice. By the time Horkheimer wrote “Eclipse of Reason” (1947) he could find no clear exit from the hellish prison that Instrumental Reason, the mind as a calculator, had built on this planet.
Enter the work of Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization, who undertook the task of curing Reason of its paranoia and guilt, not by giving it a healthy dose of its own medicine—more and better Logos—but by conceiving it anew, as Eros. Marcuse’s encounter with Freud is an all-important turning point in the 20th Century, a brilliant intellectual synthesis that occurs but few times in any Century. The Enlightenment, German Idealism, Marxism, and the entire tradition of Western philosophy at least since Aristotle, with few exceptions, had failed to penetrate to the deeper reality of Eros as the striving for pleasure, ultimately human pleasure and happiness, so Marcuse, adopting Freud’s meta-psychology, uncovered it and developed an ontology of liberation (Marcuse, 1955; p. 228).
According to Marcuse’s ontological theory, simply put, if human beings would understand and accept our erotic nature, then we could use this creative energy to transform this miserable civilization into one in which we are truly free and happy. He incorporates the insights of Freud into a political philosophy that explains what people really need and want, not only by analyzing and criticizing culture and society, but by giving us a comprehensive theory that makes sense of our experiences, a meta-political framework that interprets everyday life and work in the larger context of earthly existence.
The idea that reality is Eros, that Being is the striving for pleasure, is relevant today because it explains how radical subjectivity can emerge in a one-dimensional society. It means that there is an inexhaustible, free-flowing psychosomatic energy that cannot be eliminated or stopped (except by death) from struggling for a social order of gratification and individual happiness. The “vicious circle” (in which false desires and needs perpetuate laws, institutions, and a culture of domination that produce these false desires and needs) is not completely closed, not sealed shut, and there is always the hope, the realistic possibility, that an awareness of an alternative way of life will break-though, politicize, and overturn Global Capitalism, no matter how buried and remote this possibility is at present.
Only a Movement with a sense/awareness of who we are and why we are, one that taps and strengthens the life-instinct, can eventually bring forth a Revolution. The established reality does not and cannot satisfy human beings down deep. The more we taste real freedom and happiness, the more this false world pales in comparison (like flickering images on the wall of a cave). This is the dialectical process that Marcuse discovered in Freud: real change is powered by Eros and guided by Reason, two dimensions of one and the same evolving energy. Freud helped Marcuse to see an exit from the vicious circle, and even Marcuse’s Aesthetic theory depends on arousing (subversive) sensibility through Art.
The idea that Eros is inwardly moving people toward real change is something Marcuse saw manifesting itself in the ecology movement, the women’s movement, the student movement, the peace movement, and the anti-authoritarian movement—to cite some of his favorite examples. These radical political tendencies are, according to Marcuse, existential revolts against inequality and injustice, as well as affirmative biological urges or instincts for an altogether different way of life. It is the source of the energy driving these movements, and the pleasure principle that governs them, that Marcuse found so promising because they spring from the deep, uncompromising core of human beings.
In Eros and Civilization Marcuse borrows Charles Odier’s concept of a “superid” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 228) in order to explain a force, in addition to Eros, within the Self that is potentially revolutionary. Our long childhood dependency on adults, especially the early mother-child relationship, together with aspects of our “archaic heritage” (what is passed down to us from our ancestors, stretching all the way back to our tribal beginnings) create an inner moral voice, a conscience, that sustains ideas, values, images, of a far more loving and satisfying relationship to the world than the competitive and antagonistic one we experience as working adults under Capitalism.
Marcuse is aware that Freud rejected the idea of an innate conscience, but Marcuse derives it from psychoanalytic theory because there is, according to Freud, no escaping the helplessness of childhood and the special, lasting impressions of the first caretakers, notably the warm and tender mother, nor is it possible to completely forget, as Freud acknowledged, the wisdom of our ancestors, deposited in human nature and (to some degree, although a shrinking one) in the laws, institutions, and Culture that surround us and influence us. The superid, in distinction from the superego, is a higher, differentiated structure of the mind that recalls and upholds an earlier time of harmony and satisfaction with others and the environment.
This superid is a close ally of the id (containing Eros) in its striving for pleasure and fulfillment; it is a persistent, inner subjective force for socio-economic change in accordance with the pleasure principle. Although the reality principle begins to dominate the human personality around five or six years of age, following the Oedipus Complex, it is in the modern workplace, more than anywhere else, where the maturing individual encounters and submits to a world that blatantly contradicts and discredits the youthful ego ideal of cooperation and compassion that s/he learned as a child, and that is a significant part of our bio-cultural inheritance, where the individual is still the genus.
According to Marcuse, the struggle for existence is obsolete because technical progress has conquered scarcity, but it is artificially sustained for the sake of profit. The awareness that we could work less and live better would come to general consciousness, so it has to be repressed in order to prevent protest and rebellion. Along with a strengthening of repression to deny the increasing historical possibilities for freedom and happiness, there is also a heightening of guilt because the superid knows that another world is possible. Marcuse derives this kind of guilt, guilt about a revolution that has not been carried out (that Freud did not acknowledge) from psychoanalytic theory, and it is a driving force in Marcuse’s qualitative conception of progress and human emancipation.
The ego, the third and final structure of the human mind (in addition to the id and ego-ideal), eventually identifies with the values of the prevailing historical socio-economic system, Capitalism, on which adults depend for the satisfaction of their needs. This ego represents the performance principle (survival through competition and exploitation) as the reality principle, and it forgets that the pleasure principle is the deeper reality, the ultimate purpose of human existence, that the ego is supposed to protect and serve.
For five hundred years Capitalism has shaped and ruled the Western world, and the Western ego has subordinated itself to this specific socio-economic system by resisting the demands of the id and superid in the interest of individual self-preservation. Instead of a three-dimensional mind functioning as an integral whole, the established reality ego has usurped the role of master. This shrunken ego, cut off from the larger self, is doomed to a life of meaninglessness, depression, and ultimately self-destruction because without the wisdom of the id and the superid to ground it and guide it, it is lost and unable to determine what is of true value in life.
Marcuse argued, following Freud, that the origin of rational thought is the memory of gratification and the impulse to recapture it, but the reality ego, the little self, resists the biological memory and cultural wisdom of the deepest and oldest layers of the mind, and functions as a calculator or computer that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. In order for us to think properly, to think rationally, in the sense of sustaining a social order of gratification, there must be a re-collection and re-connection of the big self, as the necessary perquisite for revolutionary change.
In other words, breaking the vicious circle requires, first and foremost, far-reaching changes in the subjective life of human beings, amounting to a total transformation of the human personality, and in the context of Freud, as Marcuse developed it, this means a new fusion or balance of the instincts, and a new mature ego, with profoundly different relations to the instinctual and ethical dimensions of the mind. In Eros and Civilization, Marcuse indicates three basic concepts that define revolutionary subjectivity:
One, “non-repressive sublimation,” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 230) in contrast to repressive sublimation, is the use of sexual energy in ways that do not weaken Eros because the instinct is gratified in activities and relations that are not sexual in the sense of direct sexual intercourse, but are libidinal and erotic. [i] It means sublimation without de-sexualization, because sexuality, transformed into Eros, attains higher levels of human happiness by building a new society and a new Culture.
Two, “narcissistic-maternal attitude,” (Marcuse, 1955; pp. 228-230) in contrast to pathological narcissism, is the experience of self-love in ways that do not alienated and isolate us from one another and nature, but instead unite us by overflowing the defensive ego-borders that have been artificially exaggerated by capitalist society. Primary narcissism, the original and natural human condition, extends outward to encompass human and non-human lives in a genuine, widening community, unless it is seriously wounded and turned inward by too much disappointment and suffering (thereby becoming pathological narcissism).
Three, “libidinal morality,” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 228) in contrast to the pathological superego, is a pre-genital and prehistoric disposition of the human organism to recover a lost reality, or a lost relation between ego and reality, in which the primary experience of reality is that of a harmonious union. The ego responds to others and nature, not with an attitude of fear, aggression, or defense, but with one of acceptance, compassion and the urge toward oneness. The superego may be entirely the result of traumatic socialization, but the superid (or core of the ego ideal) is the inherent gift of our (phylogenetic and ontogenetic) childhood.
The liberation of the ego is the key to the emergence of a new self because the ego has the power to channel instinctual energy toward higher ends. All sublimation proceeds by way of the ego, which can either deflect and block Eros, as is predominately the case under the performance principle, or it can utilize instinctual energy for diversified and pleasurable social ends.[ii] Moreover, the ego, since it controls voluntary movement, can “act” either on behalf of the established outer reality and its internal representative, the (pathological) superego, or it can act on behalf of Eros, the superid, and the potentialities for freedom and happiness contained within the established society.
It is the ego that is responsible for repressing mental material that is trying to break into awareness. One part of the ego can resist another part of the ego, such that parts of the ego itself become unconscious, but it is the conscious ego, at bottom, that is the decision maker, and the constant tendency of the mental apparatus to combine all its feelings and ideas into an integrated whole can only be disrupted and denied by the ego. It is the ego that splits off traumatic experiences that then give rise to an alien, circumscribed false self, a pathological superego, and it is the ego that refuses to recognize that the id and the superid are essential dimensions of Reason.
In One-Dimensional Man, and in an article written eight years after Eros and Civilization entitled, “Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man” (1970), Marcuse argued that the classical psychoanalytic model of the mental apparatus has been altered by the totalitarian socialization processes and super-indoctrination techniques of Technological Capitalism to a point where a weakened and impoverished ego is unable to function autonomously as the psychic center of the personality.
During the 21st Century, the de-materialization of reality, via the commercialization of the Internet, furthers the de-materialization and de-realization of the ego, and it has been thinned and fragmented into a stream of images and ideas that are not bound into an organized whole for the purpose of reality-testing and critical judgment. The control and manipulation of the ego is now causing the disintegration and dissolution of the ego, a regressive development toward severe mental disturbances. Cyberspace is an environment of disembodied egos that acknowledges no limits, no consequences to the domination nature (or human beings), amounting to a complete break or rupture with the natural world, which is the ground of reality and personal sanity.
If present social trends continue, in keeping with the economic logic of Internet Capitalism, to convert all of life into bits of information that are monitored for profit, then we will soon no longer know who we are and why we are. Lost in techno-identities and techno-fantasies, boredom, depression, and suffering will grow until they reach unbearable heights of personal suffering, for what is there to remind us of what we really need and want? How are we to remain sane in a society where nothing is valid or credible outside a computerized universe, a universe that functions for the sake of the super-rich, whose bottom line is to get richer.
I hasten to add that Marcuse would have been among the first to acknowledge that the Internet per se is not the problem, but rather, the problem is its design and function in the interest of exploitation, i.e., the “presence” in it of the masters of domination. He did not advocate returning to a pre-technological stage, or to some Golden Age (that he thought never existed), but rather, as Osha Neumann points out, the Marcusean interpretation of Freud concludes: “The solution to the woes of civilization and, by extension, the woes that we have caused the natural world is not less civilization…but more. And better” (Neumann, 2013; p. 95).
In “Counter Revolution and Revolt,” Marcuse argued that the economic system of capitalism is producing its own “gravediggers” (Marcuse, 1972; p. 57), in the sense of creating needs that it cannot satisfy, thereby developing the subjective forces of revolt. However, is the business- internet creating images of a world of “ease, enjoyment, fulfillment, and comfort” (Marcuse, 1972; p. 19), and opening a new dimension of self-determination and real satisfaction, as Marcuse thought, or is it merely creating alongside the world of capitalism, without threatening it, a phony world of even greater “repressive de-sublimation”?[iii]
Marcuse found in Art the greatest contrast and distance from what we are under capitalism, and he argued that personal encounters with authentic art, especially beautiful art, shape people profoundly. Human beings must reach a high level of internal development in order to found true socialism, and these qualities—an intolerance for suffering, ugliness, stupidity—are exemplified in the illusory (but truthful) world of art, but has the gap between one-dimensional society and the artistic dimension been genuinely bridged in the era of the internet, or only further divided? Have not the great works of literature been displaced or distorted by the digital universe? Is not their autonomous truth forgotten evermore?
The call for political education was constant throughout all the stages of Marcuse’s political philosophy, and he saw the universities as possible semi-autonomous centers for critical analysis and protest, but it is questionable if he would feel this way today, given the extended corporate control over “higher” education (and lower education), especially over the last several decades. Real knowledge and teaching can still be found here and there, but it is submerged in a sea of irrelevant and misleading academic and computer data that serves Capital accumulation.
Marcuse’s political theory militates against any single-minded exit from the vicious circle, and he was always searching for objective tendencies for real change within new historical circumstances. He held a very high standard for what life could be,[iv] but one wonders, as Marcuse wondered, if political education, art, resistance in the Third World, and the contradictions and deterioration of the Capitalist economy, together with other progressive forces that he identified throughout his life, are enough to effect the radically new Self that he argued must precede revolutionary change?
Marcuse remained unsatisfied his entire life that he, or anyone else, had a solution to the vicious circle because the totalitarian society that he described in his book, One-Dimensional Man, quite successfully cancels or contains objective tendencies for qualitative change, and how much more true is this today, 50 years later, given the power of Computer Capitalism to pacify and re-shape the population not only through substitute satisfactions, but through an entire substitute reality?
Of course, reality is still “out there,” and the possibility of ecocide or other global disasters are real enough, but they may occur too late to be helpful in any meaningful sense because our domination of nature is so great that failure is likely to be fatal, at least for human beings. If there is nothing outside the Self that can force or determine its transformation, then this change must first come from within, and only afterward climax in a Revolution, or it may never come at all.
In an essay written late in life, “Protosocialism and Late Capitalism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis Based on Bahro’s Analysis,” Marcuse returned, once again, to the vicious circle: “How can an emancipatory instinctual structure emerge in and against a repressive society whose rulers (unlike the opposition) have long since learned to mobilize the psyche” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 45). Following Bahro, he answers: “Only personal experience (Erlebnis), the experience that breaks through subaltern consciousness, leads or forces the individual to see and feel things and people in a different way, to think other thoughts” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 45). The advancement “beyond the ego” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 45) is the beginning of the social process of revolution.
Clearly, the ego that Marcuse has in mind here is not the original ego of early childhood that feels itself to be to part of, and one with the entire universe. Rather, it is the defensive ego, the product of Capitalist socialization, or more broadly speaking of Western civilization, that denies the vital need to recapture the libidinal unity of self, society, and nature. This defensive ego-structure locks us into the vicious circle, and for breaking out of it the late Marcuse endorsed Bahro’s concept of the “journey inwards” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 45), which means, basically, self exploration, self knowledge, and self-development.
According to Marcuse, “The “journey inwards” is necessary, because the dynamic of Ego and Id is obscured by efficient social control” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 46). The idea here, linking back to Eros and Civilization, is that there is a deep connection and interaction between ego and id that would generate the need and awareness for a better world, if the human mind was working properly, as nature and evolution designed it. Instead, the present reality-ego is torn from its roots in nature (human and external nature), and is operating one-dimensionally, in isolation from the id and superid, which can only result in madness or death.
Because the ego is a differentiated part of the id, Logos is Eros, it is always possible for it to re-open communication with the larger self, and, in fact, it takes constant energy and effort on the part of the ego to prevent this from happening, for the unconscious mind is constantly putting forth, pushing up, thoughts and impulses that protect and promote freedom and happiness. The defensive ego needs to relax, to lower its walls, in order for the Life instinct, and the natural, biological sense of right and wrong, to flow again throughout the human organism, but this is easier said than done.
Fear, the struggle for existence, and massive doses of propaganda weaken and enslave the ego. Still, the conscious ego retains the capacity for calm self-observation and self-understanding, even in horrible historical circumstances, except where insanity has already become its fate. There are moments in the life of nearly every person where we let go of, suspend, tune out, this false outside world, and travel within, accessing feelings, memories, dreams that lead us to the core of human nature, and facilitate three-dimensional thought, if we take the time and have the courage to go there.
Marcuse warned about “the ambivalence in the turn toward subjectivity” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 46) in the sense that there is the danger of getting stuck in a “politics in the first person,” which he regarded as a ” contradiction in adjecto” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 46). He always insisted on the connection between personal and political rebellion, private liberation and social revolution. He is emphatic that there is no getting around politics. Moments of transcendence, internal reflection, or soul searching could spark a cultural revolution that must eventually become political. It would be a Movement with the personal power to look through the propaganda and false ideals of this wretched reality, and see a better future in the lives of the participants, and also in the liberating forces and hidden qualities of Nature.[v]
The journey inwards does not remain at the level of personal experience. The solitary ego is a restriction, a reduction of our larger self. This larger self already contains society as represented by the superid (and pathological superego), and it already contains nature in the form of primary biological instincts. Society and nature penetrate the ego, and are inseparable from it. As Marcuse put it in an unpublished essay, “Subjectivity is therefore generality, and the recourse to a private sphere is at best an abstraction” (Marcuse, 2007; pp. 211-218). The journey inwards, by its inner logic, entails the development of the personal and unique into the general and common, or it comes up short of its goal.
Everything hinges on the assumption—and Marcuse made this assumption, based on Freudian theory—that the original self still survives within us, and that we can recognize it and develop it, not only in ourselves, but in others as well. Distant memories of our ancestors and childhood experiences may not be, strictly speaking, fully recoverable i.e., may not produce a complete recollection of the past, but enough of the past can be remembered to build privacy, personal stability, and opposition to one-dimensionality, and, through mediation and politicization, eventually produce an assured conviction that Capitalism has to go.
The growing personal misery under Cyber-Capitalism is intensifying the search for an answer to the vicious circle. The conscious ego would like to find peace and joy. Dwarfed and overpowered by a false outside, the ego turns inward, and it will either detach itself altogether from reality, tending toward personal insanity, or it will find, down deep, the greater self and true reality, which is the subjective prerequisite for radical change. We already “know” the truth about this painful and pathetic money-driven society, in the way in which the ego knows its unconscious mind, and to some degree the unconscious mind of others, but we need to access this intelligence and collectively act on it.
In the end, Marcuse thought that the political struggle must proceed as a journey inwards, and in the context of Freud, this means a liberation of the ego, and the restoration of three-dimensional thought. Toward this end, Eros and the Superid are strong allies, urging us to know and love ourselves and Nature, but the outcome depends on the willingness of (enough) people to open themselves, to expand themselves, to transcend the established ego-structure, in favor of love and solidarity, and building an alternative society, which is best called “integral socialism” (Marcuse, 1980; p. 46), according to Marcuse.
Looking back on the counter-culture of the Sixties it is clear that the success of the anti-war protest was rooted in our species-being. The movement was driven by feelings of brotherhood and sisterhood, or love in the broad sense. “Radical sensibility” (Marcuse, 1969), argued Marcuse, was the source of the ascending values of peace, justice, equality. Opening our houses to visitors at all hours of the day and night, hanging out, appreciating music and art, discussing politics and philosophy, enjoying nature, were expressions of biopsychological needs, instinctual needs. Unfortunately, this spontaneous self-sublimation of eroticism was disrupted and blocked, not only by violent state repression, but also by the pathological narcissism of those seeking change. Too much of the old ego-structure survived within us, and it helped to destroy a genuine Movement for radical change. One lesson to be learned is that Eros is liberating only if directed by an emancipated ego-consciousness.
Marcuse cites Franz Alexander’s idea of the “corporealization of the psyche” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 32) with reference to the ego’s tendency to lose mobile energy over time and react to things and people on the basis of unconscious automatic reactions, rather than in terms of what the actual situation requires, permits or promises. The remedy is inner knowledge and total questioning: we must subject all established thoughts and behavioral patterns to conscious scrutiny and judgment, as part of transforming ourselves. Future political organizations and Movements will fail if they involve us as we are, the same old Adam, rather than as we could be and should be.[vi]
The journey inwards takes the political struggle to the subjective roots of our social discontentment and oppression, a process that by its very nature leads the isolated and lonely self to intersubjectivity, and libidinal connections with nature. It’s about freeing ourselves from internal domination by discovering and identifying with the wider context of who we really are, both as an individual and as a “species-being,” and building a Movement on this foundation that re-defines Reason in terms of Eros: “Reasonable is what sustains the order of gratification” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 224).
In sum, super-advanced technological capitalism has blurred and blended the distinction between fantasy and reality to a such a point that it is doubtful if any outside force is capable of shattering the illusory whole, and not even the near terminal destruction of external nature appears to be enough to wake us up, so the critical analysis of one-dimensional man is more relevant today than ever before, but there is also a creative libido and a natural morality within us that could revolutionize everything, and Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, together with the totality of his insights into Freudian psychoanalytic theory, provide the clues and concepts for a profound transformation of consciousness, to be followed by a political and economic Revolution.
3) The Praxis of the Journey Inward
What is the praxis of the journey inwards? It is not easy to say, and I take the liberty of a possible over-interpretation of Marcuse’s final position, which is, however, very much in keeping with the Marcusean spirit of revealing and extending a hidden trend in the work of major thinkers in accordance with changing historical circumstances, as he did with Hegel, Freud, Weber, Husserl, and many others. I offer a new line of inquiry into the vast philosophical legacy of Herbert Marcuse.
Rudolf Bahro, who influenced Marcuse with the term and concept of the “journey inwards,” turned to Eastern and Western spirituality, after Marcuse died, in order to accelerate the evolution of emancipatory subjectivity. Bahro remained exceedingly political his entire life, but after his disappointment with The Greens, he attempted to integrate spiritual and meditative techniques and practices into community-based political projects and new living experiments. One such project, Lebensgut Commune, founded by Bahro in 1992, continues to this day to practice a new lifestyle that combines politics, ecology, and spirituality.[vii]
It would be interesting to know what Marcuse would have said about Bahro’s later political philosophy and practice, for Marcuse held communes, radical alternative living arrangements, in the highest regard, but Marcuse infrequently uses the words “spirit” or “spirituality” in his writings, and he positively argues against individual psychology and therapy as solutions to social and economic problems. Still, his search in One-Dimensional Man for a broader emerging rationality, his long enthusiastic embrace of Freud’s metapsychology, and his adoption and use of the concept of the “journey inwards” suggest a new perspective on radical change that he was not, unfortunately, able to further develop.
Unlike Bahro, Marcuse never wavered on protest-politics, although as far back as One-Dimensional Man he said that “the totalitarian tendencies of this society render the traditional ways and means of protest ineffective” (Marcuse, 1964; p. 256). It seems clear, however, that Marcuse would have strongly endorsed and supported Occupy Wall Street, even though it could be argued that this Movement lacked the subjective readiness or inner ripeness for realizing its radical potential to overturn Capitalism, due to a great deal of shallow individualism, not to mention the brutality of the police under corporate America’s determination to terminate it.
The General Assembly, within Occupy, and as an institution of a free democratic society, is more than an opinion-expressing or vote-counting process. Its proper functioning presupposes an already existing high level of informal consensus among the participating members. In other words, reaching formal consensus requires a close togetherness and solidarity within the acting political body; otherwise, we only get (after too much time and effort) the will of all or the will of the majority, instead of the General Will.
Genuine community, the foundation of decisive political action, requires an association of individuals who have expanded the established ego to include the social self and the biological self. Toward this goal, it seems to me, that the dawn and dusk of consciousness, just before falling asleep and right after waking up, are examples of personal experience (Erlebnis) when the ego suspends or loosens its dominating role, and allows communication between the id and the ego. Not free association in which the ego is looking for resistances to the truth, and not meditation in which the ego waiting for a truth that dissolves or excludes itself, but rather a free dialogue among the inner structures of the human mind—ego, id and superid—is required for the liberation of subjectivity.
We need to listen to the unconscious mind in others and ourselves by muting or turning down the commercialized ego. This unconscious mind is constantly informing us, and we can hear it and learn from it through “practice,” beginning with the most opportune occasions, such as the dawn and dusk of consciousness, and eventually engaging in coherent or holistic thinking throughout the day and night, recognizing that there are parts of ourselves that we cannot know by any private technique or means, for which others as mirrors are indispensable healers.
Memories, dreams, expectations, and imagination are still alive within us. We need to pay attention to these unspoken inner realities, which are ongoing even in the workplace, perhaps especially in the workplace. They are the products of Eros, so they cannot be eliminated from human existence, although the greatest threat to freedom and happiness remains, as Marcuse argued in One-Dimensional Man, the intensifying occupation and take-over of the human mind by Technological Capitalism that overrides free, fundamental human dialogue evermore effectively through the 24/7 computerized commercialization of life.
Freud discovered the repressed unconscious mind, sometimes called the shadow, which is created and sustained by a dictatorial ego. This shadow casts a dark psychological reality over everything that we try to do, including our best efforts to change “the way things are.” Marcuse, who assumed the basic truth of Freudian theory[viii], intends by the “journey inwards” something more than political education. Utopian ideas and radical information are essential, yet every psychoanalyst knows that internal emancipation requires not only a heightening of consciousness, but also the freedom of the emotions, of the instinctual structure, such that we become more open and loving toward ourselves and each other.
Dissolving the shadow into conscious awareness is critical for sanity and solidarity, but the journey inwards concerns the overall evolution of the entire human personality (beyond healing our wounds) toward the higher qualities of integrity, honesty, loyalty, courage, generosity, wisdom, altruism, etc. It is about shifting away from an excessive preoccupation with constructing and molding external reality, from making things, to the development of the subjective pole of human existence, to the flowering of human relationships, to becoming a more harmonious self-conscious earthy creature.
One readily available part of a journey inwards is to sit or walk, each day or evening, for perhaps twenty minutes, and survey one’s personal history and everyday life.[ix] Rest the ego, and let other dimensions of the mind observe and speak. Let deep desires and longings come to the fore, activate love-emotions, and let the deep-seated sense of right and wrong manifest. Remember when and why you were fulfilled and happy, hear the voices of those who made sense, made peace, made the world a better place, and feel the urge to unit and work with others that the long evolution of nature and society has implanted in human nature.[x]
Quiet self-reflection will show the purpose of existence, what is most important in life. It will reveal kindness and generosity as ultimate goods, and even the presence of death will serve, as Marcuse said, “the final remembrance of things past—last remembrance of all possibilities forsaken, of all that which could have been said and was not, of every gesture, every tenderness not shown.” (32) Only if we commit to a practice of inwardness (in one form or another) is there much hope to bring about world transformation, according to the implied, mature political philosophy of Herbert Marcuse.
What came naturally, and could be assumed as the existing features and functions of the normal human mind, must now be self-consciously practiced as a regular and central part of developing a socialist mental structure. Controlled by a World Computer, we are losing contact with our human natural powers (as they have evolved over eons), so we must summon the memories and impulses of the deeper unconscious strata of the mental apparatus, allow forgotten or isolated thoughts to come into contact with everyday thoughts, develop a consciousness that is more than ego, as preparatory work for total social change.
The journey inwards encompasses anything and everything that unifies the Self and overcomes the rigid divisions between the inherent structures of the human mind. Political education is certainly critical for breaking down prejudices and falsehoods, and opening new horizons of freedom. But, it is not the only prerequisite for human emancipation because there are (crusty) barriers in the mind that cannot be overcome by cognitive processes and programs alone, which require an internal self-analysis and critical self-evaluation to soften and erode, leading to the emergence of a new self-determination and self-confidence to engage the world. What matters now is that the intelligentsia and radical minorities undertake this inward journey.
Although Marcuse was a German immigrant, he understood the American Counter-Culture very well. He was, and remains, the quintessential philosopher of the Counter-Culture of the Sixties because he realized that its radical values were rooted in feelings of love (sublimated Eros). During this brief historical period, concern and care for the well-being of others burst the borders of the bourgeois family (to where it was artificially reduced and confined), creating a subculture of people who thought of themselves as a large family of brothers and sisters (even if we did not always act this way) and Marcuse understood the power of this solidarity.
There is a limit to what Internet communication can do for the creation of a radical historical Subject, and it is necessary to regularly disconnect from the Big Computer. In One-Dimensional Man Marcuse said: “the mere absence of all advertising and of all indoctrinating media, of information and entertainment would plunge the individual into a traumatic void where he would have the chance to wonder and to think, to know himself (or rather the negative of himself) and his society” (Marcuse, 1978; p. 68). The journey inwards entails entering this “traumatic void,” which is negative freedom from the tyranny of what is, allowing repressed dimensions of human subjectivity to come back to life, so we see and experience things differently.
Deep thinking is impossible if the mind is continuously fed information from outside, especially the virtual outside of the computerized universe. The spinning circle on the computer screen is not thinking. We need to regularly set aside cell phones, laptops, TVs, and, instead, contemplate life, allowing all our mental faculties to weigh in, interpret reality, and re-envision it. We need to practice a disinterested, free-floating awareness[xi] that separates us from the business and busyness inside our heads. The serious mental disturbances engendered by computer capitalism require major self-balancing, re-structuralization of the self, and this must be accomplished to a significant degree, within the given material circumstances of life, as an absolute pre-condition for revolt and revolution.
Releasing the ego from the world-web of instrumentalities (that is has woven itself into) through patient attentiveness toward others and ourselves is required for the emergence of powerful political activism because parts of the “victorious” (but suffering) ego are inaccessible to logical criticism. In additional to political education and protest politics, Marcuse argued throughout his life that self-change and social change depend on mobilizing deeper layers of the mind than just appealing to the rational ego. One must enter the Void, accept the id and superid, and create a new self. This is the comprehensive, unpacked meaning of Marcuse’s key claim: namely, subjective liberation must precede the revolution that is to usher in a new society.[xii]
For Marcuse, the cultivation of inwardness never meant that we must (first) develop ourselves independently of and apart from political activism. Rather, self-change requires political education and political struggle, and the journey inwards is not meant to be a new political theory, but only another dimension of Marcuse’s evolving radical politics, a new quality in the dialectics of liberation that changing historical circumstances have brought to the fore. The totalitarian invasion and seizure of the human mind, 50 years after Marcuse first explained it in One-Dimensional Man, requires evermore urgently a counter-practice of self-recovery and inner activism, both which open up private, autonomous mental space.
It is not a matter of personal liberation “or” political struggle. Rather, it is about adequately addressing the ego-problem “within” political struggle, recognizing it as a problem in its own right, a problem that cannot be reduced to the political problem, but neither can it be separated from it. The Left has been too focused on changing external reality and not focused enough on freeing ourselves from ourselves, i.e., from internalized competitive and aggressive cultural influences. We must become adept at knowing one another and ourselves as natural and complete human beings, as organic-emotional-thoughtful organisms. Self-insight is not only an intellectual affair, but also an awakening of the whole person, entailing freedom from false needs, and petty ego-jealousies and hostilities.
Political battles must continue, but in a spirit of self-knowledge, peace, and sensitivity toward each other and toward accessible people, in all the various forms, venues, and situations that politically engage us. A radical character structure means for Marcuse the preponderance of the Life instinct over the death instinct within the human personality, manifesting itself in small and large subcultures of openness, compassion, and intelligence that aim at real change. According to Marcuse, the economic, political, and cultural features of a free society must become the subjective character of those who fight for them.
The concrete hope is for a world-wide social movement that is not based on political parties, unions, electoral politics, but rather one that is based on strong individuals, who are morally autonomous and rooted in Nature, with an inner drive to found a better world, a world that does not put business over beauty, profits over people, or productivity over pleasure. Such individuals remember and feel the joy of living and giving, practicing both the Great Refusal and the Great Alternative, more negative and more utopian in opposition to the status quo, not seeking satisfaction in power or consumption but in joyous self-determination and togetherness.
Following Hanns Sachs, Marcuse speculates that the strong narcissistic libido of the Ancient Greeks made them unable or unwilling to develop a machine technology, even though they possessed the skill and knowledge which would have enabled them to do so (Marcuse, 1955; p. 169). If we want to undermine and eventually dismantle the technological apparatus of domination, then a reactivation of Eros in ourselves and throughout the Culture is the path for accomplishing this. The crucial step is not only an unwillingness to reproduce the status quo, a refusal to cooperate, but also a willingness to examine and improve ourselves, a mindfulness of the many habits and psychological patterns that trap and enslave us, together with a conscious effort to overcome them.
Given the present cultural, economic, military, and paramilitary superiority of the technological beast over the 99%, it is less important what we do than how we do it, which is not to say that anything will do, but only that there are many ways in which to challenge or contest Capitalism. Trusting our gut, our instincts, and the soft voice of moral reason at the base of our minds, and bringing this pre-conceptual knowledge to bear on personal behavior, community interaction, and political action is a necessary part of a way forward for all of us.
The Cultural Revolution of the Sixties was eventually defeated (although some progress was undoubtedly achieved) but it mobilized the depth dimension of the psyche, where it converges with the body, history, Earth, and evolution, which testifies to the permanent and constant tendency for revolt, even in people who are heavily and expertly controlled and manipulated by science and technology. Today’s new forms of control surpass anything we have seen in the past, but the return of the repressed rebellion, with the cooperation of the ego this time around, can activate a cultural revolution in the full sense of the term, entailing an economic and political revolution and a total transvaluation of all values.
The Left has grown increasingly weaker since the onset of the preventive Counter Revolution of the 1970s, which still continues to this day. There is no Radical Revolution on the horizon, and even the catalyst groups are having great difficulty sustaining and intensifying. We are being reduced to the inherent power of (relatively) sane or whole individuals to comprehend the social madness, and to act as catalysts for others from all walks of life, spreading a new form of consciousness and sensibility, turning desires and ideas into material forces through personal presence, gestures, actions. The political organizations and institutions that are needed for a free society must be grounded in a global movement of evolving rational and integral individuals.
Radical individuality is possible within Hi-speed Capitalism, and there are many examples of people from all over the world who no longer listen to the accountants, investors, advertisers, political pundits, not to mention the mind distracting and mind-deteriorating games and antics of mass culture. Moral-erotic rebels with a cause (not to be driven crazy any longer by technological rationality, and to pursue quality of life in principle) are a new base for a potential social movement that could change everything, in conjunction with the objective contradictions of global capitalism that are cracking the popular consensus that supports this entire scientific- technological edifice of exploitation and oppression.
It is unclear whether a movement of individuals, who are in possession of their instinctual energies and directed by their moral compass, will expand the traditional ways of Left politics over the last five decades, or whether it will integrate many of these specific strategies and tactics into something new and imaginative, but the common source that is likely to drive a worldwide revolutionary movement in the 21st Century is the negative personal need to stop the madness that is converting everything into money for the sake of more money (Capital), together with the positive personal need for a meaningful and gratifying social life that no amount of money can buy, and no cyber-reality can replace.
There can only be limited individual liberation apart from a social process that changes the laws, institutions and economy of Capitalism, but given the reduction of present society to a technological web of alienated people (in which each is alienated from all) this supra-individual revolutionary process must “begin” with creative and courageous individuals who utilize their sexual energy for moral and social ends, political Eros, re-activating the original purpose of civilization, which is to preserve and build a culture of qualitative pleasures, making the political path itself an erotic quest for fulfillment.
In sum, today’s super-technologically manufactured reality is producing solipsistic and shallow people, for whom a journey inwards (a re-discovery of humanity and the basis of reality in nature) is necessary in order to become the kind of individuals who can and will successfully carry through a Revolution. We are increasingly independent of one another, and increasingly dependent on the Big Computer, and on those who own and operate it, and radical opposition to the status quo may be at an all time low. Perhaps now that so many forms of resistance and struggle have been tried and ultimately failed, people will turn to available inner resources in order to fuel a new Movement that could eventually reach a critical mass, organize, and revolt.
4) Political Eros and a New Social Movement in the United States
A future radical political movement, composed of individuals who have combined their instinctual, rational, and moral capabilities, will be a celebration of Life entailing nature, friendship, romance, dance, music, community, knowledge, and political awareness, or it is unlikely to succeed, because what decisively drives human beings is the need and desire for a fulfilling sexual life in the widest possible sense. Following Freud, and citing the work of Geza Roheim, Marcuse argued that the source of society and culture is not mere survival, but erotic adventure and pleasure (Marcuse, 1970; p. 20).
A liberation and celebration of sexuality, in all its depth, breadth, and height, amid the aggression and desperation of this declining civilization, can rejuvenate a good portion of the population, especially young people, and it may be the only thing that can get enough people to turn off their laptops and televisions, to get off their couches and out of their houses, to go into public places, and into the streets and corridors of power in order to make another world. When Eros is free to follow its own logic, then we get high Culture in all its splendor and variety, not a society of sex maniacs or “genital supremacy” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 203), as Marcuse called it, which is the most glaring symptom of an over-restriction of human sexuality.
Many people find political meetings and gatherings boring, too cognitive, not erotic. A Movement infused with Eros, with Art playing an essential role–for Art is, as Marcuse argued, inherently subversive of the established society in virtue of its Form—appeals to the senses, moving and changing human beings into better and brighter citizens (Marcuse, 1978). A radical cultural movement requires that politics and art work together, each in their own way, to involve and enlighten people toward world change. Without this erotic-artistic dimension, an aesthetic ethos, politics cannot sustain and grow because it is passion, feeling, emotional bonding, not self-interest alone, not even long-term self-interest, that holds people together and accomplishes goals.
Political education and intellectual theory will be key components of a new Movement for radical change, but the vast majority of participants will be influenced and carried along, not by rational arguments or conscious ends, but rather by impulses and feelings, by the tide of Eros that leads self-evidently and self-confidently to active support for peace, justice, equality, and quality of life. Transforming organizations and actions will grow out of interacting and changing circles of people, free associations of people, who become more and more political in the process of following their deepest desires, needs, and dreams. According to Marcuse, the essential demands of revolution have an erotic basis in subjectivity.
Without an erotic basis, political organization, political struggle and political education will always be insufficient to arouse “the people” to Revolution because “surplus consciousness” (or the amount of intellectual awareness not exhausted in the struggle for existence that enables the human organism to see beyond the given circumstances of life) depends on the surplus energy of the life-force. Whatever strengthens this creative force, and allows it to flow more freely, serves the cause of radical subjectivity and qualitative change. Revolution depends, according to Marcuse, on releasing the subversive force of erotic energy now contained in repressive de-sublimation.
The ongoing, and sometimes huge demonstrations protesting Global Warming, Wall Street, War, etc. need to display and develop their erotic side, which could happen quickly and easily, because these are only negative actions in the sense that they are against all that destroys, degrades, and disrespects (human and non-human) Life. The hidden, radical undercurrent of these movements is all about life and love. If we acknowledge and embrace this positive path and purpose, without shame or guilt, it could spread like wild fire, with each participant igniting new members, and fanning the flames of radical transformation through the enjoyment and ascent of Eros. George Katsiaficas explains the spontaneous and exponential growth of a Movement through the “eros effect” (Katsiaficas, 2013).
The powers-that-be will ensure the negative, fighting side of our experimental social projects because the corporate State will, when threatened, do everything within its power to undermine, stop, and destroy a genuine cultural revolution, pushing us toward a hard choice: “opposition as ritual event or opposition as resistance, i.e., civil disobedience (Marcuse, 1970; p. 89), as clearly seen in the Occupy Movement, but it is up to us to preserve and foster the life-energy of the human organism that will ultimately determine the historical future?
We cannot blame the Establishment entirely for the fact that we are not creating radical subcultures. There is still time and space in America for creating aware and loving communities—if we had the motivational structure to make them happen and to sustain them—but we are not “motivated” to do what is required about all the problems of global capitalism because we are cut off in our personal lives and in our politics from the flow of erotic energy that sets positive goals and moves us to achieve them. The deepest problem we face is not the lack of political awareness, or feelings of “powerlessness[xiii]”, but the feelings of apathy, because Eros, from the physical engagement of the body to its extended refinements of friendship, human communication, and eco-social harmony, is not the active basis and focus of our politics. We need radical politics that connect to the deep biological core of human nature, and self-consciously embrace and accelerate the evolution of Eros.
The creative energy of the human mind is fundamentally erotic, and a liberated Eros will generate ideas, images, strategies, and tactics for a non-repressive civilization. Without the free play of this impulse any social movement will be, or soon become, stale, abstract, and lifeless. What people fundamentally care about is their love life in a metaphysical sense that human nature and civilization obey an inner-drive to unite all human beings in emotional ties of sexual love, affection, and friendship. If a social cause or Movement does not satisfy this most fundamental of all human needs, then the vast majority of people will never care enough to “act” in the world.
Marcuse notes that in his later writings “Freud does not rigidly distinguish between Eros and sexuality” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 205). Eros implies an enlargement of the meaning of sexuality, but it remains, at bottom, sexual energy in the way described by Plato in the Symposium. According to Marcuse, “There is an unbroken ascent of erotic fulfillment from the corporeal love of one to that of the others, to the love of beautiful work and play, and ultimately to the love of beautiful knowledge” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 211). In other words, Eros is a quantitative and qualitative aggrandizement of human sexuality that includes, but goes beyond, the urge to bring one genitals into contact with the genitals of another. The directly sexual impulses are not abandoned or deflected, but associated with an enjoyment of diverse experiences and natural landscapes, and expanded to encompass spiritual aspects of togetherness.
Marcuse’s significant idea is that the sexual instinct, free from the restraining and distorting influences of capitalist culture, self-sublimates, which means that the biological drive, free from domination, becomes a cultural drive that presses for greater modes or forms of individual and social happiness without the need for repressive external modification. Eros is inherently non-repressive sublimation. If Marcuse is right about the free, self-development of Eros, then we must have the courage to trust this deep generator of social change. A false morality that opposes the acknowledgment and acceptance of human sexuality is a huge internal obstacle we face for building a radical movement because it separates and isolates people, even the most politically aware. In regard to a body-hating, sensuous-denying morality Marcuse was fond of quoting Nietzsche: “the token of freedom attained, that is, no longer being ashamed of ourselves” (Marcuse, 1969; p. 21).
What is needed right now, especially in America, along with more political awareness, is more love for ourselves, for one another, and for the social whole. This will not be achieved through more and more facts and information alone, but requires a journey inwards in which we seek out the truth about ourselves, stop projecting, learn to handle personality conflicts, and develop our ability to love (free from asceticism). The next task or stage is nothing less than to alter the psychological structure of advanced technological man and woman, a revolt within, in favor of Eros. It is going to be difficult to get past our disappointments, resentment, and anger with one another (due to living in a capitalist culture) in order to form lasting and expanding radical communities, but this is precisely what we must do prior to a revolution in the material circumstances of life.
However, simply lifting the external constraints on human beings “as we are” (infused with the capitalist spirit) would be futile because we have internalize our masters. Each of us is inflected with the sickness of capitalism. The first order of business is, therefore, to renew or perfect ourselves so that the new society we want to institutionalize is already present in us, and among us, from the beginning. Without the emergence of a new Self all attempts to organize a radical popular movement are premature. It is very difficult to influence and change people (from the outside) who are internally controlled by values, voices, feelings, and impulses that have been (scientifically) implanted in them by an oppressive society. Liberation of the ego from within is indispensable in this regard because only the ego can separate itself from all that has been imposed on it. It can feel and become aware of what it is independently of what it has been made into. It can journey inward to the original self, and freely evolve from there (in association with others and relevant political knowledge).
Inward emancipation means that we become receptive to all our mental energy, respond to our primitive or original moral calling, and activate the erotic life. A mature, Eros-friendly ego will facilitate the transformation of sexuality into high culture (non-repressive sublimation), as opposed to the release of sexuality within the prevailing social milieu (repressive de-sublimation). We are still capable of (enough) internal emancipation or self-transformation to eventually beget a revolution, but there is a limit (on personal sanity) to the onslaught of computer capitalism on the human psyche beyond which free libidinal relationships become impossible/unworkable. Under the technological domination of life, the deterioration of human relationships, reflecting ego-deformation and ego-diminishment, is already dangerously close to this limit, and it is becoming harder and harder to create and sustain genuine human solidarity.
A new cultural revolution, entailing a journey inwards, will not repeat the mistakes of yesterday because it will be undertaken and carried through by a new kind or type of individual, one in whom sensibility, reason, and morality are fused into a higher awareness and practice, a new integration of id, ego, and superid, manifesting more kindness, compatibility, and intelligence (initially) among those who are already striving for a better society, but ultimately leading to a transformation of the entire subjective life of the dependent population.
The Movement must be a new lifestyle, a foretaste of the world to come—not just words, ideas, inner-searching– that mobilizes the individual desire for joyous freedom and self-determination. People who have tasted (smelled, touched, seen, heard) the erotic substance of freedom and happiness can no longer be appeased or satisfied with a standard of living defined by endless stuff and packaged experiences, and they become revolutionaries when they are compelled, emotionally and intellectually, to live an alternative way. As Marcuse argued, the senses do not just passively receive the data of experience; they actively construct everyday reality. “It is this qualitative, elementary, unconscious, or rather preconscious, constitution of the world of experience, it is this primary experience itself which must change radically if social change is to be radical, qualitative change” (Marcuse, 1972; p. 63).
The erotic drive of human beings remains as strong as ever, despite all the oppressive and revengeful attempts to burden and bury it, and it is actively waiting for a path, an occasion, a welcoming, in order to break-ground and blossom in a new culture of abundance and beauty. We need to develop erotic-political communities, either through the expansion of already existing groups, such as the woman’s movement, ecology movement, anarchist movement, student movement; or, through new experimental places and activities in which people, who are searching for a totally different and free way of life, can meet face-to-face and get to know one another as multidimensional human beings, and increase our positive capacities for happiness. Until the end of his life, Marcuse pined his hope for radical change, especially in America, on the fusion of political rebellion with sexual-moral rebellion. This is the instinctual foundation of revolution, as he envisioned it.
A rising Culture of non-repressive sublimation is certainly not galloping across the U.S. landscape at this historical moment, but social evolution continues as a journey inwards in which the most sensitive and aware people seek to change themselves, and those with whom they come into contact, whatever the context, into the kind of people who deserve, and are capable of creating and sustaining, a rational communal life. Qualitative change resides in individuals with a sense of what life could be, who imagine and contemplate “more” than anything found at Walmart or Ebay, who are discovering their true self as erotic-rational-moral human beings. Revolution presupposes this kind of cultural-organic development of the individual within the given socio-historical continuum.
Given the degree of community disintegration that prevails in advanced technological society, including within the Left, radical opposition shifts to the personal realm, and a primary task is, right now, “know thyself,” as inscribed on the ancient Greek Temple of Apollo. This is a source of wisdom, and a necessary ingredient of strategy for radical politics in this super-alienated modern world. It does not mean withdrawing from political struggles, but rather it means expanding our awareness, claiming and consulting our instincts as the basis of social and moral behavior, remaining loyal to our passions, and collectively and decisively acting in accordance with a favorable constellation of historical factors, which is itself made far more likely by personal liberation. Marcuse’s Dialectic of Liberation: “No liberation without individual liberation, but also no individual liberation without the liberation of society” (Marcuse, 1972; p. 48).
Unless we relate to one another more as all-round individuals, as total individuals, in contact with the depth dimension of human existence, finding and following repressed ideas, images and needs, all attempts at Revolution will fail again and again. The ego, the seat of intelligence, must come to understand itself, not as a master on horseback, but as Nature become aware of itself, striving to protect and perfect the whole of reality. The liberated ego is a guide that leads Eros to where it already wants to go. It can lead us into a box canyon or off a cliff, as it is presently doing, trotting the treadmill of capitalism, or it can “reason,” i.e., accelerate the universal evolution of “integral eros” (Marcuse, 1970; p. 34) which originally governed the entire human body and all of Nature.
In sum, technological solipsism, in which we are evermore electronically connected to everyone and everything, and yet evermore alone—not only communally alone in which we are estranged from one another but also personally alone in that our unique identity, our ego, is estranged from its greater self, from the self-assured and tender-loving dimensions of the human mind, from the id and superid—is the new fictitious reality. This isolated ego is drowning in non-stop waves of lies and illusions programmed for profit, with nothing firm or real to hold onto, and with no escape except through a total revolutionary social transformation. This dire 21st Century American social situation, moving at the speed of light, calls for drastic corrective measures, beginning with the re-activation of our dynamic-dialectical psyche, leading to the emergence of joyfully rebellious communities, resulting in a reality-based social system, an Eros-based civilization.
5) Concluding Note
I have not discussed Thanatos (the instinct for self-destruction and the principle of non-being) in this essay because under natural/normal conditions, according to Marcuse, Life contains Death, which means that human progress is possible, and to be expected, unless civilization weakens Eros and releases Thanatos, resulting in an overall decline into nothingness. For Marcuse, Capitalism produces this collective abnormality, but the historical alternative of integral socialism can sustain an evolving balance in favor of Eros and Life. Death for the individual in unavoidable (at least for now), but the idea of “natural obstacles” (Marcuse, 1955; p. 227) that Marcuse lifts from the work of Freud means that a strong and sane ego, a liberated ego, can even use the anticipation of personal death as a barrier to build up and intensify the joy and fulfillment of the present. Marcuse’s development of the dynamic relationship between Eros and Thanatos, based on Freudian theory, is one of the great philosophical undertakings of the 20th Century that needs to be further explored and developed.
Notes
[i] See chapters 10 and 11 for an extended discussion of non-repressive sublimation.
[ii] Marcuse, following Freud, suggests that sublimation may work by first turning object-libido into narcissistic libido, and then going on to give it another aim. This process, according to Marcuse, opens up the possibility of non-repressive sublimation because the ego does not constrain or deflect the libido, but rather extends it. See Marcuse, 1955; p. 169.
[iii] Repressive de-sublimation is the release of sexuality (in the narrow sense) in ways that frustrate Eros (in the wide sense), and it is also the satisfaction of aggression in ways that escalate the need for more aggression. This idea becomes central in Marcuse’s book “One Dimensional Man,” and it illuminates the whole of the affluent society that delivers the goods, augments the “good life,” while at the same time making people less free and happy.
[iv] An aesthetic-utopian dimension of reality exists in all of Marcuse’s writings, and his life was devoted to its greater realization for the masses of people. One would have to consult the works of Charles Fourier and other visionaries in order to find a more positive (possible) future than that articulated by Marcuse through such ideas as “society as a work of art,” “work as play,” the “termination of the struggle of existence,” and “a new economy of time” etc.
[v] Marcuse saw forces in nature that propel us toward an authentically good life, but the Promethean ego needs to stop trying to control and dictate the flow of everything, and to ally itself with these natural forces in order to achieve wholeness and fulfillment on earth. This is how the healthy and sane mind works: it welcomes Pandora, the female principle, sexuality and pleasure, as an essential partner in undermining socio-economic discontentment in a one-dimensional society. “The beauty of the woman, and the happiness she promises are fatal to the work-world of civilization.” See Eros and Civilization (1964), p. 161.
[vi] From the 1950s onward, Marcuse invoked the idea of a “psychic thermidore” in order to explain the element of self-defeat that seems to account for the failure of all revolutions hitherto. Our dysfunctional ego, and it pathological creation the superego, keeps getting in the way of our best intentions to re-make the world. See Marcuse, H. (1970). Five Lectures. Boston: Beacon Press, p. 38.
[vii] For an understanding of Bahro’s later philosophy see: Rudolf Bahro, Building The Green Movement (New Society Publishers, 1986) and Rudolf Bahro, Avoiding Social and Ecological Disaster (Gateway Books, 1994).
[viii] In the last published article of his life, “Protosocialism and Late Capitalism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis Based on Bahro’s Analysis,” and in a talk delivered shortly before his death in 1979, “Ecology and the Critique of Modern Society,” Marcuse explicitly reiterates his commitment to Freudian instinct theory.
[ix] During the Seventies Marcuse could frequently be seen pondering life, usually in the early afternoon for about twenty minutes, sitting in his lawn chair in front of the philosophy building at UCSD without books, without lunch, only sunglasses (sometimes), and he undoubtedly incorporated the insights from these personal reflections into his books (that were often written in his office on the second floor of this building).
[x] Marcuse did not sharply divide the “inherited” from the “socially conditioned” because he thought that after the passage of many generations the socially conditioned “sinks down” and becomes the biological. See his lecture “Marxism and Feminism,” delivered on March 7, 1974, and published in The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 3, Chapter 7 (Rourledge, 2005).
[xi] In his essays on Therapy and Technique Freud spoke of “an evenly hovering attention” concerning the proper relationship of the analyst to the patient during treatment. We need to internalize this relationship such that the ego suspends its instrumental orientation toward inner and outer reality.
[xii] Marcuse’s great insight in Eros and Civilization is that the conquest of scarcity by science and technology has made possible a new anthropology—that is to say, the Freudian model of the human personality is obsolete (not only in a negative sense but also) in a positive sense that the ego is no longer required to adopt an attitude of (primarily) defense toward instinctual impulses at the behest of “reality” because “reality” could be organized anew to be fundamentally compatible with the deepest yearning of the Id (for a life of peace and fulfillment). Under a new reality principle, the ego, as the part of the mind that “reasons,” would (primarily) function to establish and sustain a a new social order of pleasure and fulfilment.
[xiii] In 1974 Marcuse gave a series of lectures at the University of Paris in which he said, “There is a feeling of powerlessness which I think explains better than the theory of lagging consciousness the degree of integration within the United States.” P. 18. I contend that the deeper message of Marcuse’s Freudian Marxism is that the vast majority of Americans are not as much overwhelmed by the feeling that they “can’t do anything,” as they are underwhelmed by the feeling that they do not “care” to do anything (due to large part to sexual repression).
References
Horkheimer, M. (1947). Eclipse of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.
Katsiaficas, G. (2013). Eros and Revolution. In Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 16, No. 2.
Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1969). An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1963/1970). Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics and Utopia. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1972). Counter-Revolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1978). The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1980). Protosocialism and Late Capitalism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis Based on Bahro’s Analysis. In International Journal of Politics 10: 2/3, Summer-Fall.
Marcuse, H. (2007). Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz. In Herbert Marcuse: Art and Revolution, Vol. 4. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 211-218.
Neumann, O. (2013). Eros and Civilization and the Death of Nature. In Radical Philosophy Review, Vol.16, No.1.
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Glenn Parton
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