We are again confronted with
one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilisation: the
rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency,
its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need,
and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilisation
transforms the object world into an extension of man�s mind and body makes
the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognise themselves
in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi
set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties
the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored
in the new needs which it has produced.
Herbert Marcuse,
One Dimensional Man: 9
Dialectics of democracy: if
democracy means self-government of free people, with justice for all,
then the realization of democracy would presuppose abolition of the existing
pseudo-democracy. In the dynamic of corporate capitalism, the fight for
democracy thus tends to assume anti-democratic forms, and the extent to
which the democratic decisions are made in "parliaments" on all levels,
the opposition will tend to become extra-parliamentary. The movement to
extend constitutionally professed rights and liberties to the daily life
of the oppressed minorities, even the movement to preserve existing rights
and liberties, will become "subversive" to the degree to which it will
meet the stiffening resistance of the majority against an "exaggerated"
interpretation and application of equality and justice.
Herbert Marcuse,
An Essay on Liberation, Pelican Books (1973),
Bungay (Great Britain), 1969: 69-70
At this stage, the question
is no longer: how can the individual satisfy his own needs without hurting
others, but rather: how can he satisfy his needs without hurting himself,
without reproducing, through his aspirations and satisfactions, his dependence
on an exploitative apparatus which, in satisfying his needs, perpetuates
his servitude?
Herbert Marcuse,
An
Essay on Liberation, Pelican Books (1973), Bungay (Great Britain),
1969: 14
The historical
process has created the preconditions, both material and intellectual,
for the realisation of Reason (Hegel) in the organisation (Marx), for
the convergence of freedom and necessity. However, freedom which converges
with (or is even absorbed by) necessity is not the final form of freedom.
At this ultimate point, Hegel and Marx again agree. The realm of true
freedom is beyond the realm of necessity. Freedom as well as necessity
is redefined. For Hegel, ultimate freedom resides in the realm of the
Absolute Spirit. For Marx, the realm of necessity is to be mastered by
a society whose reproduction has been subjected to the control of the
individuals, and freedom is the free play of individual faculties outside
the realm of necessary labour. Freedom is 'confined' to free time - but
free time is, quantitatively and qualitatively, the very content of life.
Herbert Marcuse,
Soviet Marxism, Pelican
Books (1971), London, 1958: 183
It seems that the continued
functioning of the society is sufficient justification for its legality
and its claim for obedience, and "functioning" seems defined rather negatively
as absence of civil war, massive disorder, economic collapse. Otherwise
anything goes: military dictatorship, plutocracy, government by gangs
and rackets. Genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity are not effective
arguments against a government which protects property, trade, and commerce
at home while it perpetrates its destructive policy abroad. ...there is
no (enforceable) law other than that which serves the
status quo,
and that those who refuse such service are
eo ipso outside the
realm of law even before they come into actual conflict with the law.
Herbert Marcuse,
An Essay on Liberation,
Pelican Books (1973), Bungay (Great Britain), 1969: 71
County Judge
Christ Seraphim sat with his golden retriever, Holly, on the porch of
his Spanish-style house on a pleasant East Side street [in Milwaukee]
this afternoon and made some acerbic comments on 1,000 civil rights demonstrators
who jived and strutted past his front lawn...
"I think they are disturbing the peace, don't you?" ... "They are loud
and boisterous, are they not? I can't enjoy the peace and tranquility
of my home, a home I paid a lot for."
As for Rev. James E. Groppi, the white Roman Catholic priest who commands
the marchers, Judge Seraphim snapped: "He is a criminal, a convicted criminal,
convicted twice by a jury for disorderly conduct."
The demonstrators finally moved out of earshot, and Judge Seraphim resumed,
with a grateful sigh, his reading of
A History of the Jews by Abram
Leon Sacher, president of Brandeis University, but soon the marchers returned.
"These people," said Judge Seraphim, this time referring to his book,
"were baked in ovens. But they maintained their dignity to the end. They
didn't do much marching. They are the most law-abiding people in the world."
Herbert Marcuse,
New York Times (5 September
1967), quoted in Marcuse, H.,
An Essay on Liberation, Pelican Books
(1973), Bungay (Great Britain): 75-76
...while not a single [one]
of the basic dialectical concepts has been revised or rejected in Soviet
Marxism, the function of [the] dialectic itself has undergone a significant
change: it has been transformed from a mode of critical thought into a
universal 'world outlook' and universal method with rigidly fixed rules
and regulations, and this transformation destroys the dialectic more throughly
than any revision.
Herbert Marcuse,
Soviet Marxism, Pelican Books (1971), London, 1958: 115
Hegel could develop the principles
of dialectic in the medium of universality, as a 'science of logic', because
to him the structure and movement of being was that of the 'notion' and
attained its truth in the Absolute Idea; Marxian theory, however, which
rejects Hegel's interpretation of being in terms of the Idea, can no longer
unfold the dialectic of logic: its Logos is the historical reality, and
its universality is that of history.
Herbert Marcuse,
Soviet Marxism, Pelican Books (1971), London,
1958: 119
Hypostatized
into a ritual pattern, Marxian theory becomes ideology. But its content
and function distinguish it from 'classical' forms of ideology; it is
not 'false consciousness', but a rather conscousness of falsehood, a falsehood
which is 'corrected' in the context of the 'higher truth' represented
by the objective historical interest.
Herbert Marcuse,
Soviet Marxism, Pelican Books (1971), London,
(On Soviet Marxism), 1958: 77-78
No matter how remote from these
notions the rebellion may be, no matter how destructive and self-destructive
it may be appear, no matter how great the distance between the middle-class
revolt in the metropoles and the life-and-death struggle of the wretched
of the earth - common to them is the depth of the Refusal. It makes them
reject the rules of the game that is rigged against them, the ancient
strategy of patience and persuasion, the reliance on the Good Will of
the Establishment, its false and immoral comforts, its cruel affluence.
Herbert Marcuse,
An Essay on Liberation,
Pelican Books (1973), Bungay (Great Britain), 1969: 16
...radical
change depends on a mass basis, but every step in the struggle for radical
change isolates the opposition from the masses and provokes intensified
repression: mobilization of institutionalized violence against the opposition,
thus further diminishing the prospects for radical change. ...
Humanit�
wrote (according to the
Los Angeles Times, 25 June 1968): 'every
barricade, every car burned gave tens of thousands of votes to the Gaullist
party'. This is perfectly correct - as perfectly correct as the corollary
proposition that without the barricades and car burning the ruling powers
would be safer and stronger�
Herbert
Marcuse,
An Essay on Liberation, Pelican Books (1973), Bungay (Great
Britain), 1969: 71-72
...if the revolution
does not from the beginning reverse the relationship between the labourer
and the means of labour, that is to say, transfer control over to him,
it does not have a
raison d'�tre essentially different from that
of a capitalist society. Abolition of private property in the means of
production is thus substantially linked with transfer of control to the
labourers themselves. As long as such transfer is not accomplished, the
revolution is bound to reproduce the very antagonisms which it strives
to overcome.
Herbert Marcuse,
Soviet
Marxism, Pelican Books (1971), London, 1958: 83-84
In the first phase of the development
(from the October revolution to the 'elimination of the exploiting classes'),
the functions of the state were: (a) 'to suppress the overthrown classes
inside the country', (b) 'to defend the country from foreign attack',
and (c) 'economic organisation and cultural education'. In the second
phase (from the 'elimination of the capitalist elements in town and country'
to the 'complete victory of the socialist system and the adoption of the
new constitution') function (a) ceased and was supplanted by that of 'protecting
socialist property'; functions (b) and (c) 'fully remained'.
Herbert Marcuse,
Soviet Marxism, Pelican
Books (1971), London, (On the Bolshevik program of "development'.), 1958:
86
Nationalis [The copy archived at web.archive.org breaks off here.]