HERBERT MARCUSE

Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin in 1898, the son of prosperous Jewish parents and died on July 29, 1979, in Starnberg, West Germany ten days after his 81st birthday. He was a soldier in World War I, and by 1917 he was already a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which represented the most conservative of the orthodox German Marxists. In 1918 he became a member of a German “Soviet.” After the murders in 1919 of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the Spartacist League, Marcuse left the SPD in a personal protest against its counter-revolutionary politics. After that he had no organized political affiliation. In 1928 he published his first essay dealing with Marxism in the Philosohische Hefte of Berlin, to be followed, starting in 1929 and continuing through the early thirties, by articles in Die Gessellschaft, published by the SPD.

During the years 1921-1923 his concern with Marxism was strongly colored by his studies of German romanticism and German idealism, particularly the philosophy of Hegel, at the Universities of Berlin and Freiburg (im Breisgau). His doctoral dissertation, Der deutsche Kunstlerroman, dealing with the literary genre known as the Kunstlerroman (a novel in which the artist is the center of attraction), was accepted at Freiburg. It focused on the problem of the alienation of the individual (artist)
from society and the yearning to produce a new world which would synthesize the higher realm of culture with everyday life so that beauty, freedom, community, and love could be realized in everyday life. From 1924 until 1929 Marcuse worked for a Berlin firm which both published books and handled antiquarian items.

Marcuse studied philosophy, literature and economics at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg from 1919 to 1922. In 1929 he went to Freiburg to study philosophy with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. From 1929 to 1933 Marcuse devoted himself to work with Husserl and Heidegger at Freiburg. His book Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit resulted, in part, from these contacts. He stressed Hegel’s less systematic and more historical strains. (7) Sometimes erroneously referred to as Marcuse’s doctoral dissertation, this book was intended to be his Habilitationsschrift, his inaugural dissertation, which normally would have opened the door to an academic life. As it turned out, Heidegger - whose anti-Semitism became more pronounced each day that Hitler came closer to seizing power - refused to sponsor the Habilitation, and Marcuse began a never-to-be completed search for final sponsorship elsewhere. Edmund Husserl, who had
been a member of Marcuse’s doctoral dissertation examining committee, is said to have intervened on Marcuse’s behalf at this time and had recommended him to Max Horkheimer as a future member of the Institut fur Sozialforschung.

The book received favorable review by Theodor Adorno and Marcuse was invited to join the Geneva office of the Institute of Social Research - a heterogeneous group of left-wing, non-Communist German intellectuals . . “The Frankfurt School” or the proponents of “Critical Theory”. Along with Max Horkheimer, Leo Lowenthal, Friedrich Pollock, Adorno and others,
Marcuse, from 1934-1941 helped formulate central ideas of “the critical theory of society”, revitalizing Marxism in particular and social theory in general. Marcuse began to develop his own original interpretation, synthesis and critique of phenomenology, Hegel, Marx and Freudian psychoanalytic theory.



Frankfurt School

The “Frankfurt School” refers (a) to the Institute fur Sozialforschung founded in 1923 in Frankfurt-am-Main, disbanded in 1933, continued in the U.S. until 1941 and re-opened in Frankfurt in 1950, and (b) to a school of thought which developed a specific neo-Marxian critique of society.

In 1933 Marcuse became an associate of the newly established branch of the Institut in Geneva, and in 1934, when the Institut moved to New York and set itself up at Columbia University as the International Institute of Social Research, Marcuse was the first to join its staff there.

Horkheimer, Pollock, Marcuse, and Lowenthal, with newcomer Franz Neumann, all worked together in the New York center, teaching, giving public lectures, and engaging in research; Adorno, after four years in England, joined them briefly after 1938.    Much of the effort of the Institut in these years was directed towards rescuing anti-Nazi intellectuals and guaranteeing them a means of livelihood. With the involvement of the United States in the war, many of its members took up service with
government agencies, and this, along with other activities, led to a slackening of work at the New York Institute.

At first Marcuse was an instructor at Columbia University in New York City, but during World War II (1934-1942) he worked in the Office of Strategic Services and for the State Department in Washington, D.C.

Subsequently Dr. Marcuse taught philosophy, sociology, and political science at Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Brandeis Universities. In 1965 he moved to UCSD. In 1965, as Marcuse was retiring from Brandeis University he was offered an appointment to the philosophy faculty at UCSD; the appointment lasted through 1970. Marcuse was one of most important and influential figures at the university, lecturing to packed audiences and directly involved in the anti-war movement and related
New Left causes. During last decade of his life he became internationally known as the “Father of the New Left”. Entire generation of students and younger professors in Western Europe and US struggled through One-Dimensional Man,(1964), rediscovered Eros and Civilization (1955) and sought to identify with emancipatory agents of An Essay on Liberation (1969).

When the New Left splintered, and the working class ignored the revolutionary role Marx assigned to them, Marcuse returned to subject of his youth - aesthetics: Counter Revolution and Revolt (1972) and The Aesthetic Dimension (1978).



Historicism

Founders of Critical Theory believe that a proper theory of social critique must be constantly developed and changed according to historical development. It cannot be static and be a true theory of society. New socio-historical conditions require revision of previous radical theory and politics. Critical Theory also denies claims of the existence of an alleged transition from modernity
to postmodernity; there is no socio-historical rupture or break according to Critical Theory.

Authority and the Family

Authority, previously rooted in the family or in teachers or religious figures, is the authority of the omnipotent standards of mass society. The qualities which the child needs in this society are imposed upon him by the collectivity of the school class, and the latter is but a segment of the strictly organized society itself . . .Education is no longer a process taking place between individuals, as it was when the father prepared his son to take over his property, and the teacher supported him. Present-day education is directly carried out by society itself and takes place behind the back of the family. (from FSR, p.40)

Aesthetics

Culture, once a refuge of beauty and truth, was falling prey, they believed, to tendencies toward rationalization, standardization and conformity, which they saw as a consequence of the triumph of the instrumental rationality that was coming to pervade and structure ever more aspects of life. Thus, while culture once cultivated individuality, it was now promoting conformity and was a
crucial part of ‘the totally administered society’ that was producing ‘the end of the individual’. 121

Adorno was a musicologist, and studied the effects of advanced industrial society on music in particular. Kellner states that .. .while popular music may, as Adorno argued, exhibit features of commodification, reification and standardization, which may in turn have retrogressive effects on consciousness, such a theoretical optic cannot adequately account for the genesis and popularity of many forms of popular music such as the blues, jazz, rock and roll, reggae, punk, and so on. Since music is the most nonrepresentational of all arts, it provides vehicles for the expression of pain, rage, joy, rebellion, sexuality and so forth, which might have progressive effects. Historically, the production of certain types of popular music was often carried out by oppressed groups, like blacks or Hispanics, or by working-class whites or marginalized youth. Much popular music thus
articulates rebellion against standardization, conformity, oppression and so on, however much this oppositional articulation is expressed in standard musical forms and types. Moreover, the forums of reception of popular music have frequently been dances and festivities in a context of transgression of propriety through drinking, making love, wild dancing, communal singing and the rest. Ragtime, jazz, bop, swing and rock have been more at home in the brothel, dance-hall or bedroom than within His Master’s Voice in the living room. Though contemporary forms of punk and hard rock may provide background for young fascists and conservatives, they may also provide the social cement for a culture of political mobilization and struggle, as the Rock against Racism and Rock against the Right concerts in England and Germany proved. And music like reggae can be bound up with a subculture of protest as much as with the commodification of culture for profitability and harmless catharsis. 142



Critical Theory Today

Douglas Kellner argues in Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity that changes in the social conditions and technolocultural infrastructure of capitalist societies from the 1960s to the present put in question aspects of Critical Theory’s previous accounts of the economy, state, culture, media and everyday life, and therefore that Critical Theory now requires development, revision
and updating. One of Critical Theory’s enduring contributions is its appropriation of the Hegelian-Marxian dialectical heritage which sees socially critical categories and analysis to be fundamentally historical and in need of development and revision as historical conditions change. The very spirit of Critical Theory precludes orthodoxy; thus interpretations must be resisted which
transform it into yet another orthodoxy Influences on Marcuse

Alienation

Marcuse explains alienation as developed by Marx - "the perversion of the historical-social world of man into an alien world of money and commodities; a world which confronts him as s hostile power and in which the greater part of humanity ceases to e anything more than ‘abstract’ workers (torn way from the reality of human existence), separated from the object of their work and forced to sell themselves as a commodity.

 

"As a result of this ‘alienation’ of the worker and of labour, the realization of all man’s ‘essential powers’ becomes the loss of their reality; the objective world is no longer ‘truly human property’ appropriated in ‘free activity’ as the sphere of the free operation and self-confirmation of the whole of human nature. . . in short, the universal ‘domination of dead matter over mankind’ (p. 102)

"This whole situation has often been described under the heading of ‘alienation’, ‘estrangement’ and ‘reification’"

"It is the alienation of man, the devaluation of life, the perversion and loss of human reality. In the relevant passage Marx identifies it as follows: ‘the concept of alienated labour, i.e. of alienated man, of estranged labour, of estranged life, of estranged man’ (p. 117)

"It is thus a matter of man as man (and not just as worker, economic subject and the like), and of a process not only in economic history but in the history of man and his reality. . . . a simple economic fact appears as the perversion of the human essence and the loss of human reality. It is only on this foundation that an economic fact is capable of becoming the real basis of a revolution which will genuinely transform the essence of man and his world.. .. alienated labour and private property are not simply . . economic concepts, but concepts for a crucial process in human history. . . the starting point, the basis and the goal of this investigation is precisely the particular historical situation and the praxis which is revolutionizing it."

Through labor, a universal activity, man not only surmounts the separation of the objective and subjective worlds, but in so doing becomes a member of the human community. This community, however, is also an expropriative society. Man who has fashioned the real material world can no longer recognize himself in that world because his work has been appropriated by others. While Hegel organizes his discussion of labor around the categories of "master" and "servant," Marx extends these concepts to a class analysis of capitalism in terms of "proletarian" and "capitalist." Man’s failure to recognize himself is, of course, the source of the "alienation" of modern man, alienation which, both Marx and Marcuse, would be abolished by a socialist revolution led by the proletariat. (p.5)

Alienation contributes to our one-dimensional existence. Alienation has become entirely objective; " the subject which is alienated is swallowed up by its alienated existence. There is only one dimension, and it is everywhere and in all forms. The achievements of progress defy ideological indictment as well as justification; before their tribunal, the "false consciousness" of their rationality becomes the true consciousness."

Technological Rationality

. . . In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of domination. Technological rationality has become political rationality.

Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972)

Section One of this book is entitled "The Left Under the Counterrevolution". Marcuse describes the counterrevolution in advanced industrial society as he sees it.

The Capitalist system is defending itself against revolution by the organization of a counterrevolution. In the United States this is strictly a preventive measure. Fear of a revolution, which according to Marcuse would be the most radical of all revolutions - a world-historical revolution, is the reason behind the counterrevolutionary stance of the Establishment. This revolution would be qualitatively different from any previous revolution in that it would vary in degree according to the level of development of capitalism. Where capitalism is most advanced the revolution would be designed to break the repressive continuum of the Establishment. In doing so, socialism could overcome capitalist influences such as subordination of man to instruments of labor, alienation of man, and the waste and enslavement of the consumer society. Socialism, through this revolution, would create a new society, a technical and natural environment which no longer "perpetuates violence, ugliness, ignorance and brutality". Socialism would have a "new totality" which would include moral and aesthetic dimensions, a change in the quality of existence itself - change in the needs and satisfactions of humans, and moral, psychological, aesthetic and intellectual faculties would become factors in the material production. This revolution would be the "historical answer to the development of capitalism".

Capitalism can raise productivity of labor by enlarging dependence of underlying population:

Law of Capitalist Progress:

Technical Progress = Growing Social Wealth = Extended Servitude

Marcuse is examining/discussing the potential for a revolution:

(insert graph here)

Youth educated for better Educators determine the "detailed needs"

future conditions of humanity of the established society.

He states that fascism is a possibility in the development of capitalist society. As capitalism grows (out of control) it:

1. creates more needs than can be met

2. organizes counterrevolution (see Nixon, etc. p.24-26)

Capitalism will end; in its place will be either fascism or socialism. The result, he believes, depends on the awareness and freedom of the mass/base of society.

We are now in a new phase of capitalism - monopoly-state capitalism. This calls for not revision, but restoration, of Marxian theory. he states that false consciousness is rampant on the New Left and the Old Left.

Marcuse analyses the situation of the New Left in the United States. The Establishment is now prepared (they weren’t before) for the actions of the New Left. He asks the question, How is movement reacting to this?

1. The movement is weakened to a dangerous degree due to legal and extra-legal repression as well as internal weakness of the New Left due to ideological conflicts within militant opposition and lack of organization.

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notes from Counterrevolution and Revolt . . .