Marcuse, "Political Preface 1966"

[Dave Monroe]

Selected selections from Herbert Marcuse, "Political Preface 1966," Eros and 
Civilization: A Philosophical Enquiry into Freud (Botson: Beacon Press, 1966 
[1955]), pp. xi-xxv.

Written in Memory of Sophie Marcuse, 1901-1951 (dedication)

Eros and Civilization: the title expressed an optimistic, euphemistic, even 
positive thought, namely, that the achievements of advanced industrial 
society would enable man to reverse the direction of progress, to break the 
fatal union of productivity and destruction, liberty and repression--in 
othre words, to learn the gay science (gaya sciencia) of how to use the 
social wealth for shaping man's world in accordance with his Life Instincts, 
in the concerted struggle against the purveyors of Death. (xi)

In the affluent society, the authorities are hardly forced to justify their 
dominion.  They dliever the goods; they satisfy the sexual and the 
aggressive energy of their subjects.  Like the unconscious, the destructive 
power of which they so successfully represent, they are this side of good 
and evil, and the principle of contradiction has no place in their logic. 
(xi-xii)

As the affluence of society depends iuncreasingly on the uninterrupted 
production of waste, gadgets, planned obsolescence, and means of 
destruction, the individuals have to be adapted to these requirements in 
more than the traditional ways.  [e.g., "the 'economic whip,'" "the laws and 
patriotism"] (xii)

Scientific management of instinctual needs has long since become a vital 
factor in the reproduction of the system .... (xii)

Mass democracy provides the political paraphernalia for effectuating this 
introjection of the Reality Principle; it not only permits the people (up to 
a point) to choose their own masters ... it also allows the masters to 
disappear behind trhe technological veil of the productive and destructive 
apparatus which they control, and it conceals the human (and material) costs 
of the benefits which it bestows upon those who collaborate. (xiii)

It makes no sense to talk about liberation to free men--and we are free if 
we do not belong to the oppressed minority.  And it makes no sense to talk 
about surplus repression when men and women enjoy more sexual liberty than 
ever before.  But the truth is that this freedom and satifaction are 
transforming the earth into hell.  The inferno is still concentrated in 
certain faraway places: Vietnam, the Congo, South Africa, and in the ghettos 
of the "affluent society" ... (xiii)

... man could avaoid the fate of a Welfare-Through-Welfare State only by 
achieving a new starting point where he could reconstruct the productive 
apparatus without that "innerworldy asceticism" which provided the mental 
basis for domination and exploration.  This image of man was the determinate 
negation of Nietzsche's superman; man intelligent enough and healthy enough 
to dispense with all heros [sic] and heroic virtues, man without the impulse 
to live dangerously, to meet the challenge; man with the good conscience to 
make life an end-in-itself, to live in joy without fear.  "Polymorphous 
sexuality" was the term I used to indicate that the new direction of 
progress would depend completely on the opportunity to activate repressed or 
arrested organic, biological needs: to make the human body an instrument of 
pleasure rather than labor.  (xiv-v)

The idea of such a new Reality Principle was based on teh assumption that 
the material (technical) preconditions for its development were either 
established, or could be established in teh advanced industrial societies of 
our time. (xv)

When, in the more or less affluent societies, productivity has reached a 
level at which the masses participate in its benefits, and at which the 
opposition is effctively and democratically "contained," then the conflict 
between master and slave is also effective contained.  Or rather it has 
changed its social location.  It exists, anmd explodes, in the revolt of the 
backwards countries against the intolerable heritage of colonialism and its 
prolongation by neo-colonialism. (xv-i)

... the international proletariat would get its intellectual armor from 
outside: the "lightning of thought" would strike the "naiven Volksboden." 
(xvi) ["'You are perverting a great discovery to the uses of commerce,' sez 
Thanatz," GR, V665]

Revolt against the false fathers, teachers, and heroes--solidarity with the 
wretched of the earth: is there any 'organic" connection between the two 
facets of the protest? (xvi)

The body against "the machine"--not against the mechanism ... but against 
the machine which has taken over the mechanism: the political machine, the 
corporate machine, the cultural and eduicational machine which has welded 
blessing and curse into one rational whole.  The hole has become too bog, 
its cohesion too strong, its functionong too efficient--does the power of 
the negative concentrate in still partly unconquered, primitive, elemental 
forces? ... --does guerilla warfare define the revolution of our time? 
(xvii)

Historical backwardness may again become the histrical chance of turning the 
wheel of progress to another direction.  technical and scientific 
overdevelopment stands refuted when th radar-equipped bombers, teh 
chemicals, and teh "special forces" of the affluent society are let loose on 
the poorest of the earth .... (xvii)

The capacity to overkill and to overburn, and the mental behavior taht goes 
with it are by-products of the devlopment of the productive forces within a 
system of exploitation and repression; they seem to become more productive 
the more comfortable the system becomes to its privileged subjects.  The 
affluent society has now demonstrated that it is a society at war .... 
(xvii-viii)

... there are photographs that show a row of half naked corpses laid out for 
the victors in Vietnam: they resemble in all details the pictures of the 
starved, emasculated corpses of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  (xx)

It is not the striggle of Eros against Thanatos, because the esatablished 
society too has its Eros .... (xx)

Can we speak of a juncture between the erotic and political dimension? (xxi)

Perpetuation of the obsolescent need for full-time labor ... will require 
the increasing waste of resources ... and the growth of the military or 
destructive sector.  Escalated wars, permanent preparation for war, and 
total administration ....  Technical progress .... automation ... (xxii)

The system is at its weakest pint where it shows its most brutal strength: 
in the escalation of its military potential .... (xxiv)

... the organized refusal to continue to ork on the material and 
intellectuial instruments which are now being used against man ... (xxiv-v)

... the beginning of the reversal ... (xxv)

... organization demands counter-organization.  Today the fight for life, 
the fight for Eros, is the political fight.  (xxv)
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at 
http://profiles.msn.com.