Marcuse in the 1960s — Critical Theory

Recapitulation

Art as a promesse du bonheur (proh-MESS dew boh-NUR; /pʁɔmɛs dy bɔnœʁ/), a promise of happiness; utopia and happiness in everyday life. We saw Adorno find utopia in an American child eating an ice-cream cone (“Culture and Kultur (kool-TOOR; /kʊlˈtuːɐ̯/)”) and in “blind somatic pleasure” (“This Side of the Pleasure Principle,” in Minima Moralia (MEE-nee-mah moh-RAH-lee-ah; /ˈmi.ni.ma moˈra.li.a/)). Today, the critical theorist who made that sensual utopia into a politics.

The Frankfurt School in the 1960s

Postwar German political culture

West Germany in the 1950s was conservative and anticommunist: the Germany of Konrad Adenauer (AH-deh-now-er; /ˈaːdənaʊ̯ɐ/) and the Christian Democrats. And it was a culture that repressed its Nazi past. Adorno confronted that repression directly in a lecture of 1959, published in 1960: “What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?”

The rise of the student movement

A new generation rose up against postwar conformism and against their parents’ silence about the fascist past. They protested the American military bases in West Germany and the war in Vietnam. Outside a parliament dominated by a grand coalition, they formed the “extra-parliamentary opposition,” the Außerparlamentarische Opposition (OW-ser-par-lah-men-TAH-ri-sheh oh-poh-zee-TSYOHN; /ˈaʊ̯sɐpaʁlamɛnˌtaːʁɪʃə ʔɔpoziˈtsi̯oːn/), or APO.

The Institute as ally, and as establishment

The Institute’s antifascist agenda in the 1950s and 1960s made it a natural ally of the student activists, and in general it supported them. But it was also the establishment. On 30 May 1968 the Bundestag (BOON-des-tahk; /ˈbʊndəstaːk/) passed the “emergency laws,” giving the government extraordinary powers in a crisis, against the opposition of the League of German Socialist Students. In Frankfurt, The New York Times reported, leftist students blockaded the university, and fought other students trying to get in to class. On 31 January 1969 members of the APO, led by Adorno’s own student Hans-Jürgen Krahl (KRAHL; /kʁaːl/), occupied the Institute. Adorno called the police. A leaflet of the time declared: “Adorno as an institution is dead.”

Herbert Marcuse: life and thought

Biography (19 July 1898 – 29 July 1979)

Herbert Marcuse (mar-KOO-zeh; /maʁˈkuːzə/) was born in Berlin and educated in Freiburg. He attempted a habilitation with Heidegger (HY-deg-er; /ˈhaɪ̯dɛɡɐ/), Hegel’s (HAY-gel; /ˈheːɡl̩/) Ontology and the Foundation of a Theory of Historicity (1932), and joined the Institute in 1933. He emigrated to the United States in 1934 and lived in Morningside Heights in New York. During the war he worked for the OSS; afterwards he taught at Harvard, Brandeis and the University of California, San Diego, and acquired the reputation of “father of the New Left.”

Selected major works

Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941)
Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955). Its “Political Preface” of 1966 says: “Today the fight for life, the fight for Eros, is the political fight.”
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964)

Major themes

early experiments in “Heideggerian Marxism,” and the 1932 review of Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts that we read in week 2;
utopia, sought in eros, in “libidinal labor,” in popular culture, and in the student movement;
the “Great Refusal”: a radical turn against capitalist consumption, and a demand for total fulfillment.

An Essay on Liberation (1969)

The Great Refusal

The consumer economy and corporate capitalism, Marcuse argues, have created a second nature in human beings, which ties them libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need to possess, consume, handle and constantly renew the gadgets offered to and imposed on people, even at the risk of their own destruction, has become a “biological” need. This second nature militates against any change that would abolish people’s existence as consumers consuming themselves in buying and selling. So the needs this system generates are stabilizing, conservative needs: “the counterrevolution anchored in the instinctual structure.” (Quotation 1.) The Great Refusal is the refusal of those needs.

Eros against Thanatos

If our servitude is anchored in the instincts, then liberation must reach into a dimension that Marxist theory hardly considered: the “biological” dimension, where vital needs and satisfactions assert themselves. Liberation presupposes different instinctual needs, different reactions of body as well as mind. (Quotation 2.) It is a politics of Eros, the life drive, against Thanatos (THAN-ah-toss; /ˈtʰa.na.tos/), the death drive Freud set beside it.

The importance of the aesthetic

The “new sensibility” has become practice. It emerges in the struggle against violence and exploitation, wherever that struggle is waged for new ways and forms of life: negation of the Establishment, its morality and its culture; affirmation of the right to build a society where the abolition of poverty and toil ends in a world in which the sensuous, the playful, the calm and the beautiful become forms of existence, and so the Form of society itself. Freedom is not merely self-determination but the realization of goals that enhance, protect and unite life on earth, in our relations, our language and our silence, our gestures and looks, our love and hate. (Quotation 3.) Play, beauty and experience are political.

Labor, students, Black liberation and the “Third World”

Marcuse warns that organized labor has been integrated into the system. He sees the student movement as anti-institutional, revolutionary in its theory, instincts and goals, but not yet a revolutionary force, perhaps not even an avant-garde, so long as there are no masses able and willing to follow. It is “the ferment of hope” in the stifling capitalist metropoles, testifying to the real need and real possibility of a free society. (Quotation 4.) He made strong statements of support for Black liberation (Angela Davis, who had studied with him, and the Black Panthers), and for the “Third World” struggles: the Viet Cong, Cuba, and others.

Marcuse’s legacy

Angela Davis’s “Marcuse’s Legacies” began as an address at Berkeley in 1998. “One of the most salient and persistent aspects of Marcuse’s work,” she says, “is his concern with the possibilities of utopia.” (Quotation 5.) Of the first-generation critical theorists, Marcuse was the most overt proponent of utopia. His legacy runs through eros and imagination, feminism, Black liberation, and popular music.

The new radicalism, as Marcuse described it, militated against centralized bureaucratic communism and semi-democratic liberal organization alike. It had a strong element of spontaneity, even anarchism, an expression of the new sensibility against domination: the feeling that the joy of freedom and the need to be free must come before liberation. Hence its aversion to pre-established leaders, apparatchiks of every kind, politicians however leftist; the initiative passes to small, widely diffused, autonomous groups. (Quotation 6.)

Marcuse supported the student movement. Adorno, occupied and picketed in Frankfurt, did not, or not in the same way. Their argument is next.

Handout outline (Professor Gordon)

I. Recapitulation

art as a “promesse du bonheur” or promise of happiness
utopia and happiness in everyday life
Adorno’s reference to American child with ice cream (“Kultur and culture”) and to “blind somatic pleasure” (“This side of the pleasure principle,” Minima Moralia)

II. The Frankfurt School in the 1960s

A. Postwar German political culture
- conservatism and anticommunism: Konrad Adenauer and the CDU
- the repression of the Nazi past
- Adorno’s “What is the Meaning of Working Through the Past?” (1960)
B. The rise of the student movement
- the rising generation and revolt against postwar conformism and parental repression of fascist past
- rebellion against U.S. military bases in West Germany; protests against Vietnam War
- the “extra-parliamentary opposition” (Außerparlamentarische Opposition, or ApO)
C. The Institute as ally and establishment
- the Institute’s anti-fascist agenda in the 50s and 60s and general support for student activists
- 17 May 1968: Bundestag passes “emergency laws,” opposed by League of German Socialist Students [17 May is the date of the Times report on the back; the final vote was on 30 May]
- ApO led by Hans-Jürgen Krahl occupies Institute (31 January 1969): “Adorno as an institution is dead”

III. Herbert Marcuse: life and thought

A. Biographical: 19 July 1898 – 29 July 1979 [the handout has 20 July]
- born in Berlin; educated in Freiburg; attempts habilitation with Heidegger, “Hegel’s Ontology and the Foundation of a Theory of Historicity” (1932); joins Institute in 1933
- emigration to US 1934; lives in Morningside Heights, New York City
- work with OSS during war; teaching at Harvard, Brandeis, UC San Diego
- reputation as “father of the New Left”
B. Selected major works
- Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941)
- Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955): “Today the fight for life, the fight for Eros, is the political fight” (Political Preface, 1966)
- One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964)
C. Major themes
- early experiments in “Heideggerian Marxism” and the review of Marx’s EPM (1932)
- themes of utopia: in eros, “libidinal labor,” popular culture, and the student movement
- the “great refusal”: a radical turn against capitalist consumption and a demand for total fulfillment

IV. Marcuse’s An Essay on Liberation (1969)

A. The great refusal
- a turn against capitalist consumption [quote 1]
B. Eros against Thanatos
- libido and the body [quote 2]
C. The importance of aesthetic
- play, beauty, and experience [quote 3]
D. Labor, students, Black liberation, and the “Third World”
- warns of labor integration; sees student movement as anti-institutional but not yet ready [quote 4]
- strong statements of support for Black liberation (Angela Davis and “Black Panthers”)
- strong support for “Third World” (Viet Cong), Cuba, et cetera

V. Marcuse’s legacy

Angela Davis, “Marcuse’s Legacies” (originally address at UC Berkeley, 1998) [quote 5]
the most overt proponent of “utopia” among the first-generation critical theorists
eros, imagination, feminism, black liberation, and popular music [quote 6]
support for the student movement and debate with Adorno [next lecture]

On the back: The New York Times, 17 May 1968; (1)–(4), (6) Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (1969); (5) Davis, “Marcuse’s Legacies” (1998).