Marcuse: the Dialectics of Hopelessness

• Date: 01 March 1977
• Published date: 01 March 1977
• Author: John Fremstad
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297703000108
• Subject Matter: Articles

MARCUSE: THE DIALECTICS OF HOPELESSNESS
JOHN FREMSTAD
University of South Dakota
EC.#USE Marcuse did not surface as a semi-popular social critic till the
t―~ 1960s during the time of mounting and, for awhile, hopeful social protest,
he
is often assumed to be a spokesman for the protestors. Indeed, some
of his writings in the sixties (most notably his Essay on Liberation) directly ad-
dressed the protest movement. Moreover, as protest in the U.S. subsided in the
seventies, Marcuse became less prominent . Yet the conclusions which Marcuse
draws from his studies seem far more apt in the politically quiescent seventies (and,
earlier, in the fifties) than the sixties. And if we look clearly at what Marcuse was
saying, even in the sixties, it appears that he was always a pessimistic revolutionary.
He generally spoke dourly to the fervent youth.
It is ll~Zarcuse’s peculiar brand of pessimism which I will attempt to elucidate
in this study. My focus will be on Marcuse’s psychological theories -
specifically,
on some of his revisions of Freud’s social-psychological theories. This narrow focus
can only be maintained by deliberately ignoring related themes and theories that
Marcuse has developed in his various writings. In particular I will not deal at
any length with Marcuse’s notion that art, the imagination and, more generally,
the human intellectual capacity for negation of historical realities provides a basis
for changing these realities. However I will indicate very briefly near the end of
this paper why I think this Marcusean theme does not fundamentally challenge
the outcome of my analysis. For, in my opinion, Marcuse, the post-Freudian, de-
livers pessimistic conclusions that neither Marcuse, the neo-Marxist, nor Marcuse,
the upholder of the (current) &dquo;truth value&dquo; of the arts, can quite get around.2
2
TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIMISM, PSYCHOLOGICAL PESSIMISM
But before proceeding it is necessary to note why Marcuse is a revolutionary
at all, to show the basis of such hopes as he had for changing and improving
society. Briefly, Marcuse believes that the productive capacities of modern tech-
nology finally make it possible to eradicate scarcity and the misery it produces.
(This is, of course, a conventional Marxist belief but one which is also held by
many social theorists of whatever political orientation.) Even more optimistically,
he believes that violence, ignorance and general ugliness can now be eliminated
along with scarcity.3 In short, &dquo;All the material and intellectual forces which
could be put to work for the realization of a free society are at hand.&dquo;4 Or, as he
likes to state it, utopia is at hand. The utopian wishes traditionally expressed in
art, religion and other imaginative enterprises have became sober, scientific, tech-
nological estimates. &dquo;The utopian claims of imagination have become saturated
with historical reality.&dquo;5 We are fast approaching &dquo;... a stage where society’s
’ Certainly his latest book, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972) is
not as widely read as his Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) which
came out during the crest of the sixties protest.
2
Marcuse speaks of the "truth value" of the imagination and the arts on pp. 130-43 in Eros
and Civilization (New York: Random House, 1955). My brief discussion of this posi-
tion is seen below.
3

For a recent formulation see pp. 2-3, Counterrevolution and Revolt: "No longer con-
demned to compulsive aggressiveness and repression in the struggle for existence, indi-
viduals would be able to create a technical and natural environment which would no
longer perpetuate violence, ugliness, ignorance, and brutality."
4

Five Lectures (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 64.
5

Eros and Civilization, p .141.

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81
capacity to produce may be akin to the creative capacity of art, and the construc-
tion of the world of art akin to the reconstruction of the real world --- union of
liberating art and liberating technolo~~.&dquo;e
Where, in such views, is there room for pessimism? Though there are, in his
estimate, no technological barriers to the establishment of a free society, Marcuse,
sees some other, very human, barriers. For one thing, current elites cannot be
expected to abdicate willingly, even for the noble purpose of establishing a free
society.’ (Needless to say, these elites generally will not see matters this way or,
at least, admit to seeing things this way. ) 8 But, in addition, Marcuse, does not see
most of the citizens of the advanced technological societies pushing for the estab-
lishment of a free society. They do not even understand what a free society might
be and pervasive psychological forces may perpetuate their ignorance and passivity.9
That Marcuse’s pessimism grows primarily from his analysis of the psycho-
logical dispositions of his contemporaries is rather startling since one of his major
intellectual projects has been a revision of the pessimistic social-psychological
theories of Freud. But even in Eros and Civilization, his full-length retooling of
Freudian theory, very conservative conclusions emerge. In the end, Marcuse, seems
to conclude that we contemporaries have wriggled out of the Freudian strait
jacket only at the cost of breaking our limbs so that we can no longer move for-
ward. Where Freud pictures for us robust humans shackled by social constraints,
Marcuse shows us unshackled humans who are cripples. Either way the perpetua-
tion of a repressive society seems guaranteed.
To illustrate this paradoxical conclusion to 1.tlarcuse’s revision of Freud it will
suffice to focus on Marcuse’s critique of two fundamental Freudian propositions.
First, Freud maintained that the human sexual instinct is socially disruptive and
must be repressed if social order is to be maintained. Second, Freud argued that
the necessary work for social living will not be performed spontaneously but must
be based on a repressive diversion of sexual energies. Marcuse attempts to undo
both theories. But his revisions seem strangely futile because they end in his own
prediction of continuing sexual repression and exploitation of workers. That is not
obvious, however, till one has traced to the end the main lines of Marcuse’s argu-
ment and that is the task we
must now
begin.
UBIQUITOUS SEX, DIFFUSE SEX AND SOG1AL ORDER
Of the various ideas and arguments Freud presented over the years his insis-
tence of the prevalence of sexual behavior or sexually motivated behavior must
have upset his contemporaries most. To a still somewhat puritanical society it
6

An
Essay on Liberation, p. 48.
7
Marcuse seems ambiguous and wavering on the issue of the degree to which some kind of
power elite consciously and selfishly orders society for its own ends. See George Kateb’s
discussion "The Political Thought of Herbert Marcuse" in James V. Downton and
and David K. Hart, eds., Perspectives on Political Philosophy, Vol. III (Hinsdale, Ill.:
Dryden, 1973), pp. 416-19. See also the discussion below.
8
That U.S. society, among others, is dominated by elites is a proposition for which I can
hardly take the time to argue in this paper. For what it is worth I believe that to be
true.
9
Again, Marcuse does not seem to be completely consistent on this point but usually he
stresses the crucial importance of the masses’ realizing the difference between the es-
tablished "false" needs which the present society satisfies and their "real" needs which
would demand a new society. Consider the following passage, for example: "It is pre-
cisely the continuity of the needs developed and satisfied in a repressive society that
reproduces this repressive society over and over again within the individuals themselves.
Individuals reproduce repressive society in their needs, which persist even through revo-
lution, and it is precisely this continuity which up to now has stood in the way of the
leap from quantity into the quality of a free society." Five Lectures, p. 65. Note that
here Marcuse is maintaining that even a successful revolution would come to naught
if the masses did not understand what a free society really is and what their true
needs are.

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82
was bad enough that adults, particularly younger males, had rather strong hetero-
sexual urges, for even such limited urges threatened a family structure based on
monogamy. Freud’s contention that sexual impulses not only went far beyond
heterosexual urges, but strongly affected women and children as well as adult males,
would seem to make sexual impulses even more dangerous to society
Only decades later Freud’s insistence on the diversity and prevalence of sexual
urges may not seem so frightening. After all, why should mere sexual urges dis-
rupt society? But one must remember here the specific sexual inclinations (and
their normal accompaniments) which Freud claimed to have discovered. The
Oedipus complex, for example, included not only the strong sexual interest of the
male child in his mother, but the child’s wish to eliminate the father as a rival.
Oedipus killed his father. Incest and murder are a heady mixture. Further, Freud
illustrated the tendency for sexual impulses to fuse with sadistic and/or masochistic
impulses. Such sexual alloys appear disruptive, to say the least. And, as we know,
the sexual-sadist may be a powerful politician, not just a closet pervert.
Along such paths, sexuality, as portrayed by Freud, would lead directly (that
is, if sexual urges were not repressed) to behavior...