Class & Economy as Practices of Power : Herbert Marcuse

Class & Economy as Practices of Power:Herbert Marcuse “This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.”

Herbert Marcuse • 1898 – 1979 • Student of Heidegger, broke w/him over Heidegger’s Nazi party membership, immigrated to US from Germany in 1934 • Worked for US gov’t during & immediately after WWII • Member of Frankfurt school • Taught at Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis, UCSD • Mentor of Angela Davis, “Father of the New Left”

What is totalitarianism? • The permanent and total mobilization of society and the individual in the defense of “the state” • Terror • “Technology” • Totalitarianism “is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests” (3)

What is totalitarianism? • In the west, “Technical progress, extended to a whole system of domination and coordination, creates forms of life (and of power) which appear to reconcile the forces opposing the system, and to defeat or refute all protest in the name of freedom from toil and domination.” (xliv)

Reconciliation of Opposing Forces • The full integration of state, economy, and society thwarts criticism: • The social order has integrated even concepts & agents that were meant to negate and oppose it • “society”, “individual”, “class”, “private”, “family” • “With the growing integration of industrial society, these categories are losing their critical connotation, and tend to become descriptive, deceptive, or operational terms.” (xlvi)

Individual & State • “In this society, the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupation, skills, and attitudes but also individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the opposition between the public and private existence, between individual and social needs.” (xlvii) • The individual self is thus fully mobilized in the service of the state

False Consciousness • True and false needs: • True: food, clothes, company, shelter • False: “those which are superimposed upon the particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice.” (5)

False Consciousness • Example: Relaxation. • Work is hard and unpleasant • You need to relax. • Vacations are expensive. • Work & save. • Buy & buy. • Now you’re broke. Back to work. • Work is hard and unpleasant. • “euphoria in unhappiness” (5)

False Consciousness • “No matter how much such needs may have become the individual’s own, reproduced and and fortified by the conditions of his existence; no matter how much he indentifies himself with them and finds himself in their satisfaction • …they continue to be what they were from the beginning—products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression.” (5) • “Private [mental] space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality.” (10)

False Consciousness • How to distinguish false from true needs? • No judge can do it, it would be reprehensible. • It must be left to the individual “if and when they are free to give their own answer.” (6) • But they are NOT free. • Thus, the more this process proceeds, “the more unimaginable” it becomes that “individuals might break their servitude and seize their own liberation.” • “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude.”

Positivism • This is in part because of the triumph of positivism • “The concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations.” • Example: length. What about justice? • “Many of the more troublesome concepts are being eliminated” because they cannot be operationalized. (13) • “debunking of the mind” • Reason brought to earth, incorporated

Absence of Negative Dimension • Criticism becomes impossible. Lacking a “negative” dimension to criticize “positive” thought, the status quo appears perfectly rational. • The objective good of progress and efficiency • Justice  justice system • Free institutions  those of the free world • “Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which could wipe out the human race also serve to protect the very forces which perpetuate this danger?”

One-Dimensional Thought • The pattern of one-dimensional thought & behavior either deflects ideas, actions, feelings that transcend it, or reduces them to its own terms. • Reason and religion both tamed, co-opted

One-Dimensional Thought • Example: freedom. Don’t people choose freely? Who is to contradict them? • But the availability of choice here is not the issue. That is a non-critical understanding of freedom • Free election of masters abolishes neither masters nor slaves • Free choice of goods & services is not free if these gods & services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear • Doing what you want isn’t freedom if your wants are given to you by the forces of your exploitation. That you want that just demonstrates the efficacy of the controls (7-8)

So what? • In the past, constant labor was necessary • Now, technology has rendered this unnecessary, also opening new political possibilities • Where once life was a struggle to dominate the world, there is now the possibility of its pacification • “the development of man’s struggle with man and nature, under conditions where the competing needs, desires, and aspirations are no longer organized by the vested interests in domination and scarcity”

So What? • While there exists a trend toward this consummation of technology, there are “intensive efforts to contain this trend within the established institutions.” • Technology becomes an instrument of domination rather than liberation, of servitude rather than freedom. This is the “irrational element in its rationality.” • “Life as an end is qualitatively different from life as a means.” (17)

So What? • What is being lost? • Freedom FROM the economy • The individual exists only as an economic unit • Liberation from politics over which the individual has no real control • Democracy is not, in fact, rule by the people. It is only insofar as elections are thought to be equivalent to power • Freedom of Choice? • Freedom of individual thought, unrestrained by manufactured “public opinion”

So What? • “The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of their utopian character, but of the strength of forces which prevent their realization.” (4)

The unification of opposing forces • Political parties • In the name of profit and against the Enemy • Applies both to US & USSR • Classes • To maintain the comfortable society • Labor & industry • A shared interest in long-term corporate profitability • Is this stabilization temporary, painting over the roots of conflict, or is it permanent, having transformed the very basis of social conflict? • Systematic effects • The elimination of negative potential

Nullification of Labor • Laborers, who once lived in contradiction & negation of the system, are now integrated • Sticks: Technological unemployment, outsourcing, speed-up • Carrots: Lifelong benefits (retirement, etc.) cause workers to identify their own interests WITH the company • Even to the extent that they will surrender increased wages to ensure continued profitability • Co-optation of labor interests

Revolution: Impossible • In order for fundamental social change (revolution) to occur, the laboring classes must be “alienated from this universe in their very existence, that their consciousness is that of the total impossibility to continue to exist in this universe… Thus, the negation exists prior to the change itself…” (25) • Labor no longer alienated; its critical (negative) dimension is gone

Revolution: Impossible • The promise of an ever-more-comfortable existence for some and brutality for others makes it impossible to imagine a qualitatively different universe of discourse & action • The current system is supremely able to contain & manipulate subversive thought & action

Incorporating the professionals • Professionals are integrated ever more systematically • Interdependence of professions • Striking has no effect • Reliance on machines • Computers store the knowledge once held by humans • Proletarianization • Example: store clerks, adjunct professors

The Bosses Vanish • Even owners and bosses are integrated, becoming less makers of decisions than corporate administrators • Behind the veil of vast corporate & government administration, responsibility dissolves and there is no place to affix responsibility, resentment, or anger • Who governs? Who leads?

Life as a thing • Labor, organizers, administrators, management all lose negative potential • They plan, they administrate, but “the decisions over life and death, over personal and national security are made at places over which the individuals have no control.” (32) • No one decides, no one chooses, they only function.

Life as a thing • “The growing productivity of labor creates an increasing surplus-product which ... allows an increased consumption—notwithstanding the increased diversion of productivity.” • Work  Consume  Work

Life as a thing • “As long as this constellation prevails, it reduces the use-value of freedom: there is no reason to insist on self-determination if the administered life is the comfortable and even the “good” life.” (49) • Use-value of freedom?  Efficiency • Freedom not good for anything • Who defines “good”?

Life as a thing • “This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.” It doesn’t matter “if the thing is animated and chooses its material and intellectual food, if it does not feel its being-a-thing, if it is a pretty, clean, mobile thing.” (33) • The human administered, managed like equipment

Class & Economy as Practices of Power : Herbert Marcuse