The work of Marcuse is to be seen within the context of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. Jewish intellectuals like Marcuse headed movements that subjected Gentile culture to radical criticism while allowing for the continuity of Jewish identification.
These movements promote radical individualism for White people while maintaining collectivism and nationhood for Jews. While Marcuse promoted individualism and condemned White racial feeling as immoral, he was a committed Zionist who strongly supported the establishment of the State of Israel.
Marcuse became a preeminent intellectual figure for the New Left and student movements during the 1960s. Associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, he offered a synthesis of psychoanalytic thought and Marxist critique that challenged the foundations of Western capitalist society.
His work focused heavily on the mechanisms of social control in advanced industrial societies and the potential for revolutionary change through the dismantling of traditional institutions.
The Rejection of Orthodox Psychoanalysis
Marcuse was trained in psychoanalysis but developed a fierce critique of the orthodox Freudian establishment that rose to prominence in mid-twentieth century America. Traditional Freudian theory, particularly the views held by Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna Freud, held that dangerous and aggressive forces lurked within the human unconscious.
Consequently, the Freudian view maintained that the function of civilisation and therapy was to repress or control these instincts to maintain social order and ensure individuals adapted to their environment.
Marcuse rejected this premise fundamental to the psychoanalytic status quo. He argued that the inner emotional drives of human beings were not inherently violent or evil.
Instead, it was the specific structure of society that made these drives dangerous by repressing and distorting them. He criticised the psychoanalysts of his era, arguing they had become corrupt agents of the ruling power structure. By teaching individuals to conform to the existing social order, Marcuse argued that therapists were merely helping people adapt to a society that was itself corrupt and evil, thereby forcing individuals to submit to evil rather than challenge it.
Eros and the Sexual Revolution
In 1955, Marcuse published _Eros and Civilization_, a work that called for polymorphous perversity, a concept crafted by Sigmund Freud but radicalised by Marcuse.
This concept posed the idea of sexual pleasure outside traditional norms and became influential in shaping the sexual revolution and Hippie Movement of the 1960s.
Marcuse viewed the restriction of sexuality to procreation and the monogamous family as a mechanism of capitalist oppression. He argued that if capitalism were abolished, there would be no need for repressing sexuality, and socially useful work could become erotic play.
Marcuse believed that the liberation of sexuality and the creation of non hierarchical democratic structures in the family would create personalities resistant to fascism.
He agreed with Wilhelm Reich that the traditional Western family was an institution for the production of authoritarian personalities who are inclined to submit to dominant authorities.
Consequently, he advocated for the eroticisation of previously tabooed zones, times, and relations, aiming to dismantle the distinction between infantile and adult sexuality. This philosophy promoted the idea that a society tolerant of every form of sexual deviancy is a society tolerant of minority groups and resistant to authoritarianism.
The One Dimensional Man
A central tenet of the social criticism found in Marcuse is the concept of the one dimensional man. He observed that advanced industrial society created a conformist population by manipulating the subconscious and unconscious primary drives of individuals.
In his 1964 work _One Dimensional Man_, he argued that advanced industrial societies repress their populations by creating false needs via mass advertising, industrial management, and modes of thought.
In this framework, individuals were reduced to expressing their feelings and identities through mass produced objects. This consumerist dynamic resulted in a society where people believed they were happy and free because they could purchase goods, yet this prosperity led to a systematic waste of resources.
Marcuse contended that this Consumerism served a political function: it kept the masses docile and distracted. The result was a one dimensional universe of thought and behaviour which stifled the capacity for critical thought and oppositional behaviour among the populace.
Repressive Tolerance and Political Strategy
Marcuse developed a specific political theory regarding tolerance in democratic societies, often referred to as repressive or liberating tolerance. He argued that the realisation of true liberation required a shift in how tolerance was applied.
According to his theory, liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the political Right and toleration of movements from the Left.
He asserted that a government could not be expected to foster its own subversion, but that in a democracy, the right to subvert was vested in the majority of the people. If the pathways to this subversion were blocked by organised repression and indoctrination, undemocratic means might be required to reopen them.
This strategy included the withdrawal of toleration for speech and assembly from groups that promoted aggressive policies, armaments, chauvinism, or discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, as well as those opposing the extension of public services.
To achieve these political ends, Marcuse advocated what he called the great refusal as the only effective opposition to all encompassing methods of social control.
He championed sexual and ethnic minorities and outsiders to nourish oppositional thought and behaviour. Marcuse argued that orthodox Marxists had misplaced their faith in the proletariat, which he no longer viewed as a revolutionary class.
Instead, he urged the Left to embrace middle class student radicals and minority coalitions as a new revolutionary vanguard.
Aesthetics and Environmentalism
The philosophy of Marcuse extended to the realms of aesthetics and nature. He utilised Freud's dichotomy between the death drive (Thanatos) and the life drive (Eros) to frame environmentalism as a political and psychological movement of liberation.
In this view, environmentalism represents the victory of Eros, shifting the balance within individuals towards life and the erotic over death and destruction. This vision involved a narcissistic union where the individual melts into their environment, rejecting the distinct forms and categories that characterise traditional views of reality.
Marcuse expressed opposition to the representational art of Europe, arguing that such art falsified the world by presenting it as a collection of things to be dominated and owned by men.
He held that any positive statement or coherent form in art implied repression, as it necessitates that whatever falls outside that form is ugly or abnormal. Therefore, he believed revolutionary art must be negative and critical, exposing the nakedness of man and the abyss of destruction to facilitate the goal of the free individual.
Legacy
Following World War II, Marcuse was involved in efforts to reshape the German psyche during the occupation, producing propaganda films designed to instill a sense of collective guilt in the German population, as a punishment for standing against the Jews.
By the 1960s, he had become a mentor to the radical student movements in the United States. His theories provided the intellectual framework for the New Left, influencing student activists who sought to overthrow the established order.
His ideas regarding the suppression of right wing viewpoints and the promotion of revolutionary left wing movements became a significant element of radical political strategy, influencing modern concepts of tolerance, sexuality, and social justice.