From the period immediately following World War II to the publication of An Essay on Liberation in 1969, orthodox Marxist theory and practice came under intense criticism from both Marxist and Liberal intellectuals. The critique of Marxist practice centered on the increasingly totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union. Even thinkers like Merleau-Ponty who defended the Moscow Purge Trials in Humanism and Terror became aware after the disclosure of slave labor camp atrocities that the Soviet Union was using violence for its own totalitarian rather than revolutionary (Marxist) ends.
Orwell extended this criticism of the Soviet Union in 1984: a depiction of a communist (INGSOC) totalitarian regime which used brute force, psychological torture, and linguistic control to subjugate its citizens. It seemed to confirm the perception that B.H. Levy later argued in Barbarism with a Human Face; Marxism was the demonstration of brute power (E.g. O'Brien) under the guise of morality and equality. This equation of power to communist practice extended beyond the critique of the Soviet Union. Raymond Aron systematically applied the criticism on a social level to French intellectuals, who, displaced from power by the rise of the new technocrats, used Marxism as a vehicle to regain lost power.
The final break from the Soviet camp occurred as a reaction to the "Prague Spring" of 1968. Not only did European communist parties and intellectuals repudiate the Soviet model and practice of Communism, but in its stead were updated and anti-totalitarian ideas which aligned "Euro communism" with the ideals of freedom and liberty found in Western Liberalism.
Though Orwell had intended 1984 to distinguish socialism from the bastardized vanguardism of the Soviet Union, Western thinkers with the advent of the "Cold War" turned their criticism to Marxist theory. Some argued that the "exclusive" nature of Marxist theory, its privileged and correct view of world history and class society, and its prescription for revolution, had licensed, if not caused, Soviet totalitarianism.
One writer during this new "Cold War", Frederick Hayek, saw Nazi totalitarianism as the natural consequence of socialism. Both governments had "centralized" economic planning. This led to compulsory mandates of a "majority decision" which gave no voice to dissent. Hannah Arendt argued that Marxist and fascist conceptions of "historical movements" destroyed traditional Western freedoms granted though previously "transcendent" laws. In communist countries, Marx's "science of history" became identified as the sole interpreter of human history; there was no longer recourse to transcendent laws. Moreover, this "monopoly" of history was relative to the group in power at the given time in history. Since the interpretation of history determined almost all aspects of public and private life, individual liberty could be destroyed with the change of governments.
Similar critiques came from within the Marxist fold. Popper argued against the validity of Marxist "historicism" ("holism") as a science and tool for social change. Such "laws, he argued, were based on the invalid extrapolation of scientific induction to history. Scientific laws were based on repeated events with uniform outcomes. History, on the other hand, was a "one shot" event which could not be retested and thereby validated. Even the apparent circularity in history was based on infrequently occurring events which might have any number of causes. It would be impossible to retest any one theory. Finally, Popper railed against Marxist plans for a future society: the course of history depends on knowledge, and future knowledge cannot be speculated on in the present. Thus, "whole" changes cannot be made, only "piecemeal" social engineering based on present knowledge is possible.
All these criticisms militate against any comprehensive ideological position, specifically the Marxist claim to historical "insight" and application. Without any of "exclusive" ideology, many intellectuals, like Rof Dahrendorf, favored a pluralistic political process. Like Marx, Dahrendorf felt that change and class struggle were inevitable in society, yet society should "institutionalize" the change, providing formal rules for conflict and mediation which recognize the equal rights of all dissident groups and ideologies. Even the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci wrote that Marxist values must be taught rather than imposed. He also wrote that communist parties should assume power only through democratically validated means.
Within this non-ideological and pluralistic context, Marcuse reaffirms some of the absolute "privileged" Marxist theories with a new twist. The re-emergence of interest in the "young Marx" brought back traditional categories "alienation", "species being" etc, all which found their basis in the Hegelian absolute of human "freedom." Marcuse based his social critique on biology and Freudian analysis, which were apparently even more undeniable. From this underpinning, he leveled irrefutable attacks on capitalism: "Self determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, ...to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive it may be. Organized capitalism has sublimated and turn to socially productive use frustration and primary aggressiveness on an unprecedented scale." Note what has happened here: pluralism and freedom are denied, for mankind cannot make truly "free" decisions. Instead, the "so called consumer economy and politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form." His argument remains ideological in the sense that it give a partisan historical interpretation of history, and due to its"absolute nature--its basis in biological truth--its could be used to license totalitarian change in the sense Arendt elucidates. The dissenters would simply not know what is "truly" best for them.
But perhaps this is an unfair criticism given Marcuse's other Utopian ideals. He is not advocating political revolution, but a complete revolution in consciousness--a "liberation." In this way, Marcuse allies himself to the "young Marx" concept of "alienation." Both argue that modern labor does not fulfil the self. Man's biological needs, his "life instincts", require a creative and free expression of the self in line with the classic German idealistic conception of "Bildung." In a capitalistic system, however, work is "socially necessary": done for the purposes of power, competition, or money. The life instinct is sublimated in the unfulfilled acquisition of material goods. But how can man liberate himself from these capitalistic conceptions that have become "second nature"?
In the formulation of classic German idealism, man's freedom of imagination (and thus the fulfilment of the "life instinct") is the synthesis between "sensibility" (comprised of "sensual experience" and "pure forms") and "reason". In a capitalistic system, man's sensibility (sensory experience) is corrupted by "socially necessary" work, "surplus repression," and acquisition.
Political "liberation" then becomes an "aesthetic liberation." Art ultimately has the same goals as the "life instincts" of man" the integration of the sensuous aspects of nature (feelings and emotions) into formal instructions (via man's reason) that have internal "harmony." As is the case in man, the sensual nature of art is corrupted by the Establishment: "Art cannot become a technique in reconstructing reality; its sensibility remaining repressed." Instead, art must reject current "forms" (desublimate) and return the vital roots of its original creation. Marcuse views "Non objective, abstract painting, rock and roll, blues and jazz" as "liberation art"--a complete rejection of current artistic forms (the "false automatism of current practices." The "new object of art," just as that of politics, is not yet given, "but the familiar objective has become impossibly false." Likewise, what is called for in politics is a desublimation of existing political forms--for even democratic systems perpetuate the Establishment and a resublimation to a new harmony of sensibility and reason devoid of capitalistic "alienation." Like Popper, Marcuse has no one future plan in mind, only something like "piecemeal" social engineering: the "harmless drive for better zoning regulations to the prohibition of transistor radio playing in public places." Such practices "desublimate" existing institutions, brings people back to the fundamental roots of government (i.e. Rousseau).
But still, is this process of "liberation" ideological? Des the criticism of Arendt apply? To answer this question at a first level, it is important to examine in more detail what a Marcusean revolution, if indeed there is to be one, would entail. Specifically, how would the revolution withstand the criticisms of philosophers of the New Right like Levy and Glucksman? These writers have argued that the reality of society is overwhelmingly complex, with constant conflict between groups. To impose a Marxist solution is not possible without dissent. Indeed, they would argue that a classless Marxist utopia does exist in real life--in the Soviet Union. For the only way to homogenize a complex society is to silence and isolate dissent. Thus, slave labor camps are a necessary feature of a Marxist society.
At one level, this criticism of the "new Right" is invalid. It is based only on the homogeneity of class, not on the possibility of mass liberation. If universal liberation occurs there theoretically could be a universal brotherhood with peace and understanding. Moreover there are no provision for a revolution in the present or the future in Marcuse. He sees provisions for a revolution in the present or the future in Marcuse. He potential elements of a future revolution in the ghetto population of the United States and in the countries of the Third World, but he fears that without a rupture of their beliefs a revolution would either spark a counterrevolution or continued enslavement to an exploitative system like in the Soviet Union. He offers no specific blueprint the new society must be determined by trial and error. Rather, his emphasis is on the spontaneous almost anarchic feeling of the joy of freedom which accompanies revolutions, especially student revolutions. This emotional response of liberation re humanizes the lives of the oppressed, filling them with new meaning. Marcuse sees this emotional content as more important, for example, than the specific revolutionary model of the Fidel and Che revolutions.
At this point, it appears that Marcuse's theories are indeed negative without any direct advocacy of any real world action or ideology. But a more persuasive criticism can be made on the applicability of aesthetic Utopian ideas in a complex political society. Art is not life, and is it even possible for the artist to achieve resolutions? Indeed, Marcuse's analysis seems to push human reality to absolute black and white dichotomies; for instance, mankind seems either absolutely free or absolutely indentured to capitalist society. There is no sense of a grey area reality of partial freedoms or partial truths, which by extension, the thought of New Right thinkers suggest, given their emphasis on pluralism and change. Implicit in their analysis is a resignation to the inherently conflicting motivations and beliefs in human behavior, and the necessity for compromise. In short, perfect forms in either art or politics are not possible in the world.
Finally, through desublimation appears devoid of ideology, taking in itself it is an ideology to end all ideologies. Could it comprise negative thinking or is it an absolute value? It seems a dichotomy had developed in political though between black and white thought aimed at negativing reality and establishing a Utopian community, and the more realistic acceptance of the inherent conflicts and compromises necessary in political life. But is this in itself an example of the black and white mode of thought?
Why are Marxist beliefs maintained in the face of this criticism? Or why after the apparent failures of both the Soviet experience and student revolts of the 1960s? Or why after the criticism waged by the end of ideology thinkers like Bell, Aron, and Ellul who suggest Marxism to be obsolete in a modern industrial world that is effected more by the technical expertise of managers than the specific economic system employed? The answer to this question in interestingly and suspectly a restatement of Marcuse's original position. For instance, one could reject capitalism on moral grounds, where morality , like beauty is defined as part of a high more resolved world. It follows that the world under capitalism is immoral in practice, a life spent in competition and material acquisition and by its effects: inequality of wealth, emptiness of material gain, unemployment, destruction of communities and the environment etc. Marxism, on the other hand, is favored because it offers the vision of a harmonious world. The "why" of Marxism has become a restatement of Marcuse's essay. It seems that the form of his argument first assumes certain Utopian conceptions of life, the condemns any discrepancies from the Utopia. Is he then begging the question: imposing absolute standards on life and then condemning capitalism for not reaching them? If so, is his and other Utopian Marxist criticism not unique to capitalism, but applicable to all aspects of an unresolved reality? This is all critical and Utopian thought based on faulty logic or illusion? But what is the alternative? Resignation could bring with it no hope for a better future.
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