The Utopia of Herbert Marcuse Part 1

Abstract

Herbert Marcuse, the prominent intellectual leader of the student movement in the 1960s, is undoubtedly one of the greatest utopians in modern times. For him utopianism was not so much an unrealistic socioeconomic or political vision of a future society, but rather a vision which breaks radically with the prevailing social thinking, including its ‘visions’ of future society. The ‘end of utopia’ is the realization of a possible social utopia. In developing his utopia—in Soviet Marxism, Eros and Civilization, Psychoanalyse und Politik, Gespräche mit Herbert Marcuse, and other works—Marcuse drew upon the Marxian idea of abolition of labor. Marx himself seems to have retreated from this idea. As the other ‘abolitions’, i.e. the abolition of private property (exploitation) and the abolition of the state, are predicated upon the abolition of labor, this also means a retreat, at least partially, form the theory of liberation from all forms of exploitation and domination. Marcuse resumed the centrality of the abolition of labor in the non-exploitative society: ‘It is identical with the transition from capitalism to socialism, if socialism is defined in its most utopian terms: namely, among others, as the abolition of labor…that is to say, life as an end in itself.’ In reviving the Marxian idea of abolition of labor Marcuse ‘eroticized’ non-instrumental production (non-labor production). For him, erotic activity, in a broad sense, was identical with non-instrumental activity. He viewed the pleasure principle in Freud's theory as a principle that stands for non-instrumental activities and non-instrumental society in general. Socialism is all but turning again this principle (which had also appeared in ancient hedonistic socio-philosophical streams) that has been suppressed in the course of human history, into the new basis of society. Thus, productive activity would become play, or sensuous artistic activity. This new, sensuous activity (sensuous, ‘erotic’ non-labor) would become pivotal in the new, non-exploitative social relations, also envisaged as ‘feminist socialism’. The student movement and the New Left were not always aware of the radical, utopian nature of the vision of their intellectual ‘father’—a vision, which also involved the transformation of technology into ‘convergence of technique and art’.