Marxism, Revolution and Utopia

Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 6

Herbert Marcuse, Douglas Kellner, Clayton Pierce, Douglas Kellner, Clayton Pierce

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415137850
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317805557
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This collection assembles some of Herbert Marcuse's most important work and presents for the first time his responses to and development of classic Marxist approaches to revolution and utopia, as well as his own theoretical and political perspectives.

This sixth and final volume of Marcuse's collected papers shows Marcuse's rejection of the prevailing twentieth-century Marxist theory and socialist practice - which he saw as inadequate for a thorough critique of Western and Soviet bureaucracy - and the development of his revolutionary thought towards a critique of the consumer society. Marcuse's later philosophical perspectives on technology, ecology, and human emancipation sat at odds with many of the classic tenets of Marx's materialist dialectic which placed the working class as the central agent of change in capitalist societies. As the material from this volume shows, Marcuse was not only a theorist of Marxist thought and practice in the twentieth century, but also proves to be an essential thinker for understanding the neoliberal phase of capitalism and resistance in the twenty-first century.

A comprehensive introduction by Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce places Marcuse's philosophy in the context of his engagement with the main currents of twentieth century philosophy while also providing important analyses of his anticipatory theorization of capitalist development through a neoliberal restructuring of society. The volume concludes with an afterword by Peter Marcuse.

III

LECTURES AND INTERVIEWS ON MARXISM, REVOLUTION
AND THE CONTEMPORARY MOMENT

MARXISM CONFRONTS ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY FEBRUARY 22, 1964*

ORGANIZATION:

I. Confrontation of Marxian theory with the facts of advanced industrial society (USA!)

II. Extent to which the facts refute the theory: areas of corroboration and of contradiction

III. The Marxist explanation of the areas of contradiction

IV. Evaluation of this explanation

V. Conclusion: is the theory refuted?

Discussion confined to the most advanced areas and tendencies, justified because

Marx established an internal link between the highest stage of capitalism and the transition to socialism; maturity of productive forces and explosion of contradictions;

the tendencies prevalent in the most advanced areas (technical, scientific, cultural) spread and serve as models of industrialization in backward areas.

I. CONFRONTATION “With Capitalism:
mere enumeration of familiar conditions:

(1) Impoverishment – improvement in standard of living

(2) Sharpening of class conflicts – increasing class collaboration

(3) Revolutionary consciousness – conformist consciousness

(4) International proletarian solidarity – nationalism

(5) Stagnation and crisis – stabilization and growth of capitalism

(6) Imperialist conflicts – supranational alliances and markets (the spectre of the Generalkartell!)

(7) Bipolarization of society, reduction of the middle classes – growth of the “new middle classes”

(8) finally, and most important:

co-existence – succession

– successful revolution in backward countries!
(Omitted: tendential decline in the rate of profit??)
industrial reserve army?

– Marx anticipates monopolistic extra profits at the expense of smaller enterprises

– Employment growing in non-production branches (“service industries”)

Formidable bill of indictment

– drawn up already around 1900, as the ground of Social Democracy

– The critique, based on these new conditions, strikes at the very roots of Marxian theory:

– the stabilization, if a structural transformation of capitalism, is not a surface phenomenon!

But now, as against these contradictions,

II. THE AREAS OF CORROBORATION

(1) Concentration and centralization of capital

(2) Constant excess capacity and destructive or restrictive use of productivity

(3) Growing need for regimenting production and distribution: monopolistic and state control

(4) Reduction of free enterprise, free competition, free market

(5) Corollary: weakening of civil and political liberties; rise of militarism and nationalism …

(6) Intensified penetration of economic and political influence spheres abroad: “neo-colonialism”

(7) Conflicts within the unified capitalist orbit: common market; defense policy!

However, Marx’s anticipation seems falsified:

none of these centrifugal tendencies (manifestation of the inherent contradictions), nor their ensemble has strengthened the revolutionary potential in advanced capitalism:

“minimum program” and democratic strategy of even the most powerful communist parties and unions (France; Italy!)

Most serious, in Marxist terms:

– the narrowing of the world market by the growth of the communist orbit and the independence of the colonies has promoted the reorganization of capitalism!

– Communism as the physician at the sickbed of capitalism!

– Capitalist unity resolves capitalist contradictions!

III. THE MARXIST ANSWER

Two stages and two levels:

(1) the official Soviet doctrine

(2) the “non-orthodox” Marxist interpretation

re (1) Soviet Marxism

In essence a restatement and up-dating of Lenin’s Imperialism:
“temporary stabilization”, on the basis of

– monopoly-state-capitalist organization

– surplus profits

– “bribing” of labor aristocracy

– war economy.

– The improvements resulting from this reorganization are

– confined to a small minority of laboring classes

– wiped out periodically by wars and depressions

– offset by intensified exploitation of labor

– in the metropolitan countries (scientific management)

– in the underdeveloped countries.

Subsequently (Stalin)

– the decline of the revolutionary potential in capitalism explained as “transformation of the class struggle into the international strugglebetween have- and have-not nations”

– But: the “proletariat” of the have-nations belonging to the other camp!

– Moreover, the Soviet doctrine retains the notions of

– the final crisis of capitalism and the historical superiority of socialism;

But:

the reality of capitalist stabilization is recognized

in the theory – and policy – of peaceful coexistence:

– Triumph of socialism through greater productivity and rationality.

Inadequacy of this answer:

– the “conformist” part of labor more than a small aristocracy

– introduction of “external factors” (the non-capitalist orbit)

– what is “temporary”?

– what is “final”??

re (2) Neo-Marxism

Recognition of structural changes in the capitalist economy and in the laboring classes:

– growing productivity of labor, and cheapening of constant capital counteract the tendential decline in the rate of profit, permit a sustained high level of living;

But:

at the price of sustained and planned production of waste

– indoctrination, manipulation of needs

– constant danger of nuclear annihilation

– total and permanent mobilization.

Nevertheless,

even these “counter-tendencies” do not resolve the inherent contradictions:

– contraction of the private sector in favor of the monopolistic and semipublic sector; and, generally:

– contradiction between growing productivity and regimentation of needs, between progress and distinction of resources social health and toil perpetuated

– Not: relative impoverishment!

Example: AUTOMATION:

– would tend to the point where the reduction of labor time would amount to a reversal of the traditional distribution between free time and labor time

– this incompatible with the requirements of capital accumulation; adequate rate of profit and surplus value

Thus: resistance against automation as against mass unemployment

– arrest of progress and productivity!

But against this arrest: threat of full automation in the societies where the laws of capitalist development do not prevail

– weakening of capitalism in the global competition.

Marx in 1857: full-scale mechanization would mean the end of capitalism!
because: reduction in socially necessary labor time means

– reduction in exchange value of commodities

– reduction in “unpaid” working time, and thus

– reduction in the rate of profit

unless counteracted by total administration:	of prices
	of enterprisev
	of investment, etc.

Such total administration might be beneficial and progressive if it leads to a genuine

WELFARE STATE.

Too facile critique:

– the loss of economic, and even “cultural” liberties might not be too heavy a price where they have been concomitant with insecurity, fear, poverty, toil

– the reduction of these liberties may well be a precondition for genuine freedom “b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction Marcuse’s Adventures in Marxism
• I Studies in Marxism
• II Marxian Interventions
• III Lectures and Interviews on Marxism, Revolution and the Contemporary Moment
• IV Letters, Testimonies, and Responses to Critics
• V Marxism and Revolution in an Era of Counterrevolution
• Afterword
• Index