9 January, 2016

This Part 1. Begun on Mauritius – with Patrick’s gift, and at Patrick’s request.

From: Herbert Marcuse, (1955, 1966).

Eros & Civilisation: A philosophical enquiry into Freud.

Reading that rather bleak tome, I came to this, in part in the area I assume is Marcuse’s summary. There he says: “Freudian theory seemed to imply that the humanitarian ideals of socialism were humanly unattainable” (pp. 238, 239). It is unclear, to me at this point how he draws this stupendous (in times of written political philosophy, historical & future) conclusion.

Marcuse’s statement, I reject on a number of levels. However, it rather well sets today’s tone. More of that view when I finally write Parts 2, 3, 4, and so on. His abrupt dismissal of Jung’s work is startling: does he see something I do not?  So far in my reading Marcuse has not provided (me) ways to collectively and alternatively consider any  overarching ideas he might propose about Freud.

Marcuse, as when considering Adorno’s writings,  I see as essentially negative. He is faced with an unacceptable situation he knows only too well. As a writer, he is, to me, using an essentially negative perspective about our (the people, the globe) chances to be equally equal, all, forever and ever. He may do this to arrest us, focus us, force us to consider what we are prepared to do – outside our safe, little boxes  – when we are forced to do something.

Marcuse’s lens is thus narrowed down to a piercing incentivising pronouncement. Yet I found new tools, as the book has some positive specifics. These may be useful in ways , as of our lives are hampered in varying ways, and degrees.

The fascinating ideas Marcuse does present are, less about politics, they are more general. He cites Enrich Fromm (1932), who he says “understands the socio-psychological phenomena as… processes of active and passive adjustment of the instinctual apparatus to the socio-economic situation”. In my life I am fully aware of this ‘balance/re-balance’. It occurs to me every, single day. Sometimes more than once, an adjustment so autonomous I assume everyone wears one.

Marcuse describes Fromm as he works on the “connection between instinctual and economic structure” (p. 241), and what might happen outside what he terms the “patricentric-acquisitive”(p. 241). Which is what all non-men must deal with, one way or another, and tellingly, Marcuse labels this “the performance principle”, (p. 242). Certainly I am much interested in the hold “performance” -as in work – still has on me. And how I am dis-allowed to do any type of work that evidences value. Totally, entirely removed from that opportunity.

Fromm explains: “the instinctual apparatus itself is – in certain of its foundations – a biological datum”, and I feel this strongly, I desire to work. He goes on to explain the factor I believe hampers me in my desire, most, that it is “to a high degree modifiable;” sexual-based love can, and in non-men’s lives, and almost without fail, get in the way.  Meanwhile, there is another, insidious and most powerful element; “the economic conditions”. As Fromm already agrees, the last “are the primary modifying factors” Fromm, cited by Marcuse, p. 241).

While I agree with Fromm’s statement, above, (cited by Marcuse) to a high degree, it is my experience, without the (personally negative sexual love element), Fromm’s “biological datum” remains immute. In the non-man, which is where I remain.

In addition, there  are points I will not pass, or have not. These points are personally sacred, and most often not swayed by economics. At least to this point. In my variegated-privileged, and economically-varying yet still extraordinarily privileged, middle-class life.

Thereafter, Marcuse continues to quote Fromm, who describes the “underlying the societal organisation of the human existence”. Fromm then describes much of those “basic libidinal wants” I mentioned above. From this aged, and thus relatively unemotional point, I dispute they are, as he describes, “needs”

However, I certainly agree Fromm’s “wants” are highly plastic and pliable, especially in the young. Indeed, in our society, as has been the case for aeons, these “wants” are shaped and utilised – to “cement” the given society” (Fromm, cited by Marcuse, p. 241).

Again from my experience I agree, while specifying this is not necessarily so – for those of us who are the most privileged. In this my senior, hormonally mal-nourished, years,  I none of Viagra-commodities or HRT support. So libido is much-reduced, and thus, from that perspective it is clear this deadly “cement” holds much of the masses – firmly in their much-impoverished, 6-children lives.

Particular information about further reading also interested. For example,
Marcuse then briefly discussed Wilhelm Reich (1931). He sets out an explanation of Reich’s  “social and instinctual structures” (p. 239), shows, in this vein he writes of the “revisionist schools” of “Freud’s theory”.

Reich describes how those revisions “reveal more than ever … its elements, that transcend the prevailing order”. These are “elements” of repression, dragoon-ment of the general populace – by the elite). Freud thus does “link the theory of repression with that of its abolition” (p. 241). I would like to follow that trail.

END of this part. XS