Eros and Civilization: Phantasy and Utopia

books/psicologia/eros-civilization.md

 [[!meta title="Eros and Civilization"]]
 
 * Author: Hebert Marcuse
+* Some subjects covered (keywords): productivity, efficiency, labor, repression, domination, alienation, automation.
 
 ## Snippets
 
@@ -591,6 +592,11 @@ Superego:
     repression, of uninhibited desire and gratification -- but reality proceeds
     according to the laws of reason, no longer committed to the dream language.
 
+    [...]
+
+    The danger of abusing the discovery of the truth value of imagination for
+    retrogressive tendencies is exemplified by the work of Carl Jung.
+
 ## Unsublimated pleasure
 
     Smell and taste give, as it were, unsublimated pleasure per se (and unrepressed
@@ -618,6 +624,117 @@ Superego:
     is more at home in such sub-real and surreal processes as dreaming,
     daydreaming, play, the "stream of consciousness."
 
+    [...]
+
+    The surrealists recognized the revolutionary implications of Freud' s
+    discoveries: "Imagination is perhaps about to reclaim its rights."
+    13 But when they asked, "Cannot the dream also be applied to the solution of
+    the fundamental problems of life?" 14 they went beyond psychoanalysis in
+    demanding that the dream be made into reality without compromising its content.
+    Art allied itself with the revolution. Uncompromising adherence to the strict
+    truth value of imagination comprehends reality more fully. That the
+    propositions of the artistic imagination are untrue in terms of the actual
+    organization of the facts belongs to the essence of their truth: The truth that
+    some proposition respecting an actual occasion is untrue may express the vital
+    truth as to the aesthetic achievement. It expresses the "great refusal" which
+    is its primary characteristic. 15 This Great Refusal is the protest against
+    unnecessary repression, the struggle for the ultimate form of freedom -- "to
+    live without anxiety." 16 But this idea could be formulated without punishment
+    only in the language of art. In the more realistic context of political theory
+    and even philosophy, it was almost universally defamed as utopia.
+
+### Utopia
+
+    The relegation of real possibilities to the no-man's land of utopia is itself
+    an essential element of the ideology of the performance principle. If the
+    construction of a nonrepressive instinctual development is oriented, not on the
+    subhistorical past, but on the historical present and mature civilization, the
+    very notion of utopia loses its meaning. The negation of the performance
+    principle emerges not against but with  the progress of conscious rationality;
+    it presupposes the highest maturity of civilization. The very achievements of
+    the performance principle have intensified the discrepancy between the archaic
+    unconscious and conscious processes of man, on the one hand, and his actual
+    potentialities, on the other. The history of mankind seems to tend toward
+    another turning point in the vicissitudes of the instincts. And, just as at the
+    preceding turning points, the adaptation of the archaic mental structure to the
+    new environment would mean another "castrophe" -- an explosive change in the
+    environment itself. However, while the first turning point was, according to
+    the Freudian hypothesis, an event in geological history, and while the second
+    occurred at the beginning of civilization, the third turning point would be
+    located at the highest attained level of civilization. The actor in this event
+    would be no longer the historical animal man but the conscious, rational
+    subject that has mastered and appropriated the objective world as the arena of
+    his realization. The historical factor contained in Freud' s theory of
+    instincts has come to fruition in history when the basis of Ananke ( Lebensnot)
+    -- which, for Freud, provided the rationale for the repressive reality
+    principle -- is undermined by the progress of civilization.
+
+    Still, there is some validity in the argument that, despite all progress,
+    scarcity and immaturity remain great enough to prevent the realization of the
+    principle "to each according to his needs." The material as well as mental
+    resources of civilization are still so limited that there must be a vastly
+    lower standard of living if social productivity were redirected toward the
+    universal gratification of individual needs: many would have to give up
+    manipulated comforts if all were to live a human life. Moreover, the prevailing
+    international structure of industrial civilization seems to condemn such an
+    idea to ridicule. This does not invalidate the theoretical insistence that the
+    performance principle has become obsolescent. The reconciliation between
+    pleasure and reality principle does not depend on the existence of abundance
+    for all. The only pertinent question is whether a state of civilization can be
+    reasonably envisaged in which human needs are fulfilled in such a manner and to
+    such an extent that surplus-repression can be eliminated.
+
+    Such a hypothetical state could be reasonably assumed at two points, which lie
+    at the opposite poles of the vicissitudes of the instincts: one would be
+    located at the primitive beginnings of history, the other at its most mature
+    stage. The first would refer to a non-oppressive distribution of scarcity (as
+    may, for example, have existed in matriarchal phases of ancient society). The
+    second would pertain to a rational organization of fully developed industrial
+    society after the conquest of scarcity. The vicissitudes of the instincts would
+    of course be very different under these two conditions, but one decisive
+    feature must be common to both: the instinctual development would be
+    non-repressive in the sense that at least the surplus-repression necessitated
+    by the interests of domination would not be imposed upon the instincts. This
+    quality would reflect the prevalent satisfaction of the basic human needs (most
+    primitive at the first, vastly extended and refined at the second stage),
+    sexual as well as social: food, housing, clothing, leisure. This satisfaction
+    would be (and this is the important point) without toil -- that is, without the
+    rule of alienated labor over the human existence. Under primitive conditions,
+    alienation has not yet  arisen because of the primitive character of the needs
+    themselves, the rudimentary (personal or sexual) character of the division of
+    labor, and the absence of an institutionalized hierarchical specialization of
+    functions. Under the "ideal" conditions of mature industrial civilization,
+    alienation would be completed by general automatization of labor, reduction of
+    labor time to a minimum , and exchangeability of functions.  Since the length
+    of the working day is itself one of the principal repressive factors imposed
+    upon the pleasure principle by the reality principle, the reduction of the
+    working day to a point where the mere quantum of labor time no longer arrests
+    human development is the first prerequisite for freedom. Such reduction by
+    itself would almost certainly mean a considerable decrease in the standard of
+    living prevalent today in the most advanced industrial countries. But the
+    regression to a lower standard of living, which the collapse of the performance
+    principle would bring about, does not militate against progress in freedom. 
+
+    The argument that makes liberation conditional upon an ever higher standard of
+    living all too easily serves to justify the perpetuation of repression. The
+    definition of the standard of living in terms of automobiles , television sets,
+    airplanes, and tractors is that of the performance principle itself. Beyond the
+    rule of this principle, the level of living would be measured by other
+    criteria: the universal gratification of the basic human needs, and the freedom
+    from guilt and fear -- internalized as well as external, instinctual as well as
+    rrational." "La vraie civilization. . n' est pas dans le gaz, ni dans la
+    vapeur, ni dans les tables tournantes. Elle est dans la diminution des traces
+    du pêché originel" 17 -- this is the definition of progress beyond the rule of
+    the performance principle.
+
+    Under optimum conditions, the prevalence, in mature civilization, of material
+    and intellectual wealth would be such as to allow painless gratification of
+    needs, while domination would no longer systematically forestall such
+    gratification. In this case, the quantum of instinctual energy still to be
+    diverted into necessary labor (in turn completely mechanized and rationalized)
+    would be so small that a large area of repressive constraints and
+    modifications, no longer sustained by external forces , would collapse.
+
 ### Misc
 
     But, again, Freud shows that this repressive system does not really solve the