From 9beb33b138e61ae5a16c687c96f01213021dd9f1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Silvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 15:33:50 -0200
Subject: [PATCH] Eros and Civilization: Phantasy and Utopia
---
books/psicologia/eros-civilization.md | 117 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 117 insertions(+)
diff --git a/books/psicologia/eros-civilization.md b/books/psicologia/eros-civilization.md
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[[!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
--
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