Total Human Emancipation: Marxist Principles for a Material and Cultural Politics
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Total Human Emancipation: Marxist Principles for a Material and Cultural Politics Alexander van Eijk 11176911 University of Amsterdam MSc Political Science (Political Theory) 3 June 2020 34,008 words Research Group Alternatives to Capitalism Supervisor Dr. Annette Freyberg-Inan Second Reader Dr. Joost de Bloois Abstract This investigation begins with the acknowledgement that much of Marxist theory and practice has focused overmuch on the material dimension of oppression and emancipation, to the detriment of cultural or psychological factors. Consequently, this thesis engages with the early humanist writings of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytical Marxism of Herbert Marcuse to develop a Marxist conception of emancipation that can properly reckon with material and non-material factors of both oppression and emancipation. It is argued that the total human emancipation thereby envisioned consists of two components. First, the consciousness project entails revealing the alienating nature of capitalist relations and replacing these with relations that allow for free and self-conscious life-activity within a community of equality and mutuality. Second, the development project entails revealing the inhibitive nature of capitalist relations and replacing these with relations that allow for the fulfilment of human potential, marked by a new rationality guided by human needs. From this concept of emancipation, five principles are developed to inform political practice: Three Project Principles (Emancipated Material Relations, Cultural and Psychological Sensitivity, Politicisation) guide the selection and evaluation of political proposals; and two Programme Principles (Variety and Compatibility, Incrementalism) inform how we are to bring these projects together so that their contributions are compatible and complementary. To illustrate how these principles can be used to develop an emancipatory alternative to capitalism, they are applied to three existing political proposals (workers’ cooperatives, Gramsci’s counter-hegemonic political education, Situationist proposals for psychogeography). 2 3 Dedicated to Opa Her … even though I’m sure you would have disagreed with something on every page. 4 Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 6 2. TOTAL HUMAN EMANCIPATION ............................................................................... 10 2.1 THE FULFILMENT OF HUMANITY IN HUMANIST MARXISM ..................................................................... 10 2.1.1 The Human Needs ....................................................................................................................................... 11 2.1.2 Humanist Marxism: The Undeveloped and Unscientific Marx? ........................................................................ 18 2.1.3 Humanist Marxism: A Summary ................................................................................................................... 26 2.2 BEYOND THE REALITY PRINCIPLE IN PSYCHOANALYTICAL MARXISM .................................................... 27 2.2.1 Freudian Psychoanalysis ................................................................................................................................ 27 2.2.2 The Psychoanalytical Marxist Response .......................................................................................................... 28 2.2.3 Towards the Orphic and Narcissistic .............................................................................................................. 31 2.2.4 Psychoanalytical Marxism: A Summary .......................................................................................................... 34 2.3 TOTAL HUMAN EMANCIPATION: A CONCRETE CONCEPTION ................................................................ 35 2.3.1 The Two Projects of Total Human Emancipation ........................................................................................... 35 3. CAPITALISM AND EMANCIPATION ............................................................................ 41 3.1 THE CONFINES OF CAPITALISM ................................................................................................................ 41 3.2 CAPITALISM AND THE EMANCIPATORY PROJECT ..................................................................................... 43 3.2.1 Can the physical human needs be met within capitalism? ................................................................................... 43 3.2.2 Is consciousness possible within capitalism? ..................................................................................................... 45 3.2.3 Is development possible within capitalism? ....................................................................................................... 48 3.3. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 50 4. FIVE PRINCIPLES FOR AN EMANCIPATED FUTURE .................................................... 51 4.1 FIVE GUIDING PRINCIPLES ........................................................................................................................ 52 4.1.1 The Three Project Principles .......................................................................................................................... 52 4.1.2 The Two Programme Principles ..................................................................................................................... 55 4.2 THREE PROPOSALS FOR AN EMANCIPATED FUTURE ................................................................................ 56 4.2.1 Workers’ Cooperatives ................................................................................................................................... 57 4.2.2 Gramsci’s Proposals for a Broader Cultural Project .......................................................................................... 59 4.2.3 Psychogeographic Urbanism ........................................................................................................................... 63 4.3 THE THREE PROPOSALS AND EMANCIPATION ......................................................................................... 67 4.3.1 The Project Principles ................................................................................................................................... 67 4.3.2 The Programme Principles ............................................................................................................................. 70 4.4 FEASIBILITY OF THE EMANCIPATORY PROGRAMME ................................................................................. 72 5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 77 5.1 EVALUATION .............................................................................................................................................. 80 5.2 IMPLICATIONS ............................................................................................................................................ 81 5.3 FINAL WORDS ............................................................................................................................................. 82 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 83 LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... 86 5 1. Introduction A close friend of mine is currently writing his thesis for a study in fashion. He was looking for some advice on how to connect his arguments to political theory and asked for my help. Having discussed his thesis, it seemed strongly connected to the Frankfurt School of critical theory and Herbert Marcuse’s work in particular, so I lent him my copy of Eros and Civilization and gave him my notes on the book. Later that evening he sent me a message telling me how much the book resonated with him, accompanied by the following quote from my notes: The development of civilization, through the repression of instinctual desire, has increasingly opened up the potential for liberation. Society has reached a point where toil and domination are no longer required, yet we maintain it in the form of surplus-repression. This is the central argument of Eros and Civilization and clearly it struck my friend, as it had struck me, as incredibly lucid and important. If two people from such different academic fields could be so struck by a single argument, I thought, something really important must be happening here. Perhaps what makes this argument so striking is that it is so devastatingly timeless. While the book was originally published in 1955, it could easily be describing our world today. More so than ever, we have untold riches and abundance within our collective grasp but have found no way to put them towards the eradication of toil and domination. Surplus-repression, or repressing our instinctual wishes and desires beyond the point needed for healthy society, remains the modus operandi of the global capitalist system. To put it in Wilhelm Reich’s words, our societies are still “psychologically sick.”1 Moreover, we seem to have forgotten how to fight back. On the individual level, the growing popularity of mindfulness, modern stoicism, self-care and other coping mechanisms do nothing