García Echeverri, Mauricio. The critical commitment of philosophy. On Marcuse´s critical project Vol. IV, No. 4, enero-junio 2017 The critical commitment of philosophy. On Marcuse´s critical project de Marcuse “Recibido el 26 de abril, aceptado el 10 de mayo de 2017.” Mauricio García Echeverri* Abstract The present essay is not intended to be something new about Herbert Marcuse. As a personal exercise to clarify concepts, its aim is to provide an over- view of Marcuse’s conception, based especially from his book One-Dimensional Man, about an advanced industrial society and how our thinking is being more and more rooted in what social elites want us to believe. At the same time, the article provides a basis to think this problem in an increasing posmodern society that is forgetting the most important critical authors of 20th century and its main preoccupation: the identity between subject and society. Keywords: Marcuse, critical theory, technological rationality, repres- sion, negative thinking. * Graduated from Instituto de Filosofía, Universidad de Antioquia. 123 Vol. IV, No. 4 Revista Ciencias y Humanidades Enero-junio 2017 Resumen El presente ensayo no tiene ninguna intención de ser algo novedoso so- EUH+HUEHUW0DUFXVH&RPRHMHUFLFLRSHUVRQDOGHFODUL¿FDUFLHUWRVFRQFHSWRVVX propósito es dar un panorama sobre la concepción de Marcuse, basada especial- mente en su libro El hombre unidimensional, acerca de una sociedad industrial avanzada y cómo nuestro pensamiento está cada vez más enraizado en lo que las élites quieren que creamos. Al mismo tiempo, el artículo da bases para pensar este problema en una creciente sociedad posmoderna que está olvidando los au- tores críticos más importantes del siglo XX y una de sus máximas preocupacio- nes: ¿cuál es la identidad entre sujeto y sociedad? Palabras clave: Marcuse, teoría crítica, racionalidad tecnológica, repre- sión, pensamiento negativo. Introduction time and freetime, on the material and intellectual culture”1 For Marcuse, individual li- This is why for Marcuse liber- berty is reached when the productive ty has to be reconceptualized. It can apparatus is organized and centralized not be established in the same way not by the social forces of the advan- as it was posed, for example, in 18th ced industrial societies, but by a sta- century with french enlightenment. te that considers that autonomy is the Although it was a political view of base of a life that has to be guided by human freedom, the circumstances the own thinking of the subject. This and the power of technology over the will suppose the end of technological individual are too far different from rationality, that is to say, the end of the 18th century. As a hegelian, Marcu- se´s view about freedom is negative. establishment of living standards and The negative terms that allow acting judgment that make people act with as a counter part of politics and eco- an entire sumission to the social appa- nomy is the path to liberation, which UDWXV DQ DSSDUDWXV WKDW ³LPSRVHV LWV implies that positivity has to be rejec- economic and political requirements ted. However, this is one of the main for defense and expansion on labor problems of modern societies. Here 1 Marcuse, Herbert. One dimensional man. Stud- ies in the ideology of advanced insutrial society. New York: Routledge. 2002, p.5 124 García Echeverri, Mauricio. The critical commitment of philosophy. On Marcuse´s critical project Vol. IV, No. 4, enero-junio 2017 the question is posed: How can the circumstances that this concept has to subject, as an alienated person, reject EHXQGHUVWRRGLW¶VKLVWRU\DQGKXPDQ positivity? interaction the ones that create repres- Before arriving to the argu- sion, and not always our human natu- ment of Marcuse about how positive re. In an agressive society, repression WKLQNLQJFDQEHUHMHFWHGZHPXVW¿UVW refers to the fact that social inpositions of all, try to understand the ways in upon our lives makes us believe that which that positivity is rooted in our the relationship with the environment thinking. For the german author, the is true. This was possible in previous implanting of material and intellectual stages of society, for example that one needs is the way in which we are in- stablished by german romanticism, in creasingly controlled, we think about which social impositions were not so ourselves as free subjects that can go VWURQJ WKLV LV ZK\ WKH VXEMHFW FRXOG to the market and establish what we see with suspicion the political appa- want to do. However, one aspect of ratus and stayed against it. advanced industrial societies is that Marcuse is against those who of a high degree of repression. It’s think that the concept of ideology hi- the kind of repression that makes us des a conspiration or an illusion of see that we are happy, that we belie- the world. If this is true, that would ve that our thoughts are an individual remind us the rationality of industrial construction of our reason and desires, VRFLHWLHVEXWIRU0DUFXVHVRFLDOLP- but hides the imposition of social inte- positions are so strong, that the way of rests. False needs, being these the so OLYLQJLVQRWDQLOOXVLRQLVVRPHWKLQJ called gadgets, ideas about art and cul- that we believe in, that we think is ture, conceptions and transformations true. The reminding of the irrational of our bodies, in general everything rationality of technological progress that is stated as the material and inte- is true. llectual excedent of capital, is the new Technological progress, the way of repression. new way of control, shows the con- Since Freud´s psychoanalysis, tradiciton of this society. But this repression is seen as an indispensable contradiction is assumed by human way of acting to the maintenance of beings as a non contradiciton. They culture. To appease one part of our dual think that social antagonisms are over nature, Eros and Thanatos, is essential and that there is no need to struggle to a harmonious life between men. No- against misery, injustice, poverty, bad WZLWKVWDQGLQJ0DUFXVHVDI¿QLW\ZLWK education, and so on. Things are like Freud´s ideas, he saw another level of this because we believe that the sys- repression. Is in order to ideological tem is abolishing them. Now, we are 125 Vol. IV, No. 4 Revista Ciencias y Humanidades Enero-junio 2017 confronted with a social apparatus that sociologist Charles Wright Mills3, the puts us in a stage in which we think state, the corporations and the army about ourselves according to our pos- were the modern institutions that ru- sessions, “the term introjection per- led other institutions, such as the fa- haps no longer describes the way in mily, universities, church, and so on. which the individual by himself re- The political universe is also an ideo- produces and perpertuates the external logical stage in which we believe we controls exercised by his society. In- DUHIUHHWRHOHFWRXUVHUYDQWVEXWWKH\ trojection suggests a variety of relati- were already elected by an economic vely spontaneous processes by which power in which we do not have any a Self (Ego) transposes the outer into chance to participate. the inner”2. When this introjection, or A welfare and warfare state mimesis, is our life style, we no longer was one of the consequences of the accept other life styles. We no longer ¿UVWSDUWRIWKFHQWXU\ZDUV,QWKH accept qualitatively changes, but we Frankfurt School, the state is seen see our lives according to cuantitative from the analysis of Friedrich Pollock, conditions, such as possesions or the especially during the period of post attempt to size experiences and fee- World War II, with his essay about lings like love and hate. state capitalism. Either in his condi- tion of democratic or totalitarian, the The closing of the political universe basic about state capitalism is that the market is deposed of his controller One question raises at the mo- function, in order to be a function of ment of posing the structure of alie- the state, through a general plan that nated individual thinking: What is the manages the actions of consumers. Its social structure in which those people REMHFWLYHLVWRLQFUHDVHWKHEHQH¿WVRI exist? Related to the political stage, WKRVHZKRKDYHLQÀXHQFHLQWKHJHQH- the new society is for Marcuse the ral plan. “No state capitalistic gover- union between Welfare and Warfare nment can or will dispense with the state. In the new way of doing politics, SUR¿W PRWLYH IRU WZR UHDVRQV )LUVW economic power is held by private HOLPLQDWLRQRIWKHSUR¿WPRWLYHZRXOG corporations, with an executive power destroy the character of the entire sys- more and more controlled by an elite, tem, and second, in many respects the although not directly, but with its eco- SUR¿W PRWLYH UHPDLQV DV DQ HI¿FLHQW nomic force able to buy the political class. As it was stated by the american 3 Mills, C.W. The power elite. United States: Ox- 2 Ibíd., p.12 ford University Press, 2000. 126 García Echeverri, Mauricio. The critical commitment of philosophy. On Marcuse´s critical project Vol. IV, No. 4, enero-junio 2017 incentive”4. No matter if the state has Marcuse resort to the marxian analysis a stronger power in the economic or- that contemplates the production appa- der of society, or that the welfare state ratus as the one that creates the techni- UHSUHVHQWHGEHQH¿WVIRUHYHU\RQHWKH cal rationality. This technical rationali- VWDWHZDVQRWDXWRQRPRXVPRUHWKDQ ty is shown not only in factories, tools that, the aforementioned elite hoarded and the exploitation of resources, but the political sphere. Moreover, as it also in labor time. In order to achie- was established recently by the french ve human freedom, socialist society economist Thomas Piketty5, between proposes that those immediate pro- 1970 and 1980, there was a growth ducers should manage the productive deceleration, specially demographic, a apparatus. It is not the nationalization movement in privatization and trans- or the socialization the way to break ference of public wealth to private the technological structure, the end of wealth, and the recovery of real es- the existing social structure implies an tate and stock exchanges actives, has alienation of the laboring classes from led to an advent of certain social elites the universe.