Books: Eros and Civilization

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+[[!meta title="Eros and Civilization"]]
+
+* Author: Hebert Marcuse
+
+## Snippets
+
+### From Pleasure Principle to Reality Principle
+
+The becoming of an organized ego:
+
+    The vicissitudes of the instincts are the vicissitudes of the mental apparatus
+    in civilization. The animal drives become human instincts under the influence
+    of the external reality. Their original "location" in the organism and their
+    basic direction remain the same, but their objectives and their manifestations
+    are subject to change. All psychoanalytic concepts (sublimation ,
+    identification, projection, repression, introjection) connote the mutability of
+    the instincts. But the reality which shapes the instincts as well as their
+    needs and satisfaction is a socio-historical world. The animal man becomes a
+    human being only through a fundamental transformation of his nature, affecting
+    not only the instinctual aims but also the instinctual "values" -- that is, the
+    principles that govern the attainment of the aims. The change in the governing
+    value system may be tentatively defined as follows:
+
+    from:                     to:
+    immediate satisfaction    delayed satisfaction
+    pleasure                  restraint of pleasure
+    joy (play)                toil (work)
+    receptiveness             productiveness
+    absence of repression     security
+
+    Freud described this change as the transformation of the pleasure principle
+    into the reality principle. The interpretation of the "mental apparatus" in
+    terms of these two principles is basic to Freud' s theory and remains so in
+    spite of all modifications of the dualistic conception. It corresponds largely
+    (but not entirely) to the distinction between unconscious and conscious
+    processes. The individual exists, as it were, in two different dimensions,
+    characterized by different mental processes and principles.
+
+    The difference between these two dimensions is a genetic-historical as well as
+    a structural one: the unconscious, ruled by the pleasure principle, comprises
+    "the older, primary processes, the residues of a phase of development in which
+    they were the only kind of mental processes." They strive for nothing but for
+    "gaining pleasure; from any operation which might arouse unpleasantness (`
+    pain') mental activity draws back." 1 But the unrestrained pleasure principle
+    comes into conflict with the natural and human environment . The individual
+    comes to the traumatic realization that full and painless gratification of his
+    needs is impossible. And after this experience of disappointment, a new
+    principle of mental functioning gains ascendancy. The reality principle
+    supersedes the pleasure principle: man learns to give up momentary, uncertain,
+    and destructive pleasure for delayed, restrained, but "assured" pleasure. 2
+    Because of this lasting gain through renunciation and restraint, according to
+    Freud, the reality principle "safeguards " rather than "dethrones," "modifies "
+    rather than denies, the pleasure principle.
+
+### Civilized Introjection: the self-repression
+
+    The effective subjugation of the instincts to repressive controls is imposed
+    not by nature but by man. The primal father, as the archetype of domination,
+    initiates the chain reaction of enslavement, rebellion, and reinforced
+    domination which marks the history of civilization. But ever since the first ,
+    prehistoric restoration of domination following the first rebellion, repression
+    from without has been supported by repression from within: the unfree
+    individual introjects his masters and their commands into his own mental
+    apparatus. The struggle against freedom reproduces itself in the psyche of man
+    , as the self- repression of the repressed individual, and his self-repression
+    in turn sustains his masters and their institutions. It is this mental dynamic
+    which Freud unfolds as the dynamic of civilization.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Scarcity ( Lebensnot, Ananke) teaches men that they cannot freely gratify their
+    instinctual impulses, that they cannot live under the pleasure principle.
+    Society's motive in enforcing the decisive modification of the instinctual
+    structure is thus "economic; since it has not means enough to support life for
+    its members without work on their part, it must see to it that the number of
+    these members is restricted and their energies directed away from sexual
+    activities on to their work." 4
+
+    [...]
+
+    According to Freud's conception the equation of freedom and happiness tabooed
+    by the conscious is upheld by the unconscious. Its truth, although repelled by
+    consciousness, continues to haunt the mind; it preserves the memory of past
+    stages of individual development at which integral gratification is obtained.
+    And the past continues to claim the future: it generates the wish that the
+    paradise be re-created on the basis of the achievements of civilization.
+
+### Eros and Thanatos
+
+At first it sounds like The Force from Star Wars...
+
+    The pleasure principle, then., is a tendency operating in the service of a
+    function whose business it is to free the mental apparatus entirely from
+    excitation or to keep the amount of excitation in it constant or to keep it as
+    low as possible. We cannot yet decide with certainty in favour of any of these
+    ways of putting it. 5
+
+    But more and more the inner logic of the conception asserts itself. Constant
+    freedom from excitation has been finally abandoned at the birth of life; the
+    instinctual tendency toward equilibrium thus is ultimately regression behind
+    life itself. The primary processes of the mental apparatus, in their striving
+    for integral gratification, seem to be fatally bound to the "most universal
+    endeavour of all living substance -- namely to return to the quiescence of the
+    inorganic world." 6 The instincts are drawn into the orbit of death. "If it is
+    true that life is governed by Fechner's principle of constant equilibrium, it
+    consists of a continuous descent toward death." 7 The Nirvana principle  now
+    emerges as the "dominating tendency of mental life, and perhaps of nervous life
+    in general." And the pleasure principle appears in the light of the Nirvana
+    principle -- as an "expression" of the Nirvana principle: . . the effort to
+    reduce, to keep constant or to remove internal tension due to stimuli (the
+    "Nirvana Principle".. )... finds expression in the pleasure principle; and our
+    recognition of this fact is one of our strongest reasons for believing in the
+    existence of death instincts. 8
+
+    However, the primacy of the Nirvana principle, the terrifying convergence of
+    pleasure and death, is dissolved as soon as it is established. No matter how
+    universal the regressive inertia of organic life, the instincts strive to
+    attain their objective in fundamentally different modes. The difference is
+    tantamount to that of sustaining and destroying life. Out of the common nature
+    of instinctual life develop two antagonistic instincts. The life instincts
+    (Eros) gain ascendency over the death instincts. They continuously counteract
+    and delay the "descent toward death": "fresh tensions are introduced by the
+    claims of Eros, of the sexual instincts, as expressed in instinctual needs." 9
+    They begin their life-reproducing function with the separation of the germ
+    cells from the organism and the coalescence of two such cell bodies, 10
+    proceeding to the establishment and preservation of "ever greater unities" of
+    life. 11
+
+    They thus win, against death, the "potential immortality" of the living
+    substance. 12 The dynamic dualism of instinctual life seems assured. However,
+    Freud at once harks back to the original common nature of the instincts. The
+    life instincts "are conservative in the same sense as the other instincts in
+    that they bring back earlier states of the living substance" -- although they
+    are conservative "to a higher degree." 13 Sexuality would thus ultimately obey
+    the same principle as the death instinct. Later, Freud, in order to illustrate
+    the regressive character of sexuality, recalls Plato's "fantastic hypothesis"
+    that "living substance at the time of its coming to life was torn apart into
+    small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through the
+    sexual instincts." 14 Does Eros, in spite of all the evidence, in the last
+    analysis work in the service of the death instinct, and is life really only one
+    long "detour to death"? 15 But the evidence is strong enough, and the detour is
+    long enough to warrant the opposite assumption. Eros is defined as the great
+    unifying force that preserves all life. 16 The ultimate relation between Eros
+    and Thanatos remains obscure. 
+
+    If Eros and Thanatos thus emerge as the two basic instincts whose ubiquitous
+    presence and continuous fusion (and de-fusion) characterize the life process,
+    then this theory of instincts is far more than a reformulation of the preceding
+    Freudian concepts.
+
+    [...]
+
+    However, the discovery of the common "conservative nature" of the instincts
+    militates against the dualistic conception and keeps Freud's late
+    metapsychology in that state of suspense and depth which makes it one of the
+    great intellectual ventures in the science of man. The quest for the common
+    origin  of the two basic instincts can no longer be silenced.  Fenichel pointed
+    out 20 that Freud himself made a decisive step in this direction by assuming a
+    "displaceable energy, which is in itself neutral, but is able to join forces
+    either with an erotic or with a destructive impulse" -- with the life or the
+    death instinct. Never before has death been so consistently taken into the
+    essence of life; but never before also has death come so close to Eros.
+    Fenichel raises the decisive question whether the antithesis of Eros and death
+    instinct is not the "differentiation of an originally common root." He suggests
+    that the phenomena grouped together as the death instinct may be taken as
+    expression of a principle "valid for all instincts," a principle which, in the
+    course of development, "might have been modified.. by external influences ."
+    Moreover, if the "regression-compulsion " in all organic life is striving for
+    integral quiescence, if the Nirvana principle is the ground of the pleasure
+    principle, then the necessity of death appears in an entirely new light. The
+    death instinct is destructiveness not for its own sake, but for the relief of
+    tension. The descent toward death is an unconscious flight from pain and want.
+    It is an expression of the eternal struggle against suffering and repression.
+    And the death instinct itself seems to be affected by the historical changes
+    which affect this struggle. Further explanation of the historical character of
+    the instincts requires placing them in the new concept of the person  which
+    corresponds to the last version of Freud's theory of instincts.
+
+### A person
+
+* The main "layers" of the mental structure are now designated as id, ego, and superego.
+* The id is free from the forms.
+* Ego: the "mediator" between the id and the external world.
+
+Superego:
+
+    This development, by which originally conscious struggles with the demands of
+    reality (the parents and their successors in the formation of the superego) are
+    transformed into unconscious automatic reactions, is of the utmost importance
+    for the course of civilization. The reality principle asserts itself through a
+    shrinking of the conscious ego in a significant direction: the autonomous
+    development of the instincts is frozen, and their pattern is fixed at the
+    childhood level. Adherence to a status quo ante  is implanted in the
+    instinctual structure. The individual becomes instinctually re-actionary -- in
+    the literal as well as the figurative sense.
+
+### Biological and historical processes
+
+    (a) Surplus-repression:  the restrictions necessitated by social domination.
+    This is distinguished from (basic) repression:  the "modifications " of the
+    instincts necessary for the perpetuation of the human race in civilization. 
+
+    (b) Performance principle:  the prevailing historical form of the reality principle.
+
+    Behind the reality principle lies the fundamental fact of Ananke or scarcity (
+    Lebensnot), which means that the struggle for existence takes place in a world
+    too poor for the satisfaction of human needs without constant restraint,
+    renunciation, delay. In other words, whatever satisfaction is possible
+    necessitates work, more or less painful arrangements and undertakings for the
+    procurement of the means for satisfying needs. For the duration of work, which
+    occupies practically the entire existence of the mature individual, pleasure is
+    "suspended" and pain prevails. 
+
+    However, this argument, which looms large in Freud' s metapsychology, is
+    fallacious in so far as it applies to the brute fact  of scarcity what actually
+    is the consequence of a specific organization  of scarcity, and of a specific
+    existential attitude enforced by this organization.
+    The prevalent scarcity has, throughout civilization (although in very different
+    modes), been organized in such a way that it has not been distributed
+    collectively in accordance with individual needs, nor has the procurement of
+    goods for the satisfaction of needs been organized with the objective of best
+    satisfying the developing needs of the individuals.
+    Instead, the distribution  of scarcity as well as the effort of overcoming it,
+    the mode of work, have been imposed  upon individuals -- first by mere
+    violence, subsequently by a more rational utilization of power.
+    Domination differs from rational exercise of authority. The latter, which is
+    inherent in any societal division of labor, is derived from knowledge and
+    confined to the administration of functions and arrangements necessary for the
+    advancement of the whole. In contrast, domination is exercised by a particular
+    group or individual in order to sustain and enhance itself in a privileged
+    position.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Moreover, while any form of the reality principle demands a considerable degree
+    and scope of repressive control over the instincts, the specific historical
+    institutions of the reality principle and the specific interests of domination
+    introduce additional  controls over and above those indispensable for civilized
+    human association. These additional controls arising from the specific
+    institutions of domination are what we denote as surplus-repression.
+
+### Primeval revolutions and counter-revolutions: the return of the repressed
+
+    The role of the women gains increasing importance . "A good part of the power
+    which had become vacant through the father' s death passed to the women; the
+    time of the matriarchate followed." 11 It seems essential for Freud' s
+    hypothesis that in the sequence of the development toward civilization the
+    matriarchal period is preceded  by primal patriarchal despotism: the low degree
+    of repressive domination, the extent of erotic freedom, which are traditionally
+    associated with matriarchy appear, in Freud's hypothesis, as consequences of
+    the overthrow of patriarchal despotism rather than as primary "natural"
+    conditions. In the development of civilization, freedom becomes possible only
+    as liberation. Liberty follows  domination -- and leads to the reaffirmation of
+    domination. Matriarchy is replaced by a patriarchal counter-revolution, and the
+    latter is stabilized by the institutionalization of religion.
+
+    Male gods at first appear as sons by the side of the great mother-deities, but
+    gradually they assume the features of the father; polytheism cedes to
+    monotheism, and then returns the "one and only father deity whose power is
+    unlimited." 13 Sublime and sublimated, original domination becomes eternal,
+    cosmic, and good, and in this form guards the process of civilization. The
+    "historical rights" of the primal father are restored.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Must not their sense of guilt include guilt about the betrayal and denial of
+    their deed? Are they not guilty of restoring the repressive father, guilty of
+    self-imposed perpetuation of domination? The question suggests itself if
+    Freud's phylogenetic hypothesis is confronted with his notion of the
+    instinctual dynamic. As the reality principle takes root, even in its most
+    primitive and most brutally enforced form, the pleasure principle becomes
+    something frightful and terrifying; the impulses for free gratification meet
+    with anxiety, and this anxiety calls for protection against them. The
+    individuals have to defend themselves against the specter of their integral
+    liberation from want and pain, against integral gratification. And the latter
+    is represented by the woman who, as mother, has once, for the first and last
+    time, provided such gratification. These are the instinctual factors which
+    reproduce the rhythm of liberation and domination.
+
+    [...]
+
+    If we follow this train of thought beyond Freud, and connect it with the
+    twofold origin of the sense of guilt, the life and death of Christ would appear
+    as a struggle against the father -- and as a triumph over the father. 21 The
+    message of the Son was the message of liberation: the overthrow of the Law
+    (which is domination) by Agape (which is Eros). This would fit in with the
+    heretical image of Jesus as the Redeemer in the flesh, the Messiah who came to
+    save man here on earth. Then the subsequent transubstantiation of the Messiah,
+    the deification of the Son beside the Father, would be a betrayal of his
+    message by his own disciples -- the denial of the liberation in the flesh, the
+    revenge on the redeemer. Christianity would then have surrendered the gospel of
+    Agape-Eros again to the Law; the father-rule would be restored and
+    strengthened. In Freudian terms, the primal crime could have been expiated,
+    according to the message of the Son, in an order of peace and love on earth. It
+    was not; it was rather superseded by another crime -- that against the Son.
+    With his transubstantiation, his gospel too was transubstantiated; his
+    deification removed his message from this world. Suffering and repression were
+    perpetuated.
+
+    [...]
+
+    We have seen that Freud's theory is focused on the recurrent cycle
+    "domination-rebellion-domination." But the second domination is not simply a
+    repetition of the first one; the cyclical movement is progress  in domination.
+    From the primal father via the brother clan to the system of institutional
+    authority characteristic of mature civilization, domination becomes
+    increasingly impersonal, objective, universal, and also increasingly rational,
+    effective, productive. At the end, under the rule of the fully developed
+    performance principle, subordination appears as implemented through the social
+    division of labor itself (although physical and personal force remains an
+    indispensable instrumentality).
+
+    [...]
+
+    The development of a hierarchical system of social labor not only rationalizes
+    domination but also "contains" the rebellion against domination. At the
+    individual level, the primal revolt is contained within the framework of the
+    normal Oedipus conflict. At the societal level, recurrent rebellions and
+    revolutions have been followed by counterrevolutions and restorations. From the
+    slave revolts in the ancient world to the socialist revolution, the struggle of
+    the oppressed has ended in establishing a new, "better" system of domination;
+    progress has taken place through an improving chain of control. Each revolution
+    has been the conscious effort to replace one ruling group by another; but each
+    revolution has also released forces that have "overshot the goal," that have
+    striven for the abolition of domination and exploitation. The ease with which
+    they have been defeated demands explanations. The ease with which they have
+    been defeated demands explanations. Neither the prevailing constellation of
+    power, nor immaturity of the productive forces, nor absence of class
+    consciousness provides an adequate answer. In every revolution, there seems to
+    have been a historical moment when the struggle against domination might have
+    been victorious -- but the moment passed. An element of self-defeat  seems to
+    be involved in this dynamic (regardless of the validity of such reasons as the
+    prematurity and inequality of forces ). In this sense, every revolution has
+    also been a betrayed revolution.
+
+### Technics
+
+    Technics provide the very basis for progress; technological rationality sets
+    the mental and behaviorist pattern for productive performance, and "power over
+    nature" has become practically identical with civilization. Is the
+    destructiveness sublimated in these activities sufficiently subdued and
+    diverted to assure the work of Eros? It seems that socially useful
+    destructiveness is less sublimated than socially useful libido. To be sure, the
+    diversion of destructiveness from the ego to the external world secured the
+    growth of civilization. However, extroverted destruction remains destruction:
+    its objects are in most cases actually and violently assailed, deprived of
+    their form, and reconstructed only after partial destruction; units are
+    forcibly divided, and the component parts forcibly rearranged. Nature is
+    literally "violated." Only in certain categories of sublimated aggressiveness
+    (as in surgical practice) does such violation directly strengthen the life of
+    its object. Destructiveness, in extent and intent, seems to be more directly
+    satisfied in civilization than the libido.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Then, through constructive technological destruction, through the constructive
+    violation of nature, the instincts would still operate toward the annihilation
+    of life. The radical hypothesis of Beyond the Pleasure Principle  would stand:
+    the instincts of self-preservation, self-assertion, and mastery, in so far as
+    they have absorbed this destructiveness, would have the function of assuring
+    the organism' s "own path to death."
+
+    [...]
+
+    The growing mastery of nature then would, with the growing productivity of
+    labor, develop and fulfill the human needs only as a by-product:  increasing
+    cultural wealth and knowledge would provide the material for progressive
+    destruction and the need for increasing instinctual repression.
+
+    [...]
+
+    However, the very progress of civilization tends to make this rationality a
+    spurious one. The existing liberties and the existing gratifications are tied
+    to the requirements of domination; they themselves become instruments of
+    repression. The excuse of scarcity, which has justified institutionalized
+    repression since its inception, weakens as man 's knowledge and control over
+    nature enhances the means for fulfilling human needs with a minimum of toil.
+    The still prevailing impoverishment of vast areas of the world is no longer due
+    chiefly to the poverty of human and natural resources but to the manner in
+    which they are distributed and utilized. 
+
+    This difference may be irrelevant to politics and to politicians but it is of
+    decisive importance to a theory of civilization which derives the need for
+    repression from the "natural" and perpetual disproportion between human desires
+    and the environment in which they must be satisfied. If such a "natural"
+    condition, and not certain political and social institutions, provides the
+    rationale for repression, then it has become irrational. The culture of
+    industrial civilization has turned the human organism into an ever more
+    sensitive, differentiated, exchangeable instrument, and has created a social
+    wealth sufficiently great to transform this instrument into an end in itself.
+    The available resources make for a qualitative  change in the human needs.
+    Rationalization and mechanization of labor tend to reduce the quantum of
+    instinctual energy channeled into toil (alienated labor), thus freeing energy
+    for the attainment of objectives set by the free play of individual faculties. 
+
+    Technology operates against the repressive utilization of energy in so far as
+    it minimizes the time necessary for the production of the necessities of life,
+    thus saving time for the development of needs beyond  the realm of necessity
+    and of necessary waste.
+
+    But the closer the real possibility of liberating the individual from the
+    constraints once justified by scarcity and immaturity, the greater the need for
+    maintaining and streamlining these constraints lest the established order of
+    domination dissolve. Civilization has to defend itself against the specter of a
+    world which could be free. If society cannot use its growing productivity for
+    reducing repression (because such usage would upset the hierarchy of the status
+    quo), productivity must be turned against  the individuals; it becomes itself
+    an instrument of universal control. Totalitarianism spreads over late
+    industrial civilization wherever the interests of domination prevail upon
+    productivity, arresting and diverting its potentialities. The people have to be
+    kept in a state of permanent mobilization, internal and external. The
+    rationality of domination has progressed to the point where it threatens to
+    invalidate its foundations; therefore it must be reaffirmed more effectively
+    than ever before. This time there shall be no killing of the father, not even a
+    "symbolic" killing -- because he may not find a successor.
+
+### Misc
+
+    Smell and taste give, as it were, unsublimated pleasure per se (and unrepressed
+    disgust). They relate (and separate) individuals immediately, without the
+    generalized and conventionalized forms of consciousness, morality, aesthetics.
+    Such immediacy is incompatible with the effectiveness of organized domination,
+    with a society which "tends to isolate people, to put distance between them,
+    and to prevent spontaneous relationships and thènatural' animal -like
+    expressions of such relations."
+
+    [...]
+
+    But, again, Freud shows that this repressive system does not really solve the
+    conflict. Civilization plunges into a destructive dialectic: the perpetual
+    restrictions on Eros ultimately weaken the life instincts and thus strengthen
+    and release the very forces against which they were "called up" -- those of
+    destruction.
+
+    [...]
+
+    For the vast majority of the population, the scope and mode of satisfaction are
+    determined by their own labor; but their labor is work for an apparatus which
+    they do not control, which operates as an independent power to which
+    individuals must submit if they want to live. And it becomes the more alien the
+    more specialized the division of labor becomes. Men do not live their own lives
+    but perform pre-established functions. While they work, they do not fulfill
+    their own needs and faculties but work in alienation. Work has now become
+    general, and so have the restrictions placed upon the libido: labor time, which
+    is the largest part of the individual' s life time, is painful time, for
+    alienated labor is absence of gratification, negation of the pleasure
+    principle. Libido is diverted for socially useful performances in which the
+    individual works for himself only in so far as he works for the apparatus,
+    engaged in activities that mostly do not coincide with his own faculties and
+    desires.
+
+    [...]
+
+    The work of repression pertains to the death instinct as well as the life
+    instinct. Normally, their fusion is a healthy one, but the sustained severity
+    of the superego constantly threatens this healthy balance. "The more a man
+    checks his aggressive tendencies toward others the more tyrannical, that is
+    aggressive, he becomes in his ego-ideal.. the more intense become the
+    aggressive tendencies of his ego-ideal against his ego." 57 Driven to the
+    extreme, in melancholia, "a pure culture of the death instinct" may hold sway
+    in the superego
+
+    [...]
+
+    It is in this context that Freud's metapsychology comes face to face with the
+    fatal dialectic of civilization: the very progress of civilization leads to the
+    release of increasingly destructive forces. In order to elucidate the
+    connection between Freud's individual psychology and the theory of
+    civilization, it will be necessary to resume the interpretation of the
+    instinctual dynamic at a different level -- namely, the phylogenetic one.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Note: 45 To be sure, every form of society, every civilization has to exact
+    labor time for the procurement of the necessities and luxuries of life. But not
+    every kind and mode of labor is essentially irreconcilable with the pleasure
+    principle. The human relations connected with work may "provide for a very
+    considerable discharge of libidinal component impulses, narcissistic,
+    aggressive, and even erotic." ( Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 34 note.)
+    The irreconcilable conflict is not between work (reality principle) and Eros
+    (pleasure principle), but between alienated  labor (performance principle) and
+    Eros. The notion of non-alienated, libidinal work will be discussed below.
+
+    [...]
+
+    It is the end result of long historical processes which are congealed in the
+    network of human and institutional entities making up society, and these
+    processes define the personality and its relationships. Consequently, to
+    understand them for what they really are, psychology must unfreeze  them by
+    tracing their hidden origins. In doing so, psychology discovers that the
+    determining childhood experiences are linked with the experiences of the
+    species -- that the individual lives the universal fate of mankind. The past
+    defines the present because mankind has not yet mastered its own history.
+
+    [...]
+
+    The basic work in civilization is non-libidinal, is labor; labor is
+    "unpleasantness," and such unpleasantness has to be enforced.
+
+    [...]
+
+    To be sure, there is a mode of work which offers a high degree of libidinal
+    satisfaction, which is pleasurable in its execution. And artistic work, where
+    it is genuine, seems to grow out of a non-repressive instinctual constellation
+    and to envisage non-repressive aims -- so much so that the term sublimation
+    seems to require considerable modification if applied to this kind of work.