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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.