[[!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. [...] The "automatization" of the superego 25 indicates the defense mechanisms by which society meets the threat. The defense consists chiefly in a strengthening of controls not so much over the instincts as over consciousness, which, if left free, might recognize the work of repression in the bigger and better satisfaction of needs. The manipulation of consciousness which has occurred throughout the orbit of contemporary industrial civilization has been described in the various interpretations of totalitarian and "popular cultures": co-ordination of the private and public existence, of spontaneous and required reactions. The promotion of thoughtless leisure activities, the triumph of anti- intellectual ideologies, exemplify the trend. [...] But these personal father-images have gradually disappeared behind the institutions. With the rationalization of the productive apparatus, with the multiplication of functions, all domination assumes the form of administration. At its peak, the concentration of economic power seems to turn into anonymity: everyone, even at the very top, appears to be powerless before the movements and laws of the apparatus itself. Control is normally administered by offices in which the controlled are the employers and the employed. [...] Most of the clichés with which sociology describes the process of dehumanization in presentday mass culture are correct; but they seem to be slanted in the wrong direction. What is retrogressive is not mechanization and standardization but their containment, not the universal co-ordination but its concealment under spurious liberties, choices, and individualities. The high standard of living in the domain of the great corporations is restrictive in a concrete sociological sense: the goods and services that the individuals buy control their needs and petrify their faculties. In exchange for the commodities that enrich their life, the individuals sell not only their labor but also their free time. The better living is offset by the all-pervasive control over living. People dwell in apartment concentrations -- and have private automobiles with which they can no longer escape into a different world. They have huge refrigerators filled with frozen foods. They have dozens of newspapers and magazines that espouse the same ideals. They have innumerable choices, innumerable gadgets which are all of the same sort and keep them occupied and divert their attention from the real issue -- which is the awareness that they could both work less and determine their own needs and satisfactions. The ideology of today lies in that production and consumption reproduce and justify domination. But their ideological character does not change the fact that their benefits are real. The repressiveness of the whole lies to a high degree in its efficacy: it enhances the scope of material culture, facilitates the procurement of the necessities of life, makes comfort and luxury cheaper, draws ever-larger areas into the orbit of industry -- while at the same time sustaining toil and destruction. The individual pays by sacrificing his time, his consciousness, his dreams; civilization pays by sacrificing its own promises of liberty, justice, and peace for all. The discrepancy between potential liberation and actual repression has come to maturity: it permeates all spheres of life the world over. The rationality of progress heightens the irrationality of its organization and direction. Social cohesion and administrative power are sufficiently strong to protect the whole from direct aggression, but not strong enough to eliminate the accumulated aggressiveness. It turns against those who do not belong to the whole, whose existence is its denial. This foe appears as the archenemy and Antichrist himself : he is everywhere at all times ; he represents hidden and sinister forces, and his omnipresence requires total mobilization.