Customer Reviews

Counterrevolution & Revolt

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Marcuse's short work Counterrevolution and Revolt, written in 1972, has four sections: "The Left Under the Counterrevolution," "Nature and Revolution," "Art and Revolution" and "Conclusion." One must imagine the political situation to which Marcuse addresses the work: the New Left, whose advances and promises were so recently great, has suffered a quick decline for two key reasons. The first was that the adaptability of the capitalist-consumer system to convert "the entire individual-body and mind-into an instrument, or even part of an instrument: active or passive, productive or receptive, in working time and free time," all for service of the system (14). Commodification had become universal; culture, even "high" culture was available in commodity form. The proletariat no longer exists as the negation of the capitalist system, but rather, as an absorbed part of it through commodity accumulation. Individual identity resides in commodity and one's job. Counter institutions, such as those the New Left desired, were difficult, if not impossible, to establish in a fashion that could gain popular support. In fact, the New Left itself had dissension and division that was the other key reason for its decline. Marcuse admonishes the New Left for its concretion of Marxian theory, he cites the difficulty of a critical language's ability to stay negative of that which it opposes without being absorbed by it. Drawing form the difficulties of the New Left, Marcuse proclaims "While it is true that people must liberate themselves from their servitude, it is also true that they must first free themselves from what has been made of them in the society in which they live. This primary liberation cannot be 'spontaneous' because such spontaneity would only express the values and goals derived from the established system. Self-liberation is self-education but as such it presupposes education by others" (46-47), revealing the "authoritarian tendencies among the New Left" (47). Much of Marcuse's arguments here draw from his seminal work One-Dimensional Man (1964, highly recommeded), which was considered as a type of bible for certain members of the New Left. Also of interest from Marcuse are his An Essay on Liberation (1969, like CRR, may be considered an addendum to One-Dimensional Man) and Negations (a collection of essays originally written in German 1934-38, trans. 1968). As for others, Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (1967), Jean Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976) and Simulacra and Simulation (1981), and much of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. Certainly, other Frankfurt School (Critical Theory) figures such as Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin (esp. his "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Illuminations).

Without getting into the substance of why Marcuse is interesting, or significant, or revolutionary, I'll address the book: It's a stimulating, but short read and I would recommend a trip to the library or a used copy for the cost. I would have preferred this as part of a compilation of Marcuse's essays. Five stars for substance, four stars for length.