57

p The world as seen by the New Left and its ideologists is truly nightmarish, a world in which seeming prosperity is diffused with a cold and ominous apocalyptical light, a world in which the anti-utopias of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are encroaching on us. Official “objective” statistics do admittedly present quite a different picture: increased steel output and production of refrigerators, expansion of foreign tourism and the motor industry. Yet for the New Left what is important is not official statistics (all the more so given the fact that the majority of the movement’s members are from well-to-do families), but the self-awareness of the individual within “late-bourgeois” society that presents a sharp contrast with this prosperity, self-awareness which is precisely what sets apart the New Left and which should in its opinion be shared by the majority of society’s members unless they be “integrated” and bereft of any capacity for critical thought. That selfawareness which enables the individual to decide whether he is after all happy in this world, should therefore be recognised as the supreme judge pronouncing sentence on the existing world.

p Members of the New Left felt themselves wretched: the "world of prosperity" proved to be far from “prosperous” for it presented a picture of universal disintegration and collapse:

p —disintegration and collapse of traditional bourgeois social and political structures, in which the New Left thanks 58 to its militant awareness suddenly discovered the inner meaning; they served as levers of “manipulation” and “suppression”, that use democracy as a screen behind which cynical sharing-out of power and money takes place;

p —disintegration and collapse of bourgeois culture which, after becoming accessible to the masses, thanks to means of communication ("mass culture") is at the same time losing its original function of bringing man nearer to the "supreme values of life";

p —disintegration and collapse of moral values ( advocated by the Church and secular power) that are losing their elevating and regulating force and turning into a collection of dead, hypocritical Pharisaic dogmas;

p —disintegration and collapse of the individual, man’s loss of his truly human essence and transformation into a well-fed and therefore obedient and meek slave of the "industrial system”.

p In short, the disintegration and collapse of modern bourgeois civilisation “cleansing” itself of "transcendental goals" and turning into something like a dry dead tree, from which all the sap has been drained.

p This picture opening up before the New Left seemed all the more tragic in that the disintegration of bourgeois civilisation was interpreted as the disintegration of human civilisation as such. The New Left saw this disintegration as total and maintained that it would also effect those social forces, those social and political structures which were traditionally regarded as the material embodiment of social transcendence, the expression of the anti-bourgeois alternative.

p Of course the picture of the existing world painted by the New Left reflected certain objective phenomena and tendencies characteristic of developed capitalist society. However the radical Left clearly exaggerated the degree to which the bourgeoisie had achieved the goals it had set itself. This exaggeration moreover was neither unexpected nor accidental: to a large extent it was predetermined by the class character of those sources from which the New Left gleaned its picture of existing society. Here we would do as well to remember that the radicals’ overall picture of the world took shape at a time when the ideology of integration which 59 had been predominant in the late fifties and early sixties was proving to be illusory and the feeling that the collapse of the “late-bourgeois” world was imminent started to spread to more and more of the left intellectuals and students, a feeling that today is penetrating the consciousness of representatives from various strata of capitalist (in particular, American) society.

p Yet the paradoxical nature of the New Left’s vision of the world (and their ideology) lay precisely in the fact that they looked upon this social disintegration as a function and consequence of socio-integratiohal processes, while the “negation-of-the-establishment” policy was justified and supported with reference to the very Same arguments which had been elaborated by bourgeois ideologists advocating preservation of the status quo. Admittedly when analysing the phenomena described by the latter, New Left writers used reverse emphasis; yet though that operation may have brought some influence to bear on their notion of the social ideal that was used to counter the establishment, in no way did it free them from the grip of the ideology of integration and technocracy as far as their picture of existing society was concerned. Precisely this "ideological captivity", this uncritical borrowing of other writers’ ideas explained the pessimistic mood of the New Left and their ideologists, because anti-revolutionary optimism never provided a firm foundation for the shaping of revolutionary optimism.

p The pessimistic assessment of social reality arrived at by the ideologists of the radical Left and in particular with regard to advanced industrial society can be explained by their definition of the latter as fundamentally totalitarian.

p “Social critics" whose ideas took shape within the walls of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Sciences were able to watch first-hand the rise of fascist totalitarianism based on the open use of brute force and terror. Yet, it was to emerge that this was not the only type of totalitarian society: the United States appeared to them as a new variety of totalitarianism, based not on brute force and bayonets, but simply on "technological rationality". Empirical observation of social reality in the United States led the "social critics" to conclude that totalitarianism is not peculiar to some specific society but rather a whole epoch. Marcuse specifies: "The 60 era tends to be totalitarian even where it has not produced totalitarian states.”  [60•* 

p The ideologists of the radical Lefts see the basic feature of totalitarianism as the swallowing up of individuality within the totality (particularly as personified by the state and official culture). The individual is forced to submit to this totality, although in such a way that he barely notices it. However these ideologists see this as a result not so much of the domination of the capitalist system of social relations, but rather of the development of technology and " technological civilisation" which are supposedly bringing about a suppression of freedom in their wake. Marcuse writes: "Throughout the world of industrial civilization, the domination of man by man is growing in scope and efficiency. Nor does this trend appear as an incidental, transitory regression on the road to progress. Concentration camps, mass exterminations, world wars, and atom bombs are no ’relapse into barbarism’, but the unrepressed implementation of the achievements of modern science, technology, and domination. And the most effective subjugation and destruction of man by man takes place at the height of civilization, when the material and intellectual attainments of mankind seem to allow the creation of a truly free world.”  [60•** 

p It is not difficult to notice that rigorous social analysis gives way here to emotional description of some sort of abstract “hell”, a description aimed at arousing a sense of aversion in relation to this “hell” and the desire to sweep it away from the path mankind has to tread.

p There are no cracks in the totalitarian society described by the radicals, the links in the social mechanisms are so tightly welded that there is not even the tiniest space in which any counter-mechanisms or counter-forces might take shape and function. Moreover there is not even the space necessary for the maintenance of critical distance and for the critic to achieve a detached viewpoint of his environment. This is a society bereft of historical dimensions, it is flat and linear, or to use Marcuse’s term, “one-dimensional”.

p The category of “one-dimensionality” in Marcuse’s 61 writing is of a universal nature in so far as, in his opinion, it makes it possible accurately to define the essence of “ totalitarian” society, both in general and in its particular manifestations. “One-dimensionality” is uniformity that rules out any alternatives (social, political, theoretical, artistic, etc.): everything has to be unified and point in the same direction. It implies an absence of opposition or criticism extending beyond the limits of the system of existing social relations, and therefore reconciliation with the existing state of affairs. In the socio-political sphere “one-dimensionality”—as conceived by Marcuse—means the absence within developed capitalist society of social forces capable of deliberately or consistently opposing established social relations so as eventually to subject them to revolutionary negation: "Technical progress, extended to a whole system of domination and coordination, created forms of life (and of power) which appear to reconcile the forces opposing the system and to defeat or refute all protest in the name of historical prospects of freedom from toil and domination. This containment of social change is perhaps the most singular achievement of advanced industrial society; the general acceptance of the National Purpose, bipartisan policy, the decline of pluralism, the collusion of Business and Labor within the strong State testify to the integration of opposites which is the result as well as the prerequisite of this achievement.”  [61•*  Marcuse here is setting out to convince his reader that within the framework of the system of social relations in the modern capitalist world there is no longer any place for antagonistic forces, for both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, in his opinion, are pursuing the same aims and share what are in the long run the same political ideals. Marcuse would have us believe that the proletariat is now “integrated” in the system of state-monopoly capitalism. This “integration” he sees as “total” in character in so far as it extends to all aspects of man’s activity. The working man feels himself a party to "National Purpose" not only in production or politics, but also in his everyday life, at home. The worker and entrepreneur watch one and the same television programmes and films, read the same newspapers and periodicals, make use 62 of the same social services, and both experience satisfaction the while.

p In their days Karl Marx and Frederick Engels described class antagonism in bourgeois society in the following terms: "The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognises estrangement as it’s own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use the expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature.

p “Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian, the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter, that of annihilating it.”  [62•* 

p Clearly Marcuse would not deny that today both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat "present the same human selfestrangement". The present-day world with its alienating “rationality” is, in Marcuse’s opinion, profoundly irrational. This irrationality engulfs all members of society, paying no heed to the classes they belong to. Yet the contradictions inherent in “one-dimensional” society have been driven into the background. They cannot come to the surface, for this is made impossible by the technically “rational” organisation of existing society, which facilitates the suppression of such contradictions. According to Marcuse it is precisely the logical development of the idea of reason commonly found in West European civilisation which gives rise to this situation. "The closed operational universe of advanced industrial civilization with its terrifying harmony of freedom and oppression, productivity and destruction, growth and regression is pre-designed in this idea of Reason as a specific historical project.”  [62•**  As a result, society in its "rationality" 63 has reached a point where it is becoming irrational. Meanwhile it has instilled the idea of this "irrational rationality" into people’s minds to such an extent as to deprive the individual of his critical dimension. The individual exposed to destruction and death, united with other individuals in a purely mechanical way and thus completely isolated, sees himself as “happy” in this "rational hell”.

p It is here that the fundamental difference between Marx and Marcuse comes to light. In Marcuse’s view of things the working class, while remaining self-alienated, ceases to feel himself "annihilated in estrangement", to be indignation personified and represent the destructive side of the antagonism. It is satisfied with its alienation, in so far as the latter is decked out relatively comfortably.

p According to Marcuse, this merging of opposites was possible thanks to the “rational” manipulation of individuals, relying on a wise network of means of mass control and mass media with the help of which unified, stabilising needs are transmitted to mass consciousness.

p Marcuse’s criticism of “one-dimensional” society won him many supporters among the ranks of the radical Left who even elevated him to the status of anti-bourgeois “ revolutionary”, placing him at the forefront of the humanist philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. The phenomenological and descriptive side of Marcuse’s concept, which was precisely what lured to his side a large contingent of supporters and led them to adopt Marcusian recipes, actually served to pinpoint certain aspects of the material and cultural life of modern advanced capitalist society, and certain phenomena which influenced the attitudes of various social strata.

p In the midst of the crisis gripping the capitalist social system the ruling class in the advanced capitalist countries attempts to standardise society and weld it-together on the basis of values that would, in the eyes of the state-monopoly bourgeoisie, ensure the unshakeable stability of the existing order of things and rob the members of society of their individuality, turning them all into cogs within the giant social machine.

p This is brought out by the "spread consumer individualism and competition for consumer status among a 64 large section of the population, and this is expressed in a constant drive for possession of things which are symbols of the individual’s social prestige.”  [64•*  Change in the mechanism of interaction between the market and production, as a result of which surplus commodities are now not destroyed but foisted upon the consumer, leads to a phenomenon which could be referred to as "hidden overconsumption". Consumption ceases to be a condition of life, and becomes its very purpose.”  [64•** 

p At the dawn of capitalism Descartes was able to say: "I think therefore I am"; nowadays at the sunset of the bourgeois era this formula—viewed sociologically—should more aptly be rendered in the context of advanced capitalist society as follows: "I consume therefore I am." Typically enough, the consumer orientation and outlook shaped by the bourgeois state apparatus are designed first and foremost to become the modus vivendi for these social strata who provide the mass consumer, that is, the working people.

p Capitalist “rationalisation” based as it is on precise calculations is irresistibly permeating all spheres of man’s existence: characteristic of present trends is a quantitative rather than a qualitative approach to all objects allowing of manipulation and this applies in particular to man himself. In these conditions the human personality loses its intrinsic value and becomes just another thing.

p Commercialised culture becomes more and more widespread, its stereotypes directed at all strata of society in order to secure their reconciliation with society as it is and their assimilation within it. Language becomes equally stereotyped, overflowing with cliches permitting the disguise or veiling of the political and moral values couched in it. Political demagogy is used not only by bourgeois liberals but by blatantly reactionary forces as well.

p Yet if we take a close look at Marcuse’s critique of " consumer society" its one-dimensional nature is discernible. The "social critic" not only overestimates the degree of 65 unification within American society (which he takes as his model of "modern society" as such), but without any justification he extends trends observed in the United States to cover modern capitalist society as a whole, ignoring specific conditions and trends of social development in the various parts of the capitalist world. This is to a large extent the result of the principles on which Marcuse based his "critical theory" from the outset. Marcuse, like other ideologists of the radical Left, bases his criticism of modern capitalist society on theories and ideological constructions propounded so as to facilitate vindication of capitalist society.

p For instance, in his negation of revolutionary role of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries Marcuse takes over a good deal of the ideas developed by Raymond Aron; then, again in his bracketing together of capitalism and socialism as varieties of "industrial society" Marcuse refers to the theories of a "single industrial society" and “ convergence” elaborated by Walt Rostow and other sociologists out to defend capitalism. This means that while retaining a superficially anti-capitalist approach, Marcuse’s ideas lack any truly revolutionary essence and assume the form of utopian theories easy for the state-monopoly capitalist system to “digest” and assimilate.

p The conclusions drawn in relation to the "one- dimensionality" of developed capitalist society, and the loss of its proletariat’s revolutionary role stem from the identification of integration processes with the process Marcuse defines as society’s transition from “two-dimensionality” to "one- dimensionality"; from fetishisation of technology and the approach to the latter as the prime factor in the shaping (through the mechanism of requirements) of “cheerful” consciousness untroubled by contradictions; from absolutisation of the relative independence of the latter; from the approach to the structure of social requirements not from the viewpoint of historical development, but from that of a priori "ideal types”.

p If a social critic adopts this kind of approach to society, the latter is bound to present itself to him as a strictly cultural phenomenon, or scanty ethical abstraction, rather than as a multi-dimensional developing organism in which each social phenomenon must be treated as a factor in the 66 historical process and assessed in the light of its prospects.

p As history has shown, each new stage in social evolution creates new conditions for material and cultural integration of society, without which the subsequent development of production and exchange of activity would be impossible. As Marx pointed out, capitalism carries out tremendous work in this direction. By creating a national and international market for the output of material production, at a relatively early stage of its development it unites once scattered regional formations and incorporates them into a single central power structure, introducing uniform legislation and nationwide standards. Yet while capitalism is developing not only in depth but also in breadth, while the monopolies have not yet replaced free competition, and means of communication, the levers of direct influence over men’s minds, have not yet assumed a “mass” character and are not aimed directly at "mass consciousness", the regulation of the nation’s life is effected in the main with the help of economic levers. The transmission from free competition to monopoly, the formation of the world socialist system and the collapse of the colonial system compel the ruling bourgeoisie to resort to a search for reserves in order to consolidate its own position. In its race for profits the bourgeoisie creates a management system based on the maximum utilisation of capitalist centralisation and the introduction of standards, and both production and labour stereotypes. As a result of the increasing domination of the state-monopoly character of capitalism and the confrontation of two social systems, economic levers prove insufficient for the control of the social organism. It becomes necessary to control the masses through direct moulding of their consciousness, through the creation of a national market for standardised cultural commodities as an integrating social force designed to unite all members of society within the framework of capitalist production. The technological revolution simplifies the solution of this problem, although of course it is not the direct cause of its appearance.

p Marcuse starts out from the premise that modern capitalism attempts to use the integration processes at work within it to mould a “one-dimensional”, that is an obedient and uncritical individual, prepared to support the existing 67 society, yet he is inclined to see the cause of all social evils, which are embodied in “one-dimensionality”, in the rational organisation of production, in the creation of an integrated well-oiled system of production, managerial and cultural institutions whose activities are based on modern technology.

p Psychologically overwhelmed by the power of capital depriving the social forces (whose interests Marcuse represents) of a stable social status, the "critical philosopher" is anxious to overlook the ambivalent, intrinsically contradictory nature of capitalist integration as such, the qualitative differences between the various functions of technology, and the differences between the ultimate aims of the integration processes at work within different social systems.

p There is no denying that the processes of economic integration at work within capitalist society are of an ambivalent nature. While creating conditions facilitating still greater exploitation of the working people, the intensification of labour and the psychological manipulation of the masses, these processes at the same time objectively promote the creation of the material preconditions for socialism, which in its turn completes the historical work begun by capitalism.

p Yet within the framework of capitalist social relations economic integration does not automatically lead to social and political integration, to the merging of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, to the “de-revolutionisation” of the political parties of the working class, that is to “one-dimensionality”, for although property relations influence the direction and goals of integration, the latter does not lead directly to radical change in the essence of dominant relations of property and management or put an end to exploitation of labour by capital, and it consequently does not do away with those objective factors which determine the position of the proleratiat in capitalist society as a revolutionary class.

p In the attitude adopted by Marcuse and other radical ideologists to modern technology there are unmistakable elements of the outlook of the modern bureaucratic elite which fetishises the role of technology in the life of society and defines its functions outside the social bonds from which the system of machines cannot be extricated. In the context of “late-bourgeois” society scientific and technological progress and the extension of the spheres for their application give 68 rise to a climate favouring the birth of new idols in keeping with spirit of science and technology and a wave of scientific and technological fetishism. This fetishism, which closely reflects technocracy’s outlook, permeates, however, not only the minds of the technocrats out to support the existing system, but also the romantic, anti-technocratic outlook that claims to embody the modern humanitarian vision of the world. It is the acknowledgement of this predominance of scientific and technological fetishes and the all-permeating power of technocracy which provides the romantically inclined with justification for their militantly anti-technocratic attitudes and indeed with their own raison-d’etre. Yet regardless of whether science and technology are considered to be the source of all social “benefits”, or the fundamental cause of all social “ills”, in either case the fetishist consciousness unjustifiably turns science and technology ( interpreted, incidentally, in a positivist spirit) into a universal and absolute criterion for all social processes, and links changes in the position of the individual within society and the radical transformation of the latter precisely with the change in the social functions of science and technology, demanding either an extension or, on the contrary, a restriction of their powers. Marcuse accuses Marx of “underestimating” the enslaving role of technology: "Marx underrated the extent of the conquest of nature and of man, of the technological management of freedom and self-realization. He did not foresee the great achievement of technological society: the assimilation of freedom and necessity, of satisfaction and repression of the aspirations of politics, business, and the individual.”  [68•* 

p Accusations of this type stem from a subjectivist interpretation of Marx’s approach to technology. For Marx the question of technology is not an abstract question of good and evil. He approached technology within the system of concrete social relations. The latter change as technology develops, but in the overall context of social reality the will of a class and its action, are conditioned in the final analysis by the nature of production relations, and in their turn 69 always determine the social role of technology in society. Placed as it is between man and nature, and between one man and another, technology "comes to life", as it were, thus becoming capable of performing contradictory functions. Yet the ambivalent and contradictory nature of the functions of technology reflects the contradictoriness of society itself.

p It is clear that not only science and technology but also human culture taken as a whole, and each of its elements are potentially capable of performing contradictory functions, in view of the contradictory nature of man’s very existence as the creator of culture. The complexity of modern technology makes it appear functionally independent in relation to society, and still more so in relation to its individual members. Yet whatever the level of technological sophistication reached, the question as to what precisely is technology’s real function and which of its potential functions is to be utilised depends on man himself, or rather on the character of relations between men in the processes of production, distribution and consumption.

p The position adopted by Marcuse, Adorno and certain other social critics (particularly those who carried out their research at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Sciences) can to a certain extent be explained by their personal experiences. This of course is not the main factor behind the genesis and essence of radical theories, yet precisely this personal factor, this "personal experience" helps to some extent to discern the specific features of those theories and pinpoint their authors’ interpretation of the destiny of the society in which they happen to live. Both Marcuse and Adorno—German philosophers and sociologists—had been brought up on traditional European values, and devout respect for "pure spirit"; cast by fate into industrial America, they could not help but feel out of place in that unfamiliar world of technological “rationality”, a world where calculation and profit permeate even the most intimate corners of life, a world of standardisation where individuality seems to be swept aside. They were outsiders in this “rationalised” world and it is hardly surprising that many of them became ideologists of the “outsiders”, that is people who found themselves outside their customary social niche. Moreover “outsiders” are always inclined to be pessimistic. They are unsure of their 70 ground and feel that the world is crashing down around them, and turning into a grey faceless mass, a "sack of potatoes" indistinguishable one from the other.

p When writing of “one-dimensionality”, seen as the lack of a critical dimension in the contemporary socio-political and cultural institutions of "advanced society" and the minds of the citizens of that society, and as the monotonous similarity in the views, tastes and habits of individuals, Marcuse is expressing first and foremost his own pessimistic mood which provides a far from accurate reflection of the true picture presented by social relations.

p If we turn to the history of culture it is clear that pessimism very often has reference to concepts such as "one- dimensionality" or the standardisation of society, and that the idea of “one-dimensionality” (although expressed in other terms) had appeared in literature long before Marcuse, even at a stage when there were no visible signs of it to hand.

p Pessimism linked with the idea of “one-dimensionality” is to be found in the works of Erich Fromm and earlier still in those of Ortega-y-Gasset and many advocates of the "mass society" concept. A picture of “one-dimensional” society is painted in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Turning still further back we find discussion of mass, one-dimensional society in the works of the Russian Populists who naturally were unable to observe any clearly defined "one- dimensionality" around them in those days, for example in Gleb Uspensky’s "Fleeting Reminiscences of a Traveller" first published in Otechestvenniye Zapiski (Annals of the Fatherland) in 1883. Uspensky on returning home from a trip to the Caspian Sea experienced a sense of inexplicable melancholy. The ship on which he had been sailing had made its way past endless streams of brimful fishing boats. When he asked what kind of fish they were carrying he was told it was roach and that it was now "roach all the way". "Yes," mused Uspensky, "that is why I feel sad at heart.... Nowadays it will soon be ’all the way’ at every turn. Cat-fish all the way teeming in their thousands, whole hosts of them so that there’s no dispersing them, and now roach all the way, millions of them, each the image of the others. The same goes for the people, each man ’the image of the others’ from here to Archangel, from Archangel to Adesta, from Adesta to 71 Kamchatka, from Kamchatka to Vladikavkaz and so on as far as the Persian and the Turkish frontiers. Whether it be on the way to Kamchatka, Adesta, Petersburg or Lenkoran nowadays everything looks the same ’all the way’, as if wrought by the same craftsmen: the fields, the ears of corn, the jades, the earth, the sky, the trees, the birds, the huts, the peasants and their women—each one the image of the others with nothing to distinguish it from the rest, in the same all-too-familiar colours, thoughts, garb and songs.... Always all the way—countryside all the way, philistines all the way, morals all the way, truth all the way, poetry all the way, everything the same, a tribe a hundred million strong, living a faceless life with herd thoughts and explicable only as a herd. To separate from that mass of millions any single unit, like our village elder Semyon Nikitin for example and try to understand him is impossible.... Semyon Nikitin can only be understood as part of the ‘heap’ of other Semyon Nikitins. A single roach is worth almost nothing, but millions of them make a fortune. Likewise a million Semyon Nikitins make a being or organism full of interest, while Semyon Nikitin on his own, with his thoughts is beyond our reach and defies study. ... Millions are living ’like other people’ while each of those ’other people’ senses and is aware that ’in all respects’ he is worth almost nothing, like a roach, and that he only starts to mean something as part of ’the heap’___"  [71•* 

p Marcuse also considers that nowadays everything is faceless and given such a state of affairs, it is difficult to presume that in conditions like these the social contradictions inherent in advanced capitalist society might come to the surface.

p Is this type of pessimism compatible with the revolutionary spirit? A work pessimistic in spirit may, admittedly, play a conspicuous role in awakening the people’s consciousness, as was the case for example with Pyotr Chaadaev’s " Philosophical Letter" which, Plekhanov maintained, "did infinitely more for the development of our thought"  [71•**  than other " 72 optimistic" sociologists. Yet even here pessimism only provides initial stimulus for ideas destined to overcome pessimism. The pessimist himself can be a participant in mass political or cultural movements, but again not in the role of theoretician or ideological leader, for no revolutionary action, in so far as it is directed towards the future can find a firm foundation in pessimism. In general, pessimism acts as a break on activity directed at changing the existing state of affairs, foreshadowing the inevitable defeat of those who have decided to embark on something. The pessimist is anti- revolutionary, not revolutionary, when it comes to real revolution as opposed to outbursts of despair. If pessimists like Marcuse are set up as "revolutionary leaders" by the participants in protest movements (and those who encourage them), this may well be the result of misunderstanding, or stem from the fact that these protesters lack true revolutionary convictions.  [72•* 

p At best the pessimist can point to the desirability, but on no account to the historical necessity of revolutionary changes, for he does not know the forces capable of preparing for and achieving victory in the struggle for fundamental social change.

p All that remains is to desire passively that something which is not destined to take place, takes place all the same, or to pin hopes on forces "from another world", that is outside the limits of the given system, or peripheral forces, now that hopes are no longer placed in God as was once the case.

p What is it, then, that leads the radical pessimist to protest? 73 Perhaps moral indignation, or sudden emotional outbursts? There is, no doubt, much of the abstract moralist in the ideologists of the radical Left. Yet even so the most powerful stimulus leading the radical pessimists to rebel, is not moral indignation but fear, fear of mankind’s nightmarish future, that will, as they see it, evolve out of today’s "consumer prosperity" and lead to the degradation of man.

p This fear is that of the petty-bourgeois radical at the transformation of the “totalitarian” society based on "repressive tolerance" into a still worse variety of totalitarianism based on the incorporation of repressive needs and values into the very structure of man’s instincts. Marcuse fears that this process will lead to the transformation of human society into an Orwellian animal farm and that Huxley’s "brave new world" will come to pass  [73•* . Marcuse holds that man has adapted himself to repression to such an extent that he has ceased to notice it and that this capacity for adaptation might take him much too far. Quoting from Rene Dubos’ Man Adapting Marcuse writes, ".. . there may emerge by selection a stock of human beings suited genetically to accept as a matter of course a regimented and sheltered way of life in a teeming and polluted world, from which all wilderness and fantasy of nature will have disappeared. The domesticated farm animal and the laboratory rodent on a controlled regiment in a controlled environment will then become true models for the study of man.”  [73•** 

Fear goads the pessimist into action, makes him protest, rebel and reject the existing state of affairs thus placing him half way between despair and hope, which determines the forms of negation of the bourgeois establishment he selects. The gloom of totally organised society cannot be divided up into “light” and “darkness”: in that gloom there is no light, nothing can be differentiated. Yet if no light can be gleaned from out of that gloom, then negation can in no way 74 be dialectical “sublation”. The world has to be subjected to "total negation". Despair-in-fear that has nothing to do with hope dictates a passive form of negation, the so-called "Great Refusal”.