p The idea concerning the transformation of "advanced industrial society" into "totalitarian society" and emphasis of “total” negation as the means of destroying that society are linked by ideologists of the radical Left first and foremost with the view that there is no longer a revolutionary "agent of historical progress" in that society, since the working class has been “de-revolutionised”. The author of One- Dimensional Man writes: "In the capitalist world, they (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—E. B.} are still the basic classes. However the capitalist development has altered the structure and function of these two classes in such a way that they no longer appear to be agents of historical transformation. An overriding interest in the preservation and improvement of the institutional status quo unites the former antagonists in the most advanced areas of contemporary society.... In the absence of demonstrable agents and agencies of social change, the critique is thus thrown back to a high level of abstraction. .. .”  [98•* 

p The thesis to the effect that the modern industrial proletariat in the West has “lost” its revolutionary role is fundamental to radical ideology of the fifties and sixties. The very emergence of the New Left movement during the second half of the last decade was to a certain extent the result of the pessimistic view of prospects for revolution in the West put forward by certain sections of the bourgeois intelligentsia, and their lack of faith in the working class as a force 99 working towards radical change and capable of implementing such change all the way. The pessimistic view of the role of the American working class is clearly expressed in the writings of C. Wright Mills, who applied it to the working class of all developed countries.

p In 1960 in his "Letter to the New Left" Wright Mills wrote, "... what I do not quite understand about some NewLeft writers is why they cling so mightily to ’the working class’ of the advanced capitalist societies as the historic agency, or even as the most important agency, in the face of the really impressive historical evidence that now stands against this expectation". Mills does however make the reservation that this question should be approached with due caution: "Of course we can’t ’write off the working class’. But we must study all that, and freshly. Where labour exists as an agency, of course we must work with it, but we must not treat it as The Necessary Lever... .”  [99•* 

p The idea of the negation of the proletariat as a revolutionary force is shared by ideologists of the radical Left in Asia, Africa and Latin America. For them negation of the revolutionary role of the proletariat in general, and the West European and North American proletariat in particular was not so much a spontaneous reaction to the lack of an industrial working class in a number of liberated countries, as an aspect of total negationof eWst European culture. Self-assertion of the oppressed nations was associated in their minds with total rejection of the oppressor nations without drawing any distinctions between the different classes within the latter.

p When expounding the theory of "oppressed coloured peoples" and contrasting "proletarian nations" and " bourgeois nations", certain ideologists from these countries maintained that in new historical conditions the liberating mission for mankind as a whole would rest with the Third World. In so far as peasants account for the bulk of the population in the Third World countries it is precisely they rather than the proletariat who supposedly are in a position to come forward as the leading revolutionary force at the 100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1975/PR246/20090731/199.tx" present time: these ideologists would have us believe that in the colonial countries only the peasants are revolutionary, since they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

p Of course the radical Left in the advanced capitalist countries could not turn to the peasantry as a revolutionary force. This is why they talk of the “disappearance” of the working class and treat the question of the "forces of negation" at a different level.

p In his works dating from the early sixties Marcuse provides as yet a vague answer to the question as to the existence of a force of revolutionary negation in modern capitalist society: it is possible such forces exist, but on the other hand they may not. Marcuse warns his readers that "one- dimensional" man will hesitate between two contradictory hypotheses: that advanced industrial society is capable of resisting all qualitative change in the foreseeable future; or that there exist forces and trends which can surmount this resistance and disrupt society.

p What are these forces though? The answer to this question was predetermined by the actual logical schema for the negation of the establishment that took shape in the consciousness of the New Left: the forces possessed of revolutionary potential were to be those occupying a critical position vis-a-vis the established structures of bourgeois civilisation, and a critical position once again was according to the logic of the schema in question, characteristic of those groups which did not share the repressive needs introduced by the bourgeoisie, which were not integrated into the establishment but “outsiders” in relation to it. Groups that fitted this category were, according to Marcuse, ethnic minorities, ghetto populations, the unemployed—in other words all those who in his opinion had reason to be dissatisfied with the existing order in capitalist society. Marcuse wrote on this subject: ". .. underneath the conservative popular base is the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable. They exist outside the democratic process; their life is the most immediate and the most real need for ending intolerable conditions and institutions. Thus their opposition is revolutionary even if their consciousness is not. Their opposition hits the system from without 101 and is therefore not deflected by the system; it is an elementary force which violates the rules of the game and, in doing so, reveals it as a rigged game.. .. The fact that they start refusing to play the game may be the fact which marks the beginning of the end of a period.”  [101•* 

p Incidentally it was only a faint hope and Marcuse himself was not certain that ethnic minorities and the unemployed would really be capable of independently disrupting the existing system. The only thing which he did not doubt (and this from the mid-sixties onwards linked him firmly with the New Left) was that real forces of negation should today be sought on the fringes of the system. However meanwhile the question as to which these forces should be remained unsolved, the question as to the "agent of historical action" still hung in the air, and the revolution remained, in Marcuses opinion, “deferred”.

p The student unrest which swept the world during the second half of the sixties and the new wave of the intellectuals’ discontent with increasing bureaucratisation and militarisation of bourgeois society seemed at last to have provided the key for a solution to this problem, all the more so since Wright Mills appealed for attention to be focussed on the intelligentsia as a social force possessed of revolutionary potential.  [101•**  In his introduction of 1966 to Eros and Civilization and later in his introduction to the French edition of 102 One-Dimensional Man (1967) Marcuse wrote of student youth and the intelligentsia as forces possessed of revolutionary potential and demanding careful attention on the part of revolutionary theoreticians.

p This preoccupation with the intelligentsia and the student body was echoed in such works by Marcuse as End of Utopia (1967), "Review of the Conception of Revolution" (a report delivered to a UNESCO Symposium marking the 150th anniversary of Marx’s birth in 1968 and An Essay on Liberation (1969). It was precisely in these works that Marcuse formulated his "new concept of revolution", or to be more precise, two interconnected concepts: the concept of world revolution with regard to which he raises the question as to the processes at work within the Third World and their interconnection with the dynamics of social change in the advanced capitalist countries, and the concept of revolution within the advanced countries themselves.

p Marcuse comes forward with a high assessment of the historical role of the radical students and the intellectuals supporting them. He sees them as the “detonator” or “catalyst” of revolution in advanced capitalist society, its motive force; it is they who “waken” the proletariat and lead it forward. Moreover, the theoretician of the radical Left maintained, they are capable of starting an anti-capitalist revolution without the proletariat. Yet are the students and intellectuals capable of implementing revolutionary change to the end, having once embarked on that course?

p At the end of 1968 Marcuse gave a negative answer to this question saying that he was always being asked whether he thought that the student movement as such represented a revolutionary force, that his answer to that question would be in the negative. He maintained he had never said or thought that the student movement could replace the proletariat or working class as a revolutionary force and that there could be no question of such a substitution; the student movement he saw as capable of acting as a type of avantgarde above all, of course, in its role as enlightener, but also in practical politics.. .. Yet the philosopher also pointed out that the students on their own, in isolation, did not constitute any kind of revolutionary force, for only in joint activity of a theoretical or practical nature, in diligent cooperation with 103 the working class could this group really become a revolutionary force.  [103•*  A year later in his Essay on Liberation Marcuse not only reaffirmed that position but made what at first glance might appear a highly positive statement as to the role of the working class: "The radical transformation of a social system still depends on the class which constitutes the human base of the process of production. In the advanced capitalist countries, this is the industrial working class.”  [103•** 

p Does this look as if Marcuse was reassessing his former evaluation of the role of the working class and has come to discover in it a truly revolutionary force? No, that is not the case: Marcuse still regarded the problem of the working class in advanced industrial society as unsolved: "In the domain of corporate capitalism, the two historical factors of transformation, the subjective and objective, do not coincide: they are prevalent in different and even antagonistic groups. The objective factor, i.e., the human base of the process of production which reproduces the established society, exists in the industrial working class, the human source and reservoir, of exploitation; the subjective factor, i.e.,—the political consciousness exists among the nonconformist young intelligentsia. .. .”  [103•***  Therefore the working class can be designated as potentially revolutionary, while in actual fact it is not revolutionary; furthermore, from the point of view of its real function the working class during the stabilisation period takes upon itself a stabilising, conservative function.  [103•**** 

p In this way Marcuse’s acknowledgement of the working class as a potentially revolutionary force in no way detracts from his negation of the role of the proletariat as a real revolutionary force, for the realisation of this potential is seen by Marcuse as something highly improbable. On the other hand his reservations concerning the “detonating” or “catalystic” function of the intelligentsia (including students) also fail to change his sceptical attitude to questions concerning the possible implementation of revolution in presentday capitalist society. For while the proletariat, according to Marcuse, is unable to accomplish anything without the 104 intelligentsia and the students, since it lacks "revolutionary consciousness", at the same time neither the intelligentsia nor the students are able to achieve anything without the proletariat; even once they have embarked on revolution they are not in a position to complete it; meanwhile an alliance between the proletariat and the intelligentsia which would make possible the linking of objective and subjective factors of revolution is a far-off dream. Where then in that case is the new agent of revolutionary action?

p Marcuse’s answer to that question is self-explanatory: "Where the traditional laboring classes cease to be the ’ gravediggers’ of capitalism, (that is in the advanced capitalist countries—E. B.) this function remains, as it were, suspended, and the political efforts toward change remain ‘tentative’, preparatory not only in a temporal but also in a structural sense. This means that the addresses as well as the immediate goals and occasions of action will be determined by the shifting situation rather than by a theoretically well-founded and elaborated strategy. This determinism, a direct consequence of the strength of the system and the diffusion of the opposition, also implies a shift of emphasis toward ’subjective factors’: the development of awareness and needs assumes primary importance.. .. Historically, it is again the period of enlightenment prior to material change—a period of education, but education which turns into praxis; demonstration, confrontation, rebellion.”  [104•* 

p This means that the “new” concept of revolution is little more than the old concept of enlightenment linked with spontaneous “experiments”, with intellectual rebellion, in a word, with the Great Refusal all over again, the appeal for which rounds off Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man.

p While denying the revolutionary role of the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries and expressing doubts in the force of “outsiders” within that society, radical ideologists in the West attempt to find material to support their theories in the Third World, in particular since the latter is now a source of various theories of revolutionary action, including those of the radical Left which have various points in common with conceptions evolved by Marcuse, Sartre and other radical ideologists.

p This affinity can be explained by the similarity between outlooks peculiar to the New Left in the West and radical representatives of non-proletarian strata in the Third World, who are concerned with the problem of national self- assertion and speak in the name of the "too large minority" which is the object of exploitation and suppression on the part of the developed nations. The proximity of their views unites radical ideologists in the West and the Third World in their negation of developed society as something incompatible with humanist ideals; in their negation of the revolutionary role of the working class; in their critical approach to science and technology and their cult of economic underdevelopment; in their preoccupation with youth and “outsiders” as an active and uncompromising revolutionary force. Both groups deny the fundamental difference between developed capitalist and socialist nations bracketing them together as "developed industrial society" or "rich nations" as opposed to "poor nations" or "proletarian nations”.

p Admittedly the West European radical Left is speaking as if already “tired” of “civilisation”, and Afro-Asian radical ideologists sound tired of waiting for “civilisation”, that is for the day when their countries might draw near to the level of production and consumption enjoyed in the developed countries. However in this particular case the difference is not an essential one: the extremes meet in the negation of technical and technological progress, in the rejection of “Western” reality as something which cools revolutionary ardour.

p Another factor which accounts for the attention which the radical Left focusses on Asia, Africa and Latin America are the socio-political processes now at work in these regions, which the New Left and their mentors see as the real embodiment of the slogans they themselves have been proclaiming and as a feasible way of building a new society. The New Left was attracted by the social dynamism of the Third World that contrasted with the apparent stagnation presented by the bourgeois West. It was precisely this dynamism which led astray those Western non-conformists thirsting for immediate and radical social upheaval who decided that "the centre of revolutionary storm had shifted to the East". This dynamism, typical of any society entering a stage 106 characterised by the break-up of institutions and relations that have grown up over whole centuries, and by a search for new paths of development, concealed from the rebels the fact that the national liberation movements subject to the influence of radical slogans were still a long way from actually implementing the social ideal they had held aloft and that degrees of social activity and revolutionary consciousness do not always coincide.

p The New Left was also disorientated by the obvious or sometimes seeming contrast between the Third World and the West (poverty as opposed to wealth, spontaneity as opposed to organisation, activity and passivity, a man- orientated or technology-orientated outlook), a contrast which led them to believe that beyond the confines of the "industrial world" there was taking shape precisely what the hated establishment was opposing and what they had been struggling to achieve.

p Marcuse also searches for revolutionary inspiration and theoretical revelations in the Third World. He also contrasts developed countries with countries which have not attained a high level of technical and economic maturity, assuming that precisely this fact will reveal to Third World nations how to build a new society. However once again Marcuse’s pessimism holds him back from any exaggerated assessment of the national liberation movement in the world revolutionary process. It has aptly been pointed out that "despite assertions by many other ideologists of the radical Left who consider that the centre of the struggle against capitalism has shifted to the Third World he (Marcuse—E. B.) comes out against the existing extremely strong tendency to regard the national liberation movement as the main, if not the only revolutionary force at the present time.”  [106•*  Marcuse writes: "The National Liberation Fronts threaten the life line of imperialism, they are not only a material but also an ideological catalyst of change... in this ideological respect too, the external revolution has become an essential part of the opposition within the capitalist metropolies. However, the exemplary force, the ideological power of the external revolution, 107 can come to fruition only if the internal structure and cohesion of the capitalist system begin to disintegrate. The chain of exploitation must break at its strongest link.”  [107•* 

p In the final analysis the “outsider” from without proves as powerless as the “outsider” from within that society. Hopes prove illusory and revolution “deferred”.

The pessimistic conclusion at which Marcuse arrives is predetermined not only by his nihilistic attitude to the proletariat of the capitalist countries, but also by one of the fundamental flaws in his conception of world revolution—his ignoring of the world socialist system which "is the decisive force in the anti-imperialist struggle"  [107•** , and which together with the international working-class movement performs on a world scale the role which ethnic detachments of the working class perform within individual capitalist states. Marcuse artificially divides up the world socialist system relegating those countries which have not yet achieved a high level of economic development to the so-called "poor nations" and the developed socialist countries—and first and foremost the Soviet Union—to the group of "rich nations" together with the developed capitalist countries. As a result of this operation the development of the world revolutionary process is reduced to a struggle between “rich” (or "non- revolutionary") and “poor” (or “revolutionary”) nations, a tendency typical of those conceptions, which certain bourgeois ideologists advocate—the Maoists with particular fervour—and which do not reflect the actual course of the class struggle in the international arena. Marcuse makes reference to the undeniable fact that the world socialist system is taking shape unevenly (just as development within the capitalist world is proceeding unevenly, while preconditions for socialism take shape within it), and this unevenness inevitably engenders varying forms of struggle waged by the socialist countries against world capitalism, and varying forms of social organisation within the countries concerned. Yet Marcuse overestimates the property factor and ignores the social relations and institutions which the socialist countries have in common. The “property” basis, which played a decisive role at 108 the time when there existed local state formations and international communications were little developed, in itself is not equipped to “neutralise” or radically deform the nature of social relations. Material, technological and political integration and ideological unity make it possible to “ compensate” for those material factors of social progress lacking in this or that particular country, on the strength of the fact that they exist in other countries and an international exchange of services functions, the organisation of which is determined by the nature of social relations. Thus the course of the world revolutionary process is shaped not by the gulf between the "poor " and “rich” nations, nor by the struggle between the "world village" and the "world town" but by the struggle waged by the united forces of the world socialist system, the international communist and working-class movements and the national liberation movement against the forces of imperialism.