p The idea of the formation of the "new man" expressed in the works of radical ideologists and in the mass slogans of the protest movement was by no means a speculative fiction. It arose as the reaction to the increasingly acute contradiction between demands made on man by the technical revolution and the objective opportunities for his development opened up by that revolution, on the one hand, and the methods and limits of the realisation of these demands and opportunities within the framework of capitalism, on the other. "The technological revolution of today introduces two new phenomena into social development: scientific discoveries and their application that lead to technological, organisational change and sharp rises in skills, places all human life on a dynamic plane; at the same time the whole sphere of man’s life is gradually drawn into the movement of civilisation in the capacity of its new dynamic factor.”  [217•* 

p Indeed industrial civilisation was based on the reproduction of available labour power and had little need to change the employee himself, while technological civilisation and present every-day life which is constantly changing in its wake and which is becoming more and more permeated by technology, demand from man new eyes and ears, new sensibility and capacities for reflection, a change in the historically envolved structure of his instincts and reactions. Parallel to these demands the growing measure of free time opens up possibilities for man to become more and more the master of his own activity, for the development of his interest potential, namely for the self-development of man as an end in itself.

p Now, the main question at issue is which path this restructuring of man’s sensibility and reflection will take, determined as it is by the dynamics of technological civilisation.

p Since the interdependence of man’s development and society’s development is growing increasingly close, the direction of the development of man’s sensibility and capacity for reflection represents an important stability factor for the existing social totality. It becomes necessary to regulate this development not only by means of economic levers, but also— since the measure of man’s free time is growing and the correlation between “public” and “private” life is changing in favour of the latter—by means of direct influence on man’s minds and psychological make-up with the help of regulators designed to guarantee social cohesion.

p However, the demands made on man in the age of technological civilisation and the opportunities that open up before him materialise in fundamentally different forms and through fundamentally different methods, depending upon the nature of social relations, within the framework of which this civilisation is developing today,

p State-monopoly capitalism is solving the task of “ reshaping” man from a utilitarian standpoint, aimed at ensuring optimal functioning of the existing order and the existing mechanism for extracting profit: it attempts to create a distorted, “one-dimensional” man, a man-function. The reshaping of man’s psychological make-up, his mind and his sensitivity is effected in such a way as to transform him into a standardised, mass-produced, automated individual, whose senses and thoughts are essentially conformist. The regulators of sensitivity and man’s capacity for reflection are alienated from the individual and “transposed” outside him: programming the purpose of his activity, working towards the goals, he sets himself, describing and assessing his acts, the Individual turns not to himself, but "drops a coin in the slot", which "coughs up" a ready-made, standard answer that is nevertheless accepted by the individual and by those who surround him as an adequate form of self- expression. The sensibility and thoughts of such an individual are a mere reflection of the sensibility and thoughts of the totality, which remains indifferent to the individual.

p The ideologists of the radical Left also point out this 219 utilitarian deformation of man: "The so-called consumer economy and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form”.  [219•*  Is it possible to avert this deformation? "Is such a change in the ‘nature’ of man conceivable? I believe so, because technical progress has reached a stage in which reality no longer need be defined by the debilitating competition for social survival and advancement.”  [219•** 

p However, when acknowledging the possibility of creating man with a fundamentally new sensibility and capacity for reflection, the radicals start out not from actual social history, but from their own speculative, Utopian constructions, which are of a blatantly functional character. The "new man" presented to us by the ideologists of the radical Left is very different from the man born of the march of history; they conjure up a man, who they need today not so much as an end in itself, but as a means for achieving the social goals they set themselves.

p Marcuse evolves his image of the "new man" in accordance with the principle of the Great Refusal: the "new man" must present a complete contrast with the real man of the 1960s. This is "a type of man with a different sensitivity as well as consciousness: men who would speak a different language, have different gestures, follow different impulses, men who have developed an instinctual barrier against cruelty, brutality, ugliness.”  [219•*** 

p It is obvious that this abstract "new man" is more or less an antipode of the present—also abstract—man, who is corrupt through and through, as presented in the writings of Marcuse and other ideologists of the radical Left. This type of "new man" born of indignant consciousness^ closely resembles the ideal, refined intellectual, the romantic gentleman, challenging the world sullied in situ. It is no wonder that this man can only be born of “challenge”.

p Marcuse’s conception of socialism is based on the idea that change in man’s "biological nature"  [219•****  is the essential 220 precondition for the formation of the "new man". Starting out from the Freudian thesis that the subconscious plays the decisive role in social behaviour.  [220•*  Marcuse seeks for the initial reason behind the reproduction of bourgeois morals and the whole system of the individual’s social orientation in the structure of his psychological make-up and the needs which stem from the latter, needs that are shaped by capitalist society: "What is now at stake are the needs themselves. At this stage, the question is no longer: how can the individual satisfy his own needs without hurting others, but rather: how can he satisfy his needs without hurting himself, without reproducing, through his aspirations and satisfactions his 221 dependence on an exploitative apparatus which, in satisfying his needs perpetuates his servitude? The advent of a free society would be characterized by the fact that the growth of well-being turns into an essentially new quality of life. This qualitative change must occur in the needs, in the infrastructure of man .. .”.  [221•* 

p According to Marcuse, man loses nothing when he breaks with his once firmly established needs, for at the present stage of development these needs have for all intents and purposes lost their once intrinsic function of stimulating social progress and they are kept up artificially by capital in its own interests. Yet the break with "repressive needs" is not the last link in the chain of structures which are being transformed. It is no simple coincidence that makes Marcuse link this change in needs with the change in man’s infrastructure. The point is here that needs have ceased to be something external in relation to man, namely something introjected into man’s psychological make-up or his mind with a deliberate end in view. The subject with his needs and society, which embodies in its structure the needs that have already taken shape, merge as one, the individual parts with his inner freedom as a result of which the introjection of these needs becomes superfluous: repressive needs (needs for competition, murder, profit, violence, etc.) are now incorporated into man’s psychological make-up, into the pattern of his instincts, in his "biological nature" and they are constantly reproducing themselves within it. The borderline between psychology and sociology, between psychology and politics has, according to the theorists of the radical Left, become something highly ephemeral, or has disappeared completely.  [221•**  222 This is why they see the destruction of the existing structure of man’s instincts as an indispensable condition for social liberation, together with the creation of a "new subject", whose biological nature is as it were in revolt against its existing environment. This means that society is constantly recreating (in man’s consciousness and in ideology) "patterns of behaviour and aspiration as part of the ‘nature’ of its people, and unless the revolt reaches into this ‘second’ nature, into these ingrown patterns, social change will remain ‘incomplete’, even self-defeating”.  [222•* 

p The creation of new, “non-repressive” needs and the formation of new instincts are for the ideologists of the New Left unthinkable without a radical break with old needs and instincts—a break whose form is revolt. Let us listen to what the "social critic" himself has to say about this: "This ’ voluntary’ servitude (voluntary inasmuch as it is introjected into the individuals)... can be broken only through a political practice which reaches the roots of containment and contentment in the infrastructure of man, a political practice of methodical disengagement from and refusal of the Establishment, aiming at a radical transvaluation of values. Such a practice involves a break with the familiar, the routine ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding things . . • common to them is the depth of the Refusal.”  [222•** 

p This means that at last we have come to the initial rung of the ladder which, according to Marcuse, leads to social liberation. This bottom rung is "new sensibility". "New sensibility" is that very “Archimedes’ Screw" with the help of which the radical seeks to create new pattern of needs and in the final analysis to overthrow the repressive world of capitalism, to change the whole structure of social relations, including those from the sphere of production. "The new sensibility, which expresses the ascent of the life instincts over aggressiveness and guilt, would foster, on a social scale, the vital need for the abolition of injustice and misery and would shape the further evolution of the ’standard of living’. The life instincts would find rational expression (sublimation) in planning the distribution of the socially necessary labor time 223 within, and among the various branches of production, thus setting priorities of goals and choices: not only what to produce but also the ‘form’ of the product. Technique would then tend to become art and art would tend to form reality—-"  [223•* 

p As he underlines the aesthetic character of social liberation Marcuse sees revolt as its adequate manifestation, revolt as a spontaneous movement that explodes any kind of organisational form, as moral-aesthetic catharsis, the self- expression of the individual which nothing can hold back and which leads, as he sees it, to the liberation of the slave of "industrial society”.  [223•** 

p Assuming that the necessary material prerequisites for the formation of the "new man" exist within the fabric of developed capitalist society, Marcuse fails completely to take into account the fact that the emergence of the new sensibility takes place not in the short-term act of the break— revolt, but in the course of a long process that includes the formation of new social relations—above all labour relations. He contrasts economic and political changes with the new sensibility, making the former dependent on the latter, namely he suggests that man should first learn to swim and then jump into the water. But whence arises this "new sensibility" if it is bereft of a culture medium? If the idea of the "new sensibility" historically precedes both the emergence of that same sensibility, and the emergence of the social environment, which furthers its formation, then this very sensibility, as a real social fact, emerges not “before” and not “after”, but in the process of the break-up of the old, repressive apparatus and the construction of the new social pattern, that is in the process of revolution. Lenin wrote: "The workers were 224 never separated by a Great Wall of China from the old society. And they have preserved a good deal of the traditional mentality of capitalist society. The workers are building a new society without themselves having become new people, or cleansed of the filth of the old world; they are still standing up to their knees in that filth. We can only dream of clearing the filth away. It would be utterly Utopian to think this could be done all at once. It would be so Utopian that in practice it would only postpone socialism to kingdom come.”  [224•* 

p This reproach can well be applied to Marcuse who connects the many-faceted and lengthy process of the education of the new man with the one-sided and comparatively short process of the destruction of the old society, with the praxis: " demonstration, confrontation, rebellion.”  [224•**  In this praxis all that can at best be effected is the disruption of the old sensibility, and a real danger emerges that a sort of aesthetic vacuum will form, which in the real political world, that tolerates no vacuums, might well be filled with content far from progressive, all the more so since the formation of the new sensibility is regarded by Marcuse as an elemental, spontaneous, unorganised process that has no definite class basis.

p The revolt of the radical Left against the organised form of mass movements, against the supervision of mass activity by socio-political organisations, the encouragement of the spontaneous features of these movements, the demand for a complete break with “traditional” organisations of the working people (parties, unions) are linked with the idea that any organisation is a material embodiment of the bureaucrat principle.

p When they praise the spontaneous activity of the masses, the ideologists of the radical Left base their arguments on the proposition that "developed industrial society" is a bureaucratic hierarchical society, a complex of social pyramids built in such a way that the main mass of the population is far removed from the administration of industry and society. French society, Cohn-Bendit maintained, was a society in which the functions of supervision were concentrated at one 225 pole, while the functions of subordination and execution were concentrated at the other. Bureaucratisation does not permit full usage being made of the advantages which the high technological level of productive forces, now attained by the developed capitalist countries, could guarantee. Eventually such writers come to the conclusion that the basic contradiction of contemporary capitalism is that between the natural urge to create and achieve self-expression and the bureaucratic system of administration which inhibits this creative activity.

p As it directs its revolt against bureaucracy the radical Left is groping after one of the vulnerable spots in modern capitalist society. Making the most of the demands of more rational management resulting from the technological revolution, the caste of bureaucrats consolidates its position in bourgeois society and the state, gaining still greater power and strength than it enjoyed in the last century, when Marx already had ample grounds for defining the bureaucracy as "a particular, closed society within the state”.  [225•* 

p The distinctive feature of modern capitalist society is the fact that the bureaucracy no longer only retains its own corporative, parasitic essence, but also extends its power to new organs of the social organism, acquiring new forms and varieties.

p This is first and foremost a matter of the increasing influence of the military bureaucracy connected with the militarisation of social life. This point is echoed by the American sociologist John K. Galbraith: "But here we find the Armed Services or the corporations that supply them making the decisions and instructing the Congress and the public. The public accepts whatever is so decided and pays the bill.”  [225•**  "The men who comprise these organizations ... meet at committee hearings, serve together on teams or task forces.. .. They naturally make their decisions in accordance with their view of the world—the view of the bureaucracy of which they are a part. The problem is not conspiracy or corruption but unchecked rule. And being unchecked, this 226 rule reflects not the national need, but the bureaucratic need.. .”.  [226•* 

p Another typical feature of present-day capitalist society is that the overall swelling of the bureaucratic caste is accompanied by a simultaneous stratification within the bureaucracy itself, as a result of which a further concentration of power and alienation of power from the "lower classes" ensues.  [226•** 

p The omnipotence of the bureaucracy in developed capitalist society engenders an unusual aberration in the anti- bureaucratic rebel among the theoreticians of the radical Left: the bureaucracy starts to appear to them as an inalienable feature of organisation as such.

p Here attention should be paid to the fact that in run- ofthe-mill consciousness, as incidentally also in certain theories of anarchist complexion orientated to precisely that type of consciousness, the presence of bureaucracy in society is firmly linked with the existence of a relatively independent and stable administrative apparatus, starting with national institutions and going as far as factory or workshop administration. From this point of view de-bureaucratisation appears as nothing but the straightforward destruction of the adminis- 227 trative apparatus. This stand is the result of unwarranted identification of the state machinery, as the apparatus of power, the apparatus of suppression of one social group by another, with the administrative apparatus as an apparatus organising social life, that is material and cultural production. This identification is not difficult to understand if we remember that in modern capitalist society the administrative apparatus is placed entirely at the service of the state apparatus. Yet whatever the reasons for this identification might be, it leads not only to a distorted view of the bureaucracy, but also to an anarchistic interpretation of the ways and forms for opposing it, to cultural nihilism.

p For the radical Left it would appear to be a secret that the existence of the bureaucracy, in the strict sense of the word, is connected not with a historically evolving need for rational administration, not with the presence or absence of a ramified administrative apparatus, between the links of which there exists complex interaction. (As a matter of fact, no developed society of today is able to survive without such an apparatus.) It is bound up with the forms and methods used by the apparatus to dispense the relevant functions. These forms and methods in their turn are rooted in the antagonistic class nature of modern capitalist society, in the ruling class’s need to consolidate its position by creating appropriate “defence” mechanisms designed to deny the people access to power. The essence of the bureaucracy is based on the appropriation of power by the administrative apparatus (which is transformed into a self-contained corporation) and the liberation of that apparatus from control effected by society. It is not surprising that when administration is identified with bureaucracy, the struggle against the latter develops into a struggle against all forms of organisation, against all forms of discipline, that is, essentially a struggle against culture and rationality, for here we find an unjustified identification of rational organisation (which inevitably presupposes some kind of discipline), as the embodiment of human culture with bureaucracy as irrational organisation, irrational discipline and irrational subordination.

p The attempt to obstruct any kind of continuity in the development of the forms of mass movements and absolute rejection of the mechanisms of social administration produce 228 a vacuum wfiich is immediately filled with new organisations, with new forms. This is illustrated, for example, by the experience of the Chinese "cultural revolution", which Western radicals saw as a model for modern anti- bureaucratic movements, but which did not, and indeed could not, have led either to the “humanisation”, or to the "de- bureaucratisation" of society, but either to the replacement of one set of bureaucratic forms by another, or to disruption of the administrative system.

p While destroying the power apparatus of bourgeois society in the course of socialist revolution, the revolutionary class must be able to distinguish between it and the administrative mechanisms, bearing in mind that the creation of a smoothly running administrative apparatus in developed capitalist society is one of the material prerequisites for socialism, and the apparatus should, where possible, not be destroyed but reorganised and reshaped. This necessity for the victorious proletariat to use the old "mechanism for social administration" was noted by Lenin: "A witty German Social-Democrat . .. called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At present the postal service is a business organised on the lines of a state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organisations of a similar type, in which, standing over the ’common people’, who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machine of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly equipped mechanism, freed from the ‘parasite’, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants.”  [228•* 

p Sometimes the radical Left attempts to justify this nihilistic attitude to the administrative apparatus that builds up its activity on a scientific basis and makes use of the services of professional experts, with reference to the experience of 229 certain socialist countries in the early post-revolutionary years, experience which they interpret in a subjectivist spirit.

p It is no secret that in the initial period of construction of socialist society the communists in a number of countries have often had to turn to the services of professional revolutionaries rather than experts, to fill the posts of economic supervisors and administrative personnel. These revolutionaries were not well-versed in the special knowledge required and relied mainly on their political experience and knowledge of life, and on the enthusiasm of the masses. Insofar as their work was subject to the party’s overall guidance in the main it proved effective and may well have given rise to the illusions on the part of the non-proletarian revolutionary to the effect that this form of administration is the "only revolutionary form", and that the revolutionary politician can quite well compensate for his incompetence in this or that particular field with his own "revolutionary ardour" and the enthusiasm of the millions, and that the use of different forms of administration of social processes (and still more so the use of capitalist experience) is a “departure” from revolutionary ideals and “bureaucratisation”.

p This kind of illusion stems from a failure to understand the dialectics of the emergence of socialism based on cultural achievements of previous societies, and at the same time from ignorance (or insufficient knowledge) of concrete historical conditions for the construction of socialism in such countries, as Russia, for example. The initial shortage of the necessary numbers of experts, the low cultural level of the mass of the population, postwar economic dislocation—these are the factors which compelled communists to undertake those steps which the radical Left of today tends to absolutise as the "only revolutionary" ones.

p Socialism, of course, arouses and fosters enthusiasm and initiative not only among the masses but also among the leaders. Furthermore, this enthusiasm and initiative in the context of free society come to constitute a great material force, but they must without fail be supplemented with specialised knowledge, with scientific organisation of labour, strict economy, the use of optimal mechanisms for the administration of social processes—only then can they ensure the progress of socialist society and its victory in the competition 230 with capitalism.  [230•*  In this connection it is relevant to recall Lenin’s attitude to the Taylor system, the capitalist system of rational organisation of labour, of production. "The task that the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is—learn to work. The Taylor system, the last word of capitalism in this respect, like all capitalist progress, is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field. The possibility of building socialism depends exactly upon our success in combining Soviet power and the Soviet organisation of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism.”  [230•** 

The normal functioning of a developed social system proves impossible without strictly defined regulation of the activity of all individuals and units making up this system, without making all of them subject to unified principles and norms. This type of organisation of the administrative process is not the same thing as bureaucratic formalism: it is none other than the manifestation of a high culture of production, distribution and consumption of material and intellectual products, without which there can be no talk of the "realm of freedom", to which Marx refers.