p There was a dachshund, once so long
He hadn’t any notion
How long it took to notify
His tail of his emotion;
And so it happened, while his eyes
Were filled with woe and sadness,
His little tail went wagging on
Because of previous gladness.

p UNKNOWN POET

p The sense of contentedness is opposed—as would seem to be natural—by a sense of wretchedness. But are they really antipodes? Perhaps “contentedness” is only a veil, a mask, a frozen smile, a role impeccably performed? Do we not here encounter a colossal and skilfully concealed mystification?

p These questions are by no means intended to question the objective existence of the sense of contentedness. The question of the authenticity of these two phenomena arises only because the sense of contentedness is an incomplete, partial reflection of the direct vital practice of its innumerable and very different supporters, whose consciousness in everything else is fabricated. The spurious character of the sense of contentedness is brought to light in the realisation of its own ideals in life. It is no simple matter to hurdle the barrier separating the mass adherent of these ideals from success. Most of the claimants have to rest content with partial successes or even simply the external appurtenances and symbols of prosperity. Although this majority has been drilled to believe that one can only blame oneself for nonsuccess (failure to get on the bus carrying people from the foothills of success to its summit is due solely to one’s own sluggishness, lack of initiative, inability to reorientate oneself morally and ideologically with the necessary speed and efficacy, and so forth), the comfort derived from consolation of this kind steadily wears thin.

p But the ordinary proponent of neohedonism is no analyst and events have never brought him round to profound 99 theoretical meditation. The sense of contentedness is much too sensitive for this. No, not to the misfortunes of others. Individualistically orientated, it can open itself to the perception of the grief and collapse of hopes of others only on the basis of its own experience. The readiness to endure difficulties and privation springs solely from profound, humanistic convictions. But these are the convictions that the sense of contentedness does not possess. It is not interested in fortitude. Life, it feels, is much too short for long and hopeless patience. Prey to consumer complications, to the thought that a mistaken step had been taken in life, it is tormented by fear for society’s present and future, a society dominated by contentedness. It is worried that it seeks comfort in a miracle which it does not believe will occur.

p However, this should not be oversimplified, depicted as though the sense of contentedness has only one motivation for self-criticism, namely, the unrealisability of hopes, in the same way as, say, unhappiness comes to the door not only of those who are undernourished, have not enough sleep and wear themselves out physically. The index of consumption can be correlated to the index of happiness only very approximately. Moreover, the extension of the range of requirements under capitalism, particularly higher, social requirements, relatively expands also the volume of discontent threatening the sense of contentedness. Properly speaking, the designation of the sense of contentedness is precisely to disperse the atmosphere of discontent in capitalist society, inject joie de vivre into the climate of universal alienation, assure “happy slavery”. For that reason the partial realisation of the hedonistic-consumption ideal in life may prove to be sufficient for this artificially created sense of well-being. Of course, this would be not enough for total authenticity. Nonetheless, it would be a barrier to discontent, to the conversion of contentedness into a mask mystifying the observer.

p Contentedness is, however, dispelled not only because the barrier to success proves to be insuperable. And not only because of any lack of adaptive effort, because the need for constant adaptation to consumer society is much too demanding, or because competition requires a great deal of 100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1977/NT228/20070202/199.tx" staying power. Erosion of contentedness begins even when a certain stability of the personal status seems to its exponent to be immutable. More, under certain circumstances the attainment of a relatively high standard of consumption may even facilitate this erosion. In any case, practice shows that the wave of discontent rises without being accompanied (and without being directly affected) by a drop of the level of material security of the adherents of the sense of contentedness, or it may even forestall this drop. Erosion is sometimes stimulated by broader factors such as intergroup and inner-group relations, by assessments of individual and social prospects, by the entire spectrum of elements determining a person’s social status in capitalist society. Now and then it may seem that discontent is totally unmotivated, fitting into the irrational explanatory formula of “having it too good".

p But things are much more complicated in capitalist reality. The sense of contentedness cannot fail to see the unabating class storms, the growth of the political struggle of the working people, and the actions of young people and the inhabitants of ghettos.

p The thickening of the atmosphere of organised and unorganised crime, social stratification, the crisis of culture, the moral degradation, the unending inflation and rising prices, the problems of towns and young people, racial animosity, militarism, exploitation and much else exist not somewhere in the clouds of philosophical generalisations and not in impersonal statistics. They envelop the sense of contentedness on all sides, and are always open to empirical or informational observation. They cannot be destroyed either by incantations addressed to others or by self-suggestion.

p Collaterally, developments swamp even those who had formerly held aloof or were even loyal to the bourgeois social system, more and more frequently drawing them into the vortex of ideological passions and even into the orbit of mass actions. The former meek consumer of the myths of industrial society is becoming fastidious. The erstwhile harmony and outward cogency of these myths no longer evoke enthusiasm in him, while the theory that the “free world" of capitalism is perfect is more and more frequently revealing its instability. He feels that these myths reflect reality 101 no better than the reverse side of a mirror. His trust in them begins to break. The allowance for the natural striving for social advertisement to somewhat exaggerate achievements, while social criticism somewhat magnifies vices, in other words, the attempts to maintain internal equilibrium by accentuating moderation, does not bring any tangible relief either. Neither is any escape afforded by the insurance injection of a ridiculously small dose of pessimism and nihilism carefully introduced into the sense of contentedness to avoid straining it.

p The hypnotic flourishes of prosperity, of a smooth future and of show-window alluring ideals are weakening. Inevitable sobering is now to be observed in industrial society. The demons of social ferment are breaking loose. Time and again the sense of contentedness comes into conflict with itself. It is being increasingly overpowered by a sense of uncertainty, has more and more frequent fits of anxiety and is secretly gnawed by dismal apprehensions. Albeit slowly and vaguely, it is beginning to discover for itself the world of exploitation, alienation and suffering. Gradually, this recovery of sight is covering a growing range of values, beginning with imposed ideals and stereotype behaviour patterns accompanying contentedness, and ending with the policies of the ruling elite. Bourgeois myths are no longer able to captivate the imagination, much less to console. The formerly unshakeable faith in the foundations of society is beginning to crumble. “Sacrosanct principles" and assurances are proving to be nothing but an opiate. The optimistic forecasts of the ruling class claiming to put out every kind of threat are increasingly displaying their hollowness. The mechanism of social suggestion is misfiring.

p People are moving away from contentedness on different levels. The emotional sphere is reacting the fastest. The first changes are taking place on the level of social psychology. This is the first area in which an underground is shaping. Alienated and exhausting work for the capitalist, brutal competition and the pseudo-collectivist life, and the barrenness and illusoriness of aims engender and pile up irritation, anxiety, a sense of emptiness, helplessness, instability and dependence on blind and uncontrollable forces. The loneliness, estrangement and anonymous existence in 102 capitalist society give rise to weary discontent, depression and a fear complex. The entertainment industry is unable to alleviate or entirely distract from them. The requirements of social discipline and the ideological notions engulfing the sense of contentedness collide with the instinctive life of people and insist on suppressing this life.

p Uncontrolled “fear of the blind force of capital"  [102•*  gives birth to specific religious feeling and the need for special forms of comfort. While justifying fear and suffering, the religious consciousness endeavours artificially to create harmony between man and the world. It strives to assert the conformist way of feeling and thought binding man to a fixed social position and to the role springing from that position. Religion instils belief in a world of serenity and bliss, where evil is atoned for and suffering surmounted. The purpose of this faith is to help people bear real suffering in the hope of attaining self-limited happiness on earth as a pale copy of bliss in the other world.

p Throughout the ages religion has been “repairing” the spirit broken by the conditions of life (and by religion itself), and the purpose of the sense of contentedness functionally coincides with this task. This sense only demonstrates the possibility of performing this role without having recourse to the idea of God, without generating any special religious emotions or developing supernatural methods for the socio-psychological guidance of people, but only making use of myths that outwardly seem to be quite rational. However, for their content these myths, which accentuate consumer hopes, differ from religious hopes only outwardly. In the same way as religious bliss is not a vital activity, but only a terrestrial or celestial addition to it, consumer pleasures are on the far side of that activity.

p The widespread character of the sense of contentedness as a functional equivalent of religious consciousness is often regarded as evidence of the process of desanctification, i.e., of the decline of the significance of and interest in the problem of the supernatural. By coming forward as a substitute for or analogue of the illusory happiness that religion offers instead of real happiness and by illusorily 103 satisfying actually unsatisfied social requirements, the sense of contentedness has been able to annex much of the territory that formerly belonged to religion. The impression that the sense of contentedness is a replacement is strengthened by the countless attacks of clericals, who thunder that the consumer orientation is the source of malignant atheism and scepticism, of social disorganisation and, generally, of all of civilisation’s misfortunes.

p However, the situation is totally different from the picture given of it by clericals and the superficial observer. The individual recruited by the sense of contentedness and unable to find a way out of the tormenting contradiction between the consumer way of life, the hedonistic ideal, on the one hand, and the unauthenticity of the achieved contentedness as a consequence of the social instability of his own status and the general course of life, on the other, clings to fantastic notions expressing inner dissatisfaction that seem to relieve pain and afford tranquillity. Motivations that in one way or another reproduce religion with its transfer of the conflicts of the external world to the world of the split subjective “I”, seethe at the back of the sense of contentedness, which aims to achieve terrestrial blessings and is at first glance purely temporal.

p Since the sense of contentedness is only the visible portion of the iceberg concealing fear and unhappiness, it sustains the attraction for religion, the need for an illusory sun, the striving for a religious variant of spectral happiness. However earthly, consumer ideas and moods do not dismiss religion into retirement. On the contrary, they bring it into their orbit, looking for and finding in it their complement and foundation for attachment to the statemonopoly status quo. In turn, it has come to light that religion’s adaptive possibilities have not been exhausted: it is energetically looking for ways of enabling its notions, values, symbols, rituals and language to coexist with the notions, dogmas and stereotype attitudes of the secular religion, namely, the ideology of consumption.

p From emotions let us now pass to a level where there is self-accounting and reflection. It is said that of all unquestioned things the most unquestioned is doubt. From it begins the departure from contentedness. Opinion, the most 104 changeable and unsystematised part of consciousness, begins to waver first. Step by step it accumulates views that deviate from the norm. And this, of course, leaves a trace although by itself opinion does not mould any new convictions.

p Doubts are now arising also in the sphere of notions about the surrounding social reality. For a fairly long time fixed convictions and established “practical philosophy" were able to ignore these doubts and block the menacing impact of new notions and assessments. But the system of convictions formed by the sense of contentedness (if the concoction of consumer aspirations, narrow-minded notions and simplified dogmas comprising the ideological arsenal of the sense of contentedness can be called convictions at all) is gradually going to pieces.

p To a certain point doubts are suppressed by the individual, by the basic patterns of his consciousness (ideals in life and notions), adjusted and fitted into these patterns, because the sense of contentedness resists renewal, having become accustomed to a somnolent existence, which makes allowance solely for decorative conflicts between opinions, knowledge and faiths. But the seeds of doubt, like grass germinating through asphalt, have a doggedness that is in no way less than the momentum of old beliefs. It is harder to set a body in motion than later to sustain that motion: although wavering likewise requires resolve, when it begins it proves to be increasingly more difficult to stop. Wavering is the death-knell of the sense of contentedness. Outwardly everything may remain unchanged as of old for a long time, especially as language and symbols as attributes of confidence, impressiveness and complacency continue to yield some very tangible dividends, maintaining prestige and a definite status. The sense of contentedness is hypocritical, but to preserve order in its own house it has to pay with double hypocrisy.

p When it is alone with itself and feels not only a vague anxiety and fear but also doubts in the correctness of its established behaviour standards and dogmas, it sheds the tinsel of its marks of distinction. The bastions of contentedness totter. The onslaught of doubts inexorably mounts, forcing a reconsideration of the perception of the world. To the sense of contentedness it now begins to seem more and more 105 frequently that a different mental attitude is not simply a generalisation of individual, generally casual disappointments, anomalies that cannot be rationally interpreted, “false subjectivity”, an ideological craze. It gradually comes round to understanding that here it is not a matter of a quarrelsome character, of a dramatic turn in destiny or of age specifics. It becomes increasingly worried by a question that had long been gathering but which it had earlier not understood, namely: does happiness in the manner of contentedness mean voluntarily succumbing to deceit?

p The phase of the retreat of contentedness in everyday, routine conditions may drag out for a long time. But by the individual symptoms of the crack-up of contentedness, symptoms in the most diverse and frequently different sectors, it is hard to foresee when doubts will be simultaneously and massively bared and illusions shed. This is probably the explanation of the sudden and staggering explosion of passions in the most incredible situations, in different and externally quiet areas of social life, for instance, at universities. As a rule, these explosions occur during periods witnessing an aggravation of capitalism’s social contradictions, coinciding with a social crisis when latent processes surface almost at one and the same time among a large number of people. During these periods it is not easy to establish where is the cause and where the effect, what has been generated by what—the crisis by the pestilence of contentedness or, on the contrary, the departure from contentedness by the social crisis. The long-standing customary hopes of the sense of contentedness begin to disintegrate rapidly. The bitter truth that the expectations are hollow is seen with increasing clarity. While the series of blows does not give any breathing space or allow gaining the former equilibrium, doubts mature and grow into certainty. As regards the speed and solidity of this process, much depends, of course, on individual qualities of a person’s character, on his temperament, cast of mind and national and cultural traditions, on the social position of the various concrete proponents of the sense of contentedness.

p This process is taking place by no means in the quiet of a cosy home. The certainty that contentedness is specious is acquired by the individual drawn into a net of the most 106 diverse associations, into the struggle for existence and selfdevelopment. Participation, albeit sporadic, in the economic, political and ideological struggles against the state-monopoly organisation, against its individual links or representatives, is the mainspring of the changes in convictions, of the modifications in the world outlook. However, the very development of capitalism’s social contradictions awakens the “sleepy masses”, involves them in the struggle, leaving fewer possibilities for evading it. Even businessmen go on strike: for instance, in protest against the tax and social policy of the government, small artisans and shopkeepers in France are staging a National Day of Disaffection.

p In crisis situations the individual with a sense of contentedness, driven by his desire to uphold his own and his group’s interests, finds that these interests are incompatible with contentedness and comes round to the realisation that his former expectations and ideals were hallucinations. He begins to understand the vulnerability of his condition and the unattainability of his plans. The remnants of his goodwill for the bourgeois organisation melt. The satisfaction of some and by no means major requirements gives less and less grounds for gratitude to the capitalist social system. The individual who had only recently been permeated by contentedness no longer has any desire to take part in the farce of prosperity. To quote the noted American doctor Benjamin Spock, he no longer wants to have anything to do with “self-depreciation”.  [106•*  More and more frequently he finds himself face to face with the torturing question: does the given social system protect people against misfortune or does it invoke them? Is bourgeois society normal and are there grounds for reformist hopes? The world with a rotten reality is approaching its decline. The flight from contentedness is becoming irrepressible.

p But where must one go? The transition to discontentedness does not yet mean determining the direction of further progress. The individual who only recently had a sense of contentedness frees himself from the web of conformist opinion, from admiration of-the myths of industrial society. The 107 question of freedom from what? is clear. But for what? to what shore? remains an open question. The individual sunders his old bonds, and through them his involvement in history. He has already lost them, but has not yet acquired new bonds. He is at the crossroads. If only it was so easy to acquire new links, freely join in history, select a new, sure road and understand what has to be done to change the “topsy-turvy world”, to eradicate alienation and dehumanisation! However, discontent as such does not yet enable the individual to understand the causes of all these phenomena or the aims of further activity. It does not give a guaranteed basis for selecting the road to a correct social orientation.

p Much prevents the individual from penetrating the essence of these phenomena, from bringing their causes to light, from understanding what must be done, and working out new ideals in life. The factors serially reproducing the sense of contentedness and dragging the individual back to the world of sweet dreams, where one may again give rein to the magic horse, continue to operate. The sense of contentedness is a coercive force—it is extorted or imposed. It is not easy to break the stubbornness of myths and education, and the tenaciousness of habit, especially in view of the fact that under capitalism there are safety-valves for discontent, while the entrances for doubts are thoroughly barricaded and made almost inaccessible to extraneous influences. For this a lifetime is sometimes not enough.

p For some time the individual who has gone off the rails of contentedness remains at a crossroads. His consciousness is split, becoming dual. This gives him a mixsture of contentedness and discontentedness. There is an infinite diversity of shades, hues and tints in this combination of contentedness and discontentedness.

p Everything we have just said brings us round to the conclusion that, with all its seeming solidity, contentedness has only a momentary existence. In terms of time it is stage, while on the structural plane it is a surface layer, behind which is the sense of wretchedness. In some individuals it may be thicker and more firmly routed, in others it is thinner and more fragile. Similarly, the sense of wretchedness may lie deeper or closer to the surface; it may be at the stage of formation or it may be mature, chronic and 108 substantial. Clear contentedness is encountered not any more frequently than crystal-clear wretchedness, if, of course, both the one and the other are not a pose. As we have noted, the prevalence of one of these elements depends on the individual features of the actual proponents, on their affiliation to one or another concrete social stratum, and on the place the latter occupies in the bourgeois social system.

p Content-cum-discontent is perhaps the most usual state of the bourgeois mass consciousness in our epoch. It expresses the actual condition of the individual, preoccupied and confused, overcome by anxiety and fear in the greatest crisis ever experienced by class society. The individual who has lost himself loses hope and is suspicious and sceptical. He becomes susceptible to nihilistic ideas.

However mutually contradictory the outlooks of optimism and pessimism may seem, the boundary between them in the bourgeois consciousness is relative and mobile. They gravitate towards and complement each other, each representing a need for the other extreme. Together they find themselves cramped but they cannot exist separately. We have just considered this circumstance from the angle of the transition, of the slipping from optimistic views and the sense of contentedness to the pessimistic attitude of the sense of wretchedness. At the end of the next chapter we shall show this mutual gravitation from a totally different angle.