The Discourse of Domination: From the Frankfurt School to Postmodernism

10. Work and Authority in Marcuse and Habermas

10 Work and Authority in Marcuse and Habermas Overcoming the Work-Play Distinction Having discussed Marcuse's view of art and aesthetic politics, I now turn to a further discussion of his views of work (in this chapter) and science (in the next chapter), the remaining components of his wide-ranging critical theory, which both retains and reformulates central Marxist assumptions about social change. His 1969 book, An Essay on Liberation, goes considerably beyond Marx's traditional bifurcation of work and play, necessity and freedom, toward a unified nondualist theory of productive human activity. This attempt has provoked recent critical theorists like Habermas to confront the issue of a Marxist theory of work and authority. My thesis is that Marcuse has frequently been misunderstood by both left and right critics who reject his work as a naive romantic glorification of a totally unrepressed social order, without civilizing decency or a collectivizing concept of authority and organization. In chapters 6-9, I read Marcuse as a responsible Freudian who does not abandon repression and sublimation necessary for the successful individuation of every human being, but only surplus repression found in societies based on domination. Here, I explore Marcuse's views on work and authority, in counterpoint to Habermas's, to the end of 172 173 WORK AND AUTHORITY IN MARCUSE AND HABERMAS grasping certain fundamental issues of Marxian political and social theory -notably, the problem of rational authority and democracy. It is my premise that a humane Marxism is contingent on optimally non-authoritarian forms of work organization and the transformation of work itself. In this regard, my reading of Marcuse is rooted in the reappropriation of early Marx's theory of self-humanizing praxis; my argument is that it is imperative to preserve and broaden Marx's notion, embodied in the 1844 manuscripts, that work can conceivably become a form of social freedom. In the next chapter, I extend this argument to science and technology. As I have indicated, Marcuse has built on Marx's early theory of praxis and attempted to go beyond it by suggesting that Marx was insufficiently radical in his conception of the emancipation of labor. In An Essay on Liberation, Marcuse argues that Marx (especially the "later" one) was not radical enough in his projections of the creative, even erotic, character of humanized work under socialism: The early Marxian example of the free individuals alternating between hunting, fishing, criticizing, and so on had a joking-ironical sound from the beginning, indicative of the impossibility of anticipating the ways in which liberated human beings would use their freedom. However, the embarrassingly ridiculous sound may also indicate the degree to which this vision has become obsolete and pertains to a stage of the development of the productive forces which has been surpassed. The later Marxian concept implies the continued separation between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom, between labor and leisure-not only in time but also in such a manner that the same subject lives a different life in the two realms. According to this Marxian conception, the realm of necessity would continue under socialism to such an extent that real human freedom would prevail only outside the entire sphere of socially necessary labor. Marx rejects the idea that work can ever become play. [1969, 29] Marcuse searches for a convergence of work and play, but one that does not abandon the necessary productivity of the working process. Marcuse is not unaware of the impinging reality of the necessity of human survival before nature. Productive work must still take place until that magic moment of complete automation and servomechanistic control of the production process-a pipe dream at best, suggests Marcuse (1969), and a reactionary ideology at worst, used to justify alienation "now" in return 174 BACK TO FRANKFURT for freedom from work "later," as in Daniel Bell (1973). Marcuse's aim is to salvage early Marx's vision of self-creative, socially useful praxis without appearing needlessly utopian. Marcuse wants to argue that there can be simultaneously creative and productive work without severe elements of domination and alienation -that human beings, in a nonsurplus repressive social order, need not sacrifice themselves in their work, enjoying themselves (and even then "falsely") only in their time away from the job. At the root of Marcuse 's reinterpretation of the Marxian concept of praxis is his vision that work and play could converge...