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MARSHALL BERMAN
and res6l1ved all the contradictions which had been plaguing men for
centuries, and when the one thing needful seemed to be
to
preserve
islands of individual dissonance amid the dissolving waves of harmony.
All sorts of monistic theories were worked out-a few of them bril–
liantly, like this one--to account for the deadly monistic world we
were supposed to have become. But these autopsies turned out to have
been premature. Our rigidities weren't nearly so well integrated as we
had thought. There were new dimensions, new contradictions, new
life in the old system yet.
Maybe, in time, these contradictions
too
will be worked out some–
how, and the nightmare Marcuse projects today will come true to–
morrow. The long-range trends he sees are powerful and dangerous
enough; and his totalistic perspective has proved fruitful indeed in
pointing them out so clearly. It would certainly be naive
to
be optimis–
tic about the future of radicalism in America. Not nearly enough is
being done; and the elan may well peter out, as it petered out a genera–
tion ago, before very much actually
is
done. Yet meanwhile, more is
being thought and talked about and tried today than at any time
since many of us learned to read.
If
Marcuse's "critical theory of
society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the
present and the future," so that "holding no promise and showing
no success, it remains negative," it is only because he won't look around
him, or take notice of the din in all our ears. There are enough critical
concepts, lost causes, "missed revolutions" (as Paul Goodman aptly puts
it) in the air-needing only, in this climate,
to
be fused with the
radical energy which lately
has
been so disturbing to our peace---to
explode "the system," for better or worse, ten times over. It is true
that these concepts are generally rough and unsystematic, lack the
grandeur and symmetry of the idea of "one-dimensional man," indeed,
lack the status of Ideas altogether. Still, for now, this may not be
altogether a bad thing. "The Germans are certainly strange people,"
said Goethe to Eckermann. "By their profound thoughts and ideas,
which they seek everywhere and fix on everything, they burden their
lives much more than is necessary." There are times when even the best
Ideas serve only as a dead weight, and when letting them go will give
the spirit new life.
Marshall Berman