PARTISAN REVIEW
255
The postwar period was one of profound disappointment for
humanists and "critical thinkers." For, instead of the new society
free of oppression and exploitation which the struggle against fascism
had led them to expect, what they saw developing in the West was
an extension of the old system in the form of corporate capitalism
and consumer society.
It
is not surprising, therefore, to see that
Marcuse and the Frankfurt School have not had to modify their
critical attitudes toward existing society; in fact, they have reinforced
them, pointing out that there has been a growing gap between the
humanistic hopes animating the cultural life of the West and its
social realities. (Adorno's work has been most important here, even
if one disagrees with him, and has played a constructive role, par–
ticularly among German intellectuals and students.)
It
is of course true that postwar Western society was essentially
different from both pre-World War I liberal society and German
fascism; and to maintain a critical position in this period, to refuse
to accept a social order in which, in contrast to the earlier liberal
era, living standards were rising and, in contrast to fascism, freedom
of expression and parliamentary rule were reestablished - in sum,
to understand this situation, a new social analysis was required.
This Marcuse accomplished in
Eros and Civilization
and
One Di–
mensional Man,
two complementary works which have profoundly
influenced contemporary thought. To summarize briefly,
Eros and
Civilization
deals with the relations between society and individual
aspirations. Through Freud, Marcuse, like the rest of the Frankfurt
School, came to the fundamental conflict between instinctual drives
(the libido and the death wish) and social organization, which must
repress them in the name of the reality principle.
In
Freud, the an–
tagonism had an "essential" and ahistorical meaning; Marcuse, as a
sociologist and philosopher of culture, gives it an historical dimen–
sion, without, however -like Fromm - minimizing the opposition
between man's basic desires and social repressiveness.
For Marcuse, the concrete form of the reality principle in
contemporary society is the principle of productivity. He goes on to
distinguish between the repression which is necessary at any time to
maintain a rational society, and the effective repression that sup–
ports
the oppressive social structure. Thus he arrives at a concept of
