MORRIS DICKSTEIN
507
little room for the agency of the individual or for his claims
to
happi–
ness in the here-and-now. On the other hand the anti-Marxism of the
latter group put all its emphasis on the individual, but saw his fate
as gloomy and tragic, impervious
to
change, hedged by necessity. (In
both cases social thought shades off into a branch of religion.)
What provided a way out of this impasse of social thought was
a peculiar blend of Marxian and Freudian revisionism, which can best
be observed in its distinct forms in the seminal works of Marcuse,
Brown, and Goodman. The end of the ftfties saw the ftrst publication
in English of Marx's early writings, which emphasized "alienation"
rather than the laws of political economy, and which gave much
impetus to the development of a new humanism that would steal
Marx away from his orthodox keepers. Similarly, the Freud who
emerged at the same time was not the Freud of the ftfties whose dark
view of human nature and the necessity of restraint provided the
underpinning for a new social quietism, a new version of original sin.
Nor was it the liberal revisionism which, in departing from Freud's
instinctual theories, tended to de-emphasize sex and to ftnd happi–
ness in the successful "adjustment"
to
society's demands.
The new Freudian radicalism stressed the repressive character of
society, but without the later Freud's tragic and stoical belief that
these repressions could never be transcended, that the "realm of
necessity" could never give way to the "realm of freedom." For
Marcuse the key change since Freud's death is the tremendous expan–
sion of technology which, despite the threat it poses of greater manip–
ulation and control, also points toward greater freedom-to be achieved
through the diminution of human labor, creating the possibility of a
society built more on leisure and pleasute. What is paradoxical here
is that Marcuse, though criticizing the structure and priorities of the
advanced industrial society of the ftfties, largely accepts its techno–
logical optimism, its faith in an ever-increasing economy of affluence
and abundance. Indeed, he even scales new heights:
Automation, once it became
the
process of material produc–
tion, would revolutionize the whole society . The reification of
human labor power, driven to perfection, would shatter the
reified form by cutting the chain that ties the individual to the
machinery-the
mechani~m
through which his own labor eo-
