‘Eros and Civilization’ by Herbert Marcuse (1966)

The following excerpt is from the 1966 preface of H. Marcuse’s book which became a theoretical strut for the New Left and counter-cultural movement of the 1960s.

Revolt against the false fathers, teachers, and heroes — solidarity with the wretched of the earth: is there and “organic” connection between the two facets of the protest? There seems to be an all but instinctual solidarity. The revolt at home against home seems largely impulsive, its targets hard to define: nausea caused by the “way of life,” revolt as a matter of physical and mental hygiene. The body against “the machine” — not against the mechanism constructed to make life safer and milder, to attenuate the cruelty of nature, but against the machine which has taken over the mechanism: the political machine, the corporate machine, the cultural and educational machine which has welded blessing and curse into one rational whole. The body against the machine: men, women, and children fighting, with the most primitive tools, the most brutal and destructive machines of all times and keeping it in check — does guerilla warfare define the revolution of our time?

Historical backwardness may against become the historical chance of turning the wheel of progress to another direction. Technical and scientific overdevelopment statnds refuted when the radar-equipped bombers, the chemicals, and the “special forces” of the affluent society are let loose on the poorest of the earth, on their shakes, hospitals, and rice fields. The “accidents” reveal the substance: they tear teh technological veil behind which the real powers are hiding. The capability to overkill and to overburn, and the mental behavior that goes with it are by-products of the development of the productive forces within a system of exploitation and repression; they seem to become more productive the more comfortable the system becomes to its privileged subjects. The affluent society has now demonstrated that it is a society at war; if its citizens have not noticed it, its victims certainly have….

Whereas previous revolutions brought about a larger and more rational development of the productive forces, in the overdeveloped societies of today, revolution would mean reversal of this trend: elimination of overdevelopment, and of its repressive rationality… As the production of wasteful and destructive goods is discontinued (a stage that would mean the end of capitalism in all its forms) — to somatic and mental mutilations inflicted on man by this production may be undone. In other words, the shaping of the environment, the transformation of nature, may be propelled by the liberated rather than the repressed Life Instincts, and aggression woul dbe subjected to their demands.

‘The White Negro’ by Norman Mailer (1957)

Our search for the rebels of the generation led us to the hipster. The hipster is an ‘enfant terrible’ turned inside out. In character with his time, he is trying to get back at the conformists by lying low… You can’t interview the hipster because his main goal is to keep out of a society which, he thinks, is trying to make everyone over in its own image. He takes marijuana because it supplies him with experiences that can’t be shared with “squares.” The hipster may be a jazz musician; he is rarely an artist, almost never a writer. He may earn his living as a petty criminal, a hobo, a carnival roustabout or freelance moving man in Greenwich Village, but some hipster have found safe refuge in the upper income brackets as television comics or movie actors. It is tempting to describe the hipster in psychiatric terms as infantile, but the style of his infantilism is a sign of the times.

– “Born 1930: The Unlost Generation” by Caroline Bird, Harper’s Bazaar, Feb. 1957

Dissent first published this essay in the summer of 1957.

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