Logo DBNL
On Growth (1974)

On Growth

(1974)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

48. Herbert Marcuse

Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin in 1898. He studied at Freiburg and Berlin, where he obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy.
In 1934 Marcuse came to the United States. He was professor of philosophy at Brandeis University from 1954 to 1965. He was then appointed to the University of California in San Diego. His most worldwide-known pupil was black activist Angela Davis.
Among his best-known works are Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1954), Soviet Marxism (1958), One-Dimensional Man (1965) and Negations (1969).

We are discussing the usefulness of the efforts by MIT and the computers of Forrester1 and the Club of Rome to make a close study of how to manage the planet in the interest of all of mankind and not the rich nations alone.

 

I think this study is of the utmost importance, because it shows from a new angle the destructiveness and aggressiveness which is inherent in the capitalist system. At the same time it shows its historical limits. They speak of redistribution and organization of all the resources of the planet. I believe that such a reorganization is only possible through and after the abolition of capitalism. From the beginning the whole question of survival is for me a radical political question and presupposes the effort to change not only certain things within society but society itself.

 

Yes, but the capitalist system tends to become stronger and stronger.

 

Stronger? And Vietnam? Chile? Cuba? And even where we can speak of economic growth, as in the Latin American states which depend on American power, this sort of economic growth goes hand in hand with the increasing impoverishment of the vast majority of the population.

But if the rich tend to become richer and the poor probably continue to become poorer, a clash seems inevitable.

 

The clash is inevitable and will be the content of a whole period of history. I certainly believe that there are already forces within the capitalist system at work which indicate the limits of the system.

 

But now the poor countries owe seventy billion dollars at this point to the rich nations. They have to pay seven billion dollars service charges on that amount of money borrowed from the rich nations. How will they ever be able to get out of this trap?2

 

Well, that's just it. They will never be able to get out of this trap unless there is a change in the advanced industrial countries themselves. I do not believe that the fundamental change can be the work of the Third World alone. It presupposes a change in the metropolis, which in turn would then trigger off the radicalization of the Third World.

 

You were optimistic, especially in 1968-69, when you drew attention to the fact that not the working class, but the universities and the ghettos presented the first real threat to the system from within.3 How would you view the situation in 1972?

 

In the first place, let me correct this. I never said or wrote that the universities and the ghettos would or could replace the working class as a revolutionary force. I only made the point (which I think has been corroborated since again and again) that in the United States today the working class is not a revolutionary force and that in the prevailing non-revolutionary situation, the students, the ghettos and the women's liberation movement represent preliminary, perhaps even premature, forces of rebellion. But they are the only ones we have today. I have stressed that unless and until the working class does become politicized, these forces will continue to operate in the forefront of the anticapitalist movement. I do not believe, for example, that the student movement is dead. I believe that it is in a period of regrouping and reexamination, the main question being, Which form of organization to give to the movement? Up to now it was mainly the lack of any kind of effective nationwide organization which caused the temporary weakening of the student movement.

Professor Marcuse, how do you explain, especially for foreign European opinion, the fact that so many young people in this country voted for Nixon?

 

I would say for two reasons, which have to be actually discussed separately. First because the repression and, consequently, the conformism have been intensified since the advent of the first Nixon administration. They continue to be intensified, so that these kids know perfectly well that if they had any radical activity on their record, that they will have a very very hard time to find a job later on. Therefore, they comply, their votes reflect this compliance. Secondly, it is the disillusionment and the disappointment that all the great efforts of '68-'69 came to naught and that the repressive government today seems stronger than ever before.

 

The killings at Kent and Jackson State,4 would you include that in efforts to scare the student movement?

 

Certainly I would. However, this is only the most brutal and the most obvious form of suppression and destruction. There're others, such as economic and social discrimination, which do not work with open terroristic means but are very effective.

 

Are there any signs of an emerging revolutionary movement?

 

It has to be emphasized again: in this country, there is no revolutionary situation. This is not surprising at all, given the fact that the system still works, and that the power structure has been immensely strengthened. However, there are strong indications of deterioration (I discussed them in my book Counterrevolution and Revolt): malfunctioning in vital areas (the fuel crisis, transportation); rapid decay of the cities; race war; widespread protest in the factories (wildcat strikes, sabotage, slow-down, absenteeism); collapse of the capitalist ‘work ethic’; inflation, unemployment, blatant poverty; destruction -

 

But foreigners do not understand how the United States has managed to incorporate the labor movement into its power structure.

 

It is not difficult to explain at all. The integration of organized labor into the capitalist societies is a rational and very material process and certainly not only pertaining to the ideological level. First of all, the

relative height of the standard of living: No matter how dehumanizing the work on the assembly line is, no matter how exploitation is intensified today (and I think it is more intensified than at any previous stage of capitalistic development), the fact remains that the organized worker today lives much better than his parents and grandparents ever lived. He has more relative security. He has more comfort, and after all, this counts. I find it ridiculous that people who call themselves dialectical materialists simply disregard all these facts as merely belonging to the ‘sphere of consumption,’ as if the sphere of consumption would be something that Marxists could neglect or relegate to a secondary level. This is a first reason, the material foundation for the integration.

The second is the apparent lack of an alternative. If you talk about socialism, the worker thinks of socialism as it exists in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet satellites. That he does not want, and he prefers his present state and society.

 

You agree with Shirer5 that the United States might be the first country to go fascist by democratic vote. Do you see an indication that this country is moving further towards a form of authoritarian rule?

 

When I talked about going fascist through the democratic process, I thought of very concrete examples. Take the very large vote for Wallace6 in the 1968 election or the strong labor vote for Nixon in the 1972 election. I also referred to the manipulation and to the computerized, electronic control of the population, wire tapping, undercover agents, etc. And perhaps most important, the rise of the executive branch of the government above all effective popular control, the decline, or rather self-emasculation, of the legislature, the silence and submission of the majority of the people in the face of the war crimes in Vietnam. Moreover, the training of ‘counterinsurgency’ forces, the police, national guard and so on. If the capitalist system should further transform itself without being abolished, it would be a transformation into fascism.

 

Do you have any indication that we are moving towards the transformation of capitalism in this country and in the rich nations in general?

 

I think they are more than indications. The transformation of the capitalist system itself within its own framework is going on before our own eyes. If you compare capitalism today with the laissez-faire capitalism of the past, there is already a tremendous change. What we have

today, what is usually called monopolist-state-capitalism, is such a transformation within the framework of the capitalist system - complete regulation of competition, the ever more active and widespread intervention of the government in the economy, the new imperialism, the paralysis of the democratic process.

 

IBM7 stock is worth forty-five billion dollars on the market right now, but the government is taking action to break it up -

 

I think that would be the first antitrust suit that really did something to the capitalist system, so if I had IBM stock I would not worry.

 

I would like to ask you one more question on Limits to Growth and what the Club of Rome is trying to do.

 

May I answer your question before you ask it? It is in my view not so much the question of limiting economic growth as of fundamentally redirecting economic growth and economic activity, above all the mobilization and exploitation of all available technical and natural resources towards the abolition of poverty and inequality the world over. This may well necessitate even further economic growth, but economic growth used in a radically different direction.


Vorige Volgende