Marcuse and Marx: robbing creativity?
When we discussed Marcuse and the desublimation of art, I couldn't help but think of Marx and his concept of the proletariat's alienation of his "own nature and species' being". The two theorists, in their respective concepts, seem to both have a common theme of an individual being robbed of their creativity for the sake of commercial and productional needs. Just as the proletariat is denied his access to creativity when standing in an assembly line and screwing caps to toothpaste bottles, so are the artists with their inherent talent and artistry commodified to fit the advertising campaigns of Nike. Both are oppressed, as Marx would put it, by higher forms of power, that is, the capitalists and the commercial world. Marx wrote in the 19th century and Marcuse came along around a century later. Do you think that Marcuse's "desublimation" can sufficiently attest to Marx's idea of individuals' alienation from what is intrinsic to their being: creativity? Where might this assumption fall short?
I do think that yes, Marcuse's idea of "desublimation" sufficiently attests to Marx's notion of individual alienation from their instrinsic creativity. It does so especially by its defining trait of being "repressive", contributing to Marcuse's depiction of advanced industrial civilization as a state of democratic unfreedom for humans. This reminded me closely of what we talked about in class at the beginning of term in order to contextualize Marxist theory as stemming and departing from Hegelian dialectics. If you remember, we used the example of the master-slave relationship, where change in the balance of power arises, for Marx, thanks to the slave's conquest of awareness of his inherent creativity. The implication for our current question is that, stripped of (or 'alienated' from) creativity, human beings are doomed to unfreedom, under what Marcuse considers "totalitarianism" which manipulates needs to prevent opposition to vested interests. In this sense, the idea of desublimation almost equates that of alienation, in my opinion, as they both produce a state of deception (Marcuse's "euphoria of unhappiness") which aims at keeping them subjugated and controlled.
There is, however, a respect in which this equation may fall short, and which lays in a fascinating nuance of Marcuse's arguments in One Dimensional Man. Together with a critique of technology, Marcuse indeed sets also forward the acknowledgment of the political power of machinery in contemporary society. If on the one hand they are, as we find in Marx's theory as well, the embodiment and vehicle for perpetuation of oppressive structures of power, the technological means of production are also, in Marcuse's view, the potential basis of a new freedom for man. In fact, machines' power is the stored-up and projected power of man, as the use of technology should theoretically imply less human labour to be needed to satisfy the vital needs of society. However, empirically, the opposite happens, with a paradoxical expansion of labor time and of control over material and intellectual culture.
Do you think that this reality, which is counter-intuitive to the theory, is a result of how Marx's explains power in capitalism? Is it a consequence or the cause of modern man's desublimation, or alienation from creativity? Would Marx agree with Marcuse on the potential of machinery for human freedom? Do you think that in our society that goal is reachable, or are the interests and the means of those in control too strong to fight?
I do believe that Marcuse's repressive desublimation and Marx's argument of alienation can be paralleled. Referring to Marcuse's argument, we look at art today and understand how it is desublimated in the sense that art is now turned into objects of everyday life that appeal to everybody, while in the past art represented a form of opposition to this "higher power". Art has been commodified as a commercial product giving individuals the illusion that it is a form of social cohesion, but rather it exerts control over our lives and takes away freedom. This domination of the commercial world can also be compared to Marx's alienation in which capitalism takes control of the individual. The oppression of the proletariat comes into play when the worker has to engage in work that is meaningless in order to survive. The proletariat cannot exercise creativity and fulfill his species being due to the demands of capitalistic production just as art has been given more attention as a product of capitalism.
I agree. Both Marx and Marcuse, as far as I understand, certainly argue about losing creativity and valuable human criteria within the social system designed by power figures. Through repetitive works for surviving, workers (those who do not have controls) tend to lose their identity and creativity; according to Marx, it could be explained as commodification/objectification of workers and according to Marcuse, moving from two-dimensional vision to one-dimensional. Capitalism, which those who have power control over those who don't in terms of material and mental status, creates and maintains the hegemonic position of a certain group i.e. the capitalist, at the same time, the other population without power/capital "who are preconditioned to accept of the conditions offered to them" (Marcuse 330) naturally adapt to the capitalist society, take their position as 'workers', get used to being exploited and remain in one-dimensional states while losing abilities to think in two-dimensional ways.