On the Topicality of Selected Aspects of Herbert Marcuse's Works

Revolutionary Subject

"Concerning fundamental social change, the question about the difference between the inside and the outside is very important. The question is whether forces that negate existing society can sublate it from the inside or from the outside. Marcuse (1966a) discussed this question and I am following his view in this respect. He argues that there are forces that negate bourgeois society which stand outside the system and try to work against the latter. He sees the outside in the sense of social forces that represent needs and goals which are suppressed in the existing antagonistic totality and can not unfold themselves in this system (1966a: 198).

Here he speaks of humans as the potential main productive force of revolution who can put their consciousness and practice outside of the system, they can transcend the existing false totality and work towards its sublation. The “Keimform” (germ) of a new society does not so much cover social structures for Marcuse, but emancipatory human consciousness which unfortunately seems to be absorbed more and more into the inside of the system in the advanced industrial society."

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"Emancipatory subjects with class consciousness are necessary. It is not determined whether such a consciousness can be developed today and to which outcome struggles that result from it will lead. Marcuse says that the material and intellectual productive forces that are entangled into the existing antagonisms are ready to enter a higher type of social existence by conscious struggles with the existing forces. The outcome depends on the conditions and possibilities of these struggles and on consciousness that develops from it. A necessary stipulation would be that the subjects become conscious of their slavery and the reasons of it, that they see liberation as something necessary and that they try to find ways towards it (Marcuse 1996c)."