existing society, that which it purports to refute and which at the same time, being negative to what is, may become a revolutionary force of social transformation. Criticism, therefore, is understood as a moment of objective historical dialectics, in which objective social contradictions promote consciousness about the possibilities of their own progressive practical transcendence. Theoretical differences are reflected either in a less resolute emphasis upon those social contradictions which Marx discovered in capitalism, or, which is morę cha-racteristic, in emphasizing that in a developed capitalist society fac-tors other than the socio-economic and class contradictions have become decisive. They amount to an open or tacit refutation of Marx’s idea about the proletariat being the fullest negation of capitalism and a potential leading revolutionary force.13 For example, in Marcuse’s analysis of a developed »industrial society«, the main contradiction and the principal source of irrationality of the social system consist not in exploitation but in domination sustained by the development of a priori qualities of scientific thought and its technological applica-tion. »The world tends to become the stuff of total administration which absorbs even the administrators. The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it. And the transcending modes of thought seem to transcend Reason itself«.u A qualitative change, which would consist in easing the struggle for existence, can only be realized if a new technology is developed, based on a reaffirmation of the »art of living«, in time of leisure, of course, the life necessities having been satisfied.15 Who is interested in this social change, which Marcuse claims is needed by society as a whole and by each of its members?10 No social force in a developed indusrtial society which is indispensable for its mainte-nance, reproduction and development towards a total domination, but only those which it had rejected as unnecessary (?!) and disenfranch-ised for reasons other than economic.17 Perhaps the »third world«?18 At any ratę, the negation of a developed industrial society may only come from without. »The power of the negative is engendered outside of this repressive totality from forces and movements which have not yet been swept by the aggresive and repressive productivity of the »affluent society«, or have already cut themselves loose from this dev-elopment.. .«19 The aim and the scope of this article do not permit
** It is on this thesis that Marcuse developed his analysis of the industrially advanced capitalist society in his book, One-Dimensional Man, Studies in the Ideo-logy of Advanced Industrial Society, (1964), Beacon Press, Boston 1968. Pages XII-XV, 19-21, 188-189, 254-257, et passim.
14 Ibid., p. 169.
'• Ibid., pp. 227-246.
18 Ibid., p. XIII.
11 Ibid., pp. 256-257.
18 H. Marcuse, »Das Ende der Utopie*, Berlin, 1967, p. 65. (Quoted according to C. Offe, »Technik und Eindimensionalitat, Einc Version der Technokraticthese?* in the compendium J. Habcrmans (Hrsg.), Antworten an Herbert Marcuse, Suhr-kamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1968, pp. 80-81.
18 H. Marcuse, »Zum Bcgriff der Negation* (1966) in the book, H. Marcuse, Ideen zu einer kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft.p. 190. The suggested possibility of intemal negation, which is not containcd in One-Dimensional Man, probably arose as an effect of the rising rcsistance by the student youth.
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