Marcuse- New Left' Utopianism

BY IN THIS short book of lectures, two of which date back 15 years, Marcuse goes over some of his favourite themes.

He discusses Freud's theory of culture and psychoanalysis, attacks the So-called 'Utopian' element in Marx and digresses on the future of the 'student revolution'.

The first three lectures - all Freud-aré by far the most interesting.

Here he develops the view that Freud's theory of the instincts and his conception "pleasure "critic principle' form part of a theory of man in capitalist society.

He suggests, for example, that capitalist culture hinges on the renunciation pleasure. PhiloKant all acepted this precapte of self-denial.

The tol hest pale bich ther extol oroductivity nan's instinctual, creative drive The denial of the "pleasure principle' in bourgeois thought was only possible, Marcuse argues, within a society dominated by exploited, alienated labour in which man himself. his whole life activity, was turned into a commodity.

REPRESSED The erotic aspects of human something dangerous and activity are thus repressed as disruptive to evil normal, healthy' bourgeois man.

Malthus' notion of 'normal restraint' for curbing population increases betomes the norm of all capitalist societies.

Marcuse tries 'to show 'that Freud's analysis of personality, built around the notion of sexual repression, is potentially a revolutionary concept.

The fact that neurosis frequently has a sexual basis in its indirect rejection of pleasure -constitutes an explicit criticism of bourgeois society in Marcuse's opinion.

le links this Freudian analys f personality disorder with th specific _commodity - producing scaped by Man a Volume T 61 Marcuse insists that this alienated state is not a permaent, non-historical 'human con ition GO FURTHER But as an avowed socialist (which Freud was not) Marcus has to go further than this.

His treatment of Fr socialism, alienated state overcoming man form, the reactionary argument of his 'One Dimensional Man' (1963).

Here he attacks the very foundations Marxism reveals working class, Marcuse laims are now integrated into the structure of capitalism, accept its values and consciously reject revolutionary politics.

Objectively, he says, a 'revolution has been on the agenda for years', but alas, there is simply no desire on the part of the working class to fight.

'ONLY HOPE' Their needs are sufficiently met by the monopolists and the result is la controlled and repressive consciousness'.

The only hope therefore lies outside the working class, in the ghettoes, the 'third world', or in those with access to specialized knowledge — the students.

They 'know all the facts' and can be mobilized to fight capitalism on a moral basis.

Most revealing is his description of an anti-war demonstration at Berkely (University of Calibetween police and students:

'After two or three scary minutes the thousands of marchers sat down in the street, guitars and harmonicas appearea, people began "necking" and "petting" , and so the demonstration ended. You may find this ridiculous, but I believe that a unity spontaneously and anarchially emerged here that perhaps in the end cannot fail to make an impression even on the enemy.!

So the guhru of the 'New Left' Marcuse, attacks Marx for his 'Utopianism', yet himself descends to the worst of its many varieties by appealing to the good sense and decency of the ruling class.

These last two lectures are In his analysis of Freud, he has said — in his usual tortuous fashion - something of value. Oil-imperi ism' OIL AND WORLD POWER BY PETER R. ODELL A THE ERUPTION of the . nid al very tineiy oo. Internationa What is not so often realized is the tremendous expansion of the oil industry in the post-war period, so that any book more than a few years old is quite outof-date.

Since 1945, "world production of petroleum has risen at about 7 per cent each year-roughly doubling every ten years. A large part of this increase has taken place in the Middle East and N Africa.

Professor Odell's little book attempts to show the effect of these rapid changes on many aspects of world politics and economics.

Only a Marxist, firmly based on Lenin's conception perialism, could really do justice to such a task.

CHARACTER But Odell gives a clear outline of the complexities of the petroleum industry and its international ramifications.

He called socialism in said that the use whatever achieve it. the centre of his statement was the vital issue of programme and perspective.

for a fight for America now and working class 'will means necessary' to ROOT Newton pointed to the capitalist system as the root of racialism and stated that without a struggle against the system, racialism could not be destroyed.

Here he hits on the key issue facing the entire working class . . . and this is no accident.

The sharpening of class tensions with the worsening imperialist crisis is now throwing every movement into turmoil, including the Panthers, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the press to label this movement as simply a bunch of triggerhappy extremists.

Indeed, the Panthers' struggle has attracted others, as The Times' reported on the convention:

'About 40 per cent of the audience was white, mostly young students. A surprisingly high proportion of the blacks in the audience were middleaged men and women, apparently residents of the ghetto area which surrounds the modern, airconditioned stadium.' RECESSION Another Panther leader, Michael Tabor, in opening the convention, made it clear that the economic recession is also breaking up the illusions in the possibility black capitalism, Some separate People urged blacks to own their own business, he said, but when they did they frequently went bankrupt because they could not compete with the big supermarket chains.

Despite the confusion and improvisation that pervaded the three-day convention, Newton's statement is important.:

That is why the 'International Herald Tribune': did its utmost to attack the Panthers and sneers at its lack of 'doctrine or analysis.

The book's great virtue is its emphasis on the international character of oil production and consumption.

However, as Odell points out:

•"International" in this context does not imply an industry owned and/or controlled by the world's many nations. Instead it refers simply to the fact that this is an industry which operates internationally, with a complex network of relationships connecting most countries of the world. Its ownership and direction lie mainly in the hands of a very, small group of. companies.' (page 13.) a ruling class.' And this is how the esteemed paper, of course, would prefer it to continue - not only among coloured workers, but for white workers also.

Whatever our disagreements with the programme of the Black Panthers, Newton has hit the nail on the head.

We are sure that there will be many coming from the ranks of this movement, who will break from the reactionary poison of black nationalism and take their stand alongside workers of every colour in the fight for Marxism in the United States.

BATTLE This will not be some pure but must take who now take black power to its racialist limits.

While Newton spoke in Phila-delphia, 600-black leaders were attending the Congress of Racial Equality meeting in Alabama and denouncing integration to the These seven 'international majors, as they are knownStandard Oil of New Jersey (Esso), Standard Oil of New York (Mobil); Standard Oil (California) •(Chevron), Gulf Oil, Texaco, Shell and British Petroleum - account for 80 per cent of production outside the Soviét Union. Five of them are US firms.

The assets of US oil companies abroad amount to some $15,000 million and their repatriated earnings in 1967 came to $1,600 million.

This highly-monopolized situation has, of course, enabled 'the oil barons to make huge profits.

Odell explains some of the contradictory effects of the US applause of the Southern extremistsl The Congress announced afterwards that it rejected integration for achieving social equality between whites and blacks.

It will work, like its former segregationist enemies, for separate institutions and has taken a county school system as a model for 'district control' based on the existing white and black neighbourhoods.

However, the powerful movement of the American working class, as revealed in the fight of the motor workers, lays the basis for a thorough cleansing of this reactionary ideology.

Newton's words expose the smallest tip of a mighty iceberg. Oil and word P Price 5s imports 'quota' imposed by Eisenhower in 1959, when lowcost Middle-East oil threatened the position of the US oil fields.

PRICE FIXING He also has a section on the system of 'Gulf prices' , which operated until the 1950s.

Under this, the price of MiddleEast oil in W Europe was fixed as if it had been produced in the US and then shipped from the Gulf of Mexico.

Since costs of production in the Middle East are only a fraction of those in the US, astronomical profits weré made. action. Many are preparing to dig in for a long haul, already discussing the stoppage in terms of months rather than weeks.

Rank-and-file militancy was evident right from the "start when thousands of workers walked out at five US and three Canadian plants the day before their contract expired and the strike officially began.

Dan Fried, Labour Editor of the US Trotskyist newspaper 'Bulletin' talked to pickets outside General Motors Linden plant in New Jersey as the strike was getting under way.

They explained that, alongside wages, retirement on a $500-a-month pension plan after 30 years, regardless of age, is one of the many big issues on which United Auto Workers president Woodcock refuses to commit himself in the current negotiations.

(There is no state pensions scheme in the US comparable to Britain's.)

One picket said:

*After 30 years in here you've had it—you've had it. Everyone in the plant from the guy who started here one month ago wants this (early retirement). Getting people out to enjoy life at an age when they can enjoy life and giving the kids a chance to get a better job that's all we want. This isn't a selfish thing'.

HARROWING The harrowing speed lines-60 cars an hour at Linden _has put real pressure the retirement demand.

One man who had worked eight years at Linden recalled:

I've seen a lot of things around here that are unbelievable. I've seen a man drop dead and before he hit the floor there was another man doing his job. That's true.' One of his fellow pickets added:

'One time I was up in the washroom and a guy who. 'was washing his hands dropped dead. The foreman rushed in and the first words out of his mouth were: "Did anybody punch out his time card?" They were so afraid that this man was going to be paid while he was lying there dead. ... You could go on with stories like this all day.' General Motors men know that they are in the vanguard of the wages fight 'and a victory would open the way for the sections following up close behind.

GEARED Nixon knows this too.

One of the Linden said:

'Of course, all of the other the auto workers can get it, and that's why I agree with you, the government wants to hold it down.

"Everything is geared to what the auto workers get. In other words, when the construction workers get a raise, they don't talk about pennies — they talk about dollar bills.

'But when General Motors told the United States of America that they were going to give us a couple of billion dollars raise over a period of three years, that was the biggest lie that was ever put forth the people of the United States. The truth is that GM is Even after this racket had come to an end, oil prices are still kept far above the few cents a barrel it costs to extract in places like Saudi-Arabia.

The addition to prices to allow for transport is also highly inflated by the monopolies.

Odell's factual background makes it easy to see how the oil companies were quite prépared to pay increased royalties to some of the governments from whose territories their profits originated.

This forms a major element in the character of the Middle East military nationalist leaders, whose politics is rooted in their ability to squeeze a few more cents a barrel out of the oil firms, by threatening them with the mass movement.

There is a useful chapter on the growth of the Soviet oil industry. A large part of this was originally planned in the 1950s to supply China, but with the Sino-Soviet dispute, this has almost ceased.

Instead, incréasing quantities of Soviet oil and natural gas are being geared to the. needs of W European markets.

REASSURES Odell reassures those in the capitalist world who warned that Moscow would use this development to undermine western economies.

He is able to show that such relationships between the Soviet offering 3 cents an hour in new money the first year' UAW members are demanding 26 cents an hour to catch up with soaring inflation over the last two years.

This is intended to be the new base line from which current negotiations should operate.

The car bosses want the 26 cents to be included in the new pay offers.

'NEW' MONEY General Motors' workers rightly talk in terms of "new' money, regarding the cost of living increases as theirs by right.

The unlimited cost-of-living ess the 1967 Ford stene, is estimated to have cost each Union and European capitalism "make sense' in terms of technical needs in the supply of energy.

The politics of the Soviet Union do not worry him in the least.

The book is sufficiently up to date to provide an account of the rise of the natural gas industry.

Odell shows how the large. Dutch gas field, only discovered in 1959, was quickly taken under the control of Shell and Esso.

With the help of the Dutch government, they kept the price at a level at which it would not compete with oil. However, this' situation is being changed with the opening up of the North Sea gas deposits.

Whatever the author's intentions in providing a useful source of information, he shows the contradictions in the development of a vital sector of world economy by imperialism.

DOMINATE The oil 'majors' typify the giant international monopolies which, through their ruthless profits drive, dominate the lives of millions of human beings, exploit workers in the advanced as well as the backward countries and stand in the way of the planned development of the world's resources.

Read together with Lenin's Imperialism', "Oil and World Power' forms a useful background to capitalism's growing crisis. UAW ON STRIKE - INCREASED FOR PENSIONS worker $1,000 over the past Union president Woodcock is trying to • duck out of another issue of vital importance to car workers, that of fighting for work-sharing as defence against the effects of automation.

One of the Linden men talked of this problem:

I'm in maintenance. We automate here every : month. There's getting to be fewer and fewer men here every month. We have such an automation programme in the body shop now president Woodcock that pretty soon there's going to be just a skeleton crew there, with the "monster" and the "octopus" that they have in there.

'They've got 200 men in there now and they want to cut it down to 50. What are they going to do with the 150 men?

I want to see one machine buy one car. We build them and we can't even buy them.

'Not only have we fallen way behind on hourly wages because of inflation, but unemployment has hurt our total income. Car sales have been very bad. You've had short work weeks and layoffs for a few weeks at a time. And today you can't afford any weeks without a pay check.' What a contrast between these correct points on the problems facing carworkers through automation and the general crisis of the economy and Woodcock's bland reassurances.

Asked about the possible length of the strike Woodcock replied:

"There are no ideological hangups so there is no reason for it to go. on too long.' Though this statement is open to a number of interpretations, they all put Woodcock firmly in the camp of those retreating on the carworkers' struggle.

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