“It is not simply the higher standard of living, the illusionary
bridging of the consumer gap between the rulers and the ruled, which has
obscured the distinction between the real and the immediate interest of the ruled.
Marxian theory soon recognized that impoverishment does not necessarily provide
the soil for revolution, that a highly developed consciousness and imagination
may generate a vital need for radical change in advanced material conditions.”
“The power of corporate capitalism has stifled the emergence of
such a consciousness and imagination; its mass media have adjusted the rational
and emotional faculties to its market and its policies and steered them to
defense of its dominion. The narrowing of the consumption gap has rendered
possible the mental and instinctual coordination of the laboring classes: the
majority of organized labor shares the stabilizing, counterrevolutionary needs
of the middle classes, as evidenced by their behavior as consumers of the
material and cultural merchandise, by their emotional revulsion against the
nonconformist intelligentsia. Conversely, where the consumer gap is still wide,
where capitalistic culture has not yet reached into every house or hut, the
system of stabilizing need has its limits; the glaring contrast between the
privileged class and the exploited leads to a radicalization of the
underprivileged. This is the case of the ghetto population and the unemployed
in the United States; this is also the case of the laboring classes in the more
backward capitalistic countries.”
Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA:
Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 15-16.
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