THE CHANCES OF CHANGE
Santoni, Ronald E.
THE CHANCES OF CHANGE counterrevolution and revolt, by Herbert Marcuse. Beacon Press. 138 pp. $7.50. reviewed by Ronald E. Santoni Herbert Marcuse's new book is packed. Sentence after sentence...
...In An Essay on Liberation, Marcuse saw the new rationality, the new anti-aggressive and anti-competitive sensibility of tenderness and love, as a necessary condition for authentic rebellion and liberation...
...Neither this, nor the "long march through the institutions," nor the "political education" of student or worker, is yet a thing of the past...
...the life in self-determination has not come...
...To help in the campaign and to provide information for concerned citizens, order VIETNAM VIEWPOINTS ($1.50 per copy) from Futura Press, Box 3765, Austin, Texas 78704...
...Although art and revolution are at one in changing the world, art has a freedom of its own: it cannot conform to the requirements of the revolution without denying itself...
...To avoid more Vietnams, we need desperately to understand not only why this one has gone bad...
...the "proto-fascist" syndrome of the counterrevolution has emerged...
...It is a forceful elaboration of his indictment of capitalist societies, of his call for a radical transformation of society and culture, of his meaning and justification of the New Sensibility and New Consciousness...
...Sentence after sentence merits reflection and testifies to his penetrating, critical, and sensitive mind...
...Although he criticizes the New Left for its anti-intellectual strain, for its distortion and "petrification" of Marxian theory and concepts (e.g., its submission to a "fetishism of labor"), and for its failVIETNAM VIEWPOINTS A Handbook for Concerned Citizens Compiled by Margret Hofmann "Margret Hofmann's Vietnam Viewpoints is among the best works in print on the Vietnam war...
...Capitalism is frightened...
...In Counterrevolution and Revolt he tries to develop this novel dimension...
...yet it has the practical and subversive potential of halting the dominating aggressiveness which has "informed" our natural and social reality...
...Art too opens established reality to the possibility and promise of liberation...
...And it is at the core of the women's liberation movement...
...It includes more than a dozen plausible suggestions for settling the war, and a collection of the most pungent cartoons and photographs illustrating America's greatest tragedy...
...There is a subversive potential in the very nature of art...
...VIETNAM VIEWPOINTS suggests the answers...
...But the precondition of accomplishing this radical change is the "juncture" of the radical intelligentsia and the worker, with each group operating from its own base in terms of its own consciousness and goals...
...Mr...
...The fetishism of its commodity world is becoming increasingly transparent...
...The life of alienated work has not gone...
...What really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin...
...While extending the base of its exploitation, its mode of production has failed to fulfill the needs which it has created...
...It puts at your fingertips the most relevant quotations and their sources, topics for discussion, and thoughtful observations...
...Marcuse sees this movement as another potentially vital force in emancipating the exploitative consciousness and overcoming the dominating expressions of the "male principle" in established society...
...What are our commitments...
...The book is a non-profit publication, written in a conciliatory spirit as one person's constructive contribution toward ending the war...
...How relevant is the 'Domino Theory...
...The life-enhancing forces of nature must be recovered...
...we need to know that it was wrong from the start...
...Marcuse does not stop here...
...Margret Hofmann's handbook is invaluable for that purpose...
...Although "there is no recent revolution to be undone, and there is none in the offing," capitalism is now systematically structuring a preventive counterrevolution against the threat of the "first truly world-historical revolution...
...Although one may have difficulty, as I do, in reconciling Marcuse's distinction between violence and revolutionary force with his allowance for the "desperate act," and sense a reverse elitist character in some of his statements, one could scarcely question either Marcuse's integrity of analysis or the probing humaneness of his sensibilities...
...On the soil of this counterrevolution, a well-organized Radical Left must develop, both as an effective "counter-force" and as an agent for political education...
...Santoni is professor of philosophy at Denison University and co-editor of "Social and Political Philosophy...
...It is the woman who 'embodies,' in a literal sense, the promise of peace, of joy, of the end of violence...
...The "end of art" is thinkable only in relation to a state of blatant barbarism at the apex of civilization...
...In the "consumer economy," nature has been exploited...
...Its insights are both profound and sometimes exaggerated, its distinctions both subtle and sometimes tenuous...
...The new, radical sensibility understands that "surrender, 'Ietting-be,' acceptance," sometimes is the non-exploitative relation...
...Counterrevolution and Revolt merits ,wide reading and serious study...
...This book raises and provokes highly important questions...
...George McGovern VIETNAM VIEWPOINTS presents over 300 statements selected with care from highly regarded sources...
...Counterrevolution and Revolt is a strong and fitting sequel to his Essay on Liberation...
...At stake is a new relation between man and nature...
...In dissociating himself methodically from alienated society and creating an "illusory" universe, the artist reveals the "subversive truth" of art...
...Whether one feels frightened or freed by Marcuse's thoughts on revolution and subversion, one can expect that they will carry one beyond the shibboleths and superficialities which normally pervade our society's thought and "double-think...
...He offers a detailed and challenging account of art...
...The liberation of nature is a vehicle for liberating man, an essential part of the radical transformation of society...
...It has the capacity both to stimulate critical reasoning and inflame uncritical passion...
...New "motives" for revolution have appeared...
...ure to catch up with the reality of "monopoly-state capitalism," he still perceives "the movement" as the most potent counterforce and decisive instrument for initiating fundamental change...
...Being "aesthetic," this sensibility is non-violent and non-domineering...
...Marcuse begins with the premise that the Western world has reached a new stage of development...
...While focusing on the chances of radical change in the United States, Marcuse attempts to assess the situation of the New Left...
...This faculty of being "receptive" and of being able "to see things in their own right" is a precondition of freedom...
Vol. 36 • November 1972 • No. 11
