← Back to Concept Indexfalse-consciousness
The concept shared by Marx and Freud that humans live under a deceptive awareness—Marx sees it as ideological masking of class exploitation, while Freud views it as repression of unconscious psychic content.
1 chapter across 1 book
Chapter III THE DIALECTICS OF LIBERATION: HERBERT MARCUSE AND NORMAN BROWN The emergence of Herbert Marcuse and Norman Brown as major social theorists among the disafhliated young of Western Europe and America must be taken as one of the defining features of the counter culture. For it is in their work that the inevitable confrontation between Marx and Freud takes place. This is nothing less than an encounter between the two most influential, but far from obviously com- patible social critics of the modern West, an encounter that leads directly to the hard task of assigning an order of priority to the psychological and sociological categories Marx and Freud have bequeathed us for the understanding of man and society. Neither psyche nor social class can be dispensed with; but one or the other of these concepts as they exist in their mature form must be given precedence in any systematic critique. Psychic reality and social reality: which is the prime mover of our lives? Which is the substance and which the shadow? At question in our rank ordering of the two is the nature of human consciousness and the meaning of liberation. While both Marx and Freud held that man is the victim of a false consciousness from which he must be freed if he is to achieve fulfillment, their diagnoses were built on very different prin- ciples. For Marx, that which is hidden from reason is the exploitive reality of the social system. Culture—“ideology” in the pejorative sense of the word—intervenes between reason and reality to mask the operation of invidious class interestThis chapter examines the intellectual confrontation between Marxist and Freudian theories through the works of Herbert Marcuse and Norman Brown, two pivotal social theorists influential among the counterculture youth of Western Europe and America. It explores their divergent approaches to prioritizing psychological versus sociological categories in understanding human consciousness and liberation, with Marcuse integrating Freudian insights into a Marxist framework and Brown adopting a more radical, psychoanalytic critique that challenges traditional political engagement. The chapter highlights their shared effort to develop a radical social critique that undermines conventional ideologies by exposing the pathological dimensions of culture and politics.