Thread by @Thinkb4Learning

The “New Rationality”: Herbert Marcuse in his book “Soviet Marxism” (1958)

“Reason is nothing but the rationality of the whole: the uninterrupted functioning and growth of the apparatus.” 1/15

“This society, defined as socialist in terms of Marxian theory, becomes the sole standard of truth and falsehood; there can be no transcendence in thought and action, no individual autonomy because the Nomos of the whole is the true Nomos.” 2/

“They claim no truth-value of their own but proclaim a preestablished truth which is to be realized through a certain attitude and behavior. They are pragmatic directives for action.” #Praxis 3/

“Soviet Marxism is built around a small number of constantly recurring…rigidly canonized statements to the effect that Soviet society is a socialist society without exploitation, a full democracy in which the constitutional rights of all citizens are guaranteed and enforced.” 4/

People “are to be ‘spelled,’ learned mechanically, monotonously, and literally; they are to be performed like a ritual which accompanies the realizing action. They are to recall and sustain the required practice.” 5/

“Taken by themselves they are no more committed to the truth than are orders or advertisements: their "truth" is in their effect.”

The praxis of the theory makes it “True” 6/

“they are a matter of practical, not of theoretical reason…magical elements gain ascendancy over comprehending thought and action. The difference between illusion and reality becomes just as obliterated as that between truth and falsehood” 7/

“illusions guide a behavior that shapes and changes reality…on primitive societies, magic has been described as a ‘body
of purely practical acts, performed as means to an end.’…The official language itself assumes magical character.” 8/

“The irrational elements of magic enter into the system of scientifically planned and practiced administration—they become part of the scientific management of society. Moreover, the magical features of Soviet theory are turned
into an instrument for rescuing the truth.” 9/

“the ritual formulas, severed from their original cognitive context, thus serve to provide unquestioned directives for unquestioned mass behavior, they retain, in a hypostatized form, their historical substance.” 10/

“The rigidity with which they are celebrated is to preserve the purity of this substance in the face of an apparently contradicting reality and to enforce verification in the face of apparently contradicting facts which make the pre- established truth into a paradox… 11/

…It defies reason; it seems absurd…ritualized language preserves the original content of Marxian theory as a truth that must be believed and enacted against all evidence to the contrary: the people must do and feel and think as if their state were the reality of that reason…

…,freedom, and justice which the ideology proclaims, and the ritual is to assure such behavior. The practice guided by it indeed moves large underprivileged masses on an international scale.” 13/

“The ritualization of this theory has kept it alive against the power of factual refutation and communicated it, in ideological form, to a…suppressed population which is to be whipped into political action, contesting and challenging advanced industrial civilization. 14/

“In its magical use, Marxian theory assumes a new rationality.” 15/15