Write Ur Own Decklists

Poesie

Chiara Taormina (melissian@hotmail.it)


Poetry 1

back memories of the East
white adorned with the sound of voices
brackish timeless
that crackle between green
carpets and windows on the past. I see the face of the alien

become familiar with the candor just mentioned
harmony. I see the narrow road

host my regret, the ultimate essence of brotherhood
mitigate diversity.


Poetry 2

It dissolves in the wind
the acrid smell of nothing. That formless abyss
which is knowledge
extinguished the last questions of life. Will
the face of dreams
the messenger who gives the world his art
without beginning or end. It is a circle of eternal hope that

wraps in his gleaming empty
the arid darkness.


Poetry 6

emerge from nothing I look to the wisdom of the man who

dissolved into the substance of all
knowledge of himself.
I look at the light between the trabecular
cracks that cut through the material, the
streaks of color in patches coagulate
hungry immortality.

This work is published under a Creative Commons License .

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La concezione del totalitarismo nella Arendt e in Marcuse

Frederick Sollazzo (p.sollazzo @ inwind.it)

Both Germans of Jewish descent Hannah Arendt and Herbert Marcuse share the path of a migration that takes them in the Thirties in the United States because of the rise of Nazism in Germany, just inside the American society (and often in sharp contrast with it 1) through a period of intense cultural activity that takes them to compose some of their most famous works.

In Vita Activa la riflessione della Arendt raggiunge l’apice della critica della modernità interpretando la decadenza dell’agire politico in Occidente, come conseguenza dell’allontanamento da un tipo ideale di comunità: la pòlis greca al tempo di Pericle, rappresentante una forma di governo che forniva agli uomini una sorta di teatro nel quale apparire, tramite la libertà delle azioni. Per la Arendt la “condizione umana” è caratterizzata da tre fondamentali attività, il lavoro, l’opera e l’azione. Il lavoro costituisce l’insieme delle attività necessarie per la sopravvivenza biologica (da questa prospettiva l’uomo viene definito come animal laborans ), the work is the function through which man "factory of the infinite variety of things whose sum total is the artificial world" 2 (the figure corresponding to this is that of 'homo faber ); the action, exclusively human characteristic not related to mere biological needs and / or instinctual, is the ability to start something that is not yet in place, " Act, in the broadest sense, means to take initiative, start (...) put in motion something " 3, and the greatest human action is political action that begins with the birth and is costituita da un insieme di relazioni con gli altri attuate senza l’utilizzo di oggetti materiali bensì tramite il linguaggio, che ne conserva anche la memoria grazie al racconto. Queste tre attività si collocano all’interno di uno spazio pubblico o di una sfera privata, che però hanno ormai caratteristiche nettamente diverse rispetto all’antica Grecia. Infatti, nelle pòleis greche la sfera privata era percepita come una limitazione della libertà a causa dell’adempimento alle necessità per la sopravvivenza, e lo spazio pubblico era vissuto come uno spazio politico grazie al quale si poteva lasciare un segno duraturo del nostro passaggio, mentre attualmente, la sfera privata è vissuta come proprietà of something like intimacy ( privacy), and public space has been reduced in the social understood as the publicity of issues that were private. According to Arendt, all this happened due to the screening of "social" on the "political": that was an alliance aimed at mere survival (the capital), has been replaced by the interaction between the men aimed to building the world (the politician) 4. Consequently, the changes in social policy which are delegated the functions that were previously private households, specifically, that projection was caused by the abolition of the public sphere (as we know it Greeks) made by Christianity (especially Thomas Aquinas) and Marxism, which have replaced the three categories of work, work and action, or categories of material life (necessary evil) and the contemplative life (good to which tend) to Christianity, or those of unproductive labor (which leaves no trace) and productive work (of goods and services), for Marxism. Just Marx's concept of productive labor is to blame, for Arendt, they have eliminated the distinction between work and work, interpreting it not as a way to avoid the necessity but as a sale of one's body or to the workforce, reducing human activity to production of material goods with them on consumption, as a result "of leisure ' animal laborans has never spent otherwise than in consumption, and the longer it remains, the most rapacious and insatiable appetites are his. What these desires become more refined - so that consumption is no longer limited to the things needed, but extends mainly to those redundant - not change the character of this society, but hides the danger that nothing in the world is protected from consumption and from 'cancellation through consumption " 5 , in modern times the work becomes the main function (" The Emancipation of work did not give rise to equality with the other activities of this Vita Activa , but its almost unchallenged dominance. From the point of view of "work to live," any activity not related to the work becomes a "hobby " 6), work that does not create anything new (this option is its only the action), conforming to the existing without being able to judge the social and political conditions in which it takes place, looking only to parameters of efficiency and functionality. And yet, the dynamics of production and consumption of ' animal laborans also involves the nature which is dominated, exploited, or consumed. Arendt also sees Karl Marx in two major contradictions: first, whether the man has to work for free, but freedom will be only the end of the work, then the man himself oscillates between productive slavery and freedom unproductive 7 and secondly, because for Marx "E 'in the nature of the work to bring together people in the form of the working group, in which some individuals" work together as one "" 8 , but this way the individual loses its identity as "The merger of many in the unit is fundamentally anti-political" 9 because "The equality that is appropriate in the public sphere is necessarily uneven to be equality of rendered "equal" in some ways and for specific purposes. The factor of equality does not come from "natural" human, but from the outside " 10 (as we shall see later), because of all this that should be equality policy, based on different world views that have to agree, is reduced to a generic and impersonal Equality workers 11. Finally, although the contrast between Greece and modern influences are felt Heidegger, Arendt rejects the outcome of the last anti-worldly Heidegger: "men, even if they die, they are not born to die but to begin" 12 .

Despite some similarities (which will emerge later) between Arendt and representatives of the "Frankfurt School", are the major reasons for separation that invest primarily the different horizons should be entrusted to the political agenda that, for Frankfurt, needs a moral foundation, while Arendt insists instead on non-foundational, not a political philosopher, addressed mainly to the sharing of words and actions between citizens. Hence, it was Arendt's criticism of Juergen Habermas, on the reduction of regulatory policy for the sole model of Greek polis, based on speech and persuasion, and the widest possible participation of members of society in decision-making 13. It remains to be seen whether the report should Arendt all the Athenian political example, or if you leave a margin for the building a time to form moral judgments in public can distinguish, first, good from evil. Otherwise, the thematizations are exclusively devoted to Arendt's attempt to uncouple the scope of individual moral knowledge from the public sphere, in which the focus is entirely directed at achieving certain policy goals independently of a purely personal assessment and morale.
The historical process that led to the European dictatorships, the Second World War and, in philosophical terms, to the devaluation of political conceived as a public dimension of human existence, it is rebuilt The Origins of Totalitarianism in 14. The decisive moments in this process are identified in anti (stemming from the collapse of nation states following the two world wars that led to the rise of "stateless persons" without country, without nationality and without human rights, this question has been further exacerbated by geographical divisions containing no account of ethnic groups, thus outlining a scenario in which "For more and more groups of people suddenly ceased to have value standards of the surrounding world" 15), 16 imperialism and the transformation of plebiscite democracy (where it is now present "The identification law with the useful " 17, with the danger that what is" useful "for most people may not be for the minorities who are excluded from the formation of a world-with-others). For restore human rights, which is a place in the world where you can act and think, vanished due to a total depoliticization of modern culture, you must become aware that human rights are not based on natural grounds, religious, political, historical or utilitarian but are based solely on a collective and participatory decision-making dimension to the creation of the world, "We are not born equal; become equal as members of a group under the decision to grant each other equal rights. Our political life is based on the assumption that we can establish equality through the organization, because man can transform the world and create one common, along with his peers and only with them " 18. The result of These ideas flows in the conception of totalitarianism Arendt, characterized as a denial of reality to make it match the actual ideology, therefore, as an absolute evil and banal at the same time, hidden as a possibility is always present in every fold of the newspaper. For Arendt , totalitarianism is a new and incomparable with known forms of regime authoritarian, a form that is not necessary the crystallization of the contradictions of the modern era, specifically, the totalitarian model is recognizable by its ideological element to the use of violence, the presence of a single party and intolerance any opposition to the point of preferring the loss of some citizens than to cherish in his bosom dissidents, but the elimination occurs only after the dissenters have been taken from their human rights, "In other words, we created a state of complete absence first rights to trample on their right to life " 19. For Arendt, in the form of totalitarianism and communism converge that Nazism and the "death camp" as a place to suspend the law and as a place of deconstruction and reconstruction of man, the metaphor becomes more symbolic. Since these are the salient features of totalitarianism, it follows that, in the desires of Arendt, the political practice must be so to say "movement" that is detached from any ideology and parties.

According to Marcuse, in addition to the model of totalitarianism Arendt identified by it there is another more difficult to recognize, as developed in modern times effetto del capitalismo 20 . Questa nuova forma di totalitarismo si è sviluppata all’interno della società industriale avanzata ed i suoi tratti essenziali sono: la sostituzione di un “sistema” indeterminato al posto di individui controllanti il potere, il soffocamento delle facoltà psico-fisiche della persona a causa della repressione spazio-temporale alla quale è sottoposta, la chiusura sia politica che culturale della società con conseguente nascita della civiltà “unidimensionale”, il tutto inserito in una organizzazione sociale apparentemente tollerante. Cogliendo il nesso fra le nuove tecniche dei processi produttivi, l’assetto sociale e le modificazioni antropologiche e psicologiche dei singoli individui, Marcuse vede nella massimizzazione della prestazione lavorativa del singolo, subalterno alla macchina totalitaria (razionale nei meccanismi ma irrazionale nei fini), la nuova esigenza del sistema che innesca una dinamica di produzione e consumo di beni e servizi (superflui), convincendo l’individuo della necessità ineluttabile degli stessi, e provocando così una sostituzione dei bisogni veri con quelli indotti. Inoltre, questo sistema ha operato una liberazione dalle forme tradizionali di repressione, per rendere il singolo del tutto conforme alle esigenze di controllo, quindi questa liberazione và, paradossalmente, nella direzione dell’asservimento dell’individuo a una forma di dominio totale, poiché the old taboos have been replaced by new ones. The sign of anything more tragic is that man is neither able to perceive the marks of his bondage, or to imagine the path towards a free future, to win in practice. Occurs as a "bad democracy" in which the right and duty of each is solely to produce and consume. This led to a kind of pragmatic-minded man with a calculative, disenchanted and, thereby, integrated into the totalitarian system, a type of man who feels deprived of moral issues, art, high culture and enjoys full freedom of cheap concessegli by the system to recharge your batteries, a type of man who does not have any reservations now more critical to draw upon to resist the status quo and thus can neither think nor, therefore, realize the alternative, a kind of ' man, in short, who does not live but let live. For Marcuse, to paraphrase Arendt, the banality of evil is this: the resigned obedience to the system and the easy satisfaction of needs (inauthentic) and entirely harmless, the emergence of false freedom and false comfort in a system of alienation and repression now accepted as normal and justified. E 'then took to conquer a new frontier of the domain: the private sphere; essa introietta i modelli di dominio del sistema che la mettono al servizio dell’espansione dello stesso. Tale scenario si è delineato per l’integrazione della classe operaia nel sistema, avvenuta a seguito dell’aumento del tenore di vita ed alla, conseguente, adesione al sistema che avviene tramite l’introiezione dei modelli di dominio e la formazione di una falsa coscienza che giustifica ed accetta uno status quo repressivo: "E’ questo l’aspetto socio-psicologico dell’evento politico che distingue l’epoca contemporanea: il tramonto delle forze storiche che, nella fase precedente della società industriale, parvero rappresentare la possibilità di nuove forme di esistenza" 21 so that "A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization" 22. That is why, in the interpretation Marcusian, "The term" totalitarian "in fact, does not only apply to a terrorist political organization of society, but also to a technical-political organization, not a terrorist, which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests. It this way to prevent the emergence of an effective opposition against the whole system. Not only a specific form of government or party domain produce totalitarianism, but also a specific system of production and distribution system that may well be compatible with a "pluralism" of parties, newspapers, "controbilanciantisi powers", etc.. " 23. Therefore, the prospects of liberation involves not just a political revolution but a revolution which derive from the concrete cultural transformations in the economic, political and technological. The practical realities of change are already present due to the high level of economic development, scientific and technical, to the point that Marcuse believes has become obsolete so-called "Marxist theory of the two phases " 24, since it was now reached such a stage of development of social wealth as to enable an immediate transition to the actual construction of a free society: socialism is now a real possibility 25. The problem lies in identifying the subject, however, failed to break the oppressive cycle of re-production-consumption. For Marx, this subject is the proletariat, driven to revolutionary action individually by the same conditions of capitalist development, this requires two basic conditions: that the revolution is an event that involves the majority of the population and the population itself is aware of its exploitation and hence the need for radical social change. While currently the system absorb the nearly the entire population, either by giving it a small part of social wealth and "entertainment" 26 (tying it so survival of the system 27), either by internalizing the psychological patterns of domination. Consequently there is no longer the working class proletariat, Marx understood as the subject of revolution, but a large middle class (or gentrified), meaning that is to be led by a vanguard that, unlike the Communist garde theorized by Marx, will be made by all those who resist and reject the system, first of all intellectuals, whose task it priority of education policy. This is also reflected in a difference between Marx and Marcuse, on the concept of "class" that, if Marx is the union of all people united by the same material conditions of existence, Marcuse designates all those who, regardless material conditions of existence, not integrated into the established system, theoretically, still the subject of a possible revolution. Marcuse's last hope is that this release will be conducted by marginalized social groups, young people, intellectuals, in short by outsiders, who only realize the weight of el'insostenibilità this arrangement, since, as we have seen, the working class (the reference is to the United States in particular) is now deeply integrated into the system, "under the popular conservative base is the substratum of outcasts and strangers, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the disabled. They remain outside the democratic process and their presence test as never before how real and immediate need to put a stop to intolerable conditions and institutions . why their opposition is revolutionary even if it is their conscience. Their opposition hits the system from outside and is not diverted from the system, is a force primary that violates the rules of the game, and in so doing shows that it is a rigged game. When you meet and fall in the streets, without arms, without protection, asking the most basic civil rights, they know they face dogs, stones, and bombs, jail, concentration camps, even death. Their strength is felt behind every political demonstration for the victims of law and order. The fact that they begin to refuse to take part in the game may be the fact that marks the beginning of the end of a period " 28.

Already Reason and Revolution 29 Marcuse had seen the power of critical thinking or negative, is the distance that separates the fact, the existing requirements from rationality becomes also a device for bringing these two poles 30. Hence the notion of "determinate negation" that is, at the same time, a method and a purpose: as an analysis method of concrete historical forms of domination, identifying its internal contradictions; goal as the possibility of denying these inconsistencies through a close emancipatory implemented antagonist from a real subject that those involved in contradictions, is keen to get rid of denying, without surrendering the course of the world, instead of having the conviction to be able to change. In this perspective it is therefore essential to recall that illusion, enchantment, the utopian tension towards a better future that capitalism has stifled by convincing people of the futility of opposition to the system. Consequently, despite the criticism of the USSR in Soviet Marxism 31 motivated dall'incongruenza between the ideological premises of Marxism and its historical realization in the Soviet system, Marcuse can not reject the equality Arendt between Communism and Nazism 32. The fruit of determinate negation is in the draft of the "great refusal" to be understood as the radical negation of this division by a concrete subject on a "peaceful life", in short, the determinate negation suggests that the negativity of this is contained also the reasons for its denial of his passing. This means that any large-scale social change does not occur as a result of inevitable historical automatic, but the changes prior to implementation should be thought about. What Marcuse goes in search is nothing less than a revolution of thought "already thematized by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment , which raises the western history as an evolution altered because of the relationship of instrumental subject-object domain. These considerations are integrated in Eros and Civilization 33 with Freudian psychoanalysis, understood primarily as knowledge of the conditions that make happiness possible: psychoanalysis (and Marxism) allow the identification of reason and happiness, through the exposure and critique of exploitation and repression of the instincts 34. Marcuse agrees with Sigmund Freud's view that for the building of a civilization is indispensable instinctual repression, to the point that "Civilization begins when the primary objective has been effectively waived, the full satisfaction of needs" 35, but he disagrees with Freud's view that the repression taking place in this particular company is suitable for the maintenance of society itself, in fact for Marcuse in Western society there is a surplus of repression that has transformed the immediate satisfaction in satisfaction over time, the limitation of the same pleasure in the joy (game) in labor (labor), freedom in aimed at the security domain, " Freud has described this change as the transformation of the principle of pleasure in the reality principle " 36 . It 's just the logic of domination, ie the structure of a power system that keeps it alive by controlling the individual, forcing humanity to suppress impulses and to renounce the happiness. To remedy this situation, where now "the repression has become so effective that it take, in the eyes of the individual restrained, the form (illusory) freedom" 37, the liberating forces are identified by Marcuse art (even incorporating it into high culture) and technology. The art of imagination as a faculty di un futuro non repressivo, conciliato con le esigenze della ragione, nel quale possa essere vissuta una esistenza pacificata; la tecnica come possibilità concreta di liberazione grazie alla sua funzione di esonero da molteplici operazioni (svolte dalle macchine) e, conseguentemente, come riconquista di uno spazio e di un tempo nei quali poter sviluppare le facoltà psico-fisiche dell’individuo. Ciò non significa che arte e tecnica rappresentino un’alternativa parallela al marxismo; piuttosto l’arte svolge il ruolo di riserva dei bisogni umani soppressi, per esprimere il grande rifiuto, appellandosi direttamente alla coscienza morale individuale, essa è un a priori prepolitico: "L’arte non può cambiare il mondo, but it can help change the consciousness and impulses of men and women who can change the world " 38. Art can be the spark to set in motion social changes that do not properly belong to the aesthetic dimension subvert the newspaper estranging from within, given that art is born inside of everyday experience. And here reveals a further difference between Marx and Marcuse, although the thought of one is consequential to the other, because "the situation, characteristic of monopoly capitalism, change the traditional concept of aesthetics Marxist argument that art, to fulfill its revolutionary role, must be directed to the "masses", the "people", the "proletariat." Today, there is a trend that needs to be a denial, that is the very antithesis of the Weltanschauung of the people, reproducing the existing society. Antithetical to the function of art include the subversion predominant experience, conscious or unconscious needs of the people, its function would be a radical alienation expressed in the language, images, form and content. In short, at this stage of capitalism the masses are not the social basis of a 'revolutionary art' 39. But paradoxically, the role that relies Marcuse art is as important as it is limited, in fact "The rest is not up to the artist. The achievement, the real change that would release men and things, as are the tasks of political action, the artist does not participate as an artist. But this outdoor activity today is probably in close connection with the situation of art - and perhaps even with the accomplishment of the purposes of art " 40.

Finally, Arendt uses il concetto di totalitarismo per definire un tipo di regime militaresco e materialmente oppressivo, nel quale l’elemento ideologico, l’uso della violenza e la presenza di un partito unico ne rappresentano i tratti sostanziali, con il rischio di un’estensione semantica del termine che finisce per indicare tutte le forme politiche contemporanee diverse dalle democrazie occidentali. Nell’interpretazione di Marcuse le caratteristiche descritte dalla Arendt rappresentano solo la prima manifestazione delle nuove forme di totalitarismo assunte dal capitalismo, essendo il capitalismo stesso un sistema che coinvolge la “totalità” delle relazioni sociali legandole alle dinamiche del capitale. Da qui nasce la cosiddetta società del benessere in which totalitarianism manifests itself in the form of one-dimensionality, and tolerance and democracy are only apparent, because democracy requires the same information and cultural tools that are denied to the people, whose views are therefore pre-packaged by the status quo : "democratic debate implies a necessary condition, namely, that people are able to choose and decide according to knowledge, that people have access to authentic and that, on this basis, his assessment is the result of a independent thought " 41. That's why political freedoms are largely insufficient if you do not engage in land for real democracy that now can only arise from a cultural revolution. "This revolution involves a radical transformation of the same needs and aspirations, cultural and material, of consciousness and sensitivity, work and leisure" 42, only individuals with these conditions may lead items, priorities and the direction of his thinking, his self-determined existence.

1) Emblematic of this criticism are the works of H. Arendt, Vita Activa , Bompiani, Milano 1991 and H. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man , Einaudi, Torino 1999.
2) H. Arendt, Vita Activa , op. cit., p. 97.
3) Ibid, pp. 128-129.
4) See Public space and privacy in H. Arendt, Vita Activa , op. cit.
5) Ibid, p. 94.
6) Ibid, p. 91.
7) It must be stressed that the liberation of Marx's work is directed towards the elimination of the phenomenon of alienation, reification.
8) H. Arendt, Vita Activa , op. cit., p. 157, according to Arendt, Marx this mutual observation by Adam Smith.
9) Ibid, pp. 157-158.
10) Ibid, p. 158.
11) See What is freedom? and What is the authority? In H. Arendt, Between Past and Future , Garzanti, Milano 1999.
12) H. Arendt, Vita Activa , op. cit., p. 182.
13) See R. Gatti, Thinking about democracy, AVE, Rome 1989.
14) H. Arendt, Le origini del totalitarismo , Comunità, Torino 1999.
15) Ibidem , p. 373.
16) A tale proposito è significativo il titolo dell’opera di Nikolaj Lenin risalente al 1916: L’imperialismo, fase suprema del capitalismo .
17) H. Arendt, Le origini del totalitarismo , op. cit., p. 414.
18) Ibidem , p. 417.
19) Ibidem , p. 409.
20) See H. Marcuse, The One-Dimensional Man, op. cit.
21) Ibid, pp. 23-24.
22) Ibid, p. 15.
23) Ibid, p. 17.
24) A thorough exposition of the theory of two phases is present in K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme , Editori Riuniti, Rome 1990.
25) See H. Marcuse, The end of utopia, Laterza, Bari 1970.
26) "Having fun is to be agreed (...) Means fun every time, not having to think, to forget suffering even where it is exposed and put on display "in M. Horkheimer - TW Adorno, Dialectic dell'Iluminismo , Einaudi, Torino 1997, p. 154.
27) "the price of survival is the practical work, the metamorphosis of the idea of \u200b\u200bdomination" in ibid. pp. 232-233.
28) Ibid, p . 259.
29) H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution , Il Mulino, Bologna 1997.
30) This power the negative, so understood, to approach GWF Hegel and Marx, both of which are configured as first thought patterns useful to draw a methodology of historical knowledge.
31) H. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism , Bloomsbury Publishing, Parma 1968.
32) See H. Marcuse, front or Nazism, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2001.
33) H. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization , Einaudi, Torino 1967.
34) E ', however, be aware that there is a critique of Marcuse's Marxist ideology reduced positive ( Soviet Marxism , Op. cit.) Freudianism and understood as a theory of individual psychological status quo in ( Epilogue: Critique of the neo-Freudian revisionism in Eros and Civilization, op. cit.).
35) H. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization , op. cit., p. 59.
36) Ibid, p. 60.
37) Ibid, p. 238.
38) H. Marcuse, The aesthetic dimension , Mondadori, Milano 1979, pp. 32-33.
39) H. Marcuse, Letter to surrealisti del gruppo di Chicago , http://utenti.lycos/Marcuse2000/index-3.html
40) H. Marcuse, L’arte nella società a una dimensione in Critica della società repressiva , Feltrinelli, Milano 1968, p. 148.
41) H. Marcuse, Tolleranza repressiva in La dimensione estetica e altri scritti , Guerini, Milano 2002, p. 83.
42) H. Marcuse, Controrivoluzione e rivolta in La dimensione estetica e altri scritti , op. cit., p. 182.

( "B@belonline.net " , No. 5, 2004)

This work is published under a Creative Commons License .