Freudo-marxism and Vulgar Materialism
Freud’s main directive in Civilisation and its Discontents is explaining why the social structure he found himself in is ultimately unsatisfying. He attributes this dissatisfaction to a fundamental contradiction between the instincts of individuals, and the need to limit those instincts for society to function. He paints a Hobbesian image of human motivation, with drive fulfillment being the motivator for all human action, and violence being the most direct route to governing and ensuring drive fulfillment. In this way society is ultimately built upon violence. This view of human nature aligns with what is called "vulgar materialism." This is an interpretation of Marx's political science that attributes most, if not all history to drive fulfillment of humans. Revolutions are bound to happen when people are hungry, and people become hungry when out of work. For example, the agitating works of Marat were not the cause of the French revolution, hunger was. Marat simply reminded them of their hunger, no further reason is needed. It's not hard to see how easily we can incorporate Freud's account of society into this. The arc of politics has been accelerating towards late stage geo-Capitalism, which comes with intense hungers and limitations of the self, making the Freudo-Marxist mode of analysis especially worthwhile. It is in this climate that the mass unrest of the masses seems bound to result in change. I don’t just mean Communist activity, as every ideology is going to have to vie for influence with other "societies in the making." Historically, this has included Fascism. This revolutionary impulse can be explained using Freud's destruction drive. The first step of the revolutionary impulse is the realization that the current conditions are the fault of someone. I am not hungry because there is no food present, nor is it a failure of my caretaker (parent or economic organization). I am hungry because someone is keeping me hungry. The immediate conclusion is that the person causing this hunger should be imprisoned, killed, or re-educated. I make the comparison between these revolutionary forces because they all exist in a similar way in the prospective revolutionaries' mind. It is a world where drives are fulfilled.
Freud notes how the natural reaction to the limiting of society is a desire to return to primal life. This is why we view pre-civilisation with a kind of nostalgia. In our imagination this is a limitless expanse of drive fulfillment. You eat, drink, and rest only within the bounds of needing to eat, drink, and rest again. This is a world governed entirely by drive fulfillment. Ted Kaczynski may embody a natural reaction to what Baudrillard called hyper-reality. This is the destruction impulse. It’s very initially an emotion of rage. When chimpanzees are isolated and cornered, insufficiently taken care of, they lash out and become violent. We have the same reaction. No one has ever sat down, with no emotional stake in the outcome, and done pure economic analysis and come out a revolutionary. To paraphrase a friend “The first step isn’t reading Capital, it’s having empathy.” Another possibility aside from primitive life may look something like Communism. Here too the world is imaged around satisfying the maximal amount of drive. In the mind of the revolutionary, every new society is going to look similar. The fascist craves the same destruction, and wants the same needs to be met. While a primitivist may be inclined towards isolation, the communist is inclined towards the opposite. Kojeve’s interpretation of the lord-bondsman dynamic posits that actions being motivated by someone else’s drive fulfillment is the very first basis of society.
Freud is perplexed by his friend’s “oceanic” feeling, which resembles a religious experience. Developmentally, very young children are unaware of the difference between themselves and the world. The development of self-consciousness requires the consciousnessness to limit itself against the grain of everything else. This is very reminiscent of the German Idealists, particularly Fichte. For Fichte, this difference is a base mechanism of the self, rather than just a stage of its development. The limiting of the self is a vital part of the formation of a society. Those who do not limit themselves are relegated as criminals and outcasts. I’m suggesting that this is not simply people conceding to the wills of others, but the limiting can be motivated on its own. This is what the "oceanic feeling" is. It's a part of being a part of something larger that your ego can dissolve within. It is a comforting thing. Freud speaks about the origination of groups only possible once the childhood’s need for superiority (in the eyes of the parents) has been repressed. Even in a selfless environment there is an unconscious desire to be the favorite. Freud may look upon church pews and see each practitioner trying to be the favorite son of God. This is why it is important to note that a Marxist society shouldn’t be thought of as a selfless utopia. People would still be acting primarily within their own self interest. Freud may say the only trace of selflessness would be a vain attempt at impressing someone, perhaps a stalin-like figure. I think of crowds at sporting events, concerts, and military rallies. All of these aid heavily in social cohesion, and without them the group dissolves and people are not willing to adhere to the social rules. They stop limiting themselves.
According to this theory, as long as the masses are entertained, fed, and housed, they will deal with the intense limits placed upon them. In the current year, this is not a problem. We can produce food on a massive scale for extremely little. We can generate any entertainment on the fly. We can even expand our organs to meet the satisfaction which has eclipsed it. This is clearly very bleak. Proceeding with this as correct, it seems like Marx just didn't anticipate how efficiently we could satisfy people's desires. I want to suggest that people can be influenced via their super-ego. This would allow things like ideology, philosophy, and art to be real contributing factors to national political action. And well, this just seems self apparent. I'm sure we all can cite many influences from books, speeches, and philosophy that have nothing to do with how hungry we were. On top of personal anecdotes, it seems like this type of influence can be historically monitored. There are complete fields of psychology dedicated to influencing the maximal amount of people possible, it's called propaganda. Propaganda works not just by reminding one of their desire, but telling them what they desire, and how to fulfill it.
All human actions, for Freud, have a direct desire that can explain the action. This includes the idyllic forms of communication I mentioned earlier, like art. What artists do is have a specific sensitivity to their own forms of desire and are able to express it to others in an abstract way. It would follow that the most perverted would make the best art! This inspiration comes from the unconscious, and communicates to the unconscious. Contemporary artists near and following Freud, like Dali, have attempted to embrace this "unconscious" way of doing art. So political motivation may just work in the same way. The best propaganda recognizes an unconscious fear, and brings it to the forefront of the mind. The best propagandists, like Marat or Tucker Carlson, are deeply fearful themselves! Their greatest skill is finding the deepest unconscious fears within their own psyche, and trying to prompt that same response within others. I do think this is how propaganda works, but this has nothing to do with rationality. Rationality, seemingly, is a refuge to this type of reaction. If rationality is a real thing, and not another way to fulfill a drive —wanting to be seen as smart, for example— it’s able to influence human action in a self justifying way. At least as it exists as a motivator in human action (as it is relevant to materialism) rationality cannot be ignored. It is thereby possible to communicate aside from desire. I can motivate someone based on abstractions that don't have to do with desire. I can convince someone to act to fulfill someone else's desire, which is the basis of society according to Kojeve. A vulgar materialist could wave this away, citing how the bulk percentage of motivation is drive fulfillment, and this “rationality” is exceptionally rare. Later psychoanalysts like Lacan argue rationality, too, is an attempt for the Ego to regain control. But this doesn’t discount the potential influence. Imagine arguing with one individual person. Instead of making your claim the most agreeable with consistent reasoning, rhetoric, and emotional appeal, you instead figure out what would appeal to their primal urges the most effectively. This is not how you communicate with people, this is how you communicate with an animal. For example, what would a society of maximal drive fulfillment look like? Would people simply be content in their habitual eating and sleeping? Would the unconscious anxieties of abstract life not have to be sublimated into art? My visceral reaction is no, of course not. In fact, this utopia would allow an exceptional focus to be placed on pointless activity. The issue in this question is that Freud’s critiques are not just of Capitalism. It would be hard for even a Freudo-marxist to claim that marxism would solve the issues Freud poses. These issues are fundamental to what a society is.
To look at the difference this makes I want to touch on religion. Religion holds a special place in Freudo-marxism, as both Freud and Marx heavily criticized religion. Marx famously called it the opiate of the people (in a refutation to Hegel). He thought religion was a kind of black hole that only served to distract people from class consciousness. It implemented a just world fallacy on a massive scale. That is, the theory that good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people. Rephrased; good people get wealthy, and bad people do not. Freud explained the need for religion as a need to idealize one's own internal attributes. A transcendent father figure that lets you judge the world through his eyes. Both are claiming that God makes the world easier, more palatable. A pretty easy response would be to note the diversity of world religions. Not every religion has a patriarchal or matriarchal God-head. I am also suspicious of if the oceanic feeling is universal. As Parsons points out in his essay on this same topic, Buddhists would not find this experience familiar as a source of the mystical genesis. It is not a great aesthetic realization that reminds one of eternity. It’s subtle, and passive. It’s not a realization, it’s a return to one’s Tathāgatagarbha, or Buddha nature. In fact, this realization is everything but eternal!
It takes a real distance into the book to realize why Freud wants to talk about the Oceanic feeling. It comes up in strange places, and he only addresses it fully at the end. His point is that this feeling is a primordial, childlike experience. It’s the feeling of not being limited, both by society and one's own perception. It’s what was there before the ego. Even if entirely critical of phenomenal, rational, or religious experience, you must account for it, if only to do history in a better way. This analysis would simply not make sense when talking about the civil rights movements in America, which were primarily organized through black churches. Or more directly, the massive amount of influence Liberation theology played in Latin American politics. Would the Russian revolution have happened without the works of Marx? What I hope I’ve made a case for is that a purely drive based view of psychology and history leaves something out. Even if the analysis is mostly accurate, and can be very useful, it cannot be the entire analysis. I’ve also argued that the oceanic feeling may be its own drive, and a source of social cohesion. Both of these points require an insistence towards real and genuine rationality.
Citations and footnotes
Parsons, William B.. The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism. United States, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents, 1929
Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations. Accessed via academia.edu