Profilo utente

Already in 1964, Herbert Marcuse had understood that most of our political discourse is completely missing the point: we need to rethink our approach to technology, or we won't achieve anything apart from touching the cosmetic surface of things. 1986 and 1991 screamed for help, but we failed to listen. Now the climate crisis and the big technological oligopolies expose the deep rot of the system in smaller installments, and the background noise makes it impossible to understand why we seem unable to do anything. Marcuse reminds us to question the basics.

From chapter 7 (1964 translation via marcuse.org): «For example, the scientific approach to the vexing problem of mutual annihilation–the mathematics and calculations of kill and over-kill, the measurement of spreading or not-quite-so-spreading fallout, the experiments of endurance in abnormal situations–is mystifying to the extent to which it promotes (and even demands) behavior which accepts the insanity. It thus counteracts a truly rational behavior–namely, the refusal to go along, and the effort to do away with the conditions which produce the insanity.»

I like to compare Marcuse to the classic "Prometheus Bound" by Aeschylus, "Téchne d'anánkes asthenéstera makrô". This really is the basic problem of modern society, since 2500 years ago.

Bookchin attempts to rewrite the history of humanity to prove that hierarchical structures aren't "natural" or "necessary". Paleosociology is inevitably hard and dubious, but Bookchin doesn't pretend to have the truth in his pocket. Every page challenges us to think differently and consider what we could do together as a society.

Bookchin is very aphorism-friendly so it would be easy to extract a myriad slogans. I've wondered about this passage on ecofascism: «To lecture society about its "insatiable" appetites, as our resource-conscious environmentalists are wont to do, is precisely what the modern consumer is not prepared to hear. And to impoverish society with contrived shortage, economic dislocations, and material deprivation is certain to shift the mystification of needs over to a more sinister social ethos, the mystification of scarcity. This ethos–already crystalllized into the "life-boat ethic", "triage", and a new bourgeois imagery of "claw-and-fang" called /survivalism/–marks the first steps towards ecofascism».

I love that he decries false rationalism in a way that's compatible with Popper's view of irrationalism including mysticism and romaticism: «The reconstruction of reason as an interpretation of the world must begin with a review of the modern premises of rationalism–its commitment to insight through opposition» etc. (chapter 11, p. 302). A standard Popper critique of dialectic could fit just as well in place of the next paragraph. Actually when I read this book I had not read "Open Society" yet; now some passages are clearer to me. So I can recommend reading some Popper before this book to get most of it (especially when Plato is mentioned).