A Study on Authority by Herbert Marcuse

Author:Herbert Marcuse
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Verso

This eBook is licensed to Magdaléna Michlová, [email protected] on 09/16/2020

IV

Counter-revolution and Restoration

A. COUNTER-REVOLUTION

The theory of the counter-revolution emerged simultaneously with the French Revolution : Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France appeared in 1790, Bonald’s Théorie du Pouvoir and de Maistre’s Considérations sur la France in 1796. Gentz, Friedrich Schlegel and Adam Müller undertook the propagation of their theories in Germany, and a straight line of social and ideological development leads from them to Friedrich J. Stahl’s theory, elaborated under the Restoration in Germany. In the counterrevolution’s philosophy of the state and society the theory of authority which subsequently becomes increasingly predominant is worked out for the first time – a consciously irrationalist and traditionalist theory. While the French use it clearly and trenchantly, mostly cynically, as a brilliant weapon in the political and social struggle, in the Germans it appears in an almost complete isolation from its actual basis; in the following we shall concentrate predominantly on its original form.

The theory of the counter-revolution initially fought for the feudal and clerical groups against the bourgeoisie as bearer of the revolution. In its long history it undergoes a decisive change of function : it is ultimately adapted for use by the ruling strata of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie changes from object to subject of the theory. It is the finest example in modern times of the justification and defence of a threatened social order. The change of function of the theory accompanies the change in the history of the bourgeoisie from the struggle of a rising class against the remnants of a social organization which has become a fetter on it, to the absolute domination of a few privileged strata against the onslaught of all progressive forces; it also accompanies the alienation of the bourgeoisie from all the values which it had proclaimed at the time of its rise. It becomes clear precisely from the theory of the counter-revolution, in particular with regard to the problem of authority, how strong were the progressive tendencies in the bourgeois philosophy of the state and society.

This already emerges from a basic thesis common to the whole theory of counter-revolution,1 which is directed against the bourgeois construction of state and society out of the rational will of man. If, in the face of this, state and society are now viewed, indirectly or directly, as divine institutions whose authority beyond this is derived either from its mere existence or mere permanence, or from a mystical âme nationale (de Maistre), this signifies the elevation of the existing system of domination above any possibility of justification vis-à-vis the insight and needs of individuals. The authoritative order embracing state and society is at once the ‘divine and natural’ order of things. ‘Society is not the work of man, but the immediate result of the will of the Creator, who willed it that man should be what he has been always and everywhere.’2

Far from being able to constitute a state and a society by his own power, man can

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