Necessity happens
only through societal praxis. [...] In the Marxian dialectic, thought, subjectivity, remains the decisive factor of the dialectical process. [...] The result [of the development of society] depends on the conditions of possibilities for struggle and the consciousness that develops thereby. This includes that its bearers have understood their slavery and its causes, that they want their own liberation and see ways of how to achieve this. [...] The necessity of socialism depends on the societal situation of the proletariat and the development of class consciousness (Marcuse 1966, 224f).
The antagonisms of capitalism necessarily create crises and are founded on class relations. The sublation of capitalism and the realisation of human essence can only be achieved based on necessity and the possibilities conditioned by necessity and created by the free activity of humans that try to transform possibilities into concrete reality. The dialectic of society is shaped by a dialectic of freedom and necessity.
Not the slightest natural necessity or automatic inevitability guarantees the transition from capitalism to socialism. […] The revolution requires the maturity of many forces, but the greatest among them is the subjective force, namely, the revolutionary class itself. The realization of freedom and reason requires the free rationality of those who achieve it. Marxian theory is, then, incompatible with fatalistic determinism (Marcuse 1941a, 318–319).
4.3.4. Determinate Negation
Hegel pointed out with his concept of the determinate negation that the negative is at the same time positive, that contradictions do not dissolve into nothingness, but into the negation of its particular content. Negation is ‘the negation of a specific subject matter’ (Hegel 1812, §62). The new contains the old and more, therefore it is richer in content (Hegel 1812, §62). In order to stress the importance of human subjects in the dialectic of society, Marcuse argued that determined negation is ‘determinate choice’ (Marcuse 1964b, 221). Marcuse did not, as incorrectly argued by Hans Heinz Holz (2005, 109, 499), refuse the notion of determinate negation, but rather embedded this concept into subject-object-dialectics. Also Wolfgang Fritz Haug (1995, 690) mistakes Marcuse when claiming that the latter assumed that the ideology of capitalism surpassed the determinate negation historically. In the passage that Haug criticises – the epilogue to Reason and Revolution – Marcuse does not, as claimed by Haug, say that determinate negation is impossible today, but rather that repressive ideology enables capitalism ‘to absorb its negativity’ (Marcuse 1941a, 437) and that at the same time the ‘total mobilization of society against the ultimate liberation of the individual […] indicates how real is the possibility of this liberation (Marcuse 1941a, 439). The determinate negation of capitalism would be objectively possible, but would be forestalled subjectively, which would be a reality, but no necessity.
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