The notion of progress can have two meanings: the first concerns its quantitative aspect, which shows the evolution of technique in the search for the domination of nature. The second aspect is qualitative and addresses the development of human potential, aiming at its full realization.
Freud's psychoanalytic view points out the impossibility of human happiness. That's because according to this theory, the work in bourgeois society it is not pleasant, since it is used as a socially useful value, which causes the repression of Eros drives or of the pleasure principle, preventing its full satisfaction.
The evolution of quantitative or technical progress that uses or spends a large amount of drive energy has taken place at the expense of qualitative or human progress. The attempt to dominate nature by men led to their domination by productivity. This conditions the behavior of individuals in society, always aiming to meet their needs only. Even when the individual benefits from some improvement in their living conditions, it is always for the production to be more efficient and profitable. The individual's life becomes managed, the linear view of time determines the present aiming at an uncertain future, but which imposes itself on it. The past is no longer of any use.
If for Freud this view only makes unhappiness possible, for Marcuse it is the key point for human development. The technical conditions that have emerged to satisfy the basic needs of human beings already allow for a qualitative leap in the progress of this same human being. For this, however, it is necessary desublimate the culture that only tends to produce superfluous goods and publicize the acquisition of such goods as a source of freedom and happiness. It must be opposed to that linear view of time, a view that has only an ascending curve, a view of full time, of real duration and satisfaction. For Freud, unhappiness is characterized by the impossibility of fulfilling desires. Marcuse proposes the transcendence of these desires in order to reach the full fruition of the drives (of course, with a minimum of repression!) that characterize true happiness.
Therefore, the mask of the system fell with Marcuse's theory that evidences the undue association of freedom and happiness with the consumption of goods, which actually causes the illusory effect of satisfaction, encouraging more and more desires and making people sick, as the objectification of expression is not enough for fullness and satisfaction. It is necessary to disassociate these ideas from CONSUMPTION = FREEDOM, so that we can think of a truly qualitative progress in life and human relations. As Marcuse says, “time understood in a linear way is lived in relation to a more or less uncertain future” so that “full time, the duration of satisfaction, the duration of individual happiness, time as tranquility, can only be imagined as superhuman...”. This can be an alternative to current reflections on productive systems, overcoming the antithesis between exaggerated capitalism and communism.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/filosofia/a-nocao-progresso-marcuse.htm