Critical Work and Radical Pedagogy: Recalling Herbert Marcuse

Capitalism has long been armed with its own theory of work and wealth; labor has not. This essay will attempt to re-think a critical philosophical analysis of labor and the human condition and build an alternative vision for labor. Given recent global economic dislocations, the time is ripe to reconstruct a critical theory of work. We will build on, and beyond, the foundational theories of Herbert Marcuse to produce a revitalized theory of society grounded in a critical understanding of human working activity. Herbert Marcuse's political-philosophical vision and cultural critique continue to shed light on current debates concerning repressive democracy, political and racial inequality, education as social control, and the radical meaning of political struggle - especially where issues of alienation, war, oppression, critical inquiry, critical media literacy, and civic/revolutionary action are involved. Marcuse's caustic condemnations of U.S. military aggression, its need for an "enemy," the irrationality of U.S. economic waste, destruction, and affluence, etc., are particularly timely and deserve invigorated attention across this nation's campuses as well as in other cultural and political circles today.Three major reasons compel us to highlight the most radical aspects of Marcuse's thought right now. First of all: Marcuse knew that because capitalism exists, so too does exploitation, and that system change is necessary and possible if we comprehend and refuse the system. He stressed that system change requires a twofold refusal: of its mode of production and the repressive satisfactions that replicate it. Over the last several decades there has been a regression in the comprehensiveness of critical theory. We are returning to Marcuse to fill-in some of the key and notable eco-nomic deficits of contemporary forms of cultural commentary stemming from postmodern literary and aesthetic theory. Secondly, Marcuse not only described the obscenities of global inequality, domination, alienation, and war in an extraordinarily vivid and effective manner, more importantly his writing evokes labor solidarity among subaltern groups across traditional barriers of culture: immigration status, race, gender, wealth and income differentials, and political-philosophical diversity. He elucidated social change strategies needed to help labor reclaim its humanist promise, including tactics for intercultural/multicultural organiza-tional development. Thirdly, Marcuse was aware that critical theory needs to be taught in order to empower the exploited and oppressed, hence the need for radical pedagogy. This booklet presents a curriculum component that contributes to the signature pedagogy of radical social science. It presents an analysis of the centrality of labor within the wealth and value production processes of the U.S. economy today, and critically examines the relationship of property ownership to the origins of income inequality.Economic processes today divest us from our own creative work, yet these also form the sources of our future social power. We have attempted to furnish the beginnings of a more comprehensive critical social theory stressing the centrality of labor in the economy.