Decision And Revolution

Marcuse’s phenomenology of historical materialism is the combination of Heidegger’s existential phenomenology and Marxist theory of social history,from which we can find the close relationship between the decisive concept and the class consciousness of the proletariat,the state of universal alienation of human beings and the decline of ordinary people,and then we can draw the conclusion that only by combining Marxism with phenomenology can we achieve this goal To deal with the historicity of human being’s being in a fair and open way,so that people in every society can recover the true state and the whole society can recover the basic conclusion of the true state.There are several important steps: first,from the Heidegger sense of "to death and to be" in the sense of decision-making to the sense of social practice of conscious "class consciousness" decision-making.Second,the "decision" of class consciousness must be implemented in the field of social life,that is,to carry out "radical action",to carry out "revolutionary practice",that is to say,it must be used in the public field(although the change in the private field is meaningful,it is far from enough),and the public field is also the real field of action.To carry out "radical action" itself has the meaning of sociality and publicity.In this sense,the phenomenology of historical materialism requires "decision" to enter the historical process,in fact,it must become a public process.When decision leads to radical behavior,the efforts of phenomenology to go deep into specific historical reality will inevitably lead to social revolution,so phenomenology becomes a revolutionary theory.In addition,when dialectics takes the object of its investigation-whether it is human or society in the society-into full view,it must unify the binary opposites of material and spirit,theory and practice,thinking and existence,subject and object,and regard the object of historical materialism as both material and spiritual at the same time.We must distinguish the law of historical materialism from that of natural science.Thus,Marcuse developed a phenomenology of historical materialism:as a historical materialism,he no longer regarded its object as merely an object,and no longer regarded its laws as having nothing to do with the concrete;on the other hand,as a phenomenology of historical materialism,he was different from Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology,because this phenomenology was a revolutionary theory.Its purpose is to guide the radical behavior of the whole human being.However,the maturity of this historical inevitability depends on a specific class subject’s overall understanding of the historical situation,and then makes a "decision".Only on the basis of this understanding can the revolutionary movement really recognize its historical conditions,specific possibilities and limits.Specifically speaking,in the face of the "survival crisis" of contemporary capitalism,the proletariat can only launch a real revolutionary movement on the premise of breaking through the materialized consciousness of the bourgeoisie and grasping its own historical situation.This revolution means not only the change of external production relations,but also the thorough revolution of human beings.The only real way of individual liberation can only be the overall social revolution.