For Herbert Marcuse, ‘the optimal goal is the replacement of false needs by true ones, the abandonment of repressive satisfaction’ (‘The New Forms of Control’, p. 9). Explain Marcuse’s argument and consider its relevance to 'The Semplica Girl Diaries' .

  

1. For Herbert Marcuse, ‘the optimal goal is the replacement of false needs by true ones, the abandonment of repressive satisfaction’ (‘The New Forms of Control’, p. 9). Explain Marcuse’s argument and consider its relevance to one or more of the texts you have studied on the module.

 

 

Marcuse’s argument

 

Marcuse tells us that the world we live in is not as free as we think. He argues we feel ‘needs’ for things we don’t ‘need’. Such needs perpetuate the toil, aggressiveness, misery and injustice that come with work. In effect these false needs make us work more in order to be able to attain them, trapping us in a form of ‘servitude’, in work.

 

Our true human needs have been preconditioned, they are genetic. Our human needs are our historical needs. Our true needs are those which we have needed through history to survive: nourishment, clothing, lodging etc. All others are ‘false needs’.  Needs imposed by society, by society’s masters. The fact Marcuse refers to both false and true as ‘needs’ underlines that they are not just a suggestion, but a desire that reaches into the innermost part of our psyche.

 

How do we come to ‘need’ false needs? Via advertisement, implanting of false conflict, the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of struggle for existence. Think football shirts, swiss army knifes etc as the most basic level. Commodities we buy come to represent sides of a conflict, or the ideas people believe make them, themselves. Buying them feels like you collect a close friend, or collect a part of yourself. Eventually people recognise themselves (all their ideals and sides) in their commodities. In the fulfilling of these false needs we ‘relax’, we have ‘found ourself’, almost kept ourself alive (in this way it can feel very similar to a true need). Society therefore succeeds in flattening out contrast between true and false needs. Making us feel as if we ‘need’ both.

 

Marcuse tells us the problem with purchasing false needs is that it achieves a ‘repressive satisfaction’. In relaxing as we buy or achieve false needs we are indoctrinated in today’s society further. Why question our society when we are relaxed, soothed (we have saved and found ourself) and gratified in it?

 

Why question it? Because we fail to realise we are in a society that makes us inherently unhappier than we need to be. The soothing represses our realisation that to gain the things we think we need (because they gratify us) we toil an irrational amount of the time. We miscalculate the value of the false needs, the things we work for (in them we are not truly saving or finding ourself but society makes it hard for us to calculate the true amount which we ‘need’ them (we can only compare how much we need something to what else we believe are needs (if none are real needs then we cannot measure quantitively)). This miscalculation makes us overwork ourselves, in consequence we end up toiling just to consume the waste that we produce in the process. This toil, Marcuse argues, means that the mobilisation of our population’s productivity is above and beyond our individual or groups best interests. The level of work/ toil in society is not necessary.

 

Yet if we were to have such a thought, how would we evaluate our best interests? Productivity, efficiency and GDP all increase as we toil and buy. The measuring sticks demonstrate progress. Progress is good. Efficiency is good. Higher, better, faster are all good. So we must be crazy to question a society that is the most efficient ever at turning our waste into our needs. Therefore we are told to abandon our reason, any suspicions that we don’t need to work this hard, that there is a possibility of a better way of doing things, because by every measurement all is good.

 

This effect is mirrored across fields. Advancement in research and studying is ‘populated by self-validating hypothesis, hypnotic definitions and insistence on certain operational and behavioural concepts’. Therefore scientific, technical and most any form of progress in measurement or research becomes another instrument of dominion, that backs up the view that this way of life, right now, is the best.

 

With the society set against it the mind’s capability to fight against the status quo is whittled down. Ideas, aspirations and objectives which transcend the established universe are repelled or reduced. All serious counter action becomes less and less possible. Our ‘consciousness’ of our own ‘servitude’ gets beaten down.

 

Thus the rampant implementation of false needs becomes an ‘effective form of warfare against liberation’. Marcuse argues that our free market economy (despite its name) replaces a free culture with a productive one. Whilst we are given freedom of enterprise, such freedom is merely liberty to make the choice between working and starving. Giving us the choice between two bad options. The choice between toil or insecurity and fear. The choice not to starve is the first step of the ladder into a society which does not work for us, and ultimately traps us in servitude.

 

With modern technology Marcuse argues that having to make this choice between toil and starvation should not be necessary. Freedom from true want, true need (the only real freedom) is a real possibility, if we were to make achieving true needs for all our goal, if the ‘productive apparatus’ were organized for satisfaction of vital needs then such servitude, such poor choices, need not be possible. He suggests to achieve, or even realise we want true needs and not excess, organization would have to be centralized (to avoid interference by those already indoctrinated, or with a vested interest as they are some of the few that the current society works for). People might be nervous about such totalitarianism. Marcuse argues a form of totalitarianism is effectively already in place. Current elections, whilst democratic, are still elections for the masters of our societies. Just because we elect our masters, does not mean they do not exist.  Said masters are then enacting totalitarianism through the manipulation of needs. Making false ones true, keeping society the same, and keeping themselves at the top.

 

Unlike now, when true needs are replaced by false ones, under a new system there needn’t be an imperative for such replacement once true needs are fulfilled. The idea of such a new system may seem scary, different, totalitarian. But Marcuse tells us that title does not matter when it may achieve a better life for society. Such leadership would not prevent autonomy but render it possible. Allowing political opposition and thought to no longer be a critical function of our society as everyone gets what they need. Freedom from want (needs) false and true, even the need to worry about, and want different, politics is Marcuse’s ultimate end goal. He tells us our focus should not be on increasing our current measuring sticks (productivity, GDP etc) but re directing attention to resolving true needs and then attempting to create a system that does require false ones. That does not persuade us that a life of servitude is the best life we can live.

 

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Semplica Girl Diaries Plot summary:

We meet a man thinking about the future. Writing to it. First we learn of his jealousy towards the brain surgeon who makes fun of his kind of work, whilst he admires said surgeon’s incredible house filled with possessions, our protagonist struggles to afford a £300 toy animal for his daughter’s birthday.

Then he gets lucky, after rewarding himself with a ‘scratch off’ at the end of his week of work he wins £10,000. Suddenly he can afford a lot. Therefore, he throws an amazing birthday party for his daughter. Including ‘Semplica Girls’, who are girls from third world countries who are paid to be decorations. He keeps them for longer than just the party. But then one day he wakes up and they are gone. There is worry (have they been stolen or saved by activists) and then he finds out his other daughter was the one who ‘let them down’.

 

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The Semplica Girl Diaries from Marcue’s perspective.

From the start the dream of the fulfilling as many false needs as possible is presented. The dream of a “new car soon anyways when rich” is soon expanded upon when the protagonist and his family visit the Torrini’s house. They own a foot massager, Ferraris, and Disney’s autograph. These are not just practical needs, the autograph is the very opposite of having any utility.

Then we focus on the Merigo Round. Importantly this is a “historical Merigo round”. It is likely not even there for its function (already pointless) (else it would likely be new) but rather for decoration, as with the autograph, to remind them of who they are, the kind of things they like. The Torrini’s demonstrate what the fall down the ladder of the toil and buy life looks like.

The Torrini’s mother hopes that her children’s “innate interests will win out”. From a Marcusian perspective this is futile, in everything false they have surrounded their children with how could they ever evaluate what they really want, what they really need. They have likely succeeded in blurring innateness to the highest degree. Will their children be able to evaluate how much the need real needs like food, when as they grew up the thing that brought their family the most ‘perceived happiness’ was a broken amusement park ride.

 

The Torrini father suggests many people do jobs with “no tangiable benefit”, to which the protagonist aims to think of a response. Initially the Torrini’s father appears to be most ‘Marcusian’. But when we consider the extent to which he engages in false needs we can see him differently, as a hypocrite. He engages in false needs, which provide him benefit. Those jobs which he states provide no benefit, are providing his family with these goods they buy. How can he state that these jobs have no benefit, when he clearly believes he gets a benefit from the things they create, contributing to the consumerism that allows such jobs to exist. He has registered the fact that toil is unnecessary, but not that his wants for the things he knows are ‘unneccessary’, are also unnecessary. He has failed to spot the other end of the see-saw. As Marcuse tells us, so imbedded in society are we that it makes us abandon our Reason.

 

This glimpse of truth is followed by more insight, as the now drunk protagonist tell us that rich people make poor people feel like “dopes”. He realises that society is not set up in everyone’s best interest. He is tired of “work, work, work”. As the Torrini’s father gets close to realising how he himself is indoctrinated, so does the protagonist.

But then quickly, the next day when not drunk, he tells us he does not “hate the rich” in fact he “aspires to be rich”. He paints his delusion. He realises he is not happy with current situation, but thinks the solution is to keep ‘toiling’, ‘working’. He does not even contemplate that society is not made in his best interest. He views it as a ladder he cannot step on or off, but only climb. This is Marcuse’s choice between toil and insecurity and fear. The later option does not seem feasible, when feeling most ‘rational’, when our fear is not inhibited by alcohol. Whilst these two dads get close to coming around to Marcuse’s perspective two characters in the story are arguably, ‘enlightened’.

 

‘Farmer Rich’ calls Semplica Girls ‘showoffy moves’. He “thinks anything fun = a showoffy move” Saunders protagonist tells us. We can interpret that when the protagonist says anything fun, he means anything that provides repressive satisfaction, given he is not ‘enlightened’.

 

How does Farmer rich manage to not slip into the belief that anything fun is fun, how does he seem to have the understanding that false needs = showoffy moves? From Marcuse’s logic a farmer is connected with base (true) needs. He knows the real value of food that he makes. He knows how much time went into it. More importantly he does not have to make the choice between starvation and toil. His worry about not having enough to eat may only come from the weather. In not having to make the choice between starvation and toil he does not have to take the first step into society’s toil, and then everything that comes with it, eventual indoctrination into the purchase and work society that keeps everything the same. So we can infer through Marcuse’s logic that he is a “Farmer (who is) Rich” in that his true needs are fulfilled, and he understands he does not need all these false (showoffy) ones.

 

From a Marcusian perspective the doctor is indoctrinated, although he might believe himself not to be, the farmer might not be (although we never meet him to be sure). There is one more character who may be ‘enlightened’. Eva.

Eva “helps” the Semplica Girls. Her dad tries to tell her about the girl’s siblings who die and who are put into prostitution and that they help them by employing them. He tells her that the girls are “not sad”. That everything is relative (an idea we will come back to). Eva cuts through the argument – “why not just give them money?”. Arguably Eva is used to turn the stereotype of old and wise on its head. The young have the potential to be the least indoctrinated, such that they can see when false needs are false, if protected (as they have been (there dad does not tell them that money does not grow on trees, but keeps the thoughts to himself, trying to hide them from the choice between insecurity and toil for as long as possible).

Despite Eva’s thought process being rational, as Marcuse expects, her dad cannot see reason. His brain so ‘whittled down’ that with the police he laughs about ‘activists’ and looking at Eva does not see logic, but sensitivity. Jumping to remember how Eva told them that the “rocking chair told her it wants to live out life in basement”. He compares an inanimate object to the Semplica girls, whilst Eva goes against the consumerist society, only making her seem more like the logical, ‘enlightened’ one.

 

Whilst indoctrinated in society himself the father maybe better than most in protecting children. Whilst the dad may succeed temporarily in keeping the realities of life from Eva (not rubbing it in that money doesn’t grow on trees, or worrying them about their money problems) it is demonstrated how hard it is. His elder daughter Lily seems already indoctrinated, keeping a list of Semplic Girls, crying cathartic “Lily tears of happiness” at her good party. Saunders highlights that when she goes into school with a ‘Condom box’, she is made to realise by school and friends. Even a dad who attempts to keep their children innocent cannot forever.

 

The dad realises he is not living a good life ((“fake smile”), no time to go and see dad, stressed, fight good fight, views ATM machines as “scary” – is fearful even though he has gone down the toil path) this does not stop him, he does not question society. Demonstrating the effectiveness of the indoctrination, he solves his problems with society with purchases helping that society (instead of stopping to think), and in the repressive satisfaction they bring his awareness of the problems he can see is reduced.  He purchases scratch off. Purchases a false need every Friday, making himself feel better despite all these negative emotions. Repressive satisfaction achieved by false needs demonstrated perfectly. He buys and then feels a bit better, so less concerned about everything wrong with society, but then also has less money so forced to toil even more in future.

 

Saunders demonstrates the extreme version of purchasing of a false need, the extreme version of repressive satisfaction, when our protagonist wins 10k from his scratch-off. Protagonist tells us “Happy possible” “knew but forgot…” leads to him saying “life is worth it thanks to perfect day – when looking back in old age.” He says this after one good day. One bit of luck. Achieving one false need. We can see how quickly he is reindoctrinated by repressive satisfaction, hope that all his needs could be fulfilled returns, which leads to a positive spiral as he believes he could be a “bigger presence at work” a “whole lot more positive” could learn guitar, teach kids, travel, have hot chocolate on a mountain. This is repressive satisfaction in action, he has spent a long time unhappy, and now everything is worth it, all this unnecessary toil. Yet it is demonstrated such happiness will never last as he is too keen on that repressive satisfaction. (Buying Semplica girls) not paying off debt. “greatest luck of life (turns) into greatest fiasco of life”.

 

Lying Melanie underlines that Saunders builds upon Marcuse’s view. Saunders suggests that toil itself is not enough, people have to hurt other people to survive. The fear if toiling is not completed to the best degree, if they cannot achieve their false needs, is so much people are willing to lie. Further Toil and false needs become so intoxicating when the dad worries about missing Semplica girls in this “strange land” he worries they have “no money, no food”. Placing their lack of money (a false need) before a true one (a lack of food) does seem “strange” when we think about it.

 

Conculsion:

Saunders short story the Semplica Girl diaries agrees with much of Marcuse’s work. Almost a demonstration of false needs and repressive satisfaction in action. But in his ‘short’ story, he manages to demonstrate that liberation from servitude is possible, with Farmer Rich and Eva. Yet he highlights the futility that Marcuse suggested in trying to ‘persuade’ others. Perhaps this is where Saunders does not fully agree Marcuse’s point of view, that consciousness of servitude is the first step in liberation. The dad seems conscious of his servitude at times (when drunk), but never enough to really face the fear of stepping off the ‘treadmill’ of society. Marcuse’s work may allow us to see issues with society as the alcohol allows the dad to see, but are many of us reading really going to make much change to the way we live our life? If consciousness is the first step towards liberation, towards replacing false needs with true, then I would be keen to know what the second step is, and how Saunders characters, and us readers, engage with that.

 

 

Bibliography:

Saunders, G. (2012) The Semplica-Girl Diaries. New Yorker URL: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/15/the-semplica-girl-diaries-fiction-george-saunders (Accessed: 28/5/24)

Marcuse, H. (1964) ‘The New Forms of Control’ in One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London, Routledge.(Pages: 3-20)(2002)