Marcuse left his key theoretical questions unanswered, falling back on Freudian catchwords

Evidence

How the process of repression had come into being; whether the distinction between basic repression and surplus repression was to imply that a civilizing process free from surplus repression might have been possible; whether the achievements of a civilization marked by domination and surplus repression should not be examined critically and fundamentally revised; whether what had been condemned to suffer a subterranean, tabooed history might not have fallen victim to distortions that could not simply be thrown off one day like tiresome fetterspressing questions like these were either not put by Marcuse at all or were simply answered with phylogenetic speculations taken over from Freud or answered with catchwords, for example in the reference to the need for a rational reorganization of a huge industrial apparatus', and the transformation of sexuality into eros and the replacement of alienated labour’ with `“libidinal” labour’ that would then be possible. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 528

Categorization

• XREF: Maps the basic repression / surplus repression distinction onto the reader’s existing notes on the Frankfurt School’s domination-of-nature thesis.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: did Marcuse ever address whether a civilization free of surplus repression was historically possible, or is it simply an unrealized counterfactual?
• SEED: Article angle: how a major critical theorist’s most famous book answers its hardest questions with ‘phylogenetic speculation’ — intellectual history as diagnosis of evasion.