crisis potentials without eliminating the irrationalities of the system. The systematic irrationalities of capitalism no longer articulate themselves as social crises. For this phenomenon, it is not the economy alone but the transformations in culture as well that are responsible.

In Eros and Civilization, Marcuse formulates the impossibility of social crises under conditions of industrial-technological civilization as follows: the very objective conditions that would make the overcoming of industrial-technological civilization possible also prevent the subjective conditions necessary for this transformation from emerging. ⁶⁵ The paradox of rationalization consists of the fact that the very conditions that could lead to a reversal of loss of freedom cannot be perceived by individuals under conditions of disenchantment. In industrial-technological civilization, the real possibility of ending the loss of freedom is provided by the transformation of science and technology into productive forces and by the subsequent elimination of immediate labour from the work process. Labour is no longer experienced by the individual as the painful exertion of organic energy to accomplish a specific task. The labour process becomes impersonal and is increasingly dependent upon the organization and co-ordination of collective human effort. The diminishing significance of immediate labour in the work process, already analysed by Marx in the Grundrisse, does not result in a corresponding decline of sociocultural control over the individual.

Quite to the contrary, the impersonalization and rationalization of authority relations brings with it a corresponding transformation in the dynamics of individual identity formation. ⁶⁶ With the decline of the role of the father in the family, the struggle against authority loses its focus: the self cannot achieve individuation, for, bereft of personal figures against whom to struggle, he can no longer experience the highly personal and idiosyncratic processes of individuating identity formation. Aggression that cannot be discharged in the Oedipal struggle against a human figure is subsequently internalized and generates guilt. ⁶⁷

The most far-reaching consequence of the disappearance of the autonomous personality is the weakening of the 'living bonds between the individual and his culture'. ⁶⁸ Ethical substance disappears. The disappearance of ethical substance in industrial-technological civilization dries up the cultural sources of group revolt which had hitherto been carried out in the name of the memories of past rebellions. The loss of culture as a repository of collective memory threatens the very dynamic of civilization itself: revolt, repression, and renewed revolt. When culture ceases to be a living reality, the memory of unfulfilled and betrayed promises in the name of which the revolt of the

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