ABSTRACT
The provisional picture of the “co-operative society” helps clarify Marcuse’s understanding of “free labor” implied by the marxist concept of “alienated labor”. This is very different from any form of work under capitalism, or in fact any previous stage of mankind’s historical development. The free individual in the co-operative society is vastly different from any conscientious “homo faber”, sharing equally in the chores and the responsibilities, however different they will be from those of a capitalist order and however “conscious”, able and knowledgeable Marcuse’s may be. The extensive definition of “free labor” has also definite epistemological implications for the idea of the “co-operative society”. The rationality which is to guide its members is radically different from the cold calculus implied by political economy and fostered by the wider social order of capitalism. Marcuse’s explicit return to Feuerbach makes clear that the qualities emphasised by Feuerbach as distinctly human receive a central place in his own vision of the “co-operative society”.
