  While the first half of Eros and Civilization does not sound any more optimistic than the conclusion of Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, it does move from diagnosis to prognosis or from critique to hope. At the diagnostic level, Marcuse examines the form of social pathology that permeates advanced industrial societies. The conclusion is that capitalism demands a level of surplus repression that supports the development of the death instinct and social domination. However, repression is never complete. Even Freud was aware of the incompleteness of repression in a 1915 essay simply entitled “Repression”. Both Freud and Marcuse recognize that repressed instincts never go away, but continue to assert themselves in one way or another. The erotic drive, which is the builder of culture, continues to assert itself in its conflict with the death instinct. According to Marcuse, the erotic drive for happiness and pleasure lives on in fantasies, art, and utopian visions.