Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization envisioned a revolutionary society where automation and growing productivity would enable the elimination of unnecessary labor. The reduction of the working day would enable a greater liberation from mental and physical forms of repression. Marcuse arrived at this utopian ideal through a dialectical reinterpretation of Freud. Emphasizing the growth of productive forces and potential freedom from alienated labor, Marcuse’s vision was thoroughly Marxist, but his reading of Freud also addressed psychological questions that Marxists had neglected. More than 70 years later, Eros and Civilization continues to be relevant for our age of digital technology and artificial intelligence. While automation threatens to destroy jobs, it also unintentionally creates new possibilities for a post-scarcity future where there is minimal need for human labor. This future cannot be realized by technology alone, but rather will require a coalition of social movements involving great numbers of people worldwide and a counterculture to imagine how life could be beyond the reality principle of work. In this light, Eros and Civilization should be revisited as a vital work of critical theory that illuminates such revolutionary possibilities, along with their implications for social and personal emancipation.