to live in the United States after the rise of Nazism has produced fascinating and important problems of contemporary culture.
He is now being cited, in virtually Revolution, in 1955. every review of theoretical him, the introduction of automation foundations of present-day student into industry marked a fundamental radicalism, as a major critical influ- change in the relations of producconsumption, the needs the are reported to form the intellectual masses had become sated, and were trinity which inspires the activism of indeed now simply manipulated and Italy's insurgent students. It is said administered by the system. "The also that his influence is powerful economie and cultural co-ordination in his old homeland of Germany, of the labouring classes" was now among the SDS. Having read Mar- complete: individuals had become cuse's work attentively over transformed into "total objects of number of years, 1 find it hard to society". All opposition to trace any very precise connections STATUS quo "pacified, •CObetween his most characteristic ideas ordinated and liquidated", and any and anything that is being written, said or done on the international was only "the dangerous prerogative Left nowadays. However, I will of outsiders". make the attempt, in the hope that those who have a clearer idea of the Marcuse SAUS much the thing, at greater length, in his book present radical movement and its One-Dimensional Man, published in theoretical origins will correct and 1964. Here he goes much further, supplement these remarks.
alleging that a drastic change in the Marcuse's output in the English terms of human thought has now language can be divided into three taken place in the West. Critical and phases, whien overlap somewhat. radical ideas have now become imThe first consists of his Reason and possible to formulate within the Revolution (1942) and Soviet realm of discourse that is accepted Marxism (1958) which analyse res- as rational by our society. Every pectively the rise (from Hegel to conceivable activity of the human Marx) and the decline (from Lenin spirit -artistic, philosophical, sciento Khruschev) of those critical. sub- tific, or simply playful versive social ideas which are tradi- to the maintenance of "the whole", tionally grouped under the heading the repressive structure of capitalism.
Marvient "Marxism- Science is counter-revolutionary be Leninism"). These are important cause it secks to control nature, and including Serge Mallet, an industrial books both for the historian of hence human nature. Art, however social ideas and for any revolu- radical in form or content, can only tionary who wants to trace the shifts function as an entertainment for the pointed out the very shaky character in the meaning of concepts, over conformist and well-off. Ordinary entire epochs, which can make or and academic language are alike produces an acquiescent working break a radical theory of society.
They imply no specific practical or "Newspeak" which denies not only peculiarly tactical payoff in terms of action; I any possibility, but also any meanmention this not as a criticism of ing, to concepts which transcend the unusual dependence on a secure the work, but to indicate the dim- -existing order of things. culty in establishing a lineage from reserves some of his severest stricthe present movement to Marcuse. tures for sexual permissiveness and laxity, which are apparently divertThe second set of writings is con- ing the masses from the knowledge cerned with the forms of intellectual of their oppression, and depleting dominatian and repression which them of the energy that should be are said by Marcuse to be prevalent sublimated into revolutionary forms advanced capitalist society. of creativity. (This last theme, of During his frst twenty years of what Marcuse calls "repressive desojourning in the United States, sublimation", is argued more fully Marcuse -became impressed by the virtual absence of any substantial lished in 1954.) movement of social criticism or rebellion in the USA, and concluded The last few sentences may sound Luxemburg's Spartakusband in 1918, was active in the pre-war Marxist Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), and since moving work on the development of Marxist thought and on According to our era of advanced technology. of individual responsibility and The laws of the system being un- largely apart from a group of mates. breakable, and unrelievedly hideous, This, however, could only apply to revolt is possible only for minorities a tiny proportion of the work-force even in an advanced ship to the main social process. The society. Semi-automated industry, critical "outsiders" of the Reason and Revolution appendix would seem to be lonely stoics like Marcuse in a typical Western economy. In himself, writing in the depressive shadow of the Joe MacCarthy era; in One-Dimensional Man they in- vanguard of militancy, responding clude the lowliest, most oppressed rapidly to the "student spark"
the groups in American society, the Highly mechanised industries in inmates of slums, ghettoes, prisons, Britain (from cars to computerised mental institutions, etc. Their rebel- banks) have also been associated critical consciousness that remained lion is at this time seen by Marcuse with a level of consciousness whose as an elemental, almost hopeless out- militancy may dispersed and burst of "outcasts", the new paupers fragmented, but is still very far from who have replaced the labour move- Marcuse's vision machinement that has grown too fat dominated worker. ficht. As marginal minorities, they The climatic struggle in France cannot be expected to win against the main tendencies of the engulfing and its less spectacular daily coun"whole" and Marcuse does not expect them to. His interpretation the the Black freedom movement thinkers apart from Marcuse, that course does little justice to industrial struggle over wages only radicalise workers when organisation, articulacy and conare fighting at a subsistence fidence. level of income. Questions of power Marcuse's views in this period and control in industry and in were presented at a conference of the State -contributes European Marxist scholars in Kor.
cula, Yugoslavia, in the summer of wage levels, are inseparably linked 1964. They were challenged there to workers demands for money. The by a number of the participants, struggle in France was fought by the workers both in terms of wages sociologist who is a leading member and in terms of power. The Left has of the French PSU. Mallet's reply gained among the working class both by exposing the incompetence of Marcuse's theory that automation and timidity of the CP-CGT apparatus as wage-bargainers and by permeated by a sort of Orwellian class. Automatic industries are often campaigning around a broader perrisk-prone, view spective of control. The CFDT now their high capital costs and their outnumbers the CGT in membership as a result of blaving this double Marcuse market over a long term. Mallet has tactic: how far either the CFDT or grounds for some years been arguing that the PSU themselves can offer more "the new working class" of the more than a rhetoric and a style is still of automated industries would acquire course an open question. wider, more political horizons exMarcuse's third phase is marked tending beyond wage-demands, and only in a few pieces of writing. and *were being further and further is doubtless still evolving. He has towards a head-on confrontation with the techno-bureaucratic struc- now acknowledged that organised tuse of control of the economy". radical movements are actually These words from Mallet's paper functioning outside tho margin of in his Fros and Civilisation. pub- (International Socialist Journal, April the outcasts: paradoxically. their 1965) seem remarkably prophetic in view of the French events this year. Fifties development in and carly Sixties eluded him tha crucial Inta while he was developine his most It is quite possible that a fully pessimistic position. a recent howevar. automated sector of industry. Teillehat This campaign, implemented by that fortunate minority that Marcuse is prepared to admit as beings", will lead to "the democratic educational dictatorship of free men", which in the present society is contradictions set up in the United "a small number indeed." States by the Vietnam war. The progress of revolution now seems to Marcuse looks back, for justifica him to depend on the forging of a tion of this open appeal to meritocapitalist link between guerrilla struggle in cracy, to the arguments of that the Third World and the rebellious classic snob of liberal leader clitism, with its relentless industrial rhythms, youth movements of the "affluent John Stuart Mill, for whom the occupies many thousands of workers society"; and in Europe "the politi- exercise of tolerance was "to apply cal revitalisation the working- only to human beings in the maturity France it was these sectors (cars and class movement on an international of their faculties". For Mill this aircraft) that proved to be in the scale" is a perspective worth think- definition would exclude children, ing and fighting towards. Others of minors and "barbarians". For Marcourse have mid as much with more cuse it would exclude everybody consistency; and even so guarded a except those who agree with his own statement is an unconfessed recanta- highly idiosyncratic interpretation of tion of the thousands of words that society and history, since the disMarcus has written to the contrary. tinction between what is progressive and what is reactionary is not a Marcuse's article "Repressive Tolerance", published in 1965 as one matter of value-preference but of rational criteria." Consequently of the outstanding set of essays by you disagree with Marcuse you are three American scholars, entitled A irrational and hence unfit Critique of Pure Tolerance, displays tolerated. fully the ambiguities of his most terpart in Britain also puts paid to recent stance. It is in part a superb Marcuse explicitly attacks the idea, common to many radical attack on the conventional liberal criterion of "clear and present danwisdom of political pluralism, which ger" which both in liberal and in sees society as an open forum for Marxist theory has offered the sole equally matched contending views. grounds for withdrawing basic civil It is also a first-rate defence of rights from groups and individuals. revolutionary violence and of ration- (Even Stalinism, it may be noted, ality history. the rationality, paid hypocrisy's tribute to this however, stops when Marcuse starts criterion in its manufacture of con spiracies and plots; for unless they society consists of "manipulated and could be displayed to the public as indoctrinated individuals who parrot, offering "clear and present danger" as their own, the opinions of their dissidents could not be suppressed masters," except for "such enclaves and exterminated.) In Marcuse' "society has entered the phase of is one of clear and present danger". total administration and indoctrina- This statement is adequate for him tion" Marcuse advocates "the to clear the distinction between the withdrawal of toleration of speech violence of revolutionary masses in from groups anc period of civil movements which promote aggres putschism of educated elite groups cille policies, armament who decide for themselves what the vinism. discrimination the moronised masses may read of of race and religion, organise for.
whinh tha ayton sion of public services, social seour- Having developed a mechanistie ity, medical care, eto." Since and elitist view of society in a period human needs are completely pro- where he wrote off all possibilities grammed and perverted by the mass for revolutionary action, Marcuse is media. the efforts to counteract now trying to graft radical proposais man's dehumanisation "must begin with stopping the words and images upon his old unreconstructed social which feed this consciousness. To be vision. I hope that 1 am right in my sure this is censorship, even pre- conclusion that Marcuse's politics, censorship. but openly directed whatever the commentators say to against the more or less hidden cen- the contrary, have actually no influ that permeates the carchis media." ence upon the theory and the tactics of the movement that we have lo.
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ence of our time. Indeed, "the three tion. With growing productivity and in a marginal or exterior relation- M's" - Marx, Marcuse and Mao-
that capitalism had entered a new like a grotesque caricature of Mar Herbert Marcuse is a social and political philosopher with a long Left-wing history; he was one of the founding members of Liebknecht's and
as the intelligentsia". Now that view "the whole post-facist period