Abstract
When One-Dimensional Man first appeared in 1964 it did not cause much of a stir*. Only when student unrest broke out did the book become a bestseller, while other, earlier, publications by Marcuse were re-edited as paperbacks. The growing pressure for the reform of Academy coalesced with — as much as it was the result of — the upsurge of radical opposition to “the system” in general and to specific policies in the international arena in particular. Insofar as the militant left-wing minorities among the students succeeded in the instigation of the more violent manifestations of the student revolt in the West, the demands of reform became more radical. But this was no indication of an overriding concern of the ring-leaders with academic reforms, particularly in America.1
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References
R. Nisbet, “Who Killed the Student Revolution?,” Encounter, Vol. XXXIV, February 1970, pp. 10–18.
Diana Trilling, Cambridge Review, as quoted by M. Cranston, “Herbert Marcuse,” Encounter, Vol. XXXII, March 1969, p. 46, note 10.
For a perceptive, and by no means unsympathetic, assessment of the problematical relationship between Marcuse and the students as well as the New Left in general see P. Breines, “Marcuse and the New Left in America,” in J. Habermas, (ed.), Antworten an Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt, 1968, pp. 134–151.
See e.g., R. Steigerwald, “Ein Apostel des ‘dritten’ Weges (Zur Kritik der Theorien Herbert Marcuses),” Probleme des Friedens und des Sozialismus, Prag, 1969, Vol. XII, pp. 1095–1103. This is a mixture of misrepresentation and cogent appraisals characteristic of those who, willingly or unwillingly, labour under the pressure of toeing the Moscow-dicdated Party line.
One-Dimensional Man, Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Societies, London, 1964, p. 257. Henceforth quoted as: ODM.
Reason and Revolution, Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, London, New York, Toronto, 1941, p. 401. Cp. also, p. 318. This book will be referred to as: RR. For Marcuse’s adherence to this view in ODM, see pp. 43, 52, 158.
Eros and Civilization, Sphere Books, London, 1969; first published in 1955. The reader will find a succinct appraisal of the main thesis of the book in Cranston’s article (see note 2 above), pp. 41–44. See also Breines, op. cit.
RR, p. 288. Cf. also, p. 320: “The economic process of capitalism exercises a totalitarian influence over all theory and practice. ‘‘
H. Marcuse, “Der Kampf gegen den Liberalismus in der totalitären Staatsauffassung,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Vol. 3, Paris, 1935, now also in English in: Negations, Penguin Press, 1968.
See Cranston, op. cit., p. 40.
RR, pp. 390, 393–4, 397–8.
Cranston, op. cit.
RR, pp. vii, 26 ff., 325 ff.
ODM, Chapters 5–7.
RR, p. 321.
Ibid., p. 218. On this and the attempt to explain the ideological motives involved in Marcuse’s apologia for Hegel’s political views, see my ‘ Revolution and Political Philosophy — Locke and Marcuse,” in M. Elliott-Bateman (ed.), The Fourth Dimension of Warfare; Part two: Violence and Politics, Manchester University Press, forthcoming.
Thus for instance in RR, p. 157, 340 passim and ODM, pp. 107 and passim, 183, 172 ff. 184 respectively.
RR, pp. 18, 37 ff., 124–7 and ODM, p. 203 passim.
RR, p. 341. For further examples of the application of the same criterion, see ODM, p. 104 and also pp. 104 ff., 193 and Chapter 7. In RR already not only capitalism but reformism, too, are totalitarian. Vide: “The idea of order, so basic to Comte’s positivism, has a totalitarian content in its social as well as methodological meaning” (p. 348).
RR, p. 338.
ODM, pp. 123 ff.
See, C. J. Friedrich (ed.), Revolution, Nomos VIII, New York, 1966, in his “Introductory Note”, p. 4
C. J. Friedrich, Man and His Government, New York — San Francisco-Toronto-London, 1963, Chapter 34 for an exhaustive treatment of the problem raised here. For my discussion of some of the aspects of the problem, see the essay mentioned in note 15 above.
Cp. H. Sée, Évolution et Révolution, Paris, 1929.
T. B. Bottomore, Critics of Society, Radical Thought in North America, London, 1967, p. 131.
ODM, p. 18.
Ibid., pp. 18, 61.
Ibid., p. 84 and passim.
Ibid., pp. 138, 87, 86, and the contexts in which these statements appear.
Ibid., p. 124.
Ibid., p.7.
Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 74.
F. E. Oppenheim, Dimensions of Freedom, New York, 1961.
ODM, p. 226.
Ibid., p. 88.
RR, p. 355.
Ibid., pp. 356, 335.
Friedrich, Man and His Government, p. 207.
ODM, p. 191.
For criticism on these lines of the reification of a class, see my forthcoming Ideology and Politics, George Allen & Unwin, London.
D. Braybrooke and C. D. Lindblom, A Strategy of Decision, Policy Evaluation as a Social Process, Glencoe — London, 1963, pp. 61 passim.
ODM, pp. 32, 50.
ODM, p. 48.
Ibid., pp. 47, 44.
Ibid., pp.88, 40, 7.
Ibid., p. 52.
Ibid., pp. 26–7. Marcuse takes the example cited in the text from Sartre who asserts that, although under the influence of machines the woman “would recall the bedroom,... it was the machine in her (sic!) which was dreaming of caresses...” (note 10, p. 27) On this Marcuse bases his conclusion that “the machine process in the technological universe breaks the innermost privacy of freedom and joins sexuality and labour in one uncons-scious, rhythmic automation — a process which parallels the assimilation of jobs” (p. 27).
Ibid., p. 194.
Ibid., p. 246.
See, e.g., V. O. Key, Jr., Public Opinion and American Democracy, New York, 1961, Chapters 15–6. Marcuse also ignores the role of those who mediate between the mass media and the members of the public as shown in E. Katz and P. F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence, New York, 1955.
See Friedrich’s monumental work bearing this name, especially Chapters 11 and 13.
R. A. Lane and D. O. Sears, Public Opinion, Englewood Cliffs, 2nd print., 1965, p. 53.
See above, note 15.
See my essay referred to in note 15 above.
ODM, pp. 52–3.
For Marcuse’s detailed treatment of the subject, see his Soviet Marxism, A Critical Analysis, London, 1958.
ODM, p. 4.
Habermas, op. cit., in his introduction (Zum Geleit), p. 14. 58 ODM, pp. 54, 53.
Ibid., p. 222.
See above, text to note 17.
ODM, pp. 210, 216–7.
Ibid., pp. 219–223.
Ibid., p. 219, 220.
Ibid., p. 222.
Ibid., p. 43. See also, Soviet Marxism, pp. 109 passim.
ODM, p. 42.
Ibid., pp. 44–5.
RR, p. 322.
Ibid., pp. 397, 398.
ODM, p. 44.
Loc. cit.
RR, p. 292.
Ibid., p. 293.
Ibid., pp. 321–2.
ODM, p. 240. Marcuse is obviously at fault in not making clear that his earlier and later interpretations of Marx reflect the latter’s own prevarications and that only the ‘romantic” stance remains constant. It is probably right to say that for Marx and Engels the identification of occupational specialization and slavery was almost an obsession (R. C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, Cambridge, 1961, p. 189), despite the (fact in their futurology they could not avoid making the kind of concessions which Marcuse develops here and which can be found in the unfinished third volume of Capital (ed. by F. Engels, Chicago, 1903, pp. 954–5).
Ibid., p.44.
Ibid., p. 251.
Ibid., p. 252.
Ibid., p. 251, My italics.
Ibid., p. 252.
Ibid., p. 235.
E. Gellner, Thought and Change, London 1964, p. 118.
ODM, p. 126.
Ibid., p. 231.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 1, 982 b.
Cp. Cranston, loc. cit., p. 50.
ODM, p. 60, Cp. also pp. 62, 249.
See above, text following notes 31 and 46.
ODM, p. 73.
Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., p. 242.
In Reason and Revolution, Marcuse had said: “Today, when all the technical potentialities for an abundant life are at hand, the National Socialists ‘consider the decline of the standard of living inevitable’ and indulge in panegyrics on impoverishment” (p. 415).
ODM, p. 244.
Ibid.
M. Rokeach, The Open and the Closed Mind, Investigations into the Nature of Belief Systems and Personality Systems, New York, 1960.
ODM, p. 220.
Ibid., pp. 6, 9 ff.
Ibid., p. 250.
Ibid., pp. 39–40.
J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London, 1952 and Political Messianism, The Romantic Phase, London, 1960.
A. MacIntyre, Marcuse, Fontana/Collins, London, 1970, concludes his study with the words: “.. .Marcuse has produced a theory that, like so many of its predecessors, invokes the great names of freedom and reason while betraying their substance at every important point” (p. 92).
See above, note 15.
Just as to-day the conditions of the affluent society require the “educational dictatorship”, so in 1941 did the view of the widening gap between the impoverishment of the worker and the wealth he produces (RR, p. 274) provide “the final basis for the universal character of the communist revolution” (p. 291).
K. Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, first edition in German in 1918; paperback ed., Ann Arbor, 1964.
S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 216–8.
Cp. for instance, Habermas, op. cit., in his introduction and especially the contribution by A. Schmidt, “Existential-Ontologie und historischer Materialismus bei Herbert Marcuse”, ibid., pp. 17–49, who like MacIntyre stresses Marcuse’s deviations from Marxian tenets. However, unlike Maclntyre, with whose evaluation I find myself in far-going agreement, Schmidt takes an on the whole appreciative view of Marcuse’s achievments. Nevertheless, Schmidt (like other contributors to Habermas’ volume) seems to me to proceed from a position which is nearer to that underlying Steigerwald’s negative judgment (see above, note 3) than that which informs MacIntyre’s unsparing critique.
B. Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, London, 1941, p. 244.
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Seliger, M. (1971). Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensionality — The Old Style of the New Left. In: von Beyme, K. (eds) Theory and Politics / Theorie und Politik. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1063-9_10
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