Herbert Marcuse
 Marcuse in 1955 in Newton, Massachusetts[1] | |
| Born |
19 July 1898 Berlin, German Empire |
|---|---|
| Died |
29 July 1979 (aged 81) Starnberg, West Germany |
| Residence | Germany, United States |
| Nationality | German |
| Era | 20th century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School |
Frankfurt School Western Marxism Critical theory Founder of the New left |
| Main interests | Social theory, socialism, industrialism, technology |
| Notable ideas | Totally administered society, technological rationality, the Great Refusal, the end of Utopia, one-dimensional man, libidinal work relations, work as free play, repressive tolerance |
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Influenced by
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Herbert Marcuse (German: [maʁˈkuːzə]; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg. He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research - what later became known as the Frankfurt School. He was married to Sophie Wertheim (1924-1951), Inge Neumann (1955-1972), and Erica Sherover (1976-1979).[2][3][4] Active in the United States after 1934, his intellectual concerns were the dehumanizing effects of capitalism and modern technology.
After his studies, in the late 1960s and the 1970s he became known as the preeminent theorist of the New Left and the student movements of Germany, France, and the USA. Between 1943 and 1950, Marcuse worked in US Government Service, which helped form the basis of his book Soviet Marxism (1964). Celebrated as the "Father of the New Left",[5] his best known works are Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964). His Marxist scholarship inspired many radical intellectuals and political activists in the 1960s and '70s, both in the U.S. and internationally.
Biography
Early life
Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin to Carl Marcuse and Gertrud Kreslawsky. His family was Jewish. In 1916 he was drafted into the German Army, but only worked in horse stables in Berlin during World War I. He then became a member of a Soldiers' Council that participated in the aborted socialist Spartacist uprising. He completed his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1922 on the German Künstlerroman after which he moved back to Berlin, where he worked in publishing. In 1924 he married Sophie Wertheim, a mathematician. He returned to Freiburg in 1928 to study with Edmund Husserl and write a Habilitation with Martin Heidegger, which was published in 1932 as Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity. This study was written in the context of the Hegel renaissance that was taking place in Europe with an emphasis on Hegel's ontology of life and history, idealist theory of spirit and dialectic.[5] With his academic career blocked by the rise of the Third Reich, in 1933 Marcuse joined the Institute for Social Research based in Frankfurt. Marcuse joined the Institut Für Sozialforschung (institute for Social Research), popularly known as the Frankfurt School, in 1932. He went almost at once into exile with them, first briefly in Geneva, then in the United States. Unlike some others, Marcuse did not return to Germany after the war, and when he visited Frankfurt in 1956, the young Jürgen Habermas was surprised to discover that he was a key member of the Institute.[6]
In 1933, Marcuse published his first major review, of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In this review, Marcuse revised the interpretation of Marxism, from the standpoint of the works of the early Marx. This review helped the world see that Marcuse was becoming one of the most promising theorists of his generation.[5]
While a member of the Institute of Social Research, Marcuse developed a model for critical social theory, created a theory of the new stage of state and monopoly capitalism, described the relationships between philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism, and provided an analysis and critique of German fascism. Marcuse worked closely with critical theorists while at the Institute.[5]
Emigration to the United States
After emigrating from Germany in 1933, Marcuse immigrated to the United States in 1934, where he became a citizen in 1940. Although he never returned to Germany to live, he remained one of the major theorists associated with the Frankfurt School, along with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (among others). In 1940 he published Reason and Revolution, a dialectical work studying G. W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx.
World War II
During World War II, Marcuse first worked for the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) on anti-Nazi propaganda projects. In 1943, he transferred to the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Directed by the Harvard historian William L Langer, the Research and Analysis Branch was in fact the biggest American research institution in the first half of the twentieth century. At its zenith between 1943 and 1945, it included over twelve hundred employees, four hundred of whom were stationed abroad. In many respects, it was the site where post–World War II American social science was born, with protégés of some of the most esteemed American university professors, as well as a large contingent of European intellectual émigrés, in its ranks.
These men comprised the “theoretical brain trust” of the American war machine, which, according to its founder, William J. Donovan, would function as a “final clearinghouse” for the secret services—that is, as a structure that, although not engaged in determining war strategy or tactics, would be able to assemble, organize, analyze, and filter the immense flow of military information directed toward Washington, thanks to the unique capacity of the specialists on hand to interpret the relevant sources.[7]
In March 1943 Marcuse joined his fellow Frankfurt School scholar Franz Neumann in R8cA's Central European Section as senior analyst and rapidly established himself as "the leading analyst on Germany.[8]
After the dissolution of the OSS in 1945, Marcuse was employed by the US Department of State as head of the Central European section, retiring after the death of his first wife in 1951.
Post War
In 1952 Marcuse began a teaching career as a political theorist, first at Columbia University, then at Harvard University, then at Brandeis University from 1958 to 1965, where he taught philosophy and politics, and finally (by then he was past the usual retirement age),[citation needed] at the University of California, San Diego.
He was a friend and collaborator of the political sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr. and of the political philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, and also a friend of the Columbia University sociology professor C. Wright Mills, one of the founders of the New Left movement.
In the post-war period, Marcuse was the most explicitly political and left-wing member of the Frankfurt School,[citation needed] continuing to identify himself as a Marxist, a socialist, and a Hegelian.
Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955 synthesis of Marx and Freud, Eros and Civilization, and his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man) resonated with the concerns of the student movement in the 1960s. Because of his willingness to speak at student protests, Marcuse soon became known as "the father of the New Left in the United States", a term he strongly disliked and disavowed. His work heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies. He had many speaking engagements in the US and Europe in the late 1960s and 1970s. He became a close friend and inspirer of the French philosopher André Gorz.
Marcuse defended the arrested East German dissident Rudolf Bahro (author of Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus [trans., The Alternative in Eastern Europe]), discussing in a 1979 essay Bahro's theories of "change from within".[9]
Jesuit Fr. James Chevedden made a written complaint to the Superior General of the Jesuit Order, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, regarding the promotion of the ideology of the Marxist philosopher, Herbert Marcuse at the 1998 California Jesuit Province Social Pastoral Conference.
The New Left and radical politics
Many radical scholars and activists were influenced by Marcuse, such as Norman O. Brown,[10] Angela Davis,[11] Kathy Acker, Abbie Hoffman, Rudi Dutschke, and Robert M. Young. (See the List of Scholars and Activists link, below.) Among those who critiqued him from the left were Marxist-humanist Raya Dunayevskaya, fellow German emigre Paul Mattick, both of whom subjected One-Dimensional Man to a Marxist critique, and Noam Chomsky, who knew and liked Marcuse "but thought very little of his work."[12] Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance", in which he claimed capitalist democracies can have totalitarian aspects, has been criticized by conservatives.[13] Marcuse argues that genuine tolerance does not permit support for "repression", since doing so ensures that marginalized voices will remain unheard. He characterizes tolerance of repressive speech as "inauthentic." Instead, he advocates a form of tolerance that is intolerant of right wing political movements:
Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.[14]
Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.[14]
Marcuse later expressed his radical ideas through three pieces of writing. He wrote An Essay on Liberation in 1969 celebrating liberation movements such as those in Vietnam, which inspired many radicals. In 1972 he wrote Counterrevolution and Revolt, which argues that the hopes of the 1960s were facing a counterrevolution from the right.[5]
After Brandeis denied the renewal of his teaching contract in 1965, Marcuse devoted the rest of his life to teaching, writing and giving lectures around the world. His efforts brought him attention from the media, which claimed that he openly advocated violence, although he often clarified that only "violence of defense" could be appropriate, not "violence of aggression." He continued to promote Marxian theory, with some of his students helping to spread his ideas. He published his final work The Aesthetic Dimension in 1979 on the role of high art in the process of what he termed "emancipation" from bourgeois society.[5]
Marriage and death
Marcuse married three times. His first wife was mathematician Sophie Wertman (1901–1951), with whom he had a son, Peter (born 1928). Herbert's second marriage was to Inge Neumann (1910–1972), the widow of his close friend Franz Neumann (1900–1954). His third wife was Erica Sherover (1938–1988), a former graduate student and forty years his junior, whom he married in 1976. His son Peter Marcuse is currently professor emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University. His granddaughter is the novelist Irene Marcuse and his grandson, Harold Marcuse, is currently a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
On July 29, 1979, ten days after his eighty-first birthday, Marcuse died after having suffered a stroke during a visit to Germany. He had spoken at the Frankfurt Römerberggespräche, and was on his way to the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg, on invitation from second-generation Frankfurt School theorist Jürgen Habermas. In 2003, after his ashes were rediscovered in the United States, they were buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery in Berlin.
Philosophy and views
His famous concept repressive desublimation refers to his argument that postwar mass culture, with its profusion of sexual provocations, serves to reinforce political repression. If people are preoccupied with unauthentic sexual stimulation, their political energy will be "desublimated"; instead of acting constructively to change the world, they remain repressed and uncritical. Marcuse advanced the prewar thinking of critical theory toward a critical account of the "one-dimensional" nature of bourgeois life in Europe and America. His thinking could, therefore, also be considered an advance of the concerns of earlier liberal critics like David Riesman.[15]
Marcuse's early "Heideggerian Marxism"
During his years in Freiburg, Marcuse wrote a series of essays that explored the possibility of synthesizing Marxism and Heidegger's fundamental ontology, as begun in the latter's work Being and Time (1927). This early interest in Heidegger followed Marcuse's demand for "concrete philosophy", which, he declared in 1928, "concerns itself with the truth of contemporaneous human existence".[16] These words were directed against the neo-Kantianism of the mainstream, and against both the revisionist and orthodox Marxist alternatives, in which the subjectivity of the individual played little role.[17] Though Marcuse quickly distanced himself from Heidegger following Heidegger's endorsement of Nazism, it has been suggested by thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas that an understanding of Marcuse's later thinking demands an appreciation of his early Heideggerian influence.[18]
Marcuse and capitalism
Marcuse’s analysis of capitalism derives partially from one of Karl Marx’s main concepts: Objectification,[19] which under capitalism becomes Alienation. Marx believed that capitalism was exploiting humans; that by producing objects, laborers became alienated and this ultimately dehumanized them to functional objects. Marcuse took this belief and expanded it. He argued that capitalism and industrialization pushed laborers so hard that they began to see themselves as extensions of the objects they were producing. At the beginning of One-Dimensional Man Marcuse writes, “The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment,”[20] meaning that under capitalism (in consumer society) humans become extensions of the commodities that they buy, thus making commodities extensions of people's minds and bodies. Affluent mass technological societies, it argued, were totally controlled and manipulated. In societies based upon mass production and mass distribution, the individual worker had become merely a consumer of its commodities and entire commodity way of life. Modern Capitalism had created false needs and false consciousness geared to consumption of commodities: it locked one-dimensional man into the one-dimensional society which produced the need for people to recognize themselves in their commodities and find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced. Most important of all, the pressure of consumerism had led to the total integration of the working class into the capitalism system. Its political parties and trade unions had become thoroughly bureaucratized and the power of negative thinking or critical reflection had rapidly declined. The working class was no longer a potentially subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change. As a result, rather than looking to the workers as the revolutionary vanguard, Marcuse put his faith in an alliance between radical intellectuals and those groups not yet integrated into one-dimensional society, the socially marginalized, the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other race and other colours, the unemployed and the unemployable. These were the people whose standards of living demanded the ending of intolerable conditions and institutions and whose resistance to one-dimensional society would not be diverted by the system. Their opposition was revolutionary even if their consciousness was not.[21]
Criticism
Leszek Kołakowski described Marcuse's views as essentially anti-Marxist, in that they ignored Marx's critique of Hegel and discarded the historical theory of class struggle entirely in favor of an inverted Freudian reading of human history where all social rules could and should be discarded to create a "New World of Happiness". Kołakowski concluded that Marcuse's ideal society "is to be ruled despotically by an enlightened group [who] have realized in themselves the unity of Logos and Eros, and thrown off the vexatious authority of logic, mathematics, and the empirical sciences."[22]
Bibliography
Books
- Hegel's Ontology and Theory of Historicity (1932) originally written in German
- A Study on Authority (1936) originally written in German
- Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941). ISBN 978-1-57392-718-5
- Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955). ISBN 978-0-415-18663-6
- Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958)
- One-Dimensional Man (1964).
- A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965) Written with Robert Paul Wolff and Barrington Moore, Jr.
- Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (1968)
- An Essay on Liberation (1969)
- Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972) ISBN 978-0-8070-1533-9
- The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (1978) ISBN 978-0-8070-1519-3
- Five Lectures (1969)
Essays
- Repressive Tolerance[23] (1965)
- On the Problem of the Dialectic[24] (1932-1972)
- Liberation[25] (1969)
See also
- Theodor Adorno
- Walter Benjamin
- Sigmund Freud
- Freudo-Marxism
- Erich Fromm
- André Gorz
- Jürgen Habermas
- G. W. F. Hegel
- Max Horkheimer
- Georg Lukács
- Neo-Marxism
- C. Wright Mills
- Wilhelm Reich
- Repressive desublimation
- Gerhard Stapelfeldt
References
Citations
- ↑ ci.newton.ma.us
- ↑ "Sophie Wertheim (1901-1951)". Marcuse.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ "Inge Neumann (1910-1972)". Marcuse.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ "Erica Sherover-Marcuse (1938-1988)". Marcuse.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Douglas Kellner. "Illuminations: Kellner". Retrieved October 1, 2012.
- ↑ Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings - Google Boeken. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ Secret Reports on Nazi Germany. The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort by Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse & Otto Kirchheimer Edited by Raffaele Laudani (Princeton University Press 2013) p2
- ↑ Laudani, Secret Reports p3
- ↑ Stefan Meretz. "open theory · offene theorie: Protosozialismus und Spätkapitalismus. Versuch einer theoretischen Synthese von Bahros Ansatz (von Herbert Marcuse)". Opentheory.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ Dufresne, Todd (2000). Tales from the Freudian Crypt: The Death Drive in Text and Context. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 112. ISBN 0-8047-3885-8.
- ↑ Davis, Angela (July 1971). "Rhetoric Vs. Reality: Angela Davis tells why black people should not be deceived by words". Ebony 26 (9) (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company). pp. 115–120. Retrieved June 6, 2010.
- ↑ Barsky, Robert (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 134.
- ↑ http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/booksabout/haters/haters.htm
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Repressive Tolerance, by Herbert Marcuse (1965)". Marcuse.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ Key Contemporary Social Theorists - Google Boeken. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ Marcuse, Herbert. "On Concrete Philosophy." 1929. In Heideggerian Marxism. Eds. John Abromeit and Richard Wolin. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. p. 49.
- ↑ For a thorough discussion of Marcuse's perspectives on the Marxisms of his day, see Benhabib's introduction to Hegel's Ontology. (Marcuse, Herbert. Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. 1932. Trans. Seyla Benhabib. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. pp. xi-xix.)
- ↑ see, e.g., Marcuse, Herbert. Heideggerian Marxism, edited by Richard Wolin and John Abromeit, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005, pp. xi-xxx.
- ↑ "Glossary of Terms: Ob". Marxists.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/quotes/QuotRedThread.html#Capitalism
- ↑ The A-Z Guide to Modern Social and Political Theorists - Google Boeken. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ↑ Kołakowski, Leszek (1981). Main Currents Of Marxism: Volume III, The Breakdown. Oxford University Press. p. 416. ISBN 0192851098.
- ↑ http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/frankfurt/marcuse/tolerance.pdf
- ↑ http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/books/Feenberg-Leiss-Review.pdf
- ↑ "Book Review: Herbert Marcuse's An Essay on Liberation Herbert Marcuse's An Essay on Liberation". Marcuse.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
Further reading
- John Abromeit and W. Mark Cobb, eds. (2004) Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader, New York, London: Routledge.
- Harold Bleich (1977) The Philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.
- Paul Breines (1970) Critical Interruptions: New Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse, New York: Herder and Herder.
- Alfred C. Fred (1985) Science and Revenge of Nature: Marcuse and Habermas, Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
- Christian Fuchs (2005). Emanzipation! Technik und Politik Bei Herbert Marcuse.
- Christian Fuchs (2005). Herbert Marcuse interkulturell gelesen. Interkulturelle Bibliothek Vol. 15.
- Douglas Kellner (1984). Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-520-05295-6.
- Raffaele Laudani (2013)(Ed) Secret Reports on Nazi Germany. The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort by Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse & Otto Kirchheimer. Princeton University Press http://press.princeton.edu/titles
- Herbert Marcuse (1998) Technology, War and Fascism, London: Routeledge.
- Alain Martineau (1986). Herbert Marcuse's Utopia, Harvest House, Montreal.
- Eliseo Vivas (1971). Contra Marcuse, Arlington House, New Rochelle. ISBN 0-87000-112-4
- Anthony Elliott and Larry Ray (2003) Key Contemporary Social Theorist.
- Charles Lemert (2010) Social Theory: the Multicultural and Classic Readings.
- Noel Parker and Stuart Sim (1997) A-Z Guide to Modern Social And Political theorists
External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Herbert Marcuse |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Herbert Marcuse. |
- Comprehensive 'Official' Herbert Marcuse Website, by one of Marcuse's grandsons, with full bibliographies of primary and secondary works, and full texts of many important works
- International Herbert Marcuse Society website
- "Herbert Marcuse (on-line) Archive" at the Marxists Internet Archive
- Herbert Marcuse Archive, by Herbert Marcuse Association
- "Marcuse: professor behind 1960s rebellion", at worldsocialism.org
- "Illuminations: The Critical Theory Project" (detailed biography and essays, by Douglas Kellner).
- Herbert's Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise, biographic documentary on Google video
- Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse"
- Bernard Stiegler, "Spirit, Capitalism, and Superego"
- "Herbert Marcuse Biography Indonesian" at aprillins.com
- Luther Blissett feat. Herbert Marcuse - Rupture, music video
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