Marcuse was retained by the United States Office of War Information and later the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA) because of his insight into German society.
His insights are attractive to this nonsociologist. Although Lady Thatcher, who seems to be descending into a form of insanity, said recently "there is no such thing as society", ordinary working people, who cannot afford gated communities, must perforce live in society.


Numeric results, innocent of theory, are useless for insight and only theory can match the qualitative texture of daily life. This is perhaps why Adorno's American typists at the Princeton Radio Research project both understood his "complex" prose and were sympathetic to his conclusions, while his "educated" superiors thought him "elitist."


One of Marcuse's insights into Nazi society describes the ordinary person as informed by "matter of fact cynicism". Perhaps because of Marcuse's German background, he here fashions a surprising neologism, a Katzenjammer, a jamming-together of concepts useful precisely because it is striking. This neologistic fashioning of terms-of-art is a permission German gives the speaker which his withheld, superficially, by English.


The cynical are not usually thought of as matter-of-fact, and the matter-of-fact, not usually thought of as cynical. The two sets, while not considered disjoint, are not considered to largely intersect.

Nonetheless, Marcuse's insight captured something about German society during the war that many observers missed. The ordinary German mind was thought by Anglo-American commentators to share in the mysticism of Hitler.


But Marcuse saw that the ordinary German, although silenced, was quite cynical about the war and Hitlerdom. Much later, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's research has confirmed Marcuse's hypothesis, for in the latter's book HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS, Goldhagen finds that many Germans were, as matter-of-fact cynics, not willing to participate in the Holocaust but equally unwilling to make a protest. This combination may have resulted from what Marcuse described as the destruction of pre-war Wilhelmine patriarchy and the regression to the matter-of-fact cynicism which is the protective coloration of silenced women.

The execution of a Rosa Luxembourg had shown countless Germans the consequence of protest while not necessarily convincing them that their leaders were anything but fools and madmen. The patriarchal response, commencing with the German revolts to Napoleon's rule during its awakening in 1800, was to act on the revolutionary belief. The matter-of-fact cynical response was quietism.


The Nazis in their origin in reaction to the Left revolutions of 1918 had succeeded in "debunking" liberatory narratives and in making resistance seem foolish. Young Germans of the Weimar period would be psychically familiar to young Americans of today, in the naivete of believing oneself free of "illusions."

The destruction of German patriarchy also foreshadows the consequences of the destruction of patriarchy good and bad in American life, where Lost Boys, filled with fancies but empty of "illusions", curse women in darkened streets and bars reminiscent of Cabaret.


This is the most troubling aspect of Marcuse's work: the fact that modern Americans, at least prior to the watershed of Sept 11 2001, were in their high levels of cynicism, their growing inability to treat their psychological troubles with anything other than legal or illegal drugs, and their pseudo-sophisticated, "ironic" rejection of narrative grand and small, closer to Weimar and Hitler period Germans than their grandparents.


Marcuse's insights led him in later life to a more general critique of society as composed of "one-dimensional", disempowered atoms. Only by actively maintaining an alternative stance to generalized depression can one prevent cynical matter-of-factness from taking over one's life.

There is so much to be said about Herbert Marcuse that this short space will not suffice.

What can be said about this collection of essays is its outline of the modern age, relating as the title suggests: "Technology, war and fascism."

Often, we think of technology as being simply the increasing of our tools' efficacy, in all other ways benign, that war is perpetrated by nations and leaders, and that fascism is a dead ideology based on hate, suspicion, and opposition to everthing in the status quo. Marcuse helps us find an understanding of these elements of the twentieth century, placing them in the context of world civilization, industrialization, political development, and capitalism.

In relation to my personal collection, I do not have a book more relevent to understanding the world, than those which Marcuse contributed.

Art, Alienation and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse
By Charles Reitz. SUNY 336 pp.

Alienation, reification, estrangement, disempowerment, and exploitation, are some of the concepts Charles Reitz addresses. Reitz presents an elaborate and lucid discussion of Marcuse's misplaced emphasis on aesthetic dimension as a purportedly disalienating dimension and as a means to overcoming the one dimensionality of existence. Reitz's discussion of Marcuse's aesthetic finds a parallel line of discussion regarding Marxian beliefs in the causes of alienation and the means of effective dealienation leading to the dissolution of Marcuse's. The philosophical discussion is complex and requires a good knowledge of the competing philosophical orientations such as those of Dilthey, Comte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schiller, Goethe, Nietzsche, Marx and Heidegger among others.

Reitz's unique contribution lies not only in presenting Marcuse either as a non-Marxist or even as an anti-Marxist, but in attempting to "recall" viable and promising "theory and conduct of education" embedded in Marcuse's critical theory and work even though he finds Marcuse's argument flawed with contradictions.

Marcuse's work in the United States introduced the American academics to the Frankfurt School's views of Marxism. Later Marcuse came to believe that both the Hegelian "dialectic of historical progress" and historical materialism found in classical Marxism (the inevitablity of the transition from capitalism to socialism) were not sufficiently convincing. Marcuse instead suggests the "aesthetic arguments" as a substitute for the Marxist structural and historical analysis of social change. That is, he opts for Dilthey's belief in "emotional" and "political" potential of humanities and intellectual history as opposed to Marx's historical materialism with labor as its foundation. To Marx, in a commodity driven market "art" finds its highest level of appreciation like any other commodity by the need for it and its price.
In his later years as contrasted with his middle period (1932-1970) and indeed throughout his intellectual life, Marcuse was in Reitz's estimation suffering from a crippling contradiction between Hegelian idealism and Marxian materialism. In Marcuse's estimation according to Reitz,knowledge and particularly educational knowledge is ontological and the word spirit occupies a central position in the pursuit of philosophical truth (ala Dilthey), replacing the core of Marxism -- Historical Materialism. Thus the selection of idealism and the rejection of materialism and the substitution of ontological aesthetic based on the classical German Idealism from Kant to Heidegger for the historical materialism (p.234).

The discussion in "The Future" section is very insightful. Reitz skillfully applies the core of the critical theory and specifically Marcuse's concept of "one dimensional man" to current realities of consumerism, alienation, reification and apathy. Globalization of production, grueling labor process, sold out politicians and politically, economically, and socially overpowering transnational corporations are reasons for Reitz's suggested course of ction.
On many issues regarding Marcuse's Marxism, anti-Marxism, idealism etc., Reitz is tormented between the pole of respect for an intellectual giant whose ideas appear to be timeless and the pole of distrust of a "third way" or approach to analyzing society that shakes the foundation of Marxism, historical materialism, by introducing the "libido" and the "erotic will" as meaningful substitutes categories.

Neither Marcuse believes nor Reitz is accusing him of arguing that aesthetics are free from political influence, and or neglecting the impact of commodification of sex, and the impact of abuses of the sensual and the sublime on the alienation process. Marcuse sees technical progress and the advancement of science as prerequisites for freedom, provided that their direction is altered and their goals are redefined free from the influence of alienating forces so they may become a vehicle of liberation -- "technology of liberation" -- an aesthetic morality which is vehemently opposed to the pollution of life by the "spirit of capitalism." The revolution demands a solid "real foundation" composed of the historical and the sensuous -- life instincts which must be rescued from crude materialistic reductionism. It is difficult to see these as anything but revolutionary and I am sure that Reitz agrees that it is all good materialism.
To Marcuse "The radical social content of the aesthetic needs becomes evident as the demand for their most elementary satisfaction is translated into group action on an enlarged scale...from...drive for better zoning regulations to...decommercialization of nature...control of the birth rate.....The quantity of such reforms would turn into the quality of radical change..." sufficiently so as to "weaken" the structural power which stands in opposition to them (An Essay On Liberation, p. 28). Here Marcuse is the Green of the late twentieth century, or is it the Greens including Reitz who reiterate Marcuse of yesteryear.

Marcuse however is walking a fine line between idealism of greater good for everyone and Marxism and its emphasis on structural causes of mass misery and alienation. Marcuse adds an interesting statement regarding the interplay of objective and subjective realms which are discussed in detail by Marx. To Marcuse "[T]he term 'aesthetic,' in its dual connotation of 'pertaining to the senses' and 'pertaining to art,' may serve to designate the quality of the productive-creative process in an environment of freedom" (Marcuse p.24). To Marx, aesthetics and in particular art in an alienated (capitalistic) environment cannot function beyond the realm of consumption. In order for arts to be liberating and disalienating, the social environment in which art is relegated to mere objects of consumption must be transformed into a free society in which art becomes art in itself. But Reitz is certainly looking at broader issues of exploitation and reification disguised and sadly presented as individual freedom regardless of the means (escapism in the form of sex, violence, sports, and consumerism) by which the whole structure is reproduced and in the spirit of postmodernism the wholehearted acceptance of these as inevitable.

In the 1930s Aldous Huxley predicted the rise of sexual freedom, promiscuity, warfare, militarism and aggression accompanied by reduction in political and economic freedoms. Well aware of these similarities, Reitz presents the reader with hope and aspirations by increasing the level of anxiety as did Marcuse's lecture on the ills of capitalist societies back then.

Mehdi Shariati

Marcuse was very perceptive about the nature of our technological society.Some of his ideas still have relevance today. He saw how the state and power elites were using technology to control people's lives. This has created a new form of totalitarianism. People are massively controlled and manipulated by technology.Our freedom today is to simply to walk about in our cages and choose the wallpaper. Marcuse points out that inner freedom or private space has been invaded and whittled down by technology reality. The media is especially at fault, and things are much worse than when he wrote in 1964. False needs are so pervasive that most people are not aware of the situation. Marcuse also shows how ideas and thinking processes are being used to limit our perceptions. Marcuse is heavy going, but he has many challenging ideas. My criticism of Marcuse is that he was a materialist himself, therefore could not offer a viable way out. He did not see that the real problem was a moral collapse, and this is destroying our materialist system from the inside.If Marcuse had a spiritual outlook, he would have found the answers in a new set of non-material values.

Marcuse's most celebrated book has long been surrounded with misconceptions. It is not social science, but a prophetic text which needs to be seen in the context of late 60's radicalism and the emergence of what Guy Debord called the society of the spectacle. Ostensibly a "Marxist", Marcuse was, perhaps, the last left Hegelian, who departs from Marx not just in particular prognoses but basic epistemological tenets. Marcuse's immense popularity on campus led to much resentment, hence the numerous false stories circulating about him by contemporaries ....

i had to read this book in colege and now i no that this is the best book ever wrote end the bestt book i ever red. im not a comunist thouh.

wonderful stop read it immediately stop I'm sure it's good, though I haven't actually read it myself stop

Herbert Marcuse, original member of the so-called 'Frankfurt School', here presents a critique of Marxist aesthetics in one of his last books. Although only 72 pages long, the book is powerful in its argument against the orthodox Marxist view that 'art represents its the interests and world outlook of particular social classes.' Marcuse argues for the importance of art in itself, apart from its source, writing, 'the criteria for the progressive character of art are given only in the work itself as a whole: in what it says and how it says it.' He truly believes that art's place in the world is not to change the world directly but to influence how people perceive the world and thereby lead them to change it.

Marcuse also touches upon other aspects of aesthetics, like his belief in a constant standard allowing us to distinguish between high and low art and the question of the 'end of art' as posited by Bertolt Brecht and others. Nevertheless his main argument is most powerful: he ends the book by praising art's role in representing 'the ultimate goal of all revolutions: the freedom and happiness of the individual.'

Truly a valuable book for all students of art, aesthetics and philosophy.

Marcuse's short work Counterrevolution and Revolt, written in 1972, has four sections: "The Left Under the Counterrevolution," "Nature and Revolution," "Art and Revolution" and "Conclusion." One must imagine the political situation to which Marcuse addresses the work: the New Left, whose advances and promises were so recently great, has suffered a quick decline for two key reasons. The first was that the adaptability of the capitalist-consumer system to convert "the entire individual-body and mind-into an instrument, or even part of an instrument: active or passive, productive or receptive, in working time and free time," all for service of the system (14). Commodification had become universal; culture, even "high" culture was available in commodity form. The proletariat no longer exists as the negation of the capitalist system, but rather, as an absorbed part of it through commodity accumulation. Individual identity resides in commodity and one's job. Counter institutions, such as those the New Left desired, were difficult, if not impossible, to establish in a fashion that could gain popular support. In fact, the New Left itself had dissension and division that was the other key reason for its decline. Marcuse admonishes the New Left for its concretion of Marxian theory, he cites the difficulty of a critical language's ability to stay negative of that which it opposes without being absorbed by it. Drawing form the difficulties of the New Left, Marcuse proclaims "While it is true that people must liberate themselves from their servitude, it is also true that they must first free themselves from what has been made of them in the society in which they live. This primary liberation cannot be 'spontaneous' because such spontaneity would only express the values and goals derived from the established system. Self-liberation is self-education but as such it presupposes education by others" (46-47), revealing the "authoritarian tendencies among the New Left" (47). Much of Marcuse's arguments here draw from his seminal work One-Dimensional Man (1964, highly recommeded), which was considered as a type of bible for certain members of the New Left. Also of interest from Marcuse are his An Essay on Liberation (1969, like CRR, may be considered an addendum to One-Dimensional Man) and Negations (a collection of essays originally written in German 1934-38, trans. 1968). As for others, Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (1967), Jean Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976) and Simulacra and Simulation (1981), and much of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. Certainly, other Frankfurt School (Critical Theory) figures such as Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin (esp. his "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Illuminations).

Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization" lays the foundations for a major critique of the fundamental tenets of Freud's theory of the psyche. In this book the German philosopher demonstrates how Freud transformed what was essentially a psychology of society into a sociology of the mind. "Freud's "biologism"", Marcuse writes, "is social theory in a depth dimension".
Specifically, Marcuse explains how Freud did not see repression as a historically situated pheomenon resulting from particular (and therefore mutable) material conditions but as a general category, inextricably intertwined with the very idea of civilization.
Perhaps for reasons of opportunity (Freud's ideas were still too influential in 1956 for an overt attack), Marcuse still elaborates his argument that a non-repressive society IS possible, within a Freudian framework. But the damage is done: once you read this book it is hard to miss the moralistic intention behind Freud's idea that repression is salutary and necessary for psychic development.
If you want to read other books along this line try Rieff's "Freud: the Mind and the Moralist".
(Note: Not everything that Freud said is rubbish, but I suspect the part of it I mentioned here is).

Marcuse has successfully taken one dubious eschatological theory (Marxism) and merged it with another dubious totalizing theory (Freudian psychology). I begin to wonder whether the dubiousness of Marx is added to the dubiousness of Freud, or whether they are multiplied by each other. Eros and Civilization is certainly a very IMPORTANT book, but it's not a particularly good one. During the 1950's Marxism tried to appropriate all of the other ideas floating around at the time to its own uses, and Marcuse epitomizes this trend.

One gets the sense that Marcuse wrote Eros and Civilization as an expanded version of a paper he wrote in college answering the question, "How can Freud's ideas be related to Marxism?" Well, Marcuse relates them to Marx, and he does a pretty good job of it, but so what? When reading this book, I begin to wonder whether Marcuse really believes what he's writing, or whether he's just trying to get the Freudians out there to join the Communist Party.

At any rate, Eros and Civilization is an interesting read, and if you can stomach Freud's un-founded historical nonsense long enough to examine how it interacts with Marxian eschatology, then go ahead and read it. It's a great example of utopian thinking, and the way Marcuse relates the Reality Principle to the functioning of the capitalist economy is certainly thoughtful...I just don't buy it.

Marcuse's attempt to combine Marx and Freud, and his vision of a non-repressive civilization (as well as his views on phantasies, art, myths and even perversions as anticipiations of such a society) is one of the masterpieces of utopian thought. After reading it your daydreams will never be the same again. It is not an easy text: the first part is certainly dry at times, and presupposes some familiarity with Freud (it is useful to read his Civilization and its discontents along with Marcuse's text). But the second part is truly of masterpiece. Anybody intesested in art, sexual liberation, ecology or psychoanalysis will find this essential reading. Far from being a rehash of Fromm, Marcuse accuses Fromm et. al. of removing the truly subversive elements from Freud. But read it, anf find out for yourself.

Such an easy book to read, and perhaps one of the most interesting sociological theorist I have come to read about. Colourful analogies, simple yet broad use of language makes it not just easy to read, but enjoyable too.

So many books I have looked at before read like 17th Century literature or are just plain boring, yet Marcuse has triumped in this book. I am not especially a critic, nor am I a superior accademic. I am but a simple student trying to get the grades, but I just want reach out to any students who wish to do any piece of work associated with sociological theory.... Choose Marcuse!!

Wolin appears to be a decent philospher and researcher, but
he needs to learn how to write. Herky jerky style and skewed syntax make this one an almost impossible read. Sorry folks, but
I have to rate this one as unintelligable garble.

You have to give Wolin credit for choosing a very deserving topic, and the relationship of Heidegger to his many disciples, and especially his Jewish disciples, is worthy of a big fat book. This is not that book. First, he leaves out Leo Strauss, arguably the most interesting case among Heidegger's Jewish students, and the one with the most critical stance towards his teacher. Second, Wolin's ignores the basic fact that the antimodern views of "Heidegger's children" were shared by many in Weimar Germany who never studied with Heidegger. Marcuse, Arendt, etc. were more children of their time and place than of Heidegger.

Wolin also attributes to Heidegger an antimodernism that his philosophy itself dismantles. The real story of Heidegger's Nazism is not how much his philosophy accomodated Nazism but how little mind the opportunistic philosopher paid his own philosophy when the party called. Wolin gives Heidegger more credit for being principled than he deserves. Wolin also pays too much attention to deciphering Heidegger's opinions from his biography and too little time actually reading Heidegger. In fact, at no point in the book does Wolin betray ever having read Being and Time.

Let us take one example of Wolin's woeful prosecutorial method. He refers to some pamphlets that Heidegger wrote as a student for a Catholic, antimodern publisher. In the pamphlets, Wolin reports, Heidegger valorizes reason and strict rationality above the modern devotion to the self, an unsurprising argument coming from a seminary student. Wolin then draws a straight line from that antimodern Catholic upbringing to Heidegger's later devotion for the Fuhrer. This is perhaps the first time that Thomas Aquinas has ever being accused of encouraging Nazism.

One of the most interesting things about Heidegger's students is that they reached such a broad audience in America. Marcuse and friends were the stars of a worldwide youth movement despite having thick German accents. The commanded such a large audience in part because they were so much more impressive than their colleagues. Wolin does not give sufficient weight to the possibility that Heidegger's students may have learned something worthwhile from their teacher. Wolin is too busy contorting himself into fits of indignant censure.

Considering the current emphasis on Martin Heidegger and his thought during the last decade, it is more than a bit surprising this book wasn't written sooner. Besides being one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Heidegger was also a university professor, and quite a charismatic one at that. Living and teaching in Weimar Germany, it is not surprising, then, that many of his best students were Jews. And if we were to, say, pick a 'cream-of-the-crop' among those Jews, the names of Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse would easily spring to mind.

It is interesting to note that none of the above were practising Jews; rather they saw themselves as assimilated and cosmopolitan in outlook. Ironically it would be their teacher, one of the greatest existentialist philosophers, who drove home to them the inauthenticity of their position when he dedicated himself to National Socialism. By abandoning them he turned his back on them and forced them to face their Jewishness, no longer as a metaphysical question, but in the harsh light of ontological reality, as an important component of their social being. Despite religious assimilation, they were still outcasts, only this time by basis of their racial identity - their very being.

Though abandoned by their mentor, each of Heidegger's students would go on to make a mark in the field of philosophy. In the chapters concerning their careers Wolin takes the time to carefully not their contribution to phliosophy and their attachments to their former teacher. Each discourse is concise and to the point, often giving the reader important insights into the relationship between student and teacher in ways not directly observable. With Arendt, this is easy due to the mass of scholarship, some excellent, some on the level of a supermarket tabloid. With a thinker such as Jonas, whose public career is not so well known, such insights are most welcome. I remember Jonas as a teacher and remember quite well his relationship with Heidegger. Although he would criticize his mentor in the strongest possible terms, when traveling to Europe he would still be careful to make the pilgrimage to the Black Forest to pay homage to the old man. Jonas made his mark both as an expert on Gnostic philosophy and as a philosopher of the environment, his works helping to build the basis of Germany's Green Party.

Lowith developed a love-hate relationship with his former teacher, becoming one of Heidegger's most insightful critics, and yet refusing to pull the trigger. One should not stop reading Heidegger; but one should refrain from reading him so naively. Perheps it was Heidegger's own latent, and naive, romanticism that led him from a critique of nihilism into the arms of totalitarian philosophy.

Marcuse is the strrangest case yet, if we view he and his teacher merely from the outside. It would appear Marcuse made the strongest reaction of all to his former teacher, by Msarcuse incorporated more of his teacher's thought into his own than any of the others. Compare Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man" with Heidegger's "Letter on Technology." Marcuse's retreat into the pseudo-rationalism of Marx to escape the demons of nihilism strangely mirrors Heidegger's own retreat into National Socialism for the same reason. Taking Spengler at his word, Marcuse accepted the decline and retreated into a new world order of sorts while Heidegger fought Spengler's prognosis by adopting the standards of what he saw as the defence of civilization in the Swatstika.

Wolin wraps all this into 269 tightly constructed pages. Not a wasted word or thought. In other words, an excellent and entertaining introduction into a world of thought not usually considered. Highly recommended.