Herbert Marcuse as a Critical Intellectual: The New Left and Alternative Socialist Futures

Abstract

A reassessment of Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory is timely given the recent revival of interest in his life and work and the critical questions he poses for the endemic violence of late capitalism. This essay considers Marcuse’s ideas on liberation and a postwork future from the viewpoint of the 1960s before examining attempts to relocate his scholarship in the present. The essay focuses on the dialectical nature of Marcuse’s writings and points to critical possibilities for a society beyond the one-dimensional present in a future world that will have socialized the economy and liberated nature while having broken with the puritan ethic, thereby enabling citizens to live more peaceful and fulfilled lives. But Marcuse remains a problematic intellectual for socialists to the extent of his distance from the working-class movement. His work therefore needs to be carefully positioned in relation to relevant New Left voices that remain critical of his intellectual and cultural production.