Abstract
Professor Wolff's explication of Herbert Marcuse's theory of toleration is especially helpful in its clarification of the concept of "surplus repression," that is, Marcuse's development of Freudian analysis of the unconscious to facilitate political analysis. The fantasy of complete freedom is the necessary means to arouse people to struggle against the surplus, unnecessary repression with which they are burdened. Repressive tolerance accepts the oppositional act easily but leaves the surplus repression untouched, and thus "robs the psychic forces of liberation of the means by which they can be tapped and translated into politically effective energies." This leads to the Marcusian argument for quite limited tolerance where limitation serves liberation, but Wolff ends with a distinctly personal, if unphilosophical, commitment to toleration.
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