Marcuse, Herbert b.July 19, 1898; Berlin, Prussia d.July 29, 1979; Starnberg, Bavaria

German philosopher, social theorist, and political activist, who gained world renown during the 1960s as the “father of the New Left.” Marcuse gained notoriety when he was perceived as both an influence on and defender of the New Left in the United States and Europe.

After receiving his PhD in literature from the University of Freiburg in 1922 and following a short career as a bookseller in Berlin, he returned to Freiburg in 1928 to study philosophy with Martin Heideg­ger, then one of the most influential thinkers in Germany. Marcuse’s first pub­lished article (1928) attempted a synthesis of the philosophical perspectives of phe­nomenology, existentialism, and Marx- ism—a synthesis that decades later would be carried out again by various “existential” and “phenomenological” Marxists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau- Ponty, as well as American students and in­tellectuals in the New Left.

In 1933 Marcuse joined the Institut fur Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt and soon became deeply involved in its interdisciplinary projects, which included working out a model for radical social theory, developing a theory of the new stage of state and mo­nopoly capitalism, and providing a system­atic analysis and critique of German fas­cism. Marcuse deeply identified with the “critical theory of society” developed by the Institute, which attempted to update Marxism and provide a critical analysis of the contemporary era, and throughout his life was close to Max Horkheimer, Theodore W.

In 1934 Marcuse—a German Jew and a radical—fled from Nazism and emigrated to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life. The Institute for Social Re­search was granted offices and an academic affiliation with Columbia University, where Marcuse worked during the 1930s and early 1940s. His first major work in English, Reason and Revolution (1941), traced the genesis of the ideas of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Karl Marx, and modern social theory. It demonstrated the similarities between Hegel and Marx and introduced many English-speaking readers to the Hegelian-Marxian tradition of di­alectical thinking.

During World War II, Marcuse worked for the Office of War Information and then the Office of Secret Services, en­tering the State Department after the war. He remained in the United States to pur­sue an academic career after Adorno, Horkheimer, and others of the group re­turned to Frankfurt. During the 1950s, Marcuse turned to the study of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis and intensified his studies of art and culture, producing a highly influential philosophical interpreta­tion of Freud in his Eros and Civilization (1955). The book provided a splendid ac­cess to Freud’s thought and the ways that psychoanalytic ideas could be merged with critical social theory and emancipatory culture and practice. In an uncanny way, the text, with its emphasis on polymorphic sexual liberation, play, cultivation of an aesthetic ethos, and burning desire for an­other world and way of life, anticipated the counterculture of the 1960s that lived out many of the key ideas in Marcuse’s text.

In 1964 Marcuse published a wide- ranging critique of both advanced capital­ist and Communist societies in One­Dimensional Man. This book theorized the decline of revolutionary potential in capi­talist societies and the development of new forms of social control. Marcuse argued that “advanced industrial society” created false needs that integrated individuals into the existing system of production and con­sumption.

One-Dimensional Man was followed by a series of books and articles that artic­ulated New Left politics and critiques of capitalist societies in “Repressive Toler­ance” (1965), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972). “Repressive Tolerance” attacked liberalism and those who refused to take a stand during the controversies of the 1960s. It won Marcuse the reputation of being an intransigent radical and ideo­logue for the Left. An Essay on Liberation

celebrated all of the existing liberation movements from the Viet Cong to the hippies and exhilarated many radicals, while further alienating establishment ac­ademics and those who opposed the movements of the 1960s. Counterrevolu­tion and Revolt, by contrast, articulated the new realism that was setting in during the early 1960s, when it was becoming clear that the most extravagant hopes of that decade were being dashed by a turn to the right and a “counterrevolution” against them.

In 1965 Brandeis University refused to renew his teaching contract, and Marcuse soon after received a position at the Uni­versity of California at La Jolla, where he remained until his retirement in the 1970s. During his last two decades —the period of his greatest influence—Marcuse also published many articles and gave lectures and advice to student radicals all over the world. He traveled widely and his work was often discussed in the mass media, making him one of the few American in­tellectuals to gain such attention. Never surrendering his revolutionary vision and commitments, Marcuse continued to his death to defend the Marxian theory and libertarian socialism.

Douglas Kellner

See also Adorno, Theodor W; Frankfurt School; Horkheimer, Max

References and Further Reading

Kellner, Douglas. Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism. London and Berkeley: Macmillan and University of California, 1984.

Marcuse, Herbert. Technology, War and Fascism. Ed. Douglas Kellner. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

------. The New Left and the 1960s. Ed. Douglas Kellner. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.