By WILLIE THOMPSON m the Morning Star, London) bert Marcuse might be aptly de- ed as the herald of the Gray Utopia. bleak pessimism sees the future onging to the ‘one-dimensional — a well-fed semi-zombie, shallow emotions, impoverished in his in relationships, a philistine puppet, led from the cradle to the grave by manipulators who have brought to tion the art of fooling all of the e all of the time. ecording to Marcuse, that kind of so- rt} ty is the logical outcome of méchanical tation. The working class in the ad- d and developed countries has con- i Marx by signally failing to ac- ish the Socialist revolution. mass movements have become pted and acquiesce in their own ex- ition. ‘Managed. capitalism’’ has lized the hitherto catastrophic swings | slumps of the market economy. Pro- militancy has died, to be re- by trade union haggling plus bo- ntentment. Miracles ruling class, it is asserted, has plished not only an economic mir- ut a political one as well, using a e which mixes the institutions of sois democracy with the most up- ate techniques in communications chology, to yield a product which ie calls ‘‘repressive tolerance.” the regime of repressive tol- all ideas may have expression, Marcuse: Who is Dr. Herbert Marcuse? DR. HERBERT MARCUSE Herald of the false Utopia Perhaps in principle, replies Marcuse, . but in reality the hope of such an outcome is almost nil. It might well be asked how such a philosophy of despair could become so in- tellectually fashionable, as this one cer- tainly has. Two reasons may be suggested. For a start it appeals to the pessimism of the times, an age when capitalist ideology and its practitioners are moth-eaten, in- tellectually bankrupt and dependent on C.LA. handouts, yet where the cold-war atmosphere has bred attitudes of disillus- ionment and cynicism toward the achievements of the Socialist states and the Communist parties inside and outside them. For those suffering in this dilemma, Marcuse offers to explain their apparent plight, and second, while despairing of the working class he offers some marginal, hope for revolutionary change through the agency of ‘‘outsiders’’ —- those perse- cuted groups excluded from the one- dimensional consensus who therefore have nothing to lose — junkies, criminals, Negroes, students, the colonial peoples. Thus Marcuse helps to justify revolu- tionary romanticism, absolves the would- be revolutionary from the harsh and un- romantic task of winning the working: class for a revolutionary outlook, of storming the ballot boxes as well as the barricades, and allows him to direct all his attention to the nrore dramatic as- pects of the world struggle. It is possible to refute Marcuse theo- retically, but the most devastating refu- ensures all the traditional dem- reedoms, government by elected es, and protection from arbi- rnment caprice. for all that, the ruling class main- its interests inside this formal shell pular control. Exploitation contin- (From Who's Who in America, 1968-69) tations are always handed out by life it- . —.. MARCUSE, Herbert, educator: b. Berlin, Germany, July 10, 1898; s. Carl and Ger- self. trud (Kreslawsky) M.; Ph.D. univs. Berlin and Freiburg, 1922; m. Inge S. Werner, Feb. 19, 1955; 1 son, Peter. Came to U. S., 1934, naturalized, 1940. With Inst. Social Research, Columbia, 1934-40, Russian Inst., Columbia and Harvard, 1951-53; prof. politics and philosophy, Brandeis U., 1954-65; prof. philosophy U. Cal. at San Diego, 1965—. Served with OSS and State Dept., 1941-50. Author: Reason and Revolution, Luckless . In this respect Marcuse has been sing- ularly luckless, The events of the past months must have demonstrated to-even the most incorrigible cynic that the re- No real challenge to the accepted or- things gets a meaningful hearing. le in theory the State is designed ure whatever the people want, the can ensure that they will want only right things. Thus we have the form mocracy without the content, the Ww of opposition but not the sub- . For all his rights the modern cit- as about as much control over the of his nation as the medieval is it done? At all levels of the unity, so Marcuse argues, psycho- 1 manipulation takes place, and the mensional people are conditioned their lives, hopes and beliefs in ance with the names of bourgeois don’t have to consider and reject g beliefs and theories such as . Through schools, newspapers, all the various media, the ruling ensures that either they don’t hear m or don’t take them seriously. use is a follower of Freud and so es human behavior in terms of instinctive impulses of love, hate, Ssion and guilt. Control Z0dern science, he asserts, has given Tuling classes the means to control impulses and channel them in the interpretation of class power in of psychic engineering, still it Points, but the conclusion which is 0 Say reactionary. refly, he concludes that humanity much more than it has gained dination to mechanical routines eaucratic complexes, life by the ter rather than the seasons; all directions. Thus power is exer- a number of original and provoca- ' i from this analysis is un-Socialist, "ad development of science and. San Diego 92038. 1941; Eros and Civilization, 1954; Soviet Marxism, 1958; One-Dimensional Man, 1965, Home: 8831 Cliffridge Ave., La Jolla, Cal. 92037. Office; Univ. of California, NOTE: Marcuse served not only with the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, a World War li intelligence agency) but also with counter-revolutionary agencies under the aegis of the Department of State, viz., the Office of Intelligence Research, the Russian Institute of Columbia University and the Russian Research Center at Harvard. the Central European Branch of this may ensure material comfort, cer- tainly, but it is just the thing for manufac- turing one-dimensional men. Reading Marcuse, one gets the impression that the values of capitalism are inherent in sci- entific thinking itself. He shows fear, hostility and suspi- cion toward scientific practice and meth- odology, a profound distrust of its prod- ucts and a nostalgic taste for peasant and rural communities. It follows, in his belief, that all in- dustrial societies are much the same, Socialist as well as capitalist, sinee tech- nological level counts for more than prop- erty relations. Elite Accordingly we have the claim that the Socialist world is also managed by a bureaucratic elite and that the position is only marginally better — because more competently run — than in the industral- ized West. Could technology and industry not be operated so as to contribute to the all- round development and betterment of more people rather than enslaving them? _ “Is there a lower price for beef stew ‘ for women—there’s A a lower rate in the : factory.’ — United Electrical Workers’ ey News Service, New == ’ - York. Weick te News Or nt Seve. PACIFIC “TRIBUNE—MARCH 28, 1969—Page 9 volutionary spirit of the Western oo class is by no means overthrown. Indeed it is fairly obvious that the “‘one-dimensional’’ society described by him corresponds pretty closely to West- ern capitalism in its postwar phase of re- latively stable expansions, when more than Marcuse were convinced that the © class struggle had been annulled for all time. It is now clear that this stabilization was far from permanent and is now being replaced by economic stress and sharp- ened political struggle as a new phase of crisis sets in. Marcuse was fond of sneering at the Marxism of. the. Communist parties, He and his followers believed that his own brand was immensely more sophisticat- ed, erudite and profound. Time has judged it, however. Al- though it could offer no purposeful guide to action it was, in a period of apparent social equilibrium, able to win a large fol- lowing among certain sections of the students and the American New Left. But the conditions which made it seem plausi- _,- ble at a certain state are already passing into history. G0-HO-ME| «i A ee Kamb in La Vie Ouvriere, Paris ‘Now what do those Vietnamese words = MeN oe ik Fike om vere ated: 4