Barry Katz: Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation, Verso Editions, 1982, £4.50.
Some years have passed since Herbert Marcuse was seen as a cult figure by sections of the Left. This period which might have permitted a sympathetic reassessment of his views has been dominated by extremely hostile criticism. Unfortunately, Barry Katz has missed the opportunity of replying to 'analytical' and Althusserian attacks on Marcuse while maintaining a theoretical distance: instead he lapses into an uncritical repetition of Marcuse's own doctrines. This is not to say [illegible] bad; on the contrary, its biographical and historical sections are often excellent, although they do leave important questions unanswered.
The central theme of the book is Marcuse's use of aesthetic as a transcendental yardstick by which to judge contemporary culture. It may be that certain modes of life anticipate the values and culture of a communist society, and Marcuse was very alive to the significance of the advances made by the women's movement in the sphere of personal politics. Marcuse is always caught between an abstract counterposition of the ideal and the actual on the one hand, and a view which sees human liberation as the realisation of tendencies present in existing societies on the other. Katz records this dichotomy, but is so keen to defend Marcuse against the charge of 'Young Hegelianism' that he glosses over the difference between the two positions.
Marcuse's view that the working class in the imperialist countries was so dominated by bourgeois ideology that it could not formulate opposition now sounds rather hollow. Many of the institutions that Marcuse saw principally as instruments of social control, such as the Welfare State, were real gains made by the working class, which it was aware of the need to defend. The inability of the bourgeoisie to solve its problems by technological means would also seem to refute Marcuse's views. Katz, however, is content simply to record Marcuse's position.
The relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis is one that has never been satisfactorily clarified. Either attention is concentrated on therapy as a practice or it is fixed on Freud's metapsychology. Marcuse opts for the latter. The wholesale adoption of Freud's theory of history (in a pseudo-Marxist guise) leads Marcuse to see history as the alienation of humanity from its libidinal essence, which is to be restored in a communist society. All very Hegelian, and an opportunity for Katz to discuss the relationship between Marcuse and Marxism, an opportunity he lets slip.
The most impressive parts of the book are biographical. Katz gives us a fascinating picture of intellectual life in Weimar Germany. Marcuse's upbringing in a comfortable bourgeois home, his radicalisation [illegible] revolution, and his flight into exile with the ascendency of the Nazi dictatorship all make interesting reading. Katz's contention that the only choice available to Marxist intellectuals after the mid-1920's was between capitulation to Stalinism (Lukacs) or retreat into academia (Marcuse) must be contested. Outside the Trotskyist movement, Karl Korsch provides an example of someone who sought to maintain both integrity and involvement during the same period.
Like a number of other German émigrés, Marcuse was employed by the US State Department to produce analyses of the political situation inside Europe during the war. It is clear that Marcuse only participated in this work because he believed himself to be involved in an anti-Fascist struggle. But although Katz is right to rebut 'police-agent' type smears against Marcuse, are we not entitled to ask what sort of Marxist does not understand the nature of inter-imperialist wars?