The Improbable Guru: Re-Reading Marcuse

Abstract

‘The improbable Guru of surrealistic politics’: a phrase used in Fortune magazine in the late 1960s to describe Herbert Marcuse.¹ Why improbable? Because Marcuse, already at that time 70 years old, had for many years laboured in relative obscurity, a writer less than limpid in style, whose works were known only to certain sectors of the academic community. One book above all others propelled Marcuse to a fame — or brought to him a notoriety — which stretched far beyond the bounds of the academy. First published in 1964, One-Dimensional Man coincided with the initial rise of the student movement in the USA, and became something of a manifesto for student activists associated with the New Left in many countries. Today the New Left already appears positively ancient, in a climate of opinion and political activity which has seen the rise of a New Right. Marcuse himself, of course, was far from wholly content with the ways in which his work was invoked by New Left radicals. Indeed, while lending his support to various of the radical activities of the period, Marcuse foresaw that the impact of the student movements might be limited; and he anticipated their dissolution. In 1969 he wrote that neither the students, nor the New Left more generally, could be seen as the progenitors of a new society; when their activities reached their limits, he feared, ‘the Establishment may initiate a new order of totalitarian suppression’.²