Introduction

Herbert Marcuse and the crisis of contemporary civilization

pp. 1-12

in: Douglas Kellner, Herbert Marcuse and the crisis of Marxism, Berlin, Springer, 1984

Abstract

Almost overnight the unknown dialectician became, in Fortune’s phrase, the ‘improbable guru of surrealist politics’ and simultaneously evoked the wrath of authorities and authoritarians everywhere. Indeed, it is one of the unique achievements of Marcuse’s work that it has unified California’s right-wing elders, Pravda, liberals such as Irving Howe and Nathan Glazer, the French Communist Party, and, most recently, the Pope in a single chorus of reprobation against the supposed pied piper who has corrupted the minds, morals and manners of the young.3