Conclusion

Marcuse's unfinished legacy

Amy E. Varela

pp. 363-375

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

Abstract

Marcuse's work is frequently presented as falling into three distinct stages: (1) his early "Heideggerian Marxist' stage from 1928 to 1933; (2) his orthodox "critical theory' stage from 1933 to 1941, which adhered to the version of Hegelian Marxism developed by the Institute for Social Research in exile; and (3) his post-Second World War writings, in which his work took on a distinctly "Marcusean' cast.¹ There are some problems, however, with this conventional way of interpreting Marcuse. Although the first two stages are relatively unified and constitute a coherent programme of social theory with political intent, the post-Second World War writings contain a series of ruptures and novel departures. Consequently, depiction of the post-1950 writings as a unified stage attributes a false unity to what is really a heterogeneous body of work.