This collection assembles some of Herbert Marcuse’s most important work and presents for the first time his responses to and development of classic Marxist approaches to revolution and utopia, as well as his own theoretical and political perspectives.
This sixth and final volume of Marcuse's collected papers shows Marcuse’s rejection of the prevailing twentieth-century Marxist theory and socialist practice - which he saw as inadequate for a thorough critique of Western and Soviet bureaucracy - and the development of his revolutionary thought towards a critique of the consumer society. Marcuse's later philosophical perspectives on technology, ecology, and human emancipation sat at odds with many of the classic tenets of Marx’s materialist dialectic which placed the working class as the central agent of change in capitalist societies. As the material from this volume shows, Marcuse was not only a theorist of Marxist thought and practice in the twentieth century, but also proves to be an essential thinker for understanding the neoliberal phase of capitalism and resistance in the twenty-first century.
A comprehensive introduction by Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce places Marcuse’s philosophy in the context of his engagement with the main currents of twentieth century philosophy while also providing important analyses of his anticipatory theorization of capitalist development through a neoliberal restructuring of society. The volume concludes with an afterword by Peter Marcuse.
Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) is an internationally renowned philosopher, social activist and theorist, and member of the Frankfurt School. He has been remembered as one of the most influential social critical theorists inspiring the radical political movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Author of numerous books including One-Dimensional Man, Eros and Civilisation, and Reason and Revolution, Marcuse taught at Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis University and the University of California before his death in 1979.
Douglas Kellner is George F. Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He is author of many books on social theory, politics, history and culture, including Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism, Media Culture, and Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity. His Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, co-edited with Stephen Eric Bronner, and book Media Spectacle, are both published by Routledge. His latest book is Media Spectacle and Insurrection, 2011: From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere.
Clayton Pierce is an assistant professor in the department of Education, Culture, & Society at the University of Utah, USA. His books include On Marcuse: Critique, Liberation, and Reschooling in the Radical Pedagogy of Herbert Marcuse (with Douglas Kellner and Tyson Lewis), and Marcuse’s Challenge to Education (with Douglas Kellner, Tyson Lewis and Daniel Cho). His latest book is Education in the Age of Biocapitalism.
