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profess themselves faintly puzzled by the current state
of
the world,
though willing to keep an open mind about it. Both sides to the
dialogue seem to embody the same uncertainties, combined with a
resolve to go on searching for· an answer. This is apparently
to
be
done by accumulating yet more data on the voting preferences of
middle-aged housewives, the "scale of tolerance" manifested by college–
educated (as distinct from non-college-educated) respondents, and the
extent
to
which people are "worried more or less now than they used
to be, and what about." Here at any rate is something de Tocqueville
had
not thought of, but then serious research has come of age only with the
invention of the questionnaire.
George lichtheim
THEORY AND PRACTICE
ONE-DIMENSIONAL MAN : STUDIES IN THE IDEOLOGY OF AD–
VANCED INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY_ By Herbert Morcuse. Beocon Press.
$6.00.
One Friday evening a few years ago, I was standing in the
midst of a noisy, happy crowd of students in an auditorium at Brandeis,
waiting for a concert to begin, when word suddenly came up the line:
"Marcuse's here!" At once there was a hush, and people divided
themselves up to clear a path. A tall, erect, vividly forceful man passed
down the aisle, smiling here and there to friends, radiant yet curiously
aloof, rather like an aristocrat who was a popular hero as well, per–
haps Egmont in the streets of Brussels. The students held their breaths
and gazed at him with awe. After he had got to his seat they relaxed
again, flux and chaos returned, but only for a moment, till everyone
could find his place; it was as
if
Marcuse's very presence had given a
structure to events.
At the time I was puzzled: I knew Marcuse only as an historian
of philosophy, preeminent in the study of Hegel and Marx, radical
in his inclinations, yet technical and esoteric almost
to
the point of
inaccessibility. But since then, in wrestling with
his
more recent work,
I've come to understand that demonstration. What makes Marcuse so
attractive a figure to many young radicals is precisely that he
does
give
structure to events-at least, to most of the events that matter most to
them. I should say, for sincerity's sake: to
us.
Where we, and the men