262
LUCIEN GOLDMANN
against established oppression. Later, faced with the movements of
May and June 1968 in France, he indicated in a lecture at the
colloquium of Korcula a turn toward optimism, referring to an
essay he was writing to be called "Beyond One-Dimensional Man."
But he also emphasized once again the need for a
radical
trans-
I
formation, and insisted on the danger of being satisfied with partial
~
changes. Ernst Bloch, who was present, immediately hailed Marcuse's
support of Bloch's own optimistic utopianism, which Marcuse, with
some reservations, confirmed.
Let me end this essay with an anecdote from a discussion which
took place in May at a Colloquium organized by UNESCO to
celebrate the centenary of the publication of
Das Kapital.
Marcuse
had just read a characteristically distinguished paper. Four members
of the Colloquium then reproached him for his pessimism and his
radical critique: a Communist philosopher explained that all was
fine in his party and in the working class; a Soviet economist delivered
an apology for the U.S.S.R.; an English participant let it be known
that everything was going very well in Red China; finally a professor
from the University of Paris sang the praises of Western society.
At that point I asked for the floor to note - and this
will
be
the conclusion of my article - that all these critics of Marcuse
proved he was right, since they revealed how well they were integ–
rated into some oppressive and reified part of the contemporary
world, while at that very moment, in Paris and in other great
cities of Europe and the world, millions of students were demon–
strating by their acclaim of Marcuse, and by their own acts, that
if
his criticism of modern society was often justified, if it had given
a theoretical dimension to their movement, he was nevertheless
essentially wrong in his pessimism, in his theory of one-dimensional
man, and in his belief that there were no forces of revolt and of
renewal in consumer society.
(Translated trom the French)
