I
,
•
Herbert Marcuse
A REPLY TO LUCIEN GOLDMANN
I was most reluctant to accept the editor's invitation to
comment on Lucien Goldmann's paper
(PR,
No.3, 1971). Gold–
mann was a close friend of mine for many years; I still cannot come
to
grips
with the brute fact of
his
death. Reading his paper, I got
quite angry; I felt he was still alive, I was talking to him and, as
so often, I disagreed passionately with what he said. And I felt that
again, we embraced each other and knew we were on the same side.
My brief comments
will
be
in self-defense: Goldmann belongs
to those before whom I want to defend myself. I shall comment only
on a few points.
1. Goldmann
says
that, in my view, "Western society has been
so stabilized that no serious oppooition can
be
found within it."
Now it is correct that
One-Dimensional Man
focuses on the integrat–
ing forces of monopoly capitalism at its advanced stage. I still be–
lieve that without a realistic evaluation of these forces, no Marxist
analysis and no leftist strategy can
be
adequate. However, I empha–
sized again and again that, beneath
this
integration, the internal
contradictions of capitalism have reached an unprecedented scope
and intensity. This is the conclusion of
One-Dimensional Man:
"... the unification of opposites in the medium of technological
rationality must be,
in
all reality,
an
illusory
unification which elim–
inates neither the contradiction between the growing productivity
and its repressive use, nor the vital need for solving the contradic–
tion" (p. 256).1 I added that a radical opposition
is
there, but that
it
1.
One-Dimensional Man
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
