ARGUMENTS
MARCUSE IN THE SEVENTIES
If
the social theories of Herbert Marcuse had remained just
theories they might have been conceded no higher status than that of a
peripheral heresy in postwar American sociology and political science.
But they came to transcend their original academic context and to inspire
furious debate over the very nature of capitalist society, while their
autJhor became a bugbear of politicians and the mass media. Marcuse's
elevation, from academic theorist to an exemplary intellectual of our
time, occurred because he was identified as the most weighty apologist
for a spectacular and disruptive political movement, the New Left. In
fact, the partnership between Marcuse and his younger disciples has
often been an uneasy one; yet there are sound historical reasons why
they should be linked in comradeship - reasons worth specifying, since
they are becoming less obvious as time passes.
The American New Left emerged in the early sixties in a few uni–
versity centers, of which Berkeley and :Madison were the most conspi–
cuous.
It
represented a fusion of three impulses: disillusionment with
the American Communist Party (this was also a generational shift, since
a large propoI'tion of the founding New Leftists were children of former
Party members ); disbelief in the chances for success of a social-demo–
cratic party
in
the U.S.; and admiration for the campaign of passive
resistance to segregation then being waged by Southern blacks. Their
strategy of direct, exemplary action had an immediate appeal that
mobilized thousands of white students in support, but it embarked the
New Left on a dubious course. Direct action made sense for Southern
blacks, since they had no real alternative. In the North, however, it led
many New Leftists to shun basic tasks of political organization, relying
instead on media manipulation - a sword that could easily be turned
against them - and on a "Jericho strategy" of marching with sound of
trumpets around some offensive institution (the Pentagon, for example) ,
in the hope that its walls might crumble.
By 1969 the limits of these strategies became evident, and the New
Left lost its mass following as people silently echoed Dotson Rader's
