New Horizons of Revolution: Marcuse Reading Mao, Ho, & Nkrumah

• In Event: Critical Theory and the Global Left in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Abstract

At the apex of the protests of the 1960s, it has long been alleged, French students scrawled three names across the walls of occupied buildings: “Marx, Mao, et Marcuse.” The specter of these “three M’s,” as they were often called, haunted the imaginations of reactionaries, conservatives, Cold War liberals, and even the established “Old Left.” Marcuse, often described as the “guru” of the student, peace, antiwar, and New Left movements was especially reviled across Europe and in the United States as a subversive intellectual force corrupting the minds of middle-class university students. Young people, according to many intellectuals, cultural critics, and politicians, were on a dangerous path—one leading from Marcuse to Mao and, ultimately, to Marx and, concomitantly, from mere reading to protesting to, finally, fomenting revolution. Indeed, Central Intelligence Agency analysts warned in 1968 that “Marx—Mao—Marcuse” were the “heroes” of the era’s social, political and cultural movements, and that Marcuse’s writings, in particular, “established the New Left’s license for violence.”

From the earliest studies of the Frankfurt School in the 1970s down to the present day, scholars have sought to understand the origins of and assess claims about Marcuse’s status as the “guru,” “grandfather,” and “spokesman” of the 1960s counterculture. However, in conjunction with the longstanding assumption that Marcuse’s works during this period were theoretically superficial and politically unserious, this historiography has reduced Marcuse to the status of a mere avatar—an epiphenomenal manifestation of the deeper cultural, social, and political forces at work in the 1960s. Building on a recent revival of interest in Marcuse’s mature political thought, this paper begins with an apparently simple question: what was Marcuse’s relationship to Mao? While Marcuse’s intriguing uses of Marx’s “humanistic” and “economic” writings has been well analyzed, his reading of Mao’s works has yet to be documented and assessed. Moreover, Mao was hardly the only revolutionary theorist that Marcuse drew from: writings from the mid-1960s onwards invoke Ho Chi Minh and Kwame Nkrumah. How, this paper asks, did Mao, Ho, and Nkrumah shape Marcuse’s political thought?

The paper develops in three sections. In the first, it collects and systematizes Marcuse’s references to Mao, Ho, and Nkrumah in texts from One-Dimensional Man (1964) and “Repressive Tolerance” (1965) to An Essay on Liberation (1969) and Counter-Revolution and Revolt (1972), as well as occasional writings and interviews from the 1960s ’70s. Doing so, this section demonstrates that Marcuse turned to these revolutionary theorists when existing categories—from both Old Left Marxism and, crucially, critical theory—began to hinder understanding of and political action in the late-capitalist world. However, it argues, Marcuse did select these thinkers for purely theoretical reasons; instead, Marcuse’s dialogue with Ho, Nkrumah, and Mao was motivated by political realities—by the fact that real revolution was happening in the so-called “Third World.” In its second section, the paper builds on this insight by tracing the influence of Nkrumah, Ho, and Mao on Marcuse’s argument that imminent political change—revolution—would be cut across class divisions and, crucially, unfold around the globe. Further, it challenges the accepted view of Marcuse’s account of revolution as primarily psychological and cultural by showing that it would be eminently material and political. In its final section, the paper elucidates some implications of this deeper understanding of Marcuse’s account of revolution for contemporary theoretical paradigms and political movements in an era of reaction and retrenchment. Throughout, the paper demonstrates that Marcuse’s mature thought can be an important resource for contemporary political theory—but only if he is read alongside Mao, Ho, and Nkrumah.

Although it takes its orientation from the dominant narratives of and striking gaps in the scholarship on Marcuse’s mature thought, the paper has far-reaching implications. First, it responds—and contributes to—the “archival turn” in political theory by drawing from Marcuse’s draft writings, unpublished manuscripts, and correspondence. Second, it contests the longstanding view—promoted by other members of the Frankfurt School—that critical theory retreated from politics and, especially, practice. Instead, the paper shows, theory and practice are connected in a never-ending cycle: Marcuse drew critical-theoretical implications from the practice of Mao, Ho, and Nkrumah in order to develop an account of revolution to motivate further practice. Finally, by recovering, systematizing, and analyzing Marcuse’s reliance on Mao, ho, and Nkrumah the paper contributes to the ongoing task of contesting the boundaries of critical theory, asking what constitutes critical theory and who counts as a critical theorist.

Author

• Charles Clavey, Harvard University