One-Dimensional Pessimism

Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man appeared four years ago. Since then, it has been widely, and on the whole, favorably reviewed, read, and discussed. Accepted by many as the long-awaited work that “tells it like it is,” Marcuse’s essay has assumed near-canonical status among some of the most serious and thoughtful of the New Left. An incisive and original discussion of community organizing in Studies on the Left led off by announcing that One-Dimensional Man was to be assumed as the theoretical underpinning for the detailed and specific analysis which followed—though the philosopher’s theory could be taken to be sometimes downright incompatible with the authors’ practice. In New Left Notes, the SDS internal journal, Marcuse’s special philosophical vocabulary appears as unproblematically as if it were part of ordinary language. Marcuse’s reputation in Europe is tremendous, as attested to by a news item in the New York Times last summer which described the tumultuous reception he received from crowds of Berlin students. Recently a weighty Festschrift for Marcuse appeared, and in March a front-page review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review section proclaimed him ...