Herbert Marcuse, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Political Violence and “Existential Politics”

7/28/2019 Herbert Marcuse, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Political Violence and “Existential Politics”

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Herbert Marcuse, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Political Violence

and “Existential Politics”

We think of the “culture war” in the United States as largely a product of “the

Sixties,” which in American political-cultural terms extended to 1972 (theMcGovern-Nixon election) or 1973 (the formal end of direct US participation in

the Vietnam War).

But there was also a conventional liberal front in the “culture war” which found

them partially on the same side as conservatives. On the one hand, the liberals

sided with the civil rights movement against the segregationists, and there was aconsiderable overlap between liberals and the civil rights movement. But liberals

were also supportive of the general direction of Cold War policies and, to varying

degrees, many were supportive of the Vietnam War, though that support wanedwith time and military failure there. One of the things that distinguished George

McGovern’s position on foreign policy from what McGovern’s adherents in 1972

were known to deride as “Cold War liberalism” was his straightforwardopposition to the Vietnam War and his broader criticism of Cold War assumptionsabout the special virtue of American power and the external threat of

Communism.

As I was reading a 1968 article by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Existential

Politics and the Cult of Violence”1, largely devoted to criticizing Frankfurt School

philosopher Herbert Marcuse and the New Left movement with which he wasidentified, it occurred to me that Schlesinger’s argument had an awful lot in

common with the more bewildered reactions to the Occupy movement.

Engaging with Schlesinger’s piece led me to compose the current essay, whichcovers several themes of particular concern for me: political violence; the

complex relationship of political ideology/philosophy and political practice; the

liberal variant of Cold War political ideology in the US; the thought of theFrankfurt School, framed by Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse as “critical

theory”; and, in particular, the enduring insights contained in Marcuse’s essay

“Repressive Tolerance” which Schlesinger attempted to skewer in 1968.

Bewildered liberals in “The Sixties”

Schlesinger was writing in the wake of his own experience with an earlier

“occupy” movement: the occupation of Columbia University, where he was then a professor, by student activists in 1968. He wrote:

The causes of student insurgency vary from college to college, and

from country to country. It would seem likely that the primary

1 The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Septembre 1968), pp. 9-15 The text is based on an

address Schlesinger gave on June 5, 1968, the day after Robert Kennedy’s assassination.



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incitement in our own nation has been the war in Vietnam- a war

which has tempted our government into its course of appalling andinsensate destruction, a war which, through the draft, has

demanded that young Americans kill and die where they can see

no rational relationship between personal sacrifice and national

interest. But the cause is also more than the Vietnam war. For thatwar has come for many to prefigure a larger incomprehensibility, a

larger absurdity, even a larger wickedness, in our official society.

For some it has come to seem, not an aberration, but the inevitableresult of the irremediable corruption of the American system.

I cannot share the belief that there was something foreordained andineluctable about the war in Vietnam- that the nature of American

society would have compelled any set of men in Washington to

pursue the same course of folly. This really seems determinist

nonsense. One can still understand, though, why the contradictions

of our society weigh so heavily on the young - the contradictions between the righteousness of a Secretary of State and the

ruthlessness of a B-52; between the notion that violence is fineagainst simple folk ten thousand miles away and shocking against

injustice in our own land; between the equality demanded by our

constitutional structure and the equality denied by our socialstructure; even between the accepted habits of one generation and

the emerging habits of the next, as when a parent tipsy on his

fourth martini begins a tirade against marijuana.

I give Schlesinger a lot of credit for paying serious attention to social and politicalviolence and disruption and looking carefully for its wider causes. In both the US

and Britain, during the 1970s a strictly punitive view toward crime took hold -

institutionalized in the unending War on Drugs - in which crime and violence

were regarded by public officials as exclusively matters of individualdelinquency. This fit well with the culture-war stand of “movement

conservatives” in the US who wanted to demonizing African-Americans and, to a

lesser but serious extent, Latinos as violent classes within the larger community.By the early 1970s, Democrats were already shying away from any mention of

anything like sociological factors in promoting violence. Such observations were

eagerly stigmatized by conservatives as “soft on crime.”

That is still a dominant attitude in the US. The now-perpetual Global War on

Terrorism has worked to strengthen that attitude. The extent to which that is sowas dramatically illustrated by the paramilitary response that was so prominent in

urban police response to the Occupy movement in 2011-12. Sadly, that was

particularly so in cities with Democratic mayors like Chicago, Oakland and

Portland, and in New York with an Independent mayor that endorsed PresidentObama for re-election in 2012.



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War and social violence

In that passage just quoted, it’s notable that Schlesinger recognized some link

between war and violence of various kinds inside the US. He doesn’t oversimplify

in the general overview. Drawing more direct connections between cause and

effect on something so overdetermined as decisions by individuals to commit actsof violence is a very difficult thing to do. Which is not to say it’s impossible.

The aftermath of the First World provides some useful examples. The role of warin setting up the Russian Revolution of 1917 is well known. The Russian people

were sick of the war, and the Bolsheviks’ main immediate appeal was that they

promised “bread and peace.” But war also meant that there were a lot of currentand former soldiers who were trained in arms and organized combat and had a

good supply of guns at a given moment. The combination created opportune

conditions for the kind of coup d’état that was still feasible in a country like

Russia where governmental institutions were so highly centralized. And for the

subsequent long and bloody civil war that followed that revolution.

Something similar can be seen in Germany, though it’s highly unlikely that aRussian-style revolutionary coup was feasible there at the time. Still, revolts in the

army and navy, including the formation of soldiers’ councils (“soviet” was the

Russian word for workers’ and soldiers’ councils) as an immediate form of basedemocracy, as well as other popular protests pushed the military government to

get the Kaiser to abdicate and turn the government over to the Social Democrats.

The training and the widespread availability of weapons continued to shape theimmediate postwar politics there, with the brutal suppression of workers’

demonstrations in January 1919 that arguably left wounds in Weimar democracythat were ultimately fatal; the Kapp Putsch in 1921; the attempted Communist

coup in 1923.

There is also some kind of link between American attitudes toward routineviolence in society and our current type of idolatry of the military and the

belligerent war rhetoric common to both parties, a situation not totally dissimilar

to the days of the Vietnam War. The most bloodthirsty rhetoric about slaughteringcivilians and torturing and murdering people is considered widely respectable,

though by no means universally indulged. I don’t share Schlesinger’s belief

expressed elsewhere that depictions of violence in fiction and on TV and even incomic books promotes violent behavior in any measurable way. But for kids

especially, hearing people they see as responsible adults defend violence and

murder against civil rights activists, or indulging in gory verbal fantasies aboutslaughtering people in war, does shape real-life attitudes toward violence.

Cold War Foreign Policy and Ideological Deadlock

But in the middle of Schlesinger’s nuanced observations about the causes of

social violence, he papers over larger objections to Cold War foreign policy



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conceptions by bracketing them in a conventional dismissal of what we might call

the most “retail” form of Communist theories of imperialism: “I cannot share the belief that there was something foreordained and ineluctable about the war in

Vietnam- that the nature of American society would have compelled any set of

men in Washington to pursue the same course of folly.”

After the Bush-Cheney Administration with its outspoken and arrogant

neoconservatives and militarists, we’ve become accustomed to hearing advocates

of a warlike foreign policy talk about the United States as an “empire” pursuing“imperial” policies. But at least well into the 1990s, the use of such terms about

American foreign policy was considered dubious at best in mainstream

conversation. They figured prominently in the propaganda of Communistcountries like China, Russia, Cuba and Vietnam, so conventional standards

required that any such criticisms be dismissed as outside the pale of respectability,

as Schlesinger does there.

To be fair, Schlesinger in other places did give careful consideration to readingsof history like those of William Appleman Williams that were popular and

influential among antiwar activists in those days and which used an anti-imperialist framework. But pretty much anyone who worked with such theories

beyond the level of what could be fitted on a one-page leaflet recognized that

there were real decision-makers with real choices involved, not that “the nature ofAmerican society would have compelled any set of men in Washington to pursue

the same course of folly,” a straw-man that Schlesinger dismisses as “determinist

nonsense,” a phrase representing a conventional criticisms of Marxism in itsvarious forms.

What Schlesinger evades in that formulation is that the United States since the

Second World War has pursued various forms of a foreign policy strategy of

global dominance or global hegemony. While the Soviet Union still existed, that

strategy confronted another superpower with its own not inconsiderable globalinfluence. Since the fall of the USSR, American officials have been willing to

speak more frankly in both speeches and official policy pronouncements about the

pursuit of a global dominance strategy, which aims at preventing the rise of any“peer competitor” nation in the world, in the foreign policy jargon. President

Obama’s National Security Strategy of May 2010 formulates it this way:

Our country possesses the attributes that have supported our

leadership for decades - sturdy alliances, an unmatched military,

the world’s largest economy, a strong and evolving democracy,and a dynamic citizenry. Going forward, there should be no doubt:

the United States of America will continue to underwrite global

security - through our commitments to allies, partners, and

institutions; our focus on defeating al-Qa’ida and its affiliates inAfghanistan, Pakistan, and around the globe; and our



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determination to deter aggression and prevent the proliferation of

the world’s most dangerous weapons. (emphasis added)2

Such a strategy does not pre-define each specific decision. Nor is it the result of

determinism, nonsensical or otherwise. But it is a strategy that developed from

historical and economic pressures and experiences. And it is a strategy thatcreates a strong incentive for foreign intervention, including military intervention.

Two of the leading theorists of the “realist” school of foreign policy, JohnMearsheimer and Stephen Walt, both advocate an alternative strategic approach

they call “offshore balancing.” Such a strategy, they both argue, would reduce the

need and temptation for direct military intervention by the United States.3

In other words, the global dominance strategy doesn’t dictate individual policy

decisions. But that strategy and the economic, political, military and social

pressures that formed it do vastly increase the likelihood of foreign policy

misadventures and military interventions. For a liberal in 1968 eager to clearlydelineate himself from a “left” anti-imperialist analysis, that was a difficult point

to admit. Even for a serious critic of the Vietnam War such Schlesinger had bythen become.

In a 1986 collection of essays, Schlesinger discusses the origins of the Cold Warand some issues raised by what he calls there Cold War revisionism in “Why the

Cold War?”4 In the first part of that essay, he argues that the basic Cold War

policy was inevitable from the American side. “The Cold War could have beenavoided only if the Soviet Union had not been possessed by convictions both of

the infallibility of the communist word and of the inevitability of a communistworld,” he writes. And because those Soviet attitudes “transformed an impasse

between national states into a religious war,” (!!) even “the most rational of

American policies could hardly have averted the Cold War.”

In the second part of the essay, “The Cold War Revisited: 1986,” he adds nuance

to that conclusion by discussing works looking at other possible driving

motivations for Soviet decisions in the postwar period. There, he reaches a lesssweeping conclusion:

2 National Security Strategy (White House; May 2010) p. 1

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf 3

John Mearshimer, “Pull Those Boots Off The Ground” Newsweek 12/30/2008http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/12/30/pull-those-boots-off-the-ground.html;

Stephen Walt, “Offshore balancing: An idea whose time has come” Foreign Policy online11/02/2011

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/02/offshore_balancing_an_idea_whose_time_has_co

me; "What if realists were in charge of U.S. foreign policy?" Foreign Policy online 04/30/2012

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/30/what_if_realists_ran_us_foreign_policy_a_top_ten

_list

4 The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1986)



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For its part, the Soviet Union had its own interests andapprehensions. The Cold War soon became an intricate,

interlocking reciprocal process, involving authentic differences in

principle, real and supposed clashes of interest and a wide range of

misunderstanding, misperception and demagoguery. Each camp persevered in corroborating the fears of the other. Together they

marched in fatal lockstep to the brink of the abyss.

Still, he couldn’t quite back away from his own version of Cold War determinism,

concluding there, “The real surprise would have been if there had been no Cold

War.”

His 1968 criticism of Herbert Marcuse, and of the New Left of the time for which

he used Marcuse as a broader symbol, reflects the constrictions of the larger Cold

War framework to which Schlesinger held.

Schlesinger’s evidence for the indictment of Marcuse: the essay “Repressive

Tolerance”

Schlesinger targets Marcuse’s essay “Repressive Tolerance” in his critique. That

essay appeared as the third of three in a 1965 book, A Critique of Pure

Tolerance.5 The first was by an analytic philosopher, Robert Paul Wolff, “Beyond

Tolerance,” the second by sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr., “Tolerance and the

Scientific Outlook.” The collection was intended to look at various aspects oftolerance as a philosophical and historical phenomenon as it manifests itself in the

present day.

More specifically, they examine tolerance as a problem in the contemporary

context. For Wolff, tolerance had developed into a problematic pluralism that

obstructs a necessary consideration of common interests. As he wrote:

Pluralism is humane, benevolent, accommodating and far more

responsive to the evils of social injustice than either the egoisticliberalism or the traditionalistic conservatism from which it grew.

But pluralism is fatally blind to the evils which afflict the entire

body politic, and as a theory of society it obstructs consideration of precisely the sorts of thoroughgoing social revisions which may be

needed to remedy those evils.

Moore focused on the central importance of the “secular and scientific outlook”

and how it both requires tolerance and is essential to recognize the limits of

tolerance:

5 (Boston: Beacon Press; 1965) Online:

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm



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Properly used and understood, the secular and scientific outlookleads neither to flaccid acceptance of the world as it is, watery

toleration of every doctrine because there might be some

contribution somewhere, nor to the fanatical single-mindedness of

the doctrinaire, willing that a thousand may perish in order that oneshall be saved. Instead of paralyzing the will and the intellect the

rational and secular outlook can nerve men for mortal combat

when the situation calls for it and prevent them from fighting orsimply being foolish when the situation calls for rational

discussion or some other behavior. It can tell us when to be

tolerant and when tolerance becomes intellectual cowardice andevasion.

Instead of taking the issues raised by the philosophical project of the book,

Schlesinger singles out Marcuse’s essay and wrongly treated it as a stereotypical

and even conventional example of the “fanatical single-mindedness of thedoctrinaire,” in Moore’s words.6

Marcuse “problematized” tolerance is a distinctive way in his contribution to that

book. “Tolerance,” he wrote, “is an end in itself. The elimination of violence, and

the reduction of suppression to the extent required for protecting man and animalsfrom cruelty and aggression are preconditions for the creation of a humane

society.”7

But Marcuse was looking at tolerance as a critical demand against existing

societies. He continued immediately, “Such a society does not yet exist ; progresstoward it is perhaps more than before arrested by violence and suppression on a

global scale.” (emphasis added)

No Cold War liberal in 1965 or 1968 could be comfortable with a broadformulation like this. And it was surely not Marcuse’s intention in using it to

comfort anyone.

Marcuse looks back to the role of tolerance in the democratic revolutions of the

17th

, 18th

and 19th

centuries, of which the English Revolution of 1666 and the

French Revolution of 1789 were the great paradigms. Toleration in those contextsmeant especially religious toleration, after a tumultuous early-modern period that

saw the Wars of Religion of the 16th

century and the long, bloody, incredibly

destructive Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, in which religious issues played a

6 Schlesinger may or may not have approved of using the word “project” to describe what the

authors of A Critique of Pure Tolerance were doing. It was Martin Heidegger who established the

use of “project” to describe a philosophical undertaking. And, as we shall see below, Schlesinger

seems to have been deeply suspicious of anything touching Heidegger’s existentialism.7 I venture to think American English has reached a point where it may be necessary to explain

that “man” in 1965 was still used as a generic reference to humanity.



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major and highly visible role. Toleration between Catholics and Protestants,

between Lutherans and Calvinists, between Christians and Jews were major issuesin the long transition from feudalism to democracy and capitalism in the Europe

world, including in their American colonies.

“The telos of tolerance is truth,” Marcuse wrote.

It is clear from the historical record that the authentic spokesmen

of tolerance had more and other truth in mind than that of propositional logic and academic theory. John Stuart Mill speaks

of the truth which is persecuted in history and which does not

triumph over persecution by virtue of its “inherent power,” whichin fact has no inherent power “against the dungeon and the stake.”

And he enumerates the “truths” which were cruelly and

successfully liquidated in the dungeons and at the stake: that of

Arnold of Brescia, of Fra Dolcino, of Savonarola, of the

Albigensians, Waldensians, Lollards, and Hussites. Tolerance isfirst and foremost for the sake of the heretics – the historical road

toward humanitas appears as heresy: target of persecution by the powers that be. Heresy by itself, however, is no token of truth.

The criterion of progress in freedom according to which Mill judges these movements is the Reformation. The evaluation is ex

post , and his list includes opposites (Savonarola too would have

burned Fra Dolcino). Even the ex post evaluation is contestable asto its truth: history corrects the judgment – too late.

Marcuse posed the problem of whether tolerance can achieve its historic value

and function of providing a free chance for the constructive, liberating ideas that

improve society and the conditions of individual life in the conditions of advanced

capitalist democracies.

First drafting this essay just after the 2012 US Presidential election and the

Superstorm/”Frankenstorm” Katrina which struck the East Coast, much of the problem he raised in 1965 were all too painfully apparent. Far more so than in

1965, American political campaigns are dependent on funds from wealthy donors.

One dramatic manifestation of that in the 2012 election was the absence ofclimate change as a major topic of discussion. (Absence as a manifestation of

something is not unlike a formulation Marcuse and other Frankfurt School figures

might have used for that situation.) Many wealthy donors, especially in the energyindustry but also more generally, don’t want climate change discussed or even

recognized for what it is, because such discussion can easily lead to inconvenient

regulations on pollution or changes in tax and spending policies that currently

favor extractive industries and carbon polluters.



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Tolerance also appears in various forms. In the legal form, it means essentially

that nobody gets put in jail just for expressing a controversial idea, howevermistaken, wrong-headed, obnoxious or just plain dumb it may be.

But tolerance is also manifested in the selection of guests and topics on TV

shows, in which talk radio programs are put in prime slots, which speakers areinvited to forums at colleges, what articles are selected for trend-setting

magazines, journals and websites. On a personal and private level, tolerance is

applied or withheld according to what topics and what manner of expression aredeemed acceptable in private conversations or semi-private forums like Facebook.

A person may feel perfectly comfortable arguing taxation policy with friends,

family members or acquaintances, but unwilling to hear their favorite religiousdoctrines criticized in any way.

Marcuse formulated the problem like this:

Within the affluent democracy, the affluent discussion prevails,and within the established framework, it is tolerant to a large

extent. All points of view can be heard: the Communist and theFascist, the Left and the Right, the white and the Negro, the

crusaders for armament and for disarmament. Moreover, in

endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion istreated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the

misinformed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda

rides along with education, truth with falsehood.8

A key element of the democratic assumption about the value of tolerance,including its formal, legal aspects with freedom of speech and freedom of

religion, is that people could make informed decisions in choosing among

alternatives. But in societies where mass manipulation is both technically possible

and widely practiced, and in which the wealthy have access to such capabilitiesfar disproportionate to either their numbers or any objective value of their ideas,

that basic assumption about well-informed citizens and electors becomes

problematic.

Marcuse at one point does argue explicitly, “It should be evident by now that the

exercise of civil rights by those who don’t have them presupposes the withdrawalof civil rights from those who prevent their exercise.”

But it is also clear that Marcuse is defining the problem of tolerance as a dilemmain the context of existing affluent democracies like the US and of the historical

value of tolerance as enabling dissenters, heretics, to push forward developments

that enhance human life and human society. As we saw above, he even puts in a

plug for animal rights there.

8 The situation he describes here could be said to be several orders of magnitude more evident in

2013 in the United States.



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Yet for the advocates of those liberating ideas to overcome the situation hedescribes, if “the exercise of civil rights by those who don’t have them

presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise,”

what is he defining is an unresolved and even unresolvable problem. The

dissenters have to make their voices not only heard but effective. But sincedissenters not accepted by or part of the Establishment (a term Marcuse uses

here), they scarcely have the power to formally withdraw civil rights from those

who defend the current system of domination by capital, as Marcuse understandsit.

What he is really defining in “Repressive Tolerance” is the real-time blockage offundamental criticism in affluent democracies, and the lack of any clear political

path to resolving that dilemma. In 1965, the reality of the discontent and massive

dissent by African-Americans against segregation and racial discrimination was

not only obvious but a dramatic feature of the American political scene. It would

be an interesting point of inquiry to look at the ways in which the civil rightsmovement at that time had already shown the way toward potential solutions of

the problem Marcuse thematizes in “Repressive Tolerance.” Or, to use Hegelianterms, toward the ablation ( Aufheben) of the problem which raises it to the next

level of development.

Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” remains a challenging and fascinating piece

because he manages to address a wide range of important themes that were

characteristic concerns of the Frankfurt School. Including the problem of politicalviolence and revolution. Which brings us to the approach Schlesinger took to

criticizing Marcuse’s perspective.

Schlesinger vs. “existential politics” and the supposed cult of violence

Rather than engaging the actual problem of tolerance as either Marcuse or theother two authors of A Critique of Pure Tolerance raised it, Schlesinger in a

number of ways tried to shoehorn Marcuse’s arguments into familiar truisms of

conventional mainstream political assumptions.

Schlesinger frames his argument against Marcuse and the New Left he takes him

to represent by claiming the “new creed” has two basic parts, one a rejection ofgood American ideas of tolerance, the other a lack of a specific program. The first

gives him a launching pad for the following characterizations of the argument of

“Repressive Tolerance”:

“The first part is an attempt to clear away what its theorists regard as the

noxious rubbish of the Bill of Rights.”

“The new creed thus perceives the First Amendment as the keystone, notof liberty, but of a wicked apparatus of tolerance employed by an

oppressive social order to resist basic change.”



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“I will state in the words of its leading advocate- that is Herbert Marcuse-

the belief that it is necessary and right , as a matter of principle, to suppress

views with which one disagrees and to howl down those who utter suchviews.”

Marcuse argues that “contemporary society has absorbed and abolished

the historic means of social revolution.” “Marcuse argues” that society does so “through a system of indoctrination

and manipulation made possible by an ingenious and despicable

combination of welfarism and tolerance.”

“Capitalism, in short, buys off potential opponents by offering a measureof apparent economic security and personal freedom. Marcuse regards this

as a terrible state of affairs.”

“As he sees it, any improvement in the condition of the powerless and the

oppressed only plays into the hands of the rulers - and is therefore to be

regretted.”

“Tolerance is evil because it dissipates the force of protest.”

“It is also evil because it permits the promulgation of evil ideas.” Marcuse calls for “for the forcible suppression of false ideas.”

And, in case the reader isn’t following his drift, Schlesinger adds,

“Marcuse's call for the forcible suppression of false ideas is, I have

suggested, only the first part of the new creed. Nor is such an assault on

the Bill of Rights new, even for radicals. The Stalinists of the Thirties, forexample, had no compunction in arguing in much the same way that civil

freedom should be denied those who resist the Stalinist truth.”

The reader will search the pages of “Repressive Tolerance” in vain trying to findwhere Marcuse condemns the American Bill of Rights as “noxious rubbish,” or

the First Amendment as “a wicked apparatus,” to generally “suppress views withwhich one disagrees” and to “howl down” those who utter them. At best, the other points just cited are exceptionally unsympathetic readings to the point that they

scarcely correspond to Marcuse’s actual arguments.

Tolerance is evil in Marcuse’s view? If Schlesinger was going to make that

argument, he should have at least grappled with what he thinks Marcuse meant in

writing the lines quoted above that began, “Tolerance is an end in itself. Theelimination of violence, and the reduction of suppression to the extent required for

protecting man and animals from cruelty and aggression are preconditions for thecreation of a humane society.”

Apparently without realizing it, in painting Marcuse there as a stereotypical

Commie straw-man, Schlesinger himself provides an illustration of the processMarcuse describes this passage from “Repressive Tolerance”:

The toleration of free discussion and the equal right of oppositeswas to define and clarify the different forms of dissent: their

direction, content, prospect. But with the concentration of



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economic and political power and the integration of opposites in a

society which uses technology as an instrument of domination,effective dissent is blocked where it could freely emerge: in the

formation of opinion, in information and communication, in speech

and assembly. Under the rule of monopolistic media – themselves

the mere instruments of economic and political power - a mentalityis created for which right and wrong, true and false are predefined

wherever they affect the vital interests of the society. That is, prior

to all expression and communication, a matter of semantics: the

blocking of effective dissent, of the recognition of that which is not

of the Establishment which begins in the language that is

publicized and administered . (emphasis added)

By framing Marcuse as a 30s-style Stalinist making arguments against the First

Amendment that sounded like those of the crudest segregationist, Schlesinger

attempts to frame him from the outset as someone whose arguments are outside

the pale of Establishment respectability and which therefore can be harmlesslydiscussed and condemned without much regard to which he actually say. In

Marcuse’s words, “prior to all expression and communication, a matter ofsemantics,” a defining of “that which is not of the Establishment” in the

“publicized and administered” language.

At this point, it worth noting that there are some obvious concerns about how

Marcuse’s arguments on formal civil rights, apart from the polemical context in

which Schlesinger attempted to frame them in the Cold War liberal “publicizedand administered” language. In 1965, the current defenses of their First

Amendment rights by civil rights advocates and also by adherents and “fellowtravelers” of the US Communist Party were very active issues, or had been in the

recent past. Neither the staunchly anti-Communist American Civil Liberties

Union or the National Lawyers Guild (a “fellow-traveling” group to the

Communist Party) would have made the argument in the way that Marcuse did,especially “the exercise of civil rights by those who don’t have them presupposes

the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise.”

It always worthwhile to recognize the extent to which the experience of the Third

Reich affected the framing of those original Frankfurt School figures including

Marcuse. And the European political scene always weighed heavily in theiranalyses after the Second World War. The United States and the Western allies

had banned the Nazi Party in occupied Germany and also forbade any attempts to

revive it. To this day, Holocaust denial or explicit promotion of Nazism are illegalin Germany and in numerous other European democracies. The Austrian State

Treaty of 1955 that formally restored Austria’s independence, and remains in

force to this day with the US, Britain and France, obligates Austria to ban Nazi

activities and advocacy. The implicit principle behind such a ban is that thisspecific historical phenomenon, Hitler’s National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and

movement, has proven itself so destructive and false in human and democratic



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terms that “withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and

movements” (Marcuse) which support it or seek to revive it is necessary andconsistent with democracy.

The present writer does not favor such legal restrictions as, for instance, Austria

imposes under its treaty obligations. But in US Constitutional law, treaties are ona level with the Constitution itself as the law of the land. So even though the US

itself isn’t under a reciprocal obligation to legally ban Nazi and Nazi-like activity,

it would not be an exaggeration to observe that the basic law of the US recognizesat some level the legitimacy of the implied historical judgment of the definitely

proven falsity of Nazism.

And the more general, formal, legal right to dissenting speech in the US certainly

does not extend in such a general form to political activity. Most European

democracies have explicit legal mechanisms for banning parties that are officially

determined to be in rejection the country’s constitutional order. The German

Communist Party was banned in the 1950s, and similar bans have been imposedon some far right political groups. The US doesn’t have the same type of

provisions but gets there through other routes. You can’t legally run terroristgroups by labeling them political parties. There are various requirements for

ballot access, about which aspiring third party perennially complain. There are

reporting requirements on political donations to political parties, and lawsexplicitly governing the parties’ conduct. Political campaigning by non-profit

agencies is legally circumscribed.9

Such formal limitations on political tolerance and political speech and advocacy

are well established, as Schlesinger surely knew very well in 1968. So it’s hard toavoid the conclusion that to a significant extent, he was being disingenuous in

pigeonholing Marcuse’s argument in “Repressive Tolerance” to some comic-book

version of dogmatic “Stalinism.”

And it’s useful to look at Schlesinger’s criticism of Marcuse’s stance, keeping in

mind that the formal, legal aspect was only part of what Marcuse was examining.

Schlesinger:

He is candid about his repudiation of the Bill of Rights.

The traditional criterion of clear and present danger

seems no longer adequate to a stage where the

whole society is in the situation of the theateraudience when somebody cries: "fire." ... The whole

post-fascist period is one of clear and present

danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the

9 In 2013, the IRS was the special target of conservative criticism for its approach to determining

whether organization engaged in political advocacy were entitled to be tax-exempt status under the

vague and complex requirements in federal law at the time.



14

withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage

of communication in word, print, and picture. . . .Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot

be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed,

certain behavior cannot be permitted without

making tolerance an instrument for the continuationof servitude. [quote from “Repressive Tolerance”]

And he is specific about what he would forbid. His program, as hestates it,

would include the withdrawal of toleration ofspeech and assembly from groups and movements

which promote aggressive policies, armament,

chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race

and religion, or which oppose the extension of

public services, medical care, etc. Moreover, therestoration of freedom of thought may necessitate

new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practicesin the educational institutions. [quote from

“Repressive Tolerance”]

But isn’t the following an example of just such a “withdrawal of toleration of

speech and assembly” without violating the law or even the ideas of most civil

liberties advocates? Joan Walsh reports on the story of how a speech by theshowy and nasty far-right extremist Ann Coulter was cancelled by the Young

Repubicans Fordham University in 2012 after they received criticism for theirchoice of a spaker to bring to their campus.

10 Fr. Joseph McShane, the President

of the Jesuit institution, issued this statement on the invitation:

To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity ofthe College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous

understatement. There are many people who can speak to the

conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms.Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and

needlessly provocative - more heat than light - and her message is

aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature.

As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with

one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud andimpugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage

in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias

incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold

out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain

10 Joan Walsh, "Fordham head blasts Ann Coulter" Salon 11/09/2012

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/fordham_head_blasts_ann_coulter/



15

on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual

orientation, or creed.

“Disgust” was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those

incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely

at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animatedFordham.

Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would beto do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of

fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from

speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goesthat the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially

true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni,

parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully,

and forcefully.

The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with

a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face ofrepugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter’s (and the student

organizers’) opinions, or do we use her appearance as an

opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in theacademy — and one another — stronger? We have chosen the

latter course, confident in our community and in the power of

decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice

In this case, it was the College Republicans themselves who decided to the practice the “withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly” from Ann Coulter

in that particular context for which they had a choice to shape. In their statement

announcing the withdrawal of the invitation to the speaker known to her critics as

“Mad Annie” Coulter, they said:

The size and severity of opposition to this event have caught us by

surprise and caused us to question our decision to welcome her toRose Hill. Looking at the concerns raised about Ms. Coulter, many

of them reasonable, we have determined that some of her

comments do not represent the ideals of the College Republicansand are inconsistent with both our organization’s mission and the

University’s. We regret that we failed to thoroughly research her

before announcing; that is our error and we do not excuseourselves for it. Consistent with our strong disagreement with

certain comments by Ms. Coulter, we have chosen to cancel the

event and rescind Ms. Coulter’s invitation to speak at Fordham.

We made this choice freely before Father McShane’s email wassent out and we became aware of his feelings – had the President



16

simply reached out to us before releasing his statement, he would

have learned that the event was being cancelled.

Tolerance operates on many levels. Schlesinger in his polemic against Marcuse’s

essay “Repressive Tolerance” chose to reduce Marcuse’s arguments to a crude

Cold War caricature.

The issue of political violence

“I set forth a theoretical model of thinking. How could I know that people would

want to realize it with Molotov cocktails?” said Marcuse’s Frankfurt School

colleague Theodor Adorno in Germany in mid-1968, contemporary withSchlesinger’s critical essay on Marcuse.

11 Adorno was responding to what was

apparently as similar criticism as that which Schlesinger directed against Herbert

Marcuse, that he was irresponsibly encouraging civil violence.

The challenge of discussing political violence

“La violencia, la promoción irresponsable de insurrecciones son mala praxis endemocracia” (“Violence, the irresponsible promotion of insurrections, are bad

practices in democracy.”) So wrote Argentine journalist Mario Wainfeld in 2012

in discussing an outbreak of organized looting and vandalism evidently organized by the opposition to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s left-Peronist government.

12

Such a straightforward statement about politically-motivated violence is almostunthinkable in the United States from major politicians or journalists. Between the

continued national focus on “terrorism” and the gun lobby’s insistence thatmassive privately-held stores of weapons are necessary to protect a right of armed

sedition supposedly guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution,

any public statements on a subject like this are typically buried under mounds of

mealy-mouthed slogans.

11 „Ich habe ein theoretisches Denkmodell aufgestellt. Wie konnte ich wissen, dass Leute es mitMolotow-Chocktails realisieren wollten.“ Quoted by Walter Rüegg in Die 68er Jahre und die

Franfurter Schule (Vortrag, gehalten im Rahmen der Margot-und-Friedrich-Becke-Stiftung am

31.Mai 2008 in Heidelberg) (Univeritätsverlag Winter; Heidelberg; 2008) p. 14. Rüegg cites both

in connection with a lecture he gave on June 17, 1968 in which he claimed the Frankfurt School

had provided the „ideological and tactical basis“for the militant actions promoted by the GermanSDS (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund ) group at the time. Apparently Adorno’s comment

was a direct response to Rüegg’s comment. The “Molotov cocktails“ reference in Adorno’s quotedcomment isn’t clear. It should also be noted that Rüegg’s lecture takes a notably hostile tone

toward both Adorno and Max Horkheimer, the head of the Instut für Sozialforschung that was the

institutional base of the “Frankfurt School,“ a tone not explained by the superficial and even

sneering criticisms he makes of them.12

“La chispa y las realidades” Página/12 (23.12.2012)http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-210464-2012-12-23.html



17

Political violence in the American context discussed in this essay is a difficult

topic on which to write. It’s ironic that it should be so, since there are very fewAmericans who consider themselves pacifists. In 2012, the extreme gun-

proliferation advocacy rhetoric of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and even

more hardline rightwing groups, has made chatter about armed subversion

depressingly common.

13

Most of it is blowhard rhetoric by grumpy white guyswho are far more likely to shoot themselves in the foot than undertake armed

revolt against the US government. But there have also been a number of cases of

murders and other actual and attempted acts of violence by far-right groups and“lone wolf” perpetrators motivated by subversive far-right talk.

When it comes to political violence in foreign policy, it is not only accepted butwidely celebrated. Political violence in the form of the police suppressing

demonstrations has been far too widely practiced in recent years in the US. Such

actions don’t command the level of support and admiration that foreign wars or

drone strikes do, but many Americans who understand themselves to be good

citizens are very complacent if not downright approving of unjustified policeviolence against nonviolent political demonstrators.

In the cases of civil unrest in other countries - a coup in Venezuela or Honduras,

civil wars in Syria or the Congo – people in the US tend to react according to

general preferences for the side that media reporting tends to make look better.And that in turn typically in turn reflects the views of various foreign policy

elites. Or ethnic/national backgrounds can play a role, as with Florida Cubans or

Polish-Americans. The Arab Awakening was largely seen in a sympathetic lightin the US, with notable exceptions among anti-Islam hardliners. In the case of

Libya, the US even intervened militarily on the side of rebels seeking the violentoverthrow of the established government.

Political violence in a domestic context is seen much more skeptically by most

people, NRA rhetoric notwithstanding. Americans raised to reverence theDeclaration of Independence and the American Revolution may theoretically

recognize the right of people anywhere to overthrow an unjust government. Few

would conclude in practice that such an action is called for in the United States.And actively organizing mass organizations to stage some kind of violent coup is

virtually unthinkable under American conditions.

13

Prior to a shocking mass murder of elementary school children in late 2012, the often unhingedrhetoric of gun proliferation adovcates like the NRA had not been prominently challenged for

years by most Democrats and certainly not by President Barack Obama. After the defeat inCongress of a very basic requirement for background checks for weapons purchases that enjoyed

overwhelming public support, it appears that most Democrats and President Obama are content to

resume ducking the issue. Not incidentally, the rejection of a hugely popular background check

legislation was widely discussed in progressive media and blogs as a dramatic frustration of the

popular will by well-heeled business interests; the NRA functions as the primary lobbying arm ofthe domestic firearms industry in the US. I did not notice any reports that described it as an

example of “repressive tolerance.” But it could have been.



18

In practice, most Americans and most citizens of democracies in 2012 would

likely agree with the notions expressed succinctly by Mario Wainfeld, “Violence,the irresponsible promotion of insurrections, are bad practices in democracy.”

That implies several things, including a moral recognition that it’s irresponsible to

promote violence without good cause, that insurrectionary acts in some

circumstances may be necessary and justified, and that it’s both wrong and dumbin a functioning democracy to rely on such tactics for political goals.

But it also could include a recognition that violence of a political or at least pre- political character can break out without any political party organizing them and

can become a reality that has to be understood for what it is.

Political violence in the context of 1968

Worries about urban riots and politically-tinged violence were very much on

many Americans’ minds in 1968, not just Arthur Schlesinger’s. The assassination

of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis that year set off a still-unmatchedwave of urban rioting. The editors of Vietnam and America (1985)14

describe it

this way:

On April 4 [1968], Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in

Memphis.

The nationwide reaction to the murder of Dr. King in some ways

rivaled the Tet Offensive, to which it bore similarities by no means purely coincidental. Between April 4 and April 11, 1968,

rebellions broke out in 125 US cities and towns.

… In that cataclysmic week, 55,000 troops had to be mobilized

alongside tens of thousands of police. Television viewers around

the world saw Washington itself defended by federal combattroops, while columns of smoke from burning buildings towered

above the Capitol. On April 11 came the biggest call-up of the

reserves during the Vietnam War.

No sooner had the black rebellions been put down than the

campuses erupted. Between April 23 and May 6, militant protestdemonstrations swept public and private universities and colleges

across the country. Large number of police battled students even at

such elite universities as Stanford and Columbia, while campusactivists increasingly linked the antiwar movement to the struggles

of black people, GIs, and those parts of the working class suffering

the gravest economic consequences of the war.

14 Marvin E. Gettleman et al, Vietnam and America: A Documented History (Grove Press, Inc.;

New York; 1985) pp. 336-7



19

So Arthur Schlesinger wasn’t entirely tilting at phantoms when he fretted about

the possible influence of revolutionary philosophy in promoting violence. Liberalsand non-segregationist conservatives who had persuaded themselves just a few

years earlier that the US had reached “the end of ideology,” to use the ill-fated

title of Daniel Bell’s once-influential book, were now facing a situation that bore

disturbing similarities to a highly ideological and conflict-ridden era. In thatmoment of disrupted conventional assumptions, finding a respected and relatively

prominent Marxist like Herbert Marcuse against whom to apply the Cold War

liberal criticisms had a comforting ritual exorcism aspect in additional towhatever substance there might be to the criticism.

Schlesinger bases his criticism of Marcuse in the “special responsibility” that “lieson our intellectual community.” But some historical background on Marcuse is

relevant here.

In 1968, Herbert Marcuse was not out in the ghettoes directing mobs to attack

police stations. He was not training Black Panther cadres in paramilitary drills. Hewas not issuing pamphlets or making radio broadcasts demanding that blood flow

in the streets until the “racist pig power structure” (a phrase of some currency atthe time

15) step down from power and voluntary agree to be confined to re-

education camps.

Marcuse was a participant in a sailor’s council during the 1918 democratic

revolution in Germany. He lived in Germany during the events in the Weimar

Republic, including the bloody suppression in 1919 against workers’ protestscarried out by a Social Democratic government in alliance with the far-rightFreikorps militias, and the subsequent violent suppression of the “soviet republic”in Bavaria; the Kapp Putsch of 1920, defeated by a successful general strike in

defense of the Republic; an attempt Communist uprising in 1923; Hitler’s “beer

hall putsch” of 1923; and the escalating political violence of the late 1920s and

early 1930s. As an exile from Nazi Germany and an analyst for the wartime USOffice of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the State Department, he was well

versed in the historical and practical complexities of political violence, both

internal to countries and internationally.

What did Marcuse actually say about violence in “Repressive Tolerance,” the text

on which Schlesinger focuses? In addition to the sections quoted above, he makesarguments such as the following:

15 See “Resolution on the Black Panther Party” of the American SDS (Students for a Democratic

Society) adopted by the SDS National Council 03/ 30/1969 New Left Review July/Aug 1969. Itquotes Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, “The correct and uncompromising leadership which the

Black Panther party has brought to the black liberation movement has brought down the most

vicious repression from the racist pig power structure.” (emphasis added) The resolution commits

SDS’ “commitment to defend the Black Panther party and the black colony against the vicious

attacks of the racist pig power structure.” (emphasis added)



20

… within a repressive society, even progressive movementsthreaten to turn into their opposite to the degree to which they

accept the rules of the game. To take a most controversial case: the

exercise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to the

press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priorirenunciation of counterviolence) in a society of total

administration serves to strengthen this administration by testifying

to the existence of democratic liberties which, in reality, havechanged their content and lost their effectiveness. In such a case,

freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an

instrument for absolving servitude. And yet (and only here thedialectical proposition shows its full intent) the existence and

practice of these liberties remain a precondition for the restoration

of their original oppositional function, provided that the effort to

transcend their (often self-imposed) limitations is intensified.

Generally, the function and value of tolerance depend on theequality prevalent in the society in which tolerance is practiced.

Tolerance itself stands subject to overriding criteria: its range andits limits cannot be defined in terms of the respective society. In

other words, tolerance is an end in itself only when it is truly

universal, practiced by the rulers as well as by the ruled, by thelords as well as by the peasants, by the sheriffs as well as by their

victims. And such universal tolerance is possible only when no

real or alleged enemy requires in the national interest the

education and training of people in military violence and

destruction. As long as these conditions do not prevail, theconditions of tolerance are 'loaded': they are determined and

defined by the institutionalized inequality (which is certainly

compatible with constitutional equality), i.e., by the class structure

of society. In such a society, tolerance is de facto limited on thedual ground of legalized violence or suppression (police, armed

forces, guards of all sorts) and of the privileged position held by

the predominant interests and their 'connections'. (emphasis addedin bold)

Marcuse here is making a statement of political theory embedded in what we mayfairly call a dense argument about how the sociological processes in a society

relating to economic and political equality and the practice of official violence

affect the function of tolerance as a practice and principle in that society. In that passage, he is not rejecting “the exercise of political rights” by “voting, letter-

writing to the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori

renunciation of counterviolence.” He was discussing the potential of how that can

blunt goals of even the most progressive political movement. Again, this is from aman who was a veteran of the First World War and experienced first-hand the

events of the Weimar Republic, including the corruption of the German Social



21

Democrats, the failure of the German Communists and Hitler’s coming to power.

Whatever the merits of his argument, he wasn’t recommending some kind ofviolent actionism.

He further argues:

Under a system of constitutionally guaranteed and (generally and

without too many and too glaring exceptions) practiced civil rights

and liberties, opposition and dissent are tolerated unless they issuein violence and/or in exhortation to and organization of violent

subversion. The underlying assumption is that the established

society is free, and that any improvement, even a change in thesocial structure and social values, would come about in the normal

course of events, prepared, defined, and tested in free and equal

discussion, on the open marketplace of ideas and goods.

Marcuse was no babe in the woods. He knew very well that no established orderis likely to willingly tolerate its own subversion. But he goes on here to make a

point referencing the political theory of John Stuart Mill about the “underlyingassumption” of the function of tolerance in a democratic society and makes an

argument that the assumptions of classical liberalism like Mill’s do not fully apply

in modern advanced societies.

His more specific discussion of political violence comes in this form:

To discuss tolerance in such a society means to reexamine the

issue of violence and the traditional distinction between violentand non-violent action. The discussion should not, from the

beginning, be clouded by ideologies which serve the perpetuation

of violence. Even in the advanced centers of civilization, violence

actually prevails: it is practiced by the police, in the prisons andmental institutions, in the fight against racial minorities; it is

carried, by the defenders of metropolitan freedom, into the

backward countries. This violence indeed breeds violence. But to

refrain from violence in the face of vastly superior violence is one

thing, to renounce a priori violence against violence, on ethical or

psychological grounds (because it may antagonize sympathizers) is

another. Non-violence is normally not only preached to but

exacted from the weak--it is a necessity rather than a virtue, and

normally it does not seriously harm the case of the strong. (Is thecase of India an exception? There, passive resistance was carried

through on a massive scale, which disrupted, or threatened to

disrupt, the economic life of the country. Quantity turns into

quality: on such a scale, passive resistance is no longer passive - itceases to be non-violent. The same holds true for the General

Strike.) Robespierre's distinction between the terror of liberty and



22

the terror of despotism, and his moral glorification of the former

belongs to the most convincingly condemned aberrations, even if

the white terror was more bloody than the red terror. The

comparative evaluation in terms of the number of victims is the

quantifying approach which reveals the man-made horror

throughout history that made violence a necessity. In terms ofhistorical function, there is a difference between revolutionary and

reactionary violence, between violence practiced by the oppressed

and by the oppressors. In terms of ethics, both forms of violenceare inhuman and evil--but since when is history made in

accordance with ethical standards? To start applying them at the

point where the oppressed rebel against the oppressors, the have-nots against the haves is serving the cause of actual violence by

weakening the protest against it. (emphasis added)

He goes on to quote with approval a passage from Frantz Fanon that refers to the

psychological strength that can come to people take part in a violent struggleagainst perceived oppressors. Schlesinger also cites Fanon making that point:

As Franz [sic] Fanon has written, "Violence is a cleaning force. It frees the

native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it

makes him fearless and restores his self-respect ... Violence alone, violencecommitted by the people, violence organized and educated by its leaders,

makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths.”

Schlesinger links his concern with Fanon’s opinion just quoted with a concern

about the practical effects of violence:

It is perfectly obvious why Mussolini and Hitler favored violence: It is

because violence, by abolishing the procedures and civilities of society,

opens the way for those who are most successful in the use of force. I donot know about the situation in developing countries; there violence in

certain contexts may have the benign effects claimed by Fanon.

And he goes on to argue, in what appears outside the immediate context of an

argument against Marcuse’s whole perspective in “Repressive Tolerance” to be a

partial statement of agreement with Marcuse’s point:

But surely little is more pathetic than the view that violence in

American society will benefit the left. A limited amount of violence

may stimulate the process of democratic change; but, if the left,

through the cult of the deed, helps create an atmosphere which

destroys the process of democracy itself; the only beneficiaries



23

will be those on the right. (emphasis added)16

In other words, both Marcuse and Schlesinger argue that political violence is a

real part of history. And even that, in Marcuse’s words, “In terms of ethics, both

forms of violence” – that of the oppressors and that of the oppressed – “are

inhuman and evil--but since when is history made in accordance with ethicalstandards?” Both recognize clearly that political tactics and just plain good sense

dictates that it is often necessary “to refrain from violence in the face of vastly

superior violence.” And while Schlesinger is convinced that civil violence in acountry like the US or Germany or Italy will benefit the right more than the left,

he recognizes explicitly at the same that that a “limited amount of violence may

stimulate the process of democratic change.” (!?)

Even in an indictment of Herbert Marcuse for promoting a cult of violence and

thereby failing to live up to the “special responsibility” that “lies on our

intellectual community,” he recognizes that violence in a political context can be

historically constructive, if one considers stimulating “the process of democraticchange” to be historically constructive. Schlesinger, too, found an honest

historical discussion of political violence to be quite a challenge.

Fanon’s Algeria and political violence in history

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a psychoanalyst whose views of violence in the

context of wars of national liberation were heavily shaped by his active

participation in the Algerian War of independence from France; he was the editorof the liberation movement’s newspaper El Moudjahid . His most famous and

influential written work was Les Damnés de la terre [English title: The Wretched

of the Earth] (1961).

Fanon’s daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, describes her late father’s

though this way:

Fanon was one of the thinkers of the Algerian Revolution, which

existed beyond any dogmatic reduction or doctrinal interpretation.He was a progressive and anti-imperialist without any

"theological" reference to Marxism, close, but without any

allegiance to the socialist camp. As the sociologist ImmanuelWallerstein noted in a lapidary but very accurate formula, "Fanon

read Marx with the eyes of Freud, and read Freud with the look of

Marx."

16 There was a rational core in this fear of the segregationist and McCarthyist right. But it is also

part of the background of today's Democratic Party operating with a perpetual inferiority complex

- even when they win on Democratic issues.



24

The liberation and de-alienation of the human being were for

Fanon the ultimate goal of political struggle, without pathos,without rigidity, but without concession either. ...

In him there existed neither the will for revenge nor for the

stigmatization of the whites, despite the way some would like to present him today, those mock theorists of existentialism and of

the so-called clash of civilizations. His detractors, who emerge

from the camp of neo-conservative "intellectuals," have attemptedto subject him to a watch hunt under a supposed apology of

violence, thus demonstrating their ignorance of Fanon's work and

their own racist fad faith. The violence that Fanon did defend - as alast-resort means that those who have been negated, exploited, and

reduced to slavery have for reconquering the self - was the

violence of legitimate defense of the oppressed who are subjected

to the still major violence of domination, dispossession and

contempt.

17

As we saw in the quote above, Schlesinger was careful to qualify his criticism ofFanon’s point as it applied to those “in developing countries.” After the massive

decolonization movement following the Second World War, some of which was

distinctly violent, it was scarcely possible ignore the role of political violence inthose situations. The year 1968 was a turning point in the Vietnam War. And that

war had taught many Americans that they maybe didn’t fully understand what

drove Vietnamese peasants to fight under Communist leadership against desperateodds in their war against the United States. It was a 1968 version of the “Why do

they hate us?” question that became a cliché after the September 11, 2001 terroristattacks.

Schlesinger served as an official advisor to President John Kennedy. His writing

on the Kennedy Administration is still considered by some historians to be“hagiography,” and references to him as Kennedy’s “court historian” are not hard

to find. One of JFK’s most famous speeches as a Senator was that of July 2, 1957,

on the Algerian War, with a short follow-up response six days later.18

In thatspeech, Kennedy actually broke not only with the Eisenhower Administration but

with conventional wisdom of the day in his own Democratic Party over US policy

of supporting Algeria in its infamously brutal war against the Algerianindependence movement. He urged US policy to support a settlement including

Algerian independence. No one could honestly mistake his position in that speech

as cheering on the deaths of French citizens or French colonialists in Algeria in

17 Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, "The Contribution of Frantz Fanon to the Process of the

Liberation of the People"; translated by Donato Fhunsu; The Black Scholar 42/3-4 (2012) pp. 8-1218 John F. Kennedy, “Algeria”; The Strategy of Peace (Harper; New York; 1960) pp. 65-81. An

account of the speech is provided by Ted Widmer, “’The challenge of imperialism,’” Boston

Sunday Globe 07/15/2007:http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/pages/Widmer-Globe-2007-July-

15.pdf



25

the war. But it was clear that he recognized there was justice in the demands of

the independence movement, which fought an urban guerrilla war against theFrench. A war in which, he observed specifically, Communists and “terrorists”

were actively participating:

The next objection most frequently raised is the aid and comfort whichany reasonable settlement would give to the extremists, terrorists, and

saboteurs that permeate the Nationalist movement, to the Communist,

Egyptian, and other outside anti-Western provocateurs that haveclearly achieved some success in penetrating the movement.

Terrorism must be combated, not condoned, it is said; it is not

right to “negotiate with murderers.” Yet once again this is a problem which neither postponement nor attempted conquest can

solve. The fever chart of every successful revolution – including, of

course, the French - reveals a rising temperature of terrorism and

counterterrorism; but this does not of itself invalidate the legitimate

goals that fi red the original revolution. Most political revolutions -including our own - have been buoyed by outside aid in men,

weapons, and ideas. Instead of abandoning African nationalism to theanti-Western agitators and Soviet agents who hope to capture its

leadership, the United States, a product of political revolution, must

redouble its efforts to earn the respect and friendship of nationalistleaders. (emphasis added in bold)

Allan Nevins in a note on Kennedy’s speech explains:

Algeria, with a million French and nearly nine million Moslems [thena common English spelling], had seen a fierce Nationalist outbreak in

1954 grown into a great and desolating war. The National Liberation

Front, with aid from Morocco and Egypt, had thrown into the field

forces which steadily increasing French armies could not control. …The French colons in Algeria and the French military leaders fighting

there tended to take an intransigent line which separated them from the

more moderate position of most citizens of metropolitan France; theloyal Moslems and the Moslems in revolt were bitterly opposed to

each other. In the confused situation the conflict became deplorably

cruel, marked by atrocities, massacres, and tortures on both sides.

(emphasis added in bold) 19

In that speech, Kennedy even derided sterile moralizing that ducked the essential political issues that were not erased by the sins of either side in combat – or in the

French prisons where torture was practiced. Calling in politician’s words for a

“full and frank discussion” of the Algerian issue in the US, Kennedy continued:

19 Kennedy/Nevins, op cit p. 67



26

This is not to say that there is any value in the kind of discussion

which has characterized earlier United States consideration of this andsimilar problems – tepid encouragement and moralizations to both

sides, cautious neutrality on all real issues … We have deceived

ourselves into believing that we have thus pleased both sides and

displeased no one with this head-in-the-sands policy – when, in truth,we have earned the suspicion of all.

The problem, he said, “is no longer to save a myth of French empire. The problemis to save the French nation, as well as free Africa.” Sounding more like an

historian than a conventional politician, he also said:

Nationalism in Africa cannot be evaluated purely in terms of the

historical and legal niceties argued by the French, and thus far

accepted by the State Department. National self-identification

frequently takes place by quick combustion which the rain of

repression simple cannot extinguish, especially in an area where thereis a common Islamic heritage and where most people – including

Algeria’s closest neighbors in Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya – have allgain political independence. New nationhood is recorded in quick

succession – Ghana yesterday, Nigeria perhaps tomorrow, and

colonies in Central Africa moving into dominion status. Whatever thehistory and lawbooks may say, we cannot evade the evidence of our

own time, especially we in the Americas whose own experiences

furnish a model from which many of these new nations drawinspiration.

Kennedy’s Algeria speech, in other words, looked at both immediate and

historical conditions, recognizing that violence is a real part of history, that

violence can and does come from the side of unjust existing orders and from those

resisting it, and that such violence often results in horrors and atrocities that areneither legal nor ethical and that cannot be excused or condoned. But political

violence has to be dealt with as a fact of history and politics.

“Existential Politics”

Placing Kennedy’s Algeria speech into dialogue with Herbert Marcuse’s“Repressive Tolerance” and Schlesinger’s “Existential Politics and the Cult of

Violence” illustrates how close the three pieces actually are in their treatment of

political violence.

Which raises the obvious question, why then did Schlesinger then try to portray

Marcuse and his “Repressive Tolerance” essay in particular as a reckless

dereliction of intellectual responsibility and as a meaningful contributor to a “cultof the deed”?



27

One likely factor is that Schlesinger just misunderstood the perspective of Herbert

Marcuse and the Frankfurt School more generally. One symptom of this, of whichSchlesinger was likely not fully aware, is that Marcuse and other notables of the

Frankfurt School – Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas –

actually voiced similar criticisms to Schlesinger’s of some student activists,

especially around their lack of political coherency and an actionism thatsometimes expected militant actions in themselves to transform society in the

absence of more traditional political parties and organizations. Schlesinger’s

concern that the kind of popular political violence he was experiencing real-timein 1968 would only benefit “those on the right” was reflected in Habermas’

perhaps ill-considered remark that some of the German student and youth

activism he was seeing at that same period looked uncomfortably like “leftfascism.”

A key problem is that Schlesinger regarded Marcuse as advocating and finding

resonance for a politics of nihilism:

In its positive side, the new creed becomes, so to speak, a kind of

existentialism in politics - a primitive kind, no doubt, but still rooted insome manner in the existential perception that man dwells in an

absurd universe and defines himself through his choices.

How one can make a “creed” of nihilism is not entirely clear. But Schlesinger

then links this notion to a Nietzsche quote critiquing rationalism, French social

philosopher Georges Sorel’s syndicalist ideas, and something like late adoslescenthormone surges (“we must feel and act before we think”). Out of this confused

mixture of dubious influences he perceives, Schlesinger derives this about themilitant activists that so troubled his mind in 1968:

In its vulgar form, however, with which we are dealing here,

existential politics becomes the notion that we must feel and act beforewe think; it is the illusion that the experience of feeling and action will

produce the insight and the policy.

Existential politics in this form springs much more from Sorel than

from Kierkegaard. Sorel, you will recall, drew a distinction between

myths, which, he said, were "not descriptions of things, butexpressions of a determination to act,'' and utopias, which were

intellectual products, the work of theorists who "seek to establish a

model to which they can compare existing society." Sorel regardedutopias - that is, rational programs - as contemptible. The myth must

be the basis of action; the myth would produce the revolution, which

would then produce its own program; and "the myth,'' Sorel

emphasized, "must be judged as a means of acting on the present; anyattempt to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future history is

devoid of sense." So, in the footsteps of Sorel, the New Leftists believe



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in the omnipotence of the deed and the irrelevance of the goal. The

political process is no longer seen as the deliberate choice of means tomove toward a desired end. Where libertarian democracy [i.e., liberal

democracy] had ideally demanded means consistent with the end, and

where the Stalinist left of the Thirties contended that the end justified

the means, the New Left propounds a different doctrine: that the meanscreate the end . (emphasis added)

In Schlesinger’s approach, he may have thought he was being charitable indistinguishing the targets of his criticism from “the Stalinist left.” (Or he may

have been playing the don’t-think-of-an-elephant trick, as in, now I’m not saying

my target of criticism is a Stalinist or anything …)

Since Marcuse and others associated with the Frankfurt School were known for

their valuing of utopian thinking, how Schlesinger managed to merge that with

the stage of Sorel’s thought that he references as rejecting utopia is, to put it

mildly, not clear.

But Schlesinger’s use of the concept of “existential politics” to contain all this political theorizing and activist-ing that he found so dubious gives us a plausible

clue to the nature of his misunderstanding. Put briefly, he was drawing lessons

from the German experience of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich that proceeded from an assumption that cultural and intellectual nihilism produced

Hitler’s takeover in Germany, a nihilism that was possibly deeply fundamental to

German culture.

After the Second World War, the question of how the Third Reich could happen became a major topic, not least in the United States. After decades, the question is

still being discussed and will continue to be. But one of the most common

assumptions in the immediate postwar period came from a “national character”

assumption about Germany. Not only was the concept of national character thenmore common than it is now. If the main question being asked about German

history is what important elements in German history led to the Third Reich, that

can easily elide over into assuming that everything important that happened inGerman history somehow led to the Third Reich. Including intellectual history.

This is known to historians as the “from Luther to Hitler” view of Germanhistory. And something like that was a widespread assumption in the postwar US.

One of the most popular histories of the Third Reich on the American market was

William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). Although he wasconsidered left-leaning, Shirer’s book found the roots of Hitler’s National

Socialism having been prepared by the thought of Martin Luther and Hegel,

among others. Nietzsche was a more obvious culprit given his writing about the

“blond beast” and his often harsh-sounding writing about Jews.20

20 The fact that Nietzsche said even harsher things about Christians and Christianity than about

Jews and considered anti-Semites of his day despicable was often not so clearly remembered.



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From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist-Nazi Political Philosophy21

was thetitle of a 1941 book by William Montgomery McGovern. Herbert Marcuse

himself had reviewed the book in 1942.22

McGovern didn’t just find direct

precursors to National Socialism in German thought, but in Thomas Hobbes and

Edmund Burke, as well. Marcuse was not impressed:

… although the author notes that German idealism is neglected and

even repudiated by Nationalsocialism [sic], he presents Kant andabove all Hegel as among the most decisive forerunners of Hitler. The

author does not elaborate the fundamental links which connect

German idealism with Western rationalism and individualism, nordoes he show that the social and political order which the idealists

glorified, is, in its fundamental aspects, hostile to the Nationalsocialist

system. His discussion of Hegel's philosophy is inadequate and

frequently incorrect - small wonder since Hegel's Logic is to him

nothing but an abstruse and incomprehensible document.

McGovern's evaluation of pre-Fascist political philosophy arises fromtwo errors of approach. (1) He bases his analysis on the assumed

fundamental opposition between individualism on the one hand, andétatisme and authoritarianism on the other. In reality, however,individualism has itself developed a quite conspicuous form of

étatisme and authoritarianism (as in Hobbes and Kant). It is

antagonistic to the Fascist form, not by virtue of its individualistic

foundation, but because of its different social content and function. (2) The author assumes that "the political philosophy which dominatesthe general public of a given country is the major factor which

determines whether or not a would-be dictator is able to secure

power". This has never been less true than under Fascism and

Nationalsocialism. These cannot be adequately interpreted in terms of political philosophy, for what appears to be their political

philosophy is nothing but an utterly flexible and opportunistic

ideology that is ex post facto adapted to the social and economic needsof imperialistic expansion. (emphasis added in bold)

Husserl’s phenomenology and Martin Heidegger’s existentialism were major philosophical trends of the 20th century. Marcuse in his early academic career had

engaged heavily with phenomenology and actually studied under Heidegger at

Heidelberg. Marcuse, like numerous others among Heidegger’s students andadmirers, was surprised and dismayed when Heidegger emerged in 1933 as a

prominent academic supporter of National Socialism, becoming a Nazi Party

member and remaining one until the end of the war.

21 Boston; Houghton Miffin Company

22 Herbert Marcuse, Review of From Luther to Hitler by William Montgomery McGovern” The

Philosophical Review, Vol. 51, No. 5 (Sep., 1942), pp. 533-534



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The considerably younger Jürgen Habermas was also heavily influenced byexistentialism and was surprised postwar to learn about Heidegger’s enthusiasm

for Hitler’s regime. Like Marcuse, he became very much aware of and critical of

Heidegger’s unsavory political engagement during the Third Reich.

Although more details were documented by later scholars, Heidegger’s

association with the Nazis was known in 1968. Schlesinger was right to be critical

of the irrationalist aspects of existentialism and to be concerned about theirimplications in political thought. Where he went off the tracks in his criticism of

Marcuse was in characterizing Marcuse’s political thought as “existential politics”

that celebrated irrationalism and promoted “the cult of the deed.” One of thequotes Schlesinger cited from “Repressive Tolerance” that “true pacification

requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of

communication in word, print, and picture,” should have been a clue that Marcuse

wasn’t celebrating any “cult of the deed.” Whether one agrees with the

formulation of Marcuse’s idea in terms of civil liberties, he was advocating theapplication of some form of rational thought in applying “the withdrawal of

tolerance” that he thought was necessary in some cases.

How well Schlesinger understood existentialism more generally may have

affected the implausible arguments he makes about so-called existential politics.Karl Lowith in 1948

23 discussed the state of knowledge about existentialism in the

Anglo-Saxon intellectual world:

The basic works of existentialism have not yet been translated [into

English]. What is generally known about the subject is derivedfrom many secondary channels and from articles about a new

philosophy, allegedly of "nihilism," but not from a knowledge of

the sources. Moreover, political circumstances play such a role in

the selection of, and attention to, contemporary literature and philosophy that the average American student knows more about

Jean-Paul Sartre than about Karl Jaspers, and more about Jaspers

than about Martin Heidegger of whom Sartre was a pupil. Thissequence in the degree of familiarity is politically conditioned, for

Sartre is a Frenchman who was engaged in the resistance

movement, and Jaspers a German who for ten lonely years was barred from academic activity by the Nazis, while Heidegger, who

supported National Socialism in 1933, neither resisted the regime

subsequently nor was dismissed from his post during its period ofdomination. (emphasis added)

Sartre was famously an adherent of the French Communist Party, which didn’t

help endear his philosophy of existentialism to Cold War liberals like Schlesinger.

23 Karl Lowith, “Heidegger: Problem and Background of Existentialism" Social Research 15/3

(September 1948) pp. 345-369



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Lowith calls Sartre “Heidegger's most original and creative pupil.” But Lowith – a

Jewish philosopher and former student of Heidegger who was also appalled byHeidegger’s support of the Nazi dictatorship - also notes how poorly Heidegger’s

actual philosophy of existentialism was understood in the West:

In view of the earnestness and radicality of Heidegger's enterprise,it was a strange mistake when in the twenties those who disliked

existentialism thought that they could dismiss it as a "philosophy

of inflation." But even twenty years after the publication of Sein

und Zeit [ Being and Time] one could still read in an article in the

New York Times (July 6, 1947) the following definition of

existentialism: "It was invented by a Nazi, Heidegger; it is a

philosophy of nihilism like Nazism, appropriate to the vacuity

of German life." Unfortunately, for this definition, existentialism

was invented during the Weimar Republic (which offered

Heidegger a chair at Berlin University) when the vacuity of

German intellectual life was still pretty well filled by a host ofother philosophies of "life," "culture," and "values."

Existentialism has outlived not only the Weimar Republic but

also the Third Reich. It has even gained ascendancy and has its

strongest support now in France, the classical country of

Cartesian rationalism. The German postwar climate after the firstworld war did perhaps stimulate, but it could not cause, the rise of

existentialism, the germ of which was planted long ago. (emphasis

added in bold)

Conclusion: Schlesinger vs. Marcuse

Much of Schlesinger’s criticism of Marcuse and his “Repressive Tolerance”

borders on the tendentious, apparently due to an attempt to pigeonhole Marcuse’s

thought as a familiar Marxism that could be ritually refuted, a Marxism that wasdefined as part of “that which is not of the Establishment” in the “publicized and

administered” language of the day, to use Marcuse’s words from “Repressive

Tolerance.”

Schlesinger’s actual discussion of Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” essay of

1965 doesn’t even qualify as a bad caricature either of Marcuse’s thought orspecifically of the essay on which he focuses. Schlesinger basically rolled out

some of his favorite Cold War, anti-Communist clichés, found passages in

“Repressive Tolerance” on which to hang them, and threw in an “evil” here and a“Stalinist” there.

It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of Schlesinger’s professional historical

work.



And perhaps ironically, Schlesinger shares with Marcuse and the Sen. Jack

Kennedy of the “Algeria” speech of 1957 a straightforward recognition that political violence in the real world has and continues to play a real and

significant role, even recognizing that (in Schlesinger’s own words) “limited

amount of violence may stimulate the process of democratic change.”

Despite his eagerness to brand Marcuse as an instigator of violence, he

provides no real solution to the real-life dilemma that, even though,

“Violence [and] the irresponsible promotion of insurrections are bad practices in democracy,” (Mario Wainfeld) nevertheless a “limited amount

of violence may stimulate the process of democratic change” (Schlesinger).

In his caricature of Marcuse’s political thought, he makes use of a dubious

concept of “existentialist politics” which doesn’t seem to be founded on a

real understanding of either Herbert Marcuse’s thinking or of the philosophy

of existentialism. In the process, Schlesinger provides a good illustration of

what narrow constraints that framework of Cold War liberalism couldimpose on clear thought.

Bruce Miller

June 30, 2013

Documents

Herbert Marcuse, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Political Violence and “Existential Politics”