The Future Future of Marcuse

What happens when debate is joined between a rigid ideologue and a supple and skeptical critic of ideology? Between, say, Herbert Marcuse, granddad of the New Left (One-Dimensional Man, Repressive Tolerance, teacher of Angela Davis), and, say, Raymond Aron, trenchant philosopher and political analyst (Opium of the Intellectuals), editor of the prestigious French newspaper Figaro? There are those who hold that Truth will irresistibly overcome Falsehood in a free and open encounter. A recent debate between Marcuse and Aron in London (published, in a slightly abridged form, in the June 23 New Statesman) suggests a more ambiguous answer: that the argument from experience is impotent against the argument from futurity.

The topic: Can Communism be liberal and democratic? Marcuse does not so much argue that it can as prophesy that it will; in fact, he insists, only Communism can be liberal. He means, of course, true Communism (as opposed to that unfortunate offshoot that oppresses nearly half the earth) and true liberalism (as opposed to that bourgeois liberalism which is really a system of repression).

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Joseph Sobran

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What happens when debate is joined between a rigid ideologue and a supple and skeptical critic of ideology? Between, say, Herbert Marcuse, granddad of the New Left (One-Dimensional Man, Repressive Tolerance, teacher of Angela Davis), and, say, Raymond Aron, trenchant philosopher and political analyst (Opium of the Intellectuals), editor of the prestigious French newspaper Figaro? There are those who hold that Truth will irresistibly overcome Falsehood in a free and open encounter. A recent debate between Marcuse and Aron in London (published, in a slightly abridged form, in the June 23 New Statesman) suggests a more ambiguous answer: that the argument from experience is impotent against the argument from futurity.

The topic: Can Communism be liberal and democratic? Marcuse does not so much argue that it can as prophesy that it will; in fact, he insists, only Communism can be liberal. He means, of course, true Communism (as opposed to that unfortunate offshoot that oppresses nearly half the earth) and true liberalism (as opposed to that bourgeois liberalism which is really a system of repression).