"In our time, the rise of Fascism calls for a reinterpretation of Marcuse's philosophy"

What we can learn from Herbert Marcuse today

“In our time, the rise of Fascism calls for a reinterpretation of Hegel’s philosophy.”

— Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (1941)

It is early 1940. War has broken out and is ravaging Europe. Herbert Marcuse is in the United States, having fled Germany in 1934. He is lecturing at Columbia University as a member of the Institute for Social Research, the Frankfurt School in exile. Fascism is spreading throughout Europe. The United States has not yet declared war.

What does Herbert Marcuse do?

He goes to Columbia’s Butler Library and writes a book on G.W.F. Hegel. The book, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, is published in 1941 by Oxford University Press. It comes on the heels, nine years earlier, of a monograph Marcuse wrote titled Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (1932). That earlier work would have served as Marcuse’s Habilitationsschrif, had he not been forced into exile.

Those two books anchor a life-long conversation with Hegel (which we just studied with Seyla Benhabib). In that decades-long dialogue, Marcuse develops a unique interpretation of Hegel that will then shape his critical theory and praxis—and that is deeply instructive to us, today, to help navigate our contemporary political crises.

In a nutshell, Marcuse helps us focus today on the key relationship between the power of negative thinking and the need to propose an alternative vision, a positive horizon. There was deep dialectical tension in Marcuse’s own work with regard to this relationship, but Marcuse brought us, through his reading of Hegel, to the point where we can confront, today, the relationship between what he called “the Great Refusal” of capitalist exploitation in contemporary society and, on the other hand, the positive vision of where we need society to head.

I would argue that, recently, the far Right has capitalized on “the Great Refusal,” but it has not offered an attractive, positive vision of where we are headed. The far Right’s ambition is predominantly xenophobic, aggressively masculinist, white nationalist, militaristic, and violent. It is not attractive to the majority of Americans. It is not surprising that there is so much anger against the ICE raids and the brutal behavior of masked undercover agents. By contrast, the Left has been good at critique and at refusing the forms of exploitation associated with neoliberalism, for instance; and it could benefit by reviving the Great Refusal as to the reactionary wave overtaking this country. But somehow, the Left has lost the capacity to offer compelling visions for a utopian future. As a result, the Left today does not have a sufficiently compelling political vision for the future.

Our reading of Marcuse focuses a lens on that precise question. One of the most compelling political movements of recent times is Zohran Mamdani’s campaign in New York City, which was built on the idea of affordability. Affordability is crucial, important, compelling; but it is not sufficiently visionary in terms of the society that we want. We want more than an affordable society—although achieving that, right now, feels so demanding. There are, to be sure, elements in the affordability campaign that are extremely compelling and represent concrete utopias: universal child care, for instance. Universal child care is not just a question of affordability, although it is certainly related; the idea of universal child care goes further, it aspires to the larger ambition of creating community, collectivity, and cooperation. It promotes a broader vision of mutual support and aid for everyone living in New York City, and that is a compelling, concrete, utopian vision. Somehow, we need to build on policies like universal child care to craft a powerful cooperative vision for the future.

Our reading of Marcuse on Hegel takes us to the question of how to negotiate, now, this conflict between tearing down and building up—of how to reconcile the Great Refusal with a compelling vision of a just society. That is, I contend, one of the most critical issues for us to address today. It is the payoff of confronting Marcuse on Hegel.

Marcuse on Hegel, circa 1941

Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) is best known for his later works, including Eros and Civilization (1955), in which he expounds a Freudo-Marxist theory that incorporates psychoanalysis into Marxism, and One Dimensional Man (1964), where he develops a searing critique of consumerism, conformism, and technology in capitalist society. These works were important and had a significant impact on the student revolutions of 1968. They are the works that we tend to associate most with Marcuse.

But it is impossible to understand them and the work they do, without returning to Marcuse’s reinterpretation of Hegel in his two earliest works. In the first, Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (1932), Marcuse explores the concept of historicity in Hegel’s ontological writings, and is deeply influenced by his teacher at the time, Heidegger. (Seyla Benhabib discusses this in her brilliant article for Hegel 13/13). It lays a groundwork for Marcuse’s later emphasis on pervasive negation and thus perpetual constructions of the social world. The second, Reason and Revolution (1941), written during World War II while he was at Columbia University, recuperates Hegel from the fascists and cements his reinterpretation of Hegel.

Marcuse was essentially making three important moves in his work on Hegel in the 1940s. The first was to recuperate Hegel from the Italian fascists who have appropriated him, as well as from Hegel’s association with Nazi Germany. Many theorists of Nazi Germany rejected Hegel, Carl Schmitt especially; but nevertheless, there was an association of Hegelianism with the Prussian bureaucracy, and in that sense, there was a proximity between Hegel and German fascism as well. Marcuse’s first task, then, was to recuperate Hegel from the fascists—in the same way that Georges Bataille, Jean Wahl, André Masson and others took it upon themselves to recuperate Nietzsche from the fascists. The second objective, tied to the first, was to create a direct lineage that went from Hegel to Marxian social theory to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Marcuse argued that this was the correct reading of Hegel, by contrast to the lineage that went from positive philosophy to positivism and then ultimately to fascism. Marcuse argued that positive philosophy and positivism lead to fascism because they serve to justify the status quo. Marcuse’s third central goal was to show the revolutionary nature of Hegelianism and Marxian social theory: how they lead people to feel that there is a need for radical transformation of society. This, of course, explains the title of the book. Let me take each one of these in order.

1. Recuperating Hegel from the Fascists

Marcuse takes on, as his first challenge, the burden of demonstrating that Hegel’s philosophy and Hegelianism do not lend themselves to fascism. One of the main objectives of the book is to show that the Italian Fascist appropriation of Hegel was misguided and non-philosophical. The appropriation, especially by Giovanni Gentile, was not a philosophical intervention worth its salt. Moreover, the German National Socialists were openly anti-Hegelian. So, Marcuse takes it as his burden, as his challenge, to demonstrate that fascism in general is anti-Hegelian and is not the natural outcome of Hegel’s philosophy.

The first aim of the book, then, is to argue that Hegel’s thought does not feed German fascism. As Herbert Marcuse writes, “The social and political theory responsible for the development of Fascist Germany was, then, related to Hegelianism in a completely negative way. It was anti-Hegelian in all its aims and principles.”^[1] He demonstrates this by calling, as his “best witness,” Carl Schmitt, the political theorist of Nazi Germany, member of the Nazi Party and Nazi apologist. Carl Schmitt famously asked the question, at the time, how long Hegel’s spirit lived in Berlin. His response is pointedly quoted by Marcuse as the very last sentence of the book: “on the day of Hitler’s ascent to power ‘Hegel, so to speak, died,” quoting Schmitt.^[2] Schmitt argued that Hegel instead “wandered from Karl Marx to Lenin and to Moscow.”^[3] In that regards, Marcuse essentially agreed.

As for the Italian fascists, Marcuse argues against Gentile’s interpretation and appropriation of Hegel, and adds that the entire Italian school of thought was non philosophical. As he says of Gentile’s work, and of Italian Fascist philosophy, “they cannot be treated on a philosophic level.”^[4] For a philosopher, that is a pretty damning indictment. Essentially, what Marcuse intends to show is that the Italian fascists are, in truth, anti-Hegelian. What Marcuse’s critique demonstrates is that Gentile’s fundamental motives are “the strict opposite of Hegel’s philosophy, and it is by virtue of its being the opposite that it passes directly into the Fascist ideology.”^[5]

In this regard, as I noted earlier, Herbert Marcuse is recuperating Hegel from the Italian fascists in the same way in which Georges Bataille, Jean Wahl, Pierre Klossowski, André Masson and others recuperated Nietzsche from the fascists in 1936 through 1939 with their project Acéphale and the Collège de sociologie. We had a terrific seminar about this at Nietzsche 2/13 if you are interested.

2. A Genealogy of Critical Theory

Marcuse’s second objective is to show that Hegelianism leads to Marx and Marxian social theory—and nowhere else. The idea here is that Hegel and Marx shared the dual concepts of reason and negativity, leading to revolution. By contrast, the other intellectual schools that claimed to be Hegelian pushed in the direction of “positive philosophy,” rather than the negative dialectic and contradiction—a positive philosophy that either runs into a dead end or somehow, combined with irrational philosophies of life and nature, turns into fascism. The important point here is that “Marxian social theory” is the only legitimate heir to Hegelianism, and the only intellectual strand that productively pushes forward Hegel’s thought.

Now, it is important to understand the risks associated with this second objective. At the time, in 1941, Herbert Marcuse is in the United States at Columbia University under the auspices of the Institute for Social Research—Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s institute. Columbia is a milieu that is predominantly anti-communist, liberal but anti-Soviet. The Frankfurt School is trying to integrate and find a home at Columbia, to ingratiate itself with the university community, and is not wearing its Marxism on its sleeve. I’ve written about this elsewhere in the context of Franz Neumann, who is also at Columbia with Marcuse, and who also had to mask his Marxism. Some of the ways in which Marcuse is doing this is by referring to “Marxian social theory,” rather than “Marxism.” The suffix “-ian” rather than “-ism” is important here, a tell-tale sign. So is the reference to “social theory.” Both are a soft peddled way of talking about Marxist thought. Another way in which Marcuse is at times soft peddling things is by making Hegel seem more liberal than he might have been. Marcuse is offering a liberal-adjacent interpretations of the Hegel-Marx-Marxian social theory genealogy.

In effect, Marcuse is trying to trace genealogies. One of them leads from Hegel to Marx to Critical Theory. Another one, which leads from Hegel to the positive philosophy of the historical school and to Auguste Comte’s sociology, Marcuse argues, ultimately leads to fascism and the current assault on liberalism. Marcuse writes, “The ideological roots of authoritarianism have their soil in the ‘violent reaction’ against Hegel that styled itself the ‘positive philosophy.’ The destruction of the principle of reason, the interpretation of society in terms of nature, and the subordination of thought to the inexorable dynamics of the given, operated in the romanticist philosophy of the state, in the Historical school, in Comte’s sociology. These anti-Hegelian tendencies joined forces with the irrational philosophies of Life, history and ‘existence’ that arose in the last decade of the nineteenth century and built the ideological framework for the assault on liberalism.”^[6]

Marcuse is, of course, familiar with the usual account of the post-Hegelian traditions. He recounts the common way in which we speak of Hegel’s legacy, involving both the Right Hegelians like Rosencrantz and the Left Hegelians, including the Bauer brothers, Feuerbach and David Strauss. He argues, though, that that history is too schematic: “The historical heritage of Hegel’s philosophy, for instance, did not pass to the ‘Hegelians’ (neither of the right nor of the left)—they were not the ones who kept alive the true content of this philosophy.”^[7] Marcuse argues that, although we are familiar with the controversy between the right Hegelians and the young or Left Hegelians, that history is not accurate at a substantive level. Instead, it is Marxian social theory that is the natural heir and substantive continuation of Hegelianism. “The critical tendencies of the Hegelian philosophy, rather, were taken over by, and continued in, the Marxian social theory, while, in all other aspects, the history of Hegelianism became the history of a struggle against Hegel in which he was used as a symbol for all that the new intellectual (and to a considerable extent even the practical political) efforts opposed.”^[8]

What’s interesting here is that Marcuse is developing a Hegelian Marxism and suggesting that Marxian social theory is actually in continuity with Hegel, rather than an inversion of Hegel. It is actually all the other so-called Hegelians who are the ones who are anti-Hegelian or struggling against Hegel’s thought. The question we have to ask ourselves is: What is this reading of Hegel, which emphasizes reason to the detriment of other concepts like “spirit”? And how does it feed into a Marxian social theoretic worldview?

By linking Hegel and Marx in 1941—and paying so much attention to the Marx of alienated labor, of the abolition of labor, of labor processes, of the Marxian dialectic—Marcuse is creating a philosophical or Hegelian Marx. Those are the elements of Marxian social theory that draw the most from Hegelian philosophy. The focus on the alienation of the worker, caused by the social division of labor, is borrowed from Hegelian concepts of recognition and alienation in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This work leads ultimately to a “revolutionary convulsion,” in Marcuse’s words, that “ends the system of capitalist society and sets free all the potentialities for general satisfaction that have developed in this system.”^[9] Marcuse emphasizes the negativity of the Hegelian dialectic and of the Marxian dialectic: “The historical character of the Marxian dialectic embraces the prevailing negativity as well as its negation. The given state of affairs is negative and can be rendered positive only by liberating the possibilities imminent in it. This last, the negation of the negation, is accomplished by establishing a new order of things.”^[10]

This negativity or use of negation is what separates Marxian theory from the other positivist theories of sociology, the positivism associated with Auguste Comte’s courses on positive philosophy, Schelling’s lectures on positive philosophy, and all the work that emerged following Hegel’s death that took on the spirit of positive philosophy and positivity.

Reason, which for Marcuse is central to Hegel and to Marx, has to be understood through the lens of critical rationalism that is infused with negativity, the very opposite of positive philosophy.

3. The Call to Revolution

If the first task is to recuperate Hegel from the fascists, and the second to show how Hegel leads to Marx and Critical Theory, then the third task is to demonstrate the way in which Hegelianism and Marxian social theory call for revolution. This task is reflected in the very title of the work itself, Reason and Revolution. The title refers to the two cores of Marcuse’s interpretation of Hegel, namely, first, the focus on Hegel’s rationalism, on the task of reason to reveal negativity; and second, how that negativity reveals conflicts in our social condition, conflicts within reality, that call for radical social transformation. Reason is at the heart of Hegel’s philosophy, for Marcuse, but it is a critical reason, one that reveals contradictions inherent in the present. The negative relationship between reason and our actual human condition highlights the contradictions in our present condition, and this leads to revolution.

Marcuse makes this clear in his discussion of positive and negative philosophy, or more specifically, in his discussion of the anti-Hegelian philosophies of positivism which he associates with Auguste Comte, with Friedrich Schelling, and with Georg Ernst Stahl. (This is covered in the second chapter of Part II, “On the Foundations of Positivism and the Rise of Sociology, starting at page 321).

The critique by positive philosophers of Hegel’s negativity offers the clearest indication of the threat that Hegelianism presented to the established order. The positive philosophers objected that Hegel’s dialectic—or what they called his “negative philosophy”—attacked things as they are. It negates the current state of being, and that can only lead to revolution. The conflict and the contradictions between, on the one hand, the rational (in other words, the evolution of spirit towards more rational ideas of freedom) and, on the other hand, the present condition of human existence (in other words, the current political state) can only lead to revolution. Marcuse writes that from the perspective of positive philosophy, “The Hegelian dialectic was seen as the prototype of all destructive negations of the given, for in it every immediately given form passes into its opposite and attains its true content only by so doing.”^[11] Marcuse continues: “This kind of philosophy, the critics said, denies to the given the dignity of the real; it contains ‘the principle of revolution’ (Stahl said).”^[12] That was their interpretation of Hegel’s famous dictum about the actual and the rational. They argued that Hegel’s statement (that the rational is actual) meant that “only the rational is real.”^[13]

On Marcuse’s reading, Hegel’s philosophy was deeply threatening to the Prussian state, even though Hegel is considered by many an apologist of the Prussian state. Critics on the Left accused him of simply justifying the Prussian bureaucracy; those critics focused on the idea that the “actual is rational.” They took half of the equation and suggested that Hegel was simply defending the status quo. But they did not focus on the other half of the equation, which suggested that the rational, and only the rational, is actual; that half of the equation could be interpreted as threatening to the status quo, if it was understood to mean that only the rational is real, only the rational should be actualized.

Upon Hegel’s death, Schelling was appointed to take his chair. Marcuse claims that Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV “ ‘to destroy the dragon seed’ of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophic spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840.”^[14] Marcuse continues: “German political leaders clearly recognized that Hegel’s philosophy, far from justifying the state in the concrete shape it had taken, rather contained an instrument for its destruction. Within this situation, positive philosophy offered itself as the appropriate ideological savior.”^[15]

The basic idea is that whereas Hegel’s negative philosophy pointed out the internal contradictions, the necessary conflicts within objects, leading to the need for overcoming, by contrast positive philosophy sought to study social reality based on laws of nature and objectivity. It sought to describe reality in its true condition, rather than negate reality because of rational ideation. Marcuse writes, “Hegel had considered society and the state to be the historical work of man and interpreted them under the aspect of freedom; in contrast, positive philosophy studied the social realities after the pattern of nature and under the aspect of objective necessity.”^[16]

The Problem with Positivism

Marcuse’s critique of positive philosophy clarifies, for me, my long-standing objection to positivism and positivist social sciences. Let me explain, but first, let me refer you to two additional passages:

First passage: “In this way positive philosophy aimed to counteract the critical process involved in the philosophical ‘negating’ of the given, and to restore to facts the dignity of the positive.”^[17] This is the difference between positive philosophy and negative philosophy, but the mention here of “facts” is important.

Second passage: “This is the point at which the connection between positive philosophy and positivism (in the modern sense of the term) becomes clear. Their common feature, apart from their joint struggle against metaphysical apriorism, is the orientation of thought to matters of fact and the elevation of experience to the ultimate in knowledge.”^[18]

I have long critiqued positivist social sciences because their pretension to tell us what reality is like and how things really function excludes the question of how things should function. But in reality, they are always imposing an interpretation, in neutral guise, of how things should function. They mask their own normativity. They impose interpretations that are intended to be purely descriptive, but in fact represent normative assessments. I had developed this critique at length in an early book on the social sciences called Language of the Gun.^[19]

To give an example, I recall attending the Becker-Posner workshop at the University of Chicago, it must have been around 2007, where my economist colleagues were describing elasticity as being “rational”—essentially, that people were simply acting “rationally” when they are responding to price mechanisms (if the cost goes up, consumption goes down). And I kept arguing and telling my friend and colleague Gary Becker that it was not a question of people being “rational,” it was just a question of them being “elastic” to prices. Their positivist description was hiding a normative assessment. It was as if they were saying that people should behave this way, or that people behave rationally when they are responsive to pricing changes. But in fact, that is not necessarily rational. It is simply elastic. (So, for instance, it may not be rational to buy less bread as the price increases if all the other goods, such as meat or fish, are increasing in greater proportions; it may be fully reasonable to start buying even more bread). I should note that Becker agreed, though Richard Posner thought it was a distraction.

But there is a way in which positive science always does that—especially rational choice theory. It claims to be telling us simply what people are doing, but under the guise of a purely descriptive science, it actually tells us what we should be doing. It tells us what is rational. In that sense, it justifies the status quo. I think this is what Marcuse was saying when he attacked positivism, when he wrote for instance: “The positivist opposition to the principle that the matters of fact of experience have to be justified before the court of reason, however, prevented the interpretation of these ‘data’ in terms of a comprehensive critique of the given itself. Such a criticism no longer had a place in science. In the end, positive philosophy facilitated the surrender of thought to everything that existed and manifested the power to persist in experience…. Positive philosophy was going to affirm the existing order against those who asserted the need for ‘negating’ it.”^[20]

This ties positivism to counter-revolution. As Marcuse writes, “The political aims thus expressed link the positive philosophy with the doctrines of the French counter-revolution: Comte was influenced by De Maistre, Stahl by Burke.”^[21] In opposition, this is also what ties negative philosophy to revolution.

Now, to give a better sense of what Herbert Marcuse is getting at with the notion of negative philosophy versus positive philosophy, I think it would be helpful to give a concrete example.

A Concrete Example

In the United States, we tend to believe that we are free, or have a lot of liberty, in part because of our choices as consumers with regard, for instance, to our dietary or nutritional needs, especially when we think back, say, to the Soviet Union and the limitations on the selection of goods at the store. We go to grocery stores in America, and we see shelves filled with items from which we can freely choose. It gives us this sentiment of free will and free choice—of freedom.

Hegel’s concept of contradiction or negation serves to find, within that sense of liberty, the internal contradiction. The negativity of his approach is to search the form of liberty and to find within it, its opposite, its contradiction. We can do that when we realize that, in the grocery store, we are not so much exercising free will in our shopping and consumption, as we are being controlled in our choices by the mechanisms that have produced the choice of items on the shelves. It turns out that large corporations pay grocery stores to have their products placed in prominent places. (Book publishers do the same, so that the books you see on the front table have been placed there, most often, by publishers who buy those spots). Product placement is something that is acquired, purchased, paid for.

The truth of the matter, then, is that we are not so much exercising free will, as we are making choices between items that have been imposed on us by a mechanism that we have not chosen and for reasons that are not related to our own individual welfare or well-being. The large corporation pays to have its product prominently placed at eyesight, and, for all we know, is stuffing those highly processed foods with sugars and other addictive ingredients that make us want them despite the fact that they may harm us.

That is the internal contradiction, the negation that Hegel has in mind when he talks about one concept leading to its opposite, or its antithesis. In more simplistic terms, it is the idea that where we thought there was freedom, in fact we discover non-freedom, coercion, a rigged system that we are not freely choosing, that is forcing itself upon us.

In order to overcome that negation, we need to get to some higher stage that incorporates both of the previous ones. In this situation, it would mean trying to realize or instantiate a political economy of production and consumption that would ensure that the products that we can buy at the store or that we can obtain for our own consumption, are products that satisfy our freely chosen standards regarding, perhaps, organic produce, or fair trade, or made in cooperatives, or locally sourced, or local produce—say, local organic produce from cooperatives. And it turns out that we might be much better off in a situation where there is less choice of goods, but where those goods are produced by local farmers in a sustainable way.

That new notion of freedom, then, is much more capacious. It is not just a question of free will and free choice, but of our freedom being manifested within the larger organizational, economic, and political system that would involve, say, organic local cooperatives. Freedom is actually living in that ecosphere. It is not just free will, it is actually living in a society that is organized along “rational” principles of, say, cooperation.

In this sense, it takes an enormous amount of social organization and state action to create the environment within which we could be free. Freedom is not just free will or the right to be left alone. It is not “negative liberty” in that sense. It requires a lot of regulation—and here derives from a “negative” philosophy. Notice that, at least according to Marcuse’s reading of Hegel’s philosophy, it is the negation that leads us to demand or ask for that transformation of reality.

Now, if we take this to be the Hegelian position, then the reality right now—the reality of that grocery store with corporate product placement—is not what we would call the “rational.” The rational would be the world of local, cooperative, organic produce. We now know what it is or should be. And we could say that that rational state could be actualized, even if it is not the current state: the rational is the actual (not the present existing state), and that actual would be the rational.

This is the way in which the negation or negative dialectics can lead to revolutionary change, to the demand for major change in society. That is one way to understand the very title of Herbert Marcuse’s book, Reason and Revolution. Reason, the rational, is that movement of negating, of finding contradictions, that then propels us to a higher stage that we consider rational, and that leads us to action. Now I confess that I do not like the term “rational,” so I am not sure whether I want to use it, but it is negation (critical rationality) that leads us to a higher stage that is more in tune with our true freedom and equality.

I use the example of the food consumption and nutrition. I could also use the example of housing. The idea that freedom is the right to be left alone to make one’s own choices is far too simplistic. Someone who is homeless is free in the sense that they are being left alone and not forced into a shelter. There again, the notion of free choice leads to its opposite, the fact that actually the homeless person is living in the streets, not as a matter of freedom, but because they are coerced into destitution by an economic system that does not provide for them or give them opportunities to provide for themselves. We could then overcome that contradiction by having a society of solidarity and cooperation that is far more equal, where resources are distributed more equitably, so that people would have the ability to find housing and shelter.

The realization of the need to revolutionize our political economy: that is what Herbert Marcuse is describing as the march of critical reason and rationality. Hegelian reason leads to revolution.

To be sure, Hegel himself, especially in his later years, was no revolutionary, by any means. Marcuse points to this in the concluding passages on Hegel’s philosophy, where he discusses one of Hegel’s last writings on the English reform bill that was being proposed in 1830. It is clear from Hegel’s text that Hegel is opposed to the reform, which would have given more power to Parliament as opposed to the monarch. He is opposed because it is likely, in his view, only to embolden and strengthen the people or the mob, and that would bring about revolution rather than reform. Hegel writes that the reform bill would likely strengthen an opposition that “might be induced to seek its strength among the people; then, instead of achieving a reform it would bring forth a revolution.”^[22] Hegel is clearly distancing himself from revolution. He is distancing himself from the French Revolution—or what he calls the “abstract principles of the French Revolution.” He is anxious about the potential for revolution, and it is fair to say that in his later work, including the Elements for a Philosophy of Right, there is clearly a more conservative tendency in his politics. This is something that Louis Althusser emphasized, leading him to sever the later Hegelian writings from the earlier ones.

But, for Marcuse, the logic of the Hegelian argument does lead to revolutionary transformation and revolutionary fervor. It leads to Marx and Marxian social theory, rather than to any other political theory. This is how we have to understand the notion of negativity and the ideas of critical reason, criticality, critical theory, the dialectic, negative philosophy. The negative dialectic is what leads to social transformation. By contrast, positive philosophy simply tries to explain and, in the process, justifies the current condition, current reality, the status quo.

A Reinterpretation of Hegel’s Philosophy

At the heart of the three tasks that Marcuse set for himself in Reason and Revolution lies the idea of recuperating the negative moment of the dialectic in Hegel’s philosophy and focusing on the power of negative thinking. (Adorno would similarly focus on the negative moment of the dialectic in his 1966 book, Negative Dialectics).

This element of negativity comes to the fore in Marcuse’s later writings. One can sense it becoming even more prominent in the 1960 preface to Reason and Revolution, which Marcuse titles “A Note on Dialectic.” This is how Marcuse starts the preface: “This book was written in the hope that it would make a small contribution to the revival, not of Hegel, but of a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated: the power of negative thinking. As Hegel defines it: ‘Thinking is, indeed, essentially the negation of that which is immediately before us.’”^[23]

One can hear negation even more in One Dimensional Man, published in 1964, where Marcuse writes eloquently about the need for critique, contradiction, and transcendence. “To the degree to which the established society is irrational,” Marcuse writes, “the analysis in terms of historical rationality introduces into the concept the negative element—critique, contradiction, and transcendence.”^[24] This negative element, he continues, “cannot be assimilated with the positive. It changes the concept in its entirety, in its intent and validity. Thus, the analysis of an economy, capitalist or not, which operates as an ‘independent’ power over and above the individuals, the negative features […] are not comprehended as long as they appear merely as more or less inevitable by-products, as ‘the other side’ of the story of growth and progress.”^[25] Marcuse’s focus is on the negative features: “overproduction, unemployment, insecurity, waste, repression.”^[26] And the one-dimensionality that Marcuse critiques is precisely the habit of only seeing the positive side of things, of being the consumer, of not being critical in any way. It is the dimension of criticality that is missing in the one-dimensional person. This is precisely what leads Marcuse to the argument for the “Great Refusal,” which is where the book closes: “In the face of its efficient denial by the established system, this negation appears in the politically impotent from of the ‘absolute refusal’—a refusal which seems the more unreasonable the more the established system develops its productivity and alleviates the burden of life.”^[27]

Similarly, negativity is prominent in the essay “Philosophy and Critical Theory,” published in the Marcuse collection Negations in 1968, in which Marcuse argues that Critical Theory essentially negates philosophy.^[28]

What gets distilled in Marcuse’s approach, over time, is the focus on the negative. “Dialectical thought thus becomes negative in itself. Its function is to break down the self-assurance and self-contentment of common sense,” he emphasizes in the preface in 1960. And it is this element of negativity that was so important to the student movement in 1968.

Now, I would argue that Marcuse himself started to sense that he needed to add something slightly more positive to the Great Refusal. Already in An Essay on Liberation, which he published in 1969 on the heels of the student revolution, Marcuse began to negotiate a slightly different space between negativity and utopianism. That word is complicated. We had a whole 13/13 seminar series on utopia or, more specifically, on the concept of “concrete utopias.” We even discussed Marcuse on utopia. But let’s just say this. I think that there is a clear recognition by Marcuse, in his Essay on Liberation, that he needed to rethink the Left’s skepticism about utopia. There are indications that he felt he needed to return to the topic of utopia and find a different place to land. He says so in the essay when he writes, early on, that “social theory is supposed to analyze existing societies in the light of their own functions and capabilities and to identify demonstrable tendencies (if any) which might lead beyond the existing state of affairs.”^[29] He refers to determining “the basic institutional changes which are the prerequisites for the transition to a higher stage of development.”^[30] Marcuse talks about the fact that his thinking needs to be “revised.”^[31] He argues that the actual evolution of contemporary societies “deprives ‘utopia’ of its traditional unreal content.”^[32] He concludes that “what is denounced as ‘utopian’ is no longer that which has ‘no place’ and cannot have any place in the historical universe, but rather that which is blocked from coming about by the power of the established societies.”^[33] In effect, Marcuse is arguing that the Left needs to rethink its animosity toward the concept of utopia.

And in fact, in another essay, which he titles “The End of Utopia,” he argues not for the end of utopian thinking, but on the contrary for the end of a conception of Utopia as being unachievable.^[34] He argues that our old utopias are in fact achievable: What we can now achieve, what we tend to call utopian, is actually not utopian, precisely because it is not a ‘no place.’ It is not impossible to achieve. It is actually possible to achieve. So, we need to think of it as that which we are going to achieve, and not as some utopia that we can never achieve. Marcuse is returning to the question of utopia at this period precisely because the Great Refusal is so compelling and does so much political work, but it does not help with a positive vision.

There remains a dialectical tension in Marcuse’s work between the Hegelian negative philosophy and the embrace of a form of utopianism. But Marcuse is clearly rethinking, in the wake of the 1968 revolution, the role of proposing alternatives.

Thinking in the Present

This is highly relevant to our current political condition. My sense is that the far Right appropriated the negativity that Marcuse had developed and embraced. It is the far Right, the MAGA movement, and President Trump’s rhetoric that has most emphasized the need to refuse everything. The Right appropriated the Great Refusal, with its anti-establishment arguments and efforts to tear down the administrative state. The far Right has become the most dominant force of negative thinking. It is Trump and Steve Miller and Steve Bannon who have appropriated the Marcusian reading of Hegel from the 40s to the late 1960s.

But what is missing on the far Right is a positive or compelling or attractive vision of society. Their anti-establishment rhetoric of tearing of the regulatory state is an aggressively nationalistic, xenophobic vision. It is a violent politics of ICE raids and military attacks. ICE surges are perhaps the leading domestic intervention, and then, at the international level, the summary executions of suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean, the taking of Greenland, the bombing of Iran.... These are frightening politics.

Now, the Left, on the other hand, has been forceful and compelling in its critiques of inequality and social injustice. It has been shaped by Marcuse’s ideas about the power of negative thinking and the Great Refusal. Think here of the Occupy Wall Street critique of the 1% -- and the power of the 99%—or the George Floyd protests and the abolitionist movement. Those were powerful critiques and social movements. And still today, the Left can draw on the Great Refusal with regard to the new surge of white nationalism and reactionary politics.

But the Left has not been as adept at proposing compelling visions for the future. One of the most compelling visions in recent time is Zohran Mamdani’s campaign and his election, but again, it was an election that was based primarily on the notion of affordability. Affordability is not a sufficiently positive vision—it is hardly utopian. And when I say utopian, I’m not referring to the 19th century utopianism, or to grand Utopias. I am instead using the concept of concrete utopias, which I tried to develop during the Utopia 13/13 seminar series—concrete utopias being much more realistic, existing frameworks, ideas, practices that have really existed and that we can actually put into place. (Note that the idea of “concrete” works nicely in New York City!).

We need, beyond affordability, a vision of a cooperative society. The policies in the Mamdani campaign are there, particularly universal child care and housing. Those are elements of a solidaristic cooperative society. But I would argue that we must talk about them in much more affirmative terms, more than mere affordability. They represent a vision of solidarity and cooperation.

And it is the work that Marcuse did on Hegel—the way he flips Hegel into a negative philosophy that then becomes the Great Refusal, but in a dialectical way, then pushes us back towards considerations of utopia—from which we might derive the most useful and productive ideas for the present moment.

This is one answer to the third question that we are raising in Hegel 13/13: What can we learn today from the moves that critical theorists made on Hegel? What can we draw from Marcuse’s engagement with Hegel?

The answer, I propose, has something to do with the relationship between, on the one hand, criticizing, negating the present, the power of negative thinking, and on the other, negotiating a space with proposing visions of realistic, manageable, concrete utopias. This is, I think, the most important work we need to do today. And in this regard, I believe it is helpful to study Marcuse in his decades-long confrontation with Hegel.

Notes

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^[1] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at pp. 418-419.

^[2] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 419.

^[3] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 419.

^[4] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 404.

^[5] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 408.

^[6] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 418.

^[7] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 252.

^[8] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 252.

^[9] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 288.

^[10] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 315.

^[11] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 325.

^[12] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 325.

^[13] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 326.

^[14] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 326.

^[15] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 326.

^[16] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 326.

^[17] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 327.

^[18] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 327.

^[19] Bernard E. Harcourt, Language of the Gun (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

^[20] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 327.

^[21] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 328.

^[22] Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, at p. 248.

^[23] Marcuse, “A Note on Dialectic,” in Reason and Revolution, 1960 ed.

^[24] Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, at p. 229/225.

^[25] Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, at p. 229/225.

^[26] Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, at p. 229/225.

^[27] Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, at p. 259.

^[28] Herbert Marcuse, “Philosophy and Critical Theory,” pp. 99-118, in Negations, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Penguin, 1968).

^[29] Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), at p. 3.

^[30] Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, at p. 3.

^[31] Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, at p. 3.

^[32] Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, at p. 3.

^[33] Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, at p. 3-4.

^[34] Marcuse, Herbert. The End of Utopia. Trans. Jeremy Shapiro and Shierry M. Weber. In Psychoanalyse und Politik. Lecture delivered at the Free University of West Berlin in July 1967.