Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse (19 July 1898 – 29 July 1979) was a jewish German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School.

Life

Born in Germany, he along with other jewish-Germans such as Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno, emigrated to the United States after NSDAP had seized power in Germany. Perhaps the best known works of Marcuse are Eros and Civilization, One-Dimensional Man and The Aesthetic Dimension.

Marcuse was a father of Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory. Critical Theory was essentially destructive criticism of the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity, ethnocentrism, convention and conservatism.

During World War II, Marcuse worked in United States Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, including on propaganda projects. Wikipedia claims that he became "the leading analyst on Germany". In 1945, Marcuse was employed by the US Department of State as head of the Central European section, becoming an intelligence analyst of "Nazism".

An influential 1955 book was Eros and Civilization, influenced by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.

See also

• Allied psychological warfare
• Psychoanalysis - An influence
• Saul Alinsky

External links

• Review of Thomas Wheatland’s The Frankfurt School in Exile, Part III: John Dewey, Sidney Hook, and Herbert Marcuse
• The Sexual is Political (And Profitable)
• “Modify the standards of the in-group”: On jews and Mass Communications