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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2009
Brecht Forum panel: Herbert Marcuse for today
New York--About 75 people attended an "Author Meets Critic" book party to celebrate the publication of Arnold Farr's Critical Theory and Democratic Vision, Herbert Marcuse and Recent Liberation Philosophies. The event was held March 4 at Brecht Forum in New York. Speakers included Farr, Peter Marcuse, Steven Eric Bronner, and Russell Rockwell.
Farr emphasized that his work was an attempt to develop the liberating potential of philosophy and, as such, was a method to reach liberation. Theology, for example, when read from a place of privilege, is different than when read by poor and oppressed people. There are two strands in the same text: One is that of control and domination of others, the other provides emancipatory tools. Farr held that movements in philosophy (such as in Marcuse's work) originate from the cry of the oppressed, and that his book attempts to put Marcuse in dialogue with today's liberation movements. In doing so, his work situates Marcuse historically. It takes up Eros and Civilization and how, for example, Marcuse's theories speak to recent feminist theories of the body and consciousness.
Bronner emphasized that, contrary to some interpretations, Marcuse's work, such as One-Dimensional Man, actually brought class back into focus as a key to understanding contemporary society. Marcuse viewed the activity of marginalized groups in U.S. society, such as Blacks, the unemployed, and others as potentially providing the spark for radical social transformations traditionally associated with class struggles. Important for understanding Marcuse was the distinction he drew between "utopia" and "utopian." Marcuse always retained a vision of the realization of a liberated society, but he consistently eschewed "utopianism" as a form of thought.
Peter Marcuse, Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University, discussed urban activists around city-planning, as trying to make things better; but they are unable to do it. He noted that the Marxism that underlay his father's work consistently held that it's a question of changing the system. Housing should be de-commodified--people should not be allowed to buy and sell houses for profit--housing should only be a use-value. People ask "what kind of utopia?" It is the wrong question; in negation of the negation, the second negation is the idea of what should exist, a positive theory and practice link.
Rockwell said he became acquainted with Marcuse's work, especially on Hegel's Science of Logic, through the Marxist-Humanist philosopher, Raya Dunayevskaya. His interest developed through work on the volume of the complete correspondence between Dunayevskaya and Marcuse and Dunayevskaya and Fromm during the years 1954-1978, which he said will be published in the not too distant future.
Rockwell stressed Marcuse's uniqueness--the continuity he represented with the Russian Revolution through his participation (along with Rosa Luxemburg, who hoped to spread the revolution throughout Europe) in the 1919 German Spartacist Uprising, during which he joined the revolutionary soldiers' councils. Marcuse also represented a continuity with Marx--in the sense that as early as 1932 he was among the first to analyze Marx's 1844 Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts, the humanist essays, which had been buried in the archives since Marx's death one half-century earlier. Rockwell also engaged an important theme in Farr's book--Marcuse's interpretations of Hegel in his two Hegel books--Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity, and Reason and Revolution, both written in the decade from 1932-1941. Rockwell argued that as special as the two works were in analyzing Hegel's Theoretical and Practical Ideas from the Science of Logic, neither brought to the fore Hegel's crucial "conclusion": the Practical Idea makes the transition (to a unity of theory and practice) through itself. Rockwell tied this to important themes in Farr's book, especially their concern with Marcuse's (and Farr's) commitment to the self-development of various subjects of social change.
--Russell Rockwell
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