my 'writing in defense' of Marcuse was mostly quotation from him and a couple of others and was prompted by a comment carrying all kinds of revelatory & shadowy undertones - 'paid agent'...but neither is the case because HM's work for OSS and at the State Department is quite public knowledge...is he above reproach? of course not (and a discussion of such matters could be useful), but the intent of the comment was something quite different...
as for being dissatisfied with Marcuse's explanation, whatever...my father told me when I was a youngster that 'opinions are like assholes, everybody has one'...and this medium allows people to relentlessly spew forth their views, so putting one's own spin on Marcuse, Pachter, and Hughes is par for the course...someone who holds someone else with such contempt would not likely be persuaded anyway, so big fuckin' deal...
all analogies being suspect, the Marcuse-Orwell one is especially so... the latter secretly writing down names for the British gov't of prominent figures whom he felt were so enamoured with the Soviet Union that they could not be trusted...didn't Orwell also exhibit anti-Semitic and anti-gay tendencies?...how far does one draw out a non-parallel analogy?...
HM wasn't 'blithely unaware'(which might be more reason to criticize him).. .he told Habermas that he did not have the impression that what he did was of any consequence, saying:
'Those whom we had listed first as 'economic war criminals' were very quickly back in the decisive positions of responibility in the German economy.' (Telos interview cited previously)
Marcuse's 'most important' contribution during this time appears to have been the report he submitted in 1949 - *The Potentials of World Communism* - that attempted to offset the policies and politics of the Cold War, it was summarily dismissed...
re: Horkheimer/Grossman and working class/secret service, see above comment about such analogies...
the header 'Agent Marcuse' repeats the original charge...this is not criticism of/disagreement with someone, but the tactic of the pigfucker. ..Michael Hoover