Would it be churlish to point out that Marcuse is an unreliable authority, since he was a paid agent both of the FBI and of the OSS, forerunner of the CIA?
The links between the leadership of the Frnakfurt School and the CIA are well documented in Istvan Meszaros' Power of Ideology. But I was genuinely surprised that a recent edition of Marcuse's unpublished papers was made up largely of his analytic reports written for his FBI and OSS handlers! In one letter to Horkheimer Marcuse complains that he is being pressured to identify the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as parallel social orders - pressure that some would say he later gave into.
More vile is his boasting to Horkheimer that he has managed to spike the academic career of Henryk Grossmann, a fellow of the exiled Frankfurt insitute, and one of the few to stay loyal to Marxism. Marcuse's creepy acclamation to the idiot Horkheimer's 'correction' of Grossmann's orthodox Marxism is quite revolting. So is the fact that Marcuse and Horkheimer both knew full well that their collegue Franz Neumann's analysis of German Fascism was by far the more critical politically, but that they preferred to promote the more apologetic analysis of 'Totalitarianism', keeping Neumann's work an in-house secret.
Marcuse advised the OSS on how to manage denazification and govern Western Germany.
One article in Progressive Labour, was justifiably titled 'Marcuse: Cop- out or Cop?' (vol 6 no 6, Feb 1969). -- Jim heartfield