Liberalism (Locke, Mill)

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Fri Oct 30 14:44:43 PST 1998



> 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?
> More vile is his boasting to Horkheimer that he has managed to spike the
> academic career of Henryk Grossmann
> 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

yeah, yeah, yeah, been there, don't that...an *anonoymously* published article in PL is reliable?

HM answered the communists who used his US intelligence service work to taint him with CIA affiliations:

'If critics reproach me for that, it only shows the complete ignorance of these people, who seem to have forgotten that the war then was a war against fascism, and that, consequently, I haven't the slightest reason for being ashamed of having assisted in it.' (_Revolution or Reform?_, p. 59)

and

'My main task was to identify groups in Germany with which one could work towards reconstruction after the war; and to identify groups which were to be taken to task as nazis. There was a major de-Nazification programme at the time. Based on exact research, reports, newspaper reading and whatever, lists were made up of those Nazis who were supposed to assume responsibility for their activity. Later it was said that I was a CIA agent. Which is ridiculous, since the OSS wasn't even allowed near the CIA. They fought each other like enemies.' ("Conversation with Habermas and Others: Theory & Politics," _Telos_ 38, pp. 130-131.)

according to Henry Pachter, HM:

'bombarded Secretary of War Stimson with plans for a post-war Germany that would give democratic socialism a chance...' (_The Legacy of the German Intellectuals_, p.36)

and H. Stuart Hughes wrote of HM:

'it has seemed deliciously incongruous that at the end of the 1940s, with an official purge of real or suspected leftists in full swing, the State Deparment's leading authority on Central Europe should have been a revolutionary socialist who hated the cold war and all its works.' (The Sea Change, p. 175)

accidentally deleted comment about HM giving into pressure to compare Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, but his use of the term 'totalitarian administration' and his critique of bureaucratic socialism in _Soviet Marxism_ hardly suggests such...he also rejects 'convergence' thesis regarding Soviet Union and modern capitalist states, although he seem similarities between state capitalism and state socialism...

as for spiking Grossman's career, that may make HM a cad and heel in this instance, but hardly constitutes grounds for the other allegations made against him...Michael Hoover



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