Marcuse and the CIA

Richard Gibson rgibson at pipeline.com
Fri Oct 30 15:28:56 PST 1998


There are additional, and more academically acceptable, pieces of evidence regarding Marcuse. Martin Jay's "Dialectical Imagination" says HM was working with AMerican itelligence until the Korean war (p80). Jay also notes that working for the OSS is not exactly the line toward revolutionary praxis that initially was to guide the Frankfurt School. I like Lukacs' comment re the Frankfut crowd, "The Grand Hotel Abyss."...(296) Those interested in spy vs spy stuff might also note the role played by Richard Sorge in the FS (see the index)

I am also curious about what Pl had to say... .....best rich

At 05:44 PM 10/30/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> 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
>
Rich Gibson Program Coordinator of Social Studies Wayne State University College of Education Detroit MI 48202

http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/index.html http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/meap.html

Life travels upward in spirals.

Those who take pains to search the shadows

of the past below us, then, can better judge the

tiny arc up which they climb,

more surely guess the dim

curves of the future above them.



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