I usually don't say this but I don't believe what is written below - particularly about Grossmann. Yes - Marcuse worked in the war effort - but i hardly think this makes him an 'unreliable authority.' And as if the OSS would have 'trusted' Marcuse to make anything but glib comments. He was Jewish, Marxist, intellectual, a philosopher, and he was German. At the time some fairly large segments of the U.S. thought they were fighting on the wrong side! As for the USSR and Nazi Germany being parallel orders - Marcuse's arguments about this are VERY specific - he is talking about the means of production and the conditions of labour. Politically they were different, Marcuse knew this. Marcuse and the Frankfurt School not only predicted (and underestimated) the rise of fascism in their journal - but they also predicated the horrors of Solviet style communism.
As for 'spiking' the career of Grossmann - Marcuse *liked* Grossmann as a friend - Grossmann was, after all, one of the founders of the FS. Marcuse disagree with his orthodoxy. Remember - Grossmann predicted to the day when the revolution would take place - not unlike the medieval church fathers predictions about the second coming. How well would most people work with this kind of dogmatism today?
Horkheimer and Marcuse's critique of Grossmann is consistent throughout the work of the FS. And I certainly disagree that Neumann's work was kept an in house secret - hell - Neumann, if i'm not mistaken, wrote the very first article for the Institute's journal!
And that article in 1969 - note the timing. Marcuse had a slew of dogmatic and paranoid enemies after '68. All of the people in the FS did. Brandt identified Horkheimer and Adorno as the chief architects of terrorism shortly after '69 (criticism from the right) and many students of the New Left boycotted or sat-in on lectures by Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer (and Habermas) in protest of their 'great refusal.' For the most part the criticisms of Marcuse of the New Left turned out to be true (the revolution did not occur) and the wild interpretations of Marcuse's work ["the more I make love the more I want to make revolution"] are nonsense. This kind of heresay addresses nothing of Marcuse's actual work. It is slanderous gossip. If you want to talk about bibliographical work - fine - but this has nothing to do with his critical theory - esp. his appropriation of utilitarianism (which, by the way, shouldn't undercut his stalward commitment to Kant!!!!)
ken
> >>From: Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
> >>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> >>Date: Thursday, October 29, 1998 12:47 PM
> >>Subject: Re: Liberalism (Locke, Mill)
> >In message
<19981028.100430.3326.1.farmelantj at juno.com>, James
> >Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> writes
> > As I recall Herbert Marcuse (who himself was attracted to
utilitarianism) was able to Mill's utilitarianism against the
defense of free speech as an absolute right. Marcuse argued
that under certain circumstances reactionary speech could be
justifiably repressed particularly racist and/or pro-fascist
speech.
> >-----------------------------------------
> >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