Marxism, Revolution and Utopia

This collection assembles some of Herbert Marcuse's most important work, and presents for the first time his responses to and development of classic Marxist approaches to revolution and utopia. This sixth and final volume of Marcuse's collected papers shows Marcuse's rejection of the prevailing twentieth-century Marxist theory and socialist practice - which he saw as inadequate for a thorough critique of Western and Soviet bureaucracy - and the development of his revolutionary thought towards a critique of the consumer society. Marcuse's later philosophical perspectives on technology, ecology, and human emancipation sat at odds with many of the classic tenets of Marx's materialist dialectic which placed the working class as the central agent of change in capitalist societies. A comprehensive introduction by Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce places Marcuse's philosophy in the context of his engagement with the main currents of twentieth century philosophy, and the volume concludes with an afterword by Peter Marcuse.