Herbert Marcuse, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

, Political Violence
and Existential Politics
We think of the culture war in the United States as largely a product of the
Sixties, which in American political-cultural terms extended to 1972 (the
McGovern-Nixon election) or 1973 (the formal end of direct US participation in
the Vietnam War).
But there was also a conventional liberal front in the culture war which found
them partially on the same side as conservatives. On the one hand, the liberals
sided with the civil rights movement against the segregationists, and there was a
considerable overlap between liberals and the civil rights movement. But liberals
were also supportive of the general direction of Cold War policies and, to varying
degrees, many were supportive of the Vietnam War, though that support waned
with time and military failure there. One of the things that distinguished George
McGoverns position on foreign policy from what McGoverns adherents in 1972
were known to deride as Cold War liberalism was his straightforward
opposition to the Vietnam War and his broader criticism of Cold War assumptions
about the special virtue of American power and the external threat of
Communism.
As I was reading a 1968 article by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Existential
Politics and the Cult of Violence1, largely devoted to criticizing Frankfurt School
philosopher Herbert Marcuse and the New Left movement with which he was
identified, it occurred to me that Schlesingers argument had an awful lot in
common with the more bewildered reactions to the Occupy movement.
Engaging with Schlesingers piece led me to compose the current essay, which
covers several themes of particular concern for me: political violence; the
complex relationship of political ideology/philosophy and political practice; the
liberal variant of Cold War political ideology in the US; the thought of the
Frankfurt School, framed by Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse as critical
theory; and, in particular, the enduring insights contained in Marcuses essay
Repressive Tolerance which Schlesinger attempted to skewer in 1968.
Bewildered liberals in The Sixties
Schlesinger was writing in the wake of his own experience with an earlier
occupy movement: the occupation of Columbia University, where he was then a
professor, by student activists in 1968. He wrote:
The causes of student insurgency vary from college to college, and
from country to country. It would seem likely that the primary
1

The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Septembre 1968), pp. 9-15 The text is based on an
address Schlesinger gave on June 5, 1968, the day after Robert Kennedys assassination.

incitement in our own nation has been the war in Vietnam- a war
which has tempted our government into its course of appalling and
insensate destruction, a war which, through the draft, has
demanded that young Americans kill and die where they can see
no rational relationship between personal sacrifice and national
interest. But the cause is also more than the Vietnam war. For that
war has come for many to prefigure a larger incomprehensibility, a
larger absurdity, even a larger wickedness, in our official society.
For some it has come to seem, not an aberration, but the inevitable
result of the irremediable corruption of the American system.
I cannot share the belief that there was something foreordained and
ineluctable about the war in Vietnam- that the nature of American
society would have compelled any set of men in Washington to
pursue the same course of folly. This really seems determinist
nonsense. One can still understand, though, why the contradictions
of our society weigh so heavily on the young - the contradictions
between the righteousness of a Secretary of State and the
ruthlessness of a B-52; between the notion that violence is fine
against simple folk ten thousand miles away and shocking against
injustice in our own land; between the equality demanded by our
constitutional structure and the equality denied by our social
structure; even between the accepted habits of one generation and
the emerging habits of the next, as when a parent tipsy on his
fourth martini begins a tirade against marijuana.
I give Schlesinger a lot of credit for paying serious attention to social and political
violence and disruption and looking carefully for its wider causes. In both the US
and Britain, during the 1970s a strictly punitive view toward crime took hold institutionalized in the unending War on Drugs - in which crime and violence
were regarded by public officials as exclusively matters of individual
delinquency. This fit well with the culture-war stand of movement
conservatives in the US who wanted to demonizing African-Americans and, to a
lesser but serious extent, Latinos as violent classes within the larger community.
By the early 1970s, Democrats were already shying away from any mention of
anything like sociological factors in promoting violence. Such observations were
eagerly stigmatized by conservatives as soft on crime.
That is still a dominant attitude in the US. The now-perpetual Global War on
Terrorism has worked to strengthen that attitude. The extent to which that is so
was dramatically illustrated by the paramilitary response that was so prominent in
urban police response to the Occupy movement in 2011-12. Sadly, that was
particularly so in cities with Democratic mayors like Chicago, Oakland and
Portland, and in New York with an Independent mayor that endorsed President
Obama for re-election in 2012.

War and social violence

In that passage just quoted, its notable that Schlesinger recognized some link
between war and violence of various kinds inside the US. He doesnt oversimplify
in the general overview. Drawing more direct connections between cause and
effect on something so overdetermined as decisions by individuals to commit acts
of violence is a very difficult thing to do. Which is not to say its impossible.
The aftermath of the First World provides some useful examples. The role of war
in setting up the Russian Revolution of 1917 is well known. The Russian people
were sick of the war, and the Bolsheviks main immediate appeal was that they
promised bread and peace. But war also meant that there were a lot of current
and former soldiers who were trained in arms and organized combat and had a
good supply of guns at a given moment. The combination created opportune
conditions for the kind of coup dtat that was still feasible in a country like
Russia where governmental institutions were so highly centralized. And for the
subsequent long and bloody civil war that followed that revolution.
Something similar can be seen in Germany, though its highly unlikely that a
Russian-style revolutionary coup was feasible there at the time. Still, revolts in the
army and navy, including the formation of soldiers councils (soviet was the
Russian word for workers and soldiers councils) as an immediate form of base
democracy, as well as other popular protests pushed the military government to
get the Kaiser to abdicate and turn the government over to the Social Democrats.
The training and the widespread availability of weapons continued to shape the
immediate postwar politics there, with the brutal suppression of workers
demonstrations in January 1919 that arguably left wounds in Weimar democracy
that were ultimately fatal; the Kapp Putsch in 1921; the attempted Communist
coup in 1923.
There is also some kind of link between American attitudes toward routine
violence in society and our current type of idolatry of the military and the
belligerent war rhetoric common to both parties, a situation not totally dissimilar
to the days of the Vietnam War. The most bloodthirsty rhetoric about slaughtering
civilians and torturing and murdering people is considered widely respectable,
though by no means universally indulged. I dont share Schlesingers belief
expressed elsewhere that depictions of violence in fiction and on TV and even in
comic books promotes violent behavior in any measurable way. But for kids
especially, hearing people they see as responsible adults defend violence and
murder against civil rights activists, or indulging in gory verbal fantasies about
slaughtering people in war, does shape real-life attitudes toward violence.
Cold War Foreign Policy and Ideological Deadlock
But in the middle of Schlesingers nuanced observations about the causes of
social violence, he papers over larger objections to Cold War foreign policy
3

conceptions by bracketing them in a conventional dismissal of what we might call

the most retail form of Communist theories of imperialism: I cannot share the
belief that there was something foreordained and ineluctable about the war in
Vietnam- that the nature of American society would have compelled any set of
men in Washington to pursue the same course of folly.
After the Bush-Cheney Administration with its outspoken and arrogant
neoconservatives and militarists, weve become accustomed to hearing advocates
of a warlike foreign policy talk about the United States as an empire pursuing
imperial policies. But at least well into the 1990s, the use of such terms about
American foreign policy was considered dubious at best in mainstream
conversation. They figured prominently in the propaganda of Communist
countries like China, Russia, Cuba and Vietnam, so conventional standards
required that any such criticisms be dismissed as outside the pale of respectability,
as Schlesinger does there.
To be fair, Schlesinger in other places did give careful consideration to readings
of history like those of William Appleman Williams that were popular and
influential among antiwar activists in those days and which used an antiimperialist framework. But pretty much anyone who worked with such theories
beyond the level of what could be fitted on a one-page leaflet recognized that
there were real decision-makers with real choices involved, not that the nature of
American society would have compelled any set of men in Washington to pursue
the same course of folly, a straw-man that Schlesinger dismisses as determinist
nonsense, a phrase representing a conventional criticisms of Marxism in its
various forms.
What Schlesinger evades in that formulation is that the United States since the
Second World War has pursued various forms of a foreign policy strategy of
global dominance or global hegemony. While the Soviet Union still existed, that
strategy confronted another superpower with its own not inconsiderable global
influence. Since the fall of the USSR, American officials have been willing to
speak more frankly in both speeches and official policy pronouncements about the
pursuit of a global dominance strategy, which aims at preventing the rise of any
peer competitor nation in the world, in the foreign policy jargon. President
Obamas National Security Strategy of May 2010 formulates it this way:
Our country possesses the attributes that have supported our
leadership for decades - sturdy alliances, an unmatched military,
the worlds largest economy, a strong and evolving democracy,
and a dynamic citizenry. Going forward, there should be no doubt:
the United States of America will continue to underwrite global
security - through our commitments to allies, partners, and
institutions; our focus on defeating al-Qaida and its affiliates in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the globe; and our

determination to deter aggression and prevent the proliferation of

the worlds most dangerous weapons. (emphasis added)2
Such a strategy does not pre-define each specific decision. Nor is it the result of
determinism, nonsensical or otherwise. But it is a strategy that developed from
historical and economic pressures and experiences. And it is a strategy that
creates a strong incentive for foreign intervention, including military intervention.
Two of the leading theorists of the realist school of foreign policy, John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, both advocate an alternative strategic approach
they call offshore balancing. Such a strategy, they both argue, would reduce the
need and temptation for direct military intervention by the United States. 3
In other words, the global dominance strategy doesnt dictate individual policy
decisions. But that strategy and the economic, political, military and social
pressures that formed it do vastly increase the likelihood of foreign policy
misadventures and military interventions. For a liberal in 1968 eager to clearly
delineate himself from a left anti-imperialist analysis, that was a difficult point
to admit. Even for a serious critic of the Vietnam War such Schlesinger had by
then become.
In a 1986 collection of essays, Schlesinger discusses the origins of the Cold War
and some issues raised by what he calls there Cold War revisionism in Why the
Cold War?4 In the first part of that essay, he argues that the basic Cold War
policy was inevitable from the American side. The Cold War could have been
avoided only if the Soviet Union had not been possessed by convictions both of
the infallibility of the communist word and of the inevitability of a communist
world, he writes. And because those Soviet attitudes transformed an impasse
between national states into a religious war, (!!) even the most rational of
American policies could hardly have averted the Cold War.
In the second part of the essay, The Cold War Revisited: 1986, he adds nuance
to that conclusion by discussing works looking at other possible driving
motivations for Soviet decisions in the postwar period. There, he reaches a less
sweeping conclusion:
2

National Security Strategy (White House; May 2010) p. 1

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf
3
John Mearshimer, Pull Those Boots Off The Ground Newsweek 12/30/2008
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/12/30/pull-those-boots-off-the-ground.html;
Stephen Walt, Offshore balancing: An idea whose time has come Foreign Policy online
11/02/2011
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/02/offshore_balancing_an_idea_whose_time_has_co
me; "What if realists were in charge of U.S. foreign policy?" Foreign Policy online 04/30/2012
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/30/what_if_realists_ran_us_foreign_policy_a_top_ten
_list
4

The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1986)

For its part, the Soviet Union had its own interests and
apprehensions. The Cold War soon became an intricate,
interlocking reciprocal process, involving authentic differences in
principle, real and supposed clashes of interest and a wide range of
misunderstanding, misperception and demagoguery. Each camp
persevered in corroborating the fears of the other. Together they
marched in fatal lockstep to the brink of the abyss.
Still, he couldnt quite back away from his own version of Cold War determinism,
concluding there, The real surprise would have been if there had been no Cold
War.
His 1968 criticism of Herbert Marcuse, and of the New Left of the time for which
he used Marcuse as a broader symbol, reflects the constrictions of the larger Cold
War framework to which Schlesinger held.
Schlesingers evidence for the indictment of Marcuse: the essay Repressive
Tolerance
Schlesinger targets Marcuses essay Repressive Tolerance in his critique. That
essay appeared as the third of three in a 1965 book, A Critique of Pure
Tolerance.5 The first was by an analytic philosopher, Robert Paul Wolff, Beyond
Tolerance, the second by sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr., Tolerance and the
Scientific Outlook. The collection was intended to look at various aspects of
tolerance as a philosophical and historical phenomenon as it manifests itself in the
present day.
More specifically, they examine tolerance as a problem in the contemporary
context. For Wolff, tolerance had developed into a problematic pluralism that
obstructs a necessary consideration of common interests. As he wrote:
Pluralism is humane, benevolent, accommodating and far more
responsive to the evils of social injustice than either the egoistic
liberalism or the traditionalistic conservatism from which it grew.
But pluralism is fatally blind to the evils which afflict the entire
body politic, and as a theory of society it obstructs consideration of
precisely the sorts of thoroughgoing social revisions which may be
needed to remedy those evils.
Moore focused on the central importance of the secular and scientific outlook
and how it both requires tolerance and is essential to recognize the limits of
tolerance:
5

(Boston: Beacon Press; 1965) Online:

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm

Properly used and understood, the secular and scientific outlook

leads neither to flaccid acceptance of the world as it is, watery
toleration of every doctrine because there might be some
contribution somewhere, nor to the fanatical single-mindedness of
the doctrinaire, willing that a thousand may perish in order that one
shall be saved. Instead of paralyzing the will and the intellect the
rational and secular outlook can nerve men for mortal combat
when the situation calls for it and prevent them from fighting or
simply being foolish when the situation calls for rational
discussion or some other behavior. It can tell us when to be
tolerant and when tolerance becomes intellectual cowardice and
evasion.
Instead of taking the issues raised by the philosophical project of the book,
Schlesinger singles out Marcuses essay and wrongly treated it as a stereotypical
and even conventional example of the fanatical single-mindedness of the
doctrinaire, in Moores words.6
Marcuse problematized tolerance is a distinctive way in his contribution to that
book. Tolerance, he wrote, is an end in itself. The elimination of violence, and
the reduction of suppression to the extent required for protecting man and animals
from cruelty and aggression are preconditions for the creation of a humane
society.7
But Marcuse was looking at tolerance as a critical demand against existing
societies. He continued immediately, Such a society does not yet exist; progress
toward it is perhaps more than before arrested by violence and suppression on a
global scale. (emphasis added)
No Cold War liberal in 1965 or 1968 could be comfortable with a broad
formulation like this. And it was surely not Marcuses intention in using it to
comfort anyone.
Marcuse looks back to the role of tolerance in the democratic revolutions of the
17th, 18th and 19th centuries, of which the English Revolution of 1666 and the
French Revolution of 1789 were the great paradigms. Toleration in those contexts
meant especially religious toleration, after a tumultuous early-modern period that
saw the Wars of Religion of the 16th century and the long, bloody, incredibly
destructive Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, in which religious issues played a
6

Schlesinger may or may not have approved of using the word project to describe what the
authors of A Critique of Pure Tolerance were doing. It was Martin Heidegger who established the
use of project to describe a philosophical undertaking. And, as we shall see below, Schlesinger
seems to have been deeply suspicious of anything touching Heideggers existentialism.
7
I venture to think American English has reached a point where it may be necessary to explain
that man in 1965 was still used as a generic reference to humanity.

major and highly visible role. Toleration between Catholics and Protestants,
between Lutherans and Calvinists, between Christians and Jews were major issues
in the long transition from feudalism to democracy and capitalism in the Europe
world, including in their American colonies.
The telos of tolerance is truth, Marcuse wrote.
It is clear from the historical record that the authentic spokesmen
of tolerance had more and other truth in mind than that of
propositional logic and academic theory. John Stuart Mill speaks
of the truth which is persecuted in history and which does not
triumph over persecution by virtue of its inherent power, which
in fact has no inherent power against the dungeon and the stake.
And he enumerates the truths which were cruelly and
successfully liquidated in the dungeons and at the stake: that of
Arnold of Brescia, of Fra Dolcino, of Savonarola, of the
Albigensians, Waldensians, Lollards, and Hussites. Tolerance is
first and foremost for the sake of the heretics the historical road
toward humanitas appears as heresy: target of persecution by the
powers that be. Heresy by itself, however, is no token of truth.
The criterion of progress in freedom according to which Mill
judges these movements is the Reformation. The evaluation is ex
post, and his list includes opposites (Savonarola too would have
burned Fra Dolcino). Even the ex post evaluation is contestable as
to its truth: history corrects the judgment too late.
Marcuse posed the problem of whether tolerance can achieve its historic value
and function of providing a free chance for the constructive, liberating ideas that
improve society and the conditions of individual life in the conditions of advanced
capitalist democracies.
First drafting this essay just after the 2012 US Presidential election and the
Superstorm/Frankenstorm Katrina which struck the East Coast, much of the
problem he raised in 1965 were all too painfully apparent. Far more so than in
1965, American political campaigns are dependent on funds from wealthy donors.
One dramatic manifestation of that in the 2012 election was the absence of
climate change as a major topic of discussion. (Absence as a manifestation of
something is not unlike a formulation Marcuse and other Frankfurt School figures
might have used for that situation.) Many wealthy donors, especially in the energy
industry but also more generally, dont want climate change discussed or even
recognized for what it is, because such discussion can easily lead to inconvenient
regulations on pollution or changes in tax and spending policies that currently
favor extractive industries and carbon polluters.

Tolerance also appears in various forms. In the legal form, it means essentially
that nobody gets put in jail just for expressing a controversial idea, however
mistaken, wrong-headed, obnoxious or just plain dumb it may be.
But tolerance is also manifested in the selection of guests and topics on TV
shows, in which talk radio programs are put in prime slots, which speakers are
invited to forums at colleges, what articles are selected for trend-setting
magazines, journals and websites. On a personal and private level, tolerance is
applied or withheld according to what topics and what manner of expression are
deemed acceptable in private conversations or semi-private forums like Facebook.
A person may feel perfectly comfortable arguing taxation policy with friends,
family members or acquaintances, but unwilling to hear their favorite religious
doctrines criticized in any way.
Marcuse formulated the problem like this:
Within the affluent democracy, the affluent discussion prevails,
and within the established framework, it is tolerant to a large
extent. All points of view can be heard: the Communist and the
Fascist, the Left and the Right, the white and the Negro, the
crusaders for armament and for disarmament. Moreover, in
endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is
treated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the
misinformed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda
rides along with education, truth with falsehood.8
A key element of the democratic assumption about the value of tolerance,
including its formal, legal aspects with freedom of speech and freedom of
religion, is that people could make informed decisions in choosing among
alternatives. But in societies where mass manipulation is both technically possible
and widely practiced, and in which the wealthy have access to such capabilities
far disproportionate to either their numbers or any objective value of their ideas,
that basic assumption about well-informed citizens and electors becomes
problematic.
Marcuse at one point does argue explicitly, It should be evident by now that the
exercise of civil rights by those who dont have them presupposes the withdrawal
of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise.
But it is also clear that Marcuse is defining the problem of tolerance as a dilemma
in the context of existing affluent democracies like the US and of the historical
value of tolerance as enabling dissenters, heretics, to push forward developments
that enhance human life and human society. As we saw above, he even puts in a
plug for animal rights there.
8

The situation he describes here could be said to be several orders of magnitude more evident in
2013 in the United States.

Yet for the advocates of those liberating ideas to overcome the situation he
describes, if the exercise of civil rights by those who dont have them
presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise,
what is he defining is an unresolved and even unresolvable problem. The
dissenters have to make their voices not only heard but effective. But since
dissenters not accepted by or part of the Establishment (a term Marcuse uses
here), they scarcely have the power to formally withdraw civil rights from those
who defend the current system of domination by capital, as Marcuse understands
it.
What he is really defining in Repressive Tolerance is the real-time blockage of
fundamental criticism in affluent democracies, and the lack of any clear political
path to resolving that dilemma. In 1965, the reality of the discontent and massive
dissent by African-Americans against segregation and racial discrimination was
not only obvious but a dramatic feature of the American political scene. It would
be an interesting point of inquiry to look at the ways in which the civil rights
movement at that time had already shown the way toward potential solutions of
the problem Marcuse thematizes in Repressive Tolerance. Or, to use Hegelian
terms, toward the ablation (Aufheben) of the problem which raises it to the next
level of development.
Marcuses Repressive Tolerance remains a challenging and fascinating piece
because he manages to address a wide range of important themes that were
characteristic concerns of the Frankfurt School. Including the problem of political
violence and revolution. Which brings us to the approach Schlesinger took to
criticizing Marcuses perspective.
Schlesinger vs. existential politics and the supposed cult of violence
Rather than engaging the actual problem of tolerance as either Marcuse or the
other two authors of A Critique of Pure Tolerance raised it, Schlesinger in a
number of ways tried to shoehorn Marcuses arguments into familiar truisms of
conventional mainstream political assumptions.
Schlesinger frames his argument against Marcuse and the New Left he takes him
to represent by claiming the new creed has two basic parts, one a rejection of
good American ideas of tolerance, the other a lack of a specific program. The first
gives him a launching pad for the following characterizations of the argument of
Repressive Tolerance:

The first part is an attempt to clear away what its theorists regard as the
noxious rubbish of the Bill of Rights.
The new creed thus perceives the First Amendment as the keystone, not
of liberty, but of a wicked apparatus of tolerance employed by an
oppressive social order to resist basic change.
10

I will state in the words of its leading advocate- that is Herbert Marcusethe belief that it is necessary and right, as a matter of principle, to suppress
views with which one disagrees and to howl down those who utter such
views.
Marcuse argues that contemporary society has absorbed and abolished
the historic means of social revolution.
Marcuse argues that society does so through a system of indoctrination
and manipulation made possible by an ingenious and despicable
combination of welfarism and tolerance.
Capitalism, in short, buys off potential opponents by offering a measure
of apparent economic security and personal freedom. Marcuse regards this
as a terrible state of affairs.
As he sees it, any improvement in the condition of the powerless and the
oppressed only plays into the hands of the rulers - and is therefore to be
regretted.
Tolerance is evil because it dissipates the force of protest.
It is also evil because it permits the promulgation of evil ideas.
Marcuse calls for for the forcible suppression of false ideas.
And, in case the reader isnt following his drift, Schlesinger adds,
Marcuse's call for the forcible suppression of false ideas is, I have
suggested, only the first part of the new creed. Nor is such an assault on
the Bill of Rights new, even for radicals. The Stalinists of the Thirties, for
example, had no compunction in arguing in much the same way that civil
freedom should be denied those who resist the Stalinist truth.

The reader will search the pages of Repressive Tolerance in vain trying to find
where Marcuse condemns the American Bill of Rights as noxious rubbish, or
the First Amendment as a wicked apparatus, to generally suppress views with
which one disagrees and to howl down those who utter them. At best, the other
points just cited are exceptionally unsympathetic readings to the point that they
scarcely correspond to Marcuses actual arguments.
Tolerance is evil in Marcuses view? If Schlesinger was going to make that
argument, he should have at least grappled with what he thinks Marcuse meant in
writing the lines quoted above that began, Tolerance is an end in itself. The
elimination of violence, and the reduction of suppression to the extent required for
protecting man and animals from cruelty and aggression are preconditions for the
creation of a humane society.
Apparently without realizing it, in painting Marcuse there as a stereotypical
Commie straw-man, Schlesinger himself provides an illustration of the process
Marcuse describes this passage from Repressive Tolerance:
The toleration of free discussion and the equal right of opposites
was to define and clarify the different forms of dissent: their
direction, content, prospect. But with the concentration of
11

economic and political power and the integration of opposites in a

society which uses technology as an instrument of domination,
effective dissent is blocked where it could freely emerge: in the
formation of opinion, in information and communication, in speech
and assembly. Under the rule of monopolistic media themselves
the mere instruments of economic and political power - a mentality
is created for which right and wrong, true and false are predefined
wherever they affect the vital interests of the society. That is, prior
to all expression and communication, a matter of semantics: the
blocking of effective dissent, of the recognition of that which is not
of the Establishment which begins in the language that is
publicized and administered. (emphasis added)
By framing Marcuse as a 30s-style Stalinist making arguments against the First
Amendment that sounded like those of the crudest segregationist, Schlesinger
attempts to frame him from the outset as someone whose arguments are outside
the pale of Establishment respectability and which therefore can be harmlessly
discussed and condemned without much regard to which he actually say. In
Marcuses words, prior to all expression and communication, a matter of
semantics, a defining of that which is not of the Establishment in the
publicized and administered language.
At this point, it worth noting that there are some obvious concerns about how
Marcuses arguments on formal civil rights, apart from the polemical context in
which Schlesinger attempted to frame them in the Cold War liberal publicized
and administered language. In 1965, the current defenses of their First
Amendment rights by civil rights advocates and also by adherents and fellow
travelers of the US Communist Party were very active issues, or had been in the
recent past. Neither the staunchly anti-Communist American Civil Liberties
Union or the National Lawyers Guild (a fellow-traveling group to the
Communist Party) would have made the argument in the way that Marcuse did,
especially the exercise of civil rights by those who dont have them presupposes
the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise.
It always worthwhile to recognize the extent to which the experience of the Third
Reich affected the framing of those original Frankfurt School figures including
Marcuse. And the European political scene always weighed heavily in their
analyses after the Second World War. The United States and the Western allies
had banned the Nazi Party in occupied Germany and also forbade any attempts to
revive it. To this day, Holocaust denial or explicit promotion of Nazism are illegal
in Germany and in numerous other European democracies. The Austrian State
Treaty of 1955 that formally restored Austrias independence, and remains in
force to this day with the US, Britain and France, obligates Austria to ban Nazi
activities and advocacy. The implicit principle behind such a ban is that this
specific historical phenomenon, Hitlers National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and
movement, has proven itself so destructive and false in human and democratic
12

terms that withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and
movements (Marcuse) which support it or seek to revive it is necessary and
consistent with democracy.
The present writer does not favor such legal restrictions as, for instance, Austria
imposes under its treaty obligations. But in US Constitutional law, treaties are on
a level with the Constitution itself as the law of the land. So even though the US
itself isnt under a reciprocal obligation to legally ban Nazi and Nazi-like activity,
it would not be an exaggeration to observe that the basic law of the US recognizes
at some level the legitimacy of the implied historical judgment of the definitely
proven falsity of Nazism.
And the more general, formal, legal right to dissenting speech in the US certainly
does not extend in such a general form to political activity. Most European
democracies have explicit legal mechanisms for banning parties that are officially
determined to be in rejection the countrys constitutional order. The German
Communist Party was banned in the 1950s, and similar bans have been imposed
on some far right political groups. The US doesnt have the same type of
provisions but gets there through other routes. You cant legally run terrorist
groups by labeling them political parties. There are various requirements for
ballot access, about which aspiring third party perennially complain. There are
reporting requirements on political donations to political parties, and laws
explicitly governing the parties conduct. Political campaigning by non-profit
agencies is legally circumscribed.9
Such formal limitations on political tolerance and political speech and advocacy
are well established, as Schlesinger surely knew very well in 1968. So its hard to
avoid the conclusion that to a significant extent, he was being disingenuous in
pigeonholing Marcuses argument in Repressive Tolerance to some comic-book
version of dogmatic Stalinism.
And its useful to look at Schlesingers criticism of Marcuses stance, keeping in
mind that the formal, legal aspect was only part of what Marcuse was examining.
Schlesinger:
He is candid about his repudiation of the Bill of Rights.
The traditional criterion of clear and present danger
seems no longer adequate to a stage where the
whole society is in the situation of the theater
audience when somebody cries: "fire." ... The whole
post-fascist period is one of clear and present
danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the
9

In 2013, the IRS was the special target of conservative criticism for its approach to determining
whether organization engaged in political advocacy were entitled to be tax-exempt status under the
vague and complex requirements in federal law at the time.

13

withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage

of communication in word, print, and picture. . . .
Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot
be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed,
certain behavior cannot be permitted without
making tolerance an instrument for the continuation
of servitude. [quote from Repressive Tolerance]
And he is specific about what he would forbid. His program, as he
states it,
would include the withdrawal of toleration of
speech and assembly from groups and movements
which promote aggressive policies, armament,
chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race
and religion, or which oppose the extension of
public services, medical care, etc. Moreover, the
restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate
new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices
in the educational institutions. [quote from
Repressive Tolerance]
But isnt the following an example of just such a withdrawal of toleration of
speech and assembly without violating the law or even the ideas of most civil
liberties advocates? Joan Walsh reports on the story of how a speech by the
showy and nasty far-right extremist Ann Coulter was cancelled by the Young
Repubicans Fordham University in 2012 after they received criticism for their
choice of a spaker to bring to their campus.10 Fr. Joseph McShane, the President
of the Jesuit institution, issued this statement on the invitation:
To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of
the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous
understatement. There are many people who can speak to the
conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms.
Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and
needlessly provocative - more heat than light - and her message is
aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature.
As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with
one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud and
impugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage
in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias
incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold
out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain
10

Joan Walsh, "Fordham head blasts Ann Coulter" Salon 11/09/2012

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/fordham_head_blasts_ann_coulter/

14

on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual

orientation, or creed.
Disgust was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those
incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely
at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animated
Fordham.
Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be
to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of
fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from
speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goes
that the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially
true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni,
parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully,
and forcefully.
The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with
a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of
repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulters (and the student
organizers) opinions, or do we use her appearance as an
opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the
academy and one another stronger? We have chosen the
latter course, confident in our community and in the power of
decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice
In this case, it was the College Republicans themselves who decided to the
practice the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from Ann Coulter
in that particular context for which they had a choice to shape. In their statement
announcing the withdrawal of the invitation to the speaker known to her critics as
Mad Annie Coulter, they said:
The size and severity of opposition to this event have caught us by
surprise and caused us to question our decision to welcome her to
Rose Hill. Looking at the concerns raised about Ms. Coulter, many
of them reasonable, we have determined that some of her
comments do not represent the ideals of the College Republicans
and are inconsistent with both our organizations mission and the
Universitys. We regret that we failed to thoroughly research her
before announcing; that is our error and we do not excuse
ourselves for it. Consistent with our strong disagreement with
certain comments by Ms. Coulter, we have chosen to cancel the
event and rescind Ms. Coulters invitation to speak at Fordham.
We made this choice freely before Father McShanes email was
sent out and we became aware of his feelings had the President

15

simply reached out to us before releasing his statement, he would

have learned that the event was being cancelled.
Tolerance operates on many levels. Schlesinger in his polemic against Marcuses
essay Repressive Tolerance chose to reduce Marcuses arguments to a crude
Cold War caricature.
The issue of political violence
I set forth a theoretical model of thinking. How could I know that people would
want to realize it with Molotov cocktails? said Marcuses Frankfurt School
colleague Theodor Adorno in Germany in mid-1968, contemporary with
Schlesingers critical essay on Marcuse.11 Adorno was responding to what was
apparently as similar criticism as that which Schlesinger directed against Herbert
Marcuse, that he was irresponsibly encouraging civil violence.
The challenge of discussing political violence
La violencia, la promocin irresponsable de insurrecciones son mala praxis en
democracia (Violence, the irresponsible promotion of insurrections, are bad
practices in democracy.) So wrote Argentine journalist Mario Wainfeld in 2012
in discussing an outbreak of organized looting and vandalism evidently organized
by the opposition to Cristina Fernndez de Kirchners left-Peronist government.12
Such a straightforward statement about politically-motivated violence is almost
unthinkable in the United States from major politicians or journalists. Between the
continued national focus on terrorism and the gun lobbys insistence that
massive privately-held stores of weapons are necessary to protect a right of armed
sedition supposedly guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution,
any public statements on a subject like this are typically buried under mounds of
mealy-mouthed slogans.

11

Ich habe ein theoretisches Denkmodell aufgestellt. Wie konnte ich wissen, dass Leute es mit
Molotow-Chocktails realisieren wollten. Quoted by Walter Regg in Die 68er Jahre und die
Franfurter Schule (Vortrag, gehalten im Rahmen der Margot-und-Friedrich-Becke-Stiftung am
31.Mai 2008 in Heidelberg) (Univerittsverlag Winter; Heidelberg; 2008) p. 14. Regg cites both
in connection with a lecture he gave on June 17, 1968 in which he claimed the Frankfurt School
had provided the ideological and tactical basisfor the militant actions promoted by the German
SDS (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund) group at the time. Apparently Adornos comment
was a direct response to Reggs comment. The Molotov cocktails reference in Adornos quoted
comment isnt clear. It should also be noted that Reggs lecture takes a notably hostile tone
toward both Adorno and Max Horkheimer, the head of the Instut fr Sozialforschung that was the
institutional base of the Frankfurt School, a tone not explained by the superficial and even
sneering criticisms he makes of them.
12
La chispa y las realidades Pgina/12 (23.12.2012)
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-210464-2012-12-23.html

16

Political violence in the American context discussed in this essay is a difficult

topic on which to write. Its ironic that it should be so, since there are very few
Americans who consider themselves pacifists. In 2012, the extreme gunproliferation advocacy rhetoric of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and even
more hardline rightwing groups, has made chatter about armed subversion
depressingly common.13 Most of it is blowhard rhetoric by grumpy white guys
who are far more likely to shoot themselves in the foot than undertake armed
revolt against the US government. But there have also been a number of cases of
murders and other actual and attempted acts of violence by far-right groups and
lone wolf perpetrators motivated by subversive far-right talk.
When it comes to political violence in foreign policy, it is not only accepted but
widely celebrated. Political violence in the form of the police suppressing
demonstrations has been far too widely practiced in recent years in the US. Such
actions dont command the level of support and admiration that foreign wars or
drone strikes do, but many Americans who understand themselves to be good
citizens are very complacent if not downright approving of unjustified police
violence against nonviolent political demonstrators.
In the cases of civil unrest in other countries - a coup in Venezuela or Honduras,
civil wars in Syria or the Congo people in the US tend to react according to
general preferences for the side that media reporting tends to make look better.
And that in turn typically in turn reflects the views of various foreign policy
elites. Or ethnic/national backgrounds can play a role, as with Florida Cubans or
Polish-Americans. The Arab Awakening was largely seen in a sympathetic light
in the US, with notable exceptions among anti-Islam hardliners. In the case of
Libya, the US even intervened militarily on the side of rebels seeking the violent
overthrow of the established government.
Political violence in a domestic context is seen much more skeptically by most
people, NRA rhetoric notwithstanding. Americans raised to reverence the
Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution may theoretically
recognize the right of people anywhere to overthrow an unjust government. Few
would conclude in practice that such an action is called for in the United States.
And actively organizing mass organizations to stage some kind of violent coup is
virtually unthinkable under American conditions.

13

Prior to a shocking mass murder of elementary school children in late 2012, the often unhinged
rhetoric of gun proliferation adovcates like the NRA had not been prominently challenged for
years by most Democrats and certainly not by President Barack Obama. After the defeat in
Congress of a very basic requirement for background checks for weapons purchases that enjoyed
overwhelming public support, it appears that most Democrats and President Obama are content to
resume ducking the issue. Not incidentally, the rejection of a hugely popular background check
legislation was widely discussed in progressive media and blogs as a dramatic frustration of the
popular will by well-heeled business interests; the NRA functions as the primary lobbying arm of
the domestic firearms industry in the US. I did not notice any reports that described it as an
example of repressive tolerance. But it could have been.

17

In practice, most Americans and most citizens of democracies in 2012 would

likely agree with the notions expressed succinctly by Mario Wainfeld, Violence,
the irresponsible promotion of insurrections, are bad practices in democracy.
That implies several things, including a moral recognition that its irresponsible to
promote violence without good cause, that insurrectionary acts in some
circumstances may be necessary and justified, and that its both wrong and dumb
in a functioning democracy to rely on such tactics for political goals.
But it also could include a recognition that violence of a political or at least prepolitical character can break out without any political party organizing them and
can become a reality that has to be understood for what it is.
Political violence in the context of 1968
Worries about urban riots and politically-tinged violence were very much on
many Americans minds in 1968, not just Arthur Schlesingers. The assassination
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis that year set off a still-unmatched
wave of urban rioting. The editors of Vietnam and America (1985) 14 describe it
this way:
On April 4 [1968], Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in
Memphis.
The nationwide reaction to the murder of Dr. King in some ways
rivaled the Tet Offensive, to which it bore similarities by no means
purely coincidental. Between April 4 and April 11, 1968,
rebellions broke out in 125 US cities and towns.
In that cataclysmic week, 55,000 troops had to be mobilized
alongside tens of thousands of police. Television viewers around
the world saw Washington itself defended by federal combat
troops, while columns of smoke from burning buildings towered
above the Capitol. On April 11 came the biggest call-up of the
reserves during the Vietnam War.
No sooner had the black rebellions been put down than the
campuses erupted. Between April 23 and May 6, militant protest
demonstrations swept public and private universities and colleges
across the country. Large number of police battled students even at
such elite universities as Stanford and Columbia, while campus
activists increasingly linked the antiwar movement to the struggles
of black people, GIs, and those parts of the working class suffering
the gravest economic consequences of the war.

14

Marvin E. Gettleman et al, Vietnam and America: A Documented History (Grove Press, Inc.;
New York; 1985) pp. 336-7

18

So Arthur Schlesinger wasnt entirely tilting at phantoms when he fretted about

the possible influence of revolutionary philosophy in promoting violence. Liberals
and non-segregationist conservatives who had persuaded themselves just a few
years earlier that the US had reached the end of ideology, to use the ill-fated
title of Daniel Bells once-influential book, were now facing a situation that bore
disturbing similarities to a highly ideological and conflict-ridden era. In that
moment of disrupted conventional assumptions, finding a respected and relatively
prominent Marxist like Herbert Marcuse against whom to apply the Cold War
liberal criticisms had a comforting ritual exorcism aspect in additional to
whatever substance there might be to the criticism.
Schlesinger bases his criticism of Marcuse in the special responsibility that lies
on our intellectual community. But some historical background on Marcuse is
relevant here.
In 1968, Herbert Marcuse was not out in the ghettoes directing mobs to attack
police stations. He was not training Black Panther cadres in paramilitary drills. He
was not issuing pamphlets or making radio broadcasts demanding that blood flow
in the streets until the racist pig power structure (a phrase of some currency at
the time15) step down from power and voluntary agree to be confined to reeducation camps.
Marcuse was a participant in a sailors council during the 1918 democratic
revolution in Germany. He lived in Germany during the events in the Weimar
Republic, including the bloody suppression in 1919 against workers protests
carried out by a Social Democratic government in alliance with the far-right
Freikorps militias, and the subsequent violent suppression of the soviet republic
in Bavaria; the Kapp Putsch of 1920, defeated by a successful general strike in
defense of the Republic; an attempt Communist uprising in 1923; Hitlers beer
hall putsch of 1923; and the escalating political violence of the late 1920s and
early 1930s. As an exile from Nazi Germany and an analyst for the wartime US
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the State Department, he was well
versed in the historical and practical complexities of political violence, both
internal to countries and internationally.
What did Marcuse actually say about violence in Repressive Tolerance, the text
on which Schlesinger focuses? In addition to the sections quoted above, he makes
arguments such as the following:
15

See Resolution on the Black Panther Party of the American SDS (Students for a Democratic
Society) adopted by the SDS National Council 03/ 30/1969 New Left Review July/Aug 1969. It
quotes Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, The correct and uncompromising leadership which the
Black Panther party has brought to the black liberation movement has brought down the most
vicious repression from the racist pig power structure. (emphasis added) The resolution commits
SDS commitment to defend the Black Panther party and the black colony against the vicious
attacks of the racist pig power structure. (emphasis added)

19

 within a repressive society, even progressive movements

threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree to which they
accept the rules of the game. To take a most controversial case: the
exercise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to the
press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori
renunciation of counterviolence) in a society of total
administration serves to strengthen this administration by testifying
to the existence of democratic liberties which, in reality, have
changed their content and lost their effectiveness. In such a case,
freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an
instrument for absolving servitude. And yet (and only here the
dialectical proposition shows its full intent) the existence and
practice of these liberties remain a precondition for the restoration
of their original oppositional function, provided that the effort to
transcend their (often self-imposed) limitations is intensified.
Generally, the function and value of tolerance depend on the
equality prevalent in the society in which tolerance is practiced.
Tolerance itself stands subject to overriding criteria: its range and
its limits cannot be defined in terms of the respective society. In
other words, tolerance is an end in itself only when it is truly
universal, practiced by the rulers as well as by the ruled, by the
lords as well as by the peasants, by the sheriffs as well as by their
victims. And such universal tolerance is possible only when no
real or alleged enemy requires in the national interest the
education and training of people in military violence and
destruction. As long as these conditions do not prevail, the
conditions of tolerance are 'loaded': they are determined and
defined by the institutionalized inequality (which is certainly
compatible with constitutional equality), i.e., by the class structure
of society. In such a society, tolerance is de facto limited on the
dual ground of legalized violence or suppression (police, armed
forces, guards of all sorts) and of the privileged position held by
the predominant interests and their 'connections'. (emphasis added
in bold)
Marcuse here is making a statement of political theory embedded in what we may
fairly call a dense argument about how the sociological processes in a society
relating to economic and political equality and the practice of official violence
affect the function of tolerance as a practice and principle in that society. In that
passage, he is not rejecting the exercise of political rights by voting, letterwriting to the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori
renunciation of counterviolence. He was discussing the potential of how that can
blunt goals of even the most progressive political movement. Again, this is from a
man who was a veteran of the First World War and experienced first-hand the
events of the Weimar Republic, including the corruption of the German Social
20

Democrats, the failure of the German Communists and Hitlers coming to power.
Whatever the merits of his argument, he wasnt recommending some kind of
violent actionism.
He further argues:
Under a system of constitutionally guaranteed and (generally and
without too many and too glaring exceptions) practiced civil rights
and liberties, opposition and dissent are tolerated unless they issue
in violence and/or in exhortation to and organization of violent
subversion. The underlying assumption is that the established
society is free, and that any improvement, even a change in the
social structure and social values, would come about in the normal
course of events, prepared, defined, and tested in free and equal
discussion, on the open marketplace of ideas and goods.
Marcuse was no babe in the woods. He knew very well that no established order
is likely to willingly tolerate its own subversion. But he goes on here to make a
point referencing the political theory of John Stuart Mill about the underlying
assumption of the function of tolerance in a democratic society and makes an
argument that the assumptions of classical liberalism like Mills do not fully apply
in modern advanced societies.
His more specific discussion of political violence comes in this form:
To discuss tolerance in such a society means to reexamine the
issue of violence and the traditional distinction between violent
and non-violent action. The discussion should not, from the
beginning, be clouded by ideologies which serve the perpetuation
of violence. Even in the advanced centers of civilization, violence
actually prevails: it is practiced by the police, in the prisons and
mental institutions, in the fight against racial minorities; it is
carried, by the defenders of metropolitan freedom, into the
backward countries. This violence indeed breeds violence. But to
refrain from violence in the face of vastly superior violence is one
thing, to renounce a priori violence against violence, on ethical or
psychological grounds (because it may antagonize sympathizers) is
another. Non-violence is normally not only preached to but
exacted from the weak--it is a necessity rather than a virtue, and
normally it does not seriously harm the case of the strong. (Is the
case of India an exception? There, passive resistance was carried
through on a massive scale, which disrupted, or threatened to
disrupt, the economic life of the country. Quantity turns into
quality: on such a scale, passive resistance is no longer passive - it
ceases to be non-violent. The same holds true for the General
Strike.) Robespierre's distinction between the terror of liberty and
21

the terror of despotism, and his moral glorification of the former

belongs to the most convincingly condemned aberrations, even if
the white terror was more bloody than the red terror. The
comparative evaluation in terms of the number of victims is the
quantifying approach which reveals the man-made horror
throughout history that made violence a necessity. In terms of
historical function, there is a difference between revolutionary and
reactionary violence, between violence practiced by the oppressed
and by the oppressors. In terms of ethics, both forms of violence
are inhuman and evil--but since when is history made in
accordance with ethical standards? To start applying them at the
point where the oppressed rebel against the oppressors, the havenots against the haves is serving the cause of actual violence by
weakening the protest against it. (emphasis added)
He goes on to quote with approval a passage from Frantz Fanon that refers to the
psychological strength that can come to people take part in a violent struggle
against perceived oppressors. Schlesinger also cites Fanon making that point:
As Franz [sic] Fanon has written, "Violence is a cleaning force. It frees the
native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it
makes him fearless and restores his self-respect ... Violence alone, violence
committed by the people, violence organized and educated by its leaders,
makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths.
Schlesinger links his concern with Fanons opinion just quoted with a concern
about the practical effects of violence:
It is perfectly obvious why Mussolini and Hitler favored violence: It is
because violence, by abolishing the procedures and civilities of society,
opens the way for those who are most successful in the use of force. I do
not know about the situation in developing countries; there violence in
certain contexts may have the benign effects claimed by Fanon.
And he goes on to argue, in what appears outside the immediate context of an
argument against Marcuses whole perspective in Repressive Tolerance to be a
partial statement of agreement with Marcuses point:
But surely little is more pathetic than the view that violence in
American society will benefit the left. A limited amount of violence
may stimulate the process of democratic change; but, if the left,
through the cult of the deed, helps create an atmosphere which
destroys the process of democracy itself; the only beneficiaries

22

will be those on the right. (emphasis added)16

In other words, both Marcuse and Schlesinger argue that political violence is a
real part of history. And even that, in Marcuses words, In terms of ethics, both
forms of violence that of the oppressors and that of the oppressed are
inhuman and evil--but since when is history made in accordance with ethical
standards? Both recognize clearly that political tactics and just plain good sense
dictates that it is often necessary to refrain from violence in the face of vastly
superior violence. And while Schlesinger is convinced that civil violence in a
country like the US or Germany or Italy will benefit the right more than the left,
he recognizes explicitly at the same that that a limited amount of violence may
stimulate the process of democratic change. (!?)
Even in an indictment of Herbert Marcuse for promoting a cult of violence and
thereby failing to live up to the special responsibility that lies on our
intellectual community, he recognizes that violence in a political context can be
historically constructive, if one considers stimulating the process of democratic
change to be historically constructive. Schlesinger, too, found an honest
historical discussion of political violence to be quite a challenge.
Fanons Algeria and political violence in history
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a psychoanalyst whose views of violence in the
context of wars of national liberation were heavily shaped by his active
participation in the Algerian War of independence from France; he was the editor
of the liberation movements newspaper El Moudjahid. His most famous and
influential written work was Les Damns de la terre [English title: The Wretched
of the Earth] (1961).
Fanons daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mends France, describes her late fathers
though this way:
Fanon was one of the thinkers of the Algerian Revolution, which
existed beyond any dogmatic reduction or doctrinal interpretation.
He was a progressive and anti-imperialist without any
"theological" reference to Marxism, close, but without any
allegiance to the socialist camp. As the sociologist Immanuel
Wallerstein noted in a lapidary but very accurate formula, "Fanon
read Marx with the eyes of Freud, and read Freud with the look of
Marx."

16

There was a rational core in this fear of the segregationist and McCarthyist right. But it is also
part of the background of today's Democratic Party operating with a perpetual inferiority complex
- even when they win on Democratic issues.

23

The liberation and de-alienation of the human being were for

Fanon the ultimate goal of political struggle, without pathos,
without rigidity, but without concession either. ...
In him there existed neither the will for revenge nor for the
stigmatization of the whites, despite the way some would like to
present him today, those mock theorists of existentialism and of
the so-called clash of civilizations. His detractors, who emerge
from the camp of neo-conservative "intellectuals," have attempted
to subject him to a watch hunt under a supposed apology of
violence, thus demonstrating their ignorance of Fanon's work and
their own racist fad faith. The violence that Fanon did defend - as a
last-resort means that those who have been negated, exploited, and
reduced to slavery have for reconquering the self - was the
violence of legitimate defense of the oppressed who are subjected
to the still major violence of domination, dispossession and
contempt.17
As we saw in the quote above, Schlesinger was careful to qualify his criticism of
Fanons point as it applied to those in developing countries. After the massive
decolonization movement following the Second World War, some of which was
distinctly violent, it was scarcely possible ignore the role of political violence in
those situations. The year 1968 was a turning point in the Vietnam War. And that
war had taught many Americans that they maybe didnt fully understand what
drove Vietnamese peasants to fight under Communist leadership against desperate
odds in their war against the United States. It was a 1968 version of the Why do
they hate us? question that became a clich after the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks.
Schlesinger served as an official advisor to President John Kennedy. His writing
on the Kennedy Administration is still considered by some historians to be
hagiography, and references to him as Kennedys court historian are not hard
to find. One of JFKs most famous speeches as a Senator was that of July 2, 1957,
on the Algerian War, with a short follow-up response six days later.18 In that
speech, Kennedy actually broke not only with the Eisenhower Administration but
with conventional wisdom of the day in his own Democratic Party over US policy
of supporting Algeria in its infamously brutal war against the Algerian
independence movement. He urged US policy to support a settlement including
Algerian independence. No one could honestly mistake his position in that speech
as cheering on the deaths of French citizens or French colonialists in Algeria in
17

Mireille Fanon-Mends France, "The Contribution of Frantz Fanon to the Process of the
Liberation of the People"; translated by Donato Fhunsu; The Black Scholar 42/3-4 (2012) pp. 8-12
18
John F. Kennedy, Algeria; The Strategy of Peace (Harper; New York; 1960) pp. 65-81. An
account of the speech is provided by Ted Widmer, The challenge of imperialism, Boston
Sunday Globe 07/15/2007:
http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/pages/Widmer-Globe-2007-July15.pdf

24

the war. But it was clear that he recognized there was justice in the demands of
the independence movement, which fought an urban guerrilla war against the
French. A war in which, he observed specifically, Communists and terrorists
were actively participating:
The next objection most frequently raised is the aid and comfort which
any reasonable settlement would give to the extremists, terrorists, and
saboteurs that permeate the Nationalist movement, to the Communist,
Egyptian, and other outside anti-Western provocateurs that have
clearly achieved some success in penetrating the movement.
Terrorism must be combated, not condoned, it is said; it is not
right to negotiate with murderers. Yet once again this is a
problem which neither postponement nor attempted conquest can
solve. The fever chart of every successful revolution including, of
course, the French - reveals a rising temperature of terrorism and
counterterrorism; but this does not of itself invalidate the legitimate
goals that fi red the original revolution. Most political revolutions including our own - have been buoyed by outside aid in men,
weapons, and ideas. Instead of abandoning African nationalism to the
anti-Western agitators and Soviet agents who hope to capture its
leadership, the United States, a product of political revolution, must
redouble its efforts to earn the respect and friendship of nationalist
leaders. (emphasis added in bold)
Allan Nevins in a note on Kennedys speech explains:
Algeria, with a million French and nearly nine million Moslems [then
a common English spelling], had seen a fierce Nationalist outbreak in
1954 grown into a great and desolating war. The National Liberation
Front, with aid from Morocco and Egypt, had thrown into the field
forces which steadily increasing French armies could not control.
The French colons in Algeria and the French military leaders fighting
there tended to take an intransigent line which separated them from the
more moderate position of most citizens of metropolitan France; the
loyal Moslems and the Moslems in revolt were bitterly opposed to
each other. In the confused situation the conflict became deplorably
cruel, marked by atrocities, massacres, and tortures on both sides.
(emphasis added in bold) 19
In that speech, Kennedy even derided sterile moralizing that ducked the essential
political issues that were not erased by the sins of either side in combat or in the
French prisons where torture was practiced. Calling in politicians words for a
full and frank discussion of the Algerian issue in the US, Kennedy continued:

19

Kennedy/Nevins, op cit p. 67

25

This is not to say that there is any value in the kind of discussion
which has characterized earlier United States consideration of this and
similar problems tepid encouragement and moralizations to both
sides, cautious neutrality on all real issues We have deceived
ourselves into believing that we have thus pleased both sides and
displeased no one with this head-in-the-sands policy when, in truth,
we have earned the suspicion of all.
The problem, he said, is no longer to save a myth of French empire. The problem
is to save the French nation, as well as free Africa. Sounding more like an
historian than a conventional politician, he also said:
Nationalism in Africa cannot be evaluated purely in terms of the
historical and legal niceties argued by the French, and thus far
accepted by the State Department. National self-identification
frequently takes place by quick combustion which the rain of
repression simple cannot extinguish, especially in an area where there
is a common Islamic heritage and where most people including
Algerias closest neighbors in Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya have all
gain political independence. New nationhood is recorded in quick
succession Ghana yesterday, Nigeria perhaps tomorrow, and
colonies in Central Africa moving into dominion status. Whatever the
history and lawbooks may say, we cannot evade the evidence of our
own time, especially we in the Americas whose own experiences
furnish a model from which many of these new nations draw
inspiration.
Kennedys Algeria speech, in other words, looked at both immediate and
historical conditions, recognizing that violence is a real part of history, that
violence can and does come from the side of unjust existing orders and from those
resisting it, and that such violence often results in horrors and atrocities that are
neither legal nor ethical and that cannot be excused or condoned. But political
violence has to be dealt with as a fact of history and politics.
Existential Politics
Placing Kennedys Algeria speech into dialogue with Herbert Marcuses
Repressive Tolerance and Schlesingers Existential Politics and the Cult of
Violence illustrates how close the three pieces actually are in their treatment of
political violence.
Which raises the obvious question, why then did Schlesinger then try to portray
Marcuse and his Repressive Tolerance essay in particular as a reckless
dereliction of intellectual responsibility and as a meaningful contributor to a cult
of the deed?

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One likely factor is that Schlesinger just misunderstood the perspective of Herbert
Marcuse and the Frankfurt School more generally. One symptom of this, of which
Schlesinger was likely not fully aware, is that Marcuse and other notables of the
Frankfurt School Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Jrgen Habermas
actually voiced similar criticisms to Schlesingers of some student activists,
especially around their lack of political coherency and an actionism that
sometimes expected militant actions in themselves to transform society in the
absence of more traditional political parties and organizations. Schlesingers
concern that the kind of popular political violence he was experiencing real-time
in 1968 would only benefit those on the right was reflected in Habermas
perhaps ill-considered remark that some of the German student and youth
activism he was seeing at that same period looked uncomfortably like left
fascism.
A key problem is that Schlesinger regarded Marcuse as advocating and finding
resonance for a politics of nihilism:
In its positive side, the new creed becomes, so to speak, a kind of
existentialism in politics - a primitive kind, no doubt, but still rooted in
some manner in the existential perception that man dwells in an
absurd universe and defines himself through his choices.
How one can make a creed of nihilism is not entirely clear. But Schlesinger
then links this notion to a Nietzsche quote critiquing rationalism, French social
philosopher Georges Sorels syndicalist ideas, and something like late adoslescent
hormone surges (we must feel and act before we think). Out of this confused
mixture of dubious influences he perceives, Schlesinger derives this about the
militant activists that so troubled his mind in 1968:
In its vulgar form, however, with which we are dealing here,
existential politics becomes the notion that we must feel and act before
we think; it is the illusion that the experience of feeling and action will
produce the insight and the policy.
Existential politics in this form springs much more from Sorel than
from Kierkegaard. Sorel, you will recall, drew a distinction between
myths, which, he said, were "not descriptions of things, but
expressions of a determination to act,'' and utopias, which were
intellectual products, the work of theorists who "seek to establish a
model to which they can compare existing society." Sorel regarded
utopias - that is, rational programs - as contemptible. The myth must
be the basis of action; the myth would produce the revolution, which
would then produce its own program; and "the myth,'' Sorel
emphasized, "must be judged as a means of acting on the present; any
attempt to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future history is
devoid of sense." So, in the footsteps of Sorel, the New Leftists believe
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in the omnipotence of the deed and the irrelevance of the goal. The
political process is no longer seen as the deliberate choice of means to
move toward a desired end. Where libertarian democracy [i.e., liberal
democracy] had ideally demanded means consistent with the end, and
where the Stalinist left of the Thirties contended that the end justified
the means, the New Left propounds a different doctrine: that the means
create the end. (emphasis added)
In Schlesingers approach, he may have thought he was being charitable in
distinguishing the targets of his criticism from the Stalinist left. (Or he may
have been playing the dont-think-of-an-elephant trick, as in, now Im not saying
my target of criticism is a Stalinist or anything )
Since Marcuse and others associated with the Frankfurt School were known for
their valuing of utopian thinking, how Schlesinger managed to merge that with
the stage of Sorels thought that he references as rejecting utopia is, to put it
mildly, not clear.
But Schlesingers use of the concept of existential politics to contain all this
political theorizing and activist-ing that he found so dubious gives us a plausible
clue to the nature of his misunderstanding. Put briefly, he was drawing lessons
from the German experience of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich that
proceeded from an assumption that cultural and intellectual nihilism produced
Hitlers takeover in Germany, a nihilism that was possibly deeply fundamental to
German culture.
After the Second World War, the question of how the Third Reich could happen
became a major topic, not least in the United States. After decades, the question is
still being discussed and will continue to be. But one of the most common
assumptions in the immediate postwar period came from a national character
assumption about Germany. Not only was the concept of national character then
more common than it is now. If the main question being asked about German
history is what important elements in German history led to the Third Reich, that
can easily elide over into assuming that everything important that happened in
German history somehow led to the Third Reich. Including intellectual history.
This is known to historians as the from Luther to Hitler view of German
history. And something like that was a widespread assumption in the postwar US.
One of the most popular histories of the Third Reich on the American market was
William Shirers The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). Although he was
considered left-leaning, Shirers book found the roots of Hitlers National
Socialism having been prepared by the thought of Martin Luther and Hegel,
among others. Nietzsche was a more obvious culprit given his writing about the
blond beast and his often harsh-sounding writing about Jews.20
20

The fact that Nietzsche said even harsher things about Christians and Christianity than about
Jews and considered anti-Semites of his day despicable was often not so clearly remembered.

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From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist-Nazi Political Philosophy21 was the
title of a 1941 book by William Montgomery McGovern. Herbert Marcuse
himself had reviewed the book in 1942.22 McGovern didnt just find direct
precursors to National Socialism in German thought, but in Thomas Hobbes and
Edmund Burke, as well. Marcuse was not impressed:
although the author notes that German idealism is neglected and
even repudiated by Nationalsocialism [sic], he presents Kant and
above all Hegel as among the most decisive forerunners of Hitler. The
author does not elaborate the fundamental links which connect
German idealism with Western rationalism and individualism, nor
does he show that the social and political order which the idealists
glorified, is, in its fundamental aspects, hostile to the Nationalsocialist
system. His discussion of Hegel's philosophy is inadequate and
frequently incorrect - small wonder since Hegel's Logic is to him
nothing but an abstruse and incomprehensible document.
McGovern's evaluation of pre-Fascist political philosophy arises from
two errors of approach. (1) He bases his analysis on the assumed
fundamental opposition between individualism on the one hand, and
tatisme and authoritarianism on the other. In reality, however,
individualism has itself developed a quite conspicuous form of
tatisme and authoritarianism (as in Hobbes and Kant). It is
antagonistic to the Fascist form, not by virtue of its individualistic
foundation, but because of its different social content and function.
(2) The author assumes that "the political philosophy which dominates
the general public of a given country is the major factor which
determines whether or not a would-be dictator is able to secure
power". This has never been less true than under Fascism and
Nationalsocialism. These cannot be adequately interpreted in terms of
political philosophy, for what appears to be their political
philosophy is nothing but an utterly flexible and opportunistic
ideology that is ex post facto adapted to the social and economic needs
of imperialistic expansion. (emphasis added in bold)
Husserls phenomenology and Martin Heideggers existentialism were major
philosophical trends of the 20th century. Marcuse in his early academic career had
engaged heavily with phenomenology and actually studied under Heidegger at
Heidelberg. Marcuse, like numerous others among Heideggers students and
admirers, was surprised and dismayed when Heidegger emerged in 1933 as a
prominent academic supporter of National Socialism, becoming a Nazi Party
member and remaining one until the end of the war.
21

Boston; Houghton Miffin Company

Herbert Marcuse, Review of From Luther to Hitler by William Montgomery McGovern The
Philosophical Review, Vol. 51, No. 5 (Sep., 1942), pp. 533-534

22

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The considerably younger Jrgen Habermas was also heavily influenced by

existentialism and was surprised postwar to learn about Heideggers enthusiasm
for Hitlers regime. Like Marcuse, he became very much aware of and critical of
Heideggers unsavory political engagement during the Third Reich.
Although more details were documented by later scholars, Heideggers
association with the Nazis was known in 1968. Schlesinger was right to be critical
of the irrationalist aspects of existentialism and to be concerned about their
implications in political thought. Where he went off the tracks in his criticism of
Marcuse was in characterizing Marcuses political thought as existential politics
that celebrated irrationalism and promoted the cult of the deed. One of the
quotes Schlesinger cited from Repressive Tolerance that true pacification
requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of
communication in word, print, and picture, should have been a clue that Marcuse
wasnt celebrating any cult of the deed. Whether one agrees with the
formulation of Marcuses idea in terms of civil liberties, he was advocating the
application of some form of rational thought in applying the withdrawal of
tolerance that he thought was necessary in some cases.
How well Schlesinger understood existentialism more generally may have
affected the implausible arguments he makes about so-called existential politics.
Karl Lowith in 194823 discussed the state of knowledge about existentialism in the
Anglo-Saxon intellectual world:
The basic works of existentialism have not yet been translated [into
English]. What is generally known about the subject is derived
from many secondary channels and from articles about a new
philosophy, allegedly of "nihilism," but not from a knowledge of
the sources. Moreover, political circumstances play such a role in
the selection of, and attention to, contemporary literature and
philosophy that the average American student knows more about
Jean-Paul Sartre than about Karl Jaspers, and more about Jaspers
than about Martin Heidegger of whom Sartre was a pupil. This
sequence in the degree of familiarity is politically conditioned, for
Sartre is a Frenchman who was engaged in the resistance
movement, and Jaspers a German who for ten lonely years was
barred from academic activity by the Nazis, while Heidegger, who
supported National Socialism in 1933, neither resisted the regime
subsequently nor was dismissed from his post during its period of
domination. (emphasis added)
Sartre was famously an adherent of the French Communist Party, which didnt
help endear his philosophy of existentialism to Cold War liberals like Schlesinger.
23

Karl Lowith, Heidegger: Problem and Background of Existentialism" Social Research 15/3
(September 1948) pp. 345-369

30

Lowith calls Sartre Heidegger's most original and creative pupil. But Lowith a
Jewish philosopher and former student of Heidegger who was also appalled by
Heideggers support of the Nazi dictatorship - also notes how poorly Heideggers
actual philosophy of existentialism was understood in the West:
In view of the earnestness and radicality of Heidegger's enterprise,
it was a strange mistake when in the twenties those who disliked
existentialism thought that they could dismiss it as a "philosophy
of inflation." But even twenty years after the publication of Sein
und Zeit [Being and Time] one could still read in an article in the
New York Times (July 6, 1947) the following definition of
existentialism: "It was invented by a Nazi, Heidegger; it is a
philosophy of nihilism like Nazism, appropriate to the vacuity
of German life." Unfortunately, for this definition, existentialism
was invented during the Weimar Republic (which offered
Heidegger a chair at Berlin University) when the vacuity of
German intellectual life was still pretty well filled by a host of
other philosophies of "life," "culture," and "values."
Existentialism has outlived not only the Weimar Republic but
also the Third Reich. It has even gained ascendancy and has its
strongest support now in France, the classical country of
Cartesian rationalism. The German postwar climate after the first
world war did perhaps stimulate, but it could not cause, the rise of
existentialism, the germ of which was planted long ago. (emphasis
added in bold)
Conclusion: Schlesinger vs. Marcuse
Much of Schlesingers criticism of Marcuse and his Repressive Tolerance
borders on the tendentious, apparently due to an attempt to pigeonhole Marcuses
thought as a familiar Marxism that could be ritually refuted, a Marxism that was
defined as part of that which is not of the Establishment in the publicized and
administered language of the day, to use Marcuses words from Repressive
Tolerance.
Schlesingers actual discussion of Marcuses Repressive Tolerance essay of
1965 doesnt even qualify as a bad caricature either of Marcuses thought or
specifically of the essay on which he focuses. Schlesinger basically rolled out
some of his favorite Cold War, anti-Communist clichs, found passages in
Repressive Tolerance on which to hang them, and threw in an evil here and a
Stalinist there.
It certainly doesnt rise to the level of Schlesingers professional historical
work.

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And perhaps ironically, Schlesinger shares with Marcuse and the Sen. Jack
Kennedy of the Algeria speech of 1957 a straightforward recognition that
political violence in the real world has and continues to play a real and
significant role, even recognizing that (in Schlesingers own words) limited
amount of violence may stimulate the process of democratic change.
Despite his eagerness to brand Marcuse as an instigator of violence, he
provides no real solution to the real-life dilemma that, even though,
Violence [and] the irresponsible promotion of insurrections are bad
practices in democracy, (Mario Wainfeld) nevertheless a limited amount
of violence may stimulate the process of democratic change (Schlesinger).
In his caricature of Marcuses political thought, he makes use of a dubious
concept of existentialist politics which doesnt seem to be founded on a
real understanding of either Herbert Marcuses thinking or of the philosophy
of existentialism. In the process, Schlesinger provides a good illustration of
what narrow constraints that framework of Cold War liberalism could
impose on clear thought.

Bruce Miller
June 30, 2013

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