Marcuse has largely fallen out of favor in contemporary theoretical circles because of his commitment to reconstructing Reason and his failure to anticipate postmodern attacks on grand narratives of liberation (Kellner, 1984; Schoolman, 1980).
But unfortunately, as
Marcuse put it some half century ago, we are becoming slaves to it.
[I]f
Marcuse was the Jesus of the New Left, then Alinsky was his Saint Paul, proselytizing and dumbing down
Marcuse's message, making it practical and convincing leaders to make it the official religion of the United States, even if that meant discarding the old secular religion of the United States, the Constitution.
Bronner does address Erich Fromm's critique of Eros and Civilization, but he attributes Fromm's critique (along with Fromm's break from the Institute) to Fromm's emphasis on psychoanalytic practice, which gives false credence to
Marcuse's charge that Fromm advocated psychological "adjustment" of the individual to capitalism.
Es decir, y simplificando,
Marcuse puede ser un padre de los feminismos de la diferencia (?quiza sea una prueba de ello la propia Greer en Sexo y Destino?), pero la teoria feminista no ha considerado su filosofia muy aprovechable para complementar un feminismo de corte ilustrado.
If Freud's message in Civilisation and its Discontents was essentially pessimistic,
Marcuse's attempt, in Eros and Civilisation (1955), to marry Freud and Marx, invites a more optimistic outlook.
For the new radicals likewise, I believe there is no equivalent foundational text, although there may be something like the Communist Manifesto in the form of Herbert
Marcuse's call to action, "Repressive Tolerance" (1965).
Nick Thorkelson tackles the formidable task of distilling the life and work of a respected modern philosopher into a well-paced graphic biography in Herbert
Marcuse, Philosopher of Utopia.
Marcuse the neo-Marxist thus helped facilitate in Germany something akin to what anti-Marxist Margaret Thatcher did to Britain, namely, as she put it, "to change the heart and soul".