Marcuse's concept of liberation in the light of his criticism of Western capitalism and Soviet Marxism

Abstract

Marcuse's concept of liberation is most clearly outlined against the background of his criticism of both Western and Eastern monopolism. Marcuse argues that Western monopolistic or technocratic society has largely succeeded in glossing over the conflicts and contradictions that exist in Western functionalistic or technological society and that this has resulted in paralysing the revolutionary élan of the working class as the historical class of man's liberation. On the other hand, Soviet society has not completed. the revolution, in spite of having created the social institutions for communism as a free non‐repressive society. Instead, Soviet society has established a technological state monopolism manipulated by the communist party which is as repressive as Western technocratic monopolism, in spite of different motivations. It is against this actual state of affairs that Marcuse develops his concept of liberation. He does so by the application of Marx's dialectical method to the contemporary stiuation of conflict, and he does not shrink from including Heideggerian and Freudian Ideas. This procedure results in the refutation of some of Marx's fundamental theses, as should become evident from our discussion.