Technology, war, and fascism

297 Pages·1998·15.626 MB·English

by  Marcuse, Herbert, Kellner, Douglas, Marcuse, Herbert

TECHNOLOGY, WAR
AND FASCISM
COLLECTED PAPERS OF HERBERT MARCUSE
EDITED BY DOUGLAS KELLNER
Volume One
TECHNOLOGY, WAR AND FASCISM
Volume Two
TOWARDS A CRITICAL THEORY OF SOCIETY
Volume Three
FOUNDATIONS OF THE NEW LEFT
Volume Four
ART AND LIBERATION
Volume Five
PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND EMANCIPATION
Volume Six
MARXISM, REVOLUTION AND UTOPIA
TECHNOLOGY, WAR
AND FASCISM
HERBERT MARCUSE
COLLECTED PAPERS
OF HERBERT MARCUSE
Volume One
Edited by
Douglas Kellner

London and New York
First published 1998 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1998 Peter Marcuse
Introduction © 1998 Douglas Kellner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Marcuse, Herbert, 1898–
Technology, war, and fascism/Herbert Marcuse; edited by Douglas
Kellner.
(Collected papers of Herbert Marcuse; v. 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Technology—Philosophy. 2. War (Philosophy) 3. Fascism.
4. National socialism—Germany. 5. Political science—Philosophy.
I. Kellner, Douglas. II. Title. III. Series: Marcuse,
Herbert, 1898– Collected papers of Herbert Marcuse; v. 1
B945.M2983T43 1988
[T14]
191–dc21 97–14885

ISBN 0-203-20831-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26690-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-13780-2 (Print Edition)
In remembrance of the victims of fascism

CONTENTS

Foreword
PETER MARCUSE ix
Preface
The Unknown Marcuse: New Archival Discoveries
DOUGLAS KELLNER xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction
Technology, War and Fascism: Marcuse in the 1940s
DOUGLAS KELLNER 1
I Some Social Implications of Modern Technology 39
II State and Individual Under National Socialism 67
Supplement 89
III A History of the Doctrine of Social Change
HERBERT MARCUSE AND FRANZ NEUMANN 93
IV Theories of Social Change
HERBERT MARCUSE AND FRANZ NEUMANN 105
V The New German Mentality 139
Supplement One 174
Supplement Two 179
Supplement Three: On Psychological Neutrality 187
vii
viii Contents
VI Description of Three Major Projects 191
VII Some Remarks on Aragon: Art and Politics in the
Totalitarian Era 199
VIII 33 Theses 215
IX Letters to Horkheimer 229
X Heidegger and Marcuse: A Dialogue in Letters 261
Index 269
FOREWORD
Peter Marcuse
I am very pleased that these papers from my father’s unpublished works are
finally seeing the light of day, in a fashion accessible both to the general
interested reader and to scholars. They are, I think, remarkably relevant today.
Their historical interest is indisputable: the contribution of the Frankfurt
School in shaping critical social theory, and my father’s role in both the
intellectual and the political (he always saw them together) history of the
new left and the diverse movements of our time are important in any attempt
to assess the possibilities of progressive social change.
But the interest of the pieces collected in this volume goes beyond the
historical. They speak to issues at the cutting edge of social debate today.
One will find here:

(cid:127) striking examples of discourse analysis (in pieces dealing both with fascist
propaganda and the means of combating it);
(cid:127) contributions to clarity in the “culture wars” (in pieces dealing with anti-
Semitism, with the German personality and with the cultural conditions
in the West that permitted the rise of fascism);
(cid:127) notes on social change provocative in the context of the defeat of real
existing socialism and the re-examination of social democracy.

And one will find a deeply troubling question raised: Is fascism a foreign
(in both senses of the word) excrescence grafted on the main body of
Western liberal democracy, made possible only by the weakness of the
Weimar Republic and the Great Depression, rejected and combated tooth
and nail by the Western democracies, or might it be an outgrowth of
tendencies internal to those democracies? There is even an undercurrent in
ix