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CHAPTER 4 drew attention to the degree to which the class system is upheld not simply by unequal economic and political power, but also by bourgeois ‘hegemony’, the spiritual and cultural supremacy of the ruling class, brought about through the spread of bourgeois values and beliefs via civil society – the media, churches, youth movements, trade unions and so on. A more overtly Hegelian brand of Marxism was developed by the so-called Frankfurt School, whose leading early figures were Theodor Adorno (1903–69), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Herbert Marcuse. Frankfurt theorists developed what was called ‘critical theory’, a blend of Marxist political economy, Hegelian philosophy and Freudian psychology, that came to have a considerable impact on the so-called ‘New Left’. The leading exponent of the ‘second generation’ of the Frankfurt School is the German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas (born 1929). His wide-ranging work includes an analysis of ‘crisis tendencies’ in capitalist society that arise from tensions between capital accumulation and democracy.
KEY FIGURE
HERBERT MARCUSE (1898–1979) A German political philosopher and social theorist, Marcuse portrayed advanced industrial society as an all-encompassing system of repression that subdues argument and debate, and absorbs all forms of opposition. Drawing on Marxist, Hegelian and Freudian ideas, Marcuse held up the unashamedly utopian prospect of personal and sexual liberation, looking not to the conventional working class as a revolutionary force but to groups such as students, ethnic minorities, women and workers in the developing world. His key works include Eros and Civilization (1958) and One-Dimensional Man (1964).
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KEY CONCEPT NEW LEFT
‘young’ Marx, and by anarchism and radical forms of phenomenology and existentialism, New Left theories are often diffuse. Common themes nevertheless include a fundamental rejection of conventional society (‘the system’) as oppressive, a commitment to personal autonomy and self-fulfilment in the form of ‘liberation’, disillusionment with the role of the working class as the revolutionary agent, sympathy for identity politics (see p. 232), and a preference for decentralization and participatory democracy.
The New Left comprises thinkers and intellectual movements that emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s, seeking to revitalize socialist thought by developing a radical critique of advanced industrial society. The New Left rejected both ‘old’ left alternatives: Soviet-style state socialism and de-radicalized Western social democracy. Influenced by the humanist writings of the
Social democracy As an ideological stance, social democracy took shape around the mid-twentieth century, resulting from the tendency among Western socialist parties not only to adopt parliamentary strategies, but also to revise their socialist goals. In particular, they abandoned the goal of abolishing capitalism and sought instead to reform or ‘humanize’ it. Social democracy therefore came to stand for a broad balance between the market economy, on the one hand, and state intervention on the other.
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