Herbert Marcuse's Heideggerian Marxism
Abstract
Every decade exhibits its own defining characteristics. The thirties were characterized by depression, unionization, and drastic social upheavals (such as Fascism and Nazism); the forties by world war and reconstruction; and the fifties by economic stability and cultural stagnation under the impact of the cold war. This stability was attained under the mutual assumption of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that the other system was inherently unstable. Thus, a situation of forced stability was seen as leading the other to collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions.1 For the U.S. it was assumed that the economic backwardness of the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe could not stand up to the pressures of military spending imposed by the cold war and would eventually lead to social upheaval (i.e., counter-revolution).
- © 1970 Telos Press Publishing