Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse (; German: [maʁˈkuːzə]; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin and then at Freiburg, where he received his PhD. He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research – what later became known as the Frankfurt School. In his written works, he criticized capitalism, modern technology, Soviet Communism, and popular culture, arguing that they represent new forms of social control.Between 1943 and 1950, Marcuse worked in US government service for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) where he criticized the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958). Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Herbert Marcuse has received more than 2,074,175 page views. His biography is available in 66 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 65 in 2019). Herbert Marcuse is the 154th most popular philosopher (down from 150th in 2019), the 241st most popular biography from Germany (down from 227th in 2019) and the 27th most popular German Philosopher.

Herbert Marcuse is most famous for his theory of "repressive tolerance." Marcuse argues that the world is divided into two types of people: the "repressors" and the "repressed." The repressors are those who have power and privilege in society, and they use their power to keep the repressed in their place. Marcuse argues that the repressed should not be tolerant of the repression of the repressors, but rather should actively resist it.