Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism

Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism attempts a systematic overview of the whole of Marcuse's work. The book is based on study of his entire published writings and offers new interpretations of Marcuse's major works and central theoretical and political positions. It is the first study to interpret Marcuse's work as a critique and development of Marxism which responds to a series of what have been called "crises of Marxism". Douglas Kellner shows how Marcuse's synthesis of phenomenological existentialism, Hegelian dialectics, Freud's metapsychology, and aesthetic theory with Marxism responded to crises within Marxian theory could not account for. Likewise, Marcuse's development of a theory of advanced industrial society that questioned certain aspects of classical Marxism and his critiques of Soviet Marxism were motivated by failures of Marxism to account for certain facets of contemporary history. Kellner presents a more nuanced account of Marcuse's post-1960s' writings by showing how, in the 1970s, Marcuse radically modified his theories and contributed both new perspectives on advanced capitalism and liberation and new theories of social change.