*Repressive Tolerance* (1965) and the Great Refusal: is the defense of *liberating tolerance* — asymmetric in favor of suppressed positions and against established militarism, racism, and imperialism — the politically explosive authoritarianism that the 'guru of New Left violence' reception identified, or the precise structural argument that 'pure tolerance' under conditions of structural violence is itself asymmetric and that the *Great Refusal* of the marginal outsiders is the revolutionary mode advanced industrial society makes the only available one?

Herbert Marcuse, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Tolerance is not a neutral universal. Pure tolerance under conditions of structural violence is already asymmetric — it tolerates the militarism, racism, imperialism, and exploitation that the established order propagates through "tolerated" channels (the press, the universities, the political-representational machine), while marginalizing the speech and action of those who would oppose them.1

The intolerance "Repressive Tolerance" calls for is the necessary symmetric response: liberating tolerance — intolerance toward the regressive movements and policies that existing pure tolerance protects, toleration of the oppositional speech and action that existing pure tolerance suppresses. The argument is not authoritarian. It is the recognition that existing tolerance is itself a form of asymmetric political settlement, and that radical politics requires recognizing the asymmetry rather than pretending neutrality.

The Great Refusal — articulated in ODM's closing chapter and developed across the New Left writings — names the absolute negation that one-dimensional society makes the only available revolutionary mode: the marginal outsiders (students, racial minorities, the unemployed, third-world peasantry) form the revolutionary subject after the integration of the working class as classical proletariat.

The argument distinguishes carefully: structural violence (the violence built into the system's normal operation) from revolutionary violence (the violence that breaks the structural pattern); oppressors from oppressed; reactionary from progressive violence. The blanket "guru of New Left violence" reception is misreading.234

Sources

  1. Marcuse maintains that if the society is thoroughly irrational and destructive, then it must be militantly opposed and its excesses and negativities must no longer be tolerated.
    Introduction: Radical Politics, Marcuse, and the New Left, pp. 13–14
  2. But in reality in a majority of cases it's not so difficult to distinguish. Malinovich: I'm not sure I get you correctly. When you say indiscriminate tolerance, it sounds like what you're saying is total tolerance of any academic discussion, but what you're saying now is indiscriminate tolerance of an academic discussion which is not propaganda. Marcuse: Well, I wouldn't call propaganda an academic occupation.
    V Marxism and Revolution in an Era of Counterrevolution, p. 380
  3. We must work for the establishment of such relations, and if in discussing the theme of this talk I mainly take the United States as an example, I do so in order to help prepare for the establishment of such relations.
    Five Lectures - Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, pp. 107–108
  4. But in reality in a majority of cases it's not so difficult to distinguish. Malinovich: I'm not sure I get you correctly. When you say indiscriminate tolerance, it sounds like what you're saying is total tolerance of any academic discussion, but what you're saying now is indiscriminate tolerance of an academic discussion which is not propaganda. Marcuse: Well, I wouldn't call propaganda an academic occupation.
    V Marxism and Revolution in an Era of Counterrevolution, p. 380

Where the argument is made

  • 'Repressive Tolerance' in A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Wolff, Moore Jr., Marcuse, Beacon 1965)
  • the '1968 Postscript to Repressive Tolerance' (added to subsequent printings)
  • One-Dimensional Man (1964) closing chapter on the Great Refusal
  • An Essay on Liberation (1969) on the new sensibility and biological foundation of socialism
  • Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia (1970) — 'The End of Utopia' (1967 Berlin lecture), 'The Problem of Violence and the Radical Opposition'
  • The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers Vol. III (Kellner ed., 2005) — 'The Inner Logic of American Policy in Vietnam,' 'Reflections on the French Revolution,' 'Dear Angela,' 'Liberation from the Affluent Society,' 'On the New Left,' 'Marxism and Feminism' (1974 Stanford)
  • Counterrevolution and Revolt (Beacon 1972) on the long march through the institutions and the United Front turn

How the argument was received

"Repressive Tolerance" is the politically most explosive piece in the authorship and the most frequently misread. The liberal-academic reception read it as authoritarian violation of academic neutrality. The right-wing reception read it as legitimizing 1960s violence. The orthodox-Marxist reception read it as anarchic individualism rather than collective revolutionary politics. Kellner's Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (1984) Chapter 9 raises a real strategic worry: even if the structural argument is correct, advocating asymmetric intolerance under conditions where the state holds the means of suppression risks empowering those who would suppress radicals. The 1972 "United Front" turn in Counterrevolution and Revolt — the long march through the institutions — addresses this strategic worry without retracting the structural argument. The position defends the structural argument as precise and correct, refuses the "guru of violence" reception as misreading, acknowledges the strategic worry as a real practical question that subsequent strategy revisions address, and engages the contemporary deplatforming-and-free-speech reception as the present-day continuation of the 1965 question.