I recently read a document released by the CIA in 2005 that describes the New Left and Herbert Marcuse’s influence on college campuses. What it reveals is extremely relevant to what’s happening on college campuses today.
“Marx, the god; Marcuse, his prophet; Mao, his sword.”
In June of 1968, the Current Digest of the Soviet Press released a scathing article, calling University of California San Diego professor Herbert Marcuse a “false prophet.” As a Soviet entity, the Current Digest set out to annihilate Marcuse’s “decommunized Marxism,” for obvious reasons. Marcuse had abandoned “vulgar” Marxism and the USSR’s bureaucratic and administrative terror in favor of his personal flavor of faith: Identity Marxism.
The TL;DR version of Marcuse’s theory goes like this: Free market economies stabilize the working class. Marx predicted the working class would necessarily enter open revolt against the system once their economic and material conditions became too brutal to bear. This, Marx argued, was a scientific prediction, predicated on what activists now call the “immortal science of Marxism.” In other words, just as you can predict that the apple will fall if you let go of it, Marxists predicted “capitalism” would inevitably fall after running its course in advanced industrial societies—it was only a matter of time.
But free market economies adjusted, and by the 1950s and 60s it was clear that free market economies improved the lives of workers. Marxists admitted this, reluctantly. For them, it was a crisis of faith. The “immortal science of Marxism” was clearly wrong, both on a moral level, as revealed by all of the starving and dead people, and on an economic level, as revealed by workers buying nice cars and taking their families on nice holidays.
Marcuse theorized that the working class must mostly be abandoned as first movers in a Communist revolution. The working class was too stable, and revolutions require instability to work. So, he argued, Marxists must place their energy in college kids, “ghetto populations,” criminal aliens (illegal immigrants), and anyone else who might feel marginalized by society, such as gays and lesbians, the unemployed, and war veterans. If you can radicalize these groups and centralize their grievances, Marcuse thought, then you can build a coalition that can break the working class from the inside. As the New York Times would publish in the wake of Marcuse’s death in 79’:
Dr. Marcuse had little belief that the working class would, in affluent, highly technological societies, incite revolution. Rather, he believed, a new coalition of student radicals, small numbers of intellectuals, urban blacks and people from underdeveloped nations could overthrow forces that he saw as keeping workers from an awareness of their oppression.
(For more information on this important point, read “An Essay on Liberation” (Marcuse, 1969).)
The Current Digest was responding to the meteoric rise of Marcuse and his new theory of Marxism when it published “Marcuse: ‘False Prophet of Decommunized Marxism’” in June of 1968. Marcuse and his “vociferous disciples” scared the USSR because they had been converted to a new faith; a new interpretation of Marxism that “[has] special gods” and challenged the USSR’s stranglehold.
Marcuse, Marcuse, Marcuse-the name of this 70-year-old “German-American philosopher,” which has emerged form the darkness of obscurity, has been endlessly repeated in the Western press. In Bonn the name is pronounced Markoozeh; in New York, Markyooz; in Paris, Markyooss. The California resident who has undertaken to disprove Marxism is being publicized as if he were a movie star, and his books as if they were the latest brand of toothpaste or razor blades. A clever publicity formula has even been thought up: “the three M’s”—“Marx, the god; Marcuse, his prophet; and Mao, his sword.”
Marx remained “the god,” but Marcuse was his latest prophet, and the USSR hated his interpretations of their shared doctrine. If Marcuse spent his life in “dark obscurity,” his prophecy—identity-based Marxism rather than economic Marxism as the lever of revolution—wouldn’t have bothered the USSR. But Marcuse had reached astronomical popularity in the tumultuous 60s, and, worst of all, he had adopted the revolutionary strategies of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, founder of the People’s Republic of China.
Mao’s formula of Cultural Revolution proved to be incredibly successful in a gigantic, mostly agrarian society that was the last place Marx would have predicted Communist revolution to take hold. His strategy was straightforward: radicalize the easily brainwashed students and use them as a lever to bulldoze everything and consolidate his own power. Kids are extremely idealistic, and have few defense mechanisms for fighting off the “totalizing” nature of “thought reform,” as Robert Jay Lifton, expert on cult psychology broadly, and Mao’s system specifically, might describe it.
In an interview with Pierre Viansson-Ponte in Paris of 1969, Marcuse said that “certainly today every Marxist who is not a communist of strict obedience is a Maoist.” Marcuse was very familiar with Mao’s “Marxism-Leninism with Chinese characteristics,” and, according to the Current Digest, a central focus of Marcuse’s revolutionary strategy was precisely what Mao had accomplished in China with his Red Guards.
Marcuse replaces the class struggle in present-day society by the “generational conflict.” Flattering the students, he assures them that they are the chief revolutionary force, since, as Nouvel Observatuer wrote in summarizing his “doctrine,” “they are young and reject the society of their elders.” Therefore, “young people in general” must struggle against “adults in general.” Everywhere and anywhere!
Additionally,
It is characteristic that his “interpretation of prophetic revelation for the uninitiated” invariably coincides with the practice of Mao Tse-tung’s group. And what is of the greatest significance is that although this group does not stint on abusive language aimed at the imperialists, the governments of the capitalist states have very tolerant attitudes toward dissemination of its “ideas,” and at the same time toward the activities of Marcuse and his vociferous disciples as well.
What you are seeing on college campuses today is nothing new. If you are curious enough and take the initiative to investigate what’s happening, you will find that Karl Marx is still the god, Marcuse is still his prophet, and Mao is still his sword. There is a reason these kids and their enablers and directors all sound like Communists: they are.
The form of rebellion you are witnessing isn’t the “vulgar” kind you may be familiar with—a great Proletarian Revolution. It is a new kind, one that Marcuse said is, “Very different from the revolution at previous stages of history,” because, “this opposition is directed against the totality of a well-functioning, prosperous society—a protest against its Form—the commodity form of men and things, against the imposition of false values and a false morality.”
For today’s Communists, “the issue isn’t the issue; the issue is the revolution,” as David Horowitz reminded us. Make no mistake—the majority of the college kids revolting on campus have no idea what they are doing. They are in a cult, one with Marx at the top, the doctrinal revelation of Herbert Marcuse in the middle, and Mao’s revolutionary strategy at the ground level. This already happened in the 60s, but we put an end to it. The doctrine has now evolved, updating Marcuse’s prophecies through a “woke” lens (intersectionality, primarily), but it’s all the same strategy.
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“The Truth About Woke: This Insidious, Illiberal Ideology Has Nothing To Do With Protecting The Marginalised.”
An article by Helen Pluckrose
(at spiked-online.com from her new book “The Counterweight Handbook: Principled Strategies for Surviving and Defeating Critical Social Justice Ideology – at Work, in Schools and Beyond”):
“Only those who have studied Critical Social Justice theories are fully able to see the invisible power systems and must convey them to everybody else. Social justice (as defined by Critical Social Justice theories) can only be achieved by making everybody believe in these theories. This entails seeing and affirming these invisible power systems and their own complicity in them, as well as committing to dismantling them. Any disagreement with or resistance to Critical Social Justice beliefs is evidence of either ignorance or selfish unwillingness to accept one’s complicity in the oppressive power systems. Thus, any disagreement or resistance is automatically invalid.”
And from “Malleus Maleficarum” (Hammer of Witches) 1486; Introduction from 1928 translation by Montague Summers:
“At the time of the writing of The Malleus Maleficarum, there were many voices within the… community (scholars and theologians) who doubted the existence of witches and largely regarded such belief as mere superstition. The authors of the Malleus addressed those voices in no uncertain terms, stating: ‘Whether the Belief that there are such Beings as Witches is so Essential a Part of the… Faith that Obstinacy to maintain the Opposite Opinion manifestly savours of Heresy.’ The immediate, and lasting, popularity of the Malleus essentially silenced those voices. It made very real the threat of one being branded a heretic, simply by virtue of one’s questioning of the existence of witches and, thus, the validity of the Inquisition.”
Critical Social Justice (Woke) is the new Inquisition. The sole purpose of both was and is POWER. Total control over all human behaviour, speech and thought (for the financial/political gain of the controllers) by dividing people into two manipulable “sides”: “good” = obedient (on the Church/State-Elite’s “side”) or “evil” = disobedient (not on the Church/State-Elite’s “side”). THIS is why Woke was taken up so quickly by current Ruling State-Elites (corporations, UN, WEF, 1%, etc.).
Like the Inquisition did with “Witchcraft”, current Ruling State-Elites saw “Wokecraft” as the perfect tool of control because Woke reifies concepts of “morality” into binary weapons of power (“good/evil”) to ensure that anyone who objects to or questions the validity of Woke proves themselves by this dissent to be “evil” (a “fascist”, the new term for “witch”) thus fair “moral” fodder for legal persecution and extermination by the State-Elites in the name of their “morality” (currently: “social justice”, “anti-oppression”, “decolonization”, etc.) as the Church did to “heretic witches” (in the name of “God”) to sustain Power through Terror.
Woke can only be defeated by framing it in explicit terms of Authoritarian Power and excoriating it as the latest iteration of Totalitarian State-Elites’ population control. Culture, academia, politics, “morality” etc. are only tactical sites of operation where Woke is disguised so its true purpose as an instrument of Absolute State-Elite Power is obscured as “Culture Wars”, “Trans/Queer Inc”, “Right or Left”, etc.. Micro focusing solely on any of these partisan diversionary sub-tactics to the exclusion/detriment of educating ordinary people about the Big Picture of what is really going on with Woke is only playing into State-Elites’ fiendishly corrupt new “Hammer of Witches”.
She’s right, but very late to the inquisition argument as has been done by at least 1 other person for 10 years // more.
Here referral to the inquisition putting binaries Together is a slippery slope that shall require very careful explanation. The state actors with their ludicrous witch act has been splitting binaries. Not impossible for they to use reconstructions when it suits them just to benefit from the effects possible via proper couplings.
I believe Helen is yet another of new atheisms fit nubile young things ? New Atheism has a remarkable talent for being a social engineering lab disguised as an anti religion movement that created the very witchcraft models Helen is trying to debunk.
Farcical and highly ridiculous in itself.
Sorry re the above re the Helen Pluckrose book.
Helen Pluckrose did not mention the Inquisition — I did. I quoted a brief few lines from a Helen Pluckrose’s article describing “woke” tactics of tarring anyone who does not believe as an enemy by their very act of disbelief — because I noted this tactic was almost identical to the description by Montague Sommers in 1928 of the tactics of the Inquisition — my post had nothing to do with religion or new atheism — but was an attempt to show that the TACTICS of totalitarian control are repeating patterns dating back not just to 1498 but to Day 1! And that by knowing these repeating patterns we can see through current smokescreens and respond (or despair!). That was all.
Quote : Helen Pluckrose did not mention the Inquisition Unquote.
Means you are right then 13.
I’d agree witch trial terror tactics have always been a cover for some other agenda.
Even though I am myself an early guinea pig of the systematic indoctrination at our universities with their reach into public schools, I am still utterly bamboozled at the increasing absurdities that they are producing. I just received a misaddressed magazine in my mailbox: UMass Amherst’s College of Education Spring 2024 magazine entitled “Education for a Socially Just World.” In an article about one of the professors who is ‘Fostering Critical Literacies in K-12 Classrooms” the professor identifies herself as : “white woman of ethnic-minority-bilingual-bicultural-peasant-working-class-middle-and-upper-middle-class background”. It is a deep irony that she focuses on ‘meaning-making’ when her label for herself is utterly without meaning. Other than being a signal of her political allegiances. The entire magazine is so ridiculous when read ‘critically’ that I had a moment when I really wondered if James Lindsay and his crew had written it!
This is precisely why I cheered my daughter’s decision this year (4.2 GPA—gorgeous and brilliant, if I say so myself…) to skip college and go out into the world for a real education. She is way too smart to get caught up in what is happening at our universities and she knows it. The best and brightest will find their futures outside of the corrupted university system. Good riddance.
Thanks for all you do to shine a light on this topic, It has made a difference to me.
We always see these communist students in the news on tv, in the papers etc. They’re all over the place. So it looks like they outnumber the more normal, rational youths.
But: last week, in Germany the 16 to 24 y/o’s voted right-wing mostly.
Quote ” They’re all over the place ”
Very good points those.
Theres also the way the quango’s responsible BLM // Stonewall // et al have skeleton staffing with just a very few making a lot of noise. Apart from the surprisingly small number who are actually militant, these agencies also hire people to pose & shout.
British punk rock with the sex pistols was launched as malcolm maclaren spent a week with a small bus with models dressed in vivian westwards clothes / hair. They’d drop them off at one end of a british high street / broadway – and these models would march chanting loudly as they went. They were collected at the opposite end & did the same over and over towns around London.
THIS – plus the notorious pistols tv appearances launch the entire british punk scene.
Just hysterical rubbish from Lancing concerning a doc written ad hominem against Marcuse, who was decoding and reframing the lies students were being told. Hes either silly or up to something
It’s good to see someone digging into the historical roots of this mess.
My major concern remains my distinct impression that all these ideological gymnastics are solely for the purpose of normalizing criminal behavior in a significant portion of the population. It’s bad enough already. If it descended to total anarchy it would be far worse.
” Quote For today’s Communists, “the issue isn’t the issue; the issue is the revolution,” as David Horowitz reminded us. Make no mistake—the majority of the college kids revolting on campus have no idea what they are doing. They are in a cult, one with Marx at the top, the doctrinal revelation of Herbert Marcuse in the middle, and Mao’s revolutionary strategy at the ground level. This already happened in the 60s, but we put an end to it. The doctrine has now evolved, updating Marcuse’s prophecies through a “woke” lens (intersectionality, primarily), but it’s all the same strategy.” Unquote.
Dear Logan
I’m not sure if the problem is that do not understand the issues well enough or what it is. All you achieve is an opening of Dracula’s coffin & removal of the stake with yet another hysterical reaction.
Its got no BALLS – just the same boring ineffective basic allegations.
Where is your Rationale ?
Rationale for what?
What are you looking for? Some sort of plan of action? A manifesto for counter-revolution?
If so, why are you being so cagey about it? Why insult the writer’s purpose because you want it to be different?
My own criticism of the article is that it refers to a CIA document from 1968 discussing Marcuse’s agenda and its influence on the “New Left,” but says nothing about why the CIA might have composed it and whether or not they still work to oppose its latest iteration in so-called “identity politics.”
My question relates to your comments about the CIA that are implied in this statement from the article:
“This already happened in the 60s, but we put an end to it.”
Who is “we”? The CIA? The “right”? The “people”? You are correct that the late 1970s throughout the 1980s were definitely not New Left radical like in the 1960s/early 70s, so something changed that for sure. But what or who exactly? I was there back then and am still not sure since there were so many factors involved of course. And in the long run the Marx/Marcuse/Mao thing was not ended but merely delayed and deferred until a later time, post-2000 when social media delivered it personally to every young person’s brain via their smart phones.
I think a detailed examination of exactly how the New Left was ended (or delayed) would make a interesting follow up to your informative article because it would reveal strategies that worked for a while but then ultimately failed — an analysis of this failure is also needed to learn from these mistakes which were at first successful — since “leftist” Authoritarian Utopianism rose from the “dead” as a dominant control mechanism of youth in the 21st C.
That document is the CIA being the CIA.
Marcuse was their critic, ass he knew the entire anti communist agenda as designed by the the CIA was itself the device that was splitting society. The trouble with people like Lancing & JL is that they’ve already jumped in with two feet & published quite ludicrous material at random. This is in addition to their brave and very admirable material, but certain areas with gashy guesswork, impatience and lack of precision is palpable.
I’m not sat Marcuse is an angel & have never dreamt of taking ‘notice’ of him are he was only a 4th part commentator. But this ‘mess’ as Larry put it, is largely that tricky old agency again.
Don’t behave like a cold reading psychic Lancing, who can find synchronicity & coincidence even where someone like Marcuse is against whats in a document = THAT ONE.
Find a proper job.
”Rationale for what?”
Is that post a joke ?