The Dialectics of Liberation

and Radical Activism

An Exchange of Letters between
Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal1

Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal

Translated by Charles Reitz

Abstract: Warm regards are exchanged between old friends who

are seriously bent on changing the world, not merely analyzing
it. Mutual appreciation is evident, as is some tension. Herbert
Marcuse’s militant critique of US war-making, waste-making,
and poverty is taking Europe by storm. Leo Löwenthal tips his
hat with subtle irony and humor to Marcuse’s 1967 triumphs
as a public intellectual and political theorist. Activist students
give Marcuse great credit because other Frankfurt theorists like
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno have remained aloof from
this protest. Löwenthal remains more skeptical than Marcuse
about the goals of the student movement, which seem to him too
ideological and insufficiently radical.

1. These archival documents are published with the permission of the Literary
Estate of Herbert Marcuse, of which Peter Marcuse is executor, whose
permission is required for any further publication. Supplementary material
from previously unpublished work of Herbert Marcuse, much of which is now
in the archives at the library of Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, is being
published by Routledge Publishers, England, in a six-volume series edited by
Douglas Kellner, and in a German series edited by Peter-Erwin Jansen published
by zu Klampen Verlag, Germany. All rights to further publication are retained
by the Estate. The editors express their appreciation to Peter Marcuse, Peter-
Erwin Jansen, and Susanne Löwenthal for facilitating the publication of these
documents.—Eds.
© Radical Philosophy Review Volume 16, number 1 (2013): 21–23
DOI: 10.5840/radphilrev20131614
— 22 — Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal
•••

Editorial Introduction

I
n July 1967, Herbert Marcuse was among several major presenters at
the “Dialectics of Liberation” international congress held at the Round-
house in London. Other speakers included Paul Sweezy, Allen Ginsberg,
Paul Goodman, Stokely Carmichael, Jules Henry, Ronald D. Laing, Gregory
Bateson, Susan Sherman, Thich Nhat Hanh, Julian Beck, and Gajo Petrović.
This grand conclave of bohemians and political activists radicalized many
in attendance. The conference was documented in film by Peter Davis, and
a transcription of these presentations is found in a volume edited by Da-
vid Cooper, The Dialectics of Liberation (Penguin, 1968). Marcuse’s address,
“Liberation from the Affluent Society,” is also published in The Collected Pa-
pers of Herbert Marcuse, edited by Douglas Kellner, in volume 3, entitled The
New Left and the 1960s (Routledge, 2005).

I. Herbert Marcuse, Letter to Leo Löwenthal

August 10, 1967
Leo dear:
There is too much to relate—too much for writing! A most exciting week in
Berlin, where I was received like a Messiah, talking to 5000 students. A com-
plete, mad, partly psychedelic Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in
London. Max and Teddie, on account of their political (or rather unpolitical)
perspective, dismissed by the worked-up students—leaflets against Teddie!
I am attempting to get together with them in Switzerland in order to discuss
our political differences—but Max seems not quite ready!
In the meantime we are trying to rest up here in Zermatt—until our depar-
ture for the Humanism Conference in Salzburg. There is much in Old Europe
that is still quite lively—And you?
See you in September.
Much love to Marjorie—also from Inge.
Yours,
Herbert
 An Exchange of Letters — 23 —
•••

II. Leo Löwenthal, Letter of Reply to Herbert Marcuse

Berkeley
August 16, 1967
Dear Herbert,
To the appellation “Messiah” in your warm letter of August 10, you must
add another “M.” In a German newspaper I saw an article reporting on this
new “M”-tradition, namely: Marx, Mao, and Marcuse! This evokes a deep
reverence in me! By the way, I infer from press reports that you have the
same feelings as I do vis-à-vis our young friends in Germany, who cannot
see the forest of a qualitatively different life, because of the trees of global
ideologies.
Yours,
Leo — • —