Notes on Repressive Tolerance by Herbert Marcuse
Rough notes to use as a reference for this influential essay
Marcuse’s point: He begins Repressive Tolerance by railing against society and accusing us all of passively tolerating all the worst evils of the world rather than forcing change through public outcry and participation in revolution.
My Criticism: This is utopianism right out the gate because he is accusing common people, who obviously have their own day-to-day problems in life, of not doing their part to enact a political revolution. To me, it immediately brings to mind the modern accusation that “silence is violence” that so often comes from the mouths of left-wing activists. Ironically, it’s being used as a political weapon to bully people into accepting certain views.
Marcuse’s point: From there, he goes on to begin framing the main thesis of his essay. This thesis is essentially the idea that tolerance, of the variety that MLK advocated for, allows the oppressive majority to co-opt minority groups into accepting an imbalanced and rigged system. He says that by preaching tolerance, a society protects its own systems of oppression because evil is tolerated alongside good.
My criticism: To me this is an insane claim and it twists the very words of people who have made huge strides to make America a better country and the West better as a whole. After all, the history of America has seen unprecedented expansions of rights to peoples of all backgrounds over time, even if it has many dark chapters in its history that it is our duty to teach. The expansion of tolerance in this country has led to real progress, not to a tyrannical system of oppression ruled by the majority that Marcuse is trying to claim. All that said, I think it’s also obvious that this philosophy Marcuse is advocating has a large effect on the modern left and the Democrat party. I think a good example of this was when the heavily Democrat-controlled state legislature of California proposed a ballot initiative to repeal the civil rights language from the state constitution in 2020. Thankfully the citizens of California roundly rejected this, but there is an clear attack on tolerance coming out of the left these days.
Marcuse’s point: This is the biggest thing that I think people need to know about. Marcuse not only accuses tolerance of being a system to support evil and oppression, but he also prescribes his own solution to this so-called problem. He says that to fix the imbalance between the oppressor class and the oppressed minority groups in society, you must take the reins of power and begin discriminating against the oppressor class to restore balance. Since Marcuse is a Marxist, he of course decides that anything to the right of Marx himself, counts as the oppressor class. It’s important to note that instead of framing things in traditional communist terms of workers vs owners, he keeps things much more vague by labeling it as a struggle between oppressors and the oppressed.
My criticism: This is open advocacy for discrimination from Marcuse based on his subjective interpretation of who should be considered an oppressor. The reason I think it is so important to understand this point he makes is because it’s plainly happening in today’s society. Conservatives and provocateurs getting banned from social media, the dominance of left-wing narratives in corporate media, and the trend of campaigns to cancel anyone that goes against the approved left-wing worldview are all examples of it taking place. Marcuse is in many ways the source of this modern neo-Marxist ideology and I think it’s important to understand him to “know thy enemy” as Sun Tzu might say.
Overall, his essay is very detailed and worthy of a direct read to get a better understanding beyond my summary of his core points. Marcuse is possibly the most influential Marxist thinker of the past 50 years, so I think it’s important to understand the nuance in the evolution of Marxist thought over the past several decades to best understand what those of us that still uphold Western values are trying to push back against. I’ll link it below:
https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html