The paths of utopian socialism: Herbert Marcuse,critical pedagogy and the social and ecological catastrophe of late capitalism

Abstract

The politics of the coming ecological catastrophe has been widely debated within recent sociology. There is within this context an urgent need to develop more critical and pedagogic forms of theoretical reflection that are connected to radical social movements, education and more critical intellectual movements for change. In this respect, I explore an approach drawn from critical theory and critical pedagogy centred on the philosophical contributions of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse’s critique of one-dimensional forms of thinking, ecological destruction and the need for more resistant sensibilities remains significant in a world over-run by consumerism and the destructive logic of capitalism. Despite Marcuse’s location within the radical 1960s, many of these elements have strong connections to current intellectual positions and radical ecological movements including ideas around de-growth, the need to question Western rationality and engage in oppositional movements. Marcuse’s emphasis on negative reason, political economy and what I call a civilisation-based politics continues to ask many of the important questions faced by a critical sociology in the early twenty-first century. While these points are all well made by Marcuse, I also seek to point to some of his shortcomings and suggest that inevitably our times are also constituted somewhat differently.