Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis

Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis

Cover of the first edition
Author	Herbert Marcuse
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Published	1958
Media type	Print

Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason Escape from Freedom Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action Dialectic of Enlightenment
Notable theorists
Herbert Marcuse · Theodor Adorno Max Horkheimer · Walter Benjamin Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas Alfred Schmidt · Axel Honneth Siegfried Kracauer
Important concepts
Critical theory · Dialectic · Praxis Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism Popular culture · Culture industry Advanced capitalism Privatism · Non-identity Communicative rationality Legitimation crisis

Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis is a 1958 book by philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which Marcuse provides a critique of the Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Background

Much of the research was based on Marcuse's work for OSS and the State Department after 1945, and the classified intelligence report he wrote.^[1]

Summary

Marcuse sees domination in the USSR as linked to the Soviet Bureaucracy and New Rationality of industrial societies.^[2]

The individual is forced to submit to the machine process.

He also critiques the Soviet division between DiaMat and HistoMat. Unlike Marx, the Soviets see Historical Materialism as an application of Dialectical Materialism, rather than a single unity. He claims that the emphasis on the Dialectics of Nature, de-emphasizes history.^[3]

References