Politics of liberation
In the 1960s, ‘liberation’ was a demand made not only on behalf of specific
groups – colonial peoples, women, gays and lesbians – but also in relation
to the entire society. The quest for liberation was the rallying cry of a
broad collection of groups broadly classified as the New Left. Although the
New Left lacked theoretical and organisational coherence, embracing
movements as diverse as feminism, environmentalism, student activism
and anti-Vietnam War protest, it was distinguished by its rejection of both
‘old left’ alternatives on offer. Soviet-style state socialism in Eastern
Europe was regarded as authoritarian and oppressive; Western social
democracy was thought to be hopelessly compromised, lacking both vision
and principles. By contrast, the New Left adopted a radical style of
political activism which extolled the virtues of popular participation and
direct action. The revolutionary character of this new political style was
clearly revealed by the events of May 1968 in France, the month-long
rebellion by students and young workers.
Many in the New Left were attracted by the revolutionary character of
Marxist thought, but strove to remodel and revise it to make it applicable
to advanced industrial societies that had achieved a high level of material
affluence. Whereas orthodox Marxists had developed an economic critique
of capitalism, emphasising the importance of exploitation, economic
inequality and class war, the New Left, influenced by critical theory and
anarchist ideas, underlined the way in which capitalism had produced a
system of ideological and cultural domination. The enemy was therefore
no longer simply the class system or a repressive state but rather ‘the
system’, an all-encompassing process of repression that operated through
the family, the educational system, conventional culture, work, politics
and so on. In this context, ‘political liberation’ came to mean nothing less
than a negation of the existing society, a radical break or, as Marcuse
described it, a ‘leap into the realm of freedom – a total rupture’. Once
again, ‘liberation’ held out the prospect of cultural, personal and psychological
revolution and not merely political change; at the same time it
created the image of a fully satisfying and personally fulfilling society of
the future.
Herbert Marcuse was probably the most influential thinker within
the New Left. Not only did Marcuse develop a biological critique of
capitalism in terms of sexual repression, but he also tried to explain ho
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