Marcuse - the barricade and the dance floor

Happy 125th birthday Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) , born 19th July 1898 and still spooking fascists from beyond the grave - see how he features in their ridiculous 'cultural marxism' conspiracy theory.

Marcuse took a more positive view of the counter culture and the radical movements of the 1960s than some of his Frankfurt School contemporaries, as he articulated in his 1969 'An Essay on Liberation':

'the hatred of the young bursts into laughter and song, mixing the barricade and the dance floor, love play and heroism. And the young also attack the esprit de serieux in the socialist camp: miniskirts against the apparatchiks, rock ‘n’ roll against Soviet Realism. The insistence that a socialist society can and ought to be light, pretty, playful, that these qualities are essential elements of freedom, the faith in the rationality of the imagination, the demand for a new morality and culture – does this great anti-authoritarian rebellion indicate a new dimension and direction of radical change, the appearance of new agents of radical change, and a new vision of socialism in its qualitative difference from the established societies?'.