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Repressive Tolerance

Herbert Marcuse

(1965)

This essay is dedicated to my students at Brandeis University

— H.M.

Footnotes and Endnotes added by Arun Chandra

This essay examines the idea of tolerance in our ad-

vanced industrial society. The conclusion reached is that

the realization of the objective of tolerance would call

for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opin-

ions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes,

and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed. In other

words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its

origins, at the beginning of the modem period — a parti-

san

goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice. Con-

versely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance to-

day, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving

the cause of oppression.

The author is fully aware that, at present, no power, no

authority, no government exists which would translate lib-

erating tolerance into practice, but he believes that it is the

task and duty of the intellectual to recall and preserve his-

torical possibilities which seem to have become utopian

possibilities — that it is his task to break the concreteness

of oppression in order to open the mental space in which

this society can be recognized as what it is and does.

OLERANCE is an end in itself. The elimination of

violence, and the reduction of suppression to the ex-

tent required for protecting man and animals from cruelty

and aggression are preconditions for the creation of a hu-

mane society. Such a society does not yet exist; progress

toward it is perhaps more than before arrested by vio-

lence and suppression on a global scale. As deterrents

against nuclear war, as police action against subversion,

as technical aid in the ﬁght against imperialism and com-

munism, as methods of paciﬁcation in neo-colonial mas-

sacres, violence and suppression are promulgated,

prac-

ticed, and defended by democratic and authoritarian gov-

ernments alike, and the people subjected to these gov-

ernments are educated to sustain such practices as neces-

sary for the preservation of the

status quo

. Tolerance is

extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior

which should not be tolerated because they are impeding,

if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence

without fear and misery.

This sort of tolerance strengthens the tyranny of the

majority against which authentic liberals protested. The

political locus

of tolerance has changed: while it is more

or less quietly and constitutionally withdrawn from the

opposition, it is made compulsory behavior with respect

to established policies. Tolerance is turned from an ac-

tive into a passive state, from practice to non-practice:

laissez-faire

the constituted authorities. It is the peo-

ple who tolerate the government, which in turn tolerates

opposition within the framework determined by the con-

stituted authorities.

Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now ap-

pears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole

on the road to afﬂuence or more afﬂuence. The tol-

eration of the systematic moronization of children and

adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of

destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for

and training of special forces, the impotent and benevo-

lent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandis-

ing, waste, and planned obsolescence are not distortions

and aberrations: they are the essence of a system which

fosters tolerance as a means for perpetuating the strug-

gle for existence and suppressing the alternatives. The

authorities in education, morals, and psychology are vo-

ciferous

against the increase in juvenile delinquency;

they are less vociferous against the proud presentation,

prejudiced in favor of a particular cause.

promote or make widely known (an idea or cause).

status quo:

the existing state of affairs, esp. regarding social or political issues.

locus:

the effective or perceiveed location of something abstract.

laissez-faire:

a doctrine opposing governmental interference in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace

and property rights.

vociferous:

vehement or clamorous.

promulgate:

partisan:

ERBERT

ARCUSE

Repressive Tolerance

in word and deed and pictures, of ever more powerful

missiles, rockets, bombs — the mature delinquency of a

whole civilization.

According to a dialectical

proposition it is the whole

which determines the truth — not in the sense that the

whole is prior or superior to its parts, but in the sense

that its structure and function determine every particular

condition and relation. Thus, within a repressive society,

even progressive movements threaten to turn into their

opposite to the degree to which they accept the rules of

the game. To take a most controversial case: the exer-

cise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to

the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with

a priori

renunciation of counter-violence) in a society

of total administration serves to strengthen this adminis-

tration by testifying to the existence of democratic lib-

erties which, in reality, have changed their content and

lost their effectiveness. In such a case, freedom (of opin-

ion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for

absolving

servitude. And yet (and only here the di-

alectical proposition shows its full intent) the existence

and practice of these liberties remain a precondition for

the restoration of their original oppositional function,

provided that the effort to transcend their (often self-

imposed) limitations is intensiﬁed. Generally, the func-

tion and value of tolerance depend on the equality preva-

lent in the society in which tolerance is practiced. Toler-

ance itself stands subject to overriding criteria: its range

and its limits cannot be deﬁned in terms of the respective

society. In other words, tolerance is an end in itself only

when it is truly universal, practiced by the rulers as well

as by the ruled, by the lords as well as by the peasants,

by the sheriffs as well as by their victims. And such uni-

versal tolerance is possible only when no real or alleged

enemy requires in the national interest the education and

training of people in military violence and destruction.

As long as these conditions do not prevail, the condi-

tions of tolerance are “loaded”: they are determined and

deﬁned by the institutionalized inequality (which is cer-

tainly compatible with constitutional equality),

i.e.,

the class structure of society. In such a society, tolerance

de facto

limited on the dual ground of legalized vio-

lence or suppression (police, armed forces, guards of all

sorts) and of the privileged position held by the predom-

inant interests and their “connections.”

dialectical:

These background limitations of tolerance are nor-

mally prior to the explicit and judicial limitations as de-

ﬁned by the courts, custom, governments, etc. (for ex-

ample, “clear and present danger,” threat to national se-

curity, heresy). Within the framework of such a so-

cial structure, tolerance can be safety practiced and pro-

claimed. It is of two kinds: (1) the passive toleration

of entrenched and established attitudes and ideas even if

their damaging effect on man and nature is evident; and

(2) the active, ofﬁcial tolerance granted to the Right as

well as to the Left, to movements of aggression as well

as to movements of peace, to the party of hate as well

as to that of humanity. I call this non-partisan tolerance

“abstract” or “pure” inasmuch as it refrains from taking

sides — but in doing so it actually protects the already

established machinery of discrimination.

The tolerance which enlarged the range and content

of freedom was always partisan — intolerant toward the

protagonists

of the repressive

status quo.

The issue was

only the degree and extent of intolerance. In the ﬁrmly

established liberal society of England and the United

States, freedom of speech and assembly was granted

even to the radical enemies of society, provided they did

not make the transition from word to deed, from speech

to action.

Relying on the effective background limitations im-

posed by its class structure, the society seemed to prac-

tice general tolerance. But liberalist theory had already

placed an important condition on tolerance: it was “to

apply only to human beings in the maturity of their fac-

ulties.” John Stuart Mill

does not only speak of children

and minors; he elaborates:

“Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of

things anterior

to the time when mankind have become

capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.”

Anterior to that time, men may still be barbarians, and

“despotism

is a legitimate mode of government in deal-

ing with barbarians, provided the end be their improve-

ment, and the means justiﬁed by actually effecting that

end.”

Mill’s often-quoted words have a less familiar impli-

cation on which their meaning depends: the internal

connection between liberty and truth. There is a sense

in which truth is the end of liberty, and liberty must

be deﬁned and conﬁned by truth. Now in what sense

concerned with or acting through opposing forces.

priori:

formed or conceived beforehand.

absolve:

set or declare (someone) free from blame, guilt, or responsibility.

de facto:

in fact, whether by right or not.

protagonist:

an advocate or champion of a particular cause or idea.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873): British philosopher and political economist, inﬂuential liberal thinker of the 19th century.

coming before in time; earlier.

despotism:

the exercise of absolute power, esp. in a cruel and oppressive way.

ERBERT

ARCUSE

Repressive Tolerance

can liberty be for the sake of truth? Liberty is self-

determination, autonomy — this is almost a tautology,

but a tautology which results from a whole series of syn-

thetic judgments. It stipulates the ability to determine

one’s own life: to be able to determine what to do and

what not to do, what to suffer and what not. But the sub-

ject of this autonomy is never the contingent,

private

individual as that which he actually is or happens to be;

it is rather the individual as a human being who is capable

of being free with the others. And the problem of making

possible such a harmony between every individual liberty

and the other is not that of ﬁnding a compromise between

competitors, or between freedom and law, between gen-

eral and individual interest, common and private welfare

in an

established

society, but of

creating

the society in

which man is no longer enslaved by institutions which

vitiate

self-determination from the beginning. In other

words, freedom is still to be created even for the freest

of the existing societies. And the direction in which it

must be sought, and the institutional and cultural changes

which may help to attain the goal are, at least in devel-

oped civilization,

comprehensible,

that is to say, they can

be identiﬁed and projected, on the basis of experience,

by human reason.

In the interplay of theory and practice, true and false

solutions become distinguishable — never with the ev-

idence of necessity, never as the positive, only with the

certainty of a reasoned and reasonable chance, and with

the persuasive force of the negative. For the true positive

is the society of the future and therefore beyond deﬁni-

tion and determination, while the existing positive is that

which must be surmounted.

But the experience and un-

derstanding of the existent society may well be capable

of identifying what is not conducive to a free and ratio-

nal society, what impedes and distorts the possibilities of

its creation. Freedom is liberation, a speciﬁc historical

process in theory and practice, and as such it has its right

and wrong, its truth and falsehood.

The uncertainty of chance in this distinction does

not cancel the historical objectivity, but it necessitates

freedom of thought and expression as preconditions of

ﬁnding the way to freedom — it necessitates

tolerance.

However, this tolerance cannot be indiscriminate and

equal with respect to the contents of expression, neither

in word nor in deed; it cannot protect false words and

tautology:

wrong deeds which demonstrate that they contradict and

counteract the possibilities of liberation. Such indiscrim-

inate tolerance is justiﬁed in harmless debates, in conver-

sation, in academic discussion; it is indispensable in the

scientiﬁc enterprise, in private religion. But society can-

not be indiscriminate where the paciﬁcation of existence,

where freedom and happiness themselves are at stake:

here, certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot

be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed, certain

behavior cannot be permitted without making tolerance

an instrument for the continuation of servitude.

The danger of “destructive tolerance” (Baudelaire

of “benevolent neutrality” toward

art

has been recog-

nized: the market, which absorbs equally well (although

with often quite sudden ﬂuctuations) art, anti-art, and

non-art, all possible conﬂicting styles, schools, forms,

provides a “complacent receptacle, a friendly abyss”

which the radical impact of art, the protest of art against

the established reality is swallowed up. However, cen-

sorship of art and literature is regressive under all cir-

cumstances. The authentic

œuvre

is not and cannot be

a prop of oppression, and pseudo-art (which can be such

a prop) is not art. Art stands against history, withstands

history which has been the history of oppression, for art

subjects reality to laws other than the established ones:

to the laws of the Form which creates a different reality

— negation of the established one even where art depicts

the established reality. But in its struggle with history,

art subjects itself to history: history enters the deﬁni-

tion of art and enters into the distinction between art and

pseudo-art. Thus it happens that what was once art be-

comes pseudo-art. Previous forms, styles, and qualities,

previous modes of protest and refusal cannot be recap-

tured in or against a different society. There are cases

where an authentic

œuvre

carries a regressive political

message — Dostoevsky

is a case in point, But then, the

message is canceled by the

œuvre

itself: the regressive

political content is absorbed [aufgehoben] in the artistic

form: in the work as literature.

Tolerance of free speech is the way of improvement,

of progress in liberation,

not

because there is no objective

truth, and improvement must necessarily be a compro-

mise between a variety of opinions, but because there is

an objective truth which can be discovered, ascertained

only in learning and comprehending that which is and

a phrase or expression in which the same thing is said twice in different words.

subject to or at the mercy of accidents; liable to chance and change.

vitiate:

to make ineffective.

surmount:

overcome (a difﬁculty or obstacle).

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) one of the most inﬂuential French poets of the 19th century.

Edgar Wind,

Art and Anarchy

(New York: Knopf, 1964), p. 101

œuvre:

a work of art, music, or literature (French).

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81) Russian novelist.

contingent:

ERBERT

ARCUSE

Repressive Tolerance

that which can be and ought to be done for the sake of

improving the lot of mankind. This common and histor-

ical “ought” is not immediately evident, at hand: it has

to be uncovered by “cutting through,” splitting, “break-

ing asunder” (dis-cutio) the given material — separat-

ing right and wrong, good and bad, correct and incorrect.

The subject whose “improvement” depends on a progres-

sive historical practice is each man as man, and this uni-

versality is reﬂected in that of the discussion, which

priori

does not exclude any group or individual. But even

the all-inclusive character of liberalist tolerance was, at

least in theory, based on the proposition that men were

(potential)

individuals

who could learn to hear and see

and feel by themselves, to develop their own thoughts, to

grasp their true interests and rights and capabilities, also

against established authority and opinion. This was the

rationale of free speech and assembly. Universal tolera-

tion becomes questionable when its rationale no longer

prevails, when tolerance is administered to manipulated

and indoctrinated individuals who parrot, as their own,

the opinion of their masters, for whom heteronomy

has

become autonomy.

The

telos

of tolerance is truth. It is clear from the

historical record that the authentic spokesmen of toler-

ance had more and other truth in mind than that of propo-

sitional logic and academic theory. John Stuart Mill

speaks of the truth which is persecuted in history and

which does

not

triumph over persecution by virtue of its

“inherent power,” which in fact has no inherent power

“against the dungeon and the stake.” And he enumerates

the “truths” which were cruelly and successfully liqui-

dated in the dungeons and at the stake: that of Arnold of

Brescia, of Fra Dolcino, of Savonarola, of the Albigen-

sians, Waldensians, Lollards, and Hussites.

Tolerance

is ﬁrst and foremost for the sake of the heretics — the his-

torical road toward

humanitas

appears as heresy: target

of persecution by the powers that be. Heresy by itself,

however, is no token of truth.

The criterion of progress in freedom according to

which Mill judges these movements is the Reformation.

The evaluation is

ex post,

and his list includes opposites

(Savonarola too would have burned Fra Dolcino). Even

the

ex post

evaluation is contestable as to its truth: history

corrects the judgment — too late. The correction does

heteronomy:

autonomy:

not help the victims and does not absolve their execution-

ers. However, the lesson is clear: intolerance has delayed

progress and has prolonged the slaughter and torture of

innocents for hundreds of years. Does this clinch the case

for indiscriminate, “pure” tolerance? Are there historical

conditions in which such toleration impedes liberation

and multiplies the victims who are sacriﬁced to the

status

quo?

Can the indiscriminate guaranty of political rights

and liberties be repressive? Can such tolerance serve to

contain qualitative social change?

I shall discuss this question only with reference to po-

litical movements, attitudes, schools of thought, philoso-

phies which are “political” in the widest sense — affect-

ing the society as a whole, demonstrably transcending

the sphere of privacy. Moreover, I propose a shift in the

focus of the discussion: it will be concerned not only, and

not primarily, with tolerance toward radical extremes,

minorities, subversives, etc., but rather with tolerance to-

ward majorities, toward ofﬁcial and public opinion, to-

ward the established protectors of freedom. In this case,

the discussion can have as a frame of reference only a

democratic society, in which the people, as individuals

and as members of political and other organizations, par-

ticipate in the making, sustaining, and changing policies.

In an authoritarian system, the people do not tolerate —

they suffer established policies.

Under a system of constitutionally guaranteed and

(generally and without too many and too glaring excep-

tions) practiced civil rights and liberties, opposition and

dissent are tolerated unless they issue in violence and/or

in exhortation to and organization of violent subversion.

The underlying assumption is that the established society

is free, and that any improvement, even a change in the

social structure and social values, would come about in

the normal course of events, prepared, deﬁned, and tested

in free and equal discussion, on the open marketplace of

ideas and goods.

Now in recalling John Stuart Mill’s passage, I drew

attention to the premise hidden in this assumption: free

and equal discussion can fulﬁll the function attributed to

it only if it is

rational

— expression and development of

independent thinking, free from indoctrination, manipu-

lation, extraneous authority. The notion of pluralism and

countervailing powers is no substitute for this require-

subjection to something else; especially: a lack of moral freedom or self-determination.

self-directing freedom and especially moral independence.

telos:

an ultimate end.

See notes at end for these references.

humanitas:

humanity

ex post:

based on actual results rather than on forecasts.

I wish to reiterate for the following discussion that,

de facto,

tolerance is not indiscriminate and “pure” even in the most democratic society.

The “background limitations” stated earlier in this article (on page 2) restrict tolerance before it begins to operate. The antagonistic structure of

society rigs the rules of the game. Those who stand against the established system are

a priori

at a disadvantage, which is not removed by the

toleration of their ideas, speeches, and newspapers. [Note by Marcuse.]

ERBERT

ARCUSE

Repressive Tolerance

ment. One might in theory construct a state in which a

multitude of different pressures, interests, and authorities

balance each other out and result in a truly general and

rational interest. However, such a construct badly ﬁts a

society in which powers are and remain unequal and even

increase their unequal weight when they run their own

course. It ﬁts even worse when the variety of pressures

uniﬁes and coagulates into an overwhelming whole, inte-

grating the particular countervailing powers by virtue of

an increasing standard of living and an increasing con-

centration of power. Then, the laborer, whose real in-

terest conﬂicts with that of management, the common

consumer whose real interest conﬂicts with that of the

producer, the intellectual whose vocation conﬂicts with

that of his employer ﬁnd themselves submitting to a sys-

tem against which they are powerless and appear unrea-

sonable. The ideas of the available alternatives evapo-

rates into an utterly utopian dimension in which it is at

home, for a free society is indeed unrealistically and un-

deﬁnably different from the existing ones. Under these

circumstances, whatever improvement may occur “in the

normal course of events” and without subversion is likely

to be improvement in the direction determined by the

particular interests which control the whole.

By the same token, those minorities which strive for a

change of the whole itself will, under optimal conditions

which rarely prevail, be left free to deliberate and dis-

cuss, to speak and to assemble — and will be left harm-

less and helpless in the face of the overwhelming ma-

jority, which militates against qualitative social change.

This majority is ﬁrmly grounded in the increasing satis-

faction of needs, and technological and mental coordina-

tion, which testify to the general helplessness of radical

groups in a well-functioning social system.

Within the afﬂuent democracy, the afﬂuent discus-

sion prevails, and within the established framework, it

is tolerant to a large extent. All points of view can be

heard: the Communist and the Fascist, the Left and the

Right, the white and the Negro, the crusaders for arma-

ment and for disarmament. Moreover, in endlessly drag-

ging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is treated

with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misin-

formed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda

rides along with education, truth with falsehood. This

pure toleration of sense and nonsense is justiﬁed by the

democratic argument that nobody, neither group nor indi-

vidual, is in possession of the truth and capable of deﬁn-

ing what is right and wrong, good and bad. Therefore,

all contesting opinions must be submitted to “the peo-

ple” for its deliberation and choice. But I have already

suggested that the democratic argument implies a neces-

sary condition, namely, that the people must be capable

ERBERT

ARCUSE

of deliberating and choosing on the basis of knowledge,

that they must have access to authentic information, and

that, on this basis, their evaluation must be the result of

autonomous thought.

In the Contemporary period, the democratic argu-

ment for abstract tolerance tends to be invalidated by the

invalidation of the democratic process itself. The liberat-

ing force of democracy was the chance it gave to effec-

tive dissent, on the individual as well as social scale, its

openness to qualitatively different forms of government,

of culture, education, work — of the human existence in

general. The toleration of free discussion and the equal

right of opposites was to deﬁne and clarify the different

forms of dissent: their direction, content, prospect. But

with the concentration of economic and political power

and the integration of opposites in a society which uses

technology as an instrument of domination, effective dis-

sent is blocked where it could freely emerge: in the for-

mation of opinion, in information and communication,

in speech and assembly. Under the rule of monopolistic

media — themselves the mere instruments of economic

and political power — a mentality is created for which

right and wrong, true and false are predeﬁned wherever

they affect the vital interests of the society. This is, prior

to all expression and communication, a matter of seman-

tics: the blocking of effective dissent, of the recognition

of that which is not of the Establishment which begins

in the language that is publicized and administered. The

meaning of words is rigidly stabilized. Rational persua-

sion, persuasion to the opposite is all but precluded. The

avenues of entrance are closed to the meaning of words

and ideas other than the established one — established by

the publicity of the powers that be, and veriﬁed in their

practices. Other words can be spoken and heard, other

ideas can be expressed, but, at the massive scale of the

conservative majority (outside such enclaves as the in-

telligentsia), they are immediately “evaluated” (i.e., au-

tomatically understood) in terms of the public language

— a language which determines

a priori

the direction in

which the thought process moves. Thus the process of

reﬂection ends where it started: in the given conditions

and relations. Self-validating, the argument of the dis-

cussion repels the contradiction because the antithesis is

redeﬁned in terms of the thesis. For example, thesis: we

work for peace; antithesis: we prepare for war (or even:

we wage war); uniﬁcation of opposites: preparing for

war

working for peace. Peace is redeﬁned as necessar-

ily, in the prevailing situation, including preparation for

war (or even war) and in this Orwellian form, the mean-

ing of the word “peace” is stabilized. Thus, the basic

vocabulary of the Orwellian language operates as

a pri-

ori

categories of understanding: preforming all content.

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