An Essay on Liberation

An Essay on Liberation

Cover of the first edition
Author	Herbert Marcuse
Language	English
Subject	Industrial society
Publisher	Beacon Press
Publication date	1969
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	91
ISBN	0-8070-0595-9

An Essay on Liberation is a 1969 book by the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse.

Summary

The author of One-Dimensional Man argues that the time for utopian speculation has come. Marcuse argues that advanced industrial society has rendered the traditional conception of human freedom obsolete, and outlines new possibilities for contemporary human liberation "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,".[1]

Publication history

An Essay on Liberation was first published by Beacon Press in 1969.[2]

Reception

The author Brian Easlea writes that Marcuse, having in the past been attacked by Marxists for his "quite unambiguous indictment of science and perhaps feeling that he had directed too much attention away from the rulers of advanced industrial society", apparently "reversed direction" in An Essay on Liberation by endorsing science and technology as "great vehicles of liberation".[3]

References

1. Marcuse 1969, pp. –vii–x, 3–91.
2. Marcuse 1969, p. iv.
3. Easlea 1981, p. 25.

Bibliography

Books

• Easlea, Brian (1981). Science and Sexual Oppression: Patriarchy's Confrontation with Woman and Nature. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0 297 77894 3.
• Marcuse, Herbert (1969). An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-0595-9.