This volume advances Marcuse scholarship by presenting seven newly discovered, hitherto unpublished, lectures to students at Vincennes University, a branch of the Sorbonne. Marcuse's critical analysis focuses on core features of American society, its political economy, its culture, and the potential attainability of a free socialist future. These 1974 manuscripts were found in 2014 in the Marcuse archive at the University of Frankfurt by Peter-Erwin Jansen. Jansen and Charles Reitz edited and annotated the lectures for publication. Commentary by Sarah Surak, Detlev Claussen, and Douglas...

This book develops Marcuse’s critique of advanced industrial society and deploys it as a lens to critically analyze contemporary neoliberalism and its structural failures. In the chapters, Marcuse scholars explore three related topics: First, Marcuse’s theory as it applies to the relationship between neoliberalism and authoritarianism, including both the historical relationship between the two and the modern re-emergence of authoritarianism and nationalism in neoliberal states today. Second, a re-examination of the relationship between neoliberal subjectivity and technological rationality...