Marcuse and the gospel of hate
Sir: John Sparrow's piece (9 August) is a classic of wilful non-comprehension. It appears to be aimed at two main sectors of the community : students not yet 'converted to Marcuse', and entrenched capitalists who fear him. If the article was meant to dis- suade the former and comfort the latter, he might have spent a little longer on it.
To call Marcuse's philosophy the 'gospel of hate' indicates whose side Mr Sparrow is on. He is on the side of the status quo, at all costs. Marcuse is a testimonial to love— love of good, love of life, of experiment and the consequent discovery of new truths. His hatred is constructive, aimed at the nauseat- ing society in America (and elsewhere) today. Do these sentiments really compose `the nastiest book I have ever read'?
Mr Sparrow's questions about life after the revolution/evolution are old, tired phrases of which every anarchist, revolu- tionary and dreamer is very weary. No one has the answers, they lie in the future actual, to which we are not privy.
The whole tone of the piece is surpris- ingly snide and obnoxious, and in parts ill- informed. For instance, the phrase "'love play and heroism" (so the Penguin text: perhaps a misprint for "heroin"?)' To put love play and heroin in the same phrase, except as an exercise in polarisation, is an absurdity, and to suggest it is to display a simple lack of knowledge on the part of the author. Also, Mr Sparrow's evaluation of Marcuse's prose style is rather like an intel- ligent fifteen-year-old boy's: he seems to drown in the words and formation, and fails adequately to graps the concepts.
A very disappointing, facetious article this is. on a potentially and indeed mani- festly interesting subject.
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