1st Edition

Ecology and Revolution Herbert Marcuse and the Challenge of a New World System Today

By Charles Reitz Copyright 2019
    208 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    208 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    A timely addition to Henry Giroux’s Critical Interventions series, Ecology and Revolution is grounded in the Frankfurt School critical theory of Herbert Marcuse. Its task is to understand the economic architecture of wealth extraction that undergirds today’s intensifying inequalities of class, race, and gender, within a revolutionary ecological frame. Relying on newly discovered texts from the Frankfurt Marcuse Archive, this book builds theory and practice for an alternate world system. Ecology and radical political economy, as critical forms of systems analysis, show that an alternative world system is essential – both possible and feasible – despite political forces against it. Our rights to a commonwealth economy, politics, and culture reside in our commonworks as we express ourselves as artisans of the common good. It is in this context, that Charles Reitz develops a GreenCommonWealth Counter-Offensive, a strategy for revolutionary ecological liberation with core features of racial equality, women’s equality, liberation of labor, restoration of nature, leisure, abundance, and peace.

    Acknowledgements
    Introduction: Working with a "New" Marcuse
    Chapter 1. The Necessity of a New World System Today:
    Racial Equality, Women’s Equality, Liberation of Labor,
    Restoration of Nature, Leisure, Abundance, and Peace
    Chapter 2. The Trajectory of Marcuse’s Philosophy 
    Chapter 3. The Activist Political Legacy of One-Dimensional Man
    Chapter 4. A Foundation for Ethics in Commonwealth Labor
    Chapter 5. Dialectics Rising: Science, Philosophy, Marxism, Marcuse
    Chapter 6. What Makes Critical Theory Critical? Reclaiming the Critique of Commodity Fetishism
    Chapter 7. Ecology and Revolution
    Epilogue
    Index

    Biography

    Charles Reitz is the author of Philosophy & Critical Pedagogy: Insurrection & Commonwealth (2016); editor of Crisis and Commonwealth: Marcuse, Marx, McLaren (2015); and author of Art, Alienation and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse (2000). He served for several years on the Board of Directors of the International Herbert Marcuse Society.

    Marcuse’s critical theory is as large as the world he was mapping. No one has navigated Marcuse’s oeuvre with greater care and precision than Charles Reitz, who is not only the most accomplished translator of Marcuse’s German works into English but also the most accessible teacher of Marcuse’s radical contributions to contemporary theory. Inspired by the persistence of the Great Refusal and by what Marcuse called "revolutionary ecological liberation," Reitz maintains the necessity of settling for nothing less than human freedom.
    Andrew T. Lamas, University of Pennsylvania

    Charles Reitz is without question one of the most important interpreters of the work of Marcuse writing today, as well as one of the key contemporary philosophers of praxis. His most recent work only underscores this assessment. A brilliant and timely work!
    Peter McLaren, Chapman University

    As we hurtle towards planetary destruction, Reitz provides a revolutionary alternative to global financial capitalism. Building upon the work of Marcuse and Marx, a GreenCommonWealth outlines how we can and must challenge structural oppression through a praxis oriented towards solidarity within a communal humanity.
    Sarah Surak, Salisbury University