Pure Tolerance: A Critique of Criticisms

...Let us consider the contentions of our three critics...

...Consequently they probe to the roots in an effort to uncover the sources and the interests that mold that opinion...

...It needs to be said, if unkindly, that one obvious reason for this is that later critics have recognized the difficulties that earlier critics have had with him...

...Thus, while he would not apply his principle of liberty to children and immature peoples, i.e., those not capable of improvement by free and equal discussion, he would and did apply it to all mature (not necessarily "autonomous") men, and not simply to Marcuse's elites...

...If I am to infer Moore's answer from the content of this essay, it is clearly positive...

...What, finally, is meant by the phrase "prevailing theory...

...Room must therefore be left for the rectification of error and the discovery of additional knowledge...

...But does it follow that "tolerance for different 'interpretations' based on different Weltanschauungen merely befuddles the issue...

...Boston: Beacon Press, 1965...

...They are distressed by the realization that these injustices are maintained by an indifferent, because unseeing, or acquiescent public opinion...

...Of the many things that might be said by way of analysis of or in reply to this argument, I shall limit myself here to three points: (1) Marcuse confuses the meaning of freedom with its conditions and consequences and hence misunderstands tolerance...

...How much more likely is it to prevail when the conditions are not free and equal, when those who propound the error (because it gratifies their passions or promotes their conceived interests) also control the sources of information and media of communication, and where the objects of the debate are neither rational nor autonomous but "conditioned" men...

...It may well be that there are deficiencies in the intellectual marketplace, but the remedy is not to mistake Marcuse's authority for truth...

...For tolerance to be real, it must discriminate instead against falsehood and evil...

...Does his commitment to the truth not require him then to advocate, even agitate for, that doctrine...

...I speak, let it be emphasized again, not of primitive or developing societies, but only of modern industrial societies...

...It is a mark of no mean significance that this process still continues...

...That men and societies might make the "wrong" or "false" choices is clearly possible, but this too is an essential aspect of freedom...

...We must first ask, however, whether it is also true...

...Note...

...and if we consider the abortive Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (which took place after Kecskemeti wrote), the point is underscored that in the modern industrial state, with its specialized technology and advanced systems of weaponry, and with the support of powerful external armies and governments, civil revolt is in the ordinary course of events most unlikely to succeed...

...Now Marcuse may deplore the particular freedoms granted in a specific society...

...11 Take, first, the argument of Robert Paul Wolff...

...Let me first, however, try to state the essentials of Marcuse's argument...

...When Moore says, as he does, that tolerance of conflicting interpretations befuddles the issue, does he mean to suggest that the natural consequences of a serious examination of alternative doctrines will always, or mostly, lead to the adoption of the wrong doctrine...

...If it is replied that theory here means what people say, then we are simply confronted by the usual dichotomy between rhetoric and performance, between espoused or intended conduct and actual behavior...

...Or that "a scientific attitude toward human society [does not] necessarily induce a conservative tolerance of the existing order...

...All this, Marcuse admits, is censorship, "even precensorship," but warranted because the distinction between liberating and repressive teachings and practices "is not a matter of value-preference but of rational criteria...

...To be sure, some consequences of a successful revolution may be praiseworthy, e.g., the institution of certain reforms designed to eliminate or abate injustices and discontents...

...Nor is it a specific historical process, though the specific combination of liberties and restraints may be conditioned by and reflect the values of a particular historical period...

...Moore, however, confident of his "truths," seems prepared to reject the prevailing system and to adopt a revolutionary attitude...

...Nor, again, is freedom limited to rational and autonomous men...

...Traditionally, Mill has been identified with the Left and his critics with the Right...

...Then to whom, and for what purpose, does Marcuse speak...

...Then they might spare their readers, if not themselves, the labor of re-encountering ancient formulations under the guise of a new suit of phrases...

...Freedom is in part a value in itself, in part an instrument of individual development, in part a necessary means of social change...

...Why, then, does he himself foster rather than transcend obscurity...

...Only in democratic states are governments established and changed in response to the free play of conflicting opinions...

...For another, it is questionable that the cultural and human drabness to which Moore presumably objects is, in fact, amenable to correction through political action...

...Briefly, for it is a reiteration and extension of his argument in One-Dimensional Man, it comes to this: We—and by "we" Marcuse means the peoples of all modern industrial societies, whether "democratic" or otherwise—live today in a totalitarian system...

...But Moore does not explicitly say so...

...Surely not by election, for the "conditioned" masses will simply acquiesce in the opinions of their masters...

...But to assure and protect this freedom, restraints must be imposed on those men (and practices) who would interfere with it...

...If, on the other hand, we are to take seriously his plea for fundamental social and political change, for the establishment of "real" tolerance (or, as he says, `official" intolerance), it can only mean that the society is less than totalitarian, that its foundations are not altogether firm, that there are chinks in the monopolistic concentration of power...

...it must preclude harmful ideas and harmful behavior...

...I will have occasion to return to this problem...

...This, certainly, would seem to be one of the more evident lessons of revolutionary movements that have come to power since, say, the Second World War...

...In part, finally, it is because Moore advances an interesting argument of his own...

...Now, the classic case for tolerance has been set forth in John Stuart Mill's celebrated essay On Liberty...

...And expressions like "repressive tolerance," "totalitarian democracy," and "democratic dictatorship," because they mismate rather than synthesize opposites, are self-contradictory and therefore meaningless...

...It is totalitarian because, with the concentration of economic and political power and the use of technology as an instrument of domination, and under the rule of monopolistic media, "a mentality is created for which right and wrong, true and false are predefined wherever they affect the vital interests of the society...

...As a result, democratic pluralism in its concrete application—though not, Wolff adds, in its theory—supports inequality, maintains the status quo, blocks social change...

...In underscoring these objectionable features of contemporary life and in urging their correction, our three critics manifest a concern for Man rather than for rich or powerful or prestigious men...

...They also believe that tolerance, at least in a pluralist society, is the only principle under which diverse groups can live together without resorting either to mutual slaughter or to an authoritarian regime that will impose one group's creed on others...

...It is not easy for one who views the prevailing regime (or regimes) with considerable unhappiness, and who would consequently welcome certain fundamental changes in the social order, to cavil at Moore's revolutionary posture...

...But the first part of Moore's statement does not, alas, confront the obvious question: What if one's discovery of the truth is at the same time the discovery of a correct doctrine or ideal...

...In what sense, then, can the theory or practice of tolerance be termed hypocritical...

...If so, there is obviously a considerable gap not only between Mill's teaching and current (e.g., American) practice, but also, I think, between that teaching and whatever may be said to be the dominant legal and political view (or views) of liberty...

...For it is not Mill and his theory of liberty but the arrangements and practices of modern industrial society that are clearly the issues at stake...

...and the issue is not whether tolerance or a scientific attitude implies acceptance (or, for that matter, rejection) of a particular interpretation or social order—it does not—but whether it implies acceptance of one's right to entertain and advance ideas that defend (or reject) a particular interpretation or social order...

...That many contemporary nations, including the United States, celebrate their own past revolutions is only the more obvious of many instances in point...

...Marcuse and Wolff have indicated their intention of doing so...

...They have fought longest, and perhaps most bitterly, over the most fundamental rule of all—the rule by which the ground rules themselves shall be determined...

...3) Marcuse's solution is contradicted and rendered impossible of attainment by his own analysis...

...It is a tolerance abstractly "pure" but concretely "partisan," for "it actually protects the already established machinery of discrimination...

...The keynote of their argument—on which, despite other differences, they are agreed—is contained in this introductory sentence: "For each of us the prevailing theory and practice of tolerance turned out on examination to be in varying degrees hypocritical masks to cover appalling political realities...

...This requires tolerance, the free exploration and articulation of ideas...

...indeed, it has become the foundation of a flourishing industry...

...From all of which it follows that tolerance is not the freedom to express only the right ideas, but the freedom to express even stupid or loathsome ideas...

...This, it is clear, is the argument of Socrates in the Republic...

...For these and other reasons, it is less than convincing to argue that the principle of equality accurately characterizes the world of public opinion, or that the free play of ideas does in fact afford people a full range of alternatives...

...it is only to suggest that the most scientific evaluation, along with its alleged clear-cut answers, is still but tentative rather than absolute, relative to our assumptions and values, and always subject to revision...

...Now Moore avows his commitment to scientific method...

...Is the theory referred to one that accounts for the practice or one that articulates an ideal to which that practice should conform...

...Once again, therefore, we are back to the central confusion inherent in this criticism: that which equates the principle of tolerance with the restrictive practices of states avowedly committed to that principle...

...He recognizes that as a method it is a procedure for the testing of ideas, from which it follows that no conclusion, including the contents and very conception of science itself, is permanently above and beyond criticism and, possibly, fundamental change...

...Now it is curious that one who, like Wolff, relates ideas in neardeterministic fashion to particular stages of historical development—and I must bypass here the familiar and age-old controversy over this asserted but still unproved thesis—should ignore the fact that earlier theories of tolerance, those of Locke and Milton, for example, and perhaps even of Socrates in the Apology before them, were not merely arguments for a qualified tolerance, but were in a very real sense also arguments consistent with a kind of homogeneous, or largely homogeneous, society...

...It is necessary to say this at the outset because Marcuse has dwelt harshly and at length on the inadequacies, even the Orwellian evils, of ordinary language, yet has also condemned philosophers who employ linguistic analysis in an effort to avoid the pitfalls of meaninglessness...

...They should be banished from the literature...

...And here, it seems to me, the answer is by no means as simple as Moore takes it to be...

...But the dialectic—or, as Marcuse likes to say, the negation of the negation—aims to produce not a conjunction of two opposites but a synthesis which is different from either of them...

...If so, this is not identified...

...As a part-time member of this guild (though one essentially in sympathy with Mill), I can do no other than commend it to the newcomers...

...Mill, of course, essayed both roles, precisely because he saw no necessary incompatibility between them...

...In fact, the normal complement of apathy, contentment, and especially fear —not of sporadic outbreaks but of wholesale violence and disorder— makes it more than unlikely that the masses will venture to disrupt the prevailing system of order by revolutionary means...

...for from what individuals or groups, and for what purpose, will new and diverse ideas then emerge...

...It is the argument of the Grand Inquisitor, both of the Roman Catholic Church and of Stalin's Russia...

...Freedom then becomes an ordered system of liberties and restraints...

...He sought a unity that would contain rather than eliminate diversity...

...and though no one would contend that it is better to have a stupid or misguided will, what distinguishes democratic from nondemocratic governments is that the former rest upon that will even though oligarchic or plutocratic influences may have been powerful in creating it, while the latter reject that will, or at most seek to mold it in support of their policies...

...Spitz...

...This is why Cohen, like Mill, believed that scientific method encourages toleration even as it enables us to differentiate 'beliefs and opinions which have been confirmed from those which have not...

...However this may be, if it is true, as Wolff admits, that the fault is not in the theory of pluralism, or of tolerance, but in the shortcomings of its practice, why does he attack the theory of pure tolerance...

...Democracies rest on the volume, not on the quality, of that will...

...Since in the real world men who are unrestrained come into collision with one another, societies have always and everywhere confronted—and each in its own way resolved— the problem of determining which liberties are worth protecting, for whom, under what conditions, and to what degree, and, as a necessary consequence, which restraints must be imposed...

...Is it Mill's theory of liberty, or what the writers call the doctrine of "pure tolerance...

...Moore properly maintains that historical disputes can often be settled by an appeal to the evidence...

...All of which would seem to be confirmed by Moore himself when he says that "every idea, including the most dangerous and apparently absurd ones, deserves to have its credentials examined...

...But it is not the argument of John Stuart Mill...

...But such men, however, viewed, cannot overturn a firmly established order...

...and not everything that men have thought and done in the course of human history demands repudiation...

...Consider Moore's claim—(a) and (b)—that objective knowledge and objective evaluation of human institutions are possible, thereby yielding correct and unambiguous answers, independent of individual whims and preferences...

...For still another, the applicability of his second and third conditions is more than problematical...

...Thus, as an abstract statement of conditions that require and justify violence to overturn an indecent social order, Moore's argument merits respect...

...This—the securing of responsible government—is not of course the only reason for supporting tolerance...

...Presumably in the sense that the theory is at odds with, and a rationalization of, the practice...

...How, then, can he confuse the principle of tolerance, which at one point he explicitly equates with this scientific procedure, with the acceptance of a particular doctrine or system of order, or assert the possibility not merely of objective knowledge but of objective evaluation, of correct answers to human problems...

...2) Those who believe not merely that there is an objective truth but that, by some mystery of incarnation, it has been given to them to know it, have rarely been willing to respect the claim to such knowledge by others...

...In any case, the fact of will and not its purity or disinterestedness remains the foundation of the democratic state...

...To be sure, such men will constitute a minority, but since all systems—even "democratic democracies"—are in fact controlled by a few, the only questions are whether they are the correct few and whether they act in the interests of the many, in short, whether they are qualified to exercise Marcuse's "democratic educational dictatorship of free men...

...it is never absolute...

...But other consequences are more than likely to be catastrophic...

...To liberate these few, and through them the society as a whole, it is necessary "officially" to practice intolerance—both in speech and in action—against movements from the Right and to be tolerant only of movements from the Left...

...It is the traditional argument of the Right, of all who would usurp the gates of heaven and in the name of a higher morality insist, as with Gerhart Niemeyer, upon "a firm official stand for what is known as right, true, and good...

...Nor, finally, is freedom vindicated only by "good" results, or rightfully "confined by truth...

...One need not accept everything that A. J. Liebling has written in The Press, or that C. Wright Mills has written in The Power Elite, to recognize that freedom of speech, for example, has a different meaning for those wealthy enough to buy a newspaper or to purchase time on radio or television, than it has for the masses of individuals who may wish to express their thoughts but have no effective access to the various media of communication...

...Those who, therefore, in the name of a social revolution, would destroy not merely the conditions that still constrain reason but the principle of tolerance that alone gives reason its chance to prevail, defy the grim lessons of history...

...Why does he not focus instead on the conditions—whether of structure, institutions, attitudes, or all of these combined—that hinder its attainment and impair or delimit its free exercise, and on measures calculated to redress those deficiencies...

...This, I think, can only be affirmed by repudiating the value of reason itself, which Moore does not and of course will not do...

...This is not to deny the relevance and utility of scientific method in the evaluation and solution of such problems...

...Men are fallible and cannot presume to know the whole truth...

...That the rule of tolerance is this fundamental rule is revealed by the fact that dictatorships exclude it and democratic states make it central to their enterprise...

...Otherwise there can emerge only a deadening, even if new, conformity...

...In such circumstances to trust to an abstract but spurious toleration is to yield the cause...

...It ill accords with the purposes of one who professes to respect humanity...

...He may properly object that a formal or legal freedom is in fact negated by informal or social pressures...

...This is one, though not the only, function of law...

...dom, to believe in Man is not to dispel one's doubts about men...

...He is concerned rather to argue three things: (a) that the secular and rational (i.e., scientific) outlook, by which he means neither "technicist science" nor "academic humanism" but a conception of science that embraces "whatever is established by sound reasoning and evidence," is adequate both for understanding and evaluating human affairs...

...Through such "repressive tolerance" alone, Marcuse concludes, we can hope to realize the objective of "true tolerance...

...b) that this outlook is able, in principle, to yield clear-cut answers to important questions, including the question of "when to be tolerant and when tolerance becomes intellectual cowardice and evasion...

...and in doing so they might also learn to distinguish reputable from shoddy merchandise...

...But—and this is what he is most concerned to show—democratic pluralism is no longer adequate to the so-called stage of modernity in which we now find ourselves, and for two reasons primarily: it discriminates against certain disadvantaged social groups or interests—those that are outside the Establishment, that lack "legitimate representation," and that are not consequently given a place or a voice in society—and it discriminates against certain social policies, most directly those that look to the promotion of the common good rather than to the satisfaction of diverse particular interests or claims...

...While Mill clearly preferred a society made up of such men, he was realistic enough to recognize that this could not be a necessary condition of freedom...

...In these terms, to argue against pluralism and for the idea of a common good, as if these were opposing and mutually exclusive principles, is to argue for a self-defeating proposition...

...for it may well be—and I am convinced it is—that democratic pluralism, properly understood and properly institutionalized, is precisely what defines or constitutes the core of the common good...

...but it is not, of course, merely a matter of law, for it involves a complex set of attitudes and appropriate behavior in other realms of social life as well...

...it must cancel the liberal creed of free and equal discussion...

...it has broken the back of orthodoxy...

...That is the judgment I propose in regard to a new book, A Critique of Pure Tolerance, co-authored by Herbert Marcuse, Barrington Moore, and Robert Wolff.* What distinguishes the three essays that constitute this book is not an awareness, and hence transcendence, of these elementary considerations...

...In part, this is because Moore is aware of many of the foregoing considerations and avoids certain elementary confusions...

...To substitute one allegedly right authority for another, to compel or manipulate men to do what Marcuse (or anyone else) is convinced it is proper for them to do, is not to force them to be free...

...So long as three conditions are met—that the prevailing regime is unnecessarily repressive, that a revolutionary situation is in fact ripening, and that through a rough calculus of revolutionary violence one can reasonably believe that the costs in human suffering inherent in the continuation of the status quo outweigh those to be incurred in the revolution and its aftermath—the resort to violence, Moore holds, is justified in the name of freedom...

...Clearly, what constitutes relevant evidence is itself a matter of interpretation...

...In this way men will be governed by truth, and thus, even though forced, they will also be free...

...Neither of these characterizations accurately describes Mill...

...The results may improve or depress the lot of men or societies, but the results are distinct from the principle of tolerance itself...

...Though it should not go unnoted that he here goes counter to his own earlier contention that the intellectual is not to be a partisan in the cause of this, or any other, ideal...

...Consequently, in line with his utilitarian philosophy, he argued for the absolute toleration of ideas and for the maximum toleration of variety in practices...

...nor does he set out a program for its realization...

...it is always an attempt to describe the true reality—our function, Klee somewhere said, is "not to reveal the visible but to make visible the real"—or to prescribe the proper conduct...

...it is not, as in democratic states, an initiating and controlling will...

...Of these the most immediately probable is the suppression of freedom of speech and political opposition...

...Thus the appeal to revolution often invites the destruction of the very principle that makes the revolution possible—the principle of tolerance...

...For he who controls the ground rules is in a position to control the game...

...it is rather to correct those deficiencies...

...He also asserts that Mill defended the freedoms of thought and of action so long as these did not harm others...

...Such free men are not to be identified with any social class...

...It is thus repressive rather than true tolerance...

...And whatever the merits or demerits of a particular social system in observing, or failing to observe, the principle of liberalism in the intellectual sphere, it is necessary—and I believe that even under circumstances that most humanly approximate the ideal, it will remain necessary—always to dis tinguish the fact of public opinion, what may be called the will of the people, from the motives and influences that elicit it...

...but I shall make this suggestion nonetheless...

...To go beyond pluralism is presumably to plead for a new type of homogeneity, and hence for a new kind of orthodoxy...

...117 pp...

...1) Freedom is not, as Marcuse variously affirms it to be, "selfdetermination, autonomy" or "a specific historical process...

...There have been achievements, too, and of these not the least noble has been the slow and painful liberation of the human mind...

...I am aware that Marcuse, as a neo-Hegelian (also a neo-Marxist and neo-Freudian), prides himself on his dialectical thinking...

...Is it some other theory, a doctrine more in keeping with what our three writers are pleased to call the realities of an industrial democracy...

...For it is not uncommon that governments which have survived revolutionary attempts, or which have come to power through revolution, seek with grim determination to eliminate the possibility of further revolutionary efforts...

...Does the intellectual not then become a partisan malgre lui...

...however, though Wolff does not mention it, this is also central to Mill's thought...

...and these, Marcuse insists, are empirical in nature, turning on the real possibilities of attaining human freedom in a particular stage of civilization...

...Marcuse's rejection of pure tolerance is in these terms either a distrust of reason itself or a belief that the conditions under which reason operates today are such as to vitiate the process of reason, and probably both...

...III Barrington Moore's essay, "Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook," is a more sophisticated and relevant effort...

...Those who defend it also contend that tolerance makes for diversity, which is essential to progress and the development of individuality, and thus to the common good...

...Then, if we omit the word "theory" and look only at the word "practice," all that the statement seems to mean is that people do not behave very nicely, which is hardly a piercing insight...

...Not Mill's theory of pure tolerance but the repressive intolerance of our critics is, then, to be condemned...

...And here I must begin with a confession of inadequacy: I have tried, but I am unable to make sense of this statement...

...Clearly, unless one is prepared to say that under no circumstances may men rebel, that men must remain always at the base of even the most burdensome pyramids of unjust power, there are moments in history when the resort to violence is fully warranted...

...and (c) finally, and most importantly, that in the present historical moment it may well behoove us to abandon the "nauseating hypocrisy" of "liberal rhetoric," to refuse to work under the prevailing system, and to consider "the conditions under which the resort to violence is justified in the name of freedom...

...It is noteworthy that Wolff nowhere defines or articulates the nature of his common good...

...Surely not by education, for the rulers control both the educators and their media of communication...

...This ideological cleavage by no means accounts for all of Mill's critics...

...Wolff believes that tolerance is a doctrine that has emerged from and is only appropriate to a particular stage of historical development, namely, the stage of democratic pluralism...

...Surely not by revolution, for who will revolt but "hopelessly dispersed" minorities...

...But a theory is never this...

...If it is true that we live "in a democracy with totalitarian organization" and that this "coordinated society" rests on "firm foundations," how is it humanly possible to change it...

...In part, it is because Moore restates and builds upon a number of Mill's arguments—though he does not, curiously, acknowledge this indebtedness...

...What makes for confusion, instead, is the intrusion of unreason, of prejudices or interests or the operation of weighted conditions that militate against the free play of intellect...

...But freedom as a principle is always a matter of specific liberties and concomitant restraints...

...Further, in their readiness to foster even revolutionary social and political change in an effort to elevate Man from what he presently is to what he ought to be, to what he can be, they identify themselves with an abiding radical tradition...

...They are legitimately of the Left...

...V It would be less than just to conclude these remarks without noting the deep anguish and high moral commitment that animate all three of our critics...

...What makes Mill distinctive, and vitally important, is that while he recognized and even pleaded for a sense of national cohesion and for the pursuit of the public interest, he insisted along with this that it was necessary to respect and to build upon a certain heterogeneity, that progress required both the promotion of the common good and the further ance of individual and group differences...

...3) Finally, and briefly, Marcuse's argument collapses because the reality he portrays renders unattainable, and is in turn contradicted by, the proposals he recommends...

...And they have found, as every sensitive observer of human societies has always found, that within our cities there are still two cities—the city of the rich and the city of the poor, with all that this implies in inequalities of power, of access to privileges, and of opportunities...

...I ask only that they first familiarize themselves with alreadyexisting products...

...Men may differ as to the right order of priorities with respect to such liberties, but some order of priorities there must be...

...But Mill clearly and explicitly distinguished his defense of freedom of thought, which he made an absolute, from freedom of action, which was conditioned by its consequences...

...Ever since Mill published that essay in 1859, the critics of tolerance have been diligently at work refuting him...

...To the question: Who is to draw these distinctions and make these decisions?—the answer (and here Marcuse mistakenly believes he is following Mill) is: Everyone in the maturity of his faculties as a human being, that is, "everyone who has learned to think rationally and autonomously...

...It is rather the marshalling and occasionally the revision of old arguments to attack Mill from what might (for the moment) be called radical perspectives...

...And because they profess to be of the radical Left, Mill stands condemned (in their eyes) as a protagonist of the "wrong" ideas, as a purveyor of a political philosophy that safeguards the status quo...

...But then Moore's indictment should turn not on the principle of tolerance but (as with Wolff) on the social conditions in which tolerance is practiced—conditions that deny reason its day in court or that perpetuate the deficiencies of reasoners...

...They are disturbed, and properly so, by the injustices that disfigure modern societies...

...Thus, in democratic states a high value is given to freedom of political opposition...

...Clearly, the "tolerance" he espouses is intolerance, and so it should be called, lest we abandon all semblance of meaning in our ordinary use of terms...

...2) Marcuse's argument is essentially, though in reverse, the argument of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, of the Right...

...And it is, in all essentials, the argument of Marcuse...

...For error, seductively presented, may prevail over truth even in free and equal discussion...

...some of them—Dorothy Fosdick, J. C. Rees, and Isaiah Berlin, for example—have dealt with Mill and his arguments in terms divorced from such partisanship...

...For such True Believers, allowing others to disseminate what is believed to be true but what in fact is false, is to make possible the adoption of error...

...But if reason itself is not at fault, the rational examination of alternatives cannot lead to befuddlement...

...IV We come now to the most extreme and convoluted, yet in some ways the most intriguing, of our three indictments of pure tolerance: Herbert Marcuse's essay "Repressive Tolerance...

...realities...

...The latter part of this proposition is, of course, standard Millian doctrine, as may be evidenced by Mill's familiar plea (in his essay "On Civilization") that the very cornerstone and object of education "is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intense love of truth...

...For Mill, as for all democrats committed to the liberal idea of free...

...If Moore really admires Morris R. Cohen, whom he cites approvingly, he should have borne in mind Cohen's important distinction between the meaning of what is asserted in verified scientific theory and the degree of certainty of its verification...

...The argument for intolerance, in contrast, is generally put forward by men who mean to have their way but fear that free discussion will "mislead" other men—either because those others are less wise or virtuous than they or because conditions are such as to favor the false doctrine...

...The second dangerous risk is the high improbability of success...

...What, then, can one say of those who, like Marcuse, seek to reverse history by substituting for even the imperfect democracies of our day an intellectual and political authoritarianism that would allegedly act for the people, on the ground that a government that really acts in the interests of the people is better (and more democratic) than a government by the people that may, through ignorance or irrationality, act contrary to those best interests...

...Nor do his conditions take into account certain useful and perhaps necessary distinctions: those, for example, between a class and a national revolution, or between a revolution initiated to seize power and a revolution, like the National Socialist Revolution, imposed after power has been effectively seized...

...2.45...

...What is of interest, then, is not Wolff's critique of Mill—which is, strictly speaking, essentially irrelevant—but the fact that his essay, though it is entitled "Beyond Tolerance," deals less with tolerance than with the conditions that make it ineffective...

...It is rather, as Hobbes properly said, the absence of chains...

...Marcuse cannot have it both ways: either his analysis is correct and his recommendations are unrealizable, or his recommendations are meaningful and appropriate, in which case his analysis cannot stand...

...Whatever the merits or demerits of liberalism as a political and economic doctrine, in the realm of the intellect it should command our supreme allegiance: for it has freed reason from the chains of dogma and superstition...

...But it accounts for a good many of them, including, I venture to think, the three critics who here attack Mill's plea for complete freedom of thought and expression on the ground, so they say, that it prevents, or at the very least militates against, the supremacy of "correct" ideas, that is, "their" ideas...

...it has given us a method by which we may continue to correct our errors and improve our understanding...

...But to the extent that it is the second, his attack is properly directed to those conditions and not to the principle of tolerance...

...But a wise radicalism seeks to overturn not all things, only unjust and harmful things...

...for it is only to such states that our authors apply their arguments...

...Marcuse articulates these "apparently undemocratic means" as follows: They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc...

...Of these inconvenient but ever-present risks...

...To render that will a purer or wiser will is surely a proper concern of democratic (whether liberal or radical) theorists, but this means that they must look not to the removal of that will, or of the process that alone gives it the opportunity to be formed after a consideration of alternatives, but to the correction of those conditions that limit or block the introduction of new and conflicting ideas...

...As we go to press, Messrs...

...Paul Kecskemeti has called attention to the striking fact that, despite all the revolutionary talk of the past century, if we except the Iberian peninsula, there have been no serious attempts at internal revolution in peacetime Europe since 1848-49...

...Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior—thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives...

...It is not self-determination, though a measure of self-determination may be achieved through a particular combination of liberties and restraints...

...Finally, his argument either neglects or gives insufficient weight to certain risks attendant upon all revolutionary efforts...

...It is simply to subject them to Marcuse's (or another's) will...

...nor does he pursue the implications of that conclusion...

...I am not altogether sure whether he misunderstands Mill or intends his readers to misunderstand Mill, but to the extent that I may read him correctly he depicts Mill at one point as an exponent of psychological egoism and at another as an advocate of individual liberty free of all social restraints...

...It may well be, as Marcuse thinks, that in such a situation the alienated man is the "essential" rather than the sick man, and that rebellious men merit applause rather than condemnation...

...If it articulates an ideal, then the theory stands not as a description of what is but as a prescriptive norm, and hence as a criterion of judgment by which those realities are to be judged...

...What they attack, then, is not the prevailing doctrine of liberty, and not always, as will become clear, Mill's doctrine, but doctrines and conditions imputed to Mill and which, in their view, constitute the hallmark of a sorry liberalism...

...This, however, is not the message that Moore is most anxious to communicate...

...Nevertheless, if we apply his (very far from precise) conditions to the modern industrial societies of the Western world, his argument becomes less than conclusive...

...in dictatorships it is not...

...One is the corrupting effects of the revolution itself, which often degrade and alter the characters and principles of the revolutionaries themselves, so that men who emerge at the top after a successful revolution are rarely the same men (even if they retain the same names and carry the same bodies) as those who made the revolution, with all that this implies in the way of altered ends, new hatreds and antagonisms, and new repressions...

...Such men are neither radical nor liberal but, let us use the cruel word, reactionary...

...This is why, despite all the legitimate criticisms that might be (and in the course of the past century have been) made of Mill's philosophy, or of his political and economic teachings, or even of the subsidiary doctrines and incidental observations"in his essay On Liberty, the central argument of that essay remains fundamentally unimpaired...

...If it accounts for the practice, then the theory is not a mask but a revelation of the • A Critique of Pure Tolerance, by Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse...

...It must in fact encourage subversion of the existing order, even if this requires "apparently undemocratic means...

...It is the argument of Rousseau in the Social Contract...

...Nor does it require undue imagination to note that men cannot choose what they do not know exists, or will not choose what they have been taught to believe is evil...

...Is his message really more than a tocsin of futility, a summons to surrender...

...This is a hard teaching, but not for that reason to be avoided...

...they are rather "fighting minorities and isolated groups .. hopelessly dispersed throughout the society...

...and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead...

...Were he to attempt to do so, he might find, as many another writer has found, that in a multi-group society the common good requires not the rejection of pluralism but the determination of the appropriate kinds and degrees of pluralism compatible with a political goal...

...With respect to Mill, the most important of Moore's restatements is the proposition that the intellectual's task is not to agitate or fight for a particular doctrine or ideal "but to find and speak the truth, whatever the political consequences may be...

...What, apart from its strident terminology, does it mean...

...But this means only that the theory (as explanation rather than as prescription) is deficient, that in fact it is not a theory at all but an ideology...

...I have space here to note only two...

...Wolff makes the important point that tolerance should not be confused with neutrality or condescension but should be recognized as a positive good...

...This, by any name, is coercion...

...The criticism actually testifies only to the limitations of those practices, and thus leaves untouched—at least at this level of argument— Mill's plea for freedom of thought and expression...

...For one thing, it is not at all clear that Western industrial societies are so oppressive that violent overthrow of the entire system is justified...

...Otherwise a select group of allegedly wise men will make these choices for them, and this, by whatever name it may be called, is not freedom...

...It is, then, one thing to call for a revolutionary attitude, quite another to call for and expect revolutionary action...

...For truth to prevail, the "right" men must impose it—either by altering the conditions or directing otherwise irrational men, and generally both...

...for what is verified is the theorems, not the postulates, of the theory...

...The three writers criticized in this article have been invited by DISSENT to reply to Mr...

...This discussion will therefore be resumed in a future issue...

...And those who argue for tolerance, even absolute tolerance of ideas, do so because they believe that reason and experience are not calculated to lead men to the wrong decisions...

...In such a situation tolerance "is administered to manipulated and indoctrinated individuals who parrot, as their own, the opinion of their masters...

...For it needs also to be said that much of what is produced by this industry today is neither novel nor imaginative nor important...

...What is required, Wolff concludes, is a new philosophy of community, of the common good, one that goes "beyond pluralism and beyond tolerance...

...Rational persuasion is thus all but precluded...

...This certainty is always a matter of degree...

...It may seem outrageous to suggest that this very title is a contradiction in terms, as are also other phrases employed by Marcuse, for example "totalitarian democracy" and "the democratic educational dictatorship of free men...