ABSTRACT
Because Mill was so ambivalent in his sense of what an individual actually amounted to, he could not base his defence of a right to tolerance on any strong concept of individual personality and what aspects of this might be judged to deserve respect. Instead he was obliged to weave nervously together a reasonably plausible argument taken from his philosophy of science about the conditions for developing rational understanding, a strikingly implausible general theory of social change and a decidedly Romantic conception of the cultural mission of the resolutely unpopular, especially among the intelligentsia. 1
John Dunn's elegant formulation admirably summarizes some of the tensions in Mill's thoughts on liberty. It comes as some surprise, however, to turn to Herbert Marcuse's 'Repressive Tolerance', and to find there precisely the same themes attributed by Dunn to Mill - an account of rationality, a conception of change which focuses on the role of ideas, and a stress on the progressive role of enlightened but embattled minorities. This discovery is surprising because Marcuse draws a conclusion starkly opposed to Mill's. Notoriously, Marcuse denounces the 'abstract' or 'false' tolerance which permits the expression of any opinion, and argues for 'liberating tolerance', which 'would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left' (109). 2
The issues raised by Marcuse are important in three respects. First, from a purely historical point of view, his arguments had an important influence upon the American New Left in the late 1960s, and played some part in persuading them to move beyond a comparatively traditional liberal defence of certain rights (as evidenced, for example, by the very name of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964), and peaceful opposition to the Vietnam war, to increasingly violent confrontation with the state. One has to be careful, however, not to fall into Marcuse's trap of overestimating the influence of intellectuals on political events; one does not have to look much further than Mayor Daley of Chicago for an explanation of the Weathermen. Furthermore, Marcuse never endorsed terrorism as a political strategy in the advanced capitalist countries, and strongly condemned such actions as the assassination of Hans-Martin Schleyer by the Red Army Faction in his native Germany.
