"Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left."



Marcuse later expressed his radical ideas through three pieces of writing. He wrote An Essay on Liberation in 1969 celebrating liberation movements such as those in Vietnam, which inspired many radicals. In 1972 he wrote Counterrevolution and Revolt, which argues that the hopes of the 1960's were facing a counterrevolution from the right.

After Brandeis denied the renewal of his teaching contract in 1965, Marcuse devoted the rest of his life to teaching, writing and giving lectures around the world. His efforts brought him attention from the media, making his work more influential. He continued to promote Marxian Theory and progressive socialism, with some of his students helping to spread his ideas. He published his final work The Aesthetic Dimension in 1979 on the role of high art in the process of emancipation from bourgeois society.

Marcuse married three times. His first wife was mathematician Sophie Wertman (1901–1951), with whom he had a son, Peter (born 1928). Herbert's second marriage was to Inge Neumann (1910–1972), the widow of his close friend Franz Neumann (1900–1954). His third wife was Erica Sherover (1938–1988), a former graduate student and forty years his junior, whom he married in 1976. His son Peter Marcuse is currently professor emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University. His granddaughter is the novelist Irene Marcuse and his grandson, Harold Marcuse, is currently a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ten days after his eighty-first birthday, Marcuse died on July 29, 1979, after having suffered a stroke during a visit to Germany. He had spoken at the Frankfurt Römerberggespräche, and was on his way to the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg, on invitation from second-generation Frankfurt School theorist Jürgen Habermas. In 2003, after his ashes were rediscovered in the USA, he was buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer cemetery, Berlin.

Marcuse’s analysis of capitalism derives partially from one of Karl Marx’s main concepts: Objectification., which under capitalism becomes Alienation. Marx believed that capitalism was exploiting humans; that the objects produced by laborers became alienated and thus ultimately dehumanized them to functional objects. Marcuse took this belief and expanded it. He argued that capitalism and industrialization pushed laborers so hard that they began to see themselves as extensions of the objects they were producing. At the beginning of One-Dimensional Man Marcuse writes, “The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment,” meaning that under capitalism (in consumer society) humans become extensions of the commodities that they create, thus making commodities extensions of people's minds and bodies and calling into question the notion of alienation.