One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. page 9

(1) The concept of one-dimensional man asserts that there are other dimensions of human existence in
addition to the present one and that these have been eliminated. It maintains that the spheres of existence
formerly considered as private (e.g. sexuality) have now become part of the entire system of social
domination of man by man, and it suggests that totalitarianism can be imposed without terror.
(2) Technological rationality, which impoverishes all aspects of contemporary life, has developed the material
bases of human freedom, but continues to serve the interests of suppression. There is a logic of domination
in technological progress under present conditions: not quantitative accumulation, but a qualitative leap is
necessary to transform this apparatus of destruction into an apparatus of life.
(3) The analysis proceeds on the basis of negative or dialectical thinking, which sees existing things as
other than they are and as denying the possibilities inherent in themselves. It demands freedom from the
oppressive and ideological power of given facts.
(4) The book is generally pessimistic about the possibilities for overcoming the increasing domination and
unfreedom of technological society; it concentrates on the power of the present establishment to contain and
repulse all alternatives to the status quo.

1: New forms of Control

- Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of
socially necessary but painful performances page 3
- Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their
basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the
individuals through the way in which it is organized. page 4
- Reducing opposition to discussion and promotion of alternative policies.
- Possibility of fully technologised society allowing the possibility of true freedom from work.
- Economic system of production and distribution with manipulation of needs by vested interests = form
of totalitarianism, locked into the system.
- The machine of governments with socio-economic oversight of the system mechanisation of the
machine might however prove to be a potential basis of new freedom for man.
- New modes of realisation for liberty needed because new capabilities in society.
- New modes indicated in negative terms because they amount to negation of the prevailing modes.
- Economic freedom = freedom from the economy, from being controlled by economic forces and
relationships; freedom from the daily struggle for existence, from earning a living
- Political freedom = liberation from politics over which have no effective control.
- Intellectual freedom = restoration of individual thought absorbed by mass communication and
indoctrination, abolition of public opinion.
- False needs : products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression.
- The optimal goal is the replacement of false needs by true ones, the abandonment of repressive
satisfaction page 9
- The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which
demand liberation- liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable--while it
sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society.
- Here, the social controls exact the overwhelming need for the production and consumption of waste;
- the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity;
- the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefication;
- the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as
- free competition at administered prices,
- a free press which censors itself,
- free choice between brands and gadgets.
- Efficacy of control thoruhg poltiical elites and consumer-culture to placate the masses with freedom
justified throuhg false needs.
- Flattening out of contrast/conlfict between satisfied and unsatisfied needs the collectvie assimliation of
different peoples across class and race lines to mass media serving hte establishment.
- Introjection, psychological unconscious adoption, in which the outer of the Ego (self) transposes into the
inner.
- The private space of the inner has been whittled down by technological reality.
- Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual.
- Mimesis immediate identifiaction of the invidiual with his society and throuhg it, wtih the society as
a whole.
- Immediate/automoic idenitifaciton of the invidiual with society in high industrial civilisation with new
immediacY
- This is the product of sophisticated, scientific management and organisation.
- inner dimnesion of mind, in which opposition to status quo can take root, is whittled down.
- The loss of this dimension, power of negative thinking (the critical power of Reason) is at home, is
ideological counterpart to material prrocess of industrial society.
- Process wehre industrial soceity silences and reconciels opposition.
- Impact of progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life and to dynamic capability of
producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life.
- Efficiecny of system blunts invidiuals recognition that it containts no facts which do not communicate
the rperessive power fo the whole.
- False consciousness of the rationality of progress: causing the internalised self-deception of the
individual, alienation is layered with the inviduals self identification and false comfort within the system.
- The operational method in science extending to modern ways of thinking that which is measured
through a positivist outlook and verified is the sum of rationally based interpretations of the world.
- Precludes imagination and ability to think beyond the realms of empirical observation (perhaps in ref
to economic systems?)
- One dimensional though ta nd behaviour from the good life
- The reign of such a one- dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the
spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out.
- On the contrary, there is a great deal of "Worship together this week," "Why not try God," Zen,
existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc.
- But such modes of protest and tran- scendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and
no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless
negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.

- One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of
mass information. page 16
- Self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolitisticall repeated become hypontic defintions
or dications.

Totalitarian forms of logic

First World
- Free are the institutions whi ch operate in the Frree world other transcending modes of freedom
are by definition either anarchism, communism, or propaganda.
- "Socialistic" are all encroachments on private enterprises not undertaken by private
enterprise itself (or by government contracts),
- such as universal and comprehensive health insurance,
- or the protection of nature from all too sweeping commercialization,
- or the establishment of public of services which may hurt private profit.

Second World
- Freedom = way of life instituted by communist regime.
- All other modes of freedom = capitalistic, revisionsit, leiftist sectaraianism.
- In both camps, non operational ideas are non-behavioural and subversive.
- The movement of thought is stopped at barriers which appear as the limits of Reason itself.
- "Progress" is not a neutral term; it moves toward specific ends, and these ends are defined by the
possibilities ofameliorat- ing the human condition. Advanced industrial society is approaching the stage
where continued progress would demand the radical subversion of the prevailing direction and organiza-
tion of progress. This stage would be reached when material production (including the necessary services)
becomes auto- mated to the extent that all vital needs can be satisfied while necessary labor time is reduced
to marginal time. From this point on, technical progress would transcend the realm of neces- sity, where it
served as the instrument of domination and exploitation which thereby limited its rationality; technology
would become subject to the free play of faculties in the struggle for the pacification of nature and of
society.
- Technological rationality reveals its political char- acter as it becomes the great vehicle of better
domination, cre- ating a truly totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in
a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe.

2: The Closing of the political universe

- Total mobilisation of society combines features of the Welfare State and the Warfare State.
- Unification of poltiical opposites; bipartisanship of parties over foreign policy, threat of international
communism.
- Government serving the interests of big business.
- Timidity of the German SPD and British Labour party: respectability binding and crsuhing poltiical
polarisations.
- In the Easet, reduction of direct political control testifies to increasing reliance on effectiveness of
technological controls as instruments of domination.
- Strong communist parties in France and Italy:
- Bear witenss to trend of crircumstances adhering to minimum program that rejects revoultion in
favour of the ruels fo teh parliamentary game.
- If they have agreed to work within the framework of the established system, it is not
merely on tactical grounds and as short-range strategy, but because their social base has been weakened
and their objectives altered by the transformation of the capitalist system (as have the objectives of the
Soviet Union which has endorsed this change in policy) .
- These national Communist parties play the historical role oflegal opposition parties "condemned" to be
non-radical.
- They testify to the depth and scope of capitalist integration, and to the conditions which make the
qualitative difference of con- flicting interests appear as quantitative differences within the established
society. page 23
- Incredible cohsion of capitalist society at the time:
- the threat from without
- Mobilised against the threat.
- Mobilisation against the enmy working as stimulus of production and emplyoement; sustaining high
standard of living.
- Conflicts stabilised through growing productivity and threatening nuclear war.
- In advanced capitalism, technical rationality is embodied, in spite of its irrational use, in the productive
apparatus.
- Neither nationalization nor socialization alter by themselves this physical embodiment of technological
rationality; on the contrary, the latter remains a precondition for the socialist development of all
productive forces
- Now it is precisely this new consciousness, this "space within," the space for the
transcending historical practice, which is being barred by a society in which subjects
as well as objects constitute instrumentalities in a whole that has its raison d'etre in
the accomplishments of its overpowering productivity.
- The mechanisation and automation of work extends to the mindless automation of factory workers.
- No longer Marxian notion ofh the physcial expenditure of bodily labor; now the repetative physcial and
mental drudgery of isolating and automating processes, in which physical strength comes from
machines.
- The loss of professional autonomy of the worker once held by his physical labour and intense strain of
effort within conscious enslavement, now the worker is denied the power of naegation BECAUSE HE IS
NO LONGER A MEMBER OF a class set off from the other occuaption groups sassimilating trends of
class and blue/white collar workers in factories in the 1950s, etc.
- Automation indeed appears to be the great catalyst of advanced industrial society.

- The image of the Welfare State sketched in the preceding para- graphs is that of a historical freak
between organized capitalism and socialism, servitude and freedom, totalitarianism and hap- piness.
- Its possibility is sufficiently indicated by prevalent ten- dencies of technical progress, and sufficiently
threatened by explosive forces.
-
- In contemporary communist societies, the enemy without, backwardness, and the legacy of terror
perpetuate the oppressive features of "catching up with and surpassing" the achievements of capitalism.
- The priority of the means over the end is thereby aggravated-a priority which could be broken only if
pacifica- tion is achieved-and capitalism and communism continue to compete without military force,
on a global scale and through global institutions. This pacification would mean the emergence of a
genuine world economy-the demise of the nation state, the national interest, national business together
with their inter- national alliances. And this is precisely the possibility against which the present world is
mobilized:
- The fateful interdependence of the only two "sovereign" social systems in the
contemporary world is expressive of the fact that the conflict between progress and
politics, between man and his masters has become total.
- When capitalism meets the challenge of communism, it meets its own capabilities: spectacular
development of all productive forces after the subordination of the private interests in profitability
which arrest such development.
- When communism meets the challenge of capitalism, it too meets its own capabilities: spectacular
comforts, liberties, and alleviation of the burden of life. Both systems have these capabilities distorted
beyond recognition and, in both cases, the reason is in the last analysis the same--the struggle against a
form of life which would dissolve the basis for domination. page 58

Conclusion
- Contrasted with the fantastic and insane aspects of its rationality, the realm of the irrational becomes the
home of the really rational-of the ideas which may "promote the art of life."
- Setting the pace and style of politics, the power of imagination far exceeds Alice in Wonderland in the
manipulation of words, turning sense into nonsense and nonsense into sense.
- To liberate the imagination so that it can be given all its means of expression
presupposes the repression of much that is now free and that perpetuates a
repressive society. page 255
- In this realm, centralized control is rational if it establishes the pre- conditions for meaningful self-
determination. The latter can then become effective in its own realm-in the decisions which involve the
production and distribution of the economic surplus, and in the individual existence.
- The Great Refusal = what Marcuse promotes as a solution, as reached through negative thinking/
dialectics.
- Pessimistic about the future/possibility of change.
Class notes
- welfare-warfare state.
- Critique of a certain type of Marxism.
- Scientific planning
- Marcuse looks to the earlier more authentic Marx looking at alienation.
- Marcuse links capitalism to the repression of sexuality.
- Marcuse a Romantic about objecting reason and technocracy/technology.
- Love of cultural philosophising.
- Expansion of university in 60s in continental Europe and America brought out generational conflict.
- Not a global thinker like Fanon rather he had grown up in period of lefts Eurocentric interwar-period
struggles.
- Desublimation of desires.
- Capitalism = repressive desublimation.
- Ultimate example is advertising.\

dialectical materialism
dialectical materialism, official philosophy of Communism, based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, as elaborated by G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. In theory dialectical materialism is
meant to provide both a general world view and a specific method for the investigation of scientific problems.
The basic tenets are that everything is material and that change takes place through "the struggle of
opposites." Because everything contains different elements that are in opposition, "self-movement"
automatically occurs; the conflict of opposing forces leads to growth, change, and development, according to
definite laws. Communist scientists were expected to fit their investigations into this pattern, and official
approval of scientific theories in the USSR was determined to some extent by their conformity to dialectical
materialism (see Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich). Use of these principles in history and sociology is sometimes
called historical materialism. Under these doctrines the social, political, and intellectual life of society reflect
only the economic structure, since human beings create the forms of social life solely in response to economic
needs. Men are divided into classes by their relations to the means of productionland and capital. The
class that controls the means of production inevitably exploits the other classes in society; it is this class
struggle that produces the dynamic of history and is the source of progress toward a final uniformity.
Historical materialism is deterministic; that is, it prescribes that history inevitably follows certain laws and
that individuals have little or no influence on its development. Central to historical materialism is the belief
that change takes place through the meeting of two opposing forces (thesis and antithesis); their opposition is
resolved by combination produced by a higher force (synthesis). Historical materialism has had many
advocates outside the Communist world.

See G. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism (1958, repr. 1973); A. Spirkin, Dialectical Materialism (1983); I. Yurkovets,
Philosophy of Dialectical Materialism (1984)./BodyText
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/#NegDiaThiSocCha
Marcuse (from SEP)
3.3 Negative (Dialectical) Thinking and Social Change:

In 1941 Marcuse's studies of Marx and Hegel culminated in a book entitled Reason and Revolution: Hegel
and the Rise of Social Theory (1941 [1983]). This book accomplished several things. First, it disclosed the
role of Hegel's most critical, revolutionary, and emancipatory concepts in the development of Marx's critical
philosophy. Secondly, it rescued Hegel from the charge that his social and political philosophy was
conservative and legitimated the oppressive Prussian state. The third great accomplishment, or at least goal,
embodies the first two accomplishments and is perhaps the most important for the formation of Marcuse's
form of critical theory. The Hegelian/Marxian notion of dialectic or what Marcuse will call negative
thinking becomes a central element in Marcuse's critical theory. In part, Reason and Revolution is not an
attempt to rescue Hegel, but rather, it is an attempt to rescue dialectical or negative thinking. Marcuse makes
this clear in a new preface to the 1960 edition of the book. The new preface entitled A Note on Dialectic
can actually stand on its own as a guide to reading and understanding Marcuse. Marcuse begins with the
claim that this book is an attempt to rescue a form of thinking or a mental faculty which is in danger of being
obliterated (Marcuse 1960: vii).
The purpose of dialectical or negative thinking is to expose and then overcome
by revolutionary action the contradictions by which advanced industrial
societies are constituted. The problem of concealment occurs here because not only does society
produce contradictions and the forms of domination that come with them, it also produces the social and
psychological mechanisms that conceal these contradictions. An example of a social contradiction is the co-
existence of the growth of national wealth and poverty at the same time. Those who own, control, and
influence the means of production (the minority) grow richer while the workers (the minority) grow poorer.
The idea that the unbridled attempt by the rich to become richer will somehow allow their wealth to trickle
down so that all will benefit has been proven false as the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow.
However, the trickle down ideology is still very effective. The capitalist belief that unbridled competition is
good for everyone conceals the goal of purging society of competition by allowing large corporations to buy
out their competition.
In this situation, the worker, through her labor does not become a free and rational subject, but rather, an
object to be used by the economic system, a system that is a human creation, but over which the worker has
no control. In the capitalist system, the worker is used as an object for the sake of production while not
reaping the full benefits of production. In such a situation the worker is not able to actualize his or her
potential as a free and rational human being but is instead reduced to a life of toil for the sake of survival.
The existence of the worker puts under erasure his or her essence. The task of dialectical thinking is to bring
this situation to consciousness. Once this situation is brought to consciousness it can be resolved through
revolutionary practice. Thus, Douglas Kellner writes:
The central concepts presented are precisely those of the book's title, reason and revolution. Reason
distinguishes between existence and essence through conceptualizing unrealized potentialities, norms and
ideals that are to be realized in social practice. If social conditions prevent their realization, reason calls for
revolution. (Kellner 1984: 131)
Marcuse's concept of essence is not transcendental but historical. That is, there is no human essence apart
from historical context. Within the context of historical happening, within material existence, what the
human being could potentially be is already present. For example, it seems logical to assert that no human
being would want to spend his or her entire life engaged in alienating labor just to remain in poverty.
Nevertheless, this is precisely the situation in which many human beings find themselves. However, essence is
embedded in this historical appearance insofar as the potential for the worker to be free from exploitation
and alienating toil is present as a real possibility that need only be actualized. In the society wherein the
worker works there is enough wealth (produced by the worker) to free the worker of endless toil. In an essay
entitled The Concept of Essence Marcuse writes: Materialist theory thus transcends the given state of fact
and moves toward a different potentiality, proceeding from immediate appearance to the essence that appears
in it. But here appearance and essence become members of a real antithesis arising from the particular
historical structure of the social process of life (Marcuse 1968b: 67).
The above passage is crucial for understanding the theme of Reason and Revolution and Marcuse's famous
later work One-Dimensional Man (1964) (which will be discussed later). His concept of essence is not static or
transcendental. Essence presents itself as the possibility of a free non-alienating, non-repressive form of life
within a particular historical, social/political structure. Appearance (the present order of things) is in
contradiction to the very possibilities that are produced by the present social reality. For example, the
capitalist mode of production has made it possible for all members of our society to live non-alienating and
fruitful lives. However, many are still in poverty. Dialectical or negative thinking sees this contradiction and
attempts to negate such circumstances.
The concept of negation is best understood by distinguishing between two levels of negation in capitalist
societies. The concept of negation employed by Marcuse is actually a critical response to a prior form of
negation. This prior form of negation will be referred to as negation1 and the response to it as negation2.
Negation1 is the negation of human essence or freedom by an oppressive, repressive socio/economic system.
Here the potential for liberation, self-development, self-determination, the good life, etc are all put under
erasure by various forms of domination. Hence, the human individual is negated. Negation2 refers to the
development of critical, revolutionary consciousness that seeks to negate these oppressive social structures.
The goal of negation2 is liberation (Farr 2009: 8586).
There are many other features of Reason and Revolution that are worth discussing here, especially Marcuse's
critique of positivism. However, these issues will come up again in other works that will be discussed later.
Suffice it to say that at this point Marcuse presents negative thinking as an alternative to what he will later call
one-dimensional thinking. It is through negative thinking and revolution that liberation becomes possible. In
the next section we will examine another possibility for liberation.