Herbert Marcuse�One Dimensional Man

“A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technological progress”

— Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man

Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)

• German philosopher and social theorist
• Born in Berlin and studied at the University of Berlin
• Critiqued capitalism, communism, technology, popular culture
• Member of the famous Frankfurt School
• Developed theory for state capitalism and monopoly capitalism
• Critiqued National Socialism
• Studied relationship between philosophy and cultural norms

One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964)

• Marcuse offers broad and wide-ranging critique of Communism (esp. in Soviet Union) and contemporary capitalism
• Writes about the parallel ascendency of new kinds of social repression in US/Europe (capitalism) and USSR (communism)
• Notes the decline of revolutionary potential in the West
• Human needs artificially and falsely predicated by advanced industrial society
• Rather than individuals being free and individual, they are forced into existing systems of production and consumption (through mass media and advertisements)

On False Needs

“We may distinguish between both true and false needs. ‘False’ are those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice. Their satisfaction might be most gratifying to the individual, but this happiness is not a condition which has to be maintained and protected if it serves to arrest the development of the ability (his own and others) to recognize the disease of the whole and grasp the chances of curing the disease. The result then is euphoria in unhappiness. Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong in this category of false needs.”

“One Dimensional” Universe

• Being forced into repressive system of thought and consumption creates “one-dimensional” universe of being 🡪 impacts thought and behavior
• Our very characters and capacity for critical thinking are degraded
• “The Great Refusal” 🡪 response to One Dimensional world and social repression
• It is an opposition to the totalizing and totalitarian methods of social and psychological control

Negative Thinking

• Negative Thinking: not a synonym for “bad” thinking or pessimism
• Consider it in the Hegelian sense: the negation (dialectical)
• Before advanced industrial society: people had two-dimensions of thought
• One: Subject internalized the dominant way of thinking and producing
• Other: Subject possessed an awareness of the inherent contradictions present within the dominant way of being
• With Negative Thinking, a person maintained awareness of how society repressed his TRUE desires and potential
• Dominated materially but had ideological awareness of his domination

In what way is this idea of the suppression of the true self influenced by Freud?

This was the ‘inner’ dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo [could] take root.’ This negative (critical) thinking could serve as the revolutionary thought behind revolutionary action, which would lead to true liberation. One of Marcuse’s main theses is that this second, negative dimension of thought has been ‘whittled down’ in advanced industrial society due to processes such as repressive desublimation” (Nick Lee, “On Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man).

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“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 transcendence 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”

Some have suggested that thought of origins of the term ‘self care’ have some “negative” associations (e.g. “Self care is a radical act), it has now been absorbed into the status quo as a way for people to be more productive under the crushing weight of capitalism. What are some other examples of activities/movements which were at first “negative” but are now co-opted?

Outsiders offer two-dimensionality

• Questions the inevitability of the crisis of capitalism predicted by Marx and Marxists.
• Analyzes the integration of the working classes into capitalist society and one-dimensional thought.
• Must nourish oppositional thought 🡪 not orthodox Marxism
• Draws attention to the non-integration of people in the margins: minorities, outsiders, radicals 🡪 promote radical thinking and opposition to mainstream, one-dimensionality.
• Trend towards bureaucracy in the USSR is as oppositional to freedom as the manifestation of those trends in the capitalist US and Europe.

Marx and Marcuse

Marcuse wants to reimagine Marxism through Freudian theory:

• Id, Ego, Superego
• Superego represents the father, patriarchal institutions, reason, rules, the state
• The Id represents the inner feminine, emotion, intuition, chaos, violence
• Many theorists used Freud, but claimed that the superego was not necessary 🡪 it was forced on us to impose order

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“But these personal father-images have gradually disappeared behind the institutions. With the rationalization of the productive apparatus, with the multiplication of functions, all domination assumes the form of administration”