One-Dimensional Man

• http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odmcontents.html
• https://libcom.org/files/Marcuse,%20H%20-%20One-Dimensional%20Man,%202nd%20edn.%20(Routledge,%202002).pdf
• https://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/download/marcuse-one-dimensional-man.pdf

Notes

Ch 2

• 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 most powerful, of course, is the danger that

preparation for total nuclear war may turn into its realization: the deterrent also serves to deter efforts to eliminate the need for the deterrent.

• The most powerful, of course, is the danger that

preparation for total nuclear war may turn into its realization: the deterrent also serves to deter efforts to eliminate the need for the deterrent.

• At this stage

of the regimented market, is competition alleviating or intensi- fying the race for bigger and faster turnover and obsolescence? Are the political parties competing for pacification or for At this stage of the regimented market, is competition alleviating or intensi- fying the race for bigger and faster turnover and obsolescence? Are the political parties competing for pacification or for stronger and more costly armament industry? Is the production of "affluence" promoting or delaying the satisfaction of still unfulfilled vital needs?

• And the Enemy is not identical with actual commun-

ism or actual capitalism-he is, in both cases, the real spectre of liberation.

• The rule of

law, no matter how restricted, is still infinitely safer than rule above or without law.

• True, the material and mental

commodities offered may be bad, wasteful, rubbish-but Geist and knowledge are no telling arguments against satisfaction of needs.

• Rejection of the Welfare State on behalf of abstract ideas of

freedom is hardly convincing.

• The growing productivity oflabor creates an increasing surplus-

product which, whether privately or centrally appropriated and distributed, allows an increased consumption-notwithstanding the increased diversion of productivity. As long as this constella- tion prevails, it reduces the use-value of freedom; there is no reason to insist on self-determination if the administered life is the comfortable and even the "good" life

• Late industrial society has increased rather than reduced the

need for parasitical and alienated functions (for the society as a whole, if not for the individual). Advertising, public rela- tions, indoctrination, planned obsolescence are no longer unproductive overhead costs but rather elements of basic production costs

• The question is not whether the communist bureaucracies

would "give up" their privileged position once the level of a possible qualitative change has been reached, but whether they will be able to prevent the attainment of this level. In order to do so, they would have to arrest material and intellectual growth at a point where domination still is rational and profitable, where the underlying population can still be tied to the job and to the interest of the state or other established institutions.

• Indeed, society must first

create the material prerequisites of freedom for all its members before it can be a free society;

• At the present stage of advanced capitalism, organized labor

righdy opposes automation without compensating employ- ment. It insists on the extensive utilization of human labor power in material production, and thus opposes technical pro- gress. However, in doing so, it also opposes the more efficient utilization of capital; it hampers intensified efforts to raise the productivity of labor. In other words, continued arrest of automation may weaken the competitive national and inter- national position of capital, cause a long-range depression, and consequendy reactivate the conflict of class interests.

• Complete automation in the realm of necessity

would open the dimension of free time as the one in which man's private and societal existence would constitute itself. This would be the historical transcendence toward a new civilization.

• As the productive establishments rely on the military for self-

preservation and growth, so the military relies on the corpora- tions "not only for their weapons, but also for knowledge of what kind of weapons they need, how much they will cost, and how long it will take to get them.

• The productive apparatus and the goods and services which it

produces "sell" or impose the social system as a whole.

• And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the

individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls.

• Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves

Chapter 0

• We submit to the peaceful production of the means

of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they defend.

Introduction

• For, quoting Walter Benjamin at the end of One-Dimensional

Man, "It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us."

• M claims - the system's widely touted individualism and freedom are forms

from which individuals need to liberate themselves in order to be truly free.

• MAKE narrative - do stupid shit and become a maker - so you can be plugged right back into the system because you don't have real productive power
• Marcuse slices through the ideological celebra-

tions of capitalism and sharply criticizes the dehumanization and alienation in its opulence and affluence, the slavery in its labor system, the ideology and indoctrination in its culture, the fetish- ism in its consumerism, and the danger and insanity in its military-industrial complex.

• In Marcuse's analysis, "one-dimensional man" has lost, or is

losing, individuality, freedom, and the ability to dissent and to control one's own destiny.

• Marcuse took

over the term "organized capitalism" developed by the Austro- Marxist Rudolf Hilferding to describe the administrative- bureaucratic apparatus which organizes, manages, and stabilizes capitalist society. 16

• In Marcuse' s view, the powers of reason and freedom are declin-

ing in "late industrial society": "With the increasing concen- tration and effectiveness of economic, political, and cultural controls, the opposition in all these fields has been pacified, co-ordinated, or liquidated." Indeed, reason has become an instrument of domination: "It helps to organize, administer, and anticipate the powers that be, and to liquidate the 'power of Negativity.' Reason has identified itself with the reality: what is actual is reasonable, although what is reasonable has not yet become actuality."

• In general, the characteristic themes ofMarcuse's post-Second

World War writings build on the Frankfurt School's analyses of the role of technology and technological rationality, administra- tion and bureaucracy, the capitalist state, mass media and con- sumerism, and new modes of social control, which in their view produced both a decline in the revolutionary potential of the working class and a decline of individuality, freedom, and dem- ocracy, as well as the stabilization of capitalism. In a 19 54 epi- logue to the second edition of Reason and Revolution, Marcuse claims that: "The defeat of Fascism and National Socialism has not arrested the trend towards totalitarianism. Freedom is on the retreat-in the realm of thought as well as in that of society."

• For Marcuse, dialectical thinking involved the ability to abstract one's

perception and thought from existing forms in order to form more general concepts. This conception helps explain the dif- ficulty of One-Dimensional Man and the demands that it imposes upon its reader.

• Uncritical thinking derives its beliefs, norms, and values from

existing thought and social practices, while critical thought seeks alternative modes of thought and behavior from which it creates a standpoint of critique. Such a critical standpoint requires developing what Marcuse calls "negative thinking," which "negates" existing forms of thought and reality from the perspective of higher possibilities. This practice presupposes the ability to make a distinction between existence and essence, fact and potentiality, and appearance and reality. Mere existence would be negated in favor of realizing higher potentialities while norms discovered by reason would be used to criticize and overcome lower forms of thought and social organization. Thus grasping potentialities for freedom and happiness would make possible the negation of conditions that inhibited individuals' full development and realization. In other words, perceiving the possibility of self-determination and constructing one's own needs and values could enable individuals to break with the existing world of thought and behavior. Philosophy was thus to supply the norms for social criticism and the ideal of liberation which would guide social change and individual self- transformation

• Marcuse and Neumann propose, by contrast, integrating philosophy, sociology, and political theory in a theory of social change for the present age.
• In the theses, Marcuse

anticipates many of the key positions of One-Dimensional Man, including the integration of the proletariat, the stabilization of capitalism, the bureaucratization of socialism, the demise of the revolutionary left, and the absence of genuine forces of progressive social change.