One-Dimensional Man

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odmcontents.html

Notes

• 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.