One-Dimensional Man Read online

  This passage clearly reveals the typically Marcusean tendency, shared by the Frankfurt School, to integrate philosophy, social theory, and politics. While standard academic practice tended to separate these disciplines, Marcuse and his colleagues perceived their interrelation. Thus Marcuse and Neumann read ancient philosophy as containing a theory of social change that was basically determined by a search for the conditions that would produce the highest fulfillment of the individual. They read Plato, therefore, as elaborating “that form of social order which can best guarantee the development of human potentialities under the prevailing conditions.” For Plato, this involves conceptualizing the ideal forms of life and the reconstruction of society according to them: “The radical change of the traditional city state into the platonic state of estates implies a reconstruction of the economy in such a manner that the economic no longer determines the faculties and powers of man, but is rather determined by them.”

  Marcuse and Neumann propose a systematic examination of ancient, medieval, and modern theories of social change with a view toward developing a contemporary theory of society and social change. They note that modern sociology “has severed the intrinsic connection between the theory of society and philosophy which is still operative in Marxism and has treated the problem of social change as a particular sociological question.” They propose, by contrast, integrating philosophy, sociology, and political theory in a theory of social change for the present age.

  A larger, forty-seven-page manuscript, titled “A Theory of Social Change,” presents a more comprehensive analysis of some of the specific theories of social change that Marcuse and Neumann would analyze. This project is extremely interesting within the history of Critical Theory since it shows that in the 1940s there were two tendencies within Critical Theory: (1) the philosophical-cultural analysis of the trends of Western civilization being developed by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and (2) the more practical-political development of Critical Theory as a theory of social change proposed by Marcuse and Neumann. For Marcuse and Neumann, Critical Theory would be developed as a theory of social change that would connect philosophy, social theory, and radical politics—precisely the project of 1930s Critical Theory that Horkheimer and Adorno were abandoning in the early 1940s in their turn toward philosophical and cultural criticism divorced from social theory and radical politics. Marcuse and Neumann, by contrast, were focusing precisely on the issue that Horkheimer and Adorno had neglected: the theory of social change.13

  With their involvement in antifascist work for the U.S. government during the Second World War their work on the project was suspended, and there is no evidence that Marcuse and Neumann attempted to take it up again after the war. During his years of government service—from 1942 until the early 1950s—Marcuse continued to develop his Critical Theory and the themes that would become central to One-Dimensional Man. In a 1946 essay that contained thirty-three theses on the current world situation, Marcuse sketched what he saw as the social and political tendencies of the present moment.14 The text was prepared for the journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which the Institute for Social Research hoped to relaunch. The plan was for Marcuse, Horkheimer, Neumann, Adorno, and others to write articles on contemporary philosophy, art, social theory, politics, and so on, but this project also failed to come to fruition, perhaps because of growing philosophical and political differences between the members of the Institute. The return of Adorno and Horkheimer to Germany to re-establish the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt might also have undermined the project.

  Marcuse’s “Theses,” like his later One-Dimensional Man, contain a Hegelian overview of the contemporary world situation that was deeply influenced by classical Marxism. 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.

  In general, the characteristic themes of Marcuse’s post-Second World War writings build on the Frankfurt School’s analyses of the role of technology and technological rationality, administration and bureaucracy, the capitalist state, mass media and consumerism, 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 democracy, as well as the stabilization of capitalism. In a 1954 epilogue 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.”15 In Marcuse’s view, the powers of reason and freedom are declining in “late industrial society”: “With the increasing concentration 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.”

  Not only Hegel’s hope that reason would shape and control reality, but Marx’s hope that reason would be embodied in a revolutionary class and rational socialist society, had come to naught. The proletariat was not the “absolute negation of capitalist society presupposed by Marx,” and the contradictions of capitalism were not as explosive as Marx had forecast. 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 Economic planning in the state, automatization in the economy, the rationalization of culture in the mass media, and the increased bureaucratization of all modes of social, political, and economic life had created a “totally administered society” that was resulting in “the decline of the individual.”

  By the 1950s, Marcuse thus perceived that the unparalleled affluence of the consumer society and the apparatus of planning and management in advanced capitalism had produced new forms of social administration and a “society without opposition” that threatened individuality and that closed off possibilities of radical social change. In studies of the 1950s, he began sketching out a theory of a new type of technological society which would receive its fullest development in One-Dimensional Man. Marcuse’s analysis is based on a conception of the historical rise of a technological world which overpowers and controls its subjects. In this technological world, Marcuse claims that metaphysics is superseded by technology, in that the previous metaphysical concept of subjectivity, which postulates an active subject confronting a controllable world of objects, is replaced by a one-dimensional technical world where “pure instrumentality” and “efficacy” of arranging means and ends within a pre-established universe is the “common principle of thought and action.” The self-contained and self-perpetuating technological world allows change only within its own institutions and parameters. In this sense, it is “one-dimensional” and “has become a universal means of domination” which congeals into a “second nature, schlechte Unmittelbarkeit (bad immediacy) which is perhaps more hostile and more destructive than primary nature, the pretechnical nature.”17

  There are two ways to read Marcuse’s theory of the one-dimensional technical world and society, which is the primary focus of One-Dimensional Man. One can interpret Marcuse’s theory as a global, totalizing theory of a new type of society that transcends the contradictions of capitalist society in a new order that eliminates individuality, dissent, and opposition. Indeed, there is a recurrent tendency in reading Marcuse to use “one-dimensionality” as a totalizing concept to describe an era of historical development which supposedly absorbs all opposition into a totalitarian, monolithic system. However, Marcuse himself ra
rely, if ever, uses the term “one-dimensionality” (i.e., as a totalizing noun) but instead tends to speak of “one-dimensional” man, society, or thought, applying the term as an adjective describing deficient conditions which he criticizes and contrasts with an alternative state of affairs. In fact, Marcuse introduces “one-dimensional” in his earlier writing as an epistemological concept that makes a distinction between one-dimensional and dialectical thought; in One-Dimensional Man it is extended to describe social and anthropological phenomena. In light of Marcuse’s criticism of “one-dimensional” states of affairs by posing alternatives that are to be fought for and realized, it is wrong to read him solely as a theorist of the totally administered society who completely rejects contradiction, conflict, revolt, and alternative thought and action. In One-Dimensional Man and later works, he rejects a monolithic interpretation of the text as an epic of total domination that in a quasi-Hegelian fashion subsumes everything into a one-dimensional totality; it is preferable to read it as a dialectical text which contrasts one-dimensional with multidimensional thought and behavior.

  Thus, I would propose interpreting “one-dimensional” as conforming to existing thought and behavior and lacking a critical dimension and a dimension of potentialities that transcend the existing society. In Marcuse’s usage the adjective “one-dimensional” describes practices that conform to pre-existing structures, norms, and behavior, in contrast to multidimensional discourse, which focuses on possibilities that transcend the established state of affairs. This epistemological distinction presupposes antagonism between subject and object so that the subject is free to perceive possibilities in the world that do not yet exist but which can be realized. In the one-dimensional society, the subject is assimilated into the object and follows the dictates of external, objective norms and structures, thus losing the ability to discover more liberating possibilities and to engage in transformative practice to realize them. Marcuse’s theory presupposes the existence of a human subject with freedom, creativity, and self-determination who stands in opposition to an object-world, perceived as substance, which contains possibilities to be realized and secondary qualities like values, aesthetic traits, and aspirations, which can be cultivated to enhance human life.

  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. The private space, the dimension of negation and individuality, in which one may become and remain a self, is being whittled away by a society which shapes aspirations, hopes, fears, and values, and even manipulates vital needs. In Marcuse’s view, the price that one-dimensional man pays for satisfaction is to surrender freedom and individuality. One-dimensional man does not know its true needs because its needs are not its own—they are administered, superimposed, and heteronomous; it is not able to resist domination, nor to act autonomously, for it identifies with public behavior and imitates and submits to the powers that be. Lacking the power of authentic self-activity, one-dimensional man submits to increasingly total domination.

  Marcuse is thus a radical individualist who is deeply disturbed by the decline of the traits of authentic individuality that he so highly values. One-dimensional society and one-dimensional man are the results of a long historical erosion of individuality which Marcuse criticized over several decades. One-Dimensional Man can thus be interpreted as an extended protest against the decline of individuality in advanced industrial society. The cognitive costs include the loss of an ability to perceive another dimension of possibilities that transcend the one-dimensional thought and society. Rooting his conception in Hegel’s dialectical philosophy, Marcuse insists on the importance of distinguishing between existence and essence, fact and potential, and appearance and reality. One-dimensional thought is not able to make these distinctions and thus submits to the power of the existing society, deriving its view of the world and mode of behavior from existing practices and modes of thought.

  Marcuse is again reworking here the Hegelian-Marxian theme of reification and alienation, where the individual loses the power of comprehending and transforming subjectivity as it becomes dominated by alien powers and objects. For Marcuse, the distinguishing features of a human being are free and creative subjectivity. If in one’s economic and social life one is administered by a technical labor apparatus and conforms to dominant social norms, one is losing one’s potentialities of self-determination and individuality. Alienated from the powers of being-a-self, one-dimensional man thus becomes an object of administration and conformity.

  The Critical Theory of One-Dimensional Society

  One-Dimensional Man raises the specter of the closing-off, or “atrophying,” of the very possibilities of radical social change and human emancipation. Marcuse depicts a situation in which there are no revolutionary classes or groups to militate for radical social change and in which individuals are integrated into the existing society, content with their lot and unable to perceive possibilities for a happier and freer life. There are tensions in the book, however, between the development of a more general theory of “advanced industrial society” and a more specific critique of contemporary capitalist societies, especially U.S. society, from which he derives most of his examples. Marcuse draws on the social analyses of C. Wright Mills, Daniel Bell, Vance Packard, and critical journalists like Fred Cook for examples of the trends that he sees in contemporary U.S. society. Yet he also draws on European theories, such as French theories of the technological society and the new working class, and he depicts trends in contemporary communist societies that he believes are similar to those in capitalist ones. Thus one can read the book as a general theory of contemporary advanced industrial, or technological, societies, or as a more specific analysis and critique of contemporary U.S. society during a period of affluence and muted social opposition.

  Marcuse combines the perspectives of Marxian theory, the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, French social theory, and American social science to present a critical social theory of the present age. What is striking about the book is Marcuse’s posture of total critique and resolute opposition to contemporary advanced industrial societies, capitalist and communist, in their totality. While he frequently criticizes communist societies, building on his earlier critiques of Soviet Marxism (1958),18 he rejects the Cold War demonology which celebrates capitalist society in contrast to communism. Marcuse perceives destructive tendencies in advanced capitalism’s most celebrated achievements and sees irrationality in its self-proclaimed rationality. He maintains that the society’s prosperity and growth are based on waste and destruction, its progress fueled by exploitation and repression, while its freedom and democracy are based on manipulation. Marcuse slices through the ideological celebrations 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 fetishism in its consumerism, and the danger and insanity in its military-industrial complex. He concludes that despite its achievements, “this society is irrational as a whole. Its productivity is destructive of the free development of human needs and faculties … its growth dependent on the repression of the real possibilities for pacifying the struggle for existence—individual, national and international” (One-Dimensional Man, pp. ix–x).

  For Marcuse, commodities and consumption play a far greater role in contemporary capitalist society than that envisaged by Marx and most orthodox Marxists. Marcuse was one of the first critical theorists to analyze the consumer society through analyzing how consumerism, advertising, mass culture, and ideology integrate individuals into and stabilize the capitalist system. In describing how needs are produced which integrate individuals into a whole universe of thought, behavior, and satisfactions, he distinguishes between true and false needs and describes how individuals can liberate themselves from the prevailing needs and satisfactions to live a freer and happier life. He claims that the system’s widely touted
individualism and freedom are forms from which individuals need to liberate themselves in order to be truly free. His argument is that the system’s much lauded economic, political, and social freedoms, formerly a source of social progress, lose their progressive function and become subtle instruments of domination which serve to keep individuals in bondage to the system that they strengthen and perpetuate. For example, economic freedom to sell one’s labor power in order to compete on the labor market submits the individual to the slavery of an irrational economic system; political freedom to vote for generally indistinguishable representatives of the same system is but a delusive ratification of a nondemocratic political system; intellectual freedom of expression is ineffectual when the media either co-opt and defuse, or distort and suppress, oppositional ideas, and when the image-makers shape public opinion so that it is hostile or immune to oppositional thought and action. Marcuse concludes that genuine freedom and well-being depend on liberation from the entire system of one-dimensional needs and satisfactions and require “new modes of realization … corresponding to the new capabilities of society” (One-Dimensional Man, p. 4).