One-Dimensional Man

One-Dimensional Man

Cover of the first edition
Author Herbert Marcuse
Country United States
Language English
Subject Capitalism, democracy
Published 1964 (Beacon Press)
Media type Print
Pages 257
ISBN 0-415-07429-0 (2. ed.)

One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society is a 1964 book by philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which Marcuse offers a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the Communist society of the Soviet Union, documenting the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in both these societies, as well as the decline of revolutionary potential in the West. He argues that "advanced industrial society" created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought.[1]

This results in a "one-dimensional" universe of thought and behaviour, in which aptitude and ability for critical thought and oppositional behaviour wither away. Against this prevailing climate, Marcuse promotes the "great refusal" (described at length in the book) as the only adequate opposition to all-encompassing methods of control. Much of the book is a defense of "negative thinking" as a disrupting force against the prevailing positivism.[1]

Marcuse also analyzes the integration of the industrial working class into capitalist society and new forms of capitalist stabilization, thus questioning the Marxian postulates of the revolutionary proletariat and the inevitability of capitalist crisis. In contrast to orthodox Marxism, Marcuse champions non-integrated forces of minorities, outsiders, and radical intelligentsia, attempting to nourish oppositional thought and behavior through promoting radical thinking and opposition. He considers the trends towards bureaucracy in supposedly Marxist countries to be as oppositional to freedom as those in the capitalist West.[1]

One-Dimensional Man was the book that made Marcuse famous.[2]

Summary

Marcuse strongly criticizes consumerism, arguing that it is a form of social control. He suggests that the system we live in may claim to be democratic, but it is actually authoritarian in that a few individuals dictate our perceptions of freedom by only allowing us choices to buy for happiness.[3] In this state of "unfreedom",[4] consumers act irrationally by working more than they are required to in order to fulfill actual basic needs, by ignoring the psychologically destructive effects, by ignoring the waste and environmental damage it causes, and by searching for social connection through material items.[5]

It is even more irrational in the sense that the creation of new products, calling for the disposal of old products, fuels the economy and encourages the need to work more to buy more. An individual loses his humanity and becomes a tool in the industrial machine and a cog in the consumer machine. Additionally, advertising sustains consumerism, which disintegrates societal demeanor, delivered in bulk and informing the masses that happiness can be bought, an idea that is psychologically damaging.

There are other alternatives to counter the consumer lifestyle. Anti-consumerism is a lifestyle that demotes any unnecessary consumption, as well as unnecessary work, waste, etc. But even this alternative is complicated by the extreme interpenetration of advertising and commodification because everything is a commodity, even those things that are actual needs.

Reception

One-Dimensional Man was the book that made Marcuse famous.[2] In a letter to the New York Review of Books, Georg H. Fromm, William Leiss et al. outlined the major themes of the book as follows:[6]

(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.

Critical theorist Douglas Kellner writes in Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism that One-Dimensional Man was one of the most important books of the 1960s and one of the most subversive books of the twentieth century. Despite its importance, it was—due to its subversive nature—severely criticized by both orthodox Marxists and academic theorists of various political and theoretical commitments. Despite its pessimism, represented by the citation of the words of Walter Benjamin at the end of this book that "Nur um der Hoffnungslosen willen ist uns die Hoffnung gegeben"[7] ("It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us"), it influenced many in the New Left as it articulated their growing dissatisfaction with both capitalist societies and Soviet communist societies.[1]

Philosopher Stephen Hicks argues that the book's popularity marked "a strong turn towards irrationality and violence among younger Leftists."[8]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Marcuse, Herbert (1991). "Introduction to the Second Edition". One-dimensional Man: studies in ideology of advanced industrial society. London: Routledge. pp. xi. ISBN 978-0-415-07429-2.
  2. 1 2 McLellan, David (1975). Marx. Glasgow: Fontana. p. 81. ISBN 0-333-63947-2.
  3. ↑ Marcuse, Herbert (1991). "Introduction to the Second Edition". One-dimensional Man: studies in ideology of advanced industrial society. London: Routledge. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-415-07429-2.
  4. ↑ Marcuse, Herbert (1991). "Introduction to the Second Edition". One-dimensional Man: studies in ideology of advanced industrial society. London: Routledge. pp. 1, 7. ISBN 978-0-415-07429-2.
  5. ↑ Marcuse, Herbert (1991). "Chapter 1". One-dimensional Man: studies in ideology of advanced industrial society. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-07429-2.
  6. ↑ Georg H. Fromm, William Leiss, John David Ober, Arno Waserman, and Edward J. Wilkins, et al. In response to: The Threat of History from the February 20, 1964 issue.
  7. ↑ W. Benjamin, Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften, Gesammelte Schriften I.1, Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 201.
  8. ↑ Hicks, Stephen (2004). Understanding Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Scholargy Press, p. 166
  9. ↑ Ushev, Théodore (2008). "Drux Flux". Animated short. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 29 December 2009.
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