One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society [Paperback]

Leftist thinking underwent a dramatic change during the Sixties. After fifteen years of unprecedented prosperity, the class issues that had bedeviled the old left seemed moot. The working class, instead of being immiserated and ripe for revolution, was now contendedly (seemingly) partaking in the general boom and as far from revolution as one could imagine. Already by 1950 C. Wright Mills had coined the term "liberal-labor establishment" to disparage the conservative turn in the labor movement (specifically, the CIO). This seeming repudiation of Marx's predictions fostered a great deal of thinking by members of the Frankfurt School, which included Marcuse, about how marxism should be revised and where it went wrong. One Dimensional Man is Marcuse's brilliant attempt to answer this question.

Why is Marcuse so upset about prosperity? Following in the foot steps of Marx, Marcuse is not simply worried about economic exploitation. His basic concern is liberation--a liberation he sees receeding ever further into the distance as modern industrial society (both capitalist and communist) buys off almost all potential opponents through increased abundance. He views modern society as a treadmill where workers are kept enslaved to their jobs by the desire to purchase newer and ever more products produced by their labor. Rather than seeking for liberation, workers willingly put up with the indignities of working for their capitalist (and socialist) masters in hopes of greater material, as oppossed to spritual abundance.

Yet this society is, at its core, irrational, according Marcuse. Written at during the height of the Cold War, Marcuse views the prepartions for World War III as especially telling of the insanity of the current system.

In the first four chapters Marcuse shows how modern society is able to contain and absorb its contradictions. Marcuse is in despair that the "machine" seems to be inescapeable. With the demise of working class opposition, the "machine" seems capable of carrying on indefinitely; unless, of course, it anihilates itself in a nuclear holocaust. Readers may find chapter 3 especially interesting for its Freudian analysis of modern society.

The next four chapters are devoted to philosophy. Marcuse seeks to show how modern scientific thinking (which made modern society possible) is part of a "historical project" aimed at "domination." As opposed to this "positive thinking" (i.e., postivist) Marcuse proposes "negative thinking," i.e. dialectical thinking which includes the contradictions and negations of the thesis in the form of the antithesis. These chapters can be some rough sledding at points, but Marcuse explicates his ideas well enough that most readers will be able grasp his basic argument.

Finally, after a chapter discussing why liberation is still possible, and how it might be achieved, he wraps up in a conclusion that would seem to be a manifesto for the New Left. Having given up on the working class, Marcuse invests his hopes for revolution in people of color, whether in the U.S. or in the third world.

For understanding why the left took the turn it did during the sixties this book, along with the Port Huron Statement, is a necessity. Before plunging into One Dimensioal Man, however, the reader might do well to first read Reisman's _Lonely Crowd_ and Whyte's _Organization Man_. These books form an essential backdrop to Marcuse's thinking. (He mentions his debt to these works in his preface.)

By pure chance I found an old, tattered copy of this in a used book shop many years ago. I still recall the bizarre sensation of realizing that someone else, much older than me and way ahead of my own experiences, had expressed so accurately, so vividly, a view of society that I understood, and suspect is resonant among many, but perplexing to articulate in a way that isn't flippantly dismissed outright by those who gauge the intrinsic worth of human existence by a poisoned belief structure's merits.

Marcuse's book is a damning examination of the dynamics of 'democratic unfreedom;' technological servitude in the guise of liberty. I remember how the notion struck me, that if such societal/institutional analysis was on target in the early 1960s, just how indoctrinated and delusional must the situation be in our currently perceived time? Precisely.

Thankfully there are a few truly aware pockets of critical thought to be found, but by and large, the Few Big easily control the UNcritical masses through a constant barrage of institutional, cultural and media propaganda(entertainment equals indoctrination)and the strategically manufactured 'values' and exhaulted social practices of this UNreality are then impressed upon one person to the other as the herd 'polices' and indoctrinates via familiarity, example and ostrcism, making opposition to greed and superficiality appear absurd, futile.

Marcuse discusses artistic alienation, how the inherent properties of truth and protest found in artistic expression were defanged:
"The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents. In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. Prior to the advent of this cultural reconciliation, literature and art were essentially alienation, sustaining and protecting the contradiction-the unhappy consciousness of the divided world, the defeated possibilities, the hopes unfulfilled, and the promises betrayed. They were a rational, cognitive force, revealing a dimension of man and nature which was repressed and repelled in reality. Their truth was in the illusion evoked, in the insistence on creating a world in which the terror of life was called up and suspended-mastered by recognition. This is the miracle of the chefd'oeuvre; it is the tragedy, sustained to the last, and the end of tragedy-its impossible solution. To live one's love and hatred, to live that which one *is* means defeat, resignation, and death. The crimes of society, the hell that man has made for man become the actual unconquerable cosmic forces."

It's fascinating when observing various societal/cultural trends, tendencies and practices, to go back and see how it corresponds with Marcuse's prophetic warning...and yes, that is meant quite literally: this book is no less prophetic than Orwell's 1984, and what's more, is far more chilling in its range and scope due to it's realistic exploration of cultural indoctrination, mass delusion and mass denial. In Orwell's novel, 1984, Winston Smith's world is controlled through ideology, yes, but the Big Stick of state violence looms above perpetually, ensuring the perpetuation of an automatized populace.

Marcuse's book, on the other hand, is an irrefutable postulation of the Big Lie, the comfortably horrific ease in which society has become fatally entangled within a stupor of brainwashed self deception, welcomed, enthusiastic exploitation, zombie consumerism run amok, repression and lunatic militarism.

He uses words in a manner of stark clarification, refusing to allow modern society to slip the proverbial noose, and find comfortable, convenient excuses, denials and justifications. As the "Newsweek" review quoted on the cover appropriately exclaims: "A bitter cry of social protest, fortified by uncommon erudition and rationality."

What honest chance for our civilization, for our species, remains in such endless cycles of lunacy? Your hair would stand on end if you knew how many times we've come seconds close to accidental nuclear holocaust. That is reality, and to passively ignore it is to do so at our own peril. I wonder just how few people can actually comprehend that?...what is says about us.

The corporations and the 'Few Big' dominate the globe, and next they want the full militaristic dominance of outer space with their astonishingly psychotic "Star Wars" missle defense plan, which naturally has NOTHING to do with defense and everything to do with parting ways with long standing non proliferation treaties, and of course, global domination. Billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars are pathologically spent on nuclear weapons every year...gee, with the Soviet Union gone, who or what do ya s'pose they're gearing up for when they've already amassed enough weapons to implement race suicide a hundred times over?

This is the crucial point Marcuse is making: the populace is strategically marginalized into apathy and indifference, out and away from the concerns of policy making decisions by vested interests who strive to make huge profits by 'dumbing down' standards of humanity, tricking the public into subsidizing high end military technology, and appealing to base attractions and distractions(greed, superficiality, apathy)in order to secure the compliance of a mass of stunningly indifferent, dumb people who are actively participating in their own degredation and ultimate demise, if only by their inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge what should be flagrantly obvious. We're all guilty of this to some degree. People tend to talk about what matters to them most...or, what they've been conditioned and programmed to care about most, right? So when you *don't* hear many around you discussing these common sense issues, life and death issues, think of the potential consequences for our species. Encourage those around you to read Marcuse's book, it outlines a lot of basic groundwork for what we, if we're to be honest, face today.

Marcuse offers a brilliant critique of advanced industrial society that fuses dialectical thought, Freudian theory, Marxist perspectives, and even a bit of existentialism here and there. It provides a comprehensive critique of our technocratic social order, as it has become, that is reminiscient of the works of later French poststructuralists, like Deleuze and Foucault. Ultimately, Marcuse founders on the contradiction between short-term and long-term interests, explicitly critiquing the Welfare State while implicitly, it could be argued, advocating it. However, "One-Dimensional Man" is the best basis for critique yet, with much of the insight that later emerged in the French intellectual fast track, but without the ambiguity of poststructuralist alternatives. Marcuse is both entertaining and brilliant, a must-read for specialists, and an eye-opening classic for the general educated public.