-[[!meta title="One Dimensional Man"]]
+[[!meta title="One-Dimensional Man"]]
* Author: Hebert Marcuse
repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system
stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of
domination. Technological rationality has become political rationality.
+
+### Freedom in negative terms
+
+ Contemporary industrial civilization demonstrates that it has reached the stage
+ at which “the free society” can no longer be adequately defined in the
+ traditional terms of economic, political, and intellectual liberties, not
+ because these liberties have become insignificant, but because they are too
+ significant to be confined within the traditional forms. New modes of
+ realization are needed, corresponding to the new capabilities of society.
+
+ Such new modes can be indicated only in negative terms because they would
+ amount to the negation of the prevailing modes. Thus economic freedom would
+ mean freedom from the economy—from being controlled by economic forces and
+ relationships; freedom from the daily struggle for existence, from earning a
+ living. Political freedom would mean liberation of the individuals from
+ politics over which they have no effective control. Similarly, intellectual
+ freedom would mean the restoration of individual thought now absorbed by mass
+ communication and indoctrination, abolition of “public opinion” together with
+ its makers. The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of
+ their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their
+ realization. The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation
+ is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete
+ forms of the struggle for existence.
+
+ The intensity, the satisfaction and even the character of human needs, beyond
+ the biological level, have always been preconditioned. Whether or not the
+ possibility of doing or leaving, enjoying or destroying, possessing or
+ rejecting something is seized as a need depends on whether or not it can be
+ seen as desirable and necessary for the prevailing societal institutions and
+ interests. In this sense, human needs are historical needs and, to the extent
+ to which the society demands the repressive development of the individual, his
+ needs themselves and their claim for satisfaction are subject to overriding
+ critical standards.
+
+### The irrationality of the rational
+
+ We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced
+ industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its
+ productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to
+ turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which
+ this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man’s mind
+ and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable.
+
+ [...]
+
+ But in the contemporary period, the technological controls appear to be the
+ very embodiment of Reason for the benefit of all social groups and interests—to
+ such an extent that all contradiction seems irrational and all counteraction
+ impossible.
+
+ No wonder then that, in the most advanced areas of this civilization, the
+ social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual
+ protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal “to go
+ along” appears neurotic and impotent.
+
+ [...]
+
+ But the term “introjection” perhaps no longer describes the way in which the
+ individual by himself reproduces and perpetuates the external controls
+ exercised by his society. Introjection suggests a variety of relatively
+ spontaneous processes by which a Self (Ego) transposes the “outer” into the
+ “inner.” Thus introjection implies the existence of an inner dimension
+ distinguished from and even antagonistic to the external exigencies—an
+ individual consciousness and an individual unconscious apart from public
+ opinion and behavior.3 The idea of “inner freedom” here has its reality: it
+ designates the private space in which man may become and remain “himself.”
+
+ Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological
+ reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and
+ industrial psychology has long since ceased to be confined to the factory. The
+ manifold processes of introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical
+ reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate
+ identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the
+ society as a whole.
+
+### One-dimensionality
+
+ Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas,
+ aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established
+ universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of
+ this universe. They are redefined by the rationality of the given system and of
+ its quantitative extension.
+
+ The trend may be related to a development in scientific method: operationalism
+ in the physical, behaviorism in the social sciences. The common feature is a
+ total empiricism in the treatment of concepts; their meaning is restricted to
+ the representation of particular operations and behavior. The operational point
+ of view is well illustrated by P. W. Bridgman’s analysis of the concept of
+ length:5
+
+ We evidently know what we mean by length if we can tell what the length of any
+ and every object is, and for the physicist nothing more is required. To find
+ the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The
+ concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is
+ measured are fixed: that is, the concept of length involves as much and nothing
+ more than the set of operations by which length is determined. In general, we
+ mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is
+ synonymous with the corresponding set of operations.
+
+ Bridgman has seen the wide implications of this mode of thought for the society
+ at large:6
+
+ To adopt the operational point of view involves much more than a mere
+ restriction of the sense in which we understand ‘concept,’ but means a
+ far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, in that we shall no longer
+ permit ourselves to use as tools in our thinking concepts of which we cannot
+ give an adequate account in terms of operations.
+
+ Bridgman’s prediction has come true. The new mode of thought is today the
+ predominant tendency in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other fields.
+ Many of the most seriously troublesome concepts are being “eliminated” by
+ showing that no adequate account of them in terms of operations or behavior can
+ be given.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Outside the academic establishment, the “far-reaching change in all our habits
+ of thought” is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those
+ exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel
+ those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a
+ one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the
+ spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the
+ contrary, there is a great deal of “Worship together this week,” “Why not try
+ God,” Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of
+ protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no
+ longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism,
+ its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of
+ its healthy diet.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Such limitation of thought is certainly not new. Ascending modern rationalism,
+ in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between
+ extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one
+ hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and
+ functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes’ ego cogitans was to leave the
+ “great public bodies” untouched, and Hobbes held that “the present ought always
+ to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best.” Kant agreed with Locke in
+ justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and
+ in preventing subversion.
+
+### Progress, abolition of labor, totalitarianism
+
+ The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior;
+ consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or
+ meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence,
+ not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and
+ behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought” at large, becomes
+ the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and
+ aspirations.
+
+ “Progress” is not a neutral term; it moves toward specific ends, and these ends
+ are defined by the possibilities of ameliorating the human condition. Advanced
+ industrial society is approaching the stage where continued progress would
+ demand the radical subversion of the prevailing direction and organization of
+ progress. This stage would be reached when material production (including the
+ necessary services) becomes automated to the extent that all vital needs can be
+ satisfied while necessary labor time is reduced to marginal time. From this
+ point on, technical progress would transcend the realm of necessity, where it
+ served as the instrument of domination and exploitation which thereby limited
+ its rationality; technology would become subject to the free play of faculties
+ in the struggle for the pacification of nature and of society.
+
+ Such a state is envisioned in Marx’s notion of the “abolition of labor.” The
+ term “pacification of existence” seems better suited to designate the
+ historical alternative of a world which—through an international conflict which
+ transforms and suspends the contradictions within the established
+ societies—advances on the brink of a global war. “Pacification of existence”
+ means the development of man’s struggle with man and with nature, under
+ conditions where the competing needs, desires, and aspirations are no longer
+ organized by vested interests in domination and scarcity—an organization which
+ perpetuates the destructive forms of this struggle.
+
+ Today’s fight against this historical alternative finds a firm mass basis in
+ the underlying population, and finds its ideology in the rigid orientation of
+ thought and behavior to the given universe of facts. Validated by the
+ accomplishments of science and technology, justified by its growing
+ productivity, the status quo defies all transcendence. Faced with the
+ possibility of pacification on the grounds of its technical and intellectual
+ achievements, the mature industrial society closes itself against this
+ alternative. Operationalism, in theory and practice, becomes the theory and
+ practice of containment. Underneath its obvious dynamics, this society is a
+ thoroughly static system of life: self-propelling in its oppressive
+ productivity and in its beneficial coordination. Containment of technical
+ progress goes hand in hand with its growth in the established direction. In
+ spite of the political fetters imposed by the status quo, the more technology
+ appears capable of creating the conditions for pacification, the more are the
+ minds and bodies of man organized against this alternative.
+
+ The most advanced areas of industrial society exhibit throughout these two
+ features: a trend toward consummation of technological rationality, and
+ intensive efforts to contain this trend within the established institutions.
+ Here is the internal contradiction of this civilization: the irrational element
+ in its rationality. It is the token of its achievements. The industrial society
+ which makes technology and science its own is organized for the
+ ever-more-effective domination of man and nature, for the ever-more-effective
+ utilization of its resources. It becomes irrational when the success of these
+ efforts opens new dimensions of human realization. Organization for peace is
+ different from organization for war; the institutions which served the struggle
+ for existence cannot serve the pacification of existence. Life as an end is
+ qualitatively different from life as a means.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Qualitative change also involves a change in the technical basis on which this
+ society rests—one which sustains the economic and political institutions
+ through which the “second nature” of man as an aggressive object of
+ administration is stabilized.
+
+ [...]
+
+ To be sure, labor must precede the reduction of labor, and industrialization
+ must precede the development of human needs and satisfactions. But as all
+ freedom depends on the conquest of alien necessity, the realization of freedom
+ depends on the techniques of this conquest. The highest productivity of labor
+ can be used for the perpetuation of labor, and the most efficient
+ industrialization can serve the restriction and manipulation of needs.
+
+ When this point is reached, domination—in the guise of affluence and
+ liberty—extends to all spheres of private and public existence, integrates all
+ authentic opposition, absorbs all alternatives. Technological rationality
+ reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better
+ domination, creating a truly totalitarian universe in which society and nature,
+ mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of
+ this universe.
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