Books: One-Dimensional Man: Chapter One

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 * Author: Hebert Marcuse
 
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     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.