path: root/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md

[[!meta title="One-Dimensional Man"]]

* Author: Hebert Marcuse

## Snippets

### Intro

    From the beginning, any critical theory of society is thus confronted with the
    problem of historical objectivity, a problem which arises at the two points
    where the analysis implies value judgments:

    1. the judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can be and ought to
    be made worth living. This judgment underlies all intellectual effort; it is
    the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical)
    rejects theory itself;

    2. the judgment that, in a given society, specific possibilities exist for the
    amelioration of human life and specific ways and means of realizing these
    possibilities. Critical analysis has to demonstrate the objective validity of
    these judgments, and the demonstration has to proceed on empirical grounds. The
    established society has available an ascertainable quantity and quality of
    intellectual and material resources. How can these resources be used for the
    optimal development and satisfaction of individual needs and faculties with a
    minimum of toil and misery? Social theory is historical theory, and history is
    the realm of chance in the realm of necessity. Therefore, among the various
    possible and actual modes of organizing and utilizing the available resources,
    which ones offer the greatest chance of an optimal development?

    [...]

    The “possibilities” must be within the reach of the respective society; they
    must be definable goals of practice. By the same token, the abstraction from
    the established institutions must be expressive of an actual tendency—that is,
    their transformation must be the real need of the underlying population. Social
    theory is concerned with the historical alternatives which haunt the
    established society as subversive tendencies and forces. The values attached to
    the alternatives do become facts when they are translated into reality by
    historical practice. The theoretical concepts terminate with social change.

    But here, advanced industrial society confronts the critique with a situation
    which seems to deprive it of its very basis. Technical progress, extended to a
    whole system of domination and coordination, creates forms of life (and of
    power) which appear to reconcile the forces opposing the system and to defeat
    or refute all protest in the name of the historical prospects of freedom from
    toil and domination. Contemporary society seems to be capable of containing
    social change—qualitative change which would establish essentially different
    institutions, a new direction of the productive process, new modes of human
    existence.

    [...]

    As a technological universe, advanced industrial society is a political
    universe, the latest stage in the realization of a specific historical
    project—namely, the experience, transformation, and organization of nature as
    the mere stuff of domination.

    As the project unfolds, it shapes the entire universe of discourse and action,
    intellectual and material culture. In the medium of technology, culture,
    politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or
    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.