The guidelines are to write a one page single spaced paper based on a reading one chapter in a book. Write your reaction to it by using citations as well. Using the book is key to this assignment. I will provide the text and instructions for the assignment. 

Your reaction memo is a reflection, that ideally works with and questions the reading. It is not a synopsis, summary, review or regurgitation. Your goal should be to engage with the text, not summarizing the text or repeat it in another way. Your presentation may include reading beyond the text or discussion of other sources on this same topic. The best reaction memos link the reading with other concepts discussed in class and integrates the information learned thus far in the course.

Questions to guide your writing: What is the author arguing, and what is your reaction to this argument? How does this information jive with other concepts we have studied, including power, polarity, sovereignty, etc.? What additional information could you seek out to gather more information? What other perspectives would add to this information/reading?

Your memo should include at least 3 questions for discussion

Use endnotes, not footnotes if you need to cite material (including the text). The document should be single spaced with your name, course section and title (if you choose to give it one) centered at the top of the page.

One-Dimensional Man
“In One-Dimensional Man Herbert Marcuse has moved
on to what is the central problem of our civilization—
how to reconcile orginality and spontaneity and all the
creative aspects of our human nature with a prevailing
drive to rationality that tends to reduce all varieties of
temperament and desire to one universal system of
thought and behavior. He does not claim to solve this
problem, but by presenting the alternatives in clear and
critical terms, he makes the choice inevitable to every
socially responsible individual. That is to say, he makes
us realize that the choice is now between the life and
the death of our civilization.”
Herbert Read
“This is a provocative book of fundamental
significance.”
Transaction
“One of the most radical and forceful thinkers of this
time.”
The Nation
“The foremost literary symbol of the New Left.”
The New York Times

Herbert
Marcuse
One-Dimensional Man
Studies in the ideology of
advanced industrial society
With an introduction by Douglas Kellner
London and New York

First published the United Kingdom 1964
by Routledge & Kegan Paul
Second edition published 1991
Reprinted 1994, 1999, 2002
First published in Routledge Classics 2002
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
27o Madison Avenue, New York, NY iooi6
Reprinted 2006, 2007
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor at Francis Group, an informa business
© 1964 Herbert Marcuse
Introduction to second edition © 1991 Beacon Press
Typeset in Joanna by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd,
King’s Lynn, Norfolk
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical,or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 978-0-415-28976-4 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-41 5-28977-1 (pbk)

For Inge

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
by Douglas Kellner xi
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
The Paralysis of Criticism: Society
Without Opposition
PART I One- Dimensional Society
-1 The New Forms of Control 3
2 The Closing of the Political Universe 21
3 The Conquest of the Unhappy
Consciousness: Repressive Desublimation 59
4 The Closing of the Universe of Discourse 87
PART II One-Dimensional Thought
5 Negative Thinking: the Defeated
Logic of Protest

127

VI I I CONTENTS
6 From Negative to Positive Thinking:
Technological Rationality and the
Logic of Domination 147
7 The Triumph of Positive Thinking:
One-Dimensional Philosophy 1 74
PART ill The Chance of the Alternatives
8 The Historical Commitment of Philosophy 207
9 The Catastrophe of Liberation 229
,o Conclusion 251
INDEX 263

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My wife is at least partly responsible for the opinions expressed
in this book. I am infinitely grateful to her.
My friend Barrington Moore, Jr., has helped me greatly by his
critical comments; in discussions over a number of years, he has
forced me to clarify my ideas.
Robert S. Cohen, Arno J. Mayer, Hans Meyerhoff, and David
Ober read the manuscript at various stages and offered valuable
suggestions.
The American Council of Learned Societies, the Louis M.
Rabinowitz Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the
Social Science Research Council have extended to me grants
which greatly facilitated the completion of these studies.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
by Douglas Kellner
Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man was one of the most
important books of the 1960s. 1 First published in 1964, it was
immediately recognized as a significant critical diagnosis of the
present age and was soon taken up by the emergent New Left as
a damning indictment of contemporary Western societies, capit-
alist and communist. Conceived and written in the 1950s and
early 1960s, the book reflects the stifling conformity of the era
and provides a powerful critique of new modes of domination
and social control. Yet it also expresses the hopes of a radical
philosopher that human freedom and happiness could be greatly
expanded beyond the one-dimensional thought and behavior
prevalent in the established society. Holding onto the vision of
liberation articulated in his earlier book Eros and Civilization,’
`For a fuller discussion of the themes, contributions, and influence of One-
Dimensional Man, see Chapters 7-10 of my book Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of
Marxism (London and Berkeley- MacMillan Press and University of California
Press, 1984) .
2 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

xii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
Marcuse, in his critique of existing forms of domination and
oppression, urges that what is be constantly compared with
what could be: a freer and happier mode of human existence.
On one hand, One-Dimensional Man is an important work of
critical social theory that continues to be relevant today as the
forces of domination that Marcuse dissected have become even
stronger and more prevalent in the years since he wrote the
book. In a prospectus describing his work, Marcuse writes:
“This book deals with certain basic tendencies in contemporary
industrial society which seem to indicate a new phase of civil-
ization. These tendencies have engendered a mode of thought
and behavior which undermines the very foundations of the
traditional culture. The chief characteristic of this new mode of
thought and behavior is the repression of all values, aspirations,
and ideas which cannot be defined in terms of the operations
and attitudes validated by the prevailing forms of rationality The
consequence is the weakening and even the disappearance of all
genuinely radical critique, the integration of all opposition in
the established system.”‘
The book contains a theory of “advanced industrial society”
that describes how changes in production, consumption, cul-
ture, and thought have produced an advanced state of conform-
ity in which the production of needs and aspirations by the
prevailing societal apparatus integrates individuals into the estab-
lished societies. Marcuse describes what has become known as
the “technological society,” in which technology restructures
labor and leisure, influencing life from the organization of labor
to modes of thought. He also describes the mechanisms through
which consumer capitalism integrates individuals into its world
of thought and behavior. Rather than seeing these developments
as beneficial to the individual, Marcuse sees them as a threat to
3 Herbert Marcuse, prospectus for One-Dimensional Man, Beacon Press archives, no
date.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION Xiii
human freedom and individuality in a totally administered
society.
Justifying these claims requires Marcuse to develop a critical,
philosophical perspective from which he can criticize existing
forms of thought, behavior, and social organization. Thus, One-
Dimensional Man is also Marcuse’s major philosophical work,
articulating his Hegelian-Marxian concept of philosophy and
critique of dominant philosophical and intellectual currents:
positivism, analytic philosophy, technological rationality, and a
variety of modes of conformist thinking. In this text, he both
explicates his conception of dialectical philosophy and produces
analyses of society and culture which exemplify his dialectical
categories and method. Consequently, One-Dimensional Man pres-
ents a model both of Marcuse’s critical social theory and of his
critical philosophy inspired by his philosophical studies and his
work with the Frankfurt School.’
THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND
ONE-DIMENSIONAL MAN
During the 1920s and early 1930s Marcuse studied with Martin
Heidegger in Freiburg, Germany and intensely appropriated the
works of Hegel, Marx, phenomenology, existentialism, German
idealism, and the classics of the Western philosophical tradition.
While he later broke with Heidegger after the rise of National
Socialism in Germany and Heidegger’s affiliation with the Nazi
party, he was influenced by Heidegger’s critique of Western
philosophy and his attempts to develop a new philosophy. He
followed Heidegger and existentialism in seeking to deal with
the concrete problems of the existing individual and was
On the Frankfurt School, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1973) and Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory, Marxism,
and Modernity (Cambridge and Baltimore: Polity Press and Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989).

xiv INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
impressed with the phenomenological method of Husserl and
Heidegger which attempted to break with abstract philosophical
theorizing and to conceptualize “the things themselves” as they
appeared to consciousness.
In his early works, Marcuse himself attempted to synthesize
Heidegger’s phenomenological existentialism with Marxism,
and in One-Dimensional Man one recognizes Husserlian and
Heideggerian motifs in Marcuse’s critiques of scientific civiliza-
tion and modes of thought. In particular, Marcuse develops a
conception of a technological world, similar in some respects to
that developed by Heidegger, and, like Husserl and Heidegger,
sees technological rationality colonizing everyday life, robbing
individuals of freedom and individuality by imposing techno-
logical imperatives, rules, and structures upon their thought and
behavior.
Marcuse thought that dialectical philosophy could promote
critical thinking. One-Dimensional Man is perhaps Marcuse’s most
sustained attempt to present and develop the categories of the
dialectical philosophy developed by Hegel and Marx. For Mar-
cuse, dialectical thinking involved the ability to abstract one’s
perception and thought from existing forms in order to form
more general concepts. This conception helps explain the dif-
ficulty of One-Dimensional Man and the demands that it imposes
upon its reader. For Marcuse abstracts from the complexity and
multiplicity of the existing society its fundamental tendencies
and constituents, as well as those categories which constitute for
him the forms of critical thinking. This demands that the reader
also abstract from existing ways of looking at society and modes
of thinking and attempt to perceive and think in a new way.
Uncritical thinking derives its beliefs, norms, and values from
existing thought and social practices, while critical thought
seeks alternative modes of thought and behavior from which it
creates a standpoint of critique. Such a critical standpoint
requires developing what Marcuse calls “negative thinking,”

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XV
which “negates” existing forms of thought and reality from the
perspective of higher possibilities. This practice presupposes the
ability to make a distinction between existence and essence, fact
and potentiality, and appearance and reality. Mere existence
would be negated in favor of realizing higher potentialities
while norms discovered by reason would be used to criticize and
overcome lower forms of thought and social organization. Thus
grasping potentialities for freedom and happiness would make
possible the negation of conditions that inhibited individuals’
full development and realization. In other words, perceiving the
possibility of self-determination and constructing one’s own
needs and values could enable individuals to break with the
existing world of thought and behavior. Philosophy was thus to
supply the norms for social criticism and the ideal of liberation
which would guide social change and individual self-
transformation.
It is probably Marcuse’s involvement with the Critical Theory
of the Frankfurt School that most decisively influenced the gen-
esis and production of One-Dimensional Man. After the emergence
of Heidegger’s public support of National Socialism, and just on
the eve of the triumph of the Nazi party, Marcuse had a job
interview with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research,
received a position with them, and joined them in exile after
Hitler’s ascendancy to power. First in Geneva, Switzerland, and
then in New York, where the Institute affiliated with Columbia
University, Marcuse enthusiastically joined in the Institute’s col-
lective attempt to develop a critical theory of society. Along with
the Institute’s director, Max Horkheimer, Marcuse was one of
their philosophy specialists. He began his work with the Institute
by producing a critique of fascist ideology; having turned away
from his former teacher, he now appraised Heidegger’s work as
part of the new tendency toward totalitarian thought that was
dominant in Germany and which threatened the rest of the
world as well.

XVI INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
During the 1930s, Marcuse worked intensively, attempting to
explicate and develop philosophical concepts that would be
most useful for critical social theory. This project involved the
interrogation of the concepts of essence, happiness, freedom,
and, especially, critical reason, which he believed was the central
category of philosophical thought and critique. In each case, he
took standard philosophical categories and provided them with
a materialist base, showing how concepts of essence, for
instance, are directly relevant to concrete human life.’ Under-
standing the essential features of the human being, on this view,
illuminates the potentialities that can be realized by individuals
and the social conditions that inhibit or foster their
development.
This concern with critical reason and Hegelian and Mandan
modes of dialectical thinking is evident in Reason and Revolution
(1941), Marcuse’s first major work in English,’ in which he
traces the rise of modern social theory through Hegel, Marx, and
positivism. Marcuse’s Hegel is a critical dialectical thinker whom
he tries to absolve of responsibility for the totalitarian states with
which Hegel was often associated as a spiritual progenitor. Mar-
cuse claims that Hegel instituted a method of rational critique
that utilized the “power of negative thinking” to criticize
irrational forms of social life. The close connection between
Hegel and Marx and the ways that Marx developed and concret-
ized Hegel’s dialectical method are the focal points of Marcuse’s
interpretation, which remains to this day one of the most
insightful studies of the relation between Hegel and Marx and
the origins of modern social theory.
The contrast between one-dimensional and dialectical think-
ing is made already in his 1930s essays. For Marcuse,
one-dimensional thought and action derive their standards and
s See the essays in Herbert Marcuse, Negations (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
6 Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960).

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION xvii
criteria from the existing society, eschewing transcendent stand-
ards and norms. Critical and dialectical thinking, by contrast,
postulates norms of criticism, based on rational potentials for
human happiness and freedom, which are used to negate exist-
ing states of affairs that oppress individuals and restrict human
freedom and well-being. Dialectical thought thus posits the
existence of another realm of ideas, images, and imagination that
serves as a potential guide for a social transformation that would
realize the unrealized potentialities for a better life. Marcuse
believes that great philosophy and art are the locus of these
potentialities and critical norms, and he decodes the best
products of Western culture in this light.
Throughout the first decade of their period of exile, there was
constant discussion within the Institute for Social Research of
the need for a systematic treatise on dialectics which would lay
out the categories, modes of thought, and method of dialectical
and critical theory.’ Max Horkheimer was especially interested
in this project and consulted with Marcuse, Theodor Adorno,
Karl Korsch, and others concerning how such an ambitious pro-
ject might be developed. In the United States, Horkheimer and
his associates found themselves in an environment in which
scientific and pragmatic modes of thinking were dominant and
dialectics was seen as a sort of obscurantist thinking. Concerned
to establish the importance of dialectical thinking, Horkheimer
and his associates discussed how the great book on dialectics
might be conceived and written.
Marcuse was extremely eager to work on this project with
Horkheimer, who felt himself to be too involved in his work as
director of the Institute to be able to devote sufficient time and
energy to the project. During the 1940s, however, Horkheimer,
Marcuse, and Adorno moved to California where they had an
‘See Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Sauk (Munich: Hanser, 1986), esp.
pp. 338ff.

xviii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
opportunity to devote themselves full time to philosophical
studies. Soon after, following the outbreak of World War Two,
Marcuse went to Washington to work for the Office of Strategic
Services and then the State Department as his contribution to the
fight against fascism. Thus Adorno ended up as Horkheimer’s
collaborator on the project on dialectics, which became their
book Dialectic of Enlightemnent. 8
THE GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF
ONE-DIMENSIONAL MAN
In retrospect, One-Dimensional Man articulates precisely the
Hegelian-Marxian philosophical project that Marcuse began
developing in the 1930s in his work with the Frankfurt School.
In particular, in the sections on “One-Dimensional Thought”
and “The Chance of the Alternatives” Marcuse develops the
modes of critical thinking and ideology critique distinctive of
the Frankfurt School most fully. His analyses here exemplify
Hegelian/Marxian dialectical philosophy both in his relentless
critique of existing modes of what he considers uncritical
thought and in his working out of the categories of critical and
dialectical thinking.
Chapters 1 through 4 of One-Dimensional Man, by contrast, con-
nect with the Frankfurt School’s project of developing a Critical
Theory of contemporary society, which they began producing
in the 1930s. 9 The Frankfurt School critical social theorists were
among the first to analyze the new configurations of the state
and economy in contemporary capitalist societies, to criticize
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorn, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York:
Seabury, 1972; original 1947) .
9 0n the critical social theory of the Frankfurt School, see Kellner, Critical Theory,
Marxism, and Modernity and the essays collected in Stephen Bronner and Douglas
Kellner, eds., Critical Theory and Society. A Reader (New York and London: Routledge,
1989).

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION xix
the key roles of mass culture and communications, to analyze
new modes of technology and forms of social control, to discuss
new modes of socialization and the decline of the individual in
mass society, and—vis-i-vis classical Marxism—to analyze and
confront the consequences of the integration of the working
classes and the stabilization of capitalism for the project of rad-
ical social change Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man is perhaps the
fullest and most concrete development of these themes within
the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory.
One can trace the genesis of the major themes of Marcuse’s
magnus opus in his works from the early 1930s until its publica-
tion in 1964. In essays from the early 1940s, Marcuse is already
describing how tendencies toward technological rationality
were producing a system of totalitarian social control and dom-
ination. In a 1941 article, “Some Social Implications of Modern
Technology,” Marcuse sketches the historical decline of indi-
vidualism from the time of the bourgeois revolutions to the rise
of modern technological society.’ Individual rationality, he
claims, was won in the struggle against regnant superstitions,
irrationality, and domination, and posed the individual in a
critical stance against society. Critical reason was thus a creative
principle which was the source of both the individual’s libera-
tion and society’s advancement. The development of modern
industry and technological rationality, however, undermined the
basis of individual rationality. As capitalism and technology
developed, advanced industrial society demanded increasing
Herbert Marcuse, “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology,” col-
lected in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New
York: Continuum, 1985), pp. 138-62. Marcuse indicates in letters from the
1940s that he was working on a large manuscript criticizing contemporary
forms of thought such as positivism, behaviorism, and other forms of one-
dimensional thought; see the discussion in Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule,
and the collected letters from the period in the Marcuse Archive.
Unfortunately, the manuscript has not yet turned up and may be lost.

XX INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
accommodation to the economic and social apparatus and sub-
mission to increasing domination and administration. Hence, a
“mechanics of conformity” spread throughout the society. The
efficiency and power of administration overwhelmed the indi-
vidual, who gradually lost the earlier traits of critical rationality
(i.e., autonomy, dissent, the power of negation), thus producing
a “one-dimensional society” and “one-dimensional man.”
At the same time, however, Marcuse was working with Franz
Neumann on a project entitled “Theory of Social Change”
which they described as
A historical and theoretical approach to the development of a
positive theory of social change for contemporary society.
The major historical changes of social systems, and the
theories associated with them will be discussed. Particular
attention will be paid to such transitions as those from feudal-
ism to capitalism, from laissez-faire to organized industrial
society, from capitalism to socialism and communism.
A handwritten note, in Marcuse’s writing, on the themes of
the project indicates that he and Neumann intended to analyze
conflicting tendencies toward social change and social cohesion;
forces of freedom and necessity in social change; subjective and
objective factors that produce social change; patterns of social
change, such as evolution and revolution; and the nature of
social change, whether progressive, regressive, or cyclical. They
ultimately intended to develop a “theory of social change for our
society.” A seventeen-page typed manuscript in the Marcuse
Archive, entitled “A History of the Doctrine of Social Change,”
” Herbert Marcuse and Franz Neumann, “Theory of Social Change,”
unpublished text in Marcuse Archive, no date. The Marcuse Archive was
opened in Frankfurt, Germany in October of 1990; it contains a wealth of
unpublished manuscripts, lectures, and letters which will be published in
forthcoming volumes.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
xxi
presents an overview of the project. Marcuse and Neumann open
by writing:
Since sociology as an independent science was not estab-
lished before the igth century, the theory of society up to that
time was an integral part of philosophy or of those sciences
(such as the economic or juristic), the conceptual structure of
which was to a large extent based upon specific philosophical
doctrines. This intrinsic connection between philosophy and
the theory of society (a connection which will be explained in
the text) formulates the pattern of all particular theories of
social change occurring in the ancient world, in the middle
ages, and on the commencement of modern times. One
decisive result is the emphasis on the fact that social change
cannot be interpreted within a particular social science, but
must be understood within the social and natural totality of
human life. This conception uses, to a large extent, psycho-
logical factors in the theories of social change. However, the
derivation of social and political concepts from the “psyche” of
man is not a psychological method in the modern sense but
rather involves the negation of psychology as a special science.
For the Greeks, psychological concepts were essentially ethical,
social and political ones, to be integrated into the ultimate
science of philosophy: 2
This passage dearly reveals the typically Marcusean tendency,
shared by the Frankfurt School, to integrate philosophy, social
theory, and politics. While standard academic practice tended to
separate these disciplines, Marcuse and his colleagues perceived
their interrelation. Thus Marcuse and Neumann read ancient
philosophy as containing a theory of social change that was
” Herbert Marcuse and Franz Neumann, “A History of the Doctrine of Social
Change,” unpublished text in Marcuse Archive, no date.

XXII INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
basically determined by a search for the conditions that would
produce the highest fulfillment of the individual. They read
Plato, therefore, as elaborating “that form of social order which
can best guarantee the development of human potentialities
under the prevailing conditions.” For Plato, this involves con-
ceptualizing the ideal forms of life and the reconstruction of
society according to them: “The radical change of the traditional
city state into the platonic state of estates implies a reconstruc-
tion of the economy in such a manner that the economic no
longer determines the faculties and powers of man, but is rather
determined by them.”
Marcuse and Neumann propose a systematic examination of
ancient, medieval, and modern theories of social change with a
view toward developing a contemporary theory of society and
social change They note that modern sociology “has severed the
intrinsic connection between the theory of society and phil-
osophy which is still operative in Marxism and has treated the
problem of social change as a particular sociological question.”
They propose, by contrast, integrating philosophy, sociology, and
political theory in a theory of social change for the present age.
A larger, forty-seven-page manuscript, titled “A Theory of
Social Change,” presents a more comprehensive analysis of some
of the specific theories of social change that Marcuse and Neu-
mann would analyze. This project is extremely interesting
within the history of Critical Theory since it shows that in the
1940s there were two tendencies within Critical Theory: (1) the
philosophical-cultural analysis of the trends of Western civiliza-
tion being developed by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of
Enlightenment, and (2) the more practical-political development of
Critical Theory as a theory of social change proposed by Marcuse
and Neumann. For Marcuse and Neumann, Critical Theory
would be developed as a theory of social change that would
connect philosophy, social theory, and radical politics—
precisely the project of 1930s Critical Theory that Horkheimer

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
and Adorno were abandoning in the early 1940s in their turn
toward philosophical and cultural criticism divorced from social
theory and radical politics. Marcuse and Neumann, by contrast,
were focusing precisely on the issue that Horkheimer and
Adorno had neglected: the theory of social change. 13
With their involvement in antifascist work for the U.S. gov-
ernment during the Second World War their work on the project
was suspended, and there is no evidence that Marcuse and
Neumann attempted to take it up again after the war. During his
years of government service—from 1942 until the early
1950s—Marcuse continued to develop his Critical Theory and
the themes that would become central to One-Dimensional Man. In a
1946 essay that contained thirty-three theses on the current
world situation, Marcuse sketched what he saw as the social and
political tendencies of the present moment. 14 The text was pre-
pared for the journal Zeitschrift fiir Sozialforschung, which the Insti-
tute for Social Research hoped to relaunch. The plan was for
Marcuse, Horkheimer, Neumann, Adorno, and others to write
articles on contemporary philosophy, art, social theory, politics,
and so on, but this project also failed to come to fruition, per-
haps because of growing philosophical and political differences
between the members of the Institute. The return of Adorno and
Horkheimer to Germany to re-establish the Institute for Social
Research in Frankfurt might also have undermined the project.
13 In The Origins of Negative Dialectics (New York: The Free Press, 1977), Susan
Buck-Morss argues that in the 1930s there were two models and tendencies of
Critical Theory: the attempt by Marcuse, Horkheimer, and others to develop a
Critical Theory of contemporary society and the attempts to develop a radical
theory and cultural criticism developed by T. W. Adorn and Walter Benjamin
The discovery of the manuscripts by Marcuse and Neumann on theories of
social change suggest that there were also two distinct tendencies within
Critical Theory in the 1940s.
14 Herbert Marcuse, unpublished manuscript with no title, dated 1946, in
Marcuse Archive. For a discussion of the manuscript’s history, see Wiggershaus,
Die Frankfurter Schule, pp. 429ff.

xxiv INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
Marcuse’s “Theses,” like his later One-Dimensional Man, contain a
Hegelian overview of the contemporary world situation that was
deeply influenced by classical Marxism. In the theses, Marcuse
anticipates many of the key positions of One-Dimensional Man,
including the integration of the proletariat, the stabilization
of capitalism, the bureaucratization of socialism, the demise of
the revolutionary left, and the absence of genuine forces of
progressive social change.
In general, the characteristic themes of Marcuse’s post-Second
World War writings build on the Frankfurt School’s analyses of
the role of technology and technological rationality, administra-
tion and bureaucracy, the capitalist state, mass media and con-
sumerism, and new modes of social control, which in their view
produced both a decline in the revolutionary potential of the
working class and a decline of individuality, freedom, and dem-
ocracy, as well as the stabilization of capitalism. In a 1954 epi-
logue to the second edition of Reason and Revolution, Marcuse claims
that: “The defeat of Fascism and National Socialism has not
arrested the trend towards totalitarianism. Freedom is on the
retreat—in the realm of thought as well as in that of society.” 15
In Marcuse’s view, the powers of reason and freedom are declin-
ing in “late industrial society”: “With the increasing concen-
tration and effectiveness of economic, political, and cultural
controls, the opposition in all these fields has been pacified,
co-ordinated, or liquidated.” Indeed, reason has become an
instrument of domination: “It helps to organize, administer,
and anticipate the powers that be, and to liquidate the ‘power of
Negativity.’ Reason has identified itself with the reality: what is
actual is reasonable, although what is reasonable has not yet
become actuality.”
Not only Hegel’s hope that reason would shape and control
15 Herbert Marcuse, “Epilogue,” Reason and Revolution, 2d ed. (New York:
Humanities Press, 1954), pp. 433ff.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XXV
reality, but Marx’s hope that reason would be embodied in a
revolutionary class and rational socialist society, had come to
naught. The proletariat was not the “absolute negation of capital-
ist society presupposed by Marx,” and the contradictions of cap-
italism were not as explosive as Marx had forecast. Marcuse took
over the term “organized capitalism” developed by the Austro-
Marxist Rudolf Hilferding to describe the administrative-
bureaucratic apparatus which organizes, manages, and stabilizes
capitalist society. 16 Economic planning in the state, automatiza-
tion in the economy, the rationalization of culture in the mass
media, and the increased bureaucratization of all modes of
social, political, and economic life had created a “totally
administered society” that was resulting in “the decline of the
individual.”
By the 1950s, Marcuse thus perceived that the unparalleled
affluence of the consumer society and the apparatus of planning
and management in advanced capitalism had produced new
forms of social administration and a “society without oppo-
sition” that threatened individuality and that closed off possi-
bilities of radical social change. In studies of the 1950s, he began
sketching out a theory of a new type of technological society
which would receive its fullest development in One-Dimensional
Man. Marcuse’s analysis is based on a conception of the historical
rise of a technological world which overpowers and controls its
subjects. In this technological world, Marcuse claims that meta-
physics is superseded by technology, in that the previous
metaphysical concept of subjectivity, which postulates an active
subject confronting a controllable world of objects, is replaced
by a one-dimensional technical world where “pure instru-
mentality” and “efficacy” of arranging means and ends within a
pre-established universe is the “common principle of thought
‘ 6 Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital (London: Routledge, 1981; originally
published 1910) .

)0(Vi INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
and action.” The self-contained and self-perpetuating techno-
logical world allows change only within its own institutions and
parameters. In this sense, it is “one-dimensional” and “has
become a universal means of domination” which congeals into a
” second nature, schlechte Unmittelbarkeit (bad immediacy) which is
perhaps more hostile and more destructive than primary nature,
the pretechnical nature.””
There are two, ways to read Marcuse’s theory of the one-
dimensional technical world and society, which is the primary
focus of One-Dimensional Man. One can interpret Marcuse’s theory
as a global, totalizing theory of a new type of society that tran-
scends the contradictions of capitalist society in a new order that
eliminates individuality, dissent, and opposition. Indeed, there is
a recurrent tendency in reading Marcuse to use “one-
dimensionality” as a totalizing concept to describe an era of
historical development which supposedly absorbs all opposition
into a totalitarian, monolithic system. However, Marcuse himself
rarely, if ever, uses the term “one-dimensionality” (i.e., as a
totalizing noun) but instead tends to speak of “one-
dimensional” man, society, or thought, applying the term as an
adjective describing deficient conditions which he criticizes and
contrasts with an alternative state of affairs In fact, Marcuse
introduces “one-dimensional” in his earlier writing as an epi-
stemological concept that makes a distinction between one-
dimensional and dialectical thought; in One-Dimensional Man it is
extended to describe social and anthropological phenomena. In
light of Marcuse’s criticism of “one-dimensional” states of
affairs by posing alternatives that are to be fought for and realized,
it is wrong to read him solely as a theorist of the totally adminis-
tered society who completely rejects contradiction, conflict,
1 ‘ Herbert Marcuse, “From Ontology to Technology. Fundamental Tendencies
of Industrial Society,” in Stephen Bronner and Douglas Kellner, eds., Critical
Theory and Society. A Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), p. 122.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XXVII
revolt, and alternative thought and action. In One-Dimensional Man
and later works, he rejects a monolithic interpretation of the text
as an epic of total domination that in a quasi-Hegelian fashion
subsumes everything into a one-dimensional totality; it is
preferable to read it as a dialectical text which contrasts
one-dimensional with multidimensional thought and behavior.
Thus, I would propose interpreting “one-dimensional” as
conforming to existing thought and behavior and lacking a crit-
ical dimension and a dimension of potentialities that transcend
the existing society. In Marcuse’s usage the adjective “one-
dimensional” describes practices that conform to pre-existing
structures, norms, and behavior, in contrast to multidimensional
discourse, which focuses on possibilities that transcend the
established state of affairs. This epistemological distinction pre-
supposes antagonism between subject and object so that the
subject is free to perceive possibilities in the world that do not
yet exist but which can be realized In the one-dimensional soci-
ety, the subject is assimilated into the object and follows the
dictates of external, objective norms and structures, thus losing
the ability to discover more liberating possibilities and to engage
in transformative practice to realize them. Marcuse’s theory
presupposes the existence of a human subject with freedom,
creativity, and self-determination who stands in opposition to
an object-world, perceived as substance, which contains possi-
bilities to be realized and secondary qualities like values, aes-
thetic traits, and aspirations, which can be cultivated to enhance
human life.
In Marcuse’s analysis, “one-dimensional man” has lost, or is
losing, individuality, freedom, and the ability to dissent and to
control one’s own destiny. The private space, the dimension of
negation and individuality, in which one may become and
remain a self, is being whittled away by a society which shapes
aspirations, hopes, fears, and values, and even manipulates vital
needs. In Marcuse’s view, the price that one-dimensional man

XXViii INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
pays for satisfaction is to surrender freedom and individuality.
One-dimensional man does not know its true needs because its
needs are not its own—they are administered, superimposed,
and heteronomous; it is not able to resist domination, nor to act
autonomously, for it identifies with public behavior and imitates
and submits to the powers that be. Lacking the power of authen-
tic self-activity, one-dimensional man submits to increasingly
total domination.
Marcuse is thus a radical individualist who is deeply dis-
turbed by the decline of the traits of authentic individuality that
he so highly values. One-dimensional society and one-
dimensional man are the results of a long historical erosion of
individuality which Marcuse criticized over several decades. One-
Dimensional Man can thus be interpreted as an extended protest
against the decline of individuality in advanced industrial soci-
ety. The cognitive costs include the loss of an ability to perceive
another dimension of possibilities that transcend the one-
dimensional thought and society. Rooting his conception in
Hegel’s dialectical philosophy, Marcuse insists on the import-
ance of distinguishing between existence and essence, fact and
potential, and appearance and reality. One-dimensional thought
is not able to make these distinctions and thus submits to the
power of the existing society, deriving its view of the world and
mode of behavior from existing practices and modes of
thought.
Marcuse is again reworking here the Hegelian-Mandan theme
of reification and alienation, where the individual loses the
power of comprehending and transforming subjectivity as it
becomes dominated by alien powers and objects. For Marcuse,
the distinguishing features of a human being are free and cre-
ative subjectivity. If in one’s economic and social life one is
administered by a technical labor apparatus and conforms to
dominant social norms, one is losing one’s potentialities of self-
determination and individuality. Alienated from the powers of

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION XXIX
being-a-self, one-dimensional man thus becomes an object of
administration and conformity.
THE CRITICAL THEORY OF
ONE-DIMENSIONAL SOCIETY
One-Dimensional Man raises the specter of the closing-off, or “atro-
phying,” of the very possibilities of radical social change and
human emancipation. Marcuse depicts a situation in which there
are no revolutionary classes or groups to militate for radical
social change and in which individuals are integrated into the
existing society, content with their lot and unable to perceive
possibilities for a happier and freer life. There are tensions in the
book, however, between the development of a more general
theory of “advanced industrial society” and a more specific cri-
tique of contemporary capitalist societies, especially U.S. society,
from which he derives most of his examples. Marcuse draws on
the social analyses of C. Wright Mills, Daniel Bell, Vance Packard,
and critical journalists like Fred Cook for examples of the trends
that he sees in contemporary U.S. society. Yet he also draws on
European theories, such as French theories of the technological
society and the new working class, and he depicts trends in
contemporary communist societies that he believes are similar to
those in capitalist ones. Thus one can read the book as a general
theory of contemporary advanced industrial, or technological,
societies, or as a more specific analysis and critique of con-
temporary U.S. society during a period of affluence and muted
social opposition.
Marcuse combines the perspectives of Marxian theory, the
Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, French social theory,
and American social science to present a critical social theory of
the present age. What is striking about the book is Marcuse’s
posture of total critique and resolute opposition to contempor-
ary advanced industrial societies, capitalist and communist, in

)00( INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
their totality. While he frequently criticizes communist societies,
building on his earlier critiques of Soviet Marxism (195 8), 18 he
rejects the Cold War demonology which celebrates capitalist
society in contrast to communism. Marcuse perceives destruc-
tive tendencies in advanced capitalism’s most celebrated
achievements and sees irrationality in its self-proclaimed ration-
ality. He maintains that the society’s prosperity and growth are
based on waste and destruction, its progress fueled by exploit-
ation and repression, while its freedom and democracy are based
on manipulation. Marcuse slices through the ideological celebra-
tions of capitalism and sharply criticizes the dehumanization and
alienation in its opulence and affluence, the slavery in its labor
system, the ideology and indoctrination in its culture, the fetish-
ism in its consumerism, and the danger and insanity in its
military-industrial complex. He concludes that despite its
achievements, “this society is irrational as a whole. Its productiv-
ity is destructive of the free development of human needs and
faculties . . . its growth dependent on the repression of the real
possibilities for pacifying the struggle for existence—individual,
national and international” (One-Dimensional Man, p. xl).
For Marcuse, commodities and consumption play a far greater
role in contemporary capitalist society than that envisaged by
Marx and most orthodox Marxists. Marcuse was one of the first
critical theorists to analyze the consumer society through analyz-
ing how consumerism, advertising, mass culture, and ideology
integrate individuals into and stabilize the capitalist system. In
describing how needs are produced which integrate individuals
into a whole universe of thought, behavior, and satisfactions, he
distinguishes between true and false needs and describes how
individuals can liberate themselves from the prevailing needs
and satisfactions to live a freer and happier life. He claims that
is Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985;
original 1958).

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION )ood
the system’s widely touted individualism and freedom are forms
from which individuals need to liberate themselves in order to
be truly free. His argument is that the system’s much lauded
economic, political, and social freedoms, formerly a source of
social progress, lose their progressive function and become sub-
tle instruments of domination which serve to keep individuals
in bondage to the system that they strengthen and perpetuate.
For example, economic freedom to sell one’s labor power in
order to compete on the labor market submits the individual to
the slavery of an irrational economic system; political freedom
to vote for generally indistinguishable representatives of the
same system is but a delusive ratification of a nondemocratic
political system; intellectual freedom of expression is ineffectual
when the media either co-opt and defuse, or distort and sup-
press, oppositional ideas, and when the image-makers shape
public opinion so that it is hostile or immune to oppositional
thought and action. Marcuse concludes that genuine freedom
and well-being depend on liberation from the entire system of
one-dimensional needs and satisfactions and require “new
modes of realization . . . corresponding to the new capabilities of
society” (One-Dimensional Man, p. 6).
Marcuse also analyzes changes in the labor process and new
forms of integration of the working class into the existing capit-
alist society; developments within the capitalist state and the
emergence of a one-dimensional politics; and the integration of
thought, language, and culture. His critiques of contemporary
modes of thought are especially provocative. He also critically
analyzes new forms of technology and technological rationality
which are producing a qualitatively different social structure, a
totally administered society. Together, these analyses provide
theoretical perspectives on the new forms of capitalist hegemony
and stabilization which had emerged in the 1950s and early
1960s.
One-Dimensional Man continues to be relevant because of its

)00Cli INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
grasp of the underlying structures and tendencies of contempor-
ary socioeconomic and political development. The scientific and
technological rationalities that Marcuse describes are even more
powerful today with the emergence of computerization, the pro-
liferation of media and information, and the development of new
techniques and forms of social control. And yet the society is
more irrational than previously. Marcuse’s description of 1964
still rings true today: “The union of growing productivity and
growing destruction; the brinkmanship of annihilation; the sur-
render of thought, hope, and fear to the decisions of the powers
that be; the preservation of misery in the face of unprecedented
wealth constitute the most impartial indictment. . . . [Society’s]
sweeping rationality, which propels efficiency and growth is
itself irrational” (One-Dimensional Man, pp.
Marcuse’s critical theory of society brilliantly analyzes the
tendencies toward social stability and integration achieved by
contemporary capitalist societies, but downplays their crisis-
tendencies and contradictions. Consequently, his theory of
“one-dimensional society” cannot account either for the erup-
tion of social revolt on a global scale in the 1960s, or the global
crises of capitalism that have been occurring from the early
1970s to the present. In a sense, One-Dimensional Man articulates a
stage of historical development that would soon be corning to a
close and would give way to a new era marked by social turmoil
and upheaval in the 1960s and a world crisis of capitalism in the
1970s. By failing to analyze in more de ail counter-tendencies
against one-dimensional society, he created a picture of a new
type of social order able to absorb all opposition and to control
thought and action indefinitely, thus permanently stabilizing the
capitalist system.
Yet methodologically, Marcuse indicates that he is analyzing
trends of social development to which there are counter-trends
(One-Dimensional Man, pp. xlv—xlviii). In the introduction he
writes that his study “will vacillate throughout between two

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION )0C(i11
contradictory hypotheses: (1) that advanced industrial society is
capable of containing qualitative change for the foreseeable
future; (2) that forces and tendencies exist which may break this
containment and explode the society” (p. xlv). Near the end of
the book he writes: “The unification of opposites in the medium
of technological rationality must be, in all its reality, an illusory
unification, which eliminates neither the contradiction between
the growing productivity and its repressive use, nor the vital
need for solving the contradiction” (p. 260).
Thus Marcuse recognizes that both social conflicts and ten-
dencies toward change continue to exist and that radical social
transformation may eventually be possible. Although the focus
of his analysis is on the containment of social change, he
describes the society in the passage just cited as a “forced unity”
or “illusory unification” rather than as one which has eliminated
all contradictions and conflicts. Thus, to interpret properly both
One-Dimensional Man and Marcuse’s project as a whole, One-
Dimensional Man should be read in relation to Eros and Civilization as
well as to the works that follow, such as An Essay on Liberation and
Counterrevolution and Revolt. It is precisely the vision of “what could
be” articulated in these texts that highlights the bleakness of
“what is” in One-Dimensional Man. Marcuse continues to believe
that contradictions exist between the higher possibilities of a
free and pacified society and the existing social system. The
problem presented in One-Dimensional Man is that one-dimensional
thought cannot perceive this distinction, but Marcuse insists that
it continues to exist, and, if perceived, could be a vehicle of
individual and social transformation.
In his writings after One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse focuses more
on social contradictions, struggles, and the disintegrating factors
in existing societies, capitalist and communist One-Dimensional
Man should thus be read as a theory of the containment of social
contradictions, forces of negation, and possibilities of liberation
that exist but are suppressed. Even in One-Dimensional Man Marcuse

)oody INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
continues to point to these forces and possibilities, and to recog-
nize the liberating potential hidden in the oppressive social sys-
tem, especially in technology, which could be used to eliminate
alienated labor and to produce a better life for all. Marcuse
always stresses liberation, and his thought is animated by a
utopian vision that life could be as it is in art and dreams if only
a revolution would take place that would eliminate its repressive
features.
A lesson that might be drawn from his work is that critical and
dialectical social theory should analyze containment and stabil-
ization as well as contestation and struggle. In some eras,
stabilization and containment may predominate, while in others
upheaval and struggle may be dominant, or both trends could be
posed against each other. Certainly, from the 1980s to the pres-
ent, conservative trends have been dominant. Yet to present an
adequate model for contemporary social theory and politics,
forms of both domination and resistance should be analyzed.
Consequently, rather than conceptualizing contemporary soci-
eties as dosed monoliths of domination, they should be ana-
lyzed as systems of contradictions, tensions, and conflicts which
oscillate from stasis to change, from oppression and domination
to struggle and resistance, and from stability and containment to
conflict and crisis.
RECEPTION AND CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE
In sharply criticizing contemporary capitalist societies, Mar-
cuse went against the currents of conformist academic thinking
and anticipated the multifaceted critiques of U.S. society that
were to emerge in the 1960s. One-Dimensional Man had a curious
reception and impact. It angered both orthodox Marxists, who
could not accept such thorough-going revision of Marxism, and
many others who were unable to assent to such radical critiques
of contemporary capitalist society. The book was, however, well

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION )0C

Reaction Memo 1: “Wages of Labour”

Marx discusses that “the competition between the capitalist and the worker” is complex and he questions why “nothing but an exchange-value” has been seen in labor. This exchange-value that Marx refers to highlights Marx’s notion that money as the sole driver of labor is dangerous to the laborer. It should not be and is not the only factor in the present political economy. And although profit for labor is the most simplistic and common transaction, Marx argues that there is more to the equation. For example, Marx identifies that although labor is treated as a commodity in the political economy, a commodity is materialistic and labor is more than such. Labor to the worker equates to a life for themselves and their families as they dedicate their skills to their work in order to sustain a life to live. Treating labor as a commodity is dangerous as it demolishes any possible self-actualization to develop.

In my opinion, Marx makes a valid point in discussing the fact that a laborer is more than their skills needed to satisfy the capitalist. A separation must exist between a laborer’s identity and their work to establish their essence as humans rather than workers. It’s frustrating that capitalism dominates man’s desire to accumulate wealth and Marx acknowledges this. Marx argues that “we now have to grasp the essential connection between private property, greed, the separation of labor” and more. This idea of sensuous labor and its dissimilation in the political economy is made clear by the transaction based relationship between the capitalist and the worker. Marx identifies that sensuous labor cannot exist if the worker creates anything without nature. He views nature as a critical component to produce products as well as to evoke self-satisfaction. In fact, the external world is critical to the worker to be able to escape alienation that arises within the capitalist mode of production. I believe that this idea still holds truth today especially within modern day corporate culture. Many companies are diving into aggressive business plans and processes that are supposedly “essential to compete” yet are lacking in creativity. They are simply hindering the potential of employees’ abilities to think creatively and in tune with nature by establishing such rigid and barbarous intentions. In my opinion, creativity and process must live in harmony to generate success. This balanced relationship is necessary to orchestrate sensuous labor and it is disappointing as well as alarming that modern corporate culture is full of greed and self-benefit. With such an abundant focus on ruthless culture and an increasing capitalistic mindset, creative and innovative ideas are dissipating by the second.

1. How has the idea of sensuous labor evolved in today’s working environment?

2. What aspects of corporate culture today would Marx agree/disagree with?