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| Herbert Marcuse |
Herbert Marcuse’s book One-Dimensional
Man, a critique of modern industrial society first published in 1964,
remains an important analysis of social control and the ways in which liberty
can be used as an instrument of domination.
Marcuse understood that control and domination do not necessitate the
threat of force. Equally if not more
effective are forms of control and domination that hide what’s being done and manipulate
people into thinking that they’re perfectly free, doing and thinking for
themselves, when in reality they cannot but think, feel, believe, value, and
aspire in ways validated by the prevailing rationality. Such thinking Marcuse calls
one-dimensional.
Individuals may believe they have freedom because each day presents
them with a wide range of choices, but “the range of choice open to the
individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human
freedom, but what can be chosen and
what is chosen by the
individual.” One may have a free choice
among a wide variety of goods and services, but this free choice “does not
signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life
of toil and fear—that is, if they sustain alienation.” People become alienated from themselves and
their true needs when they recognize themselves and find their unique,
personally-identifying meaning in the latest smart-phone, kitchen arrangement,
television show, home theater system, or political ideology. Each
individual may pursue the American dream or its counterpart in a variety of
ways and unique choices, but if the pursuit defines the individual and
represses dissent and critique of the pursuit itself and the sought after prize,
then the individual has only the illusion of freedom and is dominated by those
who dictate the terms of the dream.
This domination is recognizable in the established universe of
discourse, which, Marcuse says, “bears throughout the marks of the specific
modes of domination, organization, and manipulation to which the members of
society are subjected.” People depend
for their living on others, from politicians to neighbors, who make them speak
and mean as they do. “Under these
circumstances, the spoken phrase is an expression of the individual who speaks
it, and of those who make him speak
as he does, and of whatever tension
or contradiction may interrelate them.
In speaking their own language, people also speak the language of their
masters, benefactors, advertisers. Thus
they do not express themselves, their
knowledge, feelings, and aspirations, but also something other than
themselves.” They heavily use without reflection the terms of movies,
news media, advertisements, politicians, best sellers and celebrities to
describe their loves and hates, their dreams and ambitions, their fears and
beliefs. An important political leader
coins a word of phrase, almost immediately that expression receives perpetual
repetition by the leaders in the media, and soon it is on the lips of those
attuned to the established chains of communication, repeated without a second
thought as the rational way to
speak. Don’t call them “rich”— call them “job creators.”
In publically dissenting from and critiquing the prevailing power and
economic structures, protest groups such as Occupy Wall Street and the Tea
Party have the potential to guide society beyond one-dimensional thought and
behavior. To serve in this capacity,
they must not themselves become sources of domination, repression, and alienation—a
danger lurking in any social relationship or group, however loosely tied
together or however ideal its aims. Instead,
they must remain at their core critical
responses to the political and economic establishments and critical promoters of the human person’s true freedom and true
needs. As soon as Occupy Wall Street or
the Tea Party or any other dissident group establishes a replacement “rational”
way of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and aspiring, it loses sight of
its critical function and becomes instead just another ready-to-use instrument
of domination, social control, and alienation.
If, instead, they refuse to play this game of uncritical consumerism and,
in their own ways, champion real liberation from the disguised forms of domination
that fuel our political and economic systems and structures of power, they’ll
have done good service.
Not that I’m holding my breath. (
VN)
