This site is being preserved as it was on 17 September 2001 as a memorial to the life and work of Eberhard Wenzel.
Website by Eberhard Wenzel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.



Herbert Marcuse

Last updated:  23 December 1998


The elimination of transitive meaning has remained a feature of empirical sociology.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 114

Where these reduced (operational - E.W.) concepts govern the analysis of the human reality, individual or social, mental or material, they arrive at a false concreteness - a concreteness isolated from the conditions which constitute its reality. In this context, the operational treatment of the concept assumes a political function. The individual and his behavior are analyzed in a therapeutic sense - adjustment to his society. Thought and expression, theory and practice are to be brought in line with the facts of his existence without leaving room for the conceptual critique of these facts.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 106-107

The society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with dependence on the "objective order of things" (on economic laws, the market, etc.).
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 144

Nature, scientifically comprehended and mastered, reappears in the technical apparatus of production and destruction which sustains and improves the life of the individuals while subordinating them to the masters of the apparatus.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 166

Observation and experiment, the methodical organization and coordination of data, propositions, and conclusions never proceed in an unstructured, neutral, theoretical space. The project of cognition involves operations on objects, or abstractions from objects which occur in a given universe of discourse and action. Science observes, calculates, and theorizes from a position in this universe.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 157

... all cognitive concepts have a transitive meaning: they go beyond descriptive reference to particular facts.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 106

If the linguistic behavior blocks conceptual development, if it militates against abstraction and mediation, if it surrenders to the immediate facts, it repels recognition of the factors behind the facts, and thus repels recognition of the facts, and of their historical content. In and for the society, this organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 97

The abbreviations (e.g. NATO, UN, USSR - E.W.) denote that and only that which is institutionalized in such a way that the transcending connotation is cut off. The meaning is fixed, doctored, loaded. Once it has become an official vocable, constantly repeated in general usage, "sanctioned" by the intellectuals, it has lost all cognitive value and serves merely for recognition of an unquestionable fact.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 94

The functional language is a radically anti-historical language: operational rationality has little room and little use for historical reason.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 98

"Concept" is taken to designate the mental representation of something that is understood, comprehended, known as the result of a process of reflection.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 105

This (functional - E.W.) language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 103

If I speak of the mind of a person, I do not merely refer to his mental processes as they are revealed in his expression, speech, behavior, etc., nor merely of his dispositions or faculties as experienced or inferred from experience. I also mean that which he does not express, for which he shows no disposition, but which is present nevertheless, and which determines, to a considerable extent, his behavior, his understanding, the formation and range of his concepts.

Thus "negatively present" are the specific "environmental" forces which precondition his mind for the spontaneous repulsion of certain data, conditions, relations. They are present as repelled material.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 209

The disharmony between the individual and social needs, and the lack of representative institutions in which the individuals work for themselves and speak for themselves, lead to the reality of such universals as the Nation, the Party, the Constitution, the Corporation, the Church - a reality which is not identical with any particular identifiable entity (individual, group, or institution).
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 206

Critical thought strives to define the irrational character of the established rationality (which becomes increasingly obvious) and to define the tendencies which cause this rationality to generate its own transformation.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 227

At its most advanced stage, domination functions as administration, and in the overdeveloped areas of mass consumption, the administered life becomes the good life of the whole, in the defense of which the opposites are united.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 255

If the completion of the technological project involves a break with the prevailing technological rationality, the break in turn depends on the continued existence of the technical base itself. For it is this base which has rendered possible the satisfaction of needs and the reduction of toil - it remains the very base of all forms of human freedom. The qualitative change rather lies in the reconstruction of this base - that is, in its development with a view of different ends.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 231

Multi-dimensional language is made into one-dimensional language, in which different and conflicting meanings no longer interpenetrate but are kept apart; the explosive historical dimension of meaning is silenced.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 198

The social position of the individual and his relation to others appear to be determined by objective qualities and laws, but these qualities and laws seem to lose their mysterious and uncontrollable character; they appear as calculable manifestations of (scientific) rationality. The world tends to become the stuff of total administration, which absorbs even the administrators.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 169

The rational society subverts the idea of Reason.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 167

Under the repressive conditions in which men think and live, thought - any mode of thinking which is not confined to pragmatic orientation within the status quo - can recognize the facts and respond to the facts only by "going behind" them. Experience takes place before a curtain which conceals and, if the world is the appearance of something behind the curtain of immediate experience, then, in Hegel's terms, it is we ourselves who are behind the curtain. We ourselves not as the subjects of common sense, as in linguistic analysis, nor as the "purified" subjects of scientific measurement, but as the subjects and objects of the historical struggle of man with nature and with society. Facts are what they are as occurrences in this struggle. Their factuality is historical, even where it is still that of brute, unconquered nature.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 185

Society is indeed the whole which exercises its independent power over the individuals, and this Society is no unidentifiable "ghost". It has its empirical hard core in the system of institutions, which are the established and frozen relationships among men.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 191

The trouble is that the statistics, measurements, and field studies of empirical sociology and political science are not rational enough. They become mystifying to the extent to which they are isolated from the truly concrete context which makes the facts and determines their function. This context is larger and other than that of the plants and shops investigated, of the town and cities studied, of the areas and groups whose public opinion is polled or whose chance of survival is calculated. And it is also more real in the sense that it creates and determines the facts investigated, polled, and calculated. This real context in which the particular subjects obtain their real significance is definable only within a theory of society.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 190

The impact of progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life, and to the dynamic capability of producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 11

Indeed, in the most highly developed areas of contemporary society, the transplantation of social into individual needs is so effective that the difference between them seems to be purely theoretical.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 8

Technological rationality reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truely totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 18

Domination is transfigured into administration. The capitalist bosses and owners are losing their identity as responsible agents; they are assuming the function of bureaucrats in a corporate machine.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 32

To the extent to which the machine becomes itself a system of mechanical tools and relations and thus extends far beyond the individual work process, it asserts its larger domination by reducing the "professional autonomy" of the laborer and integrating him with other professions which suffer and direct the technical ensemble.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 27-28

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 7

Technology serves to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social control and social cohesion.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, xlvii

Contemporary society seems to be capable of containing social change - qualitative change which would estalish essentially different institutions, a new direction of the productive process, new modes of human existence.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, xliv

Under the conditions of a rising standard of living, non-conformity with the system itself appears to be socially useless, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 2

To impose Reason upon an entire society is a paradoxical and scandalous idea.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 7

The government of advanced and advancing industrial societies can maintain and secure itself only when it succeeds in mobilizing, organizing, and exploiting the technical, scientific, and mechanical productivity available to industrial civilization. And this productivity mobilizes society as a whole, above and beyond any particular individual or group interest.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), The one-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 3

This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 78

Sex is integrated into work and public relations and is thus made more susceptible to (controlled) satisfaction.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 75

Just as this society tends to reduce and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail.

It reflects the beliefe that the real is rational, and that the established system, in spite of everything, delivers the goods.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 79

Propositions assume the form of suggestive commands - they are evocative rathern than demonstrative. Predication becomes prescription; the whole communication has a hypnotic character. At the same time it is tinged with a false familiarity - the result of constant repetition, and of the skillfully managed popular directness of the communication. This relates itself to the recipient immediately - without distance of status, education, and office - and hits him or her in the informal atmosphere of the living room, kitchen, and bedroom.

The same familiarity is established through personalized language, which plays a considerable role in advanced communication.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 91-92

The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 90

The organism is thus being preconditioned for the spontaneous acceptance of what is offered. Inasmuch as the greater liberty involves a contraction rather than extension and development of instinctual needs, it works for rather than against the status quo of general repression - one might speak of "institutionalized desublimation". The latter appears to be a vital factor in the making of the authoritarian personality of our time.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 74

The growing productivity of labor creates an increasing surplus-product which, whether privately or centrally appropriated and distributed, allows an increased consumption - notwithstanding the increased diversion of productivity. As long as this constellation prevails, it reduces the use-value of freedom; there is no reason to insist on self-determination if the administered life is the comfortable and even the "good" life. This is the rational and material ground for the unification of opposites, for one-dimensional political behavior.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 49

The prospect of containment of change, offered by the politics of technological rationality, depend on the prospects of the Welfare State. Such a state seems capable of raising the standard of administered living, a capability inherent in all advanced industrial societies where the streamlined technical apparatus - set up as a separate power over and above the individuals - depends for its functioning on the intensified development and expansion of productivity. Under such conditions, decline of freedom and opposition is not a matter of moral or intellectual deterioration or corruption. It is rather an objective societal process insofar as the production and distribution of an increasing quantity of goods and services make compliance a rational technological attitude.

However, with all its rationality, the Welfare State is a state of unfreedom because its total administration is systematic restriction of (a) "technically" available free time; (b) the quantity and quality of goods and services "technically" available for vital individual needs; (c) the intelligence (conscious and unconscious) capable of comprehending and realizing the possibilities of self-determination.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 48-49

If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator - the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value counts.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 57

Artistic alienation is sublimation. It creates the images of conditions which are irreconcilable with the established Reality Principle but which, as cultural images, become tolerable, even edifying and useful. Now this imagery is invalidated. Its incorporation into the kitchen, the office, the shop; its commercial release for business and fun is, in a sense, desublimation - replacing mediated by immediate gratification.
(...)
The Pleasure Principle absorbs the Reality Principle
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 72

In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964), One-dimensional man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. With a new introduction by Douglas Kellner. Boston (Beacon Press) 1991, 61


Back Home



Copyright © by Eberhard Wenzel, 1997-2001