Marcuse, Herbert
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was born in Berlin on July 19. After earning a doctorate in literature in 1922, he studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) in Freiburg from 1928 to 1933. Troubled by Heidegger's affiliation with the National Socialist party, Marcuse joined the philosophers Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Theodore Adorno (1903–1969) at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt before fleeing to New York in 1934. Marcuse remained for the rest of his life in the United States, where he continued the institute's interdisciplinary work in critical social theory. He died on July 29 in Starnberg, after having suffered a stroke on a trip to Germany. Marcuse synthesized the works of Heidegger, Karl Marx (1818–1883), and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) into a unique philosophical perspective from which he analyzed the nature of social control and the prospects for liberation in advanced industrial capitalist and communist societies.
Among Marcuse's contributions to critical social theory was his analysis of science and technology as instruments of social and political domination. Echoing Heidegger, Marcuse spoke of the "technological a priori" of scientific-technical rationality that projects nature as potential instrumentality. Technological rationality homogenizes people and nature into neutral objects of manipulation. That rationality is easily co-opted by economic and political power. However, science and technology merely function in the service of social control; they could be transformed to serve different ends, such as freedom, individuality, and creativity.
Marcuse's 1941 article "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology" argued that technological rationality undermines traditional "individual rationality" (autonomy) by employing efficiency as the single standard of judgment. Industrialized societies take advantage of the notion of efficiency to induce people to accept mass production, mechanization, standardization, and bureaucracy. Consequently, Marcuse argued, appeals to enlightened self-interest and autonomy appear progressively quaint and irrational in the face of a technological rationality that makes conformity seem reasonable and protest seem unreasonable.
In the mid-twentieth century political power—including state capitalism, fascism, and state socialism—developed seemingly rational, even pleasurable, means of social control that integrated individuals into a homogeneous society. The result was a "one-dimensional" society that eroded the capacity for individuality, critical thinking, and practical resistance. However, Marcuse maintained that the same impersonal rationality that made individualism unnecessary could be harnessed to realize rather than repress human capacities. Technological rationality could be used as an instrument to foster democracy, autonomy, and individuality. Marcuse was pessimistic about the prospects for that transformation because the technological apparatus tends to incorporate and subsume all opposition. However, despite Marcuse's pessimism regarding the achievement of such a transformation, he maintained that it was in principle possible.
In his most influential book, One-Dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse continued to argue that advanced industrialized societies employ science and technology to serve existing systems of production and consumption but claimed that technological rationality itself required transformation; it could not remain value-neutral if it were to lead to real human liberation. Marcuse also extended his analysis of the role of science and technology in manipulating human needs through advertising, marketing, and mass media. The scientific and technical aspects of a society are used to increase productivity and dominate humans and nature. The result is a carefully managed society that creates a one-dimensional person who willingly conforms to a society that limits freedom, imposes false needs, stifles creativity, and co-opts all resistance.
At the end of One-Dimensional Man Marcuse expresses the hope that humans one day will develop technologies for the "pacification of the struggle forexistence" that will reduce misery and suffering and promote peace and happiness. Developing those technologies would require a political reversal, not simply more technological advances. A radical break from existing capitalist modes of production is needed to generate a new science and new technology. Science and technology then would become the instruments of liberation, not domination. New technologies would lead to new modes of cooperative production, energy sources, management, and communities; a new science of liberation would serve the interests of freedom and help satisfy genuine human needs. In his later work Marcuse considered the contributions that utopianism, student revolts, feminism, and aesthetic interests might make to the emergence of a new science and technology.
Herbert Marcuse, 1898–1979. Marcuse was a leading 20th-century New Left philosopher in the United States and a follower of Karl Marx. His writing reflected a discontent with modern society and technology and their "destructive" influences, as well as the necessity of revolution. He was considered by some to be a philosopher of the sexual revolution. (© UPI/Corbis-Bettmann.)Marcuse was enormously popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and although his fame has been eclipsed since that time by that of Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) and French postmodern thinkers, he left an enduring legacy in critical social theory. He created a widely influential framework for analyzing the connections among political economy, science, technology, mass media, and culture in a way that not only identifies social domination and oppression but also attempts to identify the potential for social transformation leading to human liberation.
Critical Social Theory;; Habermas, Jürgen.
Bibliography
Alford, C. Fred. (1985). Science and the Revenge of Nature: Marcuse and Habermas. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Held, David. (1980). Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kellner, Douglas. (1984). Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. (1941). "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology." Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9, no. 3 (1941): 414–439.
Marcuse, Herbert. (1964). One Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. (1969). An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. (1972). Counterrevolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. (1978). The Aesthetic Dimension. Boston: Beacon Press.
Pippen, Robert, and Andrew Feenberg, eds. (1988). Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
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