One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the field of psychoanalysis. Freud graduated from the University of Vienna with a doctor of medicine in 1881. He started his medical career as a neurologist at the Vienna General Hospital in 1882, where he spent time in various departments over the course of three years, including the psychiatric department. He also worked at a local asylum. He became increasingly interested in doing clinical work, resigning his position at Vienna General Hospital in 1886 to start a clinical practice focusing on what were then called nervous disorders.

This resignation was largely inspired by an 1885 fellowship that enabled Freud to go to Paris to learn about hypnosis. This turned him toward psychopathology and away from the neurological research that he had been doing. While he revised what he learned in Paris and used hypnosis for years, he found it inconsistent.

By 1896 he increasingly relied on what he called “free association” in treating patients, which encouraged them to talk about whatever came into their minds. He also became increasingly interested in the analysis of dreams, believing that they revealed layers of unconscious formations and repressions that were at the root of various symptoms of psychopathology. By 1896 he referred to his work as “psychoanalysis.” He published over 20 books and changed the way that Western culture thinks about human psychology, having a huge influence both on the profession of psychology and Western culture in general.

Psychoanalysis has been interpreted as both radical and conservative. By the 1940s it was generally viewed as conservative. Marcuse, however, in his 1955 publication, Eros and Civilization, argues that Freud’s thinking is similar to Marx’s, though they are coming from different fields of study. Marcuse refers to Freudian theory throughout One-Dimensional Man, working specifically with Freud’s theory of the psyche and his corresponding theory of sublimation, which Marcuse revises to become his own theory of desublimation.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was born in Prussia (present-day Germany) in 1818 and received a PhD in philosophy in 1841. In addition to being a philosopher, he also worked in the fields of economics, sociology, and political theory. Marx’s theories and critiques of capitalism are known as “Marxism” and have had enormous influence on a range of fields, including but not limited to economics, political theory, sociology, history, and literary studies.

Marx published The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels in 1848 and the enormous, three-volume Das Kapital over a span of almost three decades. Both texts have been hugely influential, and Marx is considered one of the most important thinkers in Western culture. Marxist theory argues that societies develop through tension and conflict between classes. Under capitalism, this conflict occurs between the proletariat (working class) and the bourgeoisie (middle or upper classes that own the means of production). Marx believed that the overarching tension between those who labor and those who own the means of production would result in internal tensions within capitalism that would organically produce class consciousness in the worker. With this consciousness of their oppression, the workers would be able to unite and create a revolution. Marx’s theory of societal change and, more specifically, revolution against capitalism, is dialectical.

Marcuse agrees with much of Marx’s thinking. He asks the fundamental question in One-Dimensional Man of why the revolution that Marx was so insistent would occur under capitalism has not occurred. Marcuse’s theory of the repression intrinsic in capitalistic, advanced industrial society is his answer to this question. Unlike the oppression of the 19th-century capitalism that Marx analyzed, advanced industrial society is much more subtle in its oppression and thus inhibits class consciousness and, more generally, any kind of political consciousness by refusing any dialectical thinking. As a result, revolution cannot occur.

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher born in either 427 or 428 BC who was the student of Socrates. He helped to create the genre of philosophical dialectical dialogue. These dialectical dialogues are largely remembered from his experience as a student of Socrates, and Socrates is almost always a prominent figure and usually the questioner in these dialogues.

The dialectical dialogues are not only foundational to Western philosophy but are important historical and pedagogical documents, recording Socrates’s method of teaching, known as “the Socratic method.” The Socratic method does not teach a corpus of knowledge so that students are “filled” by their teacher. Instead, Socrates teaches by asking questions that elicit active thinking in his listener. Thus, Socrates facilitates the process of thinking in his students, who are led by his questions but move in their own direction in response to these questions. The Socratic method in the dialogues demonstrate how students gain a greater understanding not only of the world but also of their own minds, becoming aware of both the limitations and potential of their own thinking.

Marcuse returns to Plato’s dialogues throughout One-Dimensional Man as a guide for the kind of dialectical thinking that he believes is the only means of liberating people from advanced industrial society. It is only in being challenged by other ways of thinking and being that societies can evolve. In the case of advanced industrial society, Marcuse argues that dialectical thinking will not produce a gradual change, but a revolution that will necessarily destroy this society.

Aristotle was born in 384 BC and was a student of Plato. Plato had founded the Academy in Athens, and Aristotle was a student there for almost 20 years, beginning at the age of 17.

Aristotle later founded the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens. He established what became later known as “the Aristotelian tradition,” which provided the foundation for modern science. He also established a library at the Lyceum, producing hundreds of papyrus-based books. Despite creating a library and producing books for the Lyceum, only a third of Aristotle’s own works survive, none of which were intended for publication.

Like Plato, Aristotle is interested in universal qualities. For Aristotle, the universal and the particular meet in the actual thing or idea. For Plato, the universal is not material, but a universal idea of a form that material things and actual ideas imitate and reflect—hence the phrase “Platonic ideal.” While Aristotle relies on the process of induction from examples, Plato relies on deduction from principles or ideals.

Marcuse is interested in the philosophical movement from Plato to Aristotle, describing the difference between Plato’s dialectic and Aristotle’s formal logic as “striking.” While in the Platonic dialogues thought is created by way of tension and revision, Aristotle’s thought is organized within domination. Marcuse argues that Aristotle’s thought seeks not to engage with contradictions but to “purge” contradictions from thought. As a result, Aristotle turns away from the radical thinking that occurs in the dialectical dialogues to a thinking that is conservative and refuses revolution, thus solidifying the one-dimensional evolution of Western philosophy. It is this one-dimensional mode of thought that allows advanced industrial society to become so domineering.