Notes On Herbert Marcuse - One Dimensional Man

(i) What is meant by one dimensional man?
(ii) Describe the relationship between consumerism and violence (iii) What are the social spaces for criticism?
Marcuses One-Dimensional Man was written in 1962, but much of it reads as if it could have been written today: the flattening of discourse, the pervasive repression behind a veil of consensus, the lack of recognition for perspectives and alternatives beyond the dominant frame, the closure of the dominant universe of meaning, the corrosion of established liberties and lines of escape, total mobilisation against a permanent Enemy built into the system as a basis for conformity and effort It was product of a previous period of downturn and decomposition, similar in many ways to our own. 1)The one dimension of the title refers to the flattening of discourse, imagination, culture and politics into the field of understanding, the perspective, of the dominant order. Marcuse contrasts the affluent consumer society of organised capitalism with a previous situation of two-dimensional existence. The two dimensions exist on a number of levels, but for Marcuse express a single aspect: the coexistence of the present system with its negation.
"true needs" and "repressive needs." In this instance true needs would be those things that people have to have and repressive would be things we do not need, but we may want. He argues that the ability for a lower class to be able to own repressive items gives them a sense of equality to others in society that they have no right feeling equal to. In this situation, a normal worker would care less about the real inequalities in life, such as having health insurance, because they were able to attain some of the unessential material goods that their boss has, like a big screen television.
In culture, this second dimension was expressed in the role of culture as critique, in the ways in which even conservative aspects of culture contrasts with the prevailing order, providing characters (for instance, tragic heroines and heroes) who are frustrated in the present world, and also in the existence of a lively field of radical culture. In thought, the gap emerges because of the distance between concepts and their particular uses, the possibility of conceptually separating an actor or object (a worker, a produced item) from its functional or systemic context (work, commodities), and the contrast between ethical values and existing realities.
The gap between the two dimensions is for Marcuse crucial to the possibility of social change. The gap separates the possible from the present, making it possible to imagine situations radically different from the current system. The elimination of the gap makes it impossible to think beyond the systems frame, thus making it impossible to think of alternatives except as repeating current social relations. The two dimensions produce a gap or distance between what can be thought and what exists, a gap in which critical thought can flourish. They rely on an unhappy consciousness, discontented with the present and aware on some level of its problems.
According to Marcuse, the gap has been closed by a process of almost totalitarian social integration through the coordination of social functions and the rise of consumerism and administrative thought. Marcuse portrays this process as happening in a number of ways. One of these is that consumer culture infiltrates lifeworlds and public opinion comes into the private sphere: the systems perspective comes into the home through television, radio and consumed goods with particular messages; it comes into communities through the inescapable news headlines outside newsagents, the dominance of public opinion and the interventions of state officials. Chapter 3: Through looking at the role of art and high culture, Marcuse illustrates that art has gone through a change with the institution of one-dimensional realities. This is because art used to depict characters who went against society and were fighting for their own rights, but now those same characters are going along with what society is doing, and supporting what is believed to be the norm. Chapter 4: This is where the author looks into the function and control of language in totalitarian societies. He claims that in the members of the government speak in an entirely different language than those of the general public, so there is no way for the public to know what they are actually speaking about. He further states that governmental language often attempts to arouse feelings with the listeners when they use words such as freedom and communism that have strong connotations. The real problem comes because these words have so many different meanings at this point and can be taken so many different ways. He also argues that using phrases such as "your congressmen" create a personalization of the governmental process that is both untrue and unfair. He also does not like when governments abbreviate words such as NATO because it prevents the citizens from knowing the actual meaning, especially when they create an aura where one thinks they should know the meaning.1

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(i) What is meant by one dimensional man?

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