One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964) is an academic monograph written by philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse was a German philosopher, social critic, and political theorist who studied at Humboldt University in Berlin and then at the University of Freiburg, where he received his PhD. He was a leading scholar in the Institute for Social Research, based in Frankfurt, Germany, which later became known as the influential Frankfurt School.

One-Dimensional Man is a key text of both the Frankfurt School and the New Left. It adopts and also critiques Marxist thinking and poses the big question of why Karl Marx’s prediction of a revolution precipitated by the working class has not occurred. Marcuse argues that “advanced industrial society,” which has developed out of capitalism in modernity, “enslaves” people, who are therefore unable to revolt. He argues that the technological system of advanced industrial society squelches any glimmer of revolution. The people, though they think they are liberated by technology under advanced capitalism, are subservient to the technology that comfortably represses them.

This study guide uses Beacon Press’s 1964 edition of One-Dimensional Man.

Summary

One-Dimensional Man is a critique of modern Western capitalism or “advanced industrial society,” with a focus on the United States. Marcuse argues that this society enables a supposedly high standard of living and comfort that is simultaneously “enslaving” because it also only cultivates “one-dimensional” thinking and living that refuses critical thinking. Without critical thinking, the enslaved are unable to realize that they are, in fact, enslaved, and are therefore unable to even begin to rebel.

Prior to advanced industrial society, humans often lived lives of abject misery and toil, and there are many improvements that have occurred through the advancement of technology (indoor plumbing, electricity, vaccines, etc.). Nonetheless, these earlier human lives were not rendered one-dimensional by their society, by which Marcuse means that society did not seek to make the people unaware of its intrinsic inequalities and different planes of existence: Thus “high” art existed on a different dimension than the “lower” classes did, and the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were separated from one another.

In the current one-dimensional world of advanced industrial society, however, there is only one plane of existence, with any potential tension, conflict, or inequality ultimately contained and flattened out by and within the system, consumed by advanced industrial society’s “technology.” This technology includes the technics (or tools) of the technological system—such as phones, TVs, computers, etc.—but the technological system is much larger than these technics, which are only part of the fabric of the system’s culture, discourse, and politics. This technological system is all-encompassing, and people misunderstand their relation to this system: They assume that the technics serve them when, in fact, they serve the technics and the broader machinery of the system.

Marcuse controversially argues that this “one-dimensionality” is a form of totalitarianism. While we think of totalitarianism as being terroristic, such as Adolf Hitler’s regime in World War II-era Germany, it is not always so obviously terroristic and can actually be very comfortable. For Marcuse, a system that works to make people ignorant of their oppression and thus unable to liberate themselves is the very definition of totalitarianism. Marcuse lived in Germany as a Jew during Hitler’s reign of terroristic totalitarianism, and afterward lived in the United States for several decades and experienced this much more subtle totalitarianism. Marcuse argues that the “soft” totalitarianism of advanced industrial society may be more dangerous than terroristic totalitarianism because it is so insidious and invisible.

In the book's first section, Marcuse focuses on “one-dimensional society,” looking at the ways that this society claims to be both a “warfare” and “welfare” state. Advanced industrial society uses its technology to wage war and threaten the obliteration of all life at the same time that it proclaims to “care” through the welfare state, keeping its people dependent on a state that is death-dealing. Marcuse argues that both war and welfare are enslaving those within the state as well as those outside the state.

Advanced industrial society also promises a false liberation in the supposed end of the repression of desire, specifically sexual desire. The 1960s mantra of “free love” leads people to believe they are sexually liberated by having a lot of sex with different people. Marcuse insists that this supposed liberation is actually repressive: Humans are so focused on increasing the quantity of sexual experiences that the erotic energy of the nonhuman, natural world is no longer recognized or experienced by people, as all erotic energy is channeled into a narrow idea of human sexuality concentrated on sexual acts. This results in an impoverished experience of human sexuality because it is cut off from other erotic energies imbued in the world.

Art, like sexuality, has also become “free,” available to all at any time, fully incorporated into society. In this incorporation, however, art (like sexuality) has lost its radical energy, which existed in the past in a different dimension. Like the erotic energy of the nonhuman world, the radical energy of art has been flattened in service of a consumable, reproducible version of itself. Language and discourse have also been flattened, manipulated to include contradiction not as a relation in which one thing is in tension with one another but, instead, as a relation in which contradiction can become unification. Thus, phrases such as “clean bombs” and “peace is war” are ubiquitous and accepted by the population, who do not revolt against this obscene “unification.”

The second section moves into a dense, philosophical discussion of “one-dimensional thinking.” Marcuse traces Western philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to the present moment. He argues that the Platonic dialogues, in which truth is pursued in Socratic dialogue, are grounded in dialectical thinking in the pursuit of truth. These dialogues begin with an assumption and then examine and revise that assumption; this process requires that tensions be considered (rather than flattened) in the creation of new modes of thinking. He considers classical Greek philosophy in contrast to advanced industrial society’s thinking, concluding this section with the smoothness of academic philosophy, which proclaims itself useless and, thus, is not true philosophy. Classical and Marxist dialectical thinking provide the foundation for alternatives to one-dimensional thinking and are therefore alternatives to a one-dimensional society.

The final section of the book puts forth Marcuse’s vision of revolution, which is the “pacification of nature.” Marcuse argues that the current technological system must be destroyed and technics must, instead of accumulating power, aim to reduce power and approach the world nonviolently.