From f484c50d7139f35df257e1f568dfe44fe3753517 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Silvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2018 10:35:15 -0200
Subject: [PATCH] Books: One-Dimensional Man: Chapter One
---
books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md | 227 ++++++++++++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 226 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md b/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md
index 8ffec82..fcc5fcd 100644
--- a/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md
+++ b/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-[[!meta title="One Dimensional Man"]]
+[[!meta title="One-Dimensional Man"]]
* Author: Hebert Marcuse
@@ -61,3 +61,228 @@
repulses all alternatives. The productivity and growth potential of this system
stabilize the society and contain technical progress within the framework of
domination. Technological rationality has become political rationality.
+
+### Freedom in negative terms
+
+ Contemporary industrial civilization demonstrates that it has reached the stage
+ at which “the free society†can no longer be adequately defined in the
+ traditional terms of economic, political, and intellectual liberties, not
+ because these liberties have become insignificant, but because they are too
+ significant to be confined within the traditional forms. New modes of
+ realization are needed, corresponding to the new capabilities of society.
+
+ Such new modes can be indicated only in negative terms because they would
+ amount to the negation of the prevailing modes. Thus economic freedom would
+ mean freedom from the economy—from being controlled by economic forces and
+ relationships; freedom from the daily struggle for existence, from earning a
+ living. Political freedom would mean liberation of the individuals from
+ politics over which they have no effective control. Similarly, intellectual
+ freedom would mean the restoration of individual thought now absorbed by mass
+ communication and indoctrination, abolition of “public opinion†together with
+ its makers. The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of
+ their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their
+ realization. The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation
+ is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete
+ forms of the struggle for existence.
+
+ The intensity, the satisfaction and even the character of human needs, beyond
+ the biological level, have always been preconditioned. Whether or not the
+ possibility of doing or leaving, enjoying or destroying, possessing or
+ rejecting something is seized as a need depends on whether or not it can be
+ seen as desirable and necessary for the prevailing societal institutions and
+ interests. In this sense, human needs are historical needs and, to the extent
+ to which the society demands the repressive development of the individual, his
+ needs themselves and their claim for satisfaction are subject to overriding
+ critical standards.
+
+### The irrationality of the rational
+
+ We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced
+ industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its
+ productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to
+ turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which
+ this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man’s mind
+ and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable.
+
+ [...]
+
+ But in the contemporary period, the technological controls appear to be the
+ very embodiment of Reason for the benefit of all social groups and interests—to
+ such an extent that all contradiction seems irrational and all counteraction
+ impossible.
+
+ No wonder then that, in the most advanced areas of this civilization, the
+ social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual
+ protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal “to go
+ along†appears neurotic and impotent.
+
+ [...]
+
+ But the term “introjection†perhaps no longer describes the way in which the
+ individual by himself reproduces and perpetuates the external controls
+ exercised by his society. Introjection suggests a variety of relatively
+ spontaneous processes by which a Self (Ego) transposes the “outer†into the
+ “inner.†Thus introjection implies the existence of an inner dimension
+ distinguished from and even antagonistic to the external exigencies—an
+ individual consciousness and an individual unconscious apart from public
+ opinion and behavior.3 The idea of “inner freedom†here has its reality: it
+ designates the private space in which man may become and remain “himself.â€
+
+ Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological
+ reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and
+ industrial psychology has long since ceased to be confined to the factory. The
+ manifold processes of introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical
+ reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate
+ identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the
+ society as a whole.
+
+### One-dimensionality
+
+ Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas,
+ aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established
+ universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of
+ this universe. They are redefined by the rationality of the given system and of
+ its quantitative extension.
+
+ The trend may be related to a development in scientific method: operationalism
+ in the physical, behaviorism in the social sciences. The common feature is a
+ total empiricism in the treatment of concepts; their meaning is restricted to
+ the representation of particular operations and behavior. The operational point
+ of view is well illustrated by P. W. Bridgman’s analysis of the concept of
+ length:5
+
+ We evidently know what we mean by length if we can tell what the length of any
+ and every object is, and for the physicist nothing more is required. To find
+ the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The
+ concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is
+ measured are fixed: that is, the concept of length involves as much and nothing
+ more than the set of operations by which length is determined. In general, we
+ mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is
+ synonymous with the corresponding set of operations.
+
+ Bridgman has seen the wide implications of this mode of thought for the society
+ at large:6
+
+ To adopt the operational point of view involves much more than a mere
+ restriction of the sense in which we understand ‘concept,’ but means a
+ far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, in that we shall no longer
+ permit ourselves to use as tools in our thinking concepts of which we cannot
+ give an adequate account in terms of operations.
+
+ Bridgman’s prediction has come true. The new mode of thought is today the
+ predominant tendency in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other fields.
+ Many of the most seriously troublesome concepts are being “eliminated†by
+ showing that no adequate account of them in terms of operations or behavior can
+ be given.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Outside the academic establishment, the “far-reaching change in all our habits
+ of thought†is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those
+ exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel
+ those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a
+ one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the
+ spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the
+ contrary, there is a great deal of “Worship together this week,†“Why not try
+ God,†Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of
+ protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no
+ longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism,
+ its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of
+ its healthy diet.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Such limitation of thought is certainly not new. Ascending modern rationalism,
+ in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between
+ extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one
+ hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and
+ functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes’ ego cogitans was to leave the
+ “great public bodies†untouched, and Hobbes held that “the present ought always
+ to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best.†Kant agreed with Locke in
+ justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and
+ in preventing subversion.
+
+### Progress, abolition of labor, totalitarianism
+
+ The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior;
+ consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or
+ meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence,
+ not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and
+ behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought†at large, becomes
+ the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and
+ aspirations.
+
+ “Progress†is not a neutral term; it moves toward specific ends, and these ends
+ are defined by the possibilities of ameliorating the human condition. Advanced
+ industrial society is approaching the stage where continued progress would
+ demand the radical subversion of the prevailing direction and organization of
+ progress. This stage would be reached when material production (including the
+ necessary services) becomes automated to the extent that all vital needs can be
+ satisfied while necessary labor time is reduced to marginal time. From this
+ point on, technical progress would transcend the realm of necessity, where it
+ served as the instrument of domination and exploitation which thereby limited
+ its rationality; technology would become subject to the free play of faculties
+ in the struggle for the pacification of nature and of society.
+
+ Such a state is envisioned in Marx’s notion of the “abolition of labor.†The
+ term “pacification of existence†seems better suited to designate the
+ historical alternative of a world which—through an international conflict which
+ transforms and suspends the contradictions within the established
+ societies—advances on the brink of a global war. “Pacification of existenceâ€
+ means the development of man’s struggle with man and with nature, under
+ conditions where the competing needs, desires, and aspirations are no longer
+ organized by vested interests in domination and scarcity—an organization which
+ perpetuates the destructive forms of this struggle.
+
+ Today’s fight against this historical alternative finds a firm mass basis in
+ the underlying population, and finds its ideology in the rigid orientation of
+ thought and behavior to the given universe of facts. Validated by the
+ accomplishments of science and technology, justified by its growing
+ productivity, the status quo defies all transcendence. Faced with the
+ possibility of pacification on the grounds of its technical and intellectual
+ achievements, the mature industrial society closes itself against this
+ alternative. Operationalism, in theory and practice, becomes the theory and
+ practice of containment. Underneath its obvious dynamics, this society is a
+ thoroughly static system of life: self-propelling in its oppressive
+ productivity and in its beneficial coordination. Containment of technical
+ progress goes hand in hand with its growth in the established direction. In
+ spite of the political fetters imposed by the status quo, the more technology
+ appears capable of creating the conditions for pacification, the more are the
+ minds and bodies of man organized against this alternative.
+
+ The most advanced areas of industrial society exhibit throughout these two
+ features: a trend toward consummation of technological rationality, and
+ intensive efforts to contain this trend within the established institutions.
+ Here is the internal contradiction of this civilization: the irrational element
+ in its rationality. It is the token of its achievements. The industrial society
+ which makes technology and science its own is organized for the
+ ever-more-effective domination of man and nature, for the ever-more-effective
+ utilization of its resources. It becomes irrational when the success of these
+ efforts opens new dimensions of human realization. Organization for peace is
+ different from organization for war; the institutions which served the struggle
+ for existence cannot serve the pacification of existence. Life as an end is
+ qualitatively different from life as a means.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Qualitative change also involves a change in the technical basis on which this
+ society rests—one which sustains the economic and political institutions
+ through which the “second nature†of man as an aggressive object of
+ administration is stabilized.
+
+ [...]
+
+ To be sure, labor must precede the reduction of labor, and industrialization
+ must precede the development of human needs and satisfactions. But as all
+ freedom depends on the conquest of alien necessity, the realization of freedom
+ depends on the techniques of this conquest. The highest productivity of labor
+ can be used for the perpetuation of labor, and the most efficient
+ industrialization can serve the restriction and manipulation of needs.
+
+ When this point is reached, domination—in the guise of affluence and
+ liberty—extends to all spheres of private and public existence, integrates all
+ authentic opposition, absorbs all alternatives. Technological rationality
+ reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better
+ domination, creating a truly totalitarian universe in which society and nature,
+ mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of
+ this universe.
--
GitLab