Herbert Marcuse in One Dimensional Man speaks out against what he feels are the injustices and manipulations of advanced industrial societies. Technological advancement and bureaucracy impose an all encompasing social control over the people in promotion of the establishment’s interests. What emerges is a society of contradiction that superficially appears to promote liberty, possibility, and comfort but actually asserts its control and domination. In the examination of his key concepts of “true” vs. “false” needs, the “Great Refusal,” the unhappy consciousness, Eros vs. sexuality, and the “new historical Subject,” it is apparent that Marcuse believes that these societies, through their manipulations, are limiting freedom of the individual and thus diminishing the potential for revolution and social change.

Liberation from the economics, politics, and public opinion (absence of individual thought) of industrialized and bureaucratic societies is impeded by the preconditioning of satisfactions and needs. A need becomes defined by its relevance and attractiveness to the dominant societal institution and it’s specific agenda. Those which both promot

One of Marcuse’s responses to the advanced, dominating industrial society that produces “false” needs is the Great Refusal. The Great Refusal is the denial of the material ease of industrial society and the embrace of freedom. His embodiment of this concept is art; art, in an accelerated state, is “the Great Refusal - the protest against that which is” (Pg 63). Art, and the realm of being it creates, alienates it in a “high culture” that refuses to trade liberation and well-being for the meager prize of consumer comfort. It has the potential to distinguish itself from the bleak, diluted reality of society by creating and commenting on this reality in a fictitious, synthesized one. The essence of its truth lies in its contradiction to the industrial actuality. Through distance, art has the ability to comment on the ills and shortcomings of society. With the advancement of technological rationality, however, art is absorbed into the manipulated mainstream culture. It loses its ability to speak honestly, to shock, and to instigate as the pedestal it had been placed upon is widdled away by technological progress and the conquest of nature. Art, once a privilege of the elite, has become readily available to the masses. Old classics are pacified and reinterpreted so as to fit comfortably in the social reality of the advanced industrial society, and the new avant-garde which aims for remoteness is incorporated into popular culture as brazen, yet manageable entertainment. “The Great Refusal,” as it loses its distance and thus its capacity to explore social reality, “is in turn refused” (Pg 64).

Marcuse argues that with increased technological progress and bureaucratic control, the individual loses freedom and the will to liberate himself from domination. For the most part I support this, as in the cases of the commodification of needs, and art’s inability to no longer effectively comment on and protest society. I do see that some liberation has been achieved through the rising awareness of sexuality through popular culture, but I also recognize that this liberation is due in large part to the marketing of sex and the assimilation that occurs through sale in general. I commend Marcuse for formulating an alternative to this reality he is so disillusioned with, but feel it is too idealistic to actually come to play (his pessimistic view of its possibility acknowledges this as well). When people become comfortable in a situation, regardless of whether it is best for them or not, it is hard to ignite the desire for change. Marcuse’s ability to continue hoping for this change he fears will never come is perhaps the most beautiful example of his argument. He is actively attempting to embody the freedom of thought and will he feels has been drained from the populace by advanced industrial societies. 

Marcuse explores assimilation and the desensitization it causes further through the concept of the unhappy consciousness. The unhappy consciousness was the state of the libido before the intense mechanization that has come with technical progress. Prior to this mechanization, society was overtly repressive of the libido and sexual instinct. The denial of sexual impulse encouraged the liberation of the libido, and people sought gratification “beyond the immediate erotogenic zones - a process of non-repressive sublimation” (Pg 73). This, combined with the hard living and working conditions of the pre-technical world, provided for an opposition between the pain of everyday work and pleasure. Individuals, although repressed in what was deemed moral sexual behavior, were liberated in their enjoyment of sex.

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