The Search for Freedom -Part II
Part II- One Dimensional Man
The trappings of democracy do not guarantee freedom. American democracy permitted slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, a civil war, repression of free speech in times of “emergency,” numerous foreign wars, and economic depressions. Freedom to speak is often denied by the inability to find platforms and freedom of the press is difficult to obtain when a relatively few own and operate the mass media. Pre-conditioning in public education shapes citizens into believing, “My country, right or wrong.” Media control and manipulation shape thought to favor personal agendas.
Public support for the 2003 Iraq war and the elections of Donald Trump to the presidency and a host of his sympathizers to congressional positions demonstrate that the freedoms to gather credible information, assimilate the information into rational thought, and exercise fulfilling actions are often circumvented and to the detriment of American citizens.
The argument that Saddam Hussein was acquiring weapons of mass destruction, was a threat to U.S. security and had to be immediately removed from leadership was obviously fallacious from its first mention. Conspiratorial forces moved a mendacious U.S. government to harness indoctrination and compulsion and move an unknowing American public into acceptance of the punishing scheme. The rise of ISIS and more destruction succeeded the Iraq invasion and aggravated the initial toll on humanity.
Feeling betrayed and tired of endless wars propelled the American electorate to position an egotistic charlatan, Donald Trump, who had neither credentials nor sufficient knowledge to become their president, and enable the election of a cult of similar imposters — Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), George Santos (R-NY), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Apologists offer these anomalies as the price, cost, or vagary of freedom. Some vagaries in local elections may happen but something else is at play when they happen on the national level, with millions of votes cast, and the “vagary” occurs a multitude of times. A lying, scheming, and devious George Santos of no political experience or applicable knowledge would not have been elected if fundamental freedoms — speech, press, voting, thinking, communicating — were not repressed.
After 200 years of American democracy, the U.S. population has often escaped from its freedoms or been deterred from exercising them. The democracy that provides freedoms allows a means for treachery to channel a multi-disciplined society into a one-dimensional society, multi-dimensional thoughts into a one-dimensional thought, and a multi-dimensional person into one-dimension.
If we attempt to relate the causes of the danger to the way in which society is organized and organizes its members, we are immediately confronted with the fact that advanced industrial society becomes richer, bigger, and better as it perpetuates the danger. The defense structure makes life easier for a greater number of people and extends man's mastery of nature. Under these circumstances, our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appears to be the very embodiment of Reason.
Herbert Marcuse
One Dimensional Man
One Dimensional Man
Herbert Marcuse's philosophical treatise examines the political, social, and cultural controls that reduce the freedoms of individuals in an industrial state. Capital and technology constitute new forms of social control and domination — a One Dimensional Man formed from a One-Dimensional Society that frames a One-Dimensional Thought. "The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than before ─ which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than before.” An ongoing industrial-military complex, global terrorism, mass migrations, never-ending wars, unpredictable artificial intelligence, and complacency in solving urgent problems of global warming, gun violence, and drug addiction give "One Dimensional Man" a refreshed significance and importance.
One Dimensional Society
Democratic revolutions ushered in the industrialized capitalist system and succeeded because they recognized rights and liberties. Rights and freedoms outdated the feudal systems and protected self-powered enterprises. After the completion of the democratic revolutions, which resulted in the demise of the feudal systems and the establishment of the industrial systems, rights, and freedoms became less necessary.
The rights and freedoms, which were such vital factors in the origins and earlier stages of industrial society, yield to a higher stage of this society; they are losing their traditional rationale and content. Freedom of thought, speech, and conscience were, just as free enterprise, which they served to promote and protect, essentially critical ideas, designed to replace an obsolescent material and intellectual culture with a more productive and rational one. Once institutionalized, these rights and liberties shared the fate of the society of which they had become an integral part. The achievement cancels the premise.
Extensive prosperity satisfies basic wants. The satisfaction distracts people from argument, observation, and critical analysis: "Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals through the way it is organized." Advanced industrial societies harness technology, science, and mechanics to increase their production capacity. The machine becomes the most powerful political instrument powerful and surpasses the political power of any individual or group. Marcuse treats this phenomenon in a positive manner. "To the extent to which the work world is conceived of as a machine and mechanized accordingly, it becomes the potential basis of a new freedom of man." This does not imply the socialization of economic life. Those who operate in the workplace are the masters of the machine. By combining their efforts, they can replace the power of the managers and corporate leaders and supersede those who use profits for exercising political control and use the control for their
advantage.
The needs of the One Dimensional Man are pre-conditioned. The pre-conditioning is subjected to additional indoctrination by a standardized media. The media teaches, "to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate... " Social interests impose "false" needs. The "false" needs can gratify the individual but they "perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery and injustice." The endless drives for these endless "false" needs require additional efforts and bring frustration and despair that create hostility.
Liberty gives a wide range of choices but does not permit the individual to determine what can be chosen and what is chosen. Liberty cannot define the number of hours people are willing to work to fulfill their needs. Products serve to indoctrinate and manipulate. The indoctrination "becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life ─ much better than before ─ and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought... One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information."
One Dimensional Thought
The technological and the pre-technological stages share certain basic concepts of man and nature which express the continuity of the Western tradition. Within this continuum, different modes of thought clash with each other; they belong to different ways of apprehending, organizing, changing society and nature. The stabilizing tendencies conflict with the subversive elements of Reason, the power of positive with that of negative thinking, until the achievements of advanced industrial civilization lead to the triumph of the one-dimensional reality over all contradiction
The American democratic society moves forward with two prominent features; (1) as a "warfare state" for expanding the economic reach and preventing external challenges to military might, and (2) as a "welfare state" for distributing prosperity and preventing internal challenges to social and economic dislocations. Thoughtful responses to these challenges, such as pacifism, end to permanent mobilization, more direct distribution of wealth, etc., are regarded as asocial and unpatriotic. Even those who believe they express their own thoughts, often have these thoughts unknowingly shaped by covert domination and manipulation: "For the established universe of discourse bears throughout the marks of the specific modes of domination, organization, and manipulation to which the members of a society are subjected. People depend for their living on bosses and politicians and jobs and neighbors who make them speak and mean as they do; they are compelled by societal necessity, to identify the 'thing' with its functions."
Increased prosperity has brought increased uniformity of thought. Large-scale protests against U.S. government policies have declined dramatically since the Vietnam War days. Continuous military solutions to disputes feature attacks on defenseless nations and are supported by a society that has narrowed the dimensions of its reasoning. The university, previously a multi-dimensional depository of youthful criticism and movements, has become prominently directed to a singular purpose ─ to educate for incorporation into corporate society. Marcuse predicted these occurrences. He takes liberties with language and uses a rhetorical strategy to reach significant conclusions
The totalitarian dimensions of the one-dimensional society render the traditional ways and means of protest ineffective, perhaps even dangerous because they preserve the illusion of popular sovereignty. This illusion contains some truth: 'the people', previously the ferment of social change have 'moved up' to become the ferment of social cohesion. Here rather than in the redistribution of wealth and equalization of classes is the new stratification of advanced industrial society.
Vociferous detractors combat Herbert Marcuse's approach to American society. Their arguments raise a question, “Can those whom he considers becoming ‘One Dimensional Man’ objectively appraise his stinging comments?” Presented in another manner, “Can those who surreptitiously deny freedom to others contradict Marcuse’s revelation of how freedoms are surreptitiously denied? Herbert Marcuse displays a prophetic vision, His vision challenges the public to either comprehend the forces that shape their lives or remain limited in effective discourses and captured in a lesser dimension.
Note: All sentences in quotes are from One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse, published by Beacon Press, Boston, 1964.