One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Marcuse is a philosopher in the Western tradition. He both embraces and criticizes Western philosophy, consistently referring to Western philosophy as both inspiration for, and obstruction to, radical thinking.

Marcuse consistently returns to Plato’s dialogues as a model for dialectical, liberatory thinking. The dialogues generally consist of a conversation between Socrates and someone else. They begin with an assumed truth rooted in experience, which is then subjected to questioning via this assumption coming into tension with something else that contradicts it. For Socrates, tensions and contradictions are nothing to be feared in thinking; rather, they are the foundation for and enable philosophical inquiry and the pursuit of truth.

These dialogues narrate the origin of Western philosophy as grounded in dialectical logic: Thinking occurs in the genuine consideration of a challenge and the subsequent revision in light of this challenge. The result is a new idea that must be subjected to the same process of inquiry. This process continues until there are no more tensions or contradictions, and truth has been achieved. It is only in holding an assumption up to something that is in tension with it that thinking can ever occur. For Marcuse, philosophy is dialectical thinking.

This embrace of contradiction and tension runs contrary to current assumptions about thinking. Modern assumptions privilege an accumulation of knowledge that can be commodified over the infinite process of dialectical thinking and its constant revelation of the unknown. Dialectical thinking, in its infinite encounter with the unknown in the search for truth, is inherently destabilizing. It thus refuses the status quo.

Advanced industrial society and, more specifically, academic philosophy, however, maintain the status quo and generally privilege the capitalistic accumulation of knowledge over the destabilization of knowledge inherent in dialectical thinking. While ancient Greece did not imagine philosophy as available to the masses, academic philosophy programs have only increased the elitism of a philosophy that is no longer truly philosophical.

Not only is real philosophy dependent on thinking within contradiction, but liberation from any oppressive system—especially the “soft” and comfortable totalitarianism of advanced industrial society—depends on dialectical thinking’s destabilization. In part because dialectical thinking is assumed to be a privilege for the elite in academia, regarded as a marginal pursuit rather than one that is essential to a just society, dialectical thinking has generally and quietly disappeared. Advanced industrial society ensures that dialectical thinking is integrated within its one-dimensionality so that it cannot challenge the status quo.

For Marcuse, the importance and radical nature of dialectical thinking has not changed since Socrates. Thinking within contradiction to arrive at new ideas is two-dimensional and, thus, an inherent refusal of the one-dimensional thinking that defines advanced industrial society. The process of dialectical thinking is itself liberating, and, if this thinking is acted upon by the people, is the means to societal liberation from advanced industrial society’s one-dimensionality. Dialectical thinking is open and intrinsically refuses capitalist accumulation. For Marcuse, revolution lies in dialectical philosophy’s constant reimagining of the world.