Modern Society: An End to Revolt?

One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
by Herbert Marcuse
Beacon Press, 1964, $6.00

Herbert Marcuse’s latest book is an essay in pessimism so profound that it is contradicted by the act of writing it. For to write a book presupposes at least a possible audience and yet if Marcuse’s conclusions are correct his book can have almost no audience. His thesis is that we live in a society capable of absorbing both intellectual criticism and working-class revolt. “Technical progress, extended to a whole system of domination and coordination, creates forms of life (and of power) which appear to reconcile the forces opposing the system and to defeat or refute all protest in the name of the historical prospects of freedom from toil and domination.” For whom then can Marcuse be writing? The lack of an answer to this question perhaps explains the solip...