Critical Theory: Herbert Marcuse and his One-Dimensional Man

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the radio silence — been busy selling my labor. Finally getting around to scheduling our next event, which will be held after the holidays.

Herbert Marcuse was a French philosopher and co-founder of The Frankfurt School of critical theory. He attempted to synthesize the ideas of Marx and Freud (among others) and use their combined forces to investigate how capitalism shapes psychology and culture. In One-Dimensional man, he describes the flattening of the human personality that takes place in a modern world defined by consumerism and conformism.

Here's a PDF of the book: https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odmcontents.html

Pick the sections that look the most interesting to you and read through as much as you can!

If you'd like to read about the ideas in Marcuse's other texts, here's an overview: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/

This will be a dual in-person and online meeting to allow all of our remote members to stay in the loop. See you all next month!

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At our last meeting, we discussed Antonio Gramsci, who is regarded as the forefather of critical theory given his interest in how ideology is deployed as a form of social control. See below for an excerpt of my essay on his life and thought:

"Marx emphasized the role of state force: the military, the police, laws, judges, and how they worked together to enforce institutions such as private property. Gramsci acknowledged this as one means of control, which he called “coercion.” But he also identified another, less talked about form of control, which he called “consent.” Whereas coercion is a physical battle for control, consent is an ideological battle, with the ruling class utilizing cultural institutions such as schools, churches, and the media to inculcate societal norms that train the working class to accept its subaltern status. The ruling class’s objective is to get the working class to perceive its subordination not as artificially imposed, but as the natural, inevitable way of the world."

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