One-Dimensional Culture

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

The concept of one-dimensional culture needs to be understood in its social and historical context. It emerged in an attempt to comprehend advanced industrial society. The basis for the concept lies in the scientific and technological developments that enabled a higher standard of living. The developments in the natural sciences in the 17th century and the ensuing Enlightenment, with its celebration of reason against myth and tradition, reinforced the idea of human beings being in control of nature and thus their own fate. The industrialism that followed the technological developments enabled mass production of the necessities of life. However, in the context of Western capitalism many other commodities also were mass produced. This lay the ground for today's consumer culture, the signs of which were already identified by thinkers in the early 20th century, particularly advocates of critical theory.

Marcuse uses the term one-dimensional to describe a number of different things: thought, behavior, society, civilization, philosophy, language, culture, man. It refers to a state of affairs characterized by consensus and unity, where no tensions, contradictions, or antagonisms present themselves and, if they do, they are reduced to insignificance. [Page 626]Instead, domains of life such as culture, commerce, science, religion, and politics all seem to coexist harmoniously. The concept of one-dimensional thus refers to a conflation of potentially contradictory spheres into one congenial unity.

Marcuse was one of the central thinkers of critical theory as developed and practiced by a number of scholars connected to the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, often referred to as the Frankfurt School. His thinking connects to a long line of critical thinkers of society and builds in particular on the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. Although the thinkers of the institute work with a wide variety of social issues, there are a few topics of interest that many of them share. Among these are the nature of reason, domination, and the need for dialectical thinking, all of which are important for understanding the concept of one-dimensional culture.

Marcuse criticizes contemporary society for presenting itself as rational despite its irrationalities. These irrationalities present themselves in a comparison of the actual and possible consequences of the Enlightenment legacy. In contemporary terms, despite the massive technological advancements in society the world is still ridden by poverty and hunger for a majority of people due to unequal distribution of wealth and well-being. The advent of mass production potentially enabled a solution to this problem. Furthermore, as a consequence of excessive mass production, today the world is facing monumental environmental degradation that is eroding the very preconditions of life. Contemporary reason would thus seem far from reasonable.

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