Jednorozměrný člověk – Marcuse Herbert (2025)

In his famous book from 1964, Marcuse criticizes capitalism while simultaneously rejecting the socialist regimes in the then Eastern Europe. According to the author, modern industrial society, although it claims to be rationalist, is in fact highly irrational. It has successfully dominated nature, but also its creator – man. It is totalitarian because it dictates not only social needs to people through technology but also their individual desires, claiming them even in their free time. Freedom (e.g., the free choice of goods and services) becomes a tool of control. The developed industrial society is, according to the author, far more ideological than its predecessor because ideology has shifted into the very production process; people begin to be products, and advertising becomes a desirable lifestyle. Capitalists take on the role of bureaucrats, and the working class is integrated into an unfree society. Concepts are reduced to a summary of operations, and operationalist hypotheses, through constant repetition in mass media, turn into definitions. The unreasonable equals the non-operationalizable. One-dimensional behavior and thinking emerge. The way out is a return to two-dimensionality – the contradictions that are necessarily contained in...