Klimawandel ist nicht mehr umkehrbar!

[Hmpf]

Ach, wißt Ihr was? Ich poste hier einfach mal meine Zusammenfassung des Marcuse-Buches aus meiner Hausarbeit, die ich darüber letztes Semester geschrieben habe. Ist zwar lang, aber immer noch kürzer als das Buch. *g*

2. Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man

One-Dimensional Man is a philosophical critique of advanced industrial society, both in its capitalist and in the (nominally) socialist varieties of Marcuse's time. Marcuse considers this form of society as fundamentally unfree and irrational due to its underlying ideology, a distorted technological rationality which reduces man and nature to the status of instrumentalities. This technological rationality pervades the entire society. It is embodied in the process of production and the productive apparatus itself and can therefore not be overcome simply by transferring ownership of said apparatus to another social group. A real, qualitative change of society would require a change in its technical basis as well as changes in its political and economic organisation.
Marcuse believes that thought and reality are fundamentally antagonistic, with thought the realm of absolute truths against which the imperfect reality can – and, in fact, must - be measured. Thought transcends and negates the established reality. It projects more rational ways of being and has thus a normative, imperative, and political quality.
The central idea in Marcuse's criticism of advanced industrial society is the idea of freedom. Its lack in the established society is his main point of criticism, and freedom is also the central feature of the potential better society that apart from this most important requirement Marcuse only sketches out vaguely.
Marcuse's concept of freedom belongs to the sphere of thought, of absolute truth and true rationality. It can only ever be partly realised in reality, but it demands to be realised as far as possible in a truly rational society. True rationality is aimed towards the reduction of ignorance, destruction, and repression, and a society is truly rational only if it achieves the highest amount of mental, political and economic freedom for the individuals living in it that can be achieved with the technical and material resources available at that point in history. Since industrial civilisation is theoretically capable of providing a much higher level of individual freedom than it currently does, it is irrational in its current form.
The material prerequisite of freedom, according to Marcuse, is freedom from want, the end of the struggle for existence - what Marcuse calls the pacification of existence. This is the true end of undistorted technical rationality. It is technically within the reach of advanced industrial society - achievable through the mechanisation of labour, a reduction of destructive over-development, and a fair distribution of social wealth. Pacification would require mastery of nature, but not its destruction. In political and social terms it would mean not an increase but a reduction of power and domination over human beings, who would no longer be forced to compete against each other and perform alienated labour to survive. The pacification of existence would then lead to qualitatively different relations between people, and between people and nature, with both human beings and nature regaining a distinct value independent of their utility in the productive process.
A pacified existence would also provide people with the free time and energy necessary to determine for themselves their true needs and desires. All further development resulting from this would mean a qualitative break with the previous direction of progress, and Marcuse suggests that at this point aesthetic qualities could enter technology, and people could begin to develop a way of life more genuinely in tune with all, and not just the material human needs.
A change towards a more rational society, however, is unlikely since according to Marcuse advanced industrial society is totalitarian and closed against qualitative change. It perpetuates itself by virtue of its efficiency at providing an increasing standard of living for increasing numbers of people on the basis of an interlocking welfare and warfare state. Since it appears to allow great numbers of people a good life this system seems to its subjects to be a good one, and, increasingly, the only truly rational one. Any conflict with it or resistance to it appears socially useless and neurotic.

2.1. One-Dimensional Thought

Advanced industrial society undeniably achieves a high standard of living for large numbers of people; however, as Marcuse points out, it does so at a great cost to the environment and to people in less privileged countries. Its constantly rising productivity is founded on destruction and oppression. Also, for all the quality of life it provides, the established society preserves the necessity for people to spend a large part of their lives doing work that is at best merely alienated, at worst deeply irrational and destructive. The economy is dependent on the constant maintenance of a state of military alertness and on the incessant production and satisfaction of new needs. In Marcuse's view these needs are false needs because they do not arise from within the individuals but are impressed upon them from without, by a marketing or propaganda machinery. The easy satisfaction of these false needs helps to cement the status quo.
The destructive and oppressive elements in the organisation of advanced industrial society are seen by its members as unfortunate but unavoidable side-effects of progress that are 'absolved' by its achievements. The relatively comfortable style of living maintained even for the less fortunate members of society by the welfare state and the sense of threat from without that is the result of what Marcuse calls "the Warfare State" serve to contain conflicts and doubts about the established society. Also, a lack of free time and energy as well as a tendency towards the reduction of privacy, i.e. the reduction of the time and inner space necessary for reflection, combine to make the development of a critical consciousness difficult.
Advanced industrial society is therefore characterised by a mode of thought that only knows one dimension, that of the factual reality of the established society. The other dimension of reality, the dimension of thought, of what could be instead of what is, is disregarded. It is considered irrational because it contradicts the established society, although it is actually precisely this contradiction that makes it more rational than said society.
Marcuse observes one-dimensional thinking in all areas of modern culture. In science it takes the form of a narrow positivism which can only describe and quantify facts, but cannot judge the purposes its findings are put to, nor explain facts in their historical dimension. This positivism, which is also found in philosophy, relegates values and concepts that transcend the current society to a wholly separate, subjective dimension, rendering them irrelevant to the dimension of facts and science and thereby rendering science artificially - falsely - neutral. As for art - and especially those areas of art that used to constitute the realm of higher culture, which according to Marcuse was traditionally founded on its opposition to and negation of the established society - here the loss of any contrasting dimensions turns art from a subversive instrument of reason into an instrument of affirmation and containment.
In the one-dimensional view of the world the very idea of qualitative social change becomes impossible. Social problems are perceived as individual problems without any connection to a larger context, to be solved by therapy, or better technical management of a particular situation. Therapy in this sense serves to better attune the individual to society, whereas what is really needed would be to change society in a way that would make it serve the individuals' needs better.


ETA: Marcuse sieht also das Problem nicht so sehr im Kapitalismus allein, sondern vielmehr in der Industriegesellschaft. Damit hat er natürlich recht. Ich benutze das Wort 'Kapitalismus' im Moment meist als quasi-Synonym für die Industriegesellschaft, weil die Form der Industriegesellschaft, die wir im Moment haben, nun einmal eine kapitalistische ist, und verschiedene Mechanismen innerhalb des Kapitalismus die Probleme der Industriegesellschaft meiner Meinung nach verstärken.

Okay, jetzt bin ich aber wirklich erstmal weg. Für den Rest des Tages, mindestens.