Although he was certainly influenced by Adorno and even Heidegger, Marcuse was not the romantic technophobe he is often taken for. To be sure, he argues that instrumental reason is historically contingent, but unlike Adorno and Heidegger, he thinks human action can change the epochal structure of technological rationality and the designs which flow from it. A new type of reason would generate new and more benign scientific discoveries and technologies. Marcuse is an eloquent advocate of this ambitious position, but today the notion of a political transformation of science has a vanishingly small audience and discredits his whole
approach.37
Theories of technology entail various epistemological and conceptual difficulties, not least the problem of defining technology per se in anything but broad terms.38 Understandably, definitions
range widely, but for the current discussion, two crucial points regarding Marcuse's definition need to be addressed. Firstly, Marcuse was a believer in the hardly controversial claim that technology was still developing, it is not a “fixed destiny.”39 This contention forms the background both to his
philosophical anthropology as well as his philosophy of technology which considered technoscience to contain powers that, were they to be released in line with what he contended were its innate potentials, would be directed to provide for the augmentation of human capacities, to diminish the need for arduous or dangerous manual labour, to counter misery and sickness, and to restore the mutilated environment. Broadly, Marcuse's view implies that technological, natural and human ends ought be considered inseparable; the so-called “end” of technological rationality is not merely aligned with human potential in some arbitrary fashion – it is the concrete means by which this potential may be pursued, embodied and practically realised.40
Utopian possibilities are inherent in the technical and technological forces of advanced capitalism and socialism: the rational utilization of these forces on a global scale would
37 Feenberg, Questioning Technology, (London & New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 153.
38 A summary overview of the more common definitions is provided by S.J. Kline, 'What is Technology?' in
Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition, edited by R.C. Scharff and V. Dusek (Oxford, Blackwell, 2005), pp. 210-212. See also the volume edited by J.K.B. Olsen, S.A. Pedersen and V.F. Hendricks, A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009).
39 Feenberg, op.cit. (2005), p. 1. 40 See Marcuse, op.cit. (1964), p. 239.
terminate poverty and scarcity within a very foreseeable future.41
The second point concerns Marcuse's distinction between 'technics' and 'technology'which arguably becomes crucial in understanding his wider critique of advanced industrial society. Marcuse
originally attributed the distinction to Lewis Mumford,42 but it appears to owe more to the Marxian
distinctions between mode, means, and relations of production. Although in Marcuse's writings – not least 'Some Social Implications of Modern Technology' and One-Dimensional Man – the
distinction is not held scrupulously,43 it will be contended in this thesis that it persists throughout his
work in an implicit manner and has specific relevance to questions pertaining to the shared grounds of technology and environment.
For Marcuse, technics, or the “technical apparatus” denotes the totality of instruments, devices and artifacts that are commonly taken in English as 'technology' in general. In other words, the
“apparatus of industry, transportation and communication”, individual technical artifacts, from tools and machinery to consumer products, engine parts, computers, and the mechanisms and techniques by which they are produced.44 Marcuse is less concerned to interrogate this element of the equation,
as 'technics' (or the means of production) are “but a partial factor” of what he is most interested in: the mode of production which provides the incentive and impetus which underlies their production in the first place.45 In short, it is once again clear in 'Some Social Implications of Modern
Technology' and later works that Marcuse remains concerned with the historically specific shift in the orientation of production from use-value to exchange value.46 This shift spans almost the entire
gamut of the means of production, but also counts for the human relations of production, as in the affluent societies, well after subsistence needs had been met for the majority of the workforce, wage increases served as an incentive to continue to carry out work and to keep levels of consumption growing. For Marcuse, technical artifacts are socially contingent and ethically neutral; they can be used to “promote authoritarianism as well as liberty, scarcity as well as abundance, the extension as well as the abolition of toil”.47 However, understood in Marcusean terms, 'technology' is a mode of
41 Marcuse, op.cit. (1969b), p. 4. 42 Marcuse, op.cit. (1941), p. 41.
43 See for example, J. Ocay, 'Marcuse's Critique of Advanced Industrial Society', Kritike vol.4, no.1, (June 2010), pp. 56-57.
44 Marcuse, op.cit. (1941), p. 56. 45 Marcuse, ibid. (1941), p. 41.
46 Although One-Dimensional Man arguably provides the most cohesive and complete description of Marcuse's philosophy of technology, it's subtitle, “Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society” makes it clear that he is concerned to analyse technology in a wider social and political context.
production.48 Hence, the neutrality of technics ought not blind the investigator to this
preconditional, "basic historical factor":
One may still insist that the machinery of the technological universe is “as such” indifferent toward political ends – it can revolutionize or retard a society. An electronic computer can serve equally a capitalist or socialist administration; a cyclotron can be an equally efficient tool for a war party or a peace party. This neutrality is contested in Marx's controversial statement that the “hand-mill gives you a society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.” And this statement is further modified in Marxian theory itself:
the social mode of production, not technics is the basic historical factor. However, when technics becomes the universal form of material production, it circumscribes an entire culture; it projects a historical totality – a "world".49
Marcuse's distinction thereby draws out the role that profit-making has come to play in motivating and guiding production, which in the advanced industrial societies tends to play the major influence in rationalising and legitimating the vast majority of technical forays. A distinction can therefore be made between the technological and the development and proliferation of the technical and
technoscientific realms. Technologyis not simply a 'form' or historical stage of technical activity, it is a "new rationality" containing "new standards of individuality"; a historically-specific "social process" operant at the level of ideas, opinion, government policy, and most especially business, and hence is inseparable from the collective choices, motives and decisions of agents. Given these contentions, it is unsurprising that Marcuse claims that he is not specifically interested in the
"...influence or effect of technology or particular technical artifacts on human individuals as such, as (...) they are themselves an integral part and factor of technology, not only as the social groups which direct its application and utilisation."50 Again, as a mode of production, technology
incorporates and directs – and is itself directed by – the instrumental rationality appropriate to machinery which comes to dominate the relations of production, i.e.: individual human relations to each other, as well as to first nature.
Technology, as a mode of production, as the totality of instruments, devices and contrivances which characterise the machine age is thus at the same time a mode of organising and
perpetuating (or changing) social relationships, a manifestation of prevalent thought and
48 See Marcuse, ibid. (1941), p. 41
49 Marcuse, op.cit. (1964), p. 157-158. (Emphasis added). 50 Marcuse, op.cit. (1941), p. 41.
behaviour patterns, an instrument of control or domination.51
Especially in its modern form, Marcuse contended that the technological mode of production is operant in both the individual and socio-cultural contexts, private and public, local, regional and international. In 'Some Social Implications of Modern Technology', he uses the example of
"technocracy" utilised by the Third Reich in his native homeland to emphasise its incredibly broad scope and relevance, far transcending the realms of technics, mechanisation and industry, through the National Socialist's "ingenious manipulation of the power inherent in technology: the
intensification of labor, propaganda, the training of youths and workers, the organization of the governmental, industrial and party bureaucracy – all of which constitute the daily implements of terror – follow the lines of greatest technological efficiency."52 All of which Marcuse characterises
as – to summarily paraphrase – anti-technological, as once again he viewed technology in its 'essence' as a positive force for humankind, tending toward the decrease of unnecessary toil rather than its artificial increase, to the lessening of terror and suffering, rather than their extension.
Although certainly not incapable of brute force, the use of technology within the liberal-democratic, advanced capitalist nations tended toward the what Walt Lippman referred to as the engineering of consent rather than its overt, terroristic enforcement.53 Yet, Marcuse was convinced that a
technocratic totalitarianism remained an appropriate label for even these societies. As he wrote at the conclusion of the second edition of his study of Hegelian thought, Reason and Revolution, "The defeat of Fascism and National Socialism has not arrested the trend towards totalitarianism.
Freedom is on the retreat – in the realm of thought as well as that of society."54 Indeed, the use or
misuse of technology under consumer capitalism was not – as many advocates of the "free-market" continue to maintain – the direct opposite of the violence of such regimes as the Nazis, but related through both arrangement's use of technology as a means of social control. Marcuse did not see Fascism as a definitive break from liberalism, but instead demonstrated "...the continuities
between liberalism and fascism and shows how liberalism's unquestioned allegiance to the capitalist economic system prepared the way for the fascist-totalitarian order and with it the abolition of liberalism itself.55 Marcuse again cites Mumford who was similarly critical of the contention that
technological development under capitalism tended toward its natural 'end', noting that it was
51 Marcuse, ibid. (1941). 52 Marcuse, ibid. (1941).
53 See W. Lippmann, (1922), Public Opinion, (New York: FQ Classics, 2007). The terms is now more well-known through its use by Noam Chomsky. See his Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind, (Boston: AK Press, 1998). 54 Marcuse, 'Epilogue' in Reason and Revolution: An Introduction to the Dialectical Thinking of Hegel and Marx, 2nd
ed., (New York, Humanities Press, 1954), pp. 433.
55 Kellner, 'Herbert Marcuse and the Vicissitudes of Critical Theory', in Towards a Critical Theory of Society: The Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol.2., edited by D. Kellner, (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 8.
neither the spirit of invention, nor the promise of innovation in increasing humanity's "essential powers" that fostered and motivated technological growth, "...but business, or power over other men. In the course of their development machines have extended these aims and provided a vehicle for their fulfillment".56 According to Marcuse, the growth of technology in the capitalist nations had
therefore come to take on forms quite "different from and even opposed" to those which marked its temporal beginnings, the large duration of its existence, as well as its essential end.57
It is hopefully already clear that the difference Marcuse placed between technics and technology only superficially resembles the more famous distinction proposed by Martin Heidegger.58 Marcuse
is not aiming to provide an ontological theory or definition, but aiming to trace its concrete social manifestations in the practical context of everyday lived experience.59 Although his views of the
modern context of this 'lived experience' of technics and technology are undeniably critical, there remains in Marcuse's account the potential prospect of human responsibility coming to play a far more significant role in technical mediation than it currently does, or that was allowed for under the pessimistic sway of such thinkers as Heidegger, Ellul, and to a lesser extent, Mumford.60 As has
already been argued, given the necessary wherewithal, Marcuse's theory allows for technics and technology to be turned away from the profit motives of an already affluent few to the benefit of the non-affluent many and the recovery of first nature; the immense wealth that technoscientific
production is the primary means of generating could be turned to feed the hungry and assist the sick on a global scale instead of being funneled to elite, affluent populations who live in comparative comfort but continue to bemoan their supposed economic “uncertainty”. Marcusean philosophy of technology is therefore hardly pessimistic in its entirety; as he wrote in response to critics that mistakenly attributed more than a mote of each of these views to his philosophy, “science and technology are the great vehicles of liberation, and it is only their use and restriction in the
repressive society which makes them into vehicles of domination.”61 In emphasising how technics
(and, in the modern era, technoscience) comes to be used, it should be noted that Marcuse is not
56 L. Mumford, cited in Marcuse, op.cit. (1941), p. 41. 57 Marcuse, ibid. (1941), p. 42.
58 See Heidegger, op.cit. (1954).
59 For a thorough discussion of the differences and similarities of Marcuse and Heidegger's views on technology see Feenberg, op.cit. (2005). See also I. Thomson, 'From the Question to Technology to the Quest for a Democratic Technology: Heidegger, Marcuse, Feenberg', Inquiry, vol.43, issue 2,(Summer, 2000), pp. 225-234.
60 See J. Ellul, (1963), 'The Technological Order', in Philosophy and Technology, edited by C. Mitcham and R. Mackey, (Cambridge, MASS: The MIT Press, 1983), pp. 86-105, and Ellul, op.cit. (1964).
61 Kellner, op.cit. (1984), pp.266-267, citing Marcuse, op.cit. (1969b), p.12. (Note that Kellner's initial reference to this quote [p. 21] appears to be incorrect). It should be noted that Marcuse's thoughts on the beneficence of technology are not always consistent. For example, see Marcuse, op.cit. (1964), p. 172. Such critics include Alvin Toffler, who mistakenly described Marcuse, Lewis Mumford and Erich Fromm as “anti-technological” in his 1970 bestseller,
only thinking about the 'end user'; the agent who purchases x in order to carry out a particular task. Instead, he can be said to be drawing attention to the collective 'function' of the entire edifice of capitalist-driven production, namely: the maintenance and recreation of itself. In this process, individuals, artifacts and first nature are drawn into conformance through being provided with monetary incentives in exchange for their participation and compliance as wage labourers – strictly speaking, they are not causally determined to do so, but offered a deal that they can hardly refuse. Marcuse's concern with use is also not a reiteration of the classical Aristotelian distinction between organisms and artifacts, which, as will be argued later, lacks sufficient depth to countenance the role of the individual in advanced industrial societies.62 Nor, as will also be discussed later is Marcuse
offering a version of the 'unintended consequences' thesis, in which the original incentives informing technical designs are displaced by exactly the concern with the end user noted above.63
Rather, Marcuse made the hardly radical proposition that the incentives of profit making cannot be separated from any discussion of the modern technical phenomenon, a contention mainstream economists would hardly disagree with. Indeed, the large majority of small and large-scale
productive endeavours are not able to be accomplished without sufficient capital – either as a future expectation or as an a priori prerequisite. It is not necessarily the usefulness or the 'worth' of the technical endeavor that will decide on its ultimate success, but its 'value', or capacity for to make profits.64 However, it is also important to note that Marcuse is not arguing that technoscientific
development nor the increases in affluence it has conferred are the causes of the one-dimensional society, but their consequences:
The oppressive features of technological society are not due to excessive materialism and technicism. On the contrary, it seems that the causes of the trouble are rather in the arrest of materialism and technological rationality, that is to say, in the restraints imposed on the
materialization of values. These restraints pertain to a particular period of civilization, to a particular organization of the struggle for existence. Their abolition, that is, the liberation of technology, would involve the entire material and intellectual culture of advanced industrial society.65
62 See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book 6, iv, translated by J.A.K. Thomson, (London: Penguin Classics, 1976), p. 208 (emphasis added).
63 For a highly readable account of this thesis, see E. Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, (New York: Vintage, 1997).
64 As Marx commented after a quotation from John Locke, the "British writers" of the seventeenth century tended to refer to the use value of an artifact as its "worth", and its exchange value as its "value". As Marx notes: "This is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic word for the actual thing, and a Romance word for its reflection." See Marx, (1867), Capital, vol.1, part 1, chapter 1. note 4, (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), p. 126.
“Excessive materialism and technicism” are then not the causes of the affluent society, but the means by which the materialisation of values is artificially suspended. Although stimulated and prompted, and unable to avoid the necessity of a regular income, the individual is not simply the determinedeffect of “autonomous technology”, but is widely encouraged to be a proud contributor to the system. Instead of being brutally enforced as under (say) the dictatorial communist regimes of Stalin and Mao, public consent becomes an 'engineering project' for seemingly ever more intimately acquainted fusions of government departments and corporations, “spin doctors”, public relations and marketing firms, whose productive work – whether they are aware of it or not – tends to lubricate the reproduction of the overall arrangement. Marcuse is therefore hardly calling for technical development to be subdued, nor for its advance to be 'artificially' halted or suspended; indeed, it is just the latter that is the problem. As it will be ventured later, Marcuse may have been happily surprised to note that various recent technical capacities – especially the global spread of computers and the internet – show almost exactly the sorts of effects he was speaking of. If examples such as the “piracy” (i.e. sharing) of documents, software, video and audio and the radically open dissemination of information through such media as Wikileaks are any indication, a strong case can be made that the level of innovation modern capitalism encourages may grow beyond even its capacity to contain its potential consequences.66 However, before this contention
can be elaborated further, what Marcuse called for was a redirection of technology away from the exploitative incentives that prevail in capitalist societies, or in other words, a new mode of
production, which he contended could be actualised under a redefined, non-bureaucratised form of