Product Description

Marcuse attempts not only to interpret the world but also to change it. He brings to the task an equipment rarely found among professional philosophers and an idiom - Hegelian, Marxist and Freudian - that is altogether his own. In the tradition of Karl Mannheim he attempts a diagnosis of our times - something which social scientists and philosophers today abjure. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates of political philosophy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #861311 in Books
• Published on: 1991-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Classic of the 'New Left'
This is a classic book of the ‘New Left’ which never fails to both inspire and depress me. I am surprised his thought no longer seems to animate the debate on the Left. Marcuse, using his own unique brand of Marxist, Freudian and existentialist analysis, argues that advanced capitalism’s productive apparatus is ‘totalitarian’ and the 'military-industrial complex' unstoppable.

For Marcuse, we live in a society where the productive apparatus is totalitarian to the extent that it determines not only the social skills and attitudes we must possess to prosper, but also our individual needs and aspirations we need to achieve contentment. “The creation of repressive needs has long since become part of socially necessary labour, necessary in the sense that without it, the established mode of production could not be maintained.”

Marcuse chronicles how he believes that modern production processes manifests itself in all facets of everyday life. Western culture is increasingly commodified and merely serves the status quo. The social, political and intellectual life of the whole of society is shaped by vested interests. The economic co-ordination of life and the use of ‘legal’ coercion and forced hegemony both at home and abroad crushes all dissent. Both society and Man himself are fragmented, incomplete and one dimensional; an age away from Marx’s ideal of The Whole Man, and seemingly, with no salvation on the horizon...

This is a sociological tome that I can relate to, that helps you understand why one may think a certain way, such as why our scope for choice seems so limited despite the fact we are experiencing the most prosperity humanity has ever known.

If you find these arguments compelling, then read this book!

A book which opens our eyes on the system we live in.
I have read the Arabic transilation of this book It gave me a lot of answers i sought for a long time about modern materialistic societies,also opened my eyes on many things hapining now ,it does explain all the ideas in a scientific approache many thigs in which we would never think of just because we have been blinded thinking that our eyes are wide open!