Marcuse is a critical social theorist who has criticized advanced industrial society as ‘an all-encompassing system of repression’. He has been influenced by Hegel and also by the Marxian perspective in his writings. In his One Dimensional Man (1964), he has concluded more or less in the same manner as Marx did about alienation of the worker in the capitalist mode of production. His main argument is that Western industrial society is driven by false needs largely created by mass media. He maintains that most of the needs ‘to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements …,’54 are created needs. People no longer seek fulfilment in them and in their relations with others, rather in commodities and mechanical and electronic gadgets. As such, industrial man and also woman are alienated from every sphere of their life. The short point Marcuse is making, is that the industrial society presents commodities and products as if they define human essence. People also identify their worth with commodities. This has great potential of treating human beings as means. Human beings are consumers and it is beyond the control of consumers to resist what the market and media advertise. Alienation is rampant and creates a man who thinks in one dimension, media and market-created needs. Man (and woman) of an advanced industrial society is the one-dimensional man (and woman). Recall what we said earlier, Socrates was not Socrates because he drank hemlock but because he drinks cold drink now. X Y Z is X Y Z because he or she carries palmtop, blue tooth-driven mobile set or may be an iPod.
Wright Mills, in his book White Collar, has applied Marx’s concept of alienation to non-manual workers and has argued that non-manual workers present their unreal personality in the market situation. For example, a receptionist or a sales girl is always supposed to give a cosmetic smile even though she actually has different emotions to express at that particular time. Market requirements demand that the customer must be pleasantly welcomed. In this, the receptionist or the sales girl is not herself. She has to transform herself and wear a market-needed personality. What Mills call ‘personality market’, is based on fake and market driven personality. Look at the smile of a sales girl, a receptionist, an air hostess; the voice of a customer service attendant, a call centre attendant; the walk of a ‘beauty’ on ramp, all are simulated, all temporary, all fake. One may say that this is professionalism; the other may argue it is alienation. But the fact remains for debate: is it the true self of that person? Wright Mill will say that aspects of personality are being bought and sold in the market like labour.
André Gorz, a French sociologist, has argued that alienation at work leads to search for self-fulfilment in leisure. But leisure is also shaped and decided by external sources. We consume what the media and entertainment industry present. In fact, an alienated manual worker and a non-manual worker, also become passive consumers of leisure. Hence, one is alienated both from work and leisure.
Marx and Lukacs raised pertinent questions of human freedom in terms of self-realization by employing alienation as a concept. Marcuse, Gorz and Wright Mills have further analysed alienation in an advanced industrial society. It seems freedom and liberty could continue their journey with different perspectives fighting for giving their own interpretation. However, freedom, if it has to instal the human being as an end and not merely as a means, must provide the fullest condition of self-fulfilment and realization of human potentiality.
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