Marcuse’s basic claim is that modern science and technology are essentially implicated in social domination. By science and technology, he means just what we would expect: research, machines, industry, but also the technical practices and patterns of thought that make these concrete achievements possible. His concept of domination refers to the suppression of the individual by society, both in the external form of exploitation and coercive power, and in the internal or “introjected” form of conformism and authoritarianism. He holds that, today, the machine is not merely used for the purpose of suppressing individuality but that it is the basis for new types of suppression that it alone makes possible and is destined to carry out.
Marcuse’s dialectical style works on the ambiguities of certain terms in a way that is both illuminating and confusing. When he writes, for example, that science is “political” or that technology is “ideological,” he makes the strong point that science and technology can only be understood in the context of the social world in which they function. Yet, in making his point in this way, he blurs the essential difference between science and politics, technology and ideology. He might be taken to mean that, as politics and ideology, science and technology are nothing more than the rationalization of the interests of a particular class. But, then, opposition to that class would include opposition to “its” science and technology. This view is undoubtedly irrationalist and resembles romantic critiques of modernity that call for a return to religious values or a simpler, pretechnological way of life.
Yet this is not at all his intent. Despite his sharp criticism of “technological rationality,” he still maintains the old Marxist faith in the ultimate liberating potential of technology. It still represents the material basis for overcoming scarcity and conflict, but capitalism “represses” this technical potential by creating an ever-renewed struggle for existence.
To avoid an irrationalist misrepresentation of his position, Marcuse is obliged to offer correctives to his strongest critical claims, asserting the neutrality, validity, and instrumental effectiveness of science and technology despite their political character. At one point, he states that “technological rationality, freed from its exploitative features” can be employed under socialism, but this seems to contradict his own argument that “technology as such cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put.” He also asserts with equal assurance that “technology has become the great vehicle of reification,” and that “science and technology are the great vehicles of liberation.” He writes:
If the completion of the technological project involves a break with the prevailing technological rationality, the break in turn depends on the continued existence of the technical base itself. For it is this base which has rendered possible the satisfaction of needs and the reduction of toil—it remains the very base of all forms of human freedom. The qualitative change lies in the reconstruction of this base—that is, in its development with a view of different ends.
The mutually canceling formulas do actually add up to a theory buried in the interplay of the concepts used to present it. However, Marcuse’s rhetorical strategy is clear: from a variant of the Marxist position, he draws conclusions typical of the irrationalist critique. He wants to have his conceptual cake and eat it too, making the strongest possible critique of technology without paying the “Luddite” price.
Habermas, among others, has taken this to mean that Marcuse really believed in the neutrality of technology all along. And Joachim Bergmann argues that without a distinction between the purely neutral technical resources of advanced societies and their actual realization in particular ideologically biased technologies, there can be no notion of a “repressed potential” that would be liberated under socialism. How indeed would one measure this potential if it were not with respect to purely technical powers, abstracted from particular technologies and therefore also from whatever political or ideological function these technologies serve?
It is regrettable that Marcuse did not arrive at a clearer formulation of his theory in response to his critics. I will argue that many of his difficulties stem from the fact that his critique draws on two independent but related sources. The first of these sources is Marx’s analysis of the adaptation of science and technology to capitalist society, an approach that informs his understanding of legitimation in advanced capitalist society, and his critique of Weber’s theory of rationalization. Like Marx, Marcuse argues that technical progress can only provide universal benefits once freed from the imperatives of capitalism.
However, there is another strand to Marcuse’s argument that holds that technical reason is a priori adapted to the maintenance of social domination not just under capitalism, but essentially, in itself. This position seems closer in spirit to critics of technology such as Heidegger or Ellul, whose views are frequently described as romantic. This “romantic” or, better still, “ontological” strand of the theory holds that “technological rationality,” the prevailing form of technical reason, cannot serve a free society without fundamental transformation.
I am not convinced that Marcuse reconciled these positions successfully, but his attempt invites us to further reflection on technology. Can we, through the elaboration of his own concepts, bring these various approaches to the critique of technology together? Can they contribute to our understanding of the politics of technology today, such issues as climate change and surveillance on the internet? I will address these questions in this chapter and the next.