Saturday, December 3, 2016

Marcuse on the Need for Change

"... the need for qualitative change is as pressing as ever before. Needed by whom? The answer continues to be the same: by the society as a whole, for every one of its members. The union of growing productivity and growing destruction; the brinkmanship of annihilation; the surrender of thought, hope, and fear to the decisions of the powers that be; the preservation of misery in the face of unprecedented wealth constitute the most impartial indictment - even if they are the raison d'être of this society but only its by-product: its sweeping rationality, which propels efficiency and growth, is itself irrational."

Herbert Marcuse, "Introduction to the First Edition," One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), p. xlv.

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