Angela Davis, Herbert Marcuse, Paul Goodman, Gloria Anzaldua, and Nawal el Saadawi: On Political Shallowness and One-Dimensionality worth Shattering:

The gaffe of Mitt Romney for president, at an all-rich benefit event, said that 47% of the nation is not worth caring about. Truth is, in a have and have-not society, the Capital system does not provide for all.

Paul Goodman and Herbert Marcuse would agree that beyond the bourgeois ad nauseam, “boredom in politics may set the self-focused individual free from making a stance,” where the false democracy of limiting votes to two corporate controlled parties, still hoodwinks the masses into apathy or fetish for brand name parties. “A mass alienated from deep natural concerns, but occupying the consciousness and pre-consciousness with every manner of excitement, news, popular culture, sport, emulation, expenditure, and mechanical manipulation” (Goodman).  Paul Goodman later admits that the ability of parties and governments to accomplish any positive good is slim to none.

One online video on Yesmagazine.org recently reflected that all politicians should be required to wear labels like NASCAR drivers, to reflect the truth of which corporations, donors and lobbyists pay them top dollar. “I cannot lead or easily be led, and I am dubious about the ability of parties and governments to accomplish any positive good” (Goodman).

The real wealth and power in the United States is associated, still to this day, with corporations and families tied to the Robber Barons during the earliest years in the 20^th Century, who boomed to new heights after World War II: the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Fords, the Mellons, the DuPonts, as well as the Wallmart families, those behind Bank of America and Chase, the friends of the Bush family, and those behind Halliburton, General Electric, Monsanto, and Bechtel. Each of these elites is tied to oil, natural resources, chemicals, finances, pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods.

Hollywood does not have value power, nor does the elected official. Hollywood needs the current system as much as others because it provides the base for a never tired living vicarious audience. Big business reigns! Of course, Microsoft, and the Internet industries provide means to share information. But this new form of technology, still recent in the length of historic clout, has a two-way direction. One of threat to those in power and freedom of connectivity between alienated individuals, but also it could lead to dependency on the natural resources to make the technology and with stricter and stricter rules to control individual sharing capabilities. “This means of communication, available to all,” now has a growing lack in engaging people in controversial issues beyond the screen. Distracted by games, videos, and couch potato passivity, it is hard to move past the length of the power chord.

In light of Herbert Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man”, the most advanced areas of industrial society “exhibit throughout these two features, a trend towards consummation of technological rationality and intensive efforts to contain this trend within the established institutions” (Marcuse).    

Promoted by politicians and media, this One-Dimensional thought process is constructed by the political needs of special interests that convince the individual into a belief system that corporate needs are actually individual needs. As the old advertisement stated: “What is good for General Motors is good for America!” This sort of chime echoes today in Vice-President Joe Biden’s chant, “General Motors is Alive, and Osama Bin Laden is Dead!”

Controlled modes of thought and behavior become linked to no longer production, but consumption. No matter how much an alienated individual spends, it will not fill up the hole that is missing in a spiritually empty world under a capitalist mantra.

The thought police under Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, or Edgar Hoover’s America are fairly undifferentiated. Many people believe that times have drastically changed. But now that limited freedom has been gained, the gas chamber is the open environment that Monsanto, BP Oil, and DuPont pollute; the chains and the walls are restricted to mind control of manufactured consent; television, movies, and popular magazine trends are the image police, and media has no longer a journalistic responsibility, but a profit motive to boot.

The flavor and favor of the One-Dimensional world limits the definition of beauty and success; technical and administrative skills favored over mental skills; and this masterly fashion limits quality experience to masses of office spaces distracted with semi-satisfied machines, or sales-people, manual laborers, or construction workers beating out hours of work for works sake. Work, work, work, work, and if he or she has too much time on his or her hands, then give them more superficial distractions: sporting, shopping, accessorizing, and one-dimensional entertaining. Fluff can set you free and yet all it really does is perpetuate the acceptance of an affluent society unaware of its dependencies on overseas labor in China, Mexico, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc, Oil from the Middle East, immigrant labor at home, natural resource usurped from Africa, South America, or Asia; and a garbage bin big enough to dump all the leftovers, which is usually poor nations or poor neighborhoods having to choose between “poverty and poison”.

Tracy Chapman once sang, “Give them drugs and give them candy; Make them think that they are happy …  But if they start to question … Bang, Bang, Bang, Shoot them down.”

Angela Davis connects directly the relationship between minorities, immigrants, and the civil rights movement to the greater global international direction socially and economically; and this divergence is due to the dislocation/severed limbs between democracy and capitalism. The two ideologies do not go hand in hand. The limbo of today’s dilemmas and the future solutions are blotchily unforeseeable, except for the immediate drift towards catastrophe and collision. 

The 47% that Romney cancels out are not only those Americans, who make $10,000.00 a year or less but are also veterans, elderly, citizens with disabilities and predominantly minorities. Many are too busy working to actually find the time to vote. Many are convinced that neither party will do any thing to help the greater community, with good reason to believe this. As well, Third Party candidates are always naively easily cancelled out. There are many who do not know enough to make a stand as well as those who are unemployed, unemployable, outsiders, outcastes or other cultures.

In a letter from Raya Dunayevskaya to Erich Fromm about Herbert Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man” she summarizes, “Marcuse seems preoccupied with the idea that an advanced industrial society has replaced ontology with technology … we (individuals) have lost our power (according to him) of ‘negative thinking’ and have become so much a part of the status quo that” they are a ‘technicality’ rather than an opposition, who are easily swallowed up in minor modes of protest …” When capable the modes of “Zen, Existentialism, and Beat ways of life …  like other such modes of protest, are no longer contradictory” but have been absorbed into the status quo (Dunayevskaya). These modes of protest are no longer negating the status quo but have now become a ceremonial part of behavior practice. Such modes are now merely fashionable and are harmless like Punk, Rap, Graffiti, and Skate Boards.

While Raya Dunayevskaya until her death still believed in the ‘proletarian revolution’, Herbert Marcuse, had long given up on the Marxist notion. He equated that the blue-collar worker, the white-collar worker, and the average Joe had now been so absorbed into the consumer system that the working class had lost its ability to revolt in the previous capacity that Marx had anticipated. Voting seems just another mechanical chore, even though less than one hundred years ago women and minorities were strictly prohibited in accessing such rights.       

In Kevin Anderson and Russell Rockwell’s intro on Dunayevskaya’s correspondences with Marcuse and Erich Fromm, they note the differences between Marcuse and Dunayevskaya: “for Dunayevskaya, the creative role of labor is the key to all else” and for Marcuse, “interprets creativity ‘outside of labor’, as central to the post-capitalist society.”   In summing, one will either have creativity in their choice of work, or one will find creativity in his or her life outside of work. The debate comes to terms with the fact that human daily activities cannot fully abolish the need for labor, but it can be a means and not an end to self-development only if it leads to intellectual growth not just consumptive material growth.

If Marxists wanted a revolution of laborers over CEO’s and business elite, the post-revolution would have put the power over work in the worker’s hands; but for Marcuse, this is not enough if we do not redefine the ideal meaning of ‘work’. As for Anarchist-Intellectuals, such as Paul Goodman, they do not believe this type of revolution that Marxists hope for would lead to a healthier future under communism but instead a decline in actual freedom. Evidence is seen in the social evolution in Stalin and Mao’s grip over revolutionary power; leaving only single dictatorial voices over what is acceptable or not.

Goals of most historic Anarchist-Intellectuals, such as Har Dayal of India and Ricardo Flores of Mexico were of the “objective to not just reform government, but to leave government as unnecessary and only nominal” because if individuals have been educated enough to be ‘responsible and inclusive’ in decision making, governance would not be necessary (which a great many at the top of the greed list fail to learn) (Har Dayal). Our system is not self-improving but self-declining because of a failure in responsible leadership. The hierarchy of power is unnatural and willing to sacrifice the mass to save those at the top tier. 

Many critical workers realize that for the most part, “people who actually perform a function usually best know how it should be done.” Most employed individuals can admit that far more than they need, a boss is unnecessary. When the job is being performed, the limited micro-management the better, so as to improve self-efficiency; an ‘honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.’ The illusionary ‘busy’ work is not fooling anybody. It even does little to relieve job anxiety.

In similar alignment with Marcuse, Paul Goodman’s summation in “Drawing the Line” reflects that, “an enormous amount of effort from people in our society is used to create a synthetic demand.” Advertisers, politicians, and those in commodities “caught up in the profit system,” make you believe that you need more materials than you actually do need, and their salaries are based on hoodwinking the masses to believe this synthetic demand is natural (Goodman). This behavior is quite irresponsible and self-seeking. This artificial stimulation leads to personal egotism, and is a buffer to the ‘one-dimensional’ reality seen today at work, at home, or in social circles.

Herbert Read, who also has a great essay book entitled “To Hell With Culture”, commented on Herbert Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man”. Read stated that “Marcuse had moved to reconcile that originality and spontaneity and all the creative aspects of our human nature have been reduced in all its varieties of temperament and desire into one universal system of thought and behavior”. He notes that Marcuse does not claim to solve this problem, “but by presenting the alternatives in clear and critical terms, he makes the choice inevitable to every socially responsible individual … that we realize that the choice is now between the life and death of our civilization” (Read).

Though Marcuse does not claim to solve the problem, other intellectuals since then have pushed on how we can activate past the dilemma. Angela Davis in a 1995 interview with Lisa Lowe reflected on her experience with Herbert Marcuse during the 1960’s, and though he was in his 70’s at the time, the elderly activist participated in helping the youth movement. In the interview, Davis states, “The Seduction of the ‘One-Dimensional Society’ can be resisted (and still can be). He not only theorized these developments but he actively participated in mobilizations both in the US and in Europe. Working so closely with him at the time, I learned that while teaching and agitation were two very different practices, students need to be assured that politics and intellectual life are not two entirely separate modes of existence. I learned that I did not have to leave political activism behind to be an effective teacher” (Angela Davis).

Paul Goodman in agreement with Angela Davis also noted that “if anything is to be accomplished, it must be accomplished through continual pressure … Wiser, more compassionate people must continue to educate those who surround them.”    

Nawal el Saadawi and Gloria Anzaldua go even further. One-Dimensionality can be resisted. Nawal el Saadawi, in an essay entitled “Women and the Poor”, suggests: “we need unity and solidarity between men and women who resist global injustice at the local level as well as the international level. But we need a movement that is progressive, not backward, which seeks unity in diversity, by breaking down barriers built on discrimination (by gender, class, race, religion…)” and she emphasizes that we need to “Unveil the Mind”. Unveiling the Mind must expose the contradictions of both the economic and cultural order now controlled by corporate interests. Locally, we are controlled by the status quo. Globally, we are controlled by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (Saadawi).   

As with the act of unveiling, Gloria Anzaldua has invoked the image of a ‘Nagual’, a spiritual shape-shifter that goes ‘in-between’ spaces. Such terminology from her essay “Haciendo Caras, Una Entrada” where the masks that we wear (or veils) have driven ‘a wedge between our intersubjective personhood’; after “years of wearing masks, we may merely be just a series of roles” or merely just one-dimensional. Anzaldua suggests breaking down into fragments, creating space between the single mold, which as with any shattered piece “provides space” between the broken shards, and we must crack the masks. In our “self-reflexivity and in our active participation with the issues that confront us, whether it be through writing, front-line activism, or individual self-development, we are uncovering the interfaces” (uncovering pieces that came out from the shattering) (Anzaldua).

‘Uncovering our interfaces’ or ‘unveiling our minds’ resist one-dimensionality.  The ‘new mestiza’ that Gloria Anzaldua mentions is a person who inhabits multiple worlds due to gender, sexuality, color, race, class, bodies, spirituality, and other realities. Such a provocative alternative will allow the responsible individual to find “the guts and adrenaline that horrific suffering and anger, evoked by some of the shattered pieces, catapult us into” that acknowledges history rather than ignores history (Anzaldua). “These pieces are not only about survival strategies, they are survival strategies.” Anzaldua notes that dwelling on terms that cliché ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ is a way of avoiding serious dismantling, not only of racism but also the one-dimensionality that trivializes our independent histories. “Inherent in the creative act is a spiritual, psychic component – one of spiritual excavation” that requires ‘body, soul, mind and spirit’. 

While the election nonsense reflects the superficial politics that whitewash depth of a clearer democratic void, real politics deals with shattering the One-Dimensional thought process that has limited the American society for far too long. Voices of resistance, such as Gloria Anzaldua, Angela Davis, and Nawal el Saadawi continued and have gone beyond the realms Herbert Marcuse, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Paul Goodman had attempted to reach due to each woman’s unique creative ability and layerage of personal history. This is a quality that the 47% in deed have but need to embrace. Marcuse and Goodman started the discourse, but those who picked up the single fold that followed gave reason to shatter the process of one-dimensionality even beyond. Resistance is necessary, and activism in teaching is a required responsibility.