Herbert Marcuse Quotes About Commodities

Quotes about: Commodities

• The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Men, Ties, People

  Herbert Marcuse (1969). “An Essay on Liberation”, Boston : Beacon Press

• If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator -- the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Philosophy, Communication

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.57, Beacon Press

• The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Home, People, Soul

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.11, Routledge

• Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Real, Men, Essence

  Herbert Marcuse (2007). “The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse”, p.78, Beacon Press

• Technical progress and more comfortable living permit the systematic inclusion of libidinal components into the realm of commodity production and exchange. But no matter how controlled the mobilization of instinctual energy may be (it sometimes amounts to a scientific management of libido), no matter how much it may serve as a prop for the status quo - it is also gratifying to the managed individuals, just as racing the outboard motor, pushing the power lawn mower, and speeding the automobile are fun.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Fun, Racing, Progress

  "One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 75), 1964.

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