New Left

 Herbert Marcuse, one of the most significant social theorists of the ‘New Left’, with special reference to his famous book ‘One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society’. The book was published in the year 1964, and it had a profound impact in academic and public spheres. In fact, it established Marcuse as a new age ‘guru’ for a radical rebellious young generation in the 1960s.They actively resisted and protested against the materialistic and militaristic values of Western society and promoted a ‘counter-culture’ that defied the conservative value system of the older generation. The predictions of Karl Marx that capitalism would eventually break under the force of its own contradictions and the ‘revolution of the proletariat’ would usher in a new phase of communism were not coming true. Capitalist societies of the West had become affluent and seemed to have solved the problems of hunger and want; the working-class seemed to be thoroughly integrated in it and seemed to have lost its revolutionary potential. Social control was not by force but rather by promoting ‘false needs’ for more and more consumption. In order to fulfill these needs, human beings would cooperate with the system, and not question or challenge it. This created ‘one dimensional’ humans and a one-dimensional society that was driven and governed by consumption and a ‘flattening’ of discourse; where conformity and compliance were prized and dissent and disagreement frowned upon.

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