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The "system," Marcuse claims, is wholly irrational. Technological civilization no longer rests on material scarcity and the need for society to force individuals to give up their pursuit of personal satisfaction in order to work and produce much-needed goods. Yet most people still spend most of their time in work that amounts to "exhausting, stupefying, inhuman slavery"› made more so because the division of labor alienates workers from each other, from their product, and from work itself. Although leisure time is growing, play is advertised and packaged so as to "soothe and prolong stupefaction" rather than stimulate individual consciousness.
Pleasure Principle. Marcuse builds his gloomy assessment of technological society on a creative fusion of ideas borrowed from Freud and Marx. In Freud ian terms, man's instinctual pursuit of "the pleasure principle" (mainly sexual and based in the id) normally gives ground to "the reality principle" as influenced by society's demands (reflected by the superego) and is repressed or compromised within each individual (by the moderating ego). The tragedy now, as Marcuse sees it, is that society, in its wasteful misuse of technology, has imposed what he calls "surplus repression"—controls not really necessary for civilized human association. Among them are pressures to protect monogamy, the hierarchical division of labor, public control over private life. They seem rational, and man absorbs them unconsciously until they become his "own desire, morality and fulfillment."
Building on Marxian theory, Marcuse contends that capitalist society has within it inherently incompatible forces that cannot be contained. But he also acknowledges Marx's failure to foresee that capitalist society could buy off the workers with material goods and prevent their clash with owner-managers by making both classes of society mere tools of technology. His writings admit to the interpretation that he sees a physical uprising as the primary way to overthrow this "oppressive" structure and restore man to new potentialities of freedom.
Lofty Plane. Marcuse is an almost temptingly easy target to criticize. It has been argued that his basic premises were better put by his intellectual masters—and Marcuse's weightier ideas are couched in an abstruse Teutonic style that almost defies readability. Some libertarians complain that he is a potential authoritarian who would suppress any group trying to promote military arms, racial or religious discrimination, even the extension of public service. A more telling commentary is that Marcuse's attack on industrial civilization is put on such a lofty, pan-historical plane that it cannot be applied to any single nation without breaking down in detail. Ironically, Marcuse's concentration on the grand scheme of things dismays some of his would-be New Left followers; at San Diego, campus activists who come to Marcuse for his blessing are often subjected to devastating critiques of their tactics and their goals.