Comfortable administered life reduces freedom’s use-value

Evidence

The growing productivity of labor creates an increasing surplus-product which, whether privately or centrally appropriated and distributed, allows an increased consumption—notwithstanding the increased diversion of productivity. As long as this constellation prevails, it reduces the use-value of freedom; there is no reason to insist on self-determination if the administered life is the comfortable and even the “good” life. This is the rational and material ground for the unification of opposites, for one-dimensional political behavior. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 230

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the exact mechanism of ‘freedom as domination’ central to the Frankfurt School thesis.
• XREF: The ‘freedom reduces use-value’ inversion parallels later work on choice overload and the paradox of abundance in attention economics. — connects to: Mass diversion was devised to compensate for repressing genuine individual happiness — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 231; Rational administration of consumption masks the loss of individual control over life decisions — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 186; Administered life appears as the good life so domination looks like freedom — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 882
• DEEPTHINKING: Dense, paradigm-shifting claim that abundance materially strips freedom of its rational basis — a top-tier formulation of the book’s central thesis that resists one-sentence reduction.
• SEED: Article angle: modern convenience apps as the precise mechanism where administered comfort erodes the felt need for self-determination.

Broader Connections

• Administered life appears as the good life so domination looks like freedom #expands (0.88) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 882
• Rational administration of consumption masks the loss of individual control over life decisions #corroborates (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 186