Industrial progress destroys the conception of the person as a bearer of reason

Evidence

In Marcuse’s view, the powers of reason and freedom are declining in “late industrial society”: “With the increasing concentration and effectiveness of economic, political, and cultural controls, the opposition in all these fields has been pacified, co-ordinated, or liquidated.” Indeed, reason has become an instrument of domination: “It helps to organize, administer, and anticipate the powers that be, and to liquidate the ‘power of Negativity.’ Reason has identified itself with the reality: what is actual is reasonable, although what is reasonable has not yet become actuality. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 34 (#expands, via linked claim)

In other words, when thinking about class differences obscured in influencer culture, we find that one class is capital personified, and the other strives to achieve the status of capital personified. The striving class has bought into the belief that contemporary capitalism depends on social relations, on personal connections, embracing precarious flexibility and constant hustle as a route to future success and security. The other class, while its members also appear to engage in these same practices, has instead invested in the manufacturing of consumer goods, the ownership of social media platforms and apps, and the trading and speculation of real estate. Theirs is a class in which the logic of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation. This, we will demonstrate, is the fundamental ruse of contemporary influencer culture. In the name of identification, intimacy, and authenticity, of being “real” and being “relatable,” today’s influencer culture is asking audiences to identify with a way of conceiving of themselves—a mode of subjectivity—that follows the logic of a vertically integrated conglomerate, desiring this model of the self as the image and model of “success.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 25 (#expands, via linked claim)

As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 284 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reason becomes a mere instrument of the economic apparatus once consciousness is removed. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 47; Industrial society reduces individuals to interchangeable species beings through conformist working conditions; The logic of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 25 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Reason itself becomes an instrument of domination in late industrial society #expands (0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 34
• The logic of selfhood becomes indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation #expands (0.85) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 25
• Losing the fact-potential distinction makes thought submit to existing society #expands (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 40
• Repeated political ideals turn into meaningless operational sounds in industrial society. #exemplifies (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 284