Preserving the status quo now unites former class antagonists in advanced societies

Evidence

An overriding interest in the preservation and improvement of the institutional status quo unites the former antagonists in the most advanced areas of contemporary society. And to the degree to which technical progress assures the growth and cohesion of communist society, the very idea of qualitative change recedes before the realistic notions of a non-explosive evolution. In the absence of demonstrable agents and agencies of social change, the critique is thus thrown back to a high level of abstraction. There is no ground on which theory and practice, thought and action meet. Even the most empirical analysis of historical alternatives appears to be unrealistic speculation, and commitment to them a matter of personal (or group) preference. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 91

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes a core Marcuse move: the disappearance of the proletariat as agent of transformation, central to one-dimensionality.
• XREF: Echoes bell hooks’ lost revolutionary subject and the current attention/critique debates about who acts when mass agency vanishes. — connects to: Comunitarian resistance to change masks defense of present hierarchy — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 869; Bourgeois tolerance functions as a mask preserving the status quo — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 342

Broader Connections

• Comunitarian resistance to change masks defense of present hierarchy #complicates (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 869
• Bourgeois tolerance functions as a mask preserving the status quo #corroborates (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 342