Technical progress produces a comfortable, democratic unfreedom

Evidence

A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive corporations; the regulation of free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of prerogatives and national sovereignties which impede the international organization of resources. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 105

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The paradoxical pairing of freedom and domination is the exact thesis a critical theory reader is after.
• XREF: connects to: Technological progress legitimates capitalism as the best possible system — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 122; A comfortable, willing population can still be enslaved by its instrumentality — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 187; Liberation from technological domination requires preserving the technological base — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 812 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• A comfortable, willing population can still be enslaved by its instrumentality #corroborates (0.88) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 187
• Enlightened progress remains entangled with domination and cruelty #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 200
• Technological progress legitimates capitalism as the best possible system #expands (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 122
• Technologically educated masses paradoxically exhibit readiness to accept despotism #exemplifies (0.80)
• Democracy is power’s technical character normalized in moral terms #expands (0.78) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 745
• A new conformism built from below on production enables genuine freedom #contradicts (0.75)
• Liberation from technological domination requires preserving the technological base #qualifies (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 812
• Liberated society still needs centralized technical control over vital goods #qualifies (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 872