Marcuse's Theory Of Technology Alienation And Its Revelation

The western society had a stable space for development after the second world war.The development of science and technology has promoted the prosperity of the capitalist society,and also the material producing has made great achievements,however,spiritual poverty of individual accompanied by material wealth simultaneously.Herbert Marcuse,a representative of the Frankfurt institution,discussed and analyzed the shortcomings of the developed industrial society and people's living conditions from the perspective of social critical theory.He succeeded and developed Marx's theory of labor alienation,Lukacs' s theory of materialization and Horkheimer's theory of domination critically,and put forward the thought of technology alienation.He believed that the essence of technology was ideology in advanced industrial society,and the rationality of technology became the basis of political rationality.Moreover,technology led to human alienation as a foreign power.Marcuse thought that the external manifestation of technology alienation was one dimensional society,in which people lost their mind in negative and criticalness,indulged in false demand,and lacked freedom in nature,then individuals became one dimensional man.To get rid of the plight of technology alienation,he proposed to establish unrepressed society for Eros liberation.Marcuse's theory of technology alienation has great historic significance,but the limitation of the theory is that it does not criticize the political and economic system of capitalist society on the basis of private ownership,and does not analyze the physical reason of technology alienation from the root cause.And the way that he chose to get rid of technology alienation was utopian.He ignored the revolutionary power of the working class,thought that the working class had lost their revolutionary consciousness,and he was pessimistic about the future of the proletarian revolution.Nowadays,the development of technology has changed so much compared with Marcuse's times,but the theory of his technology alienation can still provide us with reference for avoiding new social problems arising from the development process,and avoiding ignoring the spiritual value construction of individuals in the process of technology and economic development.The theory provides enlightening significance for Chinese current socialist modernization construction.We should look at technology dialectically,construct reasonable technological development concept,and focus on the value of individuals,and return to authenticity of human.