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“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her
by claudiawerner 7y ago
“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.” (Herbert Marcuse, 1961).
- zozbot234 7y ago(By the proper definition of "(social) classes", arguably it indicates both. Then again, Marcuse did not seem to have much appreciation for those widely shared "needs and satisfactions", or for the so-called "establishment" that has evolved (and is indeed constantly evolving) to meet them.)
- claudiawerner 7y agoMarcuse is using "classes" more in the traditional sense, social relations predicated (roughly) on ownership and control of society's gross productive capacity. But the point still rings true - in terms of media, for instance, there is a huge amount of overlap between what the "upper classes" and "lower classes" enjoy. Marcuse would have been very critical of the lifestyle and art produced by the culture industry today (see, for instance, his discussion on the sadness of seeing Freud in the drug store and Bach on the radio in the kitchen).