Marcuse's 'Second Dimension

Modern capitalism has succeeded in arresting qualitative change in the realm of labor, if only temporarily, with the result that freedom and self-realization seem to terminate within the limits of expression circumscribed by the present social organization of production. We appear to be confronted with what Norman O. Brown has labeled a “vacuum in the Marxist Utopia,” that actually reflects a crisis in Marx's ontology precipitated by the perpetuation of obsolete modes of production. Marcuse has attempted to fill this vacuum by substituting a Freudian concept of man. The Freudian ontology is intended to complement Marx's efforts to formulate a definition of non-alienated labor that is dependent on, but ontologically distinct—in the broad dimensions of freedom that it represents—from the particular historical manifestations of freedom evolving gradually through the self-creativity of labor in the productive process

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