The limits of Marcusianism: froma eros and civilization to one dimensional man

Herbert Marcuse was the most revered philosopher by the students who took to the streets during the riots of May 1968. Belonging to the Frankfurt School (from the place where the school was born), Marcuse imposed himself with an original mixture of Freud's and Marx's ideas. From this ‘Freudo-Marixism’, which drew inspiration in particular from Freud's book "The discomfort of civilization", Marcuse drew fundamental and widely shared concepts such as those of "Repressive Tolerance" and "Unhappy Consciousness", and gave birth to at least two fundamental books for the sociology and the philosophy of the time: "Eros and civilization" and "Man in one dimension". The main thesis of these texts is that sexuality is bridled by technocratic society, both in the United States and in post-revolutionary Russia, and that man is being dominated by a technical rationality that blocks and homologates him, instead of setting him free. The limit of Marcusianism is not having been able to show how man can, beyond a somewhat unrealistic protest, free himself from the grip of technology and reach a stage of greater self-awareness. This was the limit of the entire Frankfurt School, also called Critical Theory, since in fact it formulated a criticism over what exists without being able to see a concrete and practicable way out