Herbert Marcuse starts his book One Dimensional Man by assessing the existence of an imposed “democratic unfreedom” (Marcuse, 1991: 1). Through this consented unfreedom, Marcuse suggests, an “advanced industrial civilization” yields any mode of critical, intellectual, scientific, creative or artful conduct to an understanding of mechanized rationalization. Such rationality directly determines the extent of the societies’ critical endeavours. His description of a modern society resembles the dystopic imagery of Metropolis—a vague blur between men and machine, where the capitalist mode of production takes over every aspect of life and death.
