The work of Herbert Marcuse, "One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society" (1964), is undoubtedly one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century, which maintains its value intact to this day.

According to Marcuse, "advanced industrial society" is governed by a form of totalitarianism, different from the classical form. Specifically, it is the totalitarianism of "economic-technical uniformity," which operates through the "manipulation of human needs." The main characteristic of this totalitarianism is the achievement of a "special system of production and distribution."

Within this framework of totalitarianism as "economic-technical uniformity," pseudo-sexual liberation, mass culture, and the implantation of "false needs" in individuals are three phenomena that effectively serve the mechanisms of this totalitarianism, as they decisively contribute to the disappearance, within individuals and thus within society, of the dimension of negativity, the denial of the established society, the social reality. The great, fateful consequence of the disappearance of the dimension of negativity within individuals and thus within society is that humans, having lost this dimension of negativity, one of the two dimensions that (according to Marcuse) distinguish them - the other being the dimension of adaptation and affirmation - become "one-dimensional men."