on Marcuse "One-Dimensional Man"

I disagree with Marcuse's fundamental 'questioning' of alienation. "We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced" (9). If anything I think it is the delusion that one's "soul" can be found in cars, tvs, homes and appliances. I think the point is that we are fooling ourselves if we really think we can find happiness and acquire our needs with these things; non-essential needs such as those he mentions can never be met, there will always be more waiting behind them.

Later on he speaks about his earlier (above) argument, saying it "is not illusion but reality. However, the reality constitutes a more progressive stage of alienation. The latter has become entirely objective; the subject which is alienated is swallowed up by its alienated existence" (11).  Here I can get on board with what he is saying because while I agree that this type of need production and attempted fulfillment is just a more complex form of alienation, it is still certainly alienation. And while the mechanics of it may now be different, it seems that the state is very much the same (and alive) today. Do you agree with Marcuse that alienation is not an apparent, obvious truth? Do you think alienated peoples becomes so "swallowed up" in their lives that they don't even see how they have been and are further being alienated?