The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves. - Herbert Marcuse

The tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the façade of objective rationality.

It is the most advanced industrial society which feels most directly threatened by the rebellion, because it is here that the social necessity of repression and alienation, of servitude and heteronomy is most transparently unnecessary, and unproductive in terms of human progress. Therefore the cruelty and violence mobilized in the struggle against the threat, therefore the monotonous regularity with which the people are made familiar with, and accustomed to inhuman attitudes and behavior-to wholesale killing as patriotic act.

In conditions of private property … “life-activity” stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.