The main idea of the book is that contemporary culture reduces everything to the merely technical and instrumental, to merely this one dimension of possible human experience. In this regard, Marcuse was in effect following Max Weber's criticism of the science-for-everything mentality produced by the dominance of instrumental reason. Even more than Weber, however, Marcuse did not hesitate to criticize the totality of human society, especially the so-called advanced societies that thought of themselves as beyond reproach and that, indeed, worked in such a way as to stifle critics by promising and delivering more and more technologically produced wealth and power .