Paul A. Baran

“Thus, important parts of physics and chemistry have been pressed into the service of war and destruction; much mathematical and statistical ingenuity has been turned into an auxiliary of monopolistic market control and profit maximization; psychology has become a prostitute of 'motivation research' and personnel management; biology is made into a handmaiden of pharmaceutical rackets; and art, language, color, and sound have been degraded into instrumentalities of advertising.”
― Paul A. Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis

“Irrationality and aggressiveness in our time are, therefore, not emanations of some unalterable human instincts. Nor do they express simply the supposedly 'natural' rejection of reason. Irrationality and aggressiveness in our time reflect primarily the refusal to accept as sacrosanct the rationality of capitalism. They testify to the protest against the mutilation and degradation of reason for the sake of capitalist domination. This outcry against bourgeois rationality, as well
as its identification with reason as such is magnificently depicted~in Dostoevsky's Underground Man who 'vomits up reason' and who scornfuIly rejects the commandment to accept the proposition that two times two equals four. While this strikingly exemplifies the posture of irrationalism, an important aspect of the Underground Man's attitude should not be lost sight of. It is that the Underground Man, irrational and crazy as he is, is actually profoundly right in 'vomiting up reason' in refusing to bow to the logic of two times two equals four. For this logic is the logic of the capitalist market, of the exploitation of man by man, of privileges, insecurity, and war. To be sure, his contempt for this rationality, his uprising against the 'common sense' of human misery, is an irrational reaction to a pernicious social order. But it is the only reaction available to the isolated and helpless individual who, incapable of comprehending the forces by which he is being crushed, is unable to struggle effectively against them. This reaction is neurosis.”
― Paul A. Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis