"But they also testify to the ambivalent rationality of progress, which is satisfying in its repressive power, and repressive in its satisfactions." Herbert Marcuse, "One-Dimensional Man"
"Committed to this framework, the investigation becomes circular and self-validating. If 'democratic' is defined in the limiting but realistic terms of the actual process of election, then this process is democratic prior to the results of the investigation."
On the 1952 presidential election in the United States:
"[...] it cannot raise the decisive question whether the consent itself was not the work of manipulation---a question for which the actual state of affairs provides ample justification. The analysis cannot raise it because it would transcend its terms toward transitive meaning---toward a concept of democracy which would reveal the democratic election as a rather limited democratic process."