Similarly, I think we've made strides in thinking about what oppression means - what allows us to say that those non-"1st-world" places are oppressive but ours are not? Is it a matter of quantity or quality? The language here is not merely hyperbolic (though this feature does remarkably well in being provocative, which is the point of activism - Marcuse was a lifelong activist), it's substantive.
When you appeal to the the "basis of Western society" in your comment, it reads more like normalization - how could such a thing be totalitarian, after all, it's the basis of Western society. That's actually the point I'm making, this basis conditions us to see only the worst examples as totalitarian/oppressive/"bad". The unspoken point seems to be that because it is the basis then we can't describe it as totalitarian. To me, that's not a logical conclusion.
>Marcuse’s engagement with the issue of totalitarianism relies on the understanding of the transformation of reason and for him this transformation is exemplified by the emergence of positivism as the dominant means of making sense of the world. He argues that the totalitarian character of advanced industrial society and its concomitant ‘totalitarian rationality’ (Marcuse 2001 [1961]: 52, 55) have specific, potentially devastating, consequences for the members of that society. Most important here are what Marcuse conceptualizes as ‘matter-of-factness’, ‘psycho-logical neutrality’, and ‘repressive desublimation’.[0]
>In advanced industrial societies, Marcuse says that the unit of production is totalitarian in without it determines the activities, attitudes and skills involved in social life. It defines and regulates also the aspirations and individual needs. Thus, the creation of false needs and control of these needs have corollary the disappearance of the border private / public life: only the consumer remains. It is this unique ontological condition that Marcuse called “undimensionnelle.”
[0] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230250857_6