Marcuse and Marx: robbing creativity?

I do think that yes, Marcuse's idea of "desublimation" sufficiently attests to Marx's notion of individual alienation from their instrinsic creativity. It does so especially by its defining trait of being "repressive", contributing to Marcuse's depiction of advanced industrial civilization as a state of democratic unfreedom for humans. This reminded me closely of what we talked about in class at the beginning of term in order to contextualize Marxist theory as stemming and departing from Hegelian dialectics. If you remember, we used the example of the master-slave relationship, where change in the balance of power arises, for Marx, thanks to the slave's conquest of awareness of his inherent creativity. The implication for our current question is that, stripped of (or 'alienated' from) creativity, human beings are doomed to unfreedom, under what Marcuse considers "totalitarianism" which manipulates needs to prevent opposition to vested interests. In this sense, the idea of desublimation almost equates that of alienation, in my opinion, as they both produce a state of deception (Marcuse's "euphoria of unhappiness") which aims at keeping them subjugated and controlled.

There is, however, a respect in which this equation may fall short, and which lays in a fascinating nuance of Marcuse's arguments in One Dimensional Man. Together with a critique of technology, Marcuse indeed sets also forward the acknowledgment of the political power of machinery in contemporary society. If on the one hand they are, as we find in Marx's theory as well, the embodiment and vehicle for perpetuation of oppressive structures of power, the technological means of production are also, in Marcuse's view, the potential basis of a new freedom for man. In fact, machines' power is the stored-up and projected power of man, as the use of technology should theoretically imply less human labour to be needed to satisfy the vital needs of society. However, empirically, the opposite happens, with a paradoxical expansion of labor time and of control over material and intellectual culture.

Do you think that this reality, which is counter-intuitive to the theory, is a result of how Marx's explains power in capitalism? Is it a consequence or the cause of modern man's desublimation, or alienation from creativity? Would Marx agree with Marcuse on the potential of machinery for human freedom? Do you think that in our society that goal is reachable, or are the interests and the means of those in control too strong to fight?