Frankfurt School Critical Theory - Class Notes

Arato/Buchstein Critical Theory F’18
9/4/18
Georg Lukács (1924): Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat: In History and
Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics.
Lukacs’s Life
- Lukacs is the creator of Western (vs. Russia) Marxism (along with Gramsci and Korsch who
were both Communists)—this traditional is outside the Communist movement and abandons
major features of it e.g. Lenin’s theory of the part but still there is this connection to
Communism
- young Hegelian scholar who likes Marx had a law degree but who spent his first productive
years in aesthetic theory (e.g. Theory of the Novel, History of Modern Drama)
- during the WW1 he was radicalized, though he already had some radical critique of capitalist
culture and society, but the war in his mind was an “epoch of total sinfulness”
- moved toward Bolshevism in part because of his Hungarian background—the Left came to
power with the collapse of the Hapsburgs and Lukacs was offered participation by Kuhn in the
project i.e. Minister of Cultural Affairs
- he was already a significant author but once he was in the movement he became an author of it
1922-3= writes most significant Marxist work of philosophy of the 20th century, History of and
Class Consciousness
Lukacs vis-à-vis Frankfurt School

His Method: “What is Orthodox Marxism?” pg. 1 highlighted passage
- Marx’s method of immanent criticism i.e. Marx doesn’t make up theories of the world from
his brain or through reflection, rather he makes up a theory on the basis of criticizing other
theories
- this doesn’t mean gainsaying and measuring the accuracy of other theories against your own—
rather, he would proceed as if the theory in question was true…and then you look for what they
haven’t done already…
Content= something not elaborated by the theorist: the lifeworld
Totality= the relationship of economy to other spheres—not contextualized in all of social
reality
- Lukacs wants to do what Marx did for his own time but for Weber—Weber did something for
our time which political economy did for its own
Max Weber= reconstructs the legal political and scoail ground within which capitalist economy
functions
- so Lukacs says let’s bring in other things…
The category of reification= reification as such is not prominently in Marx but commodity
fetishism and Lukacs unfolds this category
- takes 10 pages of Capital i.e. the idea that in commodity relationship we regard relations
between human being as if it was a relationship between things i.e. category of alienation (at this
time Marx’s manuscripts weren’t extant)
- Lukacs using fetishism argument asserts what Althusser denies namely that alienation is an
important category in Marx
- but then he applies this Weber who looked at beaurochracy---Lukacs says fetishism is working
here too
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- so Lukacs uses alienation to examine burochartic inhumanity

- so reification is a category which indicates the development of a general social logic which
deprives individuals of the ability to act to reflect to criticize and to understand their situation--
in any of the reified realms the totality is gone, so e.g. Lukacs criticizes Kelson for thinking law
is its own autonomous domain separate for politics and morality
- this method of immanent criticism is primarily applicable to social science (Adam Smith,
Riccardo) but Lukacs extends the method to another sphere…
2. The Antinomies of Bourgeoise Thought

- deals with Kant, Fichte, Schiller, Hegel—he is interested in an effort to discover suppressed
CONTENT in the Idealists namely subjectivity—human creativity
- German Idealism is the one important dimension of intellectual life which poses the problem of
subjectivity i.e. What is the subject? What is the human being?
- Lukacs shows that even though they pose the problem of the subject they can’t succeed, the
Kantian thing-in-itself problem is unconquerable if you pursue through it philosophical reason
rather than sociological turn which Lukacs will try to effect
SO:
- in Kant we can’t discern the moral law in the world or history since it is noumenal, then in
Fichte we have moral action in the world but he can’t specify what the action will be, then
Schiller who conceive of art as overcoming division between subject and object—the creator is
the source of the object and the object transofrms the creator so we have a high level of
reconciliation of alienation in the art world, but for Lukacs this is only the art world not the
world as a whole—this is a merely Utopian view, then Hegel in history the identity of subjects
and object can be asserted (and Lukacs is a Hegelian), BUT, Hegel sees the historical
manifestation of creativity and self-creation in the spirit of nations so that nations become the
subjects of philosophy—they make history, but Lukacs says even for Hegel nations cannot make
history rationality and even they are a dispersion of the World Spirit which is anyway just a
secularization of Divinity, Lukacs would want the historical subject and actor to be the
proletariat, but even now (says Arato) it’s not clear that it is classes and not nations that make
history, but even if this weren’t the case, Arato may still fall prey to conceptual mythology
How does the proletariat come in?
- they are the inheritor of classical German philosophy a la Engles, the proletariat will
accomplish what the German Idealists could not namely how a sociological entity can produce
changes in history will create a new subject and a new history
- the proletaraite will do this (where the Idealists failed) because the worker is forced to discover
something underneath alienation namely the suppressed subject that could arise again once it
becomes self-conscious
AND
- this is because the worker realizes in his labour that the commodity is more than just a
commodity i.e. the social relations that underlie the labor economy—by relfectin on their own
lives the proletariat can become self-conscious of his social world, of reification, in a way that
even a philosopher
- Lukacs thinks Marx could not know this because he was privileged as opposed to the
proleatriate
But Lukacs thinks:
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- this does not lead (viz. proletariat galvanization) to a transformative revolution, rather, Lukacs
by this time does not have to worry about a form of organization to mediate between the
dawning self-consciousness of the worker namely the Party—this is the solution Lukacs turns to,
i.e. politically organization who are themselves powerless without the class, but the class is blind
without the party
- the part is the form of fully develop SC of the proletariat—this is how Lukacs talks—party
unites subject and object in having both a theory of reality and having the means of transforming
it namely the class- so the party is the missing piece to the puzzle
What are the thing that the Frankfurt school takes up from Lukacs?
1. Immanent critique= reconstruct reality through criticizing other theories and elaborating
suppressed parts of it
2. assimilating other bourgeoise theories (e.g. Freud)
3. German Idealists as forerunners
4. reification
5. possible role of the aesthetic (viz. Schlliner in Lukacs)
6. search for the subject
2 Differences w/ Frankfurt School
1. Frankfurt reject Marxists Leninism
2. the objective spirit (the Hegelian category whereby Hegel describes the world of institutions)
- for Lukacs the institutions are nothing but alienation—these are fetishistic framework through
which subjectivity is undermined and totality is destroyed
- Frankfurt school with preserve some ardor for institutions
Criticism of Lukacs
Pg. 95= “structural similarity” – imports Weber’s argument
What’s wrong with reification?
- abstract, isolated, rigid, divided, formal, inhuman, crippled vs. organic, full, active, every
aspect of life—this very close to Marx’s vision of endangers species of the full human being and
yet Lukacs is beyond this very Romantic—all this worship of nature and irrationality
How does reification get in your head?
- alienated work (viz. Taylorism) and alienation from work relationships i.e. you compete with
everyone else
- objectively and subjectively you are reified but one can question him what is the argument that
convince someone that reification is dominant and pervasise
What is the mechanism for creating class-consciousness?
- total reificated person (describes it as a closed system) wouldn’t suffer but would just love
rational choice—but there must be in Lukacs’ understanding some force for resistance--What?
- the proletariat who are so dehumanized are going to be the source of the avant garde?
How did Lukacs himself get out of this trap (with his bourgeoise background)? He’s not a
worker.
How do you understand history as the product of your will?

- Lukacs thinks to do this he must step across the threshold to this sociological dimension—the
desire to be active politically and socially
- I move to politics because I want to see reality as my own being and individually you can’t so
you must do so through collective action
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9/11/18
Max Horkheimer
1931= founding text for Frankfurt
- speech on the occasion of his directorship for Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt German
- got a professorship—but as opposed to the previous director (political science) his
professorship is in philosophy
- under a lot political pressure and he is only 32 so he is very careful with his wording
1937= founding text for critical theory
- also very careful with his language (only translated in 1970s)
1931 Text
Social philosophy= philosophical interpretation of human fate insofar as human are not mtere
individuals but members of a community and social phil is concerned with these phenomena that
can only be interpreted in the context of human communities e.g. the state, law
- specifically invokes German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Hegel) rather that say, Plato or Rousseau
- criticizes Kant for being to individualistic, defends Hegel for fitting the ind. into a broader
social context, but rejects Hegel’s Idealism—it’s a social philosophy but it has be turned around
just as Marx did political economy
- then he discusses different school (neo-Kantianism, Positivism etc.) after 1850 says German
philosophy was very future oriented and invokes Heidegger as a left turn—turns away from
social philosophy and emphasizes his melancholy philosophy—i.e. finding the real being in the
interior of the human self—Frankfurt school is often critical of Heidegger
- so there was Kant, social philosophy, positivism, Heidegger—sees that social materialist
approach must be connected with this philosophical individualism
- envisions a materialist sociology and tries to situate philosophy within this (philosophy is in
fact in the center)
Role of philosophy is threefold:
1. philosophy is able to inject spiritual (i.e. intellectual) impulses into sociological materialism
(which is too number crunching)
2. only philosophers have a theoretical interest towards the totality, the whole—which is why
you need them
3. philosophy is open enough to be influenced by developments in empirical research
How can this idea be implemented?
- we have to organize research rather have a fragmented institutions of autonomous speicalists—
we need a dictatorship of the director to dialectically integrate these separate fields…3 steps…
1. philosopher comes up with the idea for what the real research problem is
2. organize collective research (empirical researchers)
3. philosopher synthesizes everything into one project
What are the consequence of this plan?
- collective enterprise rather than the work of ind. genius
- interdisciplinary and supra-disciplinary
- empirical and theoretical
- particular role of the philosopher
Questions
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What is to be done when the philosopher disagrees with the empirical results? What about when
philosopher and empiricist disagree?
Takeaway: what is new with Marxism and Critical theory is the understanding of the
philosopher as the synthesizer, research as collective enterprise, not politically motivated (a la
Lukacs) so much as epistemically motivated
Triangular approach of
1. economical
2. psychological development of the individual
3. cultural
- considers the interaction of the three fields
- somehow the motif of political science slips through his fingers in this focus on these 3 fields
Conclusory Remarks:
- Horkheimer argues for dialectical integration of philosophy and political research—and when
there was disagreement there was debate…Benjamin vs. Adorno, psychoanalysis (Frommer) vs. ,
state capitalism vs.
- so it’s not as if Horkheimer dictatorship suppressed this bristling intellectual conflict in the
school and in their journal
- politics and state law is lost by the end so that it’s not even in the list of fields Horkheimer
enumerates—he has a totally apolitical stance
- operated until 1933 (Jan. Feb.) when the Nazis attacked the building and scattered the faculty,
but their journal survived and was published in exile
- when Habermas left Frankfurt for Stahmberg (in Bavaria between Germay and Austria) he
founded an interdisciplinary institute, in some ways the same program, and the result of this was
Habermas’s theory of communicative action
1937 Text
- published on the 17th anniversary of Kapital
- presented dialectical logic as the logical structure on which the critique of political economy
was based
- then took Marx’s historical materialism and implemented in the form of critical theory
The structure:
188-194= traditional theory
194-206= traditional theory and history
206-end= traditional theory and critical theory
- science is understood as a social practice
- connects development of theory with development of industrial society
Pg. 200= an object is social produced but also our view of it is socially produced—the way we
look at things is socially produced—there’s a historical character to the perceived organ
Bourgeoise vs. modern calculative science
- the progressive historical role of traditional theory which was attacking metaphysic and religion
2. traditional theory vs. critical theory (p. 226)
- traditional theory is value free, social facts, look for causes, connects to German neo-Kantians
and positivism
- critical theory starts with the understanding of economically based exchange, goes to moral
impulse i.e. the concern for human being—critical theory is able to contextualize its theory to the
society in which it arose
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- critical theory is a theory of totality but to investigate the flashpoints and inner dynamics of the
theory
- traditional theory is a library, critical theory is a building (systematically constructed
throughout)
3. development of Frankfurt school critique
- criticizing blind human interaction in exchange
- criticzing oppression
- criticizing alienation
- criticizing fragmentation
4. development of Frankfurt vision
- rational plan
- community, association
- modern productive forces
- justice, equality, freedom
- so the critique is in Lukacs language and the alternative vision is in Marxist language
Later capitalism
- historical distinction drawn between liberal capitalism (free market, liberal political order,
bourgeois culture of bildung) and monopolistic capitalism (monopoly rather than free market,
authoritarian state, culture of industry)
- “today we relapse into darkest barbarism” vs. “autonomous individual”
5. role of proletariat
- no guarantee for current knowledge because they are easily manipulated (contra Lukacs)
214= proletariat has become victim of capitalist ideology
So how do we liberate them?
- “truth has sought refuge among small groups of admirable man” (237) – truth is very elusive
even for intellectuals, so there is no interaction between theory and practice and there is no
dialectical interaction between theory and the masses—you have to wait for the ripe political
moment, as if you wait for capitalism to go into crisis and then reveal the message in the bottle
that has been maintained (and we know this is coming because dialectical theory of late
capitalism can forecast this)
How would you know if you’re a genuine critical theorist, how do you know you’re one of the
admirable men who can penetrate ideology?
227= existential judgment with historical dimension
- ontological basis for critical theory is this existential judgment (a feeling)
- lauds labor and says reason is immanent to work
Questions
1. What is the epistemic status of this existential judgment?
2. Is his summary of traditional theory fair?
3. How can we measure successful critical theory? What are the criteria for good critical
theory?
4. What happens to theory and practice when we’re only interested in a small number of
admirable men?
1931 vs. 1937
- from social philosophy and research to critical theory
- 1937 he was more confident and critical
- 1937 theory of late capitalism emerges
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- 1937 role of intellectual is much different from 1931
Arato’s Comments
Social philosophy vs. critical theory
- per Alfred Schmidt the shift from social research to social philosophy is significant because
beyond being the integrator it needs to enter into every discipline (e.g. Marx, Freud etc.)
- Horkheimer abandons this view with philosophy as preeminent (per Schmidt) and we can see
this just with the kinds of articles the journal publishes i.e. political science and law is included
despite Horkheimer’s programmatic omission
What is the relationship of this project to Wester Marxism?
- whereas Arato agrees with Schmidt that there’s a shift from Horhkheimer’s conception to
something more pluralistic, Arato disagrees vis-à-vis Western Marxism
- concept of totality is demythologized by the critical school, or so Schmidt says, but the reason
to integrate the disciplines is for the whole
- the subject, self-aware of mankind, it is true that this is different from Lukacs for whom the
proletariat is the historical subject, but for Lukacs the subject is not for itself
9/18/18
Erich Fromm
- 1928, combined Freud’s theory of drives with Marx’s theory of society
Psychoanalysis of Sociology, 1931
- opening lecturer when they moved buildings
- very orthodox view of Freud, young Marx
- institute is interested in how the people are formed psychically by living conditions
- is interested in the genesis of bourgouise psychical structures
- main emphasis on human childhood which leads to family structure analysis—her Marx comes
in i.e. impact of economic structure on how families can live and be organized
- we want to understand and reconstruct the psychic structure AND we want political and social
change because only that will affect the living conditions and organization of families
- says irrationalism but means fascism – want to explain the etiology of such trends to propose an
alternative politics
- adds historical materialism and role of ideological factors, so harkens to again early Marx
- people attached to fascist political leaders have an infantile drive structure i.e. not developed
- for Fromm every society has its own libidinal character, and in later writings he would develop
a typology of libidinous characters
- alos addresses status of represses classes e.g. Roman proletariat rebellion – which is the only
appropriate reaction to an exploited from of life—so the rebellious are not the neurotics
- stresses, again, transformation of society over individual therapy
“The ideological superstructure often continues…”
- the psychical structure is so strong that even when you have revolutionary transformation it
doesn’t mean that people themselves have changed
Working Class Study, 1929-30
- research into what is the empirical knowledge we have of the consciousness of the working
class
- produced 300,000 questionnaire with 271 items
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- but could not finish the study before Hitler to power

- Fromm’s hope was that the working class would prove a resource for healthier emancipatory
power than the bourgeoise (who were neurotics)
- the early findings attested to the reverse: authoritarian leanings of workers
Typology of character
The anal= the bourgouise
Genital independent= freedom friendly
- this typology was the basis of their development of authoritarian personality
Studies on Authority and Family, 1936
- 3 volumes, 1 theoretical edited by Horkheimer and 2nd edited by Fromm (empirical stuff), 3rd
volume of essays but various authors
- basis for study was material collected all over Europe on family structure in France, England,
Switzerland
Horkheimer’s Piece
- the changing function of the family from bourgeoise liberalism to late (monopolistic)
capitalism—according to Horkheimer the family changes radically in this transition…
- in bourgeoise the family is paternalistic and authoritarian but this is lost in late capitalism
- in bourgeoise the authority of the father is a rational thing (as the breadwinner e.g.)—now
defunct
- bourgeoise liberalism private education and private socialization plays a major role, but in late,
public institutions replace these influences and produce authoritarian characters
- a lot of nostalgia for bourgeoise family
Fromm’s Piece
- critical of Freud who due to his orthodoxy didn’t get family structure right
- creates a new typology and produces this character by distancing himself from Freudian
orthodoxy—the sadomasochistic character developed through childhood fear – this character
ends up gravitating to authoritarian personalities (masochistic half), ends up brutalizing weaker
people (sadistic half) – all associated with lower socioeconomic strata given their more unstable
fear ridden childhoods
Genital character= self-confidence, health ego, socialization through friends—best chance for
democratic society
 the political message is that the lower classes are in a difficult situations and fascism is
something we should expect because of these conditions
- the institute broke with Fromm
- by 1932 Fromm became more critical of Freud
- in 1935 he officially broke with Freud— “The Social determination of Psychoanalytic
Theory”—thought Freud’s method was paternalistic in his therapy, too authoritarian
Escape from Freedom
Authoritarian Personality, published 1950 (but produced in exile)
9/25/18
- both involved in Western Marxism i.e. attempt to reconstruct Marx in the wake of the crisis of
modernity and the weaknesses of the Bolshevik
- for Adorno the question is what do you do given reification which is happening more radically
and universally in the capitalist empire and at the same time the subject of Marx and Lukacs viz.
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the proletariat was unable or unwilling to carry out a reversal—what if reification is more and
more pervasive and the subject is more and more absent?
- cultural emphasis i.e. creative activities by ind. groups—this is the them and it fits in to this
problematic because as Adorno (Fetish Character) argues nothing is spared reification AND
YET, culture is the domain where alternatives to existing society have always been proposed (the
point of Stendhal’s phrase “the promise of happiness is present in all forms of cultural
creation”)—art is the presence of undamaged life in the midst of damaged life, which is the
reason that even in reification one needs to look at art, esp. when your without out a
revolutionary subject – art is the possibility of hope
Marcuse: “Affirmative Culture”
- the problem is at the very same time that art has an element of consolation it also helps
reconcile people to their existing condition—if religion said happiness is possible in the afterlife
art said happiness is possible in a life apart from life, from production and consumption—an
alternative never to be had in the normal realm
- in this sense, affirmative culture is conservative—it contains alternative possibilities that are
presented as unachievable in reality
Adorno: “Cultural Criticism and Society”
2 from of cultural criticism…
1. transcendent criticism= takes a perspective outside the cultural and political order, or strives
to
- looking from outside you discover reification i.e. a closed world in which there is no freedom
and happiness is only for the few—a realm of damaged lives
- when it looks at culture it sees only conservatism—i.e. reproduction of dehumanization and
domination
2. immanent criticism= sees the utopian side, the element of happiness which is at least imagine
in cultural works
- but it’s sympathy with its object is so great it hamstrings its critical function
- but transcendent criticism also has a problem—wants to replace culture altogether, which is
barbaric and primitivist—this nostalgia for a simpler epoch in which art was part of the
communal life of a less developed object
- it’s too hostile
dialectical criticism= does both immanent and transcendent criticism i.e. be sympathetic and
critical at the same time—what Adorno tries to do
Theodor W. Adorno (1938): On the Fetish Character in Music and The Regression of
Listening.
What does immanent criticism find when it looks at Schoenberg from the transcendent
point of view?
- resistance to commodification—very difficult to buy and sell his work
Culinary device= the adornments of art that make it commodifiable e.g. beautiful passages
which we can hum from certain pieces of classical music—Schoenberg resists this
- also, refuses to represent moment of happiness a la Marcuse’ affirmative culture e.g. floristan
meets her lover and symbolizes bourgeoise freedom
- and without these moments audience have difficulty relating to the work—since most of them
can’t e.g. read music
What does the content of the music represent?
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- productive of alienation of the listener from the music itself— e.g. anxiety and terror which
certain passages communicate without the promise of any reconciliation (in contemporary
society)
structural listening= ability to relate individual component of the music to a complex,
organizing structure
- Adorno think this is the only true listening but someone like Bethoven softens this requirement
with his culinary passages—Schoenberg does not
Antinomy of modern music= there’s refusal to compromise with degraded and commodified
musical contents, which isolates this music from its potential audience i.e. makes it solipsistic—
it’s only written for a very small number of people who could understand its social criticism
- music which is mainstream cannot be critical and music which is critical cannot be mainstream
- thinks that Jazz is inherent structurally fetishistic, see African/enslaved roots of Jazz as
conformist
- Arato see Adorno’s jazz essays as example of transcendent criticism—doesn’t let the argument
be made by the advocates of e.g. jazz, but instead one is treated to a series of invectives
Walter Benjamin (1937): The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
- the history of art cannot be separated from the mode of its technical production and
reproduction
- BUT for Benjamin the contemporary frame of reproduction is on a massive scale, the 19th and
20th century introduce technique of mass reproduction which enable a dramatic democratization
of the world of art: the great painting is owned or exhibited by museum, BUT, the photograph is
massively available (+ photograph itself is a artform which almost all of us can practice)
- also, forms of massive reproduction have additional consequences…
destruction of aura= the uniqueness of a work, a glow which surrounds which allows us
distinguish it from even a wonderful copy e.g. the David
- but aura also links the work to the tradition of production which both the beholder and creater
share—the aura of the sculpture is a function of understanding Renaissance Florence and what it
presupposed artistically
- the aura of works exists but disappears with modern reproduction which makes the same work
reproducible i.e. the photograph from whose negative you can generate any number of
“originals”—it would be impossible to identify the aura of the original (also true in theater,
phonograph of orchestral music, spliced together film sequences from multiple takes—a
composite performance of different takes)
What are the consequence of the destruction of aura?
- art is always linked to something e.g. politics, religion, art itself—always to some cult e.g. the
ruler, the divinity, the cult of art
- BUT, that cultic element is nourished by the magic of the aura (the magical efficacy of
totemism) SO what is installed in place of the cult? Politics – this is starkly different than
Adorno
- destruction of aura abolishes the distance from the work Brecht would try to with
estrangement—so technology makes a critical attitude possible
2 Arguments for Politicization of Art
1. film
- but draws on films like Chaplin’s Modern Times
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- the film liberates the view by through its montage producing shocks in the audience which
keeps you coming in and out of the material such that you are at the same time distant from and
present to it as the same—precisely the sort of thing Adorno liked about transcendent and
immanent criticism
- indeed, this distracted perspective is produced by all films for Benjamin and is done so on the
basis of the collective, as opposed to traditional art forms—in film the audience has a collective
response (as opposed to literature or museum art)
- that said, film can be incredibly commodified (e.g. personalization of film stat and cult of the
star) for Benjamin
- but still, film has radical potential
2. Brecht
- that potential is realized in Brecht for Benjamin…
- the point of Brechtian theater is after all to estrange the audience from the experience of the
work—such that you can’t be absorbed
- Brecht strove for collective response, a response moreover that was interactive with the
audience
- so to the extent that almost every Brecht play has a political theme this theater brings the
audience into political life
Aestheticizing Politics
- e.g. Marinetti and Lenny Riefenstahl…so the question for Benjamin was if the gap between the
two is breaking down which will be prior? If fascists win a repressive aesthetic will used to sell a
repressive from of politics. If communists win, Brecht. But, for Arato, administrative
collectivization of art (as in the USSR) is not necessarily a preferable alternative (e.g. The Fall of
Berlin).
Adorno’s Criticism of Benjamin
- Adorno thinks whatever political potential film had was swallowed by commodification
Benjamin: “Author as Producer”
- Benjamin’s hero is a movement of agricultural collectivization in Soviet culture which led to
genocide—so he’s naïve about certain Soviet developments
- Adorno says, immediate politicization of art is open to the hazards of whomever politicizes it
and in that sense Benjamin’s conception can be criticized for accepting politicization without
knowing in advance what the political objectives that instrumentalizes art will be
- Benjamin and Adorn are two halves of antinomic reality which suggest the task i.e. to go
beyond intellectual marginalization and political instrumentalization
Buchstein Comments
- Benjamin’s theory of reception of art is very different from Adorno—much more room for
resistance
- in Benjamin there’s a hope for the masses where in Adorno there’s much more emphasis on the
small groups of admirable men of Horkheimer
- Benjamin has an explicit idea of historical changes of technology – the technology turns
reproductive arts into productive arts
- whereas in Adorno there is no perspective on the continual development of art—what comes
after 12 tone music?
10/2/18
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3 Reminders
1.
2.
3. political situation
- different types of revolutionary outcomes in Russia etc.—so the political situation as open
- Germany had a new constitutions since 1919, followed by Communist uprisings
Frankfurt School and the new Experts for Law and Political Science
- Adorno and Horkheimer didn’t vote
- the institute at some point realized that they don’t address law and politics sufficient so they
hired people who should fill this gap…
Hans Spier= one of the founding members of NSSR in 1936 he was giving talks criticizing the
Frankfurt School—not political enough, to theoretical
- so they hire 3 experts… Franz Neuman, Otto Kirchheimer, Gurlad—with these 3 they felt
better able to apply for research grants in the U.S. to study Nazi Germany
- all 3 till 1944-5
- all 3 disagree with some theories of the institute (as directed by Horkheimer)
Kirchheimer: Weimarr—and What Then

- wrote this for the 10 anniversary of the Weimarr constitution, published in 1930
- widely discussed and debated, Neuman strongly criticized it
What is democracy?
- the political meaning is elusive because we can mean either political or social democracy
- so you must go back to Rousseau for its meaning, and then its basis in social homogeneity—i.e.
social equality
- there would be no democracy as long as you don’t have this kind of social homogeneity
- has a theory on how modern capitalist societies are organized—the capitalist system has
enlarged its influence leading to monopo-capitalism—he’s claiming that the logic of capitalism
is taking over all parts of society
Liberal democracy = bourgeoise dictatorship
- the liberal democracy of U.S. and France are aristocratic democracies
How will these institutions of liberal democracy change the position of the working class?
- that is the measure of progress
- thought the U.S. Supreme Court was the countries most important organ
- a constitution is not just the rules of the game it’s a specific program for how to organized
society—a decisive, programmatic vision—criticizes the Weimar Republic for being deficiently
programmatic, unworkable
- either society is going to end up with proletariat dictatorship or fascist
1930-3= Kirkheimer changes his positions when the presidential dictatorships got started—
hearkened back to the Weimarr constitution and advocated militant democracy—democracy that
would defend itself from its enemies especially on the right
Franz L. Neumann (1937): The Functional Change of the Rule of Law.

- b. 1900, took part in the German revolution
- social democratic tradition/reformist
12
- moved to Berlin worked as lawyer for social democratic party

- fled in 1933 and went to England, then for the Institute
- this piece was published in the Journal of the Institute for Social Research, one of the last issue
published in German
3 Stage Mode of Law
1. natural law
- very critical of this
2. positive law
- general in formulation
3. general principles
- these 3 understandings of law fit feudalism (aristocratic state), competitive capitalism (liberal
democracy), monopolistic capitalism (authoritarian state) respectively
Decisionist law= who is the source of the law
Rationalist law= what is the content of the law
- Neumann though the rise of legal positivist had to do with the rise of competitive capitalism
3 Functions of Law
1. class struggle= bourgeoise needing law to overthrow feudalism
2. capitalism= required for commercial competition
3. ethical=
- contra Left Marxist theories of law in the Lukacs tradition—Neumann focuses on this ethical
function
Genera principles= ambiguous legal principles that judges can interpret however they wish—
exploited in Nazi law, corrupts the rule of law and its ethical function—the end of the Rechstaatd
Otto Kirchheimer (1941) Changes in the Structure of Political Compromise.

- b. in 1905, studied law, literature, philosophy
- studied under Karl Smitt in Bonn – his left wunderkind
- worked as publicist and lawyer—thought he wouldn’t get university job because of his political
career and his Judaism
- both Kirchheimer and Neumann were politically active for social democrats and labor unions,
both defended Weimarr Republic against Fascist, and both were influenced by Karl Smitt,
connected Neumann to Schmidt
- left Germany after being jailed for a couple of weeks—fled to Paris, worked for the Institute
- left the institute in 1944
- identifies certain social groups as political actors within the system
10/9/18
Context
Stalin Turn
World Economic Depression
- Is this the final collapse?
- written from exile in U.S.—late New Deal under Roosevelt
How will capitalism be replaced?
Airfood Program
13
Friedrich Pollock (1941): State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations

- deals with ideal types not real historical societies
- 3 ideal types are presented to context the idea of the collapse of capitalism—and alternative are
offered
Planning replaces market
- market coordination is based on free choices of ind. actors in a competitive relationship to each
other
- the mechanisms of competition and advancements that follow from it produces great welfare
for the macro-society- BUT, such a system is poorly planned, leads to inequalities and crises
(e.g. World Depression)
- the replacement of the anarchy of production by planning can mean the dimunition or
replacement of the phenomenon of crisis
Example= social programs can combat under consumption
Example= warfare investment can combat under employment
But, is this a capitalist system that plans? Is state capitalism still capitalism?
Yes: in this system the profit motive is still present but profits lose their function of coordination
the flow of capital from one branch of the system to another—instead the plan regulates the flow
of profit
- private property is not abolished in that it survives but all its other roles are diminished—so you
still can receive an income from property—owner retain ownership
- BUT, the means of production are run by a managerial elite
How is the system coordinated?
- state interventionism—command replaces spontaneous coordination from below
- the ideal type generates is flexible in that different methods of coordination can be
implemented in each type—but the 3 types are the same genus in the all are rely on market
coordination
Max Horkheimer (1942): The Authoritarian State
DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
10/16/18
I. Buchstein’s Presentation
Brief Introduction
Context and History of the Book

Horkheimer and Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
- this was Horkheimer’s life project—his attempt throughout the 30s and 40s to write a book on
dialectic logic and saw all his publications since ’33, ’34 as the groundwork for this book
- it was an attempt to fulfill what Karl Marx was not able to do…
14
1868 Marx letter= 5 years after the publication of Vol. 1 of Capital

after I’m done with economics… “I want to write a dialectic whose true laws have already been
found by Hegel but only in the mystical form”
- Horkheimer picks up on this plan but at some point he realizes he needs some help—first he
turns to Herbert Marcuse (his Reason and Revolution is a good intro to Hegel’s thought)
- Horkheimer moved from NY to Pacific Palisades in 1939 to focus on the book rather than the
administrative and empirical work
- at some point Adorno became involved in the endeavor and the influence of Neuman, Pollock,
and Marcuse receded
- Horkheimer wanted, originally, to write a dialectic diagnosis of our time and at the same time
describe a developing dialectic as a method—but this changed through his collaboration with
Adorno
- Habermas in his Discourse on Modernity called the Dialectic of Enlightenment “an odd book”
in its style and some have even made this charge about its content
- officially the book is co-written but as a matter of fact (?)…
“The Concept of Enlightenment” chapter= written by both—in the same room at the same
time dictating to Gretel Adorno (a very slow production process)
“Odysseus” chapter= by Adorno alone
“Juliette” chapter= by Horkheimer
“Culture Industry” chapter= Adorno
“Anti-Semitism” chapter= both (the product of 3-5 years of working on the topic)
- the book came out at first only as a hectographic manuscript at 500 copies, sent out in May
1944 to some friends
- then it was redone and published as a book in 1947 and included an afterword on their internal
censorship (e.g. the replacement of Marxist terms with more neutral terms)
The Term “Dialectic”
Dialectic= in the Hellenistic, setting this meant the art of conversation (dialogical)
- Hegel specifies this as a method of philosophical thinking i.e. development in contradictions
where each form is placed in its systematic context
- the Frankfurt School had this tradition of Lukacs’s Hegelian understanding of Marxism so that
dialectics here means the contradictory conceptual and historical development of enlightenment
and its transformation (aufhebung) through this process1
- So, it’s not an anti-enlightenment book. Rather, it wants to reconstruct the contradictory story
of enlightenment, and maybe something after enlightenment, which in the Hegel/Marx
conception would be a higher form of enlightenment. The legatee of enlightenment.
- Adorno was initially very skeptical of Horkheimer’s multi-disciplinary project circa 1931. He
was much closer to Walter Benjamin’s approach.
- So, the book contains two understandings of their concept of dialectic and they get confused.
- For Horkheimer, dialectics is a way of thinking in relative totalities (more traditional Hegel).
- For Adorno, it’s the possibility of demystifying a broad spectrum of current
phenomena— aufhebung in the Hegelian sense of bursting through the limitations of
immanent relations and saving the element of potential escape confined within them. So,
1
Whereas for Hegel the dialectic was always progressive, for Horkheimer (and perhaps for Lukacs as well?) the
dialectic has a potentially—and as a matter of actual historical fact—regressive character. (For Plato too, as Hegel
notes, the dialectic could terminate in aporia. So, there are at least two and possibly three different traditions of
dialectic here. Or, if you count Adorno, four.)
15
with Adorno we have the term determinate negation and eventually a book: Negative
Dialectics.
- Horkheimer has a more traditionally Hegelian or Marxist approach whereas Adorno’s
method is a method of showing the inner limitations of the concept or phenomenon he is
describing.
The Introduction
The Introduction (May 1944): “Mankind is sinking into a new kind of barbarism”
- the book is not just about bourgeoise civilization, it’s about civilization period which must be
questioned
Urgesichte= “urhistory” from Benjamin, but genealogy in Foucault’s sense
- this book would be an urgesichte of anti-Semitism, domination, subjectivity—tried to put these
phenomena in their urgesichtean context
- science is part of the instrumentalization problem of enlightenment, so traditional science is no
help—this in the context of an Institute for Social Research…“enlightenment must consider itself
betrayed and science has been a part of this betrayal process” …
- this sentence indicates that this book is not anti-enlightenment, rather, it wants to enlighten the
enlightenment about it itself
- the material of the book is NOT opinion polls, economic or quantitative data, it is essays by
Kant and Nietzsche, no sources of social history but rather these indirect intellectual witnesses to
social history
History of Enlightenment
- starts with Bacon and his 1604 book (The Advancement of Learning) who describes how to
fight against the false ideas (myth) through experience and experiment—so enlightenment is set
against mythical thinking
- ramifies into different schools of enlightenment but the structure of scientific unity always has
the same logic i.e. all wanted to demythologize nature by controlling it through analysis, to
demystify nature, to turn nature into an object
- invokes Freud who said that the possibility of world domination is a form of magical thinking,
so early magical thinking was our way of securing ourselves against fear from the natural
world—give meaning to trees, grass, and rocks and this gives you some of security that Gods
are there which itself is a way of dominating nature—this is the starting point of myth
- for Adorno/Horkheimer modern skilled science has the same idea as this—world domination
through science—this becomes the myth of the scientist i.e. universal intelligibility of the world
such that man has conquered the world through scientific methods and understanding (which
itself is a regression to myth in propagating this illusion of total control over nature)
- for Adorno and Horkheimer scientists have to absorb normally incommensurable things—this
is their particular form of domination: “The intertwinement of myth, power, and labor is
preserved in one of the tales of Homer.”
“Odysseus and the Sirens”:
- Oscar Wilde asked what songs the sirens sings…Odysseus faces the choice of either not being
able to listen to the wonderful singing, of not being able to follow his desire OR to follow his
desire to listen and getting lost
- Odysseus lets other people bind him and the rowers of his ship clog their ears with wax and
thus he can listen but cannot tell them to listen because they can’t hear
Adorno/Horkheimer:
16
1. domination of inner nature= Odysseus having himself bound but being able to listen
- this moment of self-control is the birth of modern subjectivity
- [so self-repression is implicated in the birth of the ego of subjectivity (contra Hegel, Marx,
etc.)]
2. social domination= coercing other people into doing labor for him (rowers/binders) so he can
listen
- impoverishment of thought and experience
- so, the siren story for Adorno/Horkheimer entails a double form of domination i.e. domination
of inner nature (of those who are able to enjoy things) and social domination (having the capacity
to force others to labor for you)
- for them, this “regression” of self-control is an impoverishment of thought and experience
which leads to further elimination of qualities i.e. rationalization in the sense of differentiation,
scientification
- at some point in this chapter human beings turn from autonomous strong subjects into
something totally different
- human being gradually inured to being controlled, rationalized, organized things become…
Amphibians of late modernity= moderns who lose their sense of full experience, isolated
individuals cut off from real experience, absorbed into mass society
- so, the origin of modern oppression is not wage labor (as in Marx) but instrumental action i.e.
work, and this at the very early stage of human development
- Marx would say that wage labor is responsible for modern forms of exploitation, whereas,
Adorno and Horkheimer would say labor is just one form of instrumental action—and the clever
Odysseus of the sirens is the paradigm for this
- for the German bourgeoisie Homer is a sacred canonical book emblematic of Greek harmony—
but Adorno and Horkheimer interpret it as an early document of cruelty and domination (as
opposed to the typical philhellenism)
- they read the Homer text as documents of different aspects and stages of the early civilization
process…
1) Odysseus as “the prototype of the bourgeois individual”
2) the Lotus eaters represent a primeval idyll but that must go together with drugs
3) the Cyclops represents another age of human civilization, its hunter-gatherer phase
4) Circe is the prototype of the courtesan, a woman who destroys man if not suppressed by
bourgeoise marriage
5) similarly, Penelope as the waiting prostitute for Odysseus—an example of female self-
alienation
6) the realm of the dead—part of the oldest part of the poem—the theme of annulling death
which is, again, already (at this archaic stage) a form of anti-mythological thinking (for
Adorno and Horkheimer)
- so even in mythical thinking anti-mythical thinking is embedded in the myth
- we have a very different theory of domination than we’re used to—not Marx’s exploitation, not
Lukacs’s reification, but Horkheimer and Adorno’s instrumental reason
Enlightenment, Myth, and Subjectivity
- Homer’s episodes tell a story of dangers and how to escape them by means of cunning, and
tells a story of self-imposed renunciation through which the ego/identity is realized. The Homer
text is a genealogy of modern subjectivity i.e. humans gain their identity as subjects by learning
17
to dominate external nature at the cost of repressing their own internal nature—an asocial
concept of individualization.
- This genealogy of human subjectivity makes possible (when we are aware of it) reflective
enlightenment. Whereas enlightenment is traditionally seen as the genealogy of ideology now
enlightenment itself is faced with its own genealogy. Adorno and Horkheimer don’t want to
relinquish enlightenment but instead excavate its ambiguity. The question then becomes what is
next. Not so much to reject enlightenment but to integrate a probing understanding of its
complicated history…
What Comes Next?
Mimesis= the aesthetic experience as Adorno would later elaborate it
- But whatever comes next does not come through historical progress which latter conception is
already regressive. There must be a radical jump out of history (a la Benjamin). Who is the
historical subject of such a break? Only those who have the capacity to see through all this and
come up with an enlightened understanding of enlightenment.
Adorno’s Take on This
1. reason itself is suspected to be the source of irrationality
2. such a description of the self—destruction of the critical capacity of reason—is paradoxical
i.e. it refutes itself…
3. Determinate Negation= Negative Dialectics
Two Conceptual Conclusions
1. The Structural Analogy of the World
the person= a) inner nature b) outer nature c) social relations
- there is a structural analogy—so Odysseus controls his a) to control b) and in the process
subjugates c) – Adorno and Horkheimer sees all these things as necessarily interconnected
2. Three Major Sources
a) Max Weber (rationalization)
b) Ludgwig Klages= a rightwing conservative revolutionary thinker that had a Romantic (in the
tradition of Rilke) understanding of how to deal with nature
c) George Lukacs (reification)
Reactions to Dialectic of Enlightenment
- Marcuse reacts through One Dimensional Man, so he’s sympathetic
- Lowenthal insisted on the original project and was disappointed that it was not a project on the
methodology of dialectics
- Pollock, the close friend of Horkheimer and Adorno, had no real reaction
- Neumann and Kirchheimer reacted negatively due to the dearth of social science
- the book (Philosophical Fragments) came out in 1947 under its new title Dialectic of
Enlightenment
- there was an Italian edition in 1966 and the book was still in print in 1967 and in 1969 a new
German edition came out—Adorno and Horkheimer didn’t want to push the book too hard but
the publishing house did and so they wrote a new Forward and Preface
- in 1972, the English translation came out
- for Horkheimer, this was his last major book while for Adorno it was a focal point for his later
(voluminous) work
- the book became a frequent starting point for the younger generation of the Frankfurt School,
used a steppingstone to…breaking with Adnorno and Horkheimer, to reframe their theory, or to
create their own theory (Habermas famously in Discourse of Modernity and Theory of
18
Communicative Action; some criticized it as too apolitical; Axel Honneth in Critique of Power
gives a good reading of its strengths and weaknesses; for a lot of observers of the Frankfurt
School this book is seen as a negative climax to the Frankfurt School)
Conclusion: 1969 Preface to the New Edition (by Adorno and Horkheimer)
“Critical thought, which does not call a halt before progress itself, requires us to take up the
cause of the remnants of freedom, of tendencies toward real humanity, even though they seem
powerless in face of the great historical trend.”
“The development toward total integration identified in the book has been interrupted but not
terminated; it threatens to be consummated by means of dictators and wars.”
- today’s technological opportunities for surveillance, data provision, China with the social
points you can gain—maybe the administered future really is the future, indeed we do not even
require dictatorship and war for total integration, new technology could by itself do the trick
II. Arato’s Response
The Influence of Lukacs and Weber

- what for Lukacs represented the dynamic of the capitalist epoch i.e. reification, he never would
have thought of applying to pre-capitalist formation, to the beginnings of human civilization in
general—here the terms and the problem are projected to all of history, which is consistent with
Weber
- in Weber’s case, reading the Protestant Ethic you will think of rationalization as specifically
part of the capitalist system of domination
- BUT, reading Weber’s “The Sociology of Religion” from Economy and Society—
demagicalizing, rationalizing potential of Protestantism is applied to Judaism, Christianity, and
indeed, to all the great world religions and then tendentially to very early societies where the
conflict between prophets and magicians is an important dimension of Weber’s analysis
- Adorno and Horkheimer in the scope of their analysis, then, go with Weber rather than with
Lukacs
- of course, the Marxian point which Weber doesn’t make is mentioned periodically in Adorno
and Horkheimer (and this is also a Lukacsian point), namely, that rationalization creates the
possibility of human welfare and human freedom and every step of rationalization is potentially
also that
- But for Adorno and Horkheimer this point is always undermined in their theory, probably in a
Benjaminian way, namely, that the logical progress is always to undermine and it is only in
glimpses of history where the positive potential makes some kind of appearance—and you see
those glimpses even in the analysis of Homer and abundance in the case of the Lotus Eaters or
the solidarity in the case of the Cyclops—these things appear but always only in a tentative and
hopeless way as is supposedly the case with all of history
- SO, in sum, we get a tragic interpretation of human history which is certainly not in Lukacs and
actually exaggerates even Weber who was himself pretty pessimistic about freedom in the
modern world (the “iron cage,” of course, being his metaphor), but who certainly did not think
(if you read his political writings where e.g. he tries to figure out how Germany could have a
democracy after the empire) so the pessimism is a theoretical one based on Weberian concepts if
not his attitude
- It surely was not Lukacs’s attitude since he had a different theory of reification than they:
reification is the systematization, quantification, equalization, reduction of human forms that
19
nevertheless runs into a kind of limit in Lukacs’s theory i.e. the consciousness of the proletariat.
The proletariat’s life is such that the tendencies toward reification run into the life needs of a
significant, and potentially the largest part of, the population. So, there is something else in
Weberian society: there is system and there is lifeworld, in Habermas’s terms—not just system.
And the lifeworld does not just appear at junctures of history; it is a systematic part of it.
The Absence of Freedom in History
- What is striking about Dialectic is that that dimension of freedom is not grounded in history.
What is in history is the use of instrumental reason in the realm of labor. Science itself is also
instrumental reason and is spreading. Enlightenment itself is heavily in the direction of relying
on a logic of instrumental reason—scientific or philosophical positivism realizes these
tendencies. There is no trend in history which favors emancipation, no trend or even subsidiary
logic which favors social transformation in a different direction. Human history is dark. And the
only thing, at least for Horkheimer, which represents an element of potential is self-reflection.
But self-reflection has no real history unless you count the development of German Idealism and
Marx to be a kind of counter history of enlightenment all along (for which a case can well be
made). But this history is one in which very few people participate.
- Lukacs in some way tried to democratize the theory of resistance. The proletariat, at least, is
supposed to be a democratic instance, which could even be a majoritarian instance, at certain
historical moments. Self-reflection is not the same as resistance of human beings on the basis of
what is done to their lives. It is something one can develop at a very high level of intellectual
development, and it has existed in history before.
- Indeed, you could redo Adorno and Horkheimer’s history and even interpret, say, Homer as
having an element of self-reflection, for instance, in those moments of abundance, happiness,
freedom from domination that appear as potentials. Indeed, certainly one could interpret the
history of philosophy as a history of self-reflection. Though, in this history, there would be no
political subject of emancipation, only a purely intellectual subject. You could find the locus of
self-reflection in art, though, even here the powers of instrumental reason turn out to be
prodigious. After all, there is Schoenberg and his school (and Adorno) on one side and there is
the culture industry on the other side. Indeed, how much of your life has been structured around
the culture industry and how much has been structured around 12-tone music?
- In this sense the theory is a very pessimistic theory of history, not that Adorno would have been
ashamed of this. But for a theory of freedom, for a theory of social change and transformation we
must look in a different direction. And the only way to do it, aside from analysis of
contemporary sociological and political trends, is to give the history another reading. That is,
history cannot be read as Horkheimer and Adorno do if we are to underwrite a project of
freedom. This is indeed an important challenge, one which must be integrated into an alternative
theory.
III. Q&A
- Their critique of science is incredibly one-sided. For instance, we were all vaccinated as
children and are not now contracting a huge number of diseases. Indeed, a certain percentage of
us would be dead by now had it not been for 19th century medical science. None of this is to say
that scientific progress is unambiguously good. But on the other hand, to do without it, would be
tremendously problematic.
20
- Of course, Adorno and Horkheimer do not recommend any backward-looking solution to

anything and should not be confused with reactionary romantics who recommend reversion to
primitive forms of production or the abolition of the division of labor. They do believe we have
to develop on the basis of contemporary problems and on the contemporary level we’re on. The
mistake that they make, however, is that they somehow cede science to the other side. To situate
science on the one side and certain very specific traditions in philosophy on the other side is an
incredible mistake.
- This book is not about the Holocaust and ghetto. This is part of this but as a matter of fact
human history from the 19th century to the 20th century is not progress but is systematic regress
i.e. one negative thing after another. So, the theoretical outlook is not so much pessimistic as it is
skeptical of revolutionary hope.
- Adorno, in his Negative Dialectics, has a different understanding of dialectics. There Adorno
criticizes the Hegelian model of dialectics where in everything must be fit into its systematic
position. Adorno thought this was too hieratic (hierarchical?), which is why he prioritized
determinate negation.
- Adorno and Horkheimer say in their Introduction that we are not right now at the final stage of
total integration. It has been interrupted, though we are still on the way to it. But was long as we
are still on the way maybe we will change course—in this in-between stage it’s absolutely
justified to make strategic use of instrumental reason (as they do).
- “Nature” in Dialectic of Enlightenment is heavily focused on organic nature i.e. animals,
human beings. But physical nature not as much. Physical nature perhaps to the extent that the
other two are reduced to physical nature by certain scientific methodologies, which treat animals
and humans as if they were physical nature. But the nature that they consider the object of
domination is not the moon or the stars, it’s human beings and animals. It’s not that Adorno and
Horkheimer don’t consider astronomy a part of nature, it’s that the center of their interest is in
biological/organic nature, namely what also concerns our nature—a center closer to Freud than
to Newton. The focus is our inner nature even if that nature is tied up with things outside of it,
things which become important to this (but only to this) extent. The problem is not Newton but
positivism e.g. The Positivism Dispute in German Sociology—this is what they cared about. Of
course, they start with Bacon who is the forerunner of Newtonian enlightenment but even so.
The domination of external nature through the application of the methods of physical science to
the world immediately around us comes to repress our inner nature.
- In Hegel, Marx, and Lukacs you can win your self-recognition, self-respect, autonomy by
dealing successfully with nature in an instrumental way. But for Adorno and Horkheimer the
very same activity leads to a subjectivity which at the same time is repressive of your inner
nature. So, from a Foucauldian perspective, this concept is attractive but from the Marxist/Hegel
tradition they turn the + before the term “labor” into a –, since the repressive element of
modernity is set at the very beginning of this instrumental way of dealing with the other.
- The story of the Sirens is about the production of human subjectivity, the objectivation of
something, calling it other and taking it to be nature. At the beginning it was some kind of
mishmash, an organic entanglement. And then it becomes separated and according to Adorno
and Horkheimer’s history of the civilization process, nature as a category and subjectivity as a
self-understanding of some people—this is process which goes together from the very beginning
on.
- Adorno and Horkheimer take Lukacs’s concept of reification (with certain modifications) and
instead of placing it at the beginnings of capital place it at the beginnings of human society.
21
What Habermas and others do is ask what is the rational core of Dialectic of Enlightenment?
Certainly, it reveals the cost of modernization for inner nature, for social interaction, for the way
we deal with outer nature. So, Habermas would in his terms take up the colonization of the
lifeworld, which he put somewhat later than reification, but thematically it is this same negative
side of modernity. So, there is this long history of the Frankfurt School of taking up Marx’s
notion of the fetish character of capitalism but dealing with it in a different way. But the question
is still the same, this persistent question, that feeling we have of alienation, of being
instrumentalized by other people of being simply used, that there is something wrong with
technical rationality. And we have this kind of feeling, not because we are romantic but because
we are human and we have an intuition about whether our relationship to ourselves, to each
other, to animals, and our surrounding more broadly is morally okay or not. This language of
using, of alienation etc. reverberates in the Frankfurt School in a long and complicated way.
- In the history of Marxism there an idealization of a pre-state society. There is nothing like that
in Adorno and Horkheimer since for them the Homeric myth tells the story, namely, drastic
repression of women and children at the very least is at the beginning of human history. And the
next steps could have meant something liberating from their point of view because in the
introduction of the division of labor made that kind of drastic repression unnecessary. And yet,
it’s again missed because it’s done under the aegis of a new dominant stratum: maybe chiefs,
maybe priests, maybe a combination. And this missed opportunity for liberation happens over
and over again throughout history because of each of the stages could have been different but is
instead a reaffirmation of what went wrong at the very beginning of humanity (by accident?), if
not at the earliest forms of human interaction then certainly at those forms reconstructed
anthropologically or archeologically or sometimes historically. And in this sense to attribute the
category of reification only the capitalist epoch is arguably a mistake. And this is important
because the critique of state socialism might otherwise concede that reification (say, under
Stalinism) disappears since there is nothing like economic exchange or private property. Their
concept then allows a critique of those forms of society that succeed classical capitalism. This is
the gain of their theory. But at the same time with all these gains we lose the possibility of
formulating what liberation would be based on (barring some Benjaminian eschatological
rupture in history which lasts only a short time before they all turn bad).
10/23/18
I. Arato’s Presentation
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: “The Culture Industry”

The Place of Dialectic of Enlightenment in the Frankfurt School
- Lukacs’s notion of reification and the ideological crisis that it produced is, of course, extremely
important for the Frankfurt School. But, as against Lukacs, that ideological crisis leads to the
disempowering of proletarian revolution. Whereas, for Lukacs, it was a possible foundation for
radicalization and the development of class consciousness—this part of Lukacs is cut off by the
Frankfurt authors. So, on one level it is a Lukacsian thesis about the culture industry. On the
other level, it leads to much more pessimistic consequences than seen in Lukacs himself.
- This point is consistent with the chapter on the culture industry in that it is also a continuation
of the Benjamin-Adorno debate, a continuation in that focuses on the domain that Benjamin
thought was possibly the foundation for liberation and the proletarization of art and culture in a
22
democratic or socialist direction. Adorno ruthlessly criticizes (as he had already in “The Fetish
Character of Music”) Benjamin’s assumptions with respect to radio, cinema, sound film, and (in
1947) television, which he predicts will lead to an even greater and more radical destruction of
cultural substance than its mass cultural, technological predecessors did.
- The thesis of “The Culture Industry” starts with the theory of state capitalism where the most
important contrast here in terms of the general socioeconomic argument is between liberal
competitive capitalism with the appropriate links to mass media (e.g. the telephone is
pronounced as a liberal technological tool par excellence) versus monopoly capitalism where
monopolized media in which, instead of the horizontal relationship of individual speakers and
subjects there’s a top-down relationship of industrial producers of culture to human subjects.
Interestingly, telephone is pronounced as liberal, radio as democratic (but in Tocqueville’s sense
i.e. democratization of society vs. democratic government) where radio, sound film and
television presuppose societal leveling.
- Themes for “The Culture Industry” are taken up by Marcuse in One Dimensional Man and
Habermas in Communicative Action. So, there were successors to Adorno and Horkheimer’s
analysis even if it remained hegemonic for a time among the Frankfurt authors. And, certainly,
Adorno and Horkheimer never really revise their fundamental analysis.
The Place of “The Culture Industry” in the Dialectic of Enlightenment
- The first chapters produced a kind of negative philosophy of history which retrojects the theory
of reification to the beginning of all time and which makes human history into a progressive
unfolding of this very negative principle of domination through instrumental reason. The
question is whether the Culture Industry chapter should be seen as an application of this negative
philosophy of history. If you apply this philosophy of history to a specific domain of
contemporary life this is what it would turn out to be. This a possible reading of the text given
the order of the chapters but the reality is otherwise because, as you can see from the essays of
Adorno from the 1930s, the culture industry thesis is developed earlier: with the exchange of
Benjamin, with the gravitation away from Lukacs—all this occurs during the course of his
simultaneous study of mass culture and mass art. One could even argue (perhaps not
convincingly) that this negative philosophy of history is a backward projection of the cultural
criticism rather than the other way around. But it doesn’t really matter that the negative
philosophy of history is more connected to Horkheimer’s work just as it doesn’t really matter
that the cultural critique is more part and parcel of Adorno and is quite continuous with it.
The Main Themes of “The Culture Industry”
Culture industry (mass culture)= a way of talking about 2 processes…
1) Monopoly and State-Interventionist Capitalism
- The development from liberal competitive capitalism to contemporary forms of monopoly or
state-interventionist monopoly capitalism where large industrial combines rather than individual
competitors are responsible for the new logic of capitalism. So mass culture would be
appropriate term for the liberal period which produces uniformitazation and the commodity
structure in the world of art. But industrialization is possible only if planning is possible and
liberal capitalism, according to the Marxist tradition, is unplanned. But the monopoly is planned
and for that reason very much admired by Lenin as well as social democratic Marxists. It is
cultural monopolies that take over the planning structure of modern monopolized industries and
apply them to the cultural world that are responsible for most of the phenomenon described here.
So, in that sense the commodification of culture, the form of reification due to the Marxian
theory of exchange, is replaced by—it is still called reification but—becomes now, with central
23
planning, administration. Later on, for instance, Adorno will speak of a totally administered
world. Of course, leaving out of account that even monopolies can be in a competitive
relationship with one another.
3. Cultural forms of Monopoly and State-Interventionist Capitalism
- Monopoly and State-Interventionist Capitalism brings with it specific cultural forms: the
movement from the liberal telephone to democratic radio, the sound film etc. But with respect to
the older debate with Benjamin, This transformation means that Benjamin’s arguments about
“distraction,” the possibility of introjecting critique and distance to the enjoyment no longer
applies—that was possible in the earlier structure e.g. on the telephone you can talk back. You
can’t do that to the radio or the television. Worse, this is not just technological distance to a thing
but also the kind of imagery, substance, logic that is produced, it absorbs. This was supposed to
be something from which the sound film liberated the bourgeois subject who was absorbed by
the great work of art. No one can be absorbed by the silent films of the 1920s. But the sound film
and the great advance of color film, of more sophisticated photography of the cult of stars—all
this produces a kind of absorption which Benjamin thought that modern art and culture could
liberate us from.
4. Social Uniformity
- A consequence of this absorption, if everybody is absorbed2 by the same thing, is uniformity.
It’s interesting that they begin their discussion of uniformity with housing. (C.f. Hansel
Rabenbach’s NSSR Sociology lecture on social democratic housing policy in Vienna.) The
uniformity of life is also a question of consumption: everybody consumes the same things,
watches the same programs, buys the same commodities, listens to the same music, uses the
same words. The culture industry, as against competitive liberal culture, ruthlessly produces that
uniformity not only by positive images but also by taboos and expulsions and banishments that
administration features on a programmatic level.
5. The Culture Industry vs. Demand from “Below”
- It is ordinarily said (e.g. via the Nieslen ratings) that the kind of programs that are produced are
produced because this is what the consumers want. This is still a demand constraint system and it
would, according to this caricature, be absurd to give people who want reality T.V. Arnold
Schoenberg since they would in the latter case just turn off the set. Thusly does consumer
demand play a great role in the apology of these systems. Adorno counters that this alleged
demand from “below” is constantly reconstructed from “above.” There is no question that the
contemporaneous shows themselves (e.g. Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best) show the kind
of people, feature the kind of life, which demands the kind of cultural goods the shows
themselves represent. This is a kind of circle. So, yes, demand is being responded to, but the
demand is also being molded. And the constant advertising indicates the latter. Indeed, the only
thing that television programs advertise more constantly than themselves, is drugs. And the
reason for the latter is because the viewers have become older people (vs. the millennials on their
phones), older people who worry about their health. And indeed, self-advertising and advertising
are complementary, since if you don’t advertise the show, people will not watch the other show
that advertises the other drug. This goes on not because of any specific demand from below, even
if, of course, there is a interest and need from below for entertainment and medicine which is in
some sense addressed.
2
If before it was (for Benjamin) auratic absorption, what accounts for the new kind of absorption of the new media
(e.g. sound film, television etc.)? Is it technical verisimilitude?
24
6. Triumph of Quantification
- The way need is measured is through constant quantification. Everything you watch and don’t
watch is, with Nielsen, being measured on a very high quantitative level by a certain number of
people who are connected and are constantly monitoring. And they are statistically selective.
And, indeed, programs are taken on and off the air in response to such ratings and in that sense
social scientific methods are brought to bear on the subject matter.
7. What is the function of the culture industry and what are its consequences?
- The function can be put in a classical Marxist way, namely, most of the people are workers or
employees (and if they’re the latter their lives are probably even drearier) and dreary forms life
of life require some relief, emancipation, amusement, something which borders on pleasure. In
this sense, the mass cultural project responds to real needs and problems and could have, at least
in theory, emancipatory consequences. The reason it does not is because the form itself imitates
the logic of work. Work is repetitive, monotonous and so are the programs. Work is quantified
and scientifically managed and entertainment and leisure are as well. If the programs would at
least give people information about society that they do not have, that would be liberating. Some
probably do but even so Adorno is not wrong in that the programs try to navigate between “two
cliffs of misinformation and truth” (fake news and news). They cannot be just falsehoods (e.g.
aliens have invaded NYC and you better buy Tide detergent). On the other hand, combining a
certain element of truth—this is how programs manipulate that divide and create the atmosphere
of being free or liberated and at the same time keep us in a dependent relationship to the existing
forms of power.
Three Termini of the Culture Industry: Art, Ideology, and the Individual
- 3 things end as a result of this transformation of culture: 1) end of art 2) end of ideology 3) end
of the individual—all famous Frankfurt theses.
- End of art. Not meant literally in the sense that great art can still somehow escape the logic of
the culture industry. Great art can escape for reasons of creativity but also because of the needs
of mass culture: creativity because if you are really creative like Arnold Schoenberg you are
always fighting against the manipulated form, creating a distance from it, creating a form of
criticism, saving something beyond—what Adorno would refer to as “the non-identical.” But this
is only half the story because the culture industry cannot kill art altogether, since creation takes
place in a little workshop and is only then taken up. But if the latter is true art must be fostered
and subsidized. The same person who creates your soap commercial may be the same person
who gives to The Metropolitan Opera. So, in sum, art remains the important and cannot be
entirely discarded. Indeed, art of the past is always revived because it too can be used and
transformed. So, the end of art is not quite an end but it is a genuine weakening which comes
from the elimination of the distance between serious and light. Adorno says that the division
between serious and light art is the truth because it is light art, folk art, popular art that
historically gives ordinary people respite from their drudgery, from their hard work which was
much harder in the past than now. But great art at the same time creates the foundation for
cultural change and renewal. So: great art neglects the suffering of the majority while light art is
incapable of renewing culture on its own. It’s this division in which, again, the truth lies. But the
culture industry precisely by fostering the world of art and focusing on popular forms by
transforming popular art into mass culture and by increasingly isolating and separating the high
form from the low. (Adorno thought Mozart’s opera the Magic Flute was the only successful
attempt at merging high and low art.)
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- End of ideology. Extremely significant for the Frankfurt School as a whole. In the Marxist
tradition, ideology means, among other things, fetishized consciousness where the forms of the
ideas that people have are the result of the penetration of the commodity form into culture. But
the meaning of ideology that Adorno develops (in an essay on cultural criticism in a volume
called Prisms) involves a combination of true and false consciousness. A typical version of
ideology as reification or ideology as fetishism would be the crude and vulgar versions of
economic liberalism which stress individual entrepreneurism and the creative freedom inherent
in the property form. But even these forms of ideology have an element of truth in them (as
Adorno would put it) since the kind of freedom that fetishized consciousness promotes could be
the basis of a demand for freedom. For example, the relationship of equal and unequal exchange
in the labor contract. On the labor market, equivalents are exchanged i.e. the market value of
labor is more or less the source of its price and the factor of production that the capitalist gains
by employing that laborer. For getting eight hours of someone’s time you pay a given wage and
these appear on the market as equivalents. But, as Marx explains, once that labor is put into
action it produces more value than the value for which it has been exchanged. So, in fact, the
equivalence conceals a non-equivalence. Adorno would say that what classical ideologies, even
in this form, imply—that a demand can be made for greater equivalence. And in that sense, the
surplus value which is appropriated by the owners, the ones who get to use the worker’s labor, is
one that can be challenged in several ways: the fight over the workday or the fight over wages.
So, again, the fact that equivalence produces non-equivalence becomes a basis for critique and
challenge. Ideology criticism criticizes the falsehood involved in such relation but in the name of
the truth which is also inherent in it. However, ideologies produced by mass and popular culture
do not have this two-side character, or so Adorno claims. They represent a kind of photographic
representation of reality and they imply that that reality is the only one that we can aspire to or
accept, or even, whose supposed value should not be overemphasized. For example,
representations of other lands and cultures which appear boring and dreary. Why would I want to
go there if I can stay home and get married? Reality is all what you experience already and the
cultural form just reinforces your acceptance of it and removes the possibility or demand which
would be inherent in it. If someone presented the enticements of other lands and other seas and
the wonders of nature as particularly desirable, someone sitting in Cincinnati watching the
program may actually want to travel there, may actually want to experience the same thing which
some sectors of society are still able to experience.3 So, ideology become a photography i.e. a
flat presentation of reality which no longer has normative surpluses on which criticism could be
based.
- End of the individual. This argument is based on psychoanalytic considerations. The
individual of the bourgeois epoch is a bourgeois individual i.e. workers, peasants were not able
in that world to develop their subjectivity, the many-sided aspects of their individuality, rich
relations with one another. So classical capitalism is the birthplace of the individual, the
bourgeois individual, which is simultaneously a great achievement, a norm, a form of life which
could be desirable to everybody, but at the same time, the very fact that it’s restricted, as Marx
says, to those with money and education means that inherent in this individuality is denial of the
individuality of others. So simultaneously creation and denial of individuality is characteristic of
the classical liberal epoch. The world of mass culture attacks also the individuality or individual
aspirations of the bourgeoisie. This of course does not mean, and cannot mean, that the patterns
3
Wouldn’t the tourism industry be incentivized to play up these enticements regardless of what the controlling
interest of society at large may desire?
26
of consumption, leisure, intersubjective relations are identical for the different classes. But, in
terms of the segmental strategies of the culture industry, everybody fits in. So, a culture is
produced which homogenizes, makes uniform, degrades—this culture is also produced for the
wealthiest. (E.g. Trump is vulgar, working class. His speech is, if anything, is less developed
than street kids from Flushing. Of course, he is a particularly hideous example of the
phenomenon but he’s not alone. After all, people rent apartments in the monstrosity that is
Trump Tower, indeed, very expensive ones. So, this denigration or leveling—not in terms of
general social leveling but in terms of particular segmented strategies—works. Obviously
aristocratic norms survive in different places and different countries have preserved them to
differing extents. But the broader phenomenon is nevertheless unmistakable. C.f. Rachel
Sherman’s Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence).
Concluding Remarks
- Reading this text, it is impossible not to think of soap operas (a.k.a. women’s serial programs in
Adorno’s time). The term soap opera is self-ironical in referring to selling soap and to creating
an operatic structure—one of course without singing and aesthetic value. They have a predictable
structure such that you can predict the conclusion based on the 1st or 2nd act.
“The analysis offered by de Tocqueville a hundred years ago has been fully borne out in
the meantime. Under the private monopoly of culture tyranny does indeed “leave the
body free and sets to work directly on the soul. The ruler no longer says: 'Either you think
as I do or you die.' He says: 'You are free not to think as I do; your life, your property-all
that you shall keep. But from this day on you will be a stranger among us.’”
- Bring every impulse including affect under social control, the industrial management of a
friendly atmosphere, the transformation of tragedy into a threat to destroy who does not
cooperate.
- Adorno, being very pessimistic, seems to say that the only solution is the admission of defeat…
But then what would resistance be based on?
- With the Frankfurt teachings regarding the end of ideology, once the thing is really
homogenized the basis of critique disappears. But at the same time the culture industry (which he
reveals in forty-five dense pages) is according to Adorno transparent. How so? E.g. gameshows
in which somebody wins. People who watch are able to calculate the chance they have of
winning and it doesn’t require too much statistical knowledge to know that you will never be the
winner. You are enjoying vicariously somebody’s win who presumably has connections to the
management anyway. (And indeed, some of the game shows of the 1950s and 60s were exposed
as frauds, as some of the winners were insiders.) People know that advertisers are cheating and
lying, presenting completely false claims on behalf of products or on behalf of programs, which
a repetitious and exactly the same as the previous program was. Nevertheless, we still watch and
buy. And indeed, our continuing to do so is, again, continually monitored and measured. So,
people do see through the culture industry but participate in it nonetheless; they buy. The
question is: is the rate of stupidifcation faster or the rise of intelligence? Because both are
happening. People are stupefied; they buy. And at the same time, they understand more and more
how false all this is. So, what will they do about it? Adorno himself does not given an answer.
That said, certainly texts’ like Adorno’s, as pessimistic as they were, did not produce pervasive
pessimism. On the contrary, they produced mostly young challengers (though Marcuse was
himself in his 70s when his position began to diverge in essays like “On Liberation and
Counterrevolution”). So, in a sense, the very naming of the problem, the very focus on it, even
27
though it’s not ideology critique in the traditional, classical sense of Marx’s critique of political
economy, it could have a liberating effect.
II. Buchstein’s Response
- Adorno doesn’t offer any real positive alternatives to the culture industry but he does describe
some features of a genuinely meaningful life, stressing things like quality, authenticity,
autonomy, independent thinking, self-reflection, creativity. Interestingly he does not list things
like justice, democracy, equality—the conventional terms. These are all terms that come from the
aesthetic sphere and concept of life. But they can be translated into politics and indeed they are
by someone like Herbert Marcuse.
III. Buchstein’s Presentation
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: “Elements of Antisemitism: Limits of

Enlightenment”
- The chapter may look like an idiosyncratic appendix to the book at first glance, but this is not
the case for two reasons. 1) The genealogy of the book. Since June of 1941 news was released in
the U.S., France, and England about the killing of the Jews in Germany. Western democracies
were very passive about this; they didn’t do anything. In the summer of 1941, Horkheimer and
Adorno’s ideas parallel on the need for discussion of the Jewish question, and for both of them
Jews stood for an inability to achieve whole assimilation into a social system. And also, for a
form of happiness free of the struggles of life in a totally organized and administrated society.
Adorno, in a letter in around October of 1941, suggested to Horkheimer that instead of writing
this book at dialectics they should write something crystallized around anti-Semitism. And
Horkheimer wrote back to say that anti-Semitism can only be understood by examining society
and that today’s society can only be understood by examining anti-Semitism. The chapter was
written jointly.
Precursors to “Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment”
- Of course, their essays had been preceded by another on the same subject by an author in the
same tradition, namely, Marx’s essay “On the Jewish Question.” In Marx, we find a
socioeconomic explanation for Jews’ role in modern society (of the 19th century). The hope was
that over time the development of capitalist society would solve the Jewish question
automatically. Freud, another author adopted by the Frankfurt School tradition, wrote how he felt
in Austria being followed by anti-Semitism. But in Freud’s theory the Jew is a target wherein
there is a cultural, analytical, and psychological dynamic which induces people to go after some
people. Freud’s argument was that the Jews are a particular and easy target because of
Christianity. For Freud, and there was till Christian resentment because Christians felt
themselves to be on the bottom of Christianity.
- Also C.f. Hannah Arendt’s essay on anti-Semitism, Sartre’s “Anti-Semite and Jew”
The Dialectic’s Marxist and Freudian Theory of Anti-Semitism
- For Adorno and Horkheimer, however, anti-Semitism is the concealment of domination in the
field of production: a suppressed aggression which has nothing to do with Christianity, but which
is native to the sphere of production and instrumental rationality. It is, as in Freud, a masochistic
reaction but the reason this reaction is directed at Jews is because located in an urgesichte
(genealogy or protohistory) of ant-Semitism. In other texts of Adorno’s in the 1940s, he wrote
28
that he and Horkheimer were developing an anthropological theory of anti-Semitism so that the
anti-Semite is a particular anthropological type which goes back to a very early stage of Jewish
existence. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, anti-Semitism is described as a ritual of human
civilization which represents the hatred of the civilized of reminders of the failures of
civilization. The Jews represented to the civilized a kind of life of happiness in closer proximity
to nature. Adorno and Horkheimer also specify that bourgeois anti-Semitism has to do with the
role of Jews in Europe. Jews were barred from real jobs and were therefore forced into poverty in
the ghetto or into employments in the financial market. So, Jews became the symbol of
modernization, capitalism, circulation of capital and this anti-capitalist resentment of some
people became the crucial factor in Anti-Semitism.4 Adorno and Horkheimer also argued that,
while liberalism had ceded property to Jews, it had not acceded to their demand for power. They
also thought anti-Semitism was partly a counterreaction to the failure of assimilation efforts in
liberal society.
Jewish Chosenness
- Jews were chosen but as victims and not by God. The liberal view of assimilation (taken up by
Moses Mendelssohn and many others in the German tradition e.g. Jews who entered politics after
WWI) had failed.
Rackets= A term from American sociology of robber barons, mafia groups, Chicago gangs, a
racket is a mafia group or band. Adorno and Horkheimer use the term in the “Culture Industry”
chapter to describe the structure of society and unions. And here again they use it in the context
of the Aryanization of Jewish property and its strengthening of modern capitalism.
- Jewish anti-Semitism is special but not different. Jews are scapegoat in particular because they
represent the circulation sector, financial markets, and economic crisis in particular. No other
groups were blamed for such things in the same way. They are the colonizers of capitalism. (E.g.
Jews, many working for Americans, introduced department stores a la Macy’s in Germany,
France, and northern Italy. Or, another example, Jews were blamed from the stock market crash
of 1929.) They are a people without a land, a soil. Jewish people, just by their existence,
represent a form of happy life which others envy.
Christianity
- Pick up on some of Freud in citing the killing of the father by the son.
- Adorno and Horkheimer write that homosexuality is a negative morbid projection, a negative
perversion.
half-Bildung= Adorno argues that Bildung is under threat of becoming reduced to a form of
half-Bildung. To him, Bildung is a persisting area of tension between the development of an
individual’s autonomy on the one hand and adaptation to the demands of society on the other.
Half-Bildung occurs when interests of the dominant groups in society define the aims of
education, and neglects the interests of the subjects of Bildung. In contrast to this half-Bildung
Adorno develops his ideas about Bildung to both a personal and a political maturity – after
Auschwitz (Adorno 1971); a process of Bildung that enables individuals to become resistant
towards all authoritarian tendencies.
- half-Bildung gives you the feeling that you are educated
4
Doesn’t that beg the question a little? Bourgeois anti-Semitism results from socioeconomic discrimination against
Jews... Admittedly, the argument is just that bourgeois anti-Semitism is an historical exacerbation of civilizational
anti-Semitism, something like the unhappy result of an elective affinity (in Weber’s sense) between civilized
discontentment and modern capitalism. Though, interestingly (and contra Weber), the conceptual resentment
(civilization and its discontents) predates the material catalyst (modern capitalism).
29
The End of Conscience

- This is destroyed, which helps accelerate the thoroughly technocratic, industrialization and
instrumentalization of society.
- Adorno and Horkheimer don’t mention the Holocaust but implicitly this “end of conscience”
allowed this industrialized slaughter. It made way for an industrialized culture in which
technocratic efficiency prevails over moral conscience.
Judaism as a Historical From of Determinate Negation
- Neither Horkheimer nor Adorno would very active practicing Jews but they still saw this
messianic element in it and a kind of life praxis.
Neumann’s Spearhead Theory of Anti-Semitism= Meant to explain German anti-Semitism
under the Nazi regime. The logic is that you start with the Jews because they’re the easiest target
and then you go after other. And going after the Jews should show everybody else in society
what we will do with those who we declare our enemies. It’s a policy to produce fear.
- Horkheimer, in his article The Jews and Europe, advances a functionalist theory, namely, that
Jews are the representatives of circulation. Now liberal capitalism has become monopoly
capitalism and therefore we don’t need them anymore and can go after them and the Jews have
no way to defend themselves because they no longer serve any strong social function.
- But just a few years later in The Dialectic of Enlightenment we have the anthropological theory
of anti-Semitism. So, between 1937 and 1944 we have three (spearhead, functionalist,
anthropological) very different approaches to anti-Semitism within the Frankfurt School. Later
on, the Frankfurt School would conduct empirical studies of anti-Semitism. Adorno, for instance,
defended his approach in light of the subsequently collected data.
IV. Arato’s Response
The Marxist Explanation of Anti-Semitism

- There is a basically underlying Marxist conception here: the transition from commercial to
monopoly capitalism and the fact that such a system has victims and creates hardship and
unhappiness. So, anti-Semitism on one level (and Marxist writers would probably agree with
this) would be a kind of projection: a shift from the real sources of misery—industrial capital,
monopoly capitalism—to the commercial sphere which is already obsolete. But the argument
really deals with the bourgeoise i.e. why do the owners of the means of production (which
National Socialism basically keeps in place), why do they support this strategy. So the
question—Why the Jews?—indicates how it is that the requisite enemy is chosen. Of course
there is already a tradition based ultimately on religious foundations. It’s a very difficult section
on the religious ground and certainly in someone like Nietzsche or Freud you would find a much
simpler explanation that seems right. After all, a people who do not accept God and who actually
choose Barbaras (?) over Christ are enemies of the faith, especially since they refuse to come in.
And of course this religious basis is periodically renewed. It’s renewed even in the liberal
capitalist period in the forms of pogroms in lots of countries and less developed countries like
Russia and Poland had the most of these. But what is possible now in this epoch of industrial
capitalism is replacing the pogrom with industrial methods.
The Psychoanalytic Explanation of Anti-Semitism
- But Adorno and Horkheimer also appeal to the psychoanalytic dimension which you certainly
don’t need to describe why the owners of the means of production would like to deflect blame
from themselves to somebody else or why industrial methods replace the handwork of the
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pogrom. You do need it to examine mass support i.e. popular support for this. And indeed, this is
a very different explanation from the one offered by the likes of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen who (in
e.g. Hitler’s Willing Executioners) appeals to German history, character, and anti-Semitism.
Adorno and Horkheimer are, without every saying it, loyal citizens of Germany, or at least, loyal
members of their linguistic and cultural community. So, the attack is not against Germans as
such. But of course, one cannot deny the fact that this policy had at least support from a minority
and acquiescence from a fairly large majority. How is that possible? That is where the
psychoanalytic explanation enters. Why do people, even ordinary people, who don’t want to go
out and kill Jews in anger or by industrial method, why do they accept it so easily? They accept it
because Jews remind them of a stage of cultural development which is no longer permitted to
them—the whole business about mimesis and affect. And Jews become an opportunity to regress
to previous cultural levels which all of us our debarred from. We’re not allowed to carry out our
aggression. Indeed, even in Nazi Germany you cannot just have a pogrom against salesman or
against Bavarians in Prussia. But the Jews permit this regression to an earlier civilizational stage.
You see this also in the U.S., which though it represented one of the foremost capitalist
countries, nevertheless in the American south you have tens of thousands of lynchings which are
mass events. How is this possible? Well, in the given context, which is not the United States as a
whole so much as it is certain states of it, aggression against particular populations was
permitted—and this allows for the same kind of regression. Lynchings, after all, were incredibly
gruesome events and otherwise ordinary people who were not torturing their children or even
their pets are capable of participating. This is what Adorno means by a “psychanalysis in
reverse” i.e. a kind of political movement that allows you to regress without sanction and
punishment. Of course, you see this kind of sadism in the camps and in prison, even now in lots
of places so Jews are not the only possible targets. Adorno and Horkheimer certainly do not think
that the Jews are the only possible targets (they also mention Roman, Protestants and Catholics)
and of course any of the targets could themselves be the executioners. So, it’s not as if just
because you have become the target in one setting you are therefore exempted from the
possibility of doing the same to somebody else. This is now a popular point to make but to make
it 1934 and ’38 was prescient. (Hannah Arendt also makes this point in Origins of
Totalitarianism.) So, it is not a question of Germans and of Jews always on the other side; it’s a
question of a set of possibilities that exist within the existing forms of social organization.
V. FAQ
High and Low Art and what Lies in Between

- Benjamin explored art between the high and low aesthetic in terms of film and radio and saw
that Brecht’s theater is in between in representing a very high poetic form but nevertheless using
some of the same techniques you would encounter in radio etc. So, Benjamin is the antipode to
Adorno in this sense. Habermas in an essay (with a German title that may have been translated)
represents a position which brings Benjamin and Adorno closer together in terms of where they
each overshot their mark. For Marcuse, in particular, forms of youth in the 1960s came to mean
to him a set of possibilities which both could lead to popular reception on the one side and at the
same time could utilize aesthetic forms. Adorno, for his part, is certainly willing to do immanent
critique of Brecht and Benjamin and Kafka and even Schoenberg and his school. But why not a
critique of popular cultural forms—to try to see within them the possibility of industrialization
and the possibility of projecting some form of emancipation. A general and more open critique of
31
different cultural forms would, after all, be very desirable. For instance, is the music of the
1960s—Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones—are these musicians the same as
Manotvani, Guy Lombardo, and Liberace? Because, in Adorno, it really looks like all these are
the forms that have replace light and popular art. But of course, there were many other things and
perhaps particularly in the 1960s people did attempt to generate conceptions which would imply
a more differentiated form of criticism—exactly the kind Adorno himself recommends in his
essay on immanent critique i.e. a combination of transcendent critique which examines things
from the outside and immanent critique which looks at it from the inside and tries to look at the
tension between positive and conformist moments which are there in all art.
- Benjamin mentions architecture being the first popular artform because people go into the
temples and other buildings in public places which are part of their environment and part of their
form of life. So, if that’s aestheticized in some way that’s positive. And architecture is perhaps a
central from of simultaneously producing art and at the same time dealing with the question of
for whom it is art.
10/30/18
Critical Political Sociology (Buchstein)

Franz L. Neumann (1954): Anxiety and Politics
Otto Kirchheimer (1957): The Waning of Opposition in Parliamentary Regimes
Otto Kirchheimer (1966): The Transformation of the Western European Party System
- Kirchheimer and Neumann knew each other as young members of the social democratic party
- both worked for the OSS during WWII
- were good friends for much of their lives
- Neumann left to the institute in 1943, but before he did he published Behemoth (a thinly veiled
critique of Schmidt’s book on Leviathan)
- prepared the legal strategy for Nuremberg trials
- pioneered political science departments in German academia
- made professor at Columbia
- died in car accident in 1954
Neumann: Behemoth
- argues again theory of state-capitalism by Pollock—says the term is self-contradictory
- wrote about the “new compromise” structure of national socialism – which he thought was
unstable and would involve foreign conquest
Spearhead theory of anti-Semitism= the Jews are 1st ones but a lot other groups will follow
- said bf 1933 the Germans had been the least anti-Semitic
- analyzes how the political structure and progress of the war lead to Holocaust
- wrote de-Nazification handbook for OSS (office of strategic studies) – blacklisting old elites
who should be excluded from democratic rebuilding
- outlined suggestion for new constitution
1948-51= wrote about W. and E. Germany, very disappointed that the conservatives had
triumphed in W. Germany though of course E. Germany was worse i.e. Stalinist dictatorship
- afraid of an authoritarian takeover of W. Germany… “Anxiety” essay is part of this
32
The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (Ed. Marcuse)= contributes essay on
Montesquieu who understands as a pioneer of political sociology, also writes on Schmidt and
critiques
Science of state (Staadtwissenschaft)= founded in early 19th century in Germany but migrated to
the U.S. (at Columbia U.)—Neumann used this story to revive the discipline in Germany
Franz L. Neumann (1954): Anxiety and Politics
- last piece before he died
- bf this he was notoriously anti-psychoanalysis—Marcuse may have helped introduce him
True anxiety (reelangst)= connected to liberalism, you’re afraid of domination
vs.
neurotic anxiety= makes you susceptible to totalitarian manipulation
alienation= already had it with Lukacs and Dialectic of Enlightenment, with Neumann he
follows Max Weber in thinking some alienation inevitable in modern society—it’s not always
capitalist oppression that must be overcome
psychology/society/politics= analyses alienation at each level
anxiety and identification= mass identification had been used to explain the demonic power of
national socialism, instead Neumann follows Freud in writing about the libido charged affective
identification in neurotic types who identify with totalitarian leaders—people who are weak and
autonomous have a drive that makes them sympathetic to these aggressors
caesarism= identified with Hitlerism
- so engages like Dialectical Enlightenment in trans-historical analysis
Conspiracy theories= ColaDirienso 1313-54 tribune of Roman people, leader of a revolt in
1334 which aimed to restore the city of Rome to its ancient power—per Neumann he was
fantastically persuasive to the masses, such that they capitulated, BUT, barons came back and
put Dirienso out of power—Dirienseo had blamed the barons for all society’s ills but instead of
pushing for their execution (a la true Ceasarism)—raises the question whether Caesarism is
possible without a radical conclusion
Anti-Semitism= the most important type of conspiracy with a coronel of truth i.e. crucifixion of
Christ
- described as a way to integrate Germany society through the construction of an enemy—the
Jews because of their concrete role in society
Monopolistic capitalism= Western capitalist society is still monopolistic wherein the official
ideology is competition BUT they are not genuinely competitive + monopolistic capitalism is not
a fair basis for competition (which for Neumann is not inherently neurotic)
Political alienation= social alienation + political alienation whereby political apathy takes hold
in the face of giant political machines—paves way for ceasarism, the institutions of neurotic
personality
Collective guilt= starts with Thucydides on Sparta massacre and compares it to Germany in the
Holocaust where guilt drives the perpetrators to commit more atrocities because they anxiously
anticipate the coming backlash
Conclusion= …skeptical of: with respect to modern society since it’s monopolistic capitalism
and political alienation
Otto Kirchheimer
- fellow at the New School in 1942, then professor in 1954, then promoted to tenure, switched to
Columbia in 1961, died in 1965
33
Political Justice= better to have political justice i.e. the rule of law—even if there are inevitable
gaps in law i.e. how law should be applied, what decency means etc.
Developments in Modern Western Democracy: “Private Man and Society”
- describes the U.S. as a rich consumer society with an growing middle class and a market
conception of freedom
- analyzes suburbanization of society and ramifications for political coalition
- interest groups and union weakens vs. advertisement, propaganda which get stronger
- society sys. denies people the opportunity to ask what is the purpose of life? Which leads to
widespread sperificiality
- sees some hope in radical student movement
Kirchheimer (1957): The Waning of Opposition in Parliamentary Regimes
- published in NS journal, Social Research
Political Typology
1. Classical opposition
2. Opposition of principle (Nazi vs. communist)
3. Parliamentary opposition (drive to the middle)
- because of the rise of the middle class, the welfare state, consumer society, less political
polarization and class struggle because massaged by consumer society
- this waning of classical opposition i.e. real policy alternatives it the general trend in all western
societies
What is the problem with the waning of the opposition?
- marginalized groups lose their voice
- also lack of political alternatives = either apathy or radical opposition
- articulation of policy difference is the rational of parlimanetary democracy—so these diff are
crucial
Otto Kirchheimer (1966): The Transformation of the Western European Party System
Another political typology
1. traditional political party
2. mass integration party
3. catch-all party
- this is a chronological typology
- catch-all parties are not regional, no strong connection to any interest groups, short-term
electoral goals, strong role of political leaders who become more important than the program
VERSUS the class parties e.g. the social democrats
Negatives of catch-all?
- pursuit of median voter marginalizes the marginalized
- parties advertise consumer interests BUT what about producer interests (better working
conditions)
- some interest get lost—the very old, the very young—because they don’t have the vote or don’t
matter for votes
- what follows form this structural selectivity of the system could mean political apathy,
polarization, radical opposition, total integration—wasn’t sure what would happen, called
himself a craftsman of political science
Arato’s Take
34
- Neumann turns to psychoanalysis in part because he believes political science doesn’t have a
method of its own whereas Kirchheimer is more of a conservative methodologically i.e. left
liberal democratic
- the theme that unites them is resistance to authoritarianism
- Neumann thinks the answer is politics BUT the party system is oligarchic even if their
supposed to be the mediators of popular sovereignty—which is why Kirchheimer conducts an
anthropology of parties and their problems—how can we revitalize parties?
1. the construction of new parties
- e.g. Greens in Germany
2. formation of ant-systemic, populist parties that denounce those within the system
11/06/18
11. November 6, Critiques of the Public Sphere (Arato)

- Jürgen Habermas (1961): The Structural Change of the Public Sphere. Cambridge UP,
1992. Chapter 16-25.
11/13/18
Critical Theory and Radical Oppositional Movements (Buchstein)

- Herbert Marcuse (1969): An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press 1990.
- B. 1898, studied with Heidegger
- Eros and Civilization (1956), One Dimensional Man (1964), “Repressive Tolerance” (1966),
“Essay on Liberation” (1969)—became manifesto of the New Left, was very controversial
- in Paris in May 1968, in deep conflict with Horkheimer and Adorno over student movement
- affiliated w/ the Green Party later in life
- did a day long interview with Habermas, mostly debate
- died in 1978
“An Essay on Liberation”

Diagnosis of our time
- global capitalist system = advance monopoly capitalism and w/o crisis at the center
- an imperial structure through economic, technical and military intervention and penetration
- calls the 3rd world the “external proletariat”—the class struggle is the center vs. peripheries of
the system
Working class= when the centers of the capitalist state integrated that stabilized the system and
made many conservative and counter-revolutionary, they are also consumerist
- SO, the old working class has to be transformed…
- such changes are only possible if the 1) econ. stability and 2) social cohesion weaken
What are the integrating factors?
Consumerism= the spread of the commodity form
- also a psychoanalytic argument i.e. sublimation in the face of workaday life and this workaday
life become a second nature, SO people require compensation…
35
- people are libidinally bound to the commodity form—incessantly acquisitive and consumerism
(but also profligate—constant dissatisfaction)—this is an infantile neurosis, people are addicted
to commodities, to satisfying their “false needs”—"the counter revolution is rooted in the
instinctive structure,” so people are aggravated by people who don’t consume
- thinks there is no way out
“biological”= Foucault would say this is not biology i.e. a social process in which behavior sinks
into the biology of man, BUT because of this social character it’s malleable, indeed Marcuse, is
at least immune as a diagnostician
- BUT, there’s an instinctual basis for freedom, morality, and solidarity in some way rooted in
the pleasure principle
Role of Critical Theory
- critical theory is reexamining the prospects for a socialist alternative (vs. utopian speculation),
and by means of technology this possibility is already imaginable
- critical theory must incorporate new cultlural phenomena, new sensibility
- wants collective ownership, control, distribution, and planning of production
- NOT just negative thinking (contra Adorno), and new art is possible (also contra Adorno)
Agents of Revolution= come from the peripheries (external proletariat of the 3rd world), NOT
the center of the system, HOWEVER, imperialism is too strong and SO the preconditions for
liberation must ALSO emerge within advance capitalist societies…
- in capitalist centers there are active minorities (lumpenproletariat) e.g. black power movement,
the student unrest on the other hand testifies to an alternative society BUT they are not the real
forces of social change
Language and Politics= “obscenity” must understood as a general in uniform, RATHER
THAN, a naked woman
- art is intentionally obscene
- the Christian “soul” is redefined by the black movement—more sensual e.g. soul music, soul
food
The Rule of Art= sublation de-segregates the aesthetic from the quotidian life
- art is a force of rapture within the vocabulary of domination—dissolves the very structure of
traditional perception BUT they have been commercialized already
- SO, we require a new art that breaks totally with reification and enables us to be creative on a
day-to-day level, art that becomes a critique of knowledge, using fantasy to escape from the
hegemony of positivism
- so current art occupies a precarious position between the commercialization and the avant-
garde
Politics of Radical Transformation= parliamentarism is an integrating machine that produces
unjust results i.e. the entrenchment of capital, SO, incremental change will not suffice, NO
reformation BUT transformation i.e. extra-parliamentary forces
- endorses direct action, democracy, participation, militant resistance…
- the establishment (the elite) vs. marginalized groups (e.g. black power, student)—the
marginalized groups have the right to violent resistant
- when attacks from the dominant become stronger then the left should defend liberal democracy
(at least in the face of right wing populism that lurches toward authoritarianism)
Technology and Science
Neutrality thesis= technology is neutral SO he’s pro-productive innovative forces and tech
advancement, indeed, those are the preconditions for socialism
36
- BUT, these means must be made objects of collective ownership—SO science and technology
are the great instruments of liberation (though of course they can be used for authoritarian ends)
- thanks to technology work can be de-alienated, work can become play
Gaia Sciencia= the planet is an organic whole
Arato’s Take
- rightly introduces criticism into the usual self-congratulation of liberal democracy
- BUT, emphasizes radical, maximalist program compared to traditional socialism (national
planning, public ownership, elimination of classes, radicalization of liberal democracy)—
Marcuse doesn’t reject all of these goals but he is not a traditional socialist and he is above all an
exponent of cultural revolution, one so radical that it is “biological” i.e. NOT just anti-
bureaucracy, de-commodified BUT must produce a new human nature (contra capitalism’s
production of a “second nature”), it must produce a new psychology
- Marcuse replaces the maximum program of socialism with something even more radical—like
everyone else he’s in search of the revolutionary subject, especially because it cannot be the
proletariat (at least subjectively, due to commodification) i.e. the groups left out of affluent
society (e.g. African Americans, later, feminism, other minorities, the external proletariat)
- revolutionary subjectivity ALSO needs a catalyst, a substance that will trigger the reaction
without entering into the reaction itself i.e.  the New Youth movement (e.g. young intellectual,
countercultural groups)—they could produce a synthesis (sublation) which would require the
revolutionary subject to realize what is already objectively possible in the contemporary system
- where are we headed would require a new culture but that culture requires a transformation of
technology—probably, though Marcuse is unclear on this, (a la Marx in the Gründrisse) the
labor-saving ones in the production process and the duality between mental (increasingly
predominant) and manual labor but NOT gadgets
- he lauds art and its emancipatory possibilities but how do you control its tendency to
commodification—Marcuse is unclear on this and equally this vis-à-vis technology
- the strategy is to reflect on the commodified entity that was supposed to be liberating e.g. art,
sex—this is where critical theory enters, it fosters reflexivity in art, youth culture, the work
process, SO that we could produce something new (which itself may be commodified e.g. the
perpetually commodified avantgarde in art)—this is why Schoenberg is political for Marcuse
because he is a self-reflexive critique of already commodified aesthetic culture
- Arato would say the Frankfurt School is always lamenting the loss of the revolutionary subject
incognito i.e. the revolution has not occurred SO perhaps it may come from…(?) – that’s their
driving question
Buchstein’s Response
- underestimates power of commodification re ostensibly liberating forces like sexuality, and
overestimates resistance to commodification in social interaction
- Marcuse’s endorsement of violent student activism = similar contemporary agitation

- & Habermas’s critique / this is why Marcuse advocates resistance/reputure from the center
11/20/18
Jürgen Habermas New Social Movements Telos September 21, 1981 1981:33-37
37
Habermas, Jürgen (1986) ‘The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the
Exhaustion of Utopian Energies’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 11(2): 1-19.
[Recommended: Jürgen Habermas (1981): The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume

2. Boston: Beacon Press 1988. (selections to be assigned); Habermas Between Facts and
Norms (selections tba)]
Max Weber for Habermas

Rationalization
- rationalization and its authoritarian concomitants sweep into fill in the void of meaning in the
contemporary world
Plebiscite democracy= this charismatic form of government could substitute for loss of meaning
Marcuse for Habermas
- on the one hand describes his understanding of rationalization and compares it to Weber, BUT,
he quotes Marcuse texts on revolutionary transformation of technology, which, for Habermas has
romantic elements
- this new science for Marcuse would require a new methodology BUT according to Habermas
this impossible—there is only one science properly so called, the basic methodology of
intersubjectivity, consistency and logic are the same
- and for Habermas, Marcuse is unclear on how this would work
- for Habermas Marcuse desires an alternative attitude to nature but he doesn’t not go as far as to
buy into the idea of a new technology
Work and Interaction
What would an alternative technology mean?
- you do interact with organic nature so that you feel yourself to be a part of it, but alternative
technology would also mean some kind of interaction
Symbolic interaction= Habermas uses this idea of interaction but brings it back to human
beings to undermine (via Hegel) the alienation narrative of Marx
- there is no other technology BUT the idea of interaction is something we can take much more
seriously so long as we root it again into human emancipation (again contra the Marxists theory
of rationalization)
Reformulating Weber’s Rationalization
1. Traditional Society
- traditional society (20,000 years ago), allow technological innovation only within certain limits
which are set by the dominant role of the myth—which is a social construction—so the society is
very stable
2. Modern Capitalism
- here, in modern capitalism, we have the institutionalization of economic growth and
technological innovation—there is the pressure of rationalization from the market
- here religious views lose their persuaisiveness (Weberian secularization)—religious loses out to
ideology, the 1st of which is the capitalist market (making Marx the 1st form of ideological
critique
3. State intervention capitalism= technology is more important because the state organizes
R&D (as opposed to modern capitalism where it is from the market)
2 Understanding of Rationalization
Purposive rationalization= increased productive efficiency and DoL (System)
38
Symbolic interaction= removing restriction on communication which is liberated from

domination, change of norms to reciprocity, decrease of repressiveness (Lifeworld)
What kind of stages are here
State Intervention Capitalism (Cont.)= difference from Pollock’s state capitalism i.e. only
discusses the democratic form…with 2 elements…
1. state intervention= market is much more regulated than before and there’s an active welfare
state
- and when you have state organized redistribution than critical theory cannot rely solely on
critique of political economy because there are politically institutionalized forms of
redistribution
- the system is legitimated through the success of mass democracy, economic success of the
state, stability, general welfare—which works only when you have a depoliticization of the
masses, because when they are depoliticized they have a conservative interest in stability
2. scientification of technology= the state institutionalization (e.g. military industrial complex)
of R&D, and this is now the leading productive force, this creative force of science
- and this is also a quasi-autonomous progress of science, separate
Praxis= in Greek Philosophy these are things which motivate you, an ethical connotation
- the dark side of the quasi-autonomous side of this R&D is that these praxis question get lost
and are substituted by “decsionsim” (Karl Schmitt’s idea that merely have to decide what to do
because ultimate questions of ethics are undecidable)—this undermines serious discourse in
society about what is the good
- this also means we don’t talk about the limits we should set on technology (e.g. nuclear
disarmament in the 1950s)—a technocratic background ideology which brackets practical (i.e.
ethical) questions
Revisions of Marx’s Theory of Class Struggle
- the state tries to avoid conflicts by pacifying them sometimes through economic redistribution
and reward
- the main conflicts are on the periphery only at this time, but in the future we’re not sure where
they might spring up (a la Marcuse)
- the years of traditional Marxian class struggle are over
Technocratic Consciousness= this is the new ideology which represses ethical questions and
depoliticizes peoples—“reification migrates into the cultural and social lifeworld”—so from the
technocratic field this reification colonizes the very heart of human self-understanding
- this ideology violates the very root of our cultural existence and self-understanding—
communication which slides into domination in the face of technocratic ideology…
The Student Movements
Marcuse= basically sympathetic, praised the new sensibility and praised direct action
Horkheimer= identified the movement with anti-Americanism and equated it with
totalitarianism
Adorno= politically inactive, said class conflict had become latent and displaced to the margins
of society, also thought a theory of contemporary society was out of reach at this point
Habermas= was very close to the student movement at its inception, but distanced himself in the
mid-60s, but in this text his view is more positive than previously, possibly because of his
experiences at the NSSR and Columbia
Who will repoliticize and counter the technocratic consciousness?
39
- in theory it’s an open question but as a matter of practice we see who they are i.e. the students,
who are 1) privileged, mostly middleclass, and educated, and more democratic relationship to
their parents and therefore more defiant 2) not convinced by the technocratic way of lifestyle 3)
not convinced by economic rewards, intimacy or self-expression are more valued
- so, in sum, students in ’68 are a source of resistance for technocratic ideology, BUT what is
more important is the democratization of decision making processes of society—the students are
a force for this and advocate for it (but without self-organizing into a revolutionary Marxist
movement)
“The Essay on New Social Movements” (1981)
- there is a the fixed distinction between system and lifeworld
- there is capitalist economy and bureaucratic distribution
- so what does this kind of state mean for “the grammar of the forms of life”
- these new social movements are on the seam of the lifeworld and the system (e.g. the feminist
movement)
Green Problems
- you need the systems rationality (global administration) to deal with these large scale problem
which will devastate the lifeworld
“The New Obscurity”
- the welfare state has become problematic, so we have 3 reactions…
1. defend the traditional welfare state
2. neo-conservativism= neoliberalism i.e. supply-side economics + traditional social values
3. some abstractive alternative that is undeveloped
Conclusions on Habermas
- works on modern critical theory of modern society
- interested in marginalized groups
- Lukacs’s reification is reinterpreted into “colonization theory” and then “migration theory”
Buchstein Q&A
- Habermas does not look for revolutionary subjects, he is attached to rational public discourse,
not violent disruption that is likely to break society (given how complex and intricate it is) rather
than reform it
- capitalism is something can be tamed and then it would be okay
Bureaucratization of the lifeworld= the bureaucratization of the intimate sphere for instance in
the family a I might resolve spousal dispute through stratagem worrying ultimately about divorce
proceedings and in the process abandoning communicative rationality
Lifeworld= rooted in symbolic interaction
11/27/18
Jürgen Habermas (1976): Legitimation Crisis

1. Crisis
- introduces this term from medicine i.e. an objectively bad state of health—of a piece with the
pathology talk of a lot of social theory
- switches to classical aesthetics (Schiller etc.) then switches to social systems i.e. Marx who had
the first comprehensive understanding of crisis
40
Nicholas Leuman (1927-1998)= professor also had a concept of crisis, wrote Ecological
Communication which predicted ecological crisis given the overcomplexity of modernity and
atomization of subsystem (see below)
What is a crisis in the social system?
- failure of integration into the healthy society leading to disintegration of social institutions and
identity
- both social integration (cultural, family level) and system integration (economics) are facing
insoluble problems—an overloading of problems, leading either to social collapse OR a further
evolution
Role of Crisis Theory
- in Marx it was crucial i.e. economic crisis would lead to economic crisis would lead to political
crisis would lead to revolution
- in Dialectic of Enlightenment—there is no crisis
- in Marcuse the crisis is cultural and from the periphery
- in Lukacs reification is the explanation for the political and social crisis that never occurred
Systems Theory
Parson’s System of Theory
Nicholas Leuman Theory= conservative background, studied with Parsons, then in the early
70s he became more radical…
Communicative interaction= in modern societies you have a lot of subsystems (religions, media,
law, family, academy) all of which have their own communicative codes (e.g. in politics you
have power, in economics money) BUT there is no integrating communicative law so the
subsystems cannot intervene into one another…
- so 1) subsystems are atomized and 2) politics is the not the hierarchical system that steers
society
- Habermas revises this theory and he and Leuman would later collaborate on a few books
(chapter by chapter)—had tremendous consequences
- in this book too Leuman can be felt
Lifeworld vs. System
- Habermas tries to bridge these very diverse traditions that are ordinarily antagonistic
Habermas’s Model of Advanced Capitalism= the setting of 3 subsystems: 1. social cultural 2.
political administration (social welfare) 3. economic (economic performance)
So where could crisis emerge?
- doesn’t think that economic crisis can upset the overriding stability of state capitalism
- doesn’t think the state is the source either
- locates crisis in socio-cultural i.e. the lifeworld
Ecology:
Personal identity= all of us since were are members of the human species share something i.e.
an anthropological balance of authenticity, not-alienation, recognition
Ecological balance= capitalist growth is unplanned a la nature but based on the exploitation of
nature
- there is no capitalist solution to ecological crisis—we need a different kind of planning that
entails less growth and less exploitation of nature
Motivational Crisis= legitimation issues are in general solvable, though they demand complex
solutions, they rely on a political culture
Legitimation= legitimation of the political system through the support of mass loyalty
41
- state intervention into the lifeworld produces alienated reaction which undermines their support
of the system
Democracy and planning= developed capitalism relies on this structure (i.e. can’t survive on
more conservative or authoritarian regimes)
Social evolution of motivation:
1. traditional= you just follow the rules as you always have
2. bourgeois=
3. post-conventional= distinguishes between norms and principles i.e. meta-norms i.e. the
objective the norm enforces—knowing the principle can empower you to break the norm to
uphold the principle
- you can justify on a universal level why the principle supersedes the norm
- Habermas was arguing that you neglect at your peril the social-cultural lifeworld, so that if you
concentrate on feeding the economic subsystem you could undermine stability of the current
political order
“The End of the Individual”
- talking about the end of the individual has become a conservative topic, one which should be
made accessible to empirical testing
- argues that system independent logic of norms of the life-world—the end of the ind. would
mean you are totally socialized, whereas Habermas thinks the are norms that persist from the
lifeworld—which theory militates against conservative theories he was opposed to
Mass loyalty= works through advertising, consumer reward, and depoliticization
- could participatory democracy combat this? Yes, but it would also produce system changing
forces
Communicative ethics= we all have interests and when we aggregate them we have a rational
choice model of democracy
- Habermas wants to say there are interests we all share and the proof of this is the universal
justifiability of these interests
- the proof of this would of course depend on the fact of a consensus that a particular interest
could be generalized…
Validity claims built into communication
- thinks just because we communicate we have normative presuppositions built in—implicit
understandings that guide how we communicate—you know shouting is wrong in certain
settings, or, your suppose that people are telling the truth, you suppose people are being sincere
- these are the necessary preconditions for effective communication
- and so communication is a ground of rationality and a setting in which rationality is
adjudicated—we figure out how to dispute and discourse with each other
Concluding Remarks
Crisis
- when Marx talks about crisis there is hope that it will happen and that it will produce political
and social change
- in Freud, crisis is a productive element because it is a catalys of development
- in Parsons, it’s an occasion for rebalancing
- in Frankfurt school crisis augurs authoritarian ascendancy and economic immisertaion
- BUT, for Habermas, crisis will emerge because of changing expectations in the lifeworld which
will produce a crisis of legitimation which will lead to a more democratic arrangement
42
Sources for Hope

- in Marx it was the working class
- in Habermas it was some universal consciousness that will emanate from the lifeworld
12/11/18
Arato, Cohen - Civil Society and Political Theory (1992)

Ch. 5 The Historicist Critique
Ch. 9 Social Theory and Civil Society
Civil Society
- civil society was at the time of writing being used a way of escaping authoritarian regimes
- wanted to fortify the political actors using the term with a higher understanding of the theory
Habermas and Civil Society
- assumes that the private, grassroots discussions (in coffee houses etc.) needed to be mediated
because they couldn’t themselves be politically effective—mediation through the “public”—
which is on the one side a private organization of bourgeoise individuals but its other face is the
political public sphere (representation)
How could these individual political actors make their civil society rhetoric actionable?
The Fusion Argument (Carl Schmidt)= the public sphere is possible only when the state is
speared from civil society where independent private actors can behave autonomously
But how to mediate?
Intervention from above= state regulation—but this was no longer as viable given the trend of
state intervention in capitalist economies
Intervention from below= private organizations assuming public functions
12/18/18
Buchstein’s Take
- wanted to find out why WW socialism didn’t ever come about after WW1
Crisis
- became clear that the economic crisis would not happen so they moved on to identifying other
crises
Critical theory, critical against what?
- critical first against capitalism (and its threat to democracy), then late capitalism, then fascism
Fate of Critical Theory
- connected to feminism
- connected to Foucault
- contrasted to postmodernism i.e. emancipatory rationalism vs. irrationalism
Turn from Defense to Optimism
- the defensive despair over lack emancipatory revolution—in Lukacs, in the 1930s, Dialectic
Enlightenment, turn to more optimistic, progressive interpretation of culture and history with
Habermas
Arato’s Take
43
- doubt’s the coherence of a tradition, BUT…

1st paradigm: Western Marxist
- i.e. great emphasis on critique of political economy
- which led to a class theory
- but there was also from the beginning a tendency toward totality—the integration of the social
sciences…
But then what was or will be the integrating principle?
- self-reflection, critical approach to each field
- practice
- this is The 2nd Paradigm
Empirical research/quantitative
3rd Paradigm: Quantitative Methods
44

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Frankfurt School Critical Theory - Class Notes

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Arato/Buchstein Critical Theory F’18

Lukacs vis-à-vis Frankfurt School

- so Lukacs uses alienation to examine burochartic inhumanity

2. The Antinomies of Bourgeoise Thought

How do you understand history as the product of your will?

- 1937 role of intellectual is much different from 1931

- but could not finish the study before Hitler to power

Kirchheimer: Weimarr—and What Then

Franz L. Neumann (1937): The Functional Change of the Rule of Law.

- moved to Berlin worked as lawyer for social democratic party

Otto Kirchheimer (1941) Changes in the Structure of Political Compromise.

Friedrich Pollock (1941): State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations

Max Horkheimer (1942): The Authoritarian State

Context and History of the Book

1868 Marx letter= 5 years after the publication of Vol. 1 of Capital

II. Arato’s Response

The Influence of Lukacs and Weber

- Of course, Adorno and Horkheimer do not recommend any backward-looking solution to

Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: “The Culture Industry”

II. Buchstein’s Response

III. Buchstein’s Presentation

Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: “Elements of Antisemitism: Limits of

The End of Conscience

IV. Arato’s Response

The Marxist Explanation of Anti-Semitism

High and Low Art and what Lies in Between

Critical Political Sociology (Buchstein)

11. November 6, Critiques of the Public Sphere (Arato)

Critical Theory and Radical Oppositional Movements (Buchstein)

“An Essay on Liberation”

- Marcuse’s endorsement of violent student activism = similar contemporary agitation

[Recommended: Jürgen Habermas (1981): The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume

Max Weber for Habermas

Symbolic interaction= removing restriction on communication which is liberated from

Jürgen Habermas (1976): Legitimation Crisis

Sources for Hope

Arato, Cohen - Civil Society and Political Theory (1992)

- doubt’s the coherence of a tradition, BUT…

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