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Giroux, Henry
Critical Theory and Educational Practice. ESA 841,
Theory and Practice in Educational Administration.
Deakin Univ., Victoria (Australia).
ISBN-0-7300-0001-X
83
146p.
Publication Sales, Deakin University Press, Deakin
University, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia ($12.50
Australian; quantity and educational discounts).
Viewpoints (120) — Collected Works - General (020)
MF01 Plus Postage. PC Not Available from EDRS.
Cultural Context; *Educational Philosophy;
Educational Policy; Educational Sociology; Elementary
Secondary Education; Foreign Countries; Foundations
of Education; *Ideology; *Marxian Analysis; Political
Socialization? ^Politics of Education; Social Change;
Social Stratification; Values
*Frankfurt School
ABSTRACT
The introductory essay in this volume argues for the
importance of the original critical theory developed by the Frankfurt
school (The Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany) in
developing a critical foundation for a nee-Marxist theory of radical
pedagogy. m Accordingly , it begins by defining the ?ims of the
Frankfurt school and then goes on to discuss its history and
background. This is followed by an indepth analysis of the Frankfurt
school's analysis of the heritage of Enlightenment rationality and
their critique of instrumental reason. The Frankfurt school's
philosophical stance is then delineated in detail, including its
notion of theory, its analysis of culture, and its analysis of depth
psychology; on the basis of this discussion, the principal elements
of a critical theory of education is outlined. The latter part of the
volume consists of four essays by different authors: (1) "Traditional
and Critical Theory, " by M. Horkheimer; (2) "The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception," by M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno;
"The Triumph of Positive Thinking: One-Dimensional Philosophy," by
Herbert Marcuse; and "The Method and Function of an Analytic Social
Psychology: Notes on Psychoanalysis and Historical Materialism," by
Erich Froram. An annotated bibliography is included. (TE)
**************************************
* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made *
* from the original document. *
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9
ERLC
ESA841 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
° Critical Theory and
S Educational Practice
UJ
Henry Giroux
ESA84 1 Theory and practice in educational administration
Critical theory and
educational practice
Henry Giroux
Boston University
Deakm University
Victoria 3217
1983
ERIC
3
Published by Deakin University. Victoria, Australia 3* 17
Distributed by Deakin University Press
First published 1983
Copyright© Deakin University 1983
Edited and designed by Deakin
University Production Unit
Printed by Deakin University Printery
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing in publication data
Giroux. Henry A. 1 943-.
Critical theory and educational practice
At head of title: Theory and practice in educational administration
Bibliography.
ES/* 841.
ISBN 0 7300 0001 X
ISBN 0 7300 0000 I (tSA 841}
1. Education. I. Deakin University. I 1 Title. Ill Title Theory and practice in educational
administration.
370
This book forms part of the Theory and practice in educational administration course
offered by the School of Education in Deakin University s Open Campus Program The book
has been prepared in collaboration with the Theory and practice in educational
administration course team, whose members are
Course team
Richard Saies (chairman)
Diana rVtacmillan (course developer)
Consultants
William Boyd
John Codd
Don En'ckson
William Foster
Henry CJiroux
Peter Gronn
Lauren :e lannaccone
Edward Kynaston
Thomas Popkewitz
Paula Silver
Peter Watkins
The course includes"
Change and Stability in Schooling
Class. Control and Contestation in Educational Organisation
Critical Theory and Educational Practice
Educational Administration and Student Outcomes
Educational Administration and the Management of Knowledge
Loose-Coupling Revisited A Critical View of Weick's Contribution u> Educational
Administration
Philosophy. Common Sense and Action in Educational Administration
Political Legitimacy and the Administration of Education
Political Science and Educational Administration
Professions:^ n Educational Administration
Rethinking Educational Administration T,B Greenfield and his Critics
Theory and Practice in Educational Administration Course Guide
Thinking Aloud
Acknowledgements
We should like to thank all those authors, publishers and other copyright holders who
kindly gave us permission to include the material reproduced in this book While every uirc
has been taken to trace and acknowledge copyright, we tender our apologies for an>
accidental infringement We should be pleased to come to a suitable arrangement with tht
ricjhtfu! owner in such a case.
g J^I^J rigrwui owner in sucn d case. ^
p
Series introduction
It is now widely recognised, among theorists and practitioners alike, that the
traditions that have informed educational administration as a field of study for
several decades are of only limited use in coming to terms with the complexit)
and value-laden nature of educational practice. The sudden politicisation of the
context and conduct of education has raised issues of immediate import that
cannot be dealt with adequately by functionalist analysis or behavioural science.
The collapse of these theoretical traditions in educational administration has
produced a vacuum into which a veiy haphazard collection of intellectual bric-
2-brac has been sucked. As a result, both theorists and the practitioners who look
to them fo' help in an increasingly disordered world are alike in their bewilderment.
Mow can alternative formulations be developed? How can reliable and relevant
analyses be made?
The series of books of which this volume is a part is an attempt to explore a
variety of intellectual traditions that have, until now, been largely ignored or
dismissed by educational administrators. Each of the books is an attempt to bring
a particular intellectual perspective to bear on the practical problems of admin-
istering education. They are, therefore, diverse in their starting points and in their
analysis. What they have in common, however, is a rejection of a purely technical,
functionalist approach to educational administration, and a commitment to a
critical and reflexive consideration of educational practice.
The ideas presented in the introductory essays are necessarily an encapsulation
of arguments which have developed and are developing more fully elsewhere.
In order to assist readers to participate in these developments, selected readings
are attached to each paper, and an annotated bibliography of key works is
provided We hope that the publication of this series will encourage others to
join a necessary exploration of alternative perspectives in educational adminis-
tration. Such exploration is long overdue.
5
Contents
Critical theory and educational practice 7
Introduction o
History and background g
Rationality and the critique of instrumental reason 11
The Frankfurt School's notion of theory 15
The Frankfurt School's analysis of culture 19
The Frankfurt School's analysis of depth psychology 23
Towards a critical theory of education 28
Conclusion 22
References 34
Readings
1 M. Horkheimer gg
Traditional and critical theory
2 M. Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno 53
The culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception
3 H. Marcuse gg
The triumph of positive thinking: one-dimensional philosophy
E. Fromm
119
Annotated bibliography
The method and function of an analytic social psychology: notes on
psychoanalysis and historical materialism
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6
Critical theory and
educational practice
ills
8
Introduction
This essay attempts to contribute to the search for a theoretical foundation
upon which to develop a critical theory of education. Within the par-
ameters of this task, the notion of critical theory has a two-fold meaning.
First, critical theory refers to the body of theoretical work developed by
certain members of what can be loosely described as 'the Frankfurt School*.
What this suggests is that critical theory was never a fully articulated
philosophy shared unproblematically by all members of the Frankfurt
School. But it must be stressed that while one cannot point to a single critical
theory shared by all of the members, one can point to the common attempt
to assess the newly emerging forms of capitalism along with the changing
forms of domination that accompanied them. Similarly, there was an attempt
on the part of all the members of the Frankfurt School to rethink and rad-
ically reconstruct the meaning of human emancipation, a project whose
aim differed considerably from the orientation of orthodox Marxism. Spe-
cifically, I argue in this essay for the importance of the original critical
theory and the insights it provides for developing a critical foundation
for a theory of radical pedagogy. As such I focus on the work of Adorno,
Horkheimer and Marcuse rather than on that of Habermas. This seems to
be an important concern, especially smce the work of Habermas has been
the almost exclusive focus of educators studying the Frankfurt School.
Second, the concept of critical theory refers to the nature of self-con-
scious critique and to the need to develop a discourse of social transform-
ation and emancipation that does not cling dogmatically to its own doctrinal
assumptions. In other words, critical theory refers to both a 'school of
thought' and a process of critique. It points to a body of thought that is,
in my view, invaluable for educational theorists; it also exemplifies a body
of work that both demonstrates and simultaneously calls for the necessity
of an ongoing critique, one in which the claims of any theory must be
confronted with the distinction between the world it examines and por-
trays, and the world as it actually exists.
The Frankfurt School took as one of its central values a commitment
to penetrate the world of objectified appearances and to expose the under-
lying social relationships they often conceal. In other words, penetrating
such appearances meant exposing, through critical analysis, social re-
lationships that took on the status of things or objects. For instance, by
examining notions such as money, consumption, distribution and pro-
duction it becomes clear that they do not represent objective 'facts' or things,
but historically contirqent contexts mediated by relationships of domi-
nation and subordination. In adopting such a perspective, the Frankfurt
School not only broke with forms of rationality that wedded science and
technology into new forms of domination, it also rejected all forms of
rationality that subordinated human consciousness and action to the im-
peratives of universal laws. Whether it be the legacy of the positivist in-
tellectual thought of Victorian Europe or the theoretical edifice developed
by Engels, Kautsky, Stalin and other heirs of Marxism, the Frankfurt School
argued against the suppression of 'subjectivity, consciousness, and culture
in history' (Breines 1979-80, p. 113) and, in doing so, articulated a notion
8
of negativity or critique in opposition to all theories that celebrated social
harmony and left unproblematic the basic -umptions of the wider society.
In more specific terms, the Frankfurt School stressed the importance of
critical thinking ly arguing that it is a constitutive feature of the struggle
for both self-emancipation and social change. Moreover, its members argued
that it was in the contradictions of society that one could begin to develop
forms of social inquiry that analysed the distinction between what is and
what should be. Finally, they strongly supported the assumption that the
basis for thought and action should be grounded, as Marcuse argued just
before his death, 'in compassion, [and] in our sense of the sufferings of
others' (Habermas 1980, p. 12).
In general terms, the Frankfurt School provides a number of valuable
insights for studying the relationship between theory and society. Its
members developed a dialectical framework by which to understand the
mediations that link the institutions and activities of everyday life with
the logic and commanding forces that shape the larger social totality. The
characteristic nature of the form of social inquiry that emerged from such
a framework was articulated by Horkheimer when he suggested that mem-
bers of the Institute for Social Research explore the question of
the interconnection between the economic life of society, the psychic
development of the individual and transformations in the realm of
culture . . . including not only the so called spiritual contents of science,
art and religion, but also law, ethics, fashion, public opinion, sport,
amusement, life style, etc. (Horkheimer 1972, p. 43).
The issues raised by Horkheimer have not lost their importance and they
still represent both a critique of and a challenge to many of the theoretical
currents that presently characterise theories of social education. The
necessity for theoretical renewal in the educational field coupled with the
massive number of primary and secondary sources that have been trans-
lated or published recently in English provide the opportunity for Ameri-
can and English speaking pedagogues to begin to appropriate the discourse
and ideas of the Frankfurt School. Needless to say, such a task will not
be easily accomplished since both the complexity of the language used
by members of the School and the diversity of the positions and themes
they explored demand a selective and critical reading of their works. Yet
the critique of culture, instrumental rationality, authoritarianism and
ideology that they pursued in an interdisciplinary context generated cat-
egories, relationships and forms of social inquiry that constitute a vital
source of knowledge for developing a critical theory of education. Since
it will be impossible within the scope of this essay to analyse all of the
themes examined by the Frankfurt School, I will limit my analysis to their
treatment of rationality, theory, culture and depth psychology. Finally,
I will discuss the implications of this for educational theory and practice.
History and background
The Institute for Social Research (Institut fur Sozialforschung) was of-
ficially created in Frankfurt, Germany in February 1923 and was the orig-
inal home of the Frankfurt School. Established by a wealthy grain merchant
ERLC
9
10
named Felix Wei), the Institute eventually came under the directorship
of Max Horkheimer in 1930. Most of the members who later became famous
joined the Institute while it was under Horkheimer's directorship. These
included Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno. As Martin
Jay points out in his now famous history of the Frankfurt School:
If it can be said that in the early years of its history the Institut con-
cerned itself primarily with an analysis of bourgeois society's socio-
economic substructure, in the years after 1930 its prime interest lay
in Us cultural superstructure (jay 1973, p. 21).
The change in the Institute's theoretical focus was soon followed by a
geographical shift in its location. Threatened by the Nazis because of the
avowedly Marxist orientation of the Institute's work and the fact that most
of its members were Jews, the Institute was forced to relocate for a short
time in Geneva in 1933 and then in New York City in 1934, where it was
housed in one of Columbia University's buildings. Emigration to New York
was followed by a stay in Los Angeles in 1941 and by 1953 the Institute
was re-established in Frankfurt.
The strengths and weaknesses of the Frankfurt School project become
intelligible only if seen as part of the social and historical context in which
it developed. In essence, the questions it pursued, along with the forms
of social inquiry it supported, represent both a particular moment in the
development of Western Marxism and a critique of it. Reacting to the rise
of Fascism and Nazism on the one hand, and the failure of orthodox Marx-
ism on the other, the Frankfurt School had to refashion and rethink the
meaning of domination and emancipation. The rise of Stalinism, the fail-
ure of the European or Western working class to contest capitalist hege-
mony in a revolutionary manner, and the power of capitalism to reconstitute
and reinforce its economic and ideological control forced the Frankfurt
School to reject the orthodox reading of Marx and Engels, particularly as
it had developed through the conventional wisdom of the Second and Third
Internationals. It is particularly in th« rejection of certain doctrinal Marxist
assumptions, developed under the historical shadow of totalitarL-iism and
the rise of the consumer society in the West, that I Iorkbeimer, Adorno and
Marjuse attempted to construct a more sufficient basis for social theory
and political action. Certainly such a basis *vas not to be found in stand ,rd
Marxist assumptions such as: the notion of historical inevitability, the
primacy of the mode of production in the shaping of history , and the notion
that class struggle as well as the mechanisms of domination take place
primarily within the confines of the labour process. For the Frankfurt School,
orthodox Marxism assumed too much while simultaneously ignoring the
benefits of self-criticism. It had failed to d slop a theory of consciousness
and by doing so expelled the human sur X from its own theoretical cal-
culus. Thus, it is not surprising that th*. .ocus of the Frankfurt School's
research downplayed the ^rea of political economy and emphasised in-
stead the issue of how subjectivity was constituted, as well as the issue
of how the spheres of culture and everyday life represented a new terrain
of domination. It is against this historical and theoretical landscape that
we can b» / 6 \n to abstract categories and modes of analysis that speak to
the nature of schooling as it presently exists, and to the possibilities it
contains for developing into a force for social change.
ERIC
Rationality and the critique of Instrumental
reason
Fundamental to an understanding of the Frankfurt School's view of theory
and their critique of instrumental reason is their analysis of the heritage
of Enlightenment rationality. Echoing Nietzsche's (1957) warning about
humanity s unbounded faith in reason, Horkheimer and Adorno voiced
a trenchant critique of modernity's unswerving belief in the promise of
Enlightenment rationality to rescue the world from the chains of super-
stition ignorance and suffering. The problematic nature of such a promise
marks the opemng lines of Dialectic 0/ Enlightenment:
In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment
has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their
sovereignty Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster trium-
phant (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972, p. 3).
A faith in scientific rationality and the principles of practical judgement
are not a legacy inherited solely from the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
urtes when people of reason united on a vast intellectual front in order
to master the world through an appeal to the claims of reasoned thought
According to the Frankfurt School, scientific rationality represented one
of :e central themes of Western thought and extended as far back as Plato
(Horkheimer 1974, pp. 6-7). Habermas. a later member of the Frankfurt
bchool, argues that the progressive notion of reason reaches its highest
point and most complex expression in the work of Karl Marx, after which
it is reduced from an all-encompassing concept of rationality to a par-
lculansed instrument In the service of industrialised society. According
to Habermas: °
On the level of the historical self reflection of a science with critical
intent, Marx for the last time identifies reason with a commitment to
rationality in its thrust against dogmatism. In the second half of the
19th century, during the course of the reduction of science to a pro-
ductive force in industrial society, positivism, historicism, and prag-
matism, each in turn, isolate one part of this all encompassing concept
of rationality. The hitherto undisputed attempts of the great theories,
to reflect on the complex of life as a whole is henceforth itself dis-
credited as dogma ... the spontaneity of hope, the art of taking a
position, the experience of relevance or indifference, and above all
the response to suffering and oppression, the desire for adult auton-
omy, the will to emancipation, and the happiness of discovering one's
identity - all these are dismissed for all time from the obligating
interest of reason (Habermas 1973, pp. 262-3).
Marx may have employed reason in the name of critique and emanci-
pation, but it was still a notion of reason that was limited to an over-em-
phasis on the labour process and the exchange rationality that was both
its driving force and ultimate mystification. Adorno, Horkheimer and
Marcuse, in contrast to Marx, believed that 'the fateful process of ration-
alization (Wellmer 1974, p. 133) had penetrated all aspects of everyday
life, whether it be the mass media, the school or the workplace. The crucial
point here is that no social sphere was free from the encroachments of a
12
form of reason in which 'all theoretical means of transcending reality be-
came metaphysical nonsense' (Horkheimer 1974, p. 82).
In the Frankfurt School's view, reason has not been stripped perma-
nently of its positive dimensions. Marcuse, for instance, believed that rea-
son contained a critical element and was still capable of reconstituting
history or as he put it, 'reason represents the highest potentiality of man
and of existence; the two belong together 1 (Marcuse 1968a, p. 136). But
if reason was to preserve its promise of creating a more just society, it would
have to demonstrate its power of critique and negativity. According to
Adorno (1973), the crisis of reason takes place as society becomes more
rationalised because undu _jch historical circumstances it loses its criti-
cal faculty in the quest for social harmony and becomes an instrument of
the existing society. As a result, reason, as insight and critique, turns into
its opposite, which is irrationality.
For the Frankfurt School, the crisis in reason is linked to the crisis in
science and the more general crisis of society. Horkheimer argued that the
starting point for understanding 'the crisis of science depends on a correct
theory of the present social situation 1 (horkheimer 1972, p. 9). In essence,
this speaks to two crucial aspects of Frankfurt School thought. First, it argues
that the only solution to the present crisis lies in developing a more fully
self-conscious notion of reason, one that embraces both the notion of crit-
ique and the element of human will and transformative action. Second,
it means entrusting to theory the task of rescuing reason from the logic
of technocratic rationality or positivism. It was the Frankfurt School's view
that positivism had emerged as the final ideological expression of the
Enlightenment and that the victory of positivism represented not the high
point but the low point of Enlightenment thought. Rather than being the
agent of reason, it became its enemy and emerged in the twentieth century
as a new form of social administration and domination. Friedman sums
up the essence of this position:
To the Frankfurt School, philosophical and practical positivism con-
stituted the end point of the Enlightenment. The social function of
the ideology of Positivism was to deny the critical faculty of reason
by allowing it only the ground of utter facticity to operate upon. By
so dGing, they denied reason a critical moment. Reason, under the
rule of Positivism, stands in ewe of the fact. Its function is simply to
characterize the fact. Its task ends when it has affirmed and explicated
the fact . . . Under the rule of positivism, reason inevitably stops shon
of critique (Friedman 1981, p. 118).
It is in its critique of pusiti vistic thought that the Frankfurt School makes
clear the specific mechanisms of ideological control that permeate the
consciousness and practice of the advanced capitalist societies. It is also
in its critique of positivism that it develops a notion of theory that has major
implications for educational critics. But the route to understanding the
latter necessitates that one first analyse the Frankfurt School's critique of
positivism, particularly sinc'J the logic of positivist thought (though in
varied forms) represents the major theoretical impetus that currently shapes
educational theory and practice.
The Frankfurt School defined positivism, in the broad sense, as an
amaigam of diverse traditions that included the work of Saint-Simon and
i4
Comte, the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, the early Wittgenstein,
and the more recent forms of logical empiricism and pragmatism that
dominate the social sciences in the West. While the history of each of these
traditions is complex and cluttered with detours and qualifications, each
of them has supported the goal of developing forms of social inquiry pat-
terned after the natural sciences and based on the methodological tenets
of sense observation and quantification. Man.use provides both a general
definition of the notion of positivism and a starting point for some of the
Frankfurt School's reservations regarding its most basic assumptions.
Since its first usage, probably in the school of Saint-Simon, the term
'positivism 1 has encompassed (1) the validation of cognitive thought
by experience of facts; (2) the orientation of cognitive thought to the
physical sciences as a model of certainty and exactness; (3) the belief
that progress in knowledge depends on this orientation. Conse-
quently, positivism is a struggle against all metaphysics, transcen-
dentalisms, and idealisms as obscurantist and regressive modes of
thought. To the degree to which the given reality is scientifically com-
prehended and transformed, to the degree to which society becomes
industrial and technological, positivism finds in the society the medium
for the realization (and validation) of its concepts — harmony between
theory and practice, truth and facts. Philosophic thought turns into
affirmative thought; the philosophic critique criticizes within the so-
cietal framework and stigmatizes non-positive notions as mere specu-
lation, dreams or fantasies (Marcuse 1964, p. 172).
Positivism, according to Horkheimer, oresented a view of knowledge
and science that stripped both of their crit ; cal possibilities. Knowledge
was reduced to the exclusive province of science, and science itself was
subsumed within a methodology that limited 'scientific activity to the
description, classification, and generalization of phenomena, with no care
to distinguish the unimportant from the essential' (Horkheimer 1972, p. 5).
Accompanying this view is the notion that knowledge derives from sense
experience and that the ideal it pursues is to be found 'in the form of a
mathematically formulated universal science deducible from the smallest
possible number of axioms, a system which assures the calculation of the
probable occurrence of all events 1 (Horkheimer 1972, p. 138).
For the Frankfurt School, positivism did not represent an indictment
of science but echoed Nietzsche's insight that 'It is not the victory of science
that is the distinguishing mark of our nineteenth century, but the victory
of the scientific method over science' (Nietzsche 1966, p. 814). Science,
in this perspective, was separated frr,n the question of ends and ethics,
the latter being rendered insignificant because they defied 'explication
in terms of mathematical structures 1 (Marcuse 1964, p. 147). According
to the Frankfurt School, the suppression of ethics in positivist rationality
precludes the possibility for self-critique, or more specifically, the ques-
tioning of its own normative structure. Facts become separated from values,
objectivity undermines critique, and the notion that essence and appear-
ance may not coincide is lost in the positivist view of the world. The latter
point becomes particularly clear in the Vienna Circle pronouncement: 'The
view that thought is a means of knowing more about the world than may
be directly observed . . . seems to us entirely mysterious 1 (Hahn 1933, p. 9).
14
For Adorno, the idea of value freedom was perfectly suited to a perspective
that was to insist on a universal form of knowledge while it simultaneously
refused to inquire into its own socio-ideological development and function
in society.
According to the Frankfurt School, the outcome of positivist rationality
and its technocratic view of science represented a threat to the notion of
subjectivity and critical thinking. By functioning within an operational
context, free from ethical commitments, positivism wedded itself to the
immediate, and 'celebrated* the world of 'facts'. The question of essence
(the difference between the world 'as it is' and that 'which it should be 1 )
is reduced to the merely methodological task of collecting and classifying
the world of facts (that 'which is'). In this schema, 'knowledge relates solely
to what is and to its recurrence* (Horkheimer 1972, p. 208). Questions
concerning the genesis, development and normative nature of the con-
ceptual systems that select, organise and define the facts appear to be outside
the concern of positivist rationality.
Since it recognises no factors behind the 'fact', positivism freezes both
human beings and history. In the case of the latter, the issue of historical
development is left aside since the historical dimension contains truths
that cannot be assigned 'to a special fact-gathering branch of science*
(Adorno, quoted in Gross 1979, p. 340). Of course, positivism is not im-
pervious to history because it ignores the relationship between history and
understanding. On the contrary, its key notions regarding objectivity, theory
and values, as well as its modes of inquiry, are both a consequence and
a force in the shaping of history. In other words, positivism may ignore
history but it cannot escape it. What is important to stress is that fun-
damental categories of socio-hi5.orical development are at odds with the
positivist emphasis on the immediate or, more specifically, that which can
be expressed, measured and calculated in precise mathematical formulas.
Russell jacoby points concisely to this issue in his claim that 'natural real-
ity and natural sciences do not know the fundamental historical categories:
consciousness and self consciousness, subjectivity and objectivity, ap-
pearance and essence' (Jacoby 1980, p. 30).
By not reflecting on its paradigmatic premises, positivist thought ignoies
the value of historical consciousness and consequently endangers the nature
of critical thinking itself. That is, inherent in the very structure of positivist
thought, with its emphasis on objectivity and its lack of theoretical ground-
ing regarding the setting of tasks (Horkheimer 1972), are a number of as-
sumptions that appear to preclude its ability to judge the complicated
interaction of power, knowledge and values, or to reflect critically on the
genesis and nature of its own ideological presuppositions. Moreover, by
situating itself within a number of false dualisms (facts vs. values, scien-
tific knowledge vs. norms, and description vs. prescription), positivism
dissolves the tension between potentiality and actuality in a'l spheres of
social existence. Thus, under the guise of neutrality, scientific knowledge
and all theory become rational on the grounds of whether they are efficient,
economic or correct. In this case, a notion of methodological correctness
subsumes and devalues the complex philosophical concept of truth. As
Marcuse points out, 'the fact that a judgement can be correct and never-
theless without truth, has been a crux of formal logic from time immem-
orial* (Marcuse, quoted in Arato and Gebhardt 1978, p. 394). For instance,
an empirical study that concludes that native workers in a colonised country
work at a slower rate than imported workers who perform the same job
may provide an answer that is correct, but such an answer tells us little
about the notion of domination or the resistance of workers under its sway.
That the native workers may slow down their rate as an act of resistance
is not considered here. Thus, the notions of inteniionality and historical
context are dissolved within the confines of a limiting quantifying
methodology.
For Adorno, Marcuse and Horkheimer, the fetishism of facts and the belief
in value neutrality represented more than an epistemological error; more
importantly, such a stance served as a form of ideological hegemony that
infused positivist rationality with a political conservatism that make it an
ideological prop of the status quo. This is not, however, to suggest an in-
tentional support for the status quo on the part of all individuals who work
within a positivist rationality. Instead, it implies a particular relationship
to the status quo which, in some situations, is a consciously political one,
while in others, it is not. In other words, in the latter instance the re-
lationship to the status quo is a conservative one, but it is not self-con-
sciously recognised by those who help to reproduce it.
The Frankfurt School's notion of theory
According to the Frankfurt School any understanding of the nature of theory
has to begin with a grasp of the relationships that exist in society between
the particular and the whole, the specific and the universal. This position
appears in direct contradiction to the empiricist claim that theory is pri-
marily a matter of classifying and arranging facts. In rejecting the abso-
lutizing of facts the Frankfurt School argued that, in the relation between
theory and the wider society, mediations exist that function to give mean-
ing not only to the constitutive nature of a fact, but also to the very nature
and substance of theoretical discourse. As Horkheimer writes:
The facts of science and science itself are but segments of the life process
of society, and in order to understand the significance of facts or of
science generally one must possess the key to the historical situation,
the right social theory (Horkheimer 1972, p. 159).
This speaks to a second constitutive element of critical theory. If theory
is to move beyond the positivist legacy of neutrality, it must develop the
capacity of a metatheory. That is, it must acknowledge the value-laden
interests it represents and be able to reflect critically on both the historical
development or genesis of such interests and the limitations they may
present within certain historical and social contexts. In other words,
'methodological correctness 1 does not provide a guarantee of truth nor does
it raise the fundamental question of why a theory functions in a given way
under specific historical conditions to serve some interests and not others.
Thus, a notion of self-critique is essential to a critical theory.
A third constitutive element for a critical theory takes its cue from
Nietzsche's dictum that 'a great truth wants to be criticized, not idolized'
iNietzsche, quoted in Arato and Gebhi'rdt 1978, p. 383). The Frankfurt
School believed that the critical spirit of theory should be represented in
ils unmasking function. The driving force of such a function was to be
16
found in the Frankfurt School's notions of immanent criticism and dia-
lectical thought. Immanent critique is the assertion of difference, the re-
fusal to collapse appearance and essence, i.e. the willingness to analyse
the reality of the social object against its possibilities. As Adorno wrote:
Theory . . . must transform the concepts which it brings, as it were,
from outside into those which the object has of itself "nto what the
object, left to itself, seeks to be, and confront it with wh^ ; is. It must
dissolve the rigidity of the temporally and spatially fixed object into
a field of tension of the possible and the real: each one, in order to
exist, is dependent upon the other. In other words, theory is indis-
putably critical (Adorno 1976, \ 39).
Dialectical thought, on the other hand, speaks to both critique and theo-
retical reconstruction (Giroux 1981a). As a mode of critique it uncovers
values that are negated by the social object under analysis. The notion of
dialectics is crucial because it reveals
the insufficiencies and imperfections of 'finished* systems of thought
... it reveals incompleteness where completeness is claimed. It em-
braces that which is in terms of that which is not, and that which is
real in terms of potentialities not yet realized (Held 1980, p. 177).
As a mode of theoretical reconstruction, dialect : cal thought points to his-
torical analysis in the critique of conformist logic, and traces out the 'inner
history* of the latter's categories and the way in which they are mediated
within a specific historical context. By looking at the social and political
constellations stored in the categories of any theory, Adorno (1973) be-
lieved that their history could be traced and thus their existing limitations
revealed. As such, dialectical thought reveals the power of human activity
and human knowledge as both a product and a force in the shaping of social
reality. But it does not do so simply to proclaim that humans give meaning
to the world. Instead, as a form of critique, dialectical thought argues that
there is a link between knowledge, power and domination. Thus it is ac-
knowledged that some knowledge is false and that the ultimate purpose
of critique should be critical thinking in the interest of social change. For
instance, as I mentioned earlier, one can exercise critical thought and not
fall into the ideological trap of relativism in which the notion of critique
is negated by the assumption that all ideas should be given equal weight.
Marcuse points to the r^nnection between thought and action in dialec-
tical thought:
Dialectical thcught starts with the experience that the world is unfree;
that is to say, man and nature exist in conditions of alienation, exist
as 'other than they are.' Any mode of thought which excludes this
contradiction from its logic is a faulty logic. Thought 'corresponds*
to reality only as it transforms reality by comprehending its contra-
dictory structure. Here the principle of dialectic drives thought be-
yond the limits of philosophy. For to comprehend reality means to
comprehend what things really are, and this in turn means rejecting
their mere factuality. Rejection is the process of thought as well as
of action . . . Dialectical thought thus becomes negative in itself. Its
function is to break down the self-assurance and self-contentment of
common sense, to undermine the sinister confidence in the power and
ERIC 16
17 "
language of facts, to demonstrate that unfreedom is so much at the
core of things that the development of their internal contradictions
leads necessarily to qualitative change: the explosion and catastrophe
of the established state of affairs (Marcuse I960, p. ix).
According to the Frankfurt School all thought and theory are tied to a
specific interest in the development of a society without injustice. Theory,
in this case, becomes a transformative activity that views itself as explicitly
political and commits itself to the projection of a future that is as yet un-
fulfilled. Thus, critical theory contains a transcendent element in which
critical thought becomes the precondition for human freedom. Rather than
proclaiming a positivist notion of neutrality, critical theory openly takes
sides in the interest of struggling for a better world. In one of his most
famous early essays comparing traditional and critical theory, Horkheimer
spelled out the essential value of theory as a political endeavour:
It is not just a research hypothesis which shows its value in the on-
going business of men; it is an essential element in the historical effort
to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers of men. How-
ever extensive the interaction between the critical theory and the special
sciences whose progress the theory must respect and on which it has
for decades exercised a liberating and stimulating influence, the theory
never aims simply at an increase of knowledge as such. Its goal is man's
emancipation from slavery (Horkheimer 1972, p. 245).
Finally, there is the question of the relationship between critical theory
and empirical studies. In the ongoing debate over theory and empirical
work, the same old dualisms appear, though in recycled forms, in which
one presupposes the exclusion of the other. One manifestation of this debate
is the criticism that the Frankfurt School rejected the value of empirical
work, a criticism that is also being lodged currently against many edu-
cational critics who have drawn upon the work of the Frankfurt Schocl.
Both sets of criticisms appear to have missed the point. Certainly, it is true
that for the Frankfurt School the issue of empirical work was a problematic
one, but what was called into question was its universalisation at the ex-
pense of a more comprehensive notion of rationality. In writing about his
experiences as an American scholar, Adorno spelled out a view of em-
pirical studies that was representative of the Frankfurt School in general:
My own position in the controversy between empirical and theoretical
sociology ... I may sum up by saying that empirical investigations
are not only legitimate but essential, even in the realm of cultural
phenomena. But one must not confer autonomy upon them or regard
them as a universal key. Above all, they must themselves terminate
in theoretical knowledge. Theory is no mere vehicle that becomes
superfluous as soon as the data are in hand (Adoino 1969, p. 353).
By insisting on the primacy of theoretical knowledge in the realm of
empirical investigations, the Frankfurt School also wanted to highlight
the limits of the positivist notion of experience, where research had to
confine itself to controlled physical experiences that could be conducted
by any researcher. Under such conditions, the research experience is limited
to simple observation. As such, generalisable and abstract methodology
follows rules that preclude any understanding of the forces that shape both
ERJC 1 7
the object of analysis as well as the subject conducting the research. In
contrast, a dialectical notion of society and theory would argue that ob-
servation cannot take the place of critical reflection and understanding.
That is, one begins not with an observation but with a theoretical frame-
work that situates the observation in rules and conventions that give it
meaning while simultaneously acknowledging the limitations of such a
perspective or framework. The Frankfurt School's position on the relation
between theory and empirical studies thus helps to illuminate its view
of theory and practice.
But a further qualification must be made here. While critical theory in-
sists that theory and practice are interrelated, it nonetheless cautions about
calling for a specious unity, for as Adorno points out:
The call for unity of theory and practice has irresistibly degraded theory
to a servant's role, removing the very traits it should have brought
to that unity. The visa stamp of practice which we demand of all theory
became a censor's placet. Yet whereas theory succumbed in the vaunted
mixture, practice became nonconceptual, a piece of the politics it was
supposed to lead out of; it became the prey of power (Adorno 1973,
p. 143).
Theory, in this case, should have as its goal emancipatory practice, but
at the same time it requires a certain distance from such practice. Theory
and practice represent a particular alliance, not a unity in which one dis-
solves into the other. The nature of such an alliance might be better under-
stood by illuminating the drawbacks inherent in the traditional
antitheoretical stance in American education in which it is argued that
concrete experience is the great 'teacher'.
Experience, whether on the part of the researcher or others, contains
in itself no guarantees that it will generate the insights necessary to make
it transparent to itself. In other words, while it is indisputable that ex-
perience may provide us with knowledge, it is also indisputable that know-
ledge may distort rather than illuminate the nature of social reality. The
point here is that the value of any experience 'will depend not on the
experience of the subject but on the struggles around the way that ex-
perience is interpreted and defined' (Bennett 1980, p. 126). Moreover, theory
cannot be reduced to the subordinate of experience, merely empowered
to provide formulas for pedagogical practice. Its real value lies in its ability
to establish the possibilities for reflexive thought and practice on the part
of those who use it, and in the case of teachers, it becomes invaluable as
an instrument of critique and understanding. As a mode of critique and
analysis, theory functions as a set of tools inextricably affected by the context
in which it is brought to bear, but it is never reducible to that context. It
has its own distance and purpose, its own element of practice. The crucial
element in both its production and use is not the structure at which it is
aimed, but the human agents who use it to give meaning to their lives.
In short, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse provided forms of historical
and sociological analysis l d pointed to the promise as well as to the limi-
tations of the existing dominant rationality as it developed in the twentieth
century. Such an analysis „ook as a starting point the conviction that for
self-conscious human beings to act collectively against the modes of tech-
nocratic rationality that permeated the work place and other socio-cultural
19
spheres, their behaviour would have to be preceded and mediated by a
mode of critical analysis. In other words, the precondition for such action
was a form of critical theory. But it is important to stress that in linking
critical theory to the goals of social and political emancipation, the Frank-
furt School redefined the very notion of rationality. Rationality was no
onger merely the exercise of critical thought, as had been its earlier En-
lightenment counterpart. Instead, rationality now became the nexus of
thought and action in the interest of the liberation of the community or
society as a whole. As a higher rationality, it contained a transcendent
project in which individual freedom merged with social freedom.
The Frankfurt School s analysis of culture
Central to the Frankfurt School's critique of positivist rationality was its
analysis of culture. Rejecting the definition and role of culture found in
both traditional sociological accounts and orthodox Marxist theory,
Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), in particular, developed a view of culture
that assigned it a key place in the development of historical experience
and everyday life. The Frankfurt School also rejected the mainstream so-
ciological notion that culture existed in an autonomous fashion unrelated
to the political and economic life processes of society. In their view, such
a perspective neutralised culture and. in doing so, abstracted it from the
historical and societal context that gave it meaning. For Adorno, the con-
ventional view was shot through with a contradiction that reduced culture
to nothing more than a piece of ideological shorthand since
it overlooks what is decisive: the role of ideology in social conflicts.
To suppose, if only methodologically, anything like an independent
logic of culture is to collaborate in the hypostasis of culture, the ideo-
logical proton pseudos. The substance of culture . . . resides not in
culture alone but in relation to something external, to the material
life-process. Culture, as Marx observed of juridical and political sys-
tems, cannot be fully 'understood either in terms of itself ... or in terms
of the so-called universal development of the mincl.' To ignore this
... is to make ideology the basic matter and to establish it firmly
(Adorno 1967a, p. 29).
On the other hand, while orthodox Marxist theory established a re-
lationship between culture and the material forces of society, it did so by
reducing culture to a mere reflex of the economic realm. In this view, the
primacy of economic forces and the logic of scientific laws took precedence
over issues concerning the terrain of everyday life, consciousness and
sexuality (Aronowitz 1981). For the Frankfurt School, changing socio-
economic conditions had made 'raditional Marxist categories of the 1930s
and 1940s untenable. They were ~>o longer adequate for understanding
the integration of the working class in ti.e West or the political effects of
technocratic rationality in the cultural realm.
Within the Frankfurt School perspective, the role of culture in Western
society had been modified with the transformation of critical Enlighten-
ment rationality into repressive forms of positivist rationality. As a result
of the development of new technical capabilities, greater concentrations
of economic power, and more sophisticated modes of administration, the
19
21
— such as the Western, familiar to every moviegoer — and to the
rationalization of distribution techniques . . . [and] not strictly to the pro-
duction process' (Adorno 1975, p. 14).
At the core of the theory of culture advanced by Horkheimer, Adorno
and Marcuse was an attempt to expose — through both a call for and a
demonstration of critique - how positivist rationality manifested itself
in the cultural realm. For instance, they criticised certain cultural pro-
ducts, such as art, for excluding the principles of resistance and opposition
that once informed their relationship to the world while simultaneously
helping to expose it (Horkheimer 1972). Likewise, for Marcuse the 'truth
of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality (i.e..
of those who established it) to define what is real In this rupture ... the
fictitious world of art appears as true reality' (Marcuse 1978, p. 9). The
Frankfurt School argued that in the one dimensional society art collapses,
rather than highlights, the distinction between reality and the possibility
of a higher truth or better world. In other words, in the true spirit of pos-
itivist harmony, art becomes simply a mirror of the existing reality and,
in doing so, affirms it. Thus, both the memory of a historical truth or the
image of a better way of life are rendered impotent in the ultra-realism
of the Warhol Campbell Soup painting or the Stakhanovite paintings of
socialist realism.
The dictates of positivist rationality and the attendant mutilation of the
power of imagination are also embodied in the techniques and forms that
shape the messages and discourse of the culture industry. Whether it be
in the glut of interchangeable plots, gags or stories, or in the rapid pace
of a film's development, the logic of standardisation reigns supreme. The
message is conformity, and the medium for its attainment is amusement,
which proudly packages itself as an escape from the necessity of critical
thought. Under the sway of the culture industry, style subsumes substance
and thought becomes an afterthought banished from the temple of official
culture. Marcuse states this argument as well as anyone in his comment:
By becoming components of the aesthetic form, words, sounds, shapes,
and colors are insulated against their familiar, ordinary use and func-
tion; . . . This is the achievement of the styJe, which is the poem, the
no"*!, the painting, the composition. The style, embodiment of the
aesthetic form, in subjecting reality to another order, subjects it to the
iaws of beauty.'
True and false, right and wrong, pain and pleasure, calm and viol-
ence become aesthetic categories within the framework of the oeuvre.
Thus deprived of their (immediate) reality, they enter a different con-
text in which even the ugly, cruel, sick become parts of the aesthetic
harmony governing the whole (Marcuse 1972, pp. 98-9).
Inherent in the reduction of culture to amusement is a significant mes-
sage, one which points to the root of the ethos of positivist rationality, i.e.
the structural division between work and play. Within the latter division,
work is confined to the imperatives of drudgery, boredom and power-
lessness for the vast majority while culture becomes the vehicle by which
to escape from such toil. The power of the Frankfurt School's analysis lies
in its exposure of the ideological fraud that constitutes this division of
labour. Rather than being an escape from the mechanised work process,
21
22
the cultural realm becomes an extension of it. Horkheimer and Adorno
write:
Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work. It is
sought after as an escape from the mechanized work process, and to
recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it again. But at the
same time mechanization has such power over a men's leisure and
happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amuse-
ment goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the work
process itself. The ostensible content is merely a faded foreground;
what sinks in is the automatic succession of standardized operations
(Horkheimer and Adorno 1972, p. 137).
The most radical critique of the division of labour among the three the-
orists under study finds its expression in the work of Herbert Marcuse
(1955, 1968b). Marcuse claims that Marxism has not been radical enough
in its attempt to develop a new sensibility that would develop as 'an in-
stinctual barrier against cruelty, brutality, ugliness.' (Marcuse 1968b, p. 3).
Marcuse's point is that a new rationality which takos as its goal the erot-
icization of labour 'and the development and fulfilment of human needs'
(Marcuse 1955, p. 205) would necessitate new relations of production and
organisational structures under which work could take place. This should
not suggest that Marcuse abandons all forms of authority or that he equates
hierarchical relationships with the realm of domination. On the contrary,
he argues that work and play can interpenetrate each other without either
losing their primary character. As Agger points out:
Marcuse is . . . saying that . . . work and play converge without aban-
doning the 'work' character of work itself. He retains the rational or-
ganization of work without abandoning the Marxian goal of creative
praxis. As he [Marcuse] notes ■ . . 'hierarchical relationships are not
unfree per se.' That is, it depends upon the kind of hierarchy which
informs relationships . . . Marcuse . . . suggests two things: in the first
place, he hints at a theory of work which rests upon the merger of
work and play components. His views in this regard are captured in
his vision of the 'eroticization of labor.' In the second place, Marcuse
hints at a form of organizational rationality which is nondominating
(Agger 1978, p. 194).
According to Marcuse (1964) science and technology have been inte-
grated under the imprint of a dominating rationality that has penetrated
the world of communicative interaction (the public sphere) as wdl as the
world of work. It is worth mentioning that, by contrast, Habermas (1979)
argues that science and technology within the sphere of work are nec-
essarily limited to technical considerations, and that the way that work
is consequently organised represents the price an advanced industrial order
must pay for its material comfort. This position has been challenged by
a number of theorists including Aronowitz who astutely argues that Hab-
ermas separates 'communications and normative judgments from the labor
process' (Aronowitz 1980, p. 80), and in doing this has 'ceded to tech-
nological consciousness the entire sphere of rational purposive action
[work]' (Aronowitz 1980, p.81-2). In opposition to Habermas, Marcuse
(1964) argues that radical change means more than simply the creation
of conditions that foster critical thinking and communicative competence.
22
23
Such change also entails the transformation of the labour process itself
and the fusion of science and technology under the guise of a rationality
that stresses co-operation and self-management in the interest of demo-
cratic community and social freedom.
While there are significant differences among Adorno, Horkheimer and
Marcuse regarding their indictment of positivist rationality and their re-
spective notions about what constitutes an aesthetic or radical sensibility,
their views converge on the existing repressiveness underlying positivist
rationality and the need for the development of a collective critical con-
sciousness and sensibility that would embrace a discourse of opposition
and non-identity as a precondition of human freedom. Thus, for them,
criticism repiesents an indispensibJe element in the struggle for eman-
cipation, and it is precisely in their call for criticism and a new sensibility
that ore finds an analysis of the nature of domination that contains in-
valuable insights for a theory of education. The analysis, in this case, in-
cludes the Frankfurt SchooPs theory of depth psychology to which I will
now briefly turn.
The Frankfurt School s analysis of depth
psychology
For the Frankfurt School it became clear that a theory of consciousness
and depth psychology was needed to explain the subjective dimension
of liberation and domination. Marx had provided the political and econ-
omic grammar of domination, but he relegated the psychic dimension to
a secondary status and believed that the latter would follow any sig-
nificant changes in the economic realm. However, since Marx, the world
had witnessed increased material production and the continued conquest
of nature in both the advanced industrial countries of the West and the
countries of the socialist bloc as well. Yet in both cases the consciousness
of the masses failed to keep pace with such conditions. In both camps,
it appeared that the objective conditions that promoted alienation had
deepened despite economic growth. For example, in the West, the pro-
duction of goods and the ensuing commodity fetishism made a mockery
of the concept of the good life, reducing it to the issue of purchasing power.
In the socialist bloc, the centralisation of political power led to political
repression instead of political and economic freedom as had been prom-
ised. Thus, it was left to the Frankfurt School, especially Marcuse (1955,
1964, 1968b, 1970), to analyse the formal structure of consciousness in
order to discover how a dehumanised society could continue to maintain
its control over its inhabitants and, similarly, how it was possible that human
beings could participate willingly at the level of everyday life in the re-
production of their own dehumanisation and exploitation. For answers,
the Frankfurt School turnedHo a critical study of Freud.
For the Frankfurt School, Freud's metapsychology provided an import-
ant theoretical foundation for revealing the interplay between the indi-
vidual and society. More specifically, the value of Freudian psychology
in this case rested with its illumination of the antagonistic character of
social reality. As a theoretician of contradictions, Freud provided a radical
insight into the way In which society reproduced its powers, both in and
over the individual. As Jacoby puts it:
ERIC . 23
Psychoanalysis shows its strength; it demystifies the claims to lib-
erated values, sensitivities, emotions, by tracing them to a repressed
psychic, social, and biological dimension ... it keeps to the pulse of
the psychic underground. As such it is more capable of grasping the
intensifying social unreason that the conformist psychologies repress
and forget: the barbarism of civilization itself, the barely suppressed
misery of the living, the madness that haunts society (Jacoby 1975,
p. 18).
The Frankfurt School theorists believed that it was only through an under-
standing of the dialectic between f.he individual and society that the depth
and the extent of domination as it existed both within and outside the
individual could be open to modification and transformation. Thus, for
Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, Freud's emphasis on the constant
struggle between the individual desire for instinctual gratification and the
dynamics of social repression provided an indispensible clue to under-
standing the nature of society and the dynamics of psychic domination
and liberation. Adorno points to this in the following comments:
The only totality the student of society can presume to know is the
antagonistic whole, and if he is to attain to totality at all, then only
in and through contradiction . . . The jarring elements that make up
the individual, his 'properties', are invariably also moments of the social
totality. He is, in the strict sense, a monad, representing the whole
and its contradictions, without, however, being at any time conscious
of the whole (Adorno 1967b, pp. 74, 77).
In order to explore the depth of the conflict between the individual and
society, the Frankfurt School accepted with some major modifications most
of Freud's most radical assumptions. More specifically, Freud's theor-
etical schema contained three important elements for developing a depth
psychology. First, Freud provided a formal psychological structure for the
Frankfurt School theorists to work with. That is, the Freudian outline of
the structure of the psyche with its underlying struggle between eros (the
life instinct), thanatos (the death instinct) and the outside world rep-
resented a key conception in the depth psychology developed by the
Frankfurt School.
Secondly, Freud's studies on psychopathology, particularly his sensi-
tivity to humanity's capacity for self-destructiveness and his focus on the
loss of egostability, and the decline of the influence of the family in con-
temporary society added significantly to the Frankfurt School analyses
of mass society and the rise of the authoritarian personality. For the Frank-
furt School, the growing concentration of power in capitalist society, along
with the pervasive intervention of the state in the affairs of everyday life,
had altered the dialectical role of the traditional family as both a positive
and negative site for identity formation. That is, the family traditionally
had provided, on the one hand, a sphere of wSrmth and protection for its
members while, on the other hand, it functioned as a repository for social
and sexual repression. But under the development of advanced industrial
capitalism, the family's dual function was gradually giving way to func-
tioning exclusively as a site for social and cultural reproduction.
Finally, by focusing on Freud's theory of instincts and metapsychology,
the Frankfurt School devised a theoretical framework for unravelling and
exposing the objective and psychological obstacles to social change. This
issue is important because it provides significant insights into how depth
psychology might be useful for developing a more comprehensive theory
of education. Since there were some major differences between Adorno
and Horkheimer on the one side, and Marcuse on the other, regarding
Freud's theory of instincts, as well as his view of the relationship between
the individual and society, I will treat their respective contributions
separately.
Adorno was quick to point out that while Freud's denunciation of 'man's
unfreedom' over-identified with a particular historical period and thus
'petrified into an anthropological constant' (Adorno 1968, p. 81), it did
not seriously distract from his greatness as a theoretician of contradictions.
That is, in spite of the limitations in Freudian theory, Adorno and Hork-
heimer firmly believed that psyc 1 analysis provided a strong theoretical
bulwark against those psychological and social theories that exalted the
idea of the 'integrated personality' and the 'wonders' of social harmony.
True to Adorno's view that 'every "image of man" is ideology except the
negative one' (Adorno 1968, p. 84), Freud's work appeared to transcend
its own shortcomings because at one level it personified the spirit of ne-
gation. Adorno (1967b, 1968) clearly exaltod the negative and critical fea-
tures of psychoanalysis and saw them as major theoretical weapons to be
used against every form of identity theory. The goals of identity theory
and revisionist psychology were both political and ideological in nature,
and it was precisely through the use of Freud's metapsychology that they
could be exposed as such, As Adorno put it:
The goal of the 4 well integrated personality' is objectionable because
it expects the individual to establish an equilibrium between con-
flicting forces which does not obtain in existing society — nor should
it, because these forces are not of equal moral merit. People are taught
to forget the objective conflicts which necessarily repeat themselves
in every individual, instead of being helped to grapple with them
(Adorno 1968, p. 83).
While it was clear to the Frankfurt School that psychoanalysis could
not solve the problems of repression and authoritarianism, they believed
that it did provide important insights into how 'people become accompl-
ices to thoir own subjugation' (J. Benjamin 1977, p. 22). Yet, beneath the
analyses put forth on psychoanalysis by Adorno (1967b, 1968, 1973) and
Horkheimer (1972) and jointly, Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), there lurked
a disturbing paradox: while both theorists went to great lengths to explain
the dynamics of author'*arianism and psychological domination, they said
very little about those formal aspects of consciousness that might provide
a basis for resistance and rebellion. In other words, Horkheimer and Adorno
recognised that Freudian psychology made a powerful criticism of existing
society by exposing its antagonistic character. However, they did not lo-
cate, in either individuals or social classes, the psychological or political
grounds for a self-conscious recognition of such contradictions, or the ability
of human agents to transform them. Consequently, they provided a view
of Freudian psychology that consigned Freud to the ambiguous status of
being a radical as well as a prophet of gloom.
If Adorno and Horkheimer viewed Freud as a revolutionary pessimist,
2C
Marcuse (1955) read him as a revolutionary Utopian. That is, though Mar-
cuse accepts most of Freud's most controversial assumptions, his inter-
pretation of them is both unique and provocative. In one sense, Marcuse's
(1955, 1968a, 1968b, 1970) analysis contained an original dialectical twist
in that it pointed to a Utopian integration of Marx and Freud. In other woids,
while Marcuse (1955) accepted Freud's view of the antagonistic relations
between the individual and society as a fundamental insight, he never-
theless altered some of Freud's basic categories and, in doing so, situated
Freud's pessimism within a historical context thtt* revealed its strengths
as well as its limitations. Thus, Marcuse was able to illuminate the im-
portance of Freud's metapsychology as a basis for social change. This
becomes particularly clear if we examine how Marcuse (1955, 1968a, 1968b,
1970) reworked Freud's basic claims regarding the life and death instincts,
the struggle between the individual and society, the relationship between
scarcity and social repression, and finally, the issues of freedom and human
emancipation.
Marcuse (1955, 1964) begins with the basic assumption that inherent
in Freud's theory of the unconscious and his theory of the instincts the
theoretical elements for a mr-e comprehensive view of the nature of in-
dividual and social domination could be found. Marcuse points to this
possibility when ho writes:
The struggle against freedom reproduces itself in the psyche of man,
as the self-repression of the repressed individual, and his self-repres-
sion in turn sustains his masters and their institutions. It is this mental
dynamic which Freud unfolds as the dynamic of civilization . . . Freud's
metapsychology is an over-renewed attempt to uncover, and to ques-
tion, the terrible necessity of the inner connection between civilization
and barbarism, progress and suffering, freedom and unhappiness
— a connection which reveals itself ultimately as that between Eros
and Thanatos (Marcuse 1955, pp. 16-17).
For Marcuse 11955, 1970), Freudian psychology posited, .:s a result of its
analysis of the relationship between civilisation and instinctual repres-
sion, the theoretical basis for understanding the distinction between socially
necessary authority and authoritarianism. That is, in the interplay between
the need for social labour and the equally important need for the subli-
mation of sexual energy, the dynamic connection between domination and
freedom on the one hand, and authority and authoritarianism on the other,
starts to become discernible. Freud presented the conflict between the
individual's instinctual need for pleasure and the society's demand for
repression as an insoluble problem rooted in a trans-historical struggle;
as such, he pointed to the continuing repressive transformation of eros
in society along with the growing propensity for self-destruction. Marcuse
believed that the 'Freudian conception of the relationship between civi-
lization and the dynamics of the instincts [was] in need of a decisive cor-
rection' (Marcuse 1970, p. 20). That is, whereas Freud (1949) saw the
increased necessity for social and instinctual repression, Marc'ise (1955,
1970) argued that any understanding of social repression had to be situated
within a specific historical context and judged as to whether such systems
of domination exceeded their bounds. To ignoie such a distinction was
to forfeit the possibility of analysing the difference between the exercise
ER?C 26
of legitimate authority and illegitimate forms of domination. For Marcuse
(1955), Freud had failed to capture in his analyses the historical dynamic
of organised domination and thus he gave to it the status and dignity of
a biological development that was universal rather than historically
contingent.
While Marcuse (1955) accepts the Freudian notion that the central con-
flict in society is between the reality principle and the pleasure principle,
he rejects the argument that the latter had to adjust to the former. In other
words, Freud believed that 'the price of civilization is paid for in forfeiting
happiness through heightening of the sense of guilt' (Freud 1949, p. 114).
This is important because at the core of Freud's notion that humanity was
forever condemned to diverting pleasure and sexual energy into alienating
labour was an appeal to a trans-historical 'truth': that scarcity was inevi-
table in society and that labour was inherently alienating. In opposition
to Freud, Marcuse (1955) argued that the reality principle referred to a
particular form of historical existence when scarcity legitimately dictated
instinctual repression. But in the contemporary period, such conditions
had been superseded and therefore abundance, ard not scarcity, charac-
terised or informed the reality principle governing ihe advanced industrial
countries of the West.
In order to add a more fully historical dimension to Freud's analysis,
Marcuse (1955) introduced the notions of performance principle and sur-
plus repression. By arguing that scarcity was not a universal aspect of the
human condition, Marcuse (1955, 1970) claimed that the moment had
arrived within the industrial West when it was no longer necessary to submit
men and women to the demands of alienating labour. The existing reality
principle, which Marcuse (1955) labelled as the performance principle,
had outstripped its historical function, i.e., the sublimation of eros in the
interest of socially necessary labour. The performance principle, with its
emphasis on technocratic reason and exchange rationality, was, in Mar-
cusp's (1955) terms, both historically contingent and socially repressive.
As a relatively new mode of domination it tied people to values, ideas and
social practices that blocked their possibilities for gratification and hap-
piness as ends in themselves.
In short, Marcuse (1 955) believed that inherent in Marx's view of societal
abundance and Freud's theory of instincts was the basis for a new per-
formance principle, one that was governed by the principles of socially
necessary labour as well as by those aspects of the pleasure principle that
integrated work, play and sexuality. This leads us to Marcuse's second
important notion, the concept of surplus repression. The excessiveness
of the existing nature of domination could be measured through what
Marcuse (1955) labelled as surplus repression. Making a distinction be-
tween socially useful repression and surplus repression, Marcuse claims
that
within the total structure of the repressed personality, surplus-repres-
sion is that portion which is the result of specific societal conditions
sustained in the specific interest of domination. The extent of this
surplus-repression provides the standard of measurement: the smaller
it is, the less repressive is the stage of civilization. The distinction
is equivalent to that between biological and the historical sources of
human suffering (Marcuse 1955, pp. 87-8).
28
According to Marcuse (1955, 1970), it is within this dialectical interplay
of the personality structure and historically conditioned repression that
the nexus exists for uncovering the historical and contemporary nature
of domination. Domination in this sense is twice historical: first, it is rooted
in the historically developed socio-economic conditions of a given society;
second, it is rooted in the sedimented history or personality structure of
individuals. In speaking of domination as a psychological as well as a
political phenomenon, Marcuse (1955, 1970) did not give a blank cheque
to wholesale gratification. On the contrary, he agreed with Freud that some
forms of repression were generally necessary. What he objected to was the
unnecessary repression that was embodied in the ethos and social practices
that characterised social institutions such as the school, workplace and
family. For Marcuse, the most penetrating marks of social repression are
generated in the inner history of individuals, in the 'needs, satisfactions,
and values which reproduce the servitude of human existence* (Marcuse
1964, p. 6). As such, needs are mediated and reinforced through the pat-
terns and social routines of everyday life, and the 'false' needs that per-
petuate toil, misery and aggressiveness become anchored in the personality
structure as second nature. That is, the historical character of such needs
is 'forgotten* and they become reduced to patterns of habit.
In the end, Marcuse (1955) grounds even Freud's important notion of
the death instinct (the autonomous drive that increasingly leads to self-
destruction) in a radical problematic. That is, by claiming that the primary
drive of humanity is pleasure, Marcuse (1955) redefines the death instinct
by arguing that it is mediated not by the need for self-destruction, although
that is a form it may take, but by the need to resolve tension. Rooted in
such a perspective, the death instinct is not only redefined, it is also pol-
iticised in that Marcuse (1955) argues that in a non-repressive society it
would be subordinated to the demands of eros. As such, Marcuse (1955,
1964) ends up supporting the Frankfurt School's notion of negative think-
ing, but with an important qualification. He insists on its value as a mode
of critique, but he equally insists that it is grounded in socio-economic
conditions that can be transformed. Thus, it is the promise of a better fu-
ture, rather than despair over the existing nature of society, that informs
both Marcuse's work, and its possibilities as a mode of critique for educators.
Towards a critical theory of education
While it is impossible to elaborate in any detail what the implications of
the work of the Frankfurt School might be for a theory of radical pedagogy,
I can point briefly to some general considerations. I believe that it is clear
that the thought of the Frankfurt School provides a major challenge and
stimulus to educational theorists who are critical of theories of education
that are tied to functionalist paradigms based on assumptions drawn from
a positivist rationality. For instance, against the positivist spirit that in-
fuses existing educational theory and practice (whether it takes the form
of the Tyler model or various systems-approaches), the Frankfurt School
offers an historical analysis and a penetrating philosophical framework
that indict the wider culture of positivism, while at the same time pro-
viding insight into how it becomes incorporated within the ethos and
ERIC 28
practices of schools. Though there is a growing body of educational lit-
erature that is critical of positivist rationality in schools, it lacks the theor-
etical sophistication characteristic of the work of Horkheimer, Adorno and
Marcuse. Similarly, the importance of historical consciousness as a fun-
damental dimension of critical thinking in the Frankfurt School perspec-
tive creates a valuable epistemological terrain upon which to develop modes
of critique that illuminate the interaction of the social and the personal
on the one hand, and history and private experience on the other. Through
this form of analysis, dialectical thought replaces positivist forms of social
inquiry. That is, the logic of predictability, verifiability, transferability and
operationahsm is replaced by a dialectical mode of thinking that stresses
the historical, relational and normative dimensions of social inquiry and
knowledge. The notion of dialectical thinking as critical thinking, and its
implications for pedagogy, become clearer in Jameson's comment:
Dialectical thinking is . . . thought about thinking itself, in which the
mind must deal with its own thought process just as much as with
the material it works on, in which both the particular content involved
and the style of thinking suited to it must be held together in the mind
at the same time (Jameson 1971, p. 45).
What we get here are hints of what a radical view of knowledge might
look liice. In this case, it would be knowledge that would instruct the op-
pressed about their situation as a group situated within specific relations
of domination and subordination. It would be knowledge that would il-
luminate how the oppressed could develop a discourse free from the dis-
tortions of their own partly mangled cultural inheritance. On the other
hand, it would be a form of knowledge that instructed the oppressed as
to how to appropriate the most progressive dimensions of their own cul-
tural histories as well as how to restructure and appropriate the most rad-
ical aspects of bourgeois culture. Finally, such knowledge would have to
provide a motivational connection to action itself; it would have to link
a radical decoding of history to a vision of the future that not only exploded
the reifications of the existing society, but also reached into those pockets
of desires and needs that harboured a longing for a new society and new
forms of social relations. It is at this point that the linkage between history,
culture and psychology becomes important.
It is with regard to the above that the notion of historical understanding
in the work of the Frankfurt School makes some important contributions
to the notion of radical pedagogy. History, for Adorno and others con-
nected with critical theory, had a two-fold meaning and could not be in-
terpreted as a continuous pattern unfolding under the imperatives of
'natural* laws. On the contrary, it had to be viewed as emerging as an open-
ended phenomenon, the significance of which was to be gleaned in the
cracks and tensions that separated individuals and social classes from the
imperatives of the dominant society. In other words, there were no laws
of history that prefigured human progress, that functioned independently
of human action. Moreover, history became meaningful not because it
provided the present with the fruits of 'interesting* or 'stimulating* culture,
but because it became the object of analyses via the present in order to
illuminate the revolutionary possibilities that existed in the given society.
For the radical educator, this suggests using history in order 'to fight against
30
the spirit of the times rather than join it, to look backward at history rather
than "forward" ' (Buck-Morss 1977, p. 48). To put it another way, it meant
as 'V. Benjamin claimed 'to brush history against the grain' (W. Benjamin
1974, p. 696).
Not only does such a position link historical analysis to the notions of
critique and emancipation, it also politicises the notion of knowledge. That
is, it argues for looking at knowledge critically, within constellations of
suppressed insights (dialectical images) that point to the ways in which
historically repressed cultures and struggles could be used to illuminate
radical potentialities in the present. Knowledge in this instance becomes
an object of analysis in a two-fold sense. On the one hand, it is examined
so as to reveal its social function, that is, the way in which it legitimates
the existing society. At the same time it could also be examined so as to
reveal through its arrangement, words, structure and style those uninten-
tional truths that contain 'fleeting images' of a different society, of more
radical practices and of new forms of understanding. For instance, almost
every cultural text contains a combination of ideological and Utopian
moments. Inherent in the most overt messages that characterise mass cul-
ture are elements of its antithesis. All cultural artifacts have a hidden re-
ferent that speaks to the basis for repression in the first place. Against the
image of the barely clad female model selling the new automobile is the
latent tension of misplaced and misappropriated sexual desire. Within the
most authoritative modes of classroom discipline and control are fleeting
images of freedom that speak to very different relationships. It is this dia-
lectical aspect of knowledge that needs to be developed as part of a radical
pedagogy.
Unlike traditional and liberal accounts of schooling, with their emphasis
on historical continuities and historical development, critical theory points
educators towards a mode of analysis that stresses the breaks, disconti-
nuities and tensions in history, all of which become valuable in that they
highlight the centrality of human agency and struggle while simultane-
ously revealing the gap between the society as it presently exists and society
as it might be.
The Frankfurt School's theory of culture also offers new concepts and
categories for analysing the role that schools play as agents of social and
cultural reproduction. By illuminating the relationship between power
and culture, the Frankfurt School provides a perspective on the way in
which dominant ideologies are constituted and mediated via specific cul-
tural formations. The concept of culture in this view exists in a particular
relationship to the material base of society. The explanatory value of such
a relationship is to be found in making problematic the specific content
of a culture, its relationship to dominant and subordinate groups, as well
as the socio-historical genesis of the ethos and practices of legitimating
cultures and their role in constituting relations of domination and re-
sistance. For example, by pointing to schools as cultural sites that embody
conflicting political values, histories and practices, it becomes possible
to investigate how schools can be analysed as an expression of the wider
organisation of society. Marcuse's (1964) study of the ideological nature
of language, Adorno's (1975) analysis of the sociology of music, Horkh-
eimer's (1972) method of dialectical critique and W. Benjamin's (1969, 1977)
theory of cognition all provide a number of valuable theoretical constructs
ERLC ou
through which to investigate the socially produced nature of knowledge
and school experience.
The centrality of culture in the work of the Frankfurt School theorists
(despite the differing opinions among its members) points to a number
of important insights that illuminate how su 1 activities are constituted
both within and outside schools. Though their analysis of culture is some-
what undialectical and clearly underdeveloped, it does provide a foun-
dation for a greater elaboration and understanding of the relationship
between culture and power while simultaneously recognising the latter
as an important terrain upon which to analyse the nature of domination
and resistance. By urging an attentiveness to the suppressed moments of
history, critical theory also points to the need to develop an equal sen-
sitivity to those aspects of culture that need to be reappointed by the working
class, students, women, blacks, and others if they are to affirm their own
histories through the use of a k.iguage, a set of social relations and a body
of knowledge that critically reconstructs and dignifies the cultural ex-
periences that make up the tissue, texture and history of their daily lives.
This is no small matter since once the affirmative nature of such a pedagogy
is established, it becomes possible for students who have been traditionally
voiceless in schools to learn the skills, knowledge and modes of inquiry
that will allow them to critically examine the role the existing society has
played in their self formation. More specifically, they will have the tools
to examine how this society has functioned to shape and thwart their own
aspirations and goals, or prevented them from even imagining a life out-
side the one they presently lead. Thus, it is important that students come
to grips with what a given society has made of them, how it has incor-
porated them »' jeologically and materially into its rules and logic, and what
it is that they need to affirm and reject in their own histories in order to
begin the process of struggling for the conditions that will give them the
opportunities to lead a self-managed existence.
While it is true that Adorno, Marcuse and Horkheimer placed a heavy
weight on the notion of domination in their analyses of culture, and thereby
appeared to equate mass culture with mass manipulation, the value of their
analyses rests with the mode of critique they developed in their attempt
to reconstruct the notion of culture as a political force, as a powerful politi-
cal moment in the process of domination. In fact, there appears to be a
paradox in their analyses of culture and human agency: they emphasised
the overwhelming and one-sided nature of mass culture as a dominating
force on the one hand, and yet they relentlessly insisted on the need for
critique, negativity and critical mediation on the other. It is within this
apparent contradiction that more dialectical notions of power and resist-
ance have to be developed, concepts that recognise the power of wider
structural and ideological determinations, while at the same time cog-
nising that human lives never represent simply a reflex of such constraints.
Human beings not only make history, they also make the constraints, and
needless to say they also unmake them. It needs to be remembt-ed that
power is both an enabling as well as a constraining force, as Foucault ^1980)
is quick to point out.
It must be stressed that the ideological justification of the given social
order is not to be found simply in modes of interpretation that view history
as a 'natural' evolving process, mr in the ideologies distributed through
32
the culture industry, but it is also found in the material reality of those
needs, desires and wants that bear the inscription of history. That is, his-
tory is to be found as 'second nature' in those concepts and views of the
world that make the most dominating aspects of the social order appear
to be immune from historical socio-political development. Those aspects
of reality that rest on an appeal to the universal and invariant often slip
from historical consciousness and become embedded within those his-
torically specific needs and desires that link individuals to the logic of
conformity and domination. There is a certain irony in the fact that the
personal and the political join together in the structure of domination
precisely at those moments where history functions to tie individuals to
a set of assumptions and practices that deny the historical nature of the
latter. 'Second nature' represents history that has hardened into a form
of 'social amnesia', a mode of consciousness that forgets its own devel-
opment (Jacoby. 1975). The significance of this perspective for radical
pedagogy is that it points to the value of a depth psychology that can unravel
the question of how the mechanisms of domination and the possible seeds
of liberation reach into the very structure of the human psyche. Radical
pedagogy is much too cognitive in its orientation, and needs to develop
a theory of domination that includes the tt^ain of desires, needs and wants.
Radical pedagogy lacks a depth psychology, as well as an appreciation
of a sensibility that points to the importance of the sensual and the im-
aginative as central dimensions of the schooling experience. The Frankfurt
School's notion of depth psychology, especially Marcuse's work, provides
new scope for developing a critical pedagogy. In other words, it speaks
to the need for new categories of analysis that will enable educators to
become more knowledgeable regarding the way teachers, students and other
educational workers become part of the system of social and cultural re-
production, particularly as it works through the messages and values that
are constituted via the social practices of the hidden curriculum (Giroux
1981b). By acknowledging the need for a critical social psychology, edu-
cators can begin to identify how ideologies become constituted and they
can then identify and reconstruct social practices and processes that break
rather than continue existing forms of social and psychological domination.
The relevance of Marcuse's analysis of depth psychology for educational
theory becomes obvious in the more recent work of Pierre Bourdieu (Bour-
dieu 1977; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Bourdieu argues that the school
and other social institutions legitimate and reinforce, through specific sets
of practices and discourses, class-based systems of behaviour and dis-
positions that function to reproduce the existing dominant society. As such,
Bourdieu extends Marcuse's insights by pointing to a notion of learning
in which a child internalises the cultural r essages of the school not only
via the latter's official discourse (symbolic mastery), but aho through the
messages embodied in the insignificant' practices of daily classroom life.
Bourdieu is worth quoting at length on this issue.
[Schools] set such store on the seemingly most insignificant details
of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners . . . The priciples em-
bodied in this way are placed beyond the grasp of consciousness, and
hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, can-
not even be made explicit . . . The whole trick of pedagogic reason
ERLC
32
33
lies precisely in the way it extorts the essential while seeming to de-
mand the insignificant: in obtaining the respect for form and forms
of respect which constitute the most visible and at the same time the
best-hidden . . . manifestation of submission to the established order
(Bourdieu 1977, pp. 94-5).
Unlike Bourdieu, Marcuse believes that historically conditioned needs
that function in the interest of domination can be changed. That is, Mar-
cuse (1955) argues that any viable form of political action must begin with
a notion of political education in which a new language, qualitatively
different social relations and a new set of values would have to operate
with the purpose of creating a new environment 'in which the non ag-
gressive, erotic, receptive faculties of man, in harmony with the con-
sciousness of freedom, strive for the pacification of man and nature*
(Marcuse 1955, p. 31). Thus, the notion of depth psychology developed
by the Frankfurt School not only provides new insights into how subjec-
tivities are formed or how ideology functions as lived experience, it also
provides theoretical tools to establish the conditions for new needs, new
systems of values and new social practices that take seriously the impera-
tives of a critical pedagogy.
Conclusion
I have attempted to present those selected aspects of the work of critical
theorists such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse that provide theor-
etical insights for developing a critical theory of education. Specifically,
I have fi .ised on their critique of positivist rationality, their view of theory,
their critical reconstruction of a theory of cuture and finally, their analysis
of depth psychology. It is within the context of these four areas that radical
educators can begin the task of reconstructing and applying the insights
of critical theory to schooling.
Of course, the task of translating the work of the Frankfurt School into
terms that inform and enrich radical educational theory and practice will
be difficult. Especially since any attempt to use such work will have to
begin with the understanding that it contains a number of shortcomings
and that in addition such work cannot be imposed in grid-like fashion onto
a theory of radical pedagogy. For example, the critical theorists I have
discussed did not develop a comprehensive theoretical approach for deal-
ing with the patterns of conflict and contradictions that existed in various
cultural spheres. They developed an unsatisfactory notion of domination
and an exaggerated view of the integrated nature of the American public;
they constantly underestimated the radical potential inherent in working-
class culture; moreover, they never developed an adequate theory of social
consciousness. That is, in spite of their insistence on the importance of
the notion of mediation, they never explored the contradictory modes of
thinking that characterise the way most people view the world. Of course,
this selection does not exhaust the list of criticisms that could be made
against the work of the critical theorists under analysis here. But the point
is that critical theory needs to be reformulated so as to provide the op-
portunity to both critique and elaborate its insights beyond the constraints
and historical conditions under which they were first generated.
ERIC
34
It must be stressed that the insights critical theory has provided have
not been exhausted. In fact, one may argue, as I would, that we are just
beginning to work out the implications of their analyses. The real issue
is to reformulate the central contributions of critical theory in terms of new
historical conditions without sacrificing the emancipatory spirit that in-
itially generated them.
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Readings
■■is
38
Traditional and critical theory
What is 'theory'? The question seems a rather easy one for
contemporary science. Theory for most researchers is the sum-
total of propositions about a subject, the propositions being so
linked with each other that a few are basic and the rest derive from
these. The smaller the number of primary principles in compari*
son with the derivations, the more perfect the theory. The real
validity of the theory depends on the derived propositions being
consonant with the actual facts. If experience and theory contra-
dict each other, one of the two must be re-examined. Either the
scientist has failed to observe correctly or something is wrong
with the principles of the theory. In relation to facts, therefore, a
theory always remains a hypothesis. One must be ready to change
it if its weaknesses begin to show as one works through the
material. Theory is storcd-up knowledge, put in a form that makes
it useful for the closest possible description of facts. Poincare
compares science to a library that must ceaselessly expand.
Experimental physics is the librarian who takes care of acquisi-
tions, that is, enriches knowledge by supplying new material.
Mathematical physics - the theory of natural science in the strict-
est sense - keeps the catalogue; without the catalogue one would
have no access to the library's rich contents. 'That is the role of
mathematical physics. It must direct generalization, so as to in-
crease what I have called just now the output of science.' 1 The
general goal of all theory is a universal systematic science, not
limited to any particular subject matter but embracing all possible
objects. The division of sciences is being broken down by deriving
the principles for special areas from the same basic premises. The
same conceptual apparatus which was elaborated for the analysis
of inanimate nature is serving to classify animate rature as well,
and anyone who has once mastered the use of it, that is, the rules
for derivation, the symbols, the process of comparing deriwid
propositions with observable fact t can use it at any time. But we
are still rather far from such an ideal situation.
Such, in its broad lines, is the widely accepted idea of what
theory is. Its origins supposedly coincide with the beginnings of
i.Poincar£(1905),p.!45.
M. Horkheimer
modern philosophy. The third maxim in Descartes* scientific
method is the decision
to carry on my reflections in due order, commencing with objects that
were |he most simple and easy to. understand, in order to rise little by
little, or by degrees, to knowledge of the most complex, assuming an
order, even if a fictitious one, among those which do not follow a
natural sequence relative to one another. 2
The derivation as usually practised in mathematics is to bcapplied
(o all science. The order in the world is captured by a deductive
chain of thought.
Those long chains of deductive reasoning, simple and easy as they are,
of which geometricians make use in order to arrive at the most difficult
demonstrations, had caused me to imagine that all those things which
fall under the cognizance of men might very likely be mutually related
in the same fashion; and that, provided only that we abstain from
receiving anything as true which is net so, and always retain the order
which is necessary in order to deduce the one conclusion from the other,
there can be nothing so remote that we cannot reach to it, nor so
recondite that we cannot discover it.
Depending on the logician's own genera! philosophical out-
look, the most universal propositions from which the deduction
begins are themselves regarded as experiential judgements, as in-
ductions (as with John Stuart Mill), as evident insights (as in
rationalist and phenomenologica! schools), or as arbitrary postu-
lates (as in the modern axiomatic approach). In the most advanced
logic of the present time, as represented by HusserFs Logischt
Untersuchun$cn % theory is defined 'as an enclosed system of pro-
positions for a science as a whole'. 3 Theory in the fullest sense is
4 a systematically linked set of propositions, taking the form of a
systematically unified deduction*. 4 Science is 4 a certain totality of
propositions . . emerging in one or other manner from theoreti-
cal work, in the systematic order of which propositions a certain
totality of objects acquires definition*. 5 The basic requirement
which any theoretical system must satisfy is that all the parts
should intermcsh thoroughly and without friction. Harmony,
which includes lack of contradictions, and the a*, cc of super-
fluous, purely dogmatic elements which havi no induencc on the
observable phenomena, are necessary conditions, according to
Weyl. 6
Insofar as this traditional conception of theory shows a ten-
dency, it is towards a purely mathematical system of symbols. As
elements of the theory, as components of the propositions and
conclusions, there arc ever fewer names of experiential objects and
ever more numerous mathematical symbols. Even the logical
operations themselves have already been so rationalized that, in
large areas of natural science at least, theory formation has be-
come a matter of mathematical construction.
2. Descartes (I637),p.92. 3.Himerl(l929),p.89. 4.ibid.,p.79.
5.ibid.,p.9l. 0. Wcyl(1927),pp. 118 ft*.
40
The sciences of man and society have attempted to follow the
lead of the natural sciences with their great successes. The differ-
ence between those schools of social science which arc more
oriented to the investigation of facts and those which concentrate
more on principles has nothing directly to do with the concept of
theory as such. The assiduous collecting of facts in all the disci-
plines dealing with social life, the gathering of great masses of
detail in connection with problems, the empirical inquiries,
through careful questionnaires and other means, which arc a
major part of scholarly activity, especially in the Anglo-Saxon
universities since Spencer's time - all this adds up to a pattern
which is, outwardly, much like the rest of life in a society domina-
ted by industrial production techniques. Such an approach seems
quite different from the formulation of abstract principles and the
analysis of basic concepts by an armchair schi ar, which are
typical, for example, of one sector of German sociology. Yet
these divergences do not signify a structural difference in ways of
thinking. In recent periods of contemporary society the so-called
human studies (Gcisteswlsscxschaften) have had but a fluctuating
market value and must try to imitate the more prosperous natural
sciences whose practical value is beyond question.
There can be no doubt, in fact, that the various schools of
sociology have an identical conception of theory and that it is the
same as theory in the natural sciences. Empirically oriented
sociologists have the same idea of what a fully elaborated theory
should be as their theoretically oriented brethren. The former,
indeed, are persuaded that in view of the complexity of social
problems and the present state of science any concern with
general principles must be regarded as indolent and idle. )f
theoretical work is to be done, it must be done with an eye un-
waveringly on the facts; there can be no thought in the foreseeable
future of comprehensive theoretical sv-^mcnts. These scholars
are much enamoured of the methods of exact formulation and, in
particular, of mathematical procedures, which are especially con-
genial to the conception of theory described above. What they
object to is not so much theory as such but theories spun out of
their heads by men who have no personal experience of the
problems of an experimental science. Distinctions like those be-
tween community and society (Tonnics), mechanical and organic
solidarity (Durkheim), or culture and civilization (A. Weber) as
basic forms of human sociality prove to be of questionable value
as soon as one attempts to apply them to concrete problems. The
way that sociology must take in the present state of research is (it
is argued) the laborious ascent from the description of social
phenomena to detailed comparisons and only then to the forma-
tion of general concepts.
The empiricist, true to his traditions, is thus led to say that only
complete inductions can supply the primary propositions for a
theory and that we are still far from having made such inductions.
His opponent claims the right to use other methods, !css depend-
ent on progress in data-collection, for the formation of primary
ERIC
categories and insights. Durkheim, for example, agrees with many
basic views of the empirical school but, in dealing with principles,
be opts for an abridgement of the inductive process. It is im-
possible, he claims, to classify social happenings on the basis of
purely empirical inventories, nor can research make classification
easier in the way in which it is expected to do so.
Its [induction's) role is to put into our hands points of reference to which
we can refer other observations than those which have furnished us
with these very points of reference. But for this purpose it must be
made not from a complete inventory of all the individual characteristics
but from a small number of them, carefully chosen ... It will spare the
observer many steps because it will guide him ... We must, then,
choose the most essential characteristics for our classification. 7
Whether'the primary principles are obtained by selection, in-
tuition or pure stipulation makes no difference, however, to their
function in the ideal theoretical system. For the scientist must
certainly apply his more or less general propositions, as hypo-
theses, to ever new facts. The phenomenologically-oriented
sociologist will indeed claim that once an essential law has been
ascertained every particular instance will, beyond any doubt,
exemplify the law. But the really hypothetical character of the
essential law is manifested as soon as the question arises whether
in a pai ticular case we arc dealing with an instance of the es-
sence in question or of a related essence, whether we are faced
with a poor example of one type or a good example of another
type. There is always, on the one hand, the conceptually formula-
ted knowledge and, on the other, the facts to be subsumed under
it. Such a subsumption or establishing of a relation between the
simple perception or verification of a fact and the conceptual
structure of our knowing is called its theoretical explanation.
We need not enter here into the details of the various kinds of
classification. It will be enough to indicate briefly how the
traditional concept of theory handles the explanation of historical
events. The answer emerged clearly in the controversy between
Eduard Meyer and Max Weber. Meyer regarded as idle and
unansweiable the question of whether, even if certain historical
personages had not reached certain decisions, the wars they
caused would nonetheless sooner or later have occurred. Weber
tried to show that if the question were indeed idle and unanswer-
able, all historical explanation would become impossible. He
developed a 'theory of objective possibility', based on the
theories of the physiologist, von Kries, and of writers in juris-
prudence and national economy such as Merkel, Liefmann and
Radbruch. For Weber, the historian's explanations, like those of
the expert in criminal law, rest not on the fullest possible enumera-
tion of all pertinent circumstances but on the establishment of a
connection between those elements of an event which are signifi-
cant for historical continuity, and particular, determinative
happenings. This connection, for example the judgement that a
7. Durkheim (1895), p. 80.
42
war resulted from the policies of a statesman who knew what he
was about, logically supposes that, if such a policy had not exis-
ted, some other effect would have followed. If one maintains a
particular causal nexus between historical events, one is neces-
sarily implying that if the nexus had not existed, then in accord-
ance with the rules that govern our experience another effect
would have followed in given circumstances. The rules of experi-
ence here are nothing but the formulations of our knowledge
concerning economic, social, and psychological interconnections.
With the help of these we reconstruct the probable course of
events, going beyond the event itself to what will serve as explana-
tion. 8 We are thus working with conditional propositions as
applied to a given situation. If circumstances a t b t c, and d are
given, then event q must be expected; if u\% lacking, event r; if g
is added, event s, and so on. This kind of calculation is a logical
tool of history as it is of science. It is in this fashion that theory in
the traditional sense is actually elaborated.
What scientists in various fields regard as the essence of theory
thus corresponds, in fact, to the immediate tasks they set for
themselves. The manipulation of physical nature and of specific
economic and social mechanisms demand alike the amassing of a
body of knowledge such as is supplied in an ordered set of hypo-
theses. The technological advances of the bourgeois period are in-
separably linked to this function of the pursuit of science. On the
one hand, it made the facts fruitful for the kind of scientific
knowledge that would have practical application in the circum-
stances, and, on the other, it made possible the application of
knowledge already possessed. Beyond doubt, such work is a
moment in the continuous transformation and development of
the material foundations of that society. But the conception of
theory was absolutized, as though it were grounded in the inner
nature of knowledge as such or justified in some other ahistorical
way, and thus it became a reified, ideological category . . .
The traditional idea of theory is based on scientific activity as
carried on within the division of labour at a particular stage in the
latter's development. It corresponds to the activity of the scholar
which takes place alongside all the other activities of a society but
in no immediately clear connection with them. In this view of
theory, therefore, the real social function of science is not made
"manifest; it speaks not of what theory means in human life, but
only of what it means in the isolated sphere in which for historical
reasons it comes into existence. Yet as a matter of fact the life of
society is the result of all the work done in the various sectors of
production. Even if therefore the division of labour in the
capitalist system functions but poorly, its branches, including
science, do not become for that reason self-sufficient and in-
dependent. They are particular instances of the way in which
society comes to grips with nature and maintains its own in-
herited form. They are moments in the social process of produc-
8.Wcber(I949).
43
tion, even if they be almost or entirely unproductive in the
narrower sense. Neither the structures of industrial and agrarian
production nor the separation of the so-called guiding and
executory functions, services, and works, or of intellectual and
manual operations are eternal or natural states of affairs. They
emerge rather from the mode of production practised in particular
forms of society. The seeming self-sufficiency enjoyed by work
processes whose course is supposedly determined by the very
nature of the object corresponds to the seeming freedom of the
economic subject in bourgeois society. The latter believe they are
acting according to personal determinations, whereas in fact even
in their most complicated calculations they but exemplify the
working of an incalculable social mechanism . . .
The whole perceptible world as present to a member of
bowgeois society and as interpreted within a traditional world-
view which is in continuous interaction with that given world, is
seen by the perceiver as a sum-total of facts; it is there and must
be accepted. The classificatory thinking of each individual is one
of those social reactions by which men try to adapt to reality in a
way that best meets their needs. But there is at this point an
essential difference between the individual and society. The world
which is given to the individual and which he must accept and
take into accoi nt is, in its present and continuing form, a product
of the activity of society as a whole. The objects we perceive in our
surroundings - cities, villages, fields, and woods - bear the mark
of having been worked on by man. It is not only in clothing and
appearance," in out.vard form and emotional make-up that men
are the product of history. Even the way they see and hear is
inseparable from the social life-process as it has evolved over the
millennia. The facts which our senses present to us are socially
preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the
object perceived and through the historical character of the per-
ceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by
human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself as
receptive and passive in the act of pero tion. The opposition of
passivity and activity, which appears in knowledge tneory as a
dualism of sense-perception and understanding, does not hold
for society, howeve;, in the same measure as for the individual.
The individual sees himself as passive and dependent, but society,
though made up of individuals, is an active subject, even if a non-
conscious one and, to that extent, a subject only in an improper
sense. This difference in the existence of man and society is an
expression of the cleavage which has up to now affected the
historical forms of social life. The existence of society has either
been founded directly on oppression or been the blind outcome of
conflicting forces, but in any event not the result of conscious
spontaneity on the part of free individuals. Therefore the meaning
of 'activity' and 'passivity' changes according as these concepts
are applied to society or to individuals. In the bourgeois economic
mode the activity of society is blind and concrete, that of indivi-
duals abstract and conscious.
44
Human production also always has an element of planning to
it. To the extent then that the facts which the individual and his
theory encounter are socially produced, there must be rationality
in them, even if in a restricted sense. But social action always
involves, in addition, available knowledge and its application.
The perceived fact is therefore co-determined by human ideas and
concepts, even before its conscious theoretical elaboration by the
knowing individual. Nor are we to think here only of experiments
in natural science. The so-called purity of objective event to be
achieved by the experimental procedure is, of course, obviously
connected with technological conditions, and the connection of
these in turn with the materia] process of production is evident.
But it is easy here to confuse two questions: the question of the
mediation of the factual through the activity of society as a
whole, and the question of the influence of the measuring instru-
ment; that is, of a particular action, upon the object being
observed. The latter problem, which continually plagues physics,
is no more closely connected with the problem that concerns us
here than is the problem of perception generally, including per-
ception in everyday life. Man's physiological apparatus for sensa-
tion itself largely anticipates the order followed in physical experi-
ment. As man reflectively records reality, he separates and rejoins
pieces of it, and concentrates on some particulars while failing to
notice others. This process is just as much a result of the modern
mode of production, as the perception of a man in a tribe of
primitive hunters and fishers is the result of the conditions of his
existence (as well, of course, as of the object of perception).
In this context the proposition that tools are prolongations of
human organs can be inverted to state that the organs are also
prolongations of the tools. In the higher stages of civilization
conscious human action unconsciously determines not only the
subjective side of perception but in larger degree the object as well.
The sensible world which a member of industrial society sees
about him every day bears the marks of deliberate work: tene-
ment houses, factories, cotton, cattle for slaughter, men, and, in
addition, not only objects such as subway trains, delivery trucks,
autos, and airplanes, but the movements in the course of which
they are perceived. The distinction within this complex totality
between what belongs to unconscious nature and what to the
action of man in society cannot be drawn in concrete detail. Even
where there is question of experiencing natural objects as such,
their very naturalness is determined by contrast with the social
world and, to that extent, depends upon the latter,
The individual, however, receives sensible reality, as a simple
sequence of facts, into his world of ordered concepts. The latter
too, though their context changes,have developed along with the
life process of society. Thus, though the ordering of reality by
understanding and the passing of judgement on objects usually
take place as a foregone conclusion and with surprising unanimity
among members of a given society, yet the harmony between per-
ception and traditional thought and among the monads or indi-
ERIC
vidual subjects of knowledge is not a metaphysical accident. The
power of healthy human understanding, or common sense, for
which there are no mysteries, as well as the general acceptance of
identical views in areas not directly connected with class con-
flicts, as for example in the natural sciences, are conditioned by
the fact that the world of objects to be judged is in large measure
produced by an activity that is itself determined by the very ideas
which help the individual to recognize that world and to grasp it
conceptually.
In Kant's philosophy this state of affairs is expressed in idealist
form. The doctrine of purely passive sensation and active under-
standing suggests to him the question of whence the understand-
ing derives its assured expectation that the manifold given in
sensation will always obey the rules of the understanding. He
explicitly rejects the thesis of a pre-established harmony, 'a kind
of preformation-system of pure reason', in which reason has
innate and sure rules with which objects are in accord. 9 His own
explanation is that sensible appearances are already formed by
the transcendental subject, that is, through the activity of reason,
when they are received by perception and consciously judged. 10 In
the most important chapters of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant
tried to give a more detailed explanation of the 'transcendental
affinity' or subjective determination of sensible material, a process
of which the individual is unaware.
The difficulty and obscurity which, by Kant's own admission,
mark the sections on the deduction and schematism of the pure
concepts of understanding may be connected with the fact that
Kant imagines the supra-individual activity, of which the indivi-
dual is unaware, only in the idealist form of a consciousness-in-
itself, that is a purely intellectual source. !n accordance with the
theoretical vision available in his day, he does not see reality as
product of a society's work, work which taken as a whole is
chaotic, but at the individual level is purposeful. Where Hegel
glimpses the cunning of a reason that is nonetheless world-
historical and objective, Kant sees 'an art concealed in the depths
of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly
likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our
gaze'. 11
At least Kant understood that behind the discrepancy between
fact and theory which the scholar experiences in his professional
work, there lies a deeper unity, namely, the general subjectivity
upon which individual knowledge depends. The activity of society
thus appears to be a transcendental power, that is, the sum-total
of spiritual factors. However, Kant's claim that its reality is sunk
in obscurity, that is, that it is irrational despite all its rationality,
is not without its kernel of truth. The bourgeois type of economy,
despite all the ingenuity of the competing individuals within it,
is not governed by any plan; it is not consciously directed to a
general goal; the life of society as a whole proceeds from this
9.Kant(1781),p. 175. 10.ibte.,A 110,pp. 137-8. 11. ibid., B 181, p. 183.
economy only at the cost of excessive friction, in a stunted form,
and almost, as it were, accidentally. The internal difficulties in the
supreme concepts of Kantian philosophy, especially the ego of
transcendental subjectivity, pure or original apperception, and
consciousness-in-itself, show the depth and honesty of his think-
ing. The two-sidedness of these Kantian concepts, that is, their
supreme unity and purposefulness, on the one hand, and their
obscurity, unknownness, and impenetrability, on the other,
reflects exactly the contradiction-filled form of human activity in
the modern period. The collaboration of men in society is the
mode of existence which reason urges upon them, and so they do
apply their powers and thus confirm their own rationality. But at
the same time their work and its results are alienated from them,
and the whole process with all its warte of work-power and human
life, and with its wars and all its senseless wretchedness, seems to
be an unchangeable force of nature, a fate beyond man's control.
In Kant's theoretical philosophy, in his analysis of knowledge,
this contradiction is preserved. The unresolved problem of the
relation between activity and passivity, a priori and sense data,
philosophy and psychology, is therefore not due to purely sub-
jective insufficiency but is objectively necessary. Hegel discovered
and developed these contradictious, but finally resolved them in
a higher intellectual realm. Kant claimed that there existed a
universal subject which, however, he could not quite describe.
Hegel escaped this embarrassment by postulating the absolute
spirit as the most real thing of all. According to him, the universal
has already adequately evolved itself and is identical with all that
happens. Reason need no longer stand over against itself in purely
critical fashion; in Hegel reason has become affirmative, even
before reality itself is affirmed as rational. But, confronted with
the persisting contradictions in human existence and with the
impotence of individuals in face of situations they have them-
selves brought about, the Hegelian solution seems a purely
private assertion, a personal peace treaty between the philosopher
and an inhuman world . . .
We must go on now to add that there is a human activity
which has society itself for its object. 12 The aim of this activity is
not simply to eliminate one or other abuse, for it regards such
abuses as necessarily connected with the way in which the social
structure is organized. Although it itself emerges from the social
structure* its purpose is not, either in its conscious intention or in
its objective significance, the better functioning of any element in
the structure. On the contrary, it is suspicious of the very cate-
gories of better, useful, appropriate, productive, and valuable, as
these are understood in the present order, and refuses to take
them as non-scientific presuppositions about which one can do
nothing. The individual as a rule must simply accept the basic
12. In the following pages Ihis activity is called 'critical * activity. The lerm
is used here less in the sense it has in I he idealist critique of pure reason thun
in the sense it has in the dialectical critique of political economy. It points to
an essential aspect of the dialectical theory of society.
conditions of his existence as given and strive to fulfil them; he
finds his satisfaction and praise in accomplishing as well as he can
the tasks connected with his place in society and in courageously
doing his duty despite all the sharp criticism he may choose to
exercise in particular matters. But the-critical attitude of which
we are speaking is wholly distrustful of the rules of conduct with
which society as presently constituted provides each of its
members. The separation between individual and society in virtue
of which the individual accepts as natural the limits prescribed for
his activity is relativized in critical theory. The latter considers the
overall framework which is conditioned by the Wind interaction
of individual activities (that is, the existent division of labour and
the class distinctions) to be a function which originates in human
action and therefore is a possible object of planful decision and
rational determination of goals.
The two-sided character of the social totality in its present form
becomes, for men who adopt the critical attitude, a conscious
opposition. In recognizing the present form of economy and the
whole culture which it generates to be the product of human work
as well as the organization which mankind was capable of and has
provided for itself in the present era, these men identify them-
selves with this totality and conceive it as will and reason. It is
their own world. At the same time, however, they experience the
fact that society is comparable to non-human natural processes,
to pure mechanisms, because cultural forms which are supported
by war and oppression are not tbi creations of a unified, self-
conscious will. That world is not their own but the world of
capital.
Previous history thus cannot really be understood; only the
individuals and specific groups in it are intelligible, and even these
not totally, since their internal dependence on an inhuman society
means that even in their conscious action such individuals and
groups are still in good measure mechanical functions. The
identification, then, of men of critical mind with their society is
marked by tension, and th,e tension characterizes all the concepts
oi wie critical way of thinking. Thus, such thinkers interpret the
economic categories of work, value, and productivity exactly as
they are interpreted in the existing order, and they regard any
other interpretation as pure idealism. But at the same time they
consider it rank dishonesty simply to accept the interpretation;
the critical acceptance of the categories which rule social life
contains simultaneously their condemnation. This dialectical
character of the self-interpretation of contemporary man is what,
in the last analysis, also causes the obscurity of the Kantian
critique of reason. Reason cannot become transparent to itself as
long as men act as members of an organism which lacks reason.
Organism as a naturally developing and declining unity cannot be
a sort of model for society, but only a form of deadened cxii .snce
from which society must emancipate itself. An attitude which
aims at such an emancipation and at an alteration of society as a
whole might well be of service in theoretical work carried on
48
within reality as presently ordered. But it lacks the pragmatic
character which attaches to traditional thought as a socially useful
professional activity.
In traditional theoretical thinking, the genesis of particular
objective facts, the practical application of the conceptual systems
by which it grasps the facts, and the role of such systems in
action, are all takea to be external to the theoretical thinking it-
self. This alienation, which finds expression in philosophical
terminology as the separation of value and research, knowledge
and action, and other polarities, protects the savant from the
tensions we have indicated and provides an assured framework
for his activity. Yet a kind of thinking which does not accept this
framework seems to have the ground taken out from under it. If a
theoretical procedure does not take the form of determining
objective facts with the help of the simplest and most differentia-
ted conceptual systems available, what can it be but an aimless
ir'ellectual game, half conceptual poetry, half impotent expres-
sion of states of mind ? The investigation into the social condition-
ing of facts and theories may indeed be a research problem,
perhaps even a whole field for theoretical work, but how can such
studies be radically different from other specialized efforts?
Research into ideologies, or sociology of knowledge, which has
been taken over from the critical theory of society and established
as a special discipline, is not opposed either in its aim or in its
other ambitions to the usual activities that go on within classifi-
catory science.
fn this reaction to critical theory, the self-awareness of thought
as such is reduced to the discovery of the relationship that exists
between intellectual positions and their social location. Yet the
structure of the critical attitude, inasmuch as its intentions go
beyond prevailing social ways of acting, is no more closely rela-
ted to social disciplines thus conceived than it is to natural science.
Its opposition to the traditional concep. of theory springe in
general from a difference not so much of objects as of subjects.
For men of the critical mind, the facts, as they emerge from the
Work of society, are not extrinsic in the same degree as they are
for the savant or for members of other professions who all think
like little savants. The latter look towards a new kind of organiza-
tion of work. But insofar as the objective realities given in per-
ception are conceived as products which in principle should be
under human control and, in the future at least, will in fact come
under it, these realities lose the character of pure factuality.
The scholarly specialist 4 as' scientist regards social reality and
its products as extrinsic to him, and 4 as' citizen exercises his
interest in them through political articles, membership in political
parties or social service organizations, and participation in elec-
tions. But he does not unify these two activities, and his othei*
activities as well, except, at best, by psychological interpretation.
Critical thinking, on the contrary, is motivated today by the effort
really to transcend the tension and to abolish the opposition be-
tween the individual's purposeful ness, spontaneity, and ration-
id
ERLC
ality, and those work-process relationships on which society is
built. Critical thought has a concept of man as in conflict with
himself until this opposition is removed. If activity governed by
reason is proper to man, then existent sct/al practice, which
forms the individual's life down to its least details, is inhuman,
and this inhumanity affects everything that goes on in the society.
There will always be something that is extrinsic to man's intel-
lectual and material activity, namely nature as the totality of as
yet unmastered elements with which society must deal. But when
situations which really depend on man alone, the relationships of
men in their work, and the course of man's own history are also
accounted part of * nature', the resultant extrinsicality is not only
not a supra-historical eternal category (even pure nature in the
sense described is not that), but it is a sign of contemptible
weakness. To surrender to such weakness is non-human and
irrational.
Bourgeois thought is so constituted that in reflection on the
subject which exercises such thought a logical necessity forces
it to recognize an ego which imagines itself to be autonomous.
Bourgeois thought is essentially abstract, and its principle is an
individuality which inflatedly believes itself to be the ground of
the world or even to be the world without qualification, an in-
dividuality separated off from events. The direct contrary of such
an outlook is the attitude which holds the individual to be the un-
problematic expression of an already constituted society; an
example would be a nationalist ideology. Here the rhetorical 4 \ve'
is taken seriously; speech is accepted as tb*» organ of the com-
munity. In the internally rent society of our day, such thinking,
except in social questions, sees non-existent unanimities and is
illusory.
Critical thought and its theory are opposed to both the types of
thinking just described. Critical thinking is the function ncit ? . of
the isolated individual nor of a sum-total of individuals. Its sub-
ject is rather a definite individual in his real relation to other
individuals and groups, in his conflict with a particular class, and,
finally, in the resultant web of relationships with the social totality
and with nature. The subject is no mathematical point like the ego
of bourgeois philosophy; his activity is the construction of the
social present. Furthermore, the thinking subject is not the place
where knowledge and object coincide, nor consequently the
starting-point for attaining absolute knowledge. Such an illusion
about the thinking subject, under which idealism has lived since
Descartes, is ideology in the strict sense, for in it the limited free-
dom of the bourgeois individual puts on the illusory form of
perfect freedom and autonomy. As a matter of fact, however, in a
society which is un transparent and without self-awareness the ego,
whether active simply as thinker or active in other ways as well, is
unsure of itself too. In reflection on man, subject and object are
sundered; their identity lies in the future, not in the present. The
method leading (o such an identification may be called explana-
tion in Cartesian language, but in genuinely critical thought
ERIC
50
explanation signifies not only a logical process but a concrete
historical one as well. In the course of it both the social structure
as a whole and the relation of the theoretician to society are
altered, that is both the subject and the role of thought are
changed. The acceptance of an essential unchangeableness be-
tween subject, theory, and object thus distinguishes the Cartesian
conception from every kind of dialectical logic.
Postscript 13
In the preceding essay I pointed out two ways of knowing: one is
based on the Discourse on Method, the other on Marx's critique
of political economy. Theory in the traditional sense established
by Descartes and everywhere practised in ths pursuit of the
specialized sciences organizes experience in the light of questions
which arise out of life in present-day society. The resultant net-
work of disciplines contains information in a form which makes it
useful in any particular circumstances for the greatest possible
number of purposes. The social genesis of problems, the real
situations in which science is put to use, and the purposes which it
is made to serve are all regarded by science as external to itself.
The critical theory of society, on the other hand, has for its
object men as producers of their own historical way of life in its
totality. The real situations which are the starting-point of science
arc not regarded simply as data to be verified and to be predicted
according to the iuws of probability. Every datum depends not on
nature alone but also on the power ran has over it. Objects, the
kind of perception, the questions asked, and the meaning of the
answers all bear witness to hurnan activity and the degree of man's
power.
in thus relating matter - that is, the apparently irreducible facts
which the scientific specialist must respect - to human produc-
tion, the critical theory of society agrees with German idealism.
Ever since Kuni, idealism has insisted ov the dynamic moment in
the relations and has Drotested against the. adoration of facts
and the social cenformism this brings with it. 'As in math^na-
tiuV says Fichte, 'so ii> oue's whole view of Uic world; the only
difference is that in interpreting the world one is unconscious that
he is interpreti/.^, for the interpretation taices place necessarily,
not freely/ 14 This thought was a commonplace in German ideal
ism. But the activity e/.eroised on the matter presented to man
was regarded as intellectual ; it was the activity of a meta-empirica!
consciousness-in-Lv 4 \ an absolute ego, the spirit, and con-
sequently the victory over the dumb, unconsciuus, irrational side
13. The 'Postscript* appeared in the Zeitsehrlft fiir Sozialforschurtf*, vol. 6«
no. 3, along with an essay by Herbert Marcus entitled 'Philosophic und
kritisehc Theorie*. Marcuse's essay has since been reprinted in his Kuhur
und Geselhchafu vol. 1, Frankfurt am Main, 1965, pp. 102 ft". English
translation: 'Philosophy and critical theory', in: Negations. Essay* in
Critical Theory, with translations from the German by Jeremy J. Shapiro,
Allen Lane, 1968.
14. Fichte (1805).
of this activity took place in principle in the person's interior, in
the realm of thought.
In the materialist conception, on the contrary, the basic activity
involved is work in society, and the class-related form of this
work puts its mark on all human patterns of reaction, including
theory. The intervention of reason in the processes whereby know-
ledge and its object arc constituted, or the subordination of these
processes to conscious control, does not take place therefore in a
purely intellectual world, but coincides with the struggle for
certain real ways of life.
The elaboration of theories in the traditional sense is regarded
in our society as an activity set off from other scientific and non-
scientific activities, needing to know nothing of the historical
goals and tendencies of which such activity is a part. But the
critical theory in its concept formation and in all phases of its
development very consciously makes its own that concern for the
rational organization of human activity which it is its task to
illumine and legitimate. For this theory is not concerned only
with goals already imposed by existent ways of life, but with men
and all their potentialities.
To that extent the critical theory is the heir not only of German
idealism but of philosophy as such. It is not just a research
hypothesis which shows its value in the ongoing business of men;
it is an essential element in the historical effort to create a world
which satisfies the needs And powers of men. However extensive
the interaction between the critical theory and the special sciences
whose progress the theory must respect and on which it has for
decades exercised a liberating and stimulating influence, the
theory never aims simply at an increase of knowledge as such. Its
goal is man^ emancipation from slavery. In this it resembles
Greek philosophy, not so much in the Hellenistic age of resigna-
tion as in the golden age of Plato and Aristotle. After the fruitless
political projects of both these men the Stoics and Epicureans
confined themselves to developing a doctrine of individualistic
practices. The new dialectical philosophy, however, has held on
to the realization that the free development cf individuals depends
on the rational constitution of society. In radically analysing
present social conditions it became a critique of the economy.
References
Descartes, R.(1637), 'Discourse on Method*, in The Philosophical Wotks
'4 Descartes, tr. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, Cambridge
University Press, 1931, vol. 1, p. 92.
Dijrkhcim, E. (1895), The Rules of Sociological Method, tr from the 8th
edition by Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller, University of Chicago
Press, 1938, p. 80.
Fichte, J. O. (t805). Xogik und Metaphysik\ in Nachgelassene Schrifren,
vol.2, Berlin, 1937, p. 47.
H usserl, E. ( 2929), Formalc und transzendenrale Logik t Halle, Berlin,
pp. 79, 89, 91.
Kant, I. (1781), Critique of Pure Reason, A110, B167, B18I, tr. Norman
Kemp Smith, Macmillan, 1933, pp. 137-8, 175, 183.
52
Marcuse,H. (1965), 'Philosophic und KritischeTheorio\ Kulturund
Gesellsckaft, vol. 1, Frankfurt am Main. Translated as ' Philosophy and
critical theory' in Negations. Essays in Critical Thtory, tr. Jeremy J.
Shapiro, Allen Une, 1968.
Poincar£, H. (1905), Science and Hypothesis, tr. W. J. Greenstrect,
Walter Scott, London, p. 145.
Weder, M.(1949) f 'Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences I:
A Critique of Cduard Meyer's Methodological Views', in Max Weber on the
Methodology of the Social Sciences, ed. and ir. Edward A. Shils and Henry
A. Finch, Free Press, Glencoe, U.S. A.
Weyl,H. (1927), 'Philosophic derNaturwissenschaft\ n/famtoucA<fcr
Philosophic, Part 2, Munich-Bcrlin, 1927, pp. 1 18 ff.
Source: Horkheimer, AA., 'Traditional and critical theory', excerpt
from Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, tr.
AA. J.O. O'Connell and others, Herder and Herder, New
York, 1972. First published in 1937. English translation C
Herder and Herder, New York, 1972.
This version
Horkheimer, AA., 'Traditional and critical theory', in P. Con-
nerton (ed.) Critical Sociology, Penguin Education,
Harmondsworth, 1976, pp. 206-24.
ERIC
The culture industry:
enlightenment as mass
deception
M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno
ERIC
The sociological theory that the loss of the support of objectively
established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of
precapitalism, together with technological and social differentia-
tion or specialization, have led to cultural chaos is disproved
every day; for culture now impresses the same stamp on every-
thing. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is
uniform as a whole and in every part. Even the aesthetic activi-
ties of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obedi-
ence to the rhythm of the iron system. The decorative industrial
management buildings and exhibitioa centers in authoritarian
countries are much the same as anywhere else. The huge gleam-
ing towers that shoot up everywhere are outward signs of the
ingenious planning of international concerns, toward which the
unleashed entrepreneurial system (whose monuments are a mass
of gloomy houses and business premises in grimy, spiritless
cities) was already hastening. Even now the -older houses just
outside the concrete city centers look like slums, and the new
bungalows on the outskirts are at one with the flimsy structures
of world fairs in theirpraiseof technical progress and theirbuilt-in
demand to be discarded after a short while like empty food cans.
Yet the city housing projects designed to perpetuate the individual
as a supposedly independent unit in a small hygienic dwelling
make him all the more subservient to his adversary — the abso-
lute power of capitalism. Because the inhabitants, as producers
and as consumers, are drawn into the center in search of work
and pleasure, all the living units crystallize into well-organized
complexes. The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm
presents men with a model of their culture: the false identity of
the general and the particular. Under monopoly all mass culture
is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to
show through. The people at the top are no longer so interested
in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so
its power grows. Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be
art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ide-
ology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce.
SCO
They call themselves industries; and when their directors' in-
comes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the
finished products is removed.
Interested parties explain the culture industry in technologi-
cal terns. It is alleged that because millions participate in it,
certain reproduction processes arc necessary that inevitably re-
quire identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with
identical goods. The technical contrast between the few pro-
duction centers and the large number of widely dispersed
consumption points is said to demand organization and plan-
ning by management. Furthermore, it is claimed that stan-
dards were based in the first place on consumers' needs, and
for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The
result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in
whicU the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No men-
tion is made of the fact that the basis on which techno" *
acquires power over society is the power of those whos
nomic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale
is the rationale of domination itself It is 'ho coercive na-
ture of society alienated from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and
movies keep the whole thing together until their Uvcling ele-
ment shows its strength in the very wrong which it furthered.
It has made the technology of the culture industry no more than
the achievement of standardization art i mass production, sacri-
ficing whatever involved a distinction betv.~<:n the Io£ : .:, of the
work and that of the social system. This is the rcsu't not of a
law of movement in technology as such but of its function ;n
today's economy. The need which might resist central control
has already been suppressed by the control of the individual
consciousness. The step from the telephone to the radio has
clearly distinguished the roles. The former still allowed the sub-
scriber to play the role of subject, and was liberal. The latter is
democratic: it turns all participants in'.o listeners and authori-
tatively subjects them to broadcast - -ograms which *ire all
exactly the same. No machinery of rejo. <dcr has been devised,
and private broadcasters are denied any freedom. They arc coit 1
fined to the apocryphal field of the "amateur," and also have to
accept organization from above. But any trace of spontaneity
from the public in official broadcasting is controlled and ab-
sorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions °nd official pro-
grams of every kind selected by professionals. Talented per-
formers belong to the industry long before it displays them;
otherwise they would not be so eager to fit in. The attitude of
the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the system of
the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse
for it. If one branch of art follows the same formula as one with
a very different medium and content; if the dramatic intrigue
of broadcast soap operas becomes no more than useful material
for showing how to master technical problems at both ends of
the scale of musical experience— real jazz or a cheap imitation;
or if a movement from a Beethoven symphony is crudely
"adapted" for a film sound-track in the same way as a Tolstoy
novel is garbled in a film script: then the claim that this is done
to satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public is no more than
hot air. We are closer to the facts if we explain these phenomena
as inherent in the technical and personnel apparatus which,
down to its last cog, itself forms part of thp economic mecha-
nism of selection. In addition there is the agreement— or at
least the determination— of all executive authorities not to
produce or sanction anything that in any way differs from their
own rules, their own ideas about consumers, or above all them-
selves.
In our age the objective social tendency is incarnate in the
hidden subjective purposes of company directors, the foremost
among whom are in the most powerful sectors of industry-
steel, petroleum, electricity, and chemicals. Culture monopolies
are weak and dependent in comparison. They cannot afford to
neglect their appeasement of the real holders of power if their
sphere of activity in mass society (a sphere producing a specific
type of commodity which anyhow is still too closely bound up
with easygoing liberalism and Jewish intellectuals) is not to
undergo a series of purges. The dependence of the most power-
ful broadcasting company on the electrical industry, or of the
motion picture industry on the banks, is characteristic of the
whole sphere, whose individual branches are themselves eco-
nomically interwoven. All are in such close contact that the
extreme concentration of mental forces allows demarcation
lines between different firms and technical branches to be ig-
rored. The ruthless unity in the culture industry is evidence of
what will happen in politics. Marked differentiations such as
those of A and B films, or of stories in magazines [n different
price ranges, depend not so much on subject matter as on classi-
fying, organizing, and labeling consumers. Something is pro-
vided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are
emphasized and extended. The public is catered for with a
hierarchical range of mass-produced products of varying quality,
thus advancing the rule of complete quantification. Everybody
must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his
previously determined and indexed level, and choose the cate-
gory of mass product turned out for his type. Consumers appear
?s statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by
income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is
that used for any type of propaganda.
How formalized the procedure is can be seen when the
mechanically differentiated products prove to be all alike in the
end. That the difference between the Chrysler ra r .ge and Gen"
eral Motors products is basically illusory strikes every child
with a keen interest in varieties. What connoisseurs discuss as
good or bad points serve only to perpetuate the semblance of
competition and range of choice. The same applies to the
Warner Brothers and Metro Goldwyn Mayer productions. But
even the differences between the more expensive and cheaper
models put out by the same firm steadily diminish: for auto-
mobiles, there are such differences as the number of cylinders,
cubic capacity, details of patented gadgets; and for films there
are the number of stars, the extravagant use of technology,
labor, and equipment, and the introduction of the latest psy-
chological formulas. The universe I criterion of merit is the
amount of "conspicuous production," of blatant cash invest-
ment. The varying budgets in the culture industry do not bear
the slightest relation to factual values, to the meaning of the
products themselves. Even the technical media are relentlessly
forced into uniformity. Television aims at a synthesis of radio
and film, and is held up only because the interested parties have
not yet reached agreement, but its consequences will be quite
enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment of aes-
thetic matter so drastically, that by tomorrow the thinly veiled
identity of all industrial culture products can come triumphantly
out into the open, derisively fulfilling the Wagnerian dream of
the Gesamtkunstwerk — the fusion of all the arts in one work.
The alliance of word, image, and music is all the more perfect
than in Tristan because the sensuous elements which all ap-
provingly reflect the surface of social reality ar& in principle
embodied in the same technical process, the unity of which be-
comes its distinctive content. This process integrates all the
elements of the production, from the novel (shaped with an eye
to the film) to the last sound effect. It is the triumph of in-
vested capital, whose title as absolute master is etched deep into
the hearts of the dispossessed in the employment line; it is the
meaningful content of every film, whatever plot the production
team may have selected.
The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufac-
turers offer him. Kant's formalism still expected a contribution
from the individual, who was thought to relate the varied ex-
periences of the senses to fundamental concept'/, but industry
robs the individual of his function Tts prime service to the cus-
tomer is to do his schematizing for him. Kant said that there
was a secret mechanism in the soul which prepared direct intui-
tions in such a way that they could be fitted into the system of
pure reason. But today that secret has been deciphered. While
the mechanism is to all appearances planned by those who serve
up the data of experience, that is, by the culture industry, it is
in fact forced upon the latter by the power of society, which
remains irrational, however we may try to rationalize it; and
this inescapable force is processed by commercial agencies so
that they give an artificial impression of being in command.
There is nothing left for the consumer to classify. Producers
have done it for him. Art for the masses has destroyed the
dream but still conforms to the tenets of that dreaming idealism
which critical idealism balked at. Everything derives from con-
sciousness: for Malebranche and Berkeley, from the conscious-
ness of God; in mass art, from the consciousness of the pro-
duction team. Not only are the hit songs, stars, and soap
operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the
specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from them
and only appears to change. The details are interchangeable.
The short interval sequence which was effective in a hit song,
the hero's momentary fall from grace (which he accepts as good
sport), the rough treatment which the beloved gets from the
male star, the latter* s rugged defiance of the spoilt heiress, are,
like all the other details, ready-made cliches to be slotted in
anywhere; they never do anything more than fulfill the purpose
allotted them in the overall plan. Their whole raison d'etre is to
confirm it by being its constituent parts. As soon as the film be-
gins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded,
punished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained ear has
heard the first notes of the hit song, it can guess what is coming
ana feel flattered- when it does come. The average length of the
short story has to be rigidly adhered to. Even gags, effects, and
jokes are calculated like the setting in which they are placed.
They are the responsibility of special experts and their narrow
range makes it easy for them to be apportioned in the office.
The development of the culture industry has led to the predomi-
nance of the effect, the obvious touch, and the technical detail
over the work itself— which once expressed an idea, but was
liquidated together with the idea. When the detail won its free-
dom, it became rebellious and, in the period from Romanticism
to Expressionism, asserted itself as free expression, as a vehicle
of protest against the organization. In music the single harmonic
effect obliterated the awareness of form as a whole; in painting
the individual color was stressed at the expense of pictorial
composition; and in the novel psychology became more impor-
tant than structure. The totality of the culture industry has put
an end to this. Though concerned exclusively with effects, it
crushes their insubordination and makes them subserve the
formula, which replaces the work. The same fate is inflicted on
whole and parts alike. The whole inevitably bears no relation to
the details — just like the career of a successful man into which
everything is made to fit as an illustration or a proof, whereas it
is nothing more than the sum of all those idiotic events. The
so-called dominant idea is like a file which ensures order but not
coherence. The whole and the parts are alike; there is no antith-
esis and no connection. Their prearranged harmony is a mock-
ery of what had to be striven after in the great bourgeois works
of art. In Germany the graveyard stillness of the dictatorship
already hung over the gayest films of the democratic era.
The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the cul-
ture industry. The old experience of the movie-goer, who sees
the world outside as an extension of the film he Has just left (be-
cause the latter is intent upon reproducing the world of every-
day perceptions), is now the producer's guideline. The more
intensely and flawlessly his techniques duplicate empirical ob-
jects, the easier it is today for the illusion to prevail that the
outside world is the straightforward continuation of that pre-
sented on the screen. This purpose has been furthered by me-
chanical reproduction since the lightning takeover by the sound
film.
Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The
sound film, far surpassing the theater of illusion, leaves no room
for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is
unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate
from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story;
hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with real-
ity. The stunting of the mass-media consumer's powers of imagi-
nation and spontaneity docs not have to be traced back to any
psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those
attributes to the objective nature of the products themselves,
especially to the most characteristic of them, the sound film.
They are so designed that quickness, powers of observation, and
experience are undeniably needed to apprehend them at all; yet
sustained thought is out of the question if the spectator is not to
miss the relentless rush of facts. Even though the effort required
for his response is semi-automatic, no scope is left for the
imagination. Those who are so absorbed by the world of the
movie — by its images, gestures, and words — that they arc un-
able to supply what really makes it a world, do not have to
dwell on particular points of its mechanics during a screening.
All the other films and products of the entertainment industry
which they have seen have taught them what to expect; they
react automatically. The migh' » f industrial society is lodged in
men's minds. The entertainments manufacturers know that their
products will be consumed with alertness even when the cus-
tomer is distraught, for each of them is a model of the huge
economic machinery which has always sustained the masses,
whether at work or at leisure— which is akin to work. From
every sound film and every broadcast program the social effect
can be inferred which is exclusive to none but is shared by all
alike. The culture industry as a whole has molded men as a type
unfailingly reproduced in every product. All the agents of this
process, from the producer to the women's clubs, take good
care that the simple reproduction of this mental state it not
nuanced or extended in any way.
The art historians and guardians of culture who complain of
the extinction in the West of a basic style-determining power
are wrong. The stereotyped appropriation of everything, even
the inchoate, for the purposes of mechanical reproduction sur-
passes the rigor and general currency of any "real style," in the
sense in which cultural cognoscenti celebrate the organic pre-
capitalist past. No Palestrina could be more of a purist in
eliminating every unprepared and unresolved discord than the
jazz arranger in suppressing any development which does not
conform to the jargon. When jazzing up Mozart he changes him
not only when he is too serious or too difficult but when he
harmonizes the melody in a different way, perhaps more simply,
than is customary now. No medieval builder can have scruti-
nized the subjects for church windows and sculptures more sus-
piciously than the studio hierarchy scrutinizes a work by Balzac
or Hugo before finally approving it. No medieval theologian
could have determined the degree of the torment to be suffered
by the damned in accordance with the ordo of divine love more
meticulously than the producers of shoddy epics calculate the
torture to be undergone by the hero or the exact point to which
the leading lady's hemline shall be raised. The explicit and im-
plicit, exoteric and esoteric catalog of the forbidden and toler-
ated is so extensive that it not only defines the area of freedom
but is all-powerful inside it. Everything down to the last detail is
shaped accordingly. Like its counterpart, avant-garde art, the
entertainment industry determines its own language, down to its
very syntax and vocabulary, by the use of anathema. The con-
stant pressure to produce new effects (which must conform to
the old pattern) serves merely as another rule to increase the
power of the conventions when any single effect threatens to slip
through the net. Every detail is so firmly stamped with sameness
that nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or does
not meet with approval at first sight. And the star performers,
S9
60
whether they produce or reproduce, use this jargon as freely
and fluently and with as much gusto as if it were the very lan-
guage which it silenced long ago. Such is the ideal of what is
natural in this field of activity, and its influence becomes all the
more powerful, the more technique is perfected and diminishes
the tension between the finished product and everyday life. The
paradox of this routine, which is essentially travesty, can be
detected and is often predominant in everything that the culture
industry turns out. A jazz musician who is playing a piece of
serious music, one of Beethoven's simplest minuets, syncopates
it involuntarily and will smile superciliously when asked to fol-
low the normal divisions of the beat. This is the "nature" which,
complicated by the ever-present and extravagant demands of
the specific medium, constitutes the new style and is a "system
of non-culture, to which one might even concede a certain 'unity
of style' if it really made any sease to :>peak of stylized bar-
barity." 1
The universal imposition of this stylized mode can even go
beyond what is quasi-officially sanctioned or forbidden; today a
hit song is more readily forgiven for not observing the 32 beats
or the compass of the ninth than for containing even the most
clandestine melodic or harmonic detail which does not conform
to the idiom. Whenever Orson Welles offends against the tricks
of the trade, he is forgiven because his departures from the
norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the
more strongly to confirm the validity of the system. The con-
straint of the technically-conditioned idiom which stars and
directors have to produce as "nature" so that the people can
appropriate it, extends to such fine nuances that they almost
attain the subtlety of the devices of an avant-garde work as
against those of truth. The rare capacity minutely to fulfill the
obligations of the natural idiom in all branches of the culture
industry becomes the criterion of efficiency. What and how they
say it must be measurable by everyday language, as in logical
positivism. The producers are experts. The idiom demands an
astounding productive power, which it absorbs and squanders.
In a diabolical way it has overreached the culturally conservative
distinction between genuine and artificial style. A style might be
called artificial which is imposed from without on the refractory
impulses of a form. But in the culture industry every element of
the subject matter has its origin in the same apparatus as that
jargon whose stamp it bears. The quarrels in which the artistic
experts become involved with sponsor and censor about a lie
going beyond the bounds of credibility are evidence not so
1. Nietzsche, Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen, Werke, Vol. I (Leipzig,
1917), p. 187.
ERIC 60
much of an inner aesthetic tension as of a divergence of inter-
ests. The reputation of the specialist, in which a last remnant of
objective independence sometimes finds refuge, conflicts with
the business politics of the Church, or the concern which is
manufacturing the cultural commodity. But the thing iiself has
been essentially objectified and made viable before the estab-
lished authorities began to argue about it. Even before Zanuck
acquired her, Saint Bernadette was regarded by her latter-day
hagiographer as brilliant propaganda for all interested parties.
That is what became of the emotions of the character. Hence
the style of the culture industry, which no longer has to test
itself against any refractory material, is also the negation of
styie. The reconciliation of the general and particular, of the
rule and the specific demands of the subject matter, the achieve-
ment of which alone gives essential, meaningful content to style,
is futile because there has ceased to be the slightest tension be-
tween opposite poles: these concordant extremes are dismally
identical; the general can replace the particular, and vice versa.
Nevertheless, this caricature of style does not amount to
something beyond the genuine style of the past. In the culture
industry ine notion of genuine style is seen to be the aesthetic
equivalent of domination. Style considered as mere aesthetic
regularity is a romantic dream of the past. The unity of style not
only of :Iie Christian Middle Ages but of the Renaissance ex-
presses in each case the different structure of social power, and
not the obscure experience of the oppressed in which tlu general
was enclosed. The great artists were never those who embodied a
wholly flawless and perfect style, but those who used style as a
way of hardening themselves against the chaotic expression of
suffering, as a negative truth. The style of their works gave what
was expressed that force without which life flows away un-
heard. Those very art forms which are known as classical, such
as Mozart's music, contain objective trends which represent
something different to the style which they incarnate. As late as
Schonberg and Picasso, the great artists have retained a mistrust
of style, and at crucial points have subordinated it to the logic of
the matter. What Dadaists and Expressionists called the un-
truth of style as such triumphs today in the sung jargon of a
crooner, in the carefully contrived elegance of a film star, and
even in the admirable expertise of a photograph of a peasant's
squalid hut. Style represents a promise in every work of art.
That which is expressed is subsumed through style into the domi-
nant forms of generality, into the language of music, painting,
or words, in the hope that it will be reconciled thus with the idea
of true generality. This promise held out by the work of art that
it will create truth by lending new shape to the conventional
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social forms is as necessary as it is hypocritical. It uncondition-
ally posits the real forms of life as it is by suggesting that fulfill-
ment l»es in their aesthetic derivatives. To this extent the claim
of art is always ideology too. However, only in this confronta-
tion with tradition of which style is the record can art express
suffering. That factor in a work of art which enables it to tran-
scend reality certainly cannot be detached from style; but it does
not consist of the harmony actually realized, of any doubtful
unity of form and content, within and without, of individual and
society; it is to be found in those features in which discrepancy
appears: in the necessary failure of the passionate striving for
identity. Instead of exposing itself to this failure in which the
style of the great work of art has always achieved self-negation,
the inferior work has always relied on its similarity with others
— on a surrogate identity.
In the culture industry this imitation finally becomes abso-
lute. Having ceased to be anything but style, it reveals the lat-
ter's secret: obedience to the social hierarchy. Today aesthetic
barbarity completes what has threatened the creations of the
spirit since they were gathered together as culture and neutral-
ized. To speak of culture was always contrary to culture. Cul-
ture as a common denominator already contains in embryo that
schematization and process of cataloging and classification
which bring culture within the sphere of administration. And
it is precisely the industrialized, the consequent, subsumption
whiclv entirely accords with this notion of culture. By subordi-
nating in the same way and to the same end all areas of intel-
lectual creation, by occupying men's senses from the time they
leave the factory in the evening to the time they clock in again
the next morning with matter that bears the impress of the
labor process they themselves have to sustain throughout the
day, this subsumption mockingly satisfies the concept of a uni-
fied culture which the philosophers of personality contrasted
with mass culture.
And so the culture industry, the most rigid of all styles, proves
to be the goal of liberalism, which is reproached for its lack of
style. Not only do its categories and contents derive from liber-
alism — domesticated naturalism as well as operetta and revue
— but the modern culture monopolies form the economic area
in which, together with the corresponding entrepreneurial types,
for the time being some part of its sphere of operation survives,
despite the process of disintegration elsewhere. It is still possible
to make one's way in entertainment, if one is not too obstinate
about one's own concerns, and proves appropriately pliable.
Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in. Once his par-
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ticular brand of deviation from the norm has been noted by the
industry, he belongs to it as does the land-reformer to capital-
ism. Realistic dissidence is the trademark of anyone who has a
new idea in business. In the public voice of modern society
accusations are seldom audible; if they are, the perceptive can
already detect signs that the dissident will soon be reconciled.
The more immeasurable the gap between chorus and leaders,
the more certainly there is room at the top for everybody who
demonstrates his superiority by well-planned originality. Hence,
in the culture industry, too, the liberal tendency to give full
scope to its able men survives. To do this for the efficient today
is still the function of the market, which is otherwise proficiently
controlled; aS for the market's freedom, in the high period of
art as elsewhere, it was freedom for the stupid to starve. Sig-
nificantly, the system of the culture industry comes from the
more liberal industrial rations, and all its characteristic media,
such as movies, radio, jazz, and magazines, flourish there. Its
progress, to be sure, had its origin in the general laws of capital.
Gaumont and Pathe, Ullstein and Hugenberg followed the in-
ternational trend with some success; Europe's economic depen-
dence on the United States after war and inflation was a con-
tributory factor. The belief that the barbarity of the culture
industry is a result of "cultural lag," of the fact that the Amer-
ican consciousness did not keep up with the growth of tech-
nology, is quite wrong. It was pre-Fascist Europe which did not
keep up with the trend toward the culture monopoly. But it was
this very lag which left intellect and creativity some degree of
independence and enabled its last representatives to exist — how-
ever dismally. In Germany the failure of democratic control to
permeate life had led to a paradoxical situation. Many things
were exempt from the market mechanism which had invaded
the Western countries. The German educational system, uni-
versities, theaters with artistic standards, great orchestras, and
museums enjoyed protection. The political powers, state and
municipalities, which had inherited such institutions from abso-
lutism, had left them with a measure of the freedom from the
forces of power which dominates the market, just as princes and
feudal lords had done up, to the nineteenth century. This
strengthened art in this late phase against the verdict of supply
and demand, and increased its resistance far beyond the actual
degree of protection. In the market itself the tribute of a qual-
ity for which no use had been found was turned into purchasing
power; hi this way, respectable literary and music publishers
could help authors who yielded little more in the way of profit
than the respect of the connoisseur. But what completely fet-
tered the artist was the pressure (and the accompanying drastic
m£ G3
64
threats), always to fit into business life as an aesthetic expert.
Formerly, like Kant and Hume, they signed their letters "Your
most humble and obedient servant," and undermined the foun-
dations of throne and altar. Today they address heads of gov-
ernment by their first names, yet in every artistic activity they
are subject to their illiterate masters. The analysis Tocqueville
offered a century ago has in the meantime proved wholly ac-
curate. Under the private culture monopoly it is a fact that
"tyranny leaves, the body free and directs its attack at the soul.
The ruler no longer says: You must think as I do or die. He
says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your property,
everything shall remain yours, but from this day on you are a
stranger among us." 2 Not to conform means to be rendered
powerless, economically and therefore spiritually — to be "self-
employed." When the outsider is excluded from the concern, he
can only too easily be accused of incompetence. Whereas today
in material production the mechanism of supply and demand is
disintegrating, in the superstructure it still operates as a check
in the rulers' favor. The consumers are the workers and em-
ployees, the farmers and lower middle class. Capitalist produc-
tion so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless vic-
tims to what is offered them. As naturally as the ruled always
took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did
the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated
by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Im-
movably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them.
The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which
is done them is a greater force than the cunning of the authori-
ties. It is stronger even than the rigorism of the Hays Office, just
as in certain great times in history it has inflamed greater forces
that were turned against it, namely, the terror of the tribunals.
It calls for Mickey Rooney in preference to the tragic Garbo,
for Donald Duck instead of Betty Boop. The industry submits
to the vote which it has itself inspired. What is a loss for the
firm v.iiich cannot fully exploit a contract with a declining star
is a legitimate expense for the system as a whole. By craftily
sanctioning the demand for rubbish it inaugurates total har-
mony. The connoisseur and the expert are despised for their
pretentious claim to know better than the others, even though
culture is democratic and distributes its privileges to all. In view
of the ideologcal truce, the conformism of the buyers and the
effrontery of the producers who supply them prevail. The result
is a constant reproduction of the same thing.
2. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Democratic en Amirique, Vol. II
(Paris, 1864), p. 151.
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65
A constant sameness governs the relationship to the past as
well. What is new about the phase of mass culture compared
with the late liberal stage is the exclusion of the new. The
machine rotates on the same spot. While determining consump-
tion it excludes the untried a risk. The movie-makers distrust
any manuscript which is not reassuringly backed by a bestseller.
Yet for this very reason there is never-ending talk of ideas,
novelty, and surprise, of what is taken for granted but has never
existed. Tempo and dynamics serve this trend. Nothing remains
as of old; everything has to run incessantly, to keep moving. For
only the universal triumph of the rhythm of mechanical produc-
tion and reproduction promises that nothing changes, and noth-
ing unsuitable will appear. Any additions to the well-proven
culture inventory are too much of a speculation. The ossified
forms— such as the sketch, short story, problem film, or hit
song — are the standardized average of late liberal taste, dic-
tated with threats from above. The people at the top in the
culture agencies, who work in harmony as only one manager
can with another, whether he comes from the rag trade or from
college, have long since reorganized and rationalized the objec-
tive spirit. One might think that an omnipresent authority had
sifted the material and drawn up an official catalog of cultural
commodities to provide a smooth supply of available mass-
produced lines. The ideas are written in the cultural firmament
where they had already been numbered by Plato— and were in-
deed numbers, incapable of increase and immutable.
Amusement and all the elements of the culture industry ex-
isted long before the latter came into existence. Now they are
taken over from above and brought up to date. The culture
industry can pride itself on having energetically executed the pre-
viously clumsy transposition of art into the sphere of consump-
tion, on making this a principle, on divesting amusement of its
obtrusive naivetes and improving the type of commodity. The
;nore absolute it became, the more ruthless it was in forcing
every outsider either into bankruptcy or into a syndicate, and
became more refined and elevated — until it ended up as a syn-
thesis of Beethoven and the Casino de Paris. It enjoys a double
victory: the truth it extinguishes without it can reproduce at
will as a lie within. "Light" art as $uch, distraction, is not a
decadent form. Anyone who complains that it is a betrayal of
the ideal of pure expression is under an illusion about society.
The purity of bourgeois art, which hypostasized itself as a world
of freedom in contrast to what was happening in the material
world, was from the beginning bought with the exclusion of the
lower classes — with whose cause, the real universality, art keeps
faith precisely by its freedom from the ends of the false univer-
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66
sality. Serious art has been withheld from those for whom the
hardship and oppression of life make a mockery of seriousness,
and who must be glad if they can use time not spent at the pro*
duction line just to keep going. Light art has been the shadow
of autonomous art. It is the social bad conscience of serious art.
The truth which the latter necessarily lacked because of its
social premises gives the other the semblance of legitimacy. The
division itself is the truth: it does at least express the negativity
of the culture which the different spheres constitute. Least of all
can the antithesis be reconciled by absorbing light mto serious
art, or vice versa. But that is what the culture industry attempts.
The eccentricity of the circus, peepshow, and brothel is as em-
barrassing to it as that of Schonberg and Karl Kraus. And so
the jazz musician Benny Goodman appears with the Budapest
string quartet, more pedantic rhythmically than any philhar-
monic clarinettist, while the style of the Budapest players is as
uniform and sugary as that of Guy Lombardo. But what is sig-
nificant is not vulgarity, stupidity, and lack of polish. The cul-
ture industry did away with yesterday's rubbish by its own per-
fection, and by forbidding and domesticating the amateurish,
although it constantly allows gross blunders without which tl
standard of the exalted style cannot be perceived. But what is new
is that the irreconcilable elements of culture, art and distraction,
are subordinated to one end and subsumed under one false
formula: the totality of the culture industry. It consists of repe-
tition. That its characteristic innovations are never anything
more than improvements of mass reproduction is not external
to the system. It is with good reason that the interest of innu-
merable consumers is directed to the technique, and not to the
contents — which are stubbornly repeated, outworn, and by now
half-discredited. The social power which the spectators worship
shows itself more effectively in the omnipresence of the stereo-
type imposed by technical skill than in the stale ideologies for
which the ephemeral contents stand in.
Nevertheless the culture industry remains the entertainment
business. Its influence over the consumers h established by en-
tertainment; that will ultimately be broken not by an outright
decree, but by the hostility inherent in the principle of enter-
tainment to what is greater than itself. Since all the trends of the
culture industry ar: profoundly embedded in the public by the
whole social process, they ar* encouraged by the survival of
the market in this area. Demand has not yet been replaced by
simple obedience. As is well known, the major reorganization
of the film industry shortly before World War I, the material
prerequisite of its expansion, was precisely its deliberate accep-
tance of the public's needs as recorded at the box-oflice — a pro-
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66
cedure which was hardly thought necessary in the pioneering
days of the screen. The same opinion is held today by the cap-
tains of the film industry, who take as their criterion the more
or less phenomenal song hits but wisely never have recourse to
the judgment of truth, the opposite criterion. Business is their
ideology. It is quite correct that the power of the culture indus-
try resides in its identification with a manufactured need, and
not in simple contrast to it, even if this contrast were one of
complete power and complete powerlessness. Amusement under
late capitalism is the prolongation of work. It is sought after as
an escape from the mechanized work process, and to recruit
strength in order to be able to cope with it again. But at the
same time mechanization has such power over a man's leisure
and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture
of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-
images of the work process itself. The ostensible content is
merely a faded foreground; what sinks in is the automatic suc-
cession of standardized operations. What happens at work, in
the factory, or in the office can only be escaped from by ap-
proximation to it in one's leisure time. All amusement suffers
from this incurable malady. Pleasure hardens into boredom be-
cause, if it is to remain pleasure, it must not demand any effort
and therefore moves rigorously in the worn grooves of associa-
tion. No independent thinking must be expected from the audi-
ence: the product prescribes every reaction: not by its natural
structure (which collapses under reflection), but by signals.
Any logical connection calling for mental effort is painstakingly
avoided. As far as possible, developments must follow from
the immediately preceding situation and never from the idea of
the whole. For the attentive movie-goer any individual scene
will give him the whole thing. Even the set pattern itself still
seems dangerous, offering some meaning — wretched as it might
be — where only meaningiessness is acceptable. Often the plot
is maliciously deprived of the development demanded by char-
acters and matter according to the old pattern. Instead, the
next step is what )he script writer takes to be the most striking
effect in the particular situation. Banal though elaborate sur-
prise interrupts the story-line. The tendency mischievously to
fall back on pure nonsense, which was a legitimate part of pop-
ular art, farce and clowning, right up to Chaplin and the Marx
Brothers, is most obvious in the unpretentious kinds. This ten-
dency has completely asserted itself in the text of the novelty
song, in the thriller movie, and in cartoons, although in films
starring Greer Garson and Bette Davis the unity of the socio-
psychological case study provides something approximating a
claim to a consistent plot. The idea itself, together with the ob-
6?
68
jccls of comedy and terror, is massacred and fragmented. Nov-
elty songs have always existed on a contempt for meaning
which, as predecessors and successors of psychoanalysis, they
reduce to the monotony of sexual symbolism. Today detective
and adventure films no longer give the audience the opportunity
to experience the resolution. In the on-ironic varieties of the
genre, it has also to rest content with the simple horror of situa-
tions which have almost ceased to be linked in any way.
Cartoons were once exponents of fantasy as opposed to ra-
tionalism. They ensured that justice was done to the creatures
and objects they electrified, by giving the maimed specimens a
second life. All they do today is to confirm the victory of tech-
nological reason over truth. A few years ago they had a con-
sistent plot which only broke up in the final moments in a crazy
chase, a,td thus resembled the old slapstick comedy. Now, how-
ever, time relations have shifted. In the very first sequence a
motive is stated so that in the course of the action destruction
can get to work on it: with ths audience in pursuit, the protag-
onist becomes the worthless object of general violence. The
quantity of organized amusement changes into the quality of
organized cruelty. The self-elected censors of the film industry
(with whom it enjoys a close relationship) watch o v er the un-
folding of the crime, which is as drawn-out as a hunt. Fun re-
places the pleasure which the sight of an embrace would
allegedly afford, and postpones satisfaction till the day of the
pogrom. In so far as cartoons do any more than accustom the
senses to the new tempo, they hammer into every brain' the
old lesson that continuous friction, the breaking down of all
individual' resistance, is the condition of life in this society.
Donald Dusk in the cartoons and the unfortunate in real life get
their thrashing so that the audience can learn to take their own
punishment.
The enjoyment of the violence suffered by the movie char-
acter turns int" violence against the spectator, and distraction
into exertion. Nothing that the experts have devised as a stimu-
lant must escape the weary eye; no stupidity is allowed in the
face of all the trickery; one has to follow everything and even
display the smart responses shown and recommended in the
film. This raises the question whether the culture industry ful-
fills the function of diverting minds which it boasts about so
loudly. If most of the radio stations and movie theaters were
closed down, the consumers would probably not lose so very
much. To walk from the street into the movie uieater is no
longer to enter a world of dream; as soon as the very existence
of these institutions no longer made it obligatory to use them,
there would be no great urge to do so. Such closures would not
ERIC 6C
69
be reactionary machine wrecking The disappointment would
be felt not so much by the enthusiasts as by the slow-witted,
who are the ones who suffer for everything anyhow. In spite of
the films which are intended to complete her integration, the
housewife finds in the darkness of the movie theater a place of
refuge where she can sit for a few hours with nobody watching,
just as she used to look out of the window when there were still
homes and rest in the evening. The unemployed in the great
cities find coolness in summer and warmth in winter in these
temperature-controlled locations. Otherwise, despite its size,
this bloated pleasure apparatus adds no dignity to man's lives.
The idea of "fully exploiting" available technical resources and
the facilities for aesthetic mass consumption is part of the eco-
nomic system which refuses to exploit resources to abolish
hunger.
The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what
it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its
plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged;
the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is
illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never
be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu. In
front of the appetite stimulated by all those brilliant names and
images there is finally set no more than a commendation of the
depressing everyday world it sought to escape. Of course works
of art were not sexual exhibitions either. However, by repre-
senting deprivation as negative, they retracted, as it were, the
prostitution of the impulse and rescued by mediation what was
denied. The secret of aesthetic sublimation is its representation
of fulfillment as a broken promise. The culture industry does
not sublimate; it represses. By repeatedly exposing the objects
of desire, breasts in a clinging sweater or the naked torso of the
athletic hero, it only stimulates the unsublimated forepleasure
which habitual deprivation has long since reduced to a mas-
ochistic semblance. There is no erotic situation which, while
insinuating and exciting, does not fail to indicate unmistakably
that things can never go that far. The Hays Office merely con-
firms the ritual of Tantalus that the culture industry has estab-
lished anyway. Works of art are ascetic and unashamed; the
culture industry is pornographic and prudish. Love is down-
graded to romance. And, after the descent, much is permitted;
even license as a marketable speciality has its quota bearing
the trade description "daring." The mass production of the
sexual automatically achieves its repression. Because of his
ubiquity, the film star with whom one is meant to fall in love is
from the outset a copy of himself. Every tenor voice comes to
sound like a Caruso record, and the "natural" faces of Texas
ERIC 09
70
girls are like the successful models by whom Hollywood has
typecast them. The mechanical reproduction of beauty, which
reactionary cultural fanaticism wholeheartedly serves in its me-
thodical idolization of individuality, leaves no room for that
unconscious idolatry which was once essential to beauty. The
triumph over beauty is celebrated by humor— the Schaden-
freude that every successful deprivation calls forth. There is
laughter because there is nothing to laugh at. Laughter, whether
conciliatory or terrible, always occurs when some fear passes.
It indicates liberation either from physical danger or from the
grip of logic. Conciliatory laughter is heard as the echo of an
escape from power; the wrong kind overcomes fear by capitu-
lating to the forces which are to be feared. It is the echo of
power as something inescapable. Fun is a medicinal bath. The
pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it. It makes laughter
the instrument of the fraud practised on happiness. Moments of
happiness are without laughter; only operettas and films portray
sex to the accompaniment of resounding laughter. But Baude-
laire is as devoid of humour as Holderlin. In the false society
laughter is a disease which has attacked happiness and is draw-
ing it into its worthless totality. To laugh at something is always
to deride it, and the life which, according to Bergson, in laugh-
ter breaks through the barrier, is actually an invading barbaric
life, self-assertion prepared to paraac its liberation from any
scruple when the social occasion arises. Such a laughing audi-
ence is a parody of humanity. Its memV/s are monads, all
dedicated to the pleasure of being ready for anything at the ex-
pense of everyone else. Their harmony is a caricature of soli-
darity. What is fiendish about this false laughter is that it is a
compelling parody of the best, which is conciliatory. Delight is
austere: res severa verum gaudium. The monastic theory that
not asceticism but the sexual act denotes the renunciation of
attainable bliss receives negative confirmation in the gravity of
the lover who with foreboding commits bis life to the fleeting
ioment. In the culture industry, jovial denial takes the place
of the pain found in ecstasy and in asceticism. The supreme
law is that they shall not satisfy their desires at any price; they
jnust laugh and be content with laughter. In every product of
the culture industry, the permanent denial imposed by civiliza-
tion is oace again unmistakably demonstrated and inflicted on
its victims. To offer and to deprive them of something is one
and the same. This is what happens in erotic films. Precisely be-
caure it must never take place, everything centers upon copula-
tion. In films it is more strictly forbidden for an illegitimate
relationship to be admitted without the parties being punished
than for a millionaire's future son-in-law to be active in the
9
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71
labor movement. In contrast to the liberal era, industrialized as
well as popular culture may wax indignant at capitalism, but it
cannot renounce the threat of castration. This is fundamental.
It outlasts the organized acceptance of the uniformed seen in
the films which are produced to that end, and in reality. What is
decisive today is no longer puritanism, although it still asserts
itself in the form of women's organizations, but the necessity
inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not for a
moment to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible.
The principle dictates that he should be shown all his needs as
capable of fulfillment, but that those needs should be so pre-
determined that he feels himself to be the eternal consumer, the
object of the culture industry. Not only does it make him believe
that the deception it practices is satisfaction, but it goes further
and implies that, whatever the state of affairs, he must put up
with what is offered. The escape from everyday drudgery which
the whole culture industry promises may be compared to the
daughter's abduction in the cartoon: the father h holding the
ladder in the dark. The paradise offered by the culture industry
is the same old drudgery. Both escape and elopement are pre-
designed to lead back to the starting point. Pleasure promotes
the resignation which it ought to help to for/t.
Amusement, if released from every restraint, would not only
be the antithesis of art but its extreme role. The Mark Twain
absurdity with which the American culture industry flirts at
times might be a corrective of ad. The more seriously the latter
regards the incompatibility with life, the more it resembles the
seriousness of life, its antithesis; the more effort it devotes to
developing wholly from its own forma! law, the more effort
it demands from the intelligence to neutralize its burden. In
some revue films, and especially in the grotesque and the fun-
nies, the possibility of this negation does glimmer for a few mo-
ments. But of course it cannot happen. Pure amusement in its
consequence, relaxed self-surrender to all kinds of associations
and happy nonsense, is cut short by the amusement on the mar-
ket: instead, it is interrupted by a surrogate overall meaning
which the culture industry insists on giving to its products, and
yet misuses as a mere pretext for bringing in the stars, Biog-
raphies and other simple stories patch the fragments of non-
sense into an idiotic plot. We do not have the cap and bells of
the jester but the bunch of keys of capitalist reason, which even
screens the pleasure of achieving success. Every kiss in the
revue film has to contribute to the career of the boxer, or some
hit song expert or other whose rise to fame is being glorified, The
deception is not that the culture industry supplies amusement
but that it ruins the fun by allowing business considerations to
72
involve it in the ideological cliches of a culture in the process
of self-liquidation. Ethics and taste cut short unrestrained amuse-
ment as "naive"— naivete is thought to be as bad as intellec-
tualism — and even restrict technical possibilities. The culture
industry is corrupt; not because it is a sinful Babylon but be-
cause it is a :athedral dedicated to elevated pleasure On all
levels, from Hemingway to Emil Ludwig, from Mrs. Miniver to
the Lone Ranger, from Toscanini to Guy Lombardo, there is
untruth in 'the intellectual content taken ready-made from art
and science. The culture industry does retain a trace of some-
thing better in those features which bring it close to the circus,
in the self-justifying and nonsensical skill of riders, acrobats
and clowns, in the "defense and justification of physical as
against intellectual art." 3 But the refuges of a mindless artistry
which represents what is human as opposed to the social mecha-
nism are being relentlessly hunted down by a schematic reason
which compels everything to prove its significance and effect.
The consequence is that the nonsensical at the bottom disap-
pears as utterly as the sense in works of art at the top.
The fusion of culture and entertainment that is taking place
today leads not only to a depravation of culture, but inevitably
to an intellectualization of amusement. This is evident from the
fact that only the copy appears: in the movie theater, the photo-
graph; on the radio, the recording. In the age of liberal expansion,
amusement lived on the unshaken belief in the future: things
would remain as they were and even improve. Today this belief
is once more intellectualized; it becomes so faint that it loses
sight of any goal and is little more than a magic-lantern show
for those with their backs to reality. It consists of the meaning-
ful emphases which, parallel to life itself, the screen play puts
on the smart fellow, the engineer, the capable girl, ruthlessness
disguised as character, interest in sport, and finally automobiles
and cigarettes, even where the entertainment is not put down to
the advertising account of the immediate producers but to that
of the system as a whole. Amusement itself becomes an ideal,
taking the place of the higher things of which it completely de-
prives the masses by repeating them in a manner even more
stereotyped than the slogans paid for by advertising interests.
Inwardness, the subjectively restricted form of truth, was always
more at the mercy of the outwardly powerful than they im-
agined. The culture industry turns it into ar* open lie. It has now
become mere twaddle which is acceptable in religious best-
sellers, psychological films, and women's serials as an embar-
rassingly agreeable garnish, so that genuine personal emotion in
3. Frank Wedekind, Gesammelte Wcrkc, Vol. IX (Munich, 1921), p.
426.
ERIC 72
73
real life can be all the more reliably controlled. In this sense
amusement carries out that purgation of the emotions which
Aristotle once attributed to tragedy and Mortimer Adler now
allows to movies. The culture industry reveals the truth about
catharsis as it did about style.
The stronger the positions of the culture industry become, the
more summarily it can deal with consumers' needs, producing
them, controlling them, disciplining them, and even withdraw-
ing amusement: no limits are set to cultural progress of this
kind. But the tendency is immanent in the principle of amuse-
ment itself, which is enlightened in a bourgeois sense. If the
need for amusement was in large measure the creation of in-
dustry, which used the subject as a means of recommending the
work to the masses — the oleograph by the dainty morsel it de-
picted, or the cake mix by a picture of a cake — amusement al-
ways reveals the influence of business, the sales talk, the quack's
spiel. But the original affinity of business and amusement is
shown in the latter's specific significance: to defend society. To
be pleased means to say Yes. It is possible only by insulation
from the totality of the social process, by desensitization and,
from the first, by senselessly sacrificing the inescapable claim of
every work, however inane, within its limits to reflect the whole.
Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget
suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It
is flight; not, as is asserted, flight from a wretched reality, but from
the last remaining thought of resistance. The liberation which
amusement promises is freedom from thought and from negation.
The effrontery of the rhetorical question, "What do people
want?" lies in the fact that it is addressed — as if to reflective indi-
viduals — to those very people who are deliberately to be deprived
of this individuality. Even when the public does — exceptionally —
rebel against the pleasure industry, all it can muster is that feeble
resistance which that very industry has inculcated in it. Never-
theless, it has become increasingly difficult to keep people in
this condition. The rate at which they are reduced to stupidity
must not fall behind the rate at which their intelligence is in-
creasing. In this age of statistics the masses are too sharp to
identify themselves with the millionaire on the screen, and too
slow-witted to ignore the law of the largest number. Ideology
conceals itself in the calculation of probabilities. Not everyone
will be lucky one day — but the person who draws the winning
ticket, or rather the one who is marked out to do so by > higher
power — usualiy by the pleasure industry itcelf, which is repre-
sented as unceasingly in search of talent. Those discovered by
talent scouts and then publicized on a vast scale by the studio
ERJC 73
74
are ideal types of the new dependent average. Of course, the
starlet is meant to symbolize the t)pist in such a way that the
splendid evening dress seems meant for the actress as distinct
from the real girl. The girls in the audience not only feel that
they could be on the screen, but realize the great gulf separating
them from it. Only one girl can draw the lucky ticket, only one
man can win the prize, and if, mathematically, all have the
same chance, yet this is so infinitesimal for each one that he or
she ,/HI do best to write it off and rejoice in the other's success,
which might just as well have been his or hers, and somehow
never is. Whenever the culture industry still issues an invitation
naively to identify, it is immediately withdrawn. No one can
escape from himself any more. Once a member of the audience
could see his own wedding in the one shown in the film. Now
the lucky actois on the screen are copies of the same category
as every member of the public, but such equality only demon-
strates the insurmountable separation of the human elements.
The perfect similarity is the absolute difference. The identity of
the category forbids that of the individual cases. Ironically, man
as a member of a species has been made a reality by the culture
industry. Now any person signifies only those attributes by
which he can replace everybody else: he is interchangeable, a
copy. As an individual he is completely expendable and utterly
insignificant, and this is just what he finds out when time de-
prives him of this similarity. This changes the inner structure of
the religion of success — otherwise strictly maintained. Increas-
ing emphasis is laid not on the path per aspera ad astra (which
presupposes hardship and effort), but on winning a prize. The
clement of blind chance in the routine decision about which
song deserves to be a hit and which extra a Iieroine is stressed
by the ideology. Movies emphasize chance. By stopping at noth-
ing to ensure that all the characters are essentially alike, with
the exception of the villain, and by excluding non-conforming
faces (for example, those which, like Garbo'c, do not look as
if you could say "Hello sister!" to them), life is made easier for
movie-goers at first. They are assured that they are all right as
they are, that they could do just as well and that nothing be-
yond their powers will be asked of them. But at the same time
they are given a hint that any effort would be useless because
even bourgeois luck no longer has any connection with the cal-
culable effect of their own work. They take the hint. Fundamen-
tally they all recognize chance (by which one occasionally
makes his fortune) as the other side of planning. Precisely be-
cause the forces of society are so deployed in the direction of
rationality that anyone might become an engineer or manager,
it has ceased entirely to be a rational matter who the one will
75
be in whom society will invest training or confidence for such
functions. Chance and planning become one and the same thing,
because, given men's equality, individual success and failure —
right up to the top — lose any eco omic meaning. Chance itself
is planned, not because it affects any particular individual but
precisely because it is believed to play a vital part. It serves the
planners as an alibi, and makes it seem that the complex of
transactions and measures into which life has been transformed
leaves scope for spontaneous and direct relations between man.
This freedom is symbcHzed in the various media of the culture
industry by the arbitrary selection of average individuals. In a
magazine's detailed accounts of the modestly magnificent pleas-
ure-trips it has arranged for the lucky person, preferably a
stenotypist (who has probably won the competition because of
her contacts with local bigwigs), the powerlessness of all is re-
flected. They are mere matter — so much so that those in con-
trol can take someone up into their heaven and Liirow him out
again: his rights and his work count for nothing. Industry is
interested in people merely as customers and employees, and
has in fact reduced mankind as a whole and each of its elements
tr this all-embracing formula. According to the ruling aspect at
the time, ideology emphasizes plan or chance, technology or
life, civilization or nature. As employees, men are reminded of
the rational organization and urged to fit in like sensible people.
As customers, the freedom of choice, the charm of novelty, is
demonstrated to them on the screen or in the press by means of
the human and personal anecdote. In either case they remain
objects.
The less the culture industry has to promise, the less it can
offer a meaningful explanation of life, and the emptier is the
ideology it disseminates. Even the abstract ideals of the har-
mony and beneficence of society are too concrete in this age of
universal publicity. We have even learned how to identify ab-
stract concepts as s^es propaganda. Language based entirely on
truth simply arouses impatience to get on with the business deal
it is probably advancing. The words that are not means appear
senseless; the others seem to be fiction, untrue. Value judg-
ments are taken either as advertising or as empty talk. Accord-
ingly ideology has been made vague and noncommittal, and
thus neither clearer nor weaker. Its very vagueness, its almost
scientific aversion from committing itself to anything which
cannot be verified, acts as an instrument of domination. It be-
comes a vigorous and prearranged promulgation of the status
quo. The culture industry tends to make itself the embodi-
ment of authoritative pronouncements, and thus the irrefutable
prophet of the prevailing order. It skilfully steers a winding
ERLC
75
76
course between the cliffs of demonstrable misinformation and
manifest truth, faithfully reproducing the phenomenon whose
opaqueness blocks any insight and installs the ubiquitous and
intact phenomenon as ideal. Ideology is split into the photograph
of stubborn life and the naked lie about its meaning — which is
not expressed but suggested and yet drummed in. To demon-
strate its divine nature, reality is always repeated in a purely
cynical way. Such a photological proof is of course not strin-
gent, but it is overpowering. Anyone who doubts the power of
monotony is a fool. The culture industry refutes the objection
made against it just as well as that against the world which it
impartially duplicates. The only choice is either to join in or to
be left behind: those provincials who have recourse to eternal
beauty and the amateur stage in preference to the cinema and
the radio are already — politically — at the point to which mass
culture drives its supporters. It is sufficiently hardened io de-
ride as ideology, if need be, the old wish-fulfillments, the father-
ideal and absolute feeling. The new ideology h'is as its objects
the world as such. It makes use of the worship of facts by no
more than elevating a disagreeable existence into the world of
fact; in representing it meticulously. This transference makes
existence itself a substitute for meaning and right. Whatever
the camera reproduces is beautiful. The disappointment of the
prospect that one might be the typist who wins the world trip is
matched by the disappointing appearance of the accurately
photographed areas which the voyage might include. Not Italy
is offered, but evidence that it exists. A film can even go so far
as to show the Paris in which the American girl thinks she will
still her desire as a hopelessly desolate place, thus driving her
the more inexorably into the arms of the smart American boy
she could have met at home anyhow. That this goes on, that, in
its most recent phase, the system itself reproduces the life of
those of whom it consists instead of immediately doing away
with them, is even put down to its credit as giving it meaning
and worth. Continuing and continuing to join in are given as
justification for the blind persistence of the system and even for
its immutability. What repeats itself is healthy, like the natural
or industrial cycle. The same babies grin eternally out of the
magazines; the jazz machine will pound away for ever. In spite
of all the progress in reproduction techniques, in controls and
the specialities, and in spite of all the restless industry, the bread
which the culture industry offers man is the stone of the stereo-
type. It draws on the life cycle, on the well-founded amazement
that mothers, in spite of everything, still go on bearing children
and that the wheels still do not grind to a halt. This serves to
confirm He immutability of circumstances. The ears of corn
ERIC 76
blowing in the wind at the end of Chaplin's The Great Dictator
give the lb to the anti-Fascist plea for freedom. They are like
the blond hair of the German girl whose camp life is photo-
graphed by the Nazi film company in the summer breeze. Na-
ture is viewed by the mechanism of social domination as a
healthy contrast to society, and is therefore denatured. Pictures
showing green trees, a blue sky, and moving clouds make these
aspects of nature into so many cryptograms for factory chim-
neys and service stations. On the o'bsr hand, wheels and ma-
chine components must seem expressive, having been degraded
to the status of agents of the spirit or trees and clouds. Nature
and technology are mobilized against all opposition; and we
have a falsified memento of liberal society, in which people sup-
posedly wallowed in erotic plush-lined bedrooms instead of tak-
ing open-air baths as in the case today, or experiencing break-
downs in prehistoric Benz models instead of shooting off with
the speed of a rocket from A (where one is anyhow) to B
(where everything ; s just the same). The triumph of the gigan-
tic concern over the initiative of the entrepreneur is praised by
the culture industry as the persistence of entrepreneurial initia-
tive. The enemy who is already defeated, the thinking individual,
is the enemy fought. The resurrection In Germany of the anti-
bourgeois "Haus Sonnenstosser," and the pleasure felt when
watching Life with Father, have one and the same meaning.
In one respect, admittedly, this hollow ideology is in deadly
earnest: everyone is provided for. "No one must go hungry or
thirsty; if anyone does, he's for the concentration camp!" This
joke from Hitler's Germany might shine forth as a maxim from
above all the portals of the culture industry. With sly naivct6,
it presupposes the most recent characteristic of society: that it
can easily find out who its supporters are. Everybody is guar-
anteed formal freedom. No one is officially responsible for what
he thinks. Instead everyone is enclosed at an early age in a sys-
tem of churches, clubs, professional associations, and other such
concerns, which constitute the most sensitive instrument of so-
cial control. Anyone who wants tc avoid ruin must see that he
is not found wanting when weighed in the scales of this appa-
ratus. Otherwise he will lag behind in life, and finally perish. In
every career, and especially in the liberal professions, expert
knowledge is linked with prescribed standards of conduct; this
can easily lead to the illusion that expert knowledge is the only
tK% that counts. In fact, it is part of the irrational planning of
this society that it reproduces to a certain degree only the lives
of its faithful members. The standard of life enjoyed corre-
sponds very closely to the degree to which classes and individ-
78
uals are essentially bound up with the system. The manager can
be relied upon, as can the lesser employee Dagwood — as he is
in the comic pages or in real life. Anyone who goes cold and
hungry, even if his prospects were once good, is branded. He is
an outsider; and, apart from certain capital crimes, the most
mortal of sins is to be an outsider. In films he sometimes, and
as an exception, becomes an original, the object of maliciously
indulgent humor; but usually he is the villain, and is identified
as such at first appearance, long before the action really gets
going: hence avoiding any suspicion that society would turn on
those of good will. Higher up the scale, in fact, a kind of wel-
fare state is coming into being today. In order to keep their
own positions, men in top posts maintain the economy in which
a highly-developed technology has in principle made the masses
redundant as producers. The workers, the real bread-winners,
are fed (if we are to believe the ideology) by the managers of
the economy, the fed. Hence the individual's position becomes
precarious. Under liberalism the poor were thought to be lazy;
now they are automatically objects of suspicion. Anybody who
is not provided for outside should be in a concentration camp,
or at any rate in the hell of the most degrading work and the
slums. The culture industry, however, reflects positive and nega-
tive welfare for those under the administrators' control as direct
human solidarity of men in a world of the efficient. No one is
forgotten; everywhere there are neighbors and welfare workers,
Dr. Gillespies and parlor philosophers whose hearts are in the
right place and who, by their kind intervention as of man to
man, cure individual cases of socially-perpetuated distress —
always provided that there is no obstacle in the personal de-
pravity of the unfortunate, The promotion of a friendly at-
mosphere as advised by management experts and adopted by
every facljry 10 increase output, brings even the last private
impulse under social control precisely because it seems to relate
men's circumstances directly to production, and to reprivatize
them. Such spiritual charity casts a conciliatory shadow onto
the products of the culture industry long before it emerges from
the factory to invade society as a whole. Yet the great benefac-
tors of mankind, whose scientific achievements have to be writ-
ten up as acts of sympathy to give them an artificial human
interest, are substitutes for the national leaders, who finally de-
cree the abolition of sympathy and think they can prevent any
recurrence when the last invalid has been exterminated.
By emphasizing the "heart of gold," society admits the suf-
fering it ha> created: everyone knows that he is now helpless in
the system, and ideology has to take this into account. Far from
concealing suffering under the cloak of improvised fellowship,
ERiC
79
the culture industry takes pride in looking it in the face like a
man, however great the strain on self-control. The pathos of
composure justifies the world which makes it necessary. That is
life — very hard, but just because of that so wonderful and so
healthy. This lie does not shrink from tragedy. Ma r .s culture
deals with it, in the same way as centralized society does not
abolish the suffering of its members but records and plans it.
That it is why it borrows so persistently from art. This provides
the tragic substance which pure amusement cannot itself supply,
but which it needs if it is somehow to remain faithful to the
principle of the exact reproduction of phenomena. Tragedy
made into a carefully calculated and accepted aspect of the
world is a blessing. It is a safeguard against the reproach that
truth is not respected, whereas it is really being adopted with
cynical regret. To the consumer who — culturally — has seen
better days it offers a substitute for long-discarded profundities.
It provides the regular movie-goer with the scraps of culture he
must have for prestige. It comforts all with the thought that a
tough, genuine human fate is still possible, and that it must at
all costs be represented uncompromisingly. Life in all the as-
pects which ideology today sets out to duplicate shows up all
the more gloriously, powerfully and magnificently, the more it
is redolent of necessary suffering. It begins to resemble fate.
Tragedy is reduced to the threat to destroy anyone who does
not cooperate, whereas its paradoxical significance once lay in a
hopeless resistance to mythic destiny. Tragic fate becomes just
punishment, which is what bourgeois aesthetics always tried to
turn it into. The morality of mass culture is the cheap form of
yesterday's children's books. In a first-class production, for ex-
ample, the villainous character appears as a hysterical woman
who (with presumed clinic accuracy) tries to ruin the happi-
ness of her opposite number, who is truer to reality, and her-
self suffers a quite untheatrical death. So much learning is of
course found only at the top. Lower down less trouble is taken.
Tragedy is marie harmless without recourse to social psychology.
Just as every Viennese operetta worthy of the name had to have
its tragic finale in the second act, which left nothing for the
third except to clear up misunderstandings, the culture iv* try
assigns tragedy a fixed place in the routine. The well-I jwn
existence of the recipe is enough to allay any fear that there is
no restraint on tragedy. The description of the dramatic formula
by the housewife as "getting into trouble and out again" em-
braces the whole of mass culture from the idiotic women's serial
to the top production. Even the worst ending which began with
good intentions confirms the order of things and corrupts the
tragic force, cither because the woman whose love runs counter
ERIC
79
80
to the laws of the game piays with her death for a brief spell of
happiness, or because the sad ending in the film all the more
clearly stresses the indestructibility of actual life. The tragic
film becomes an institution for moral improvement. The masses,
demoralized by their life under the pressure of the system, and
who show signs of civilization only in modes of behavior which
have been forced on them and through which fury and recalci-
trance show everywhere, are to be kept in order by the sight of
an inexorable life and exemplary behavior. Culture has always
played its part in taming revolutionary and barbaric instincts.
Industrial culture adds its contribution. It shows the condition
under which this merciless life can be lived at all. The individ-
ual who is thoroughly weary must use his weariness as energy
for his surrender to the collective power which wears him out,
In films, those permanently desperate situations which crush the
spectator in ordinary life somehow become a promise that one
can go on living. One has only to become aware of Gne's own
nothingness, only to recognize defeat and one is one with it all.
Society is full of desperate people and therefore a prey to rackets.
In some of the most significant ^erman novels of the pre-
Fascist era such as Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz and Fallada's
Kleiner Mann, Was Nun, this trend was as obvious as in the
average film and in the devices of jazz. What all these things
have in common is the self-derision of man. The possibility of
becoming a subject in the cconoir^ , an entrepreneur or a pro-
prietor, has been completely liquidated. Right down to the
humblest shop, the independent enterprise, on the management
and inheritance of which the bourgeois family and the position
of its head had rested, became hopelessly dependent. Everybody
became an employee; and in this civilization of employees the
dignity of the father (questionable anyhow) vanishes. The atti-
tude of the individual to the racket, business, profession or
party, before or after admission, the Fiihrer's gesticulations be-
fore the masses, or the suitor's before his sweetheart, assume
specifically masochistic traits. The attitude into which every-
body is forced in order to give repeated proof of his moral
suitability for this society reminds one of the boys who, during
tribal initiation, go round in a circle with a stereotyped smile on
their faces while the priest strikes them. Life in the iate capital-
ist era is a constant initiation rite. Everyone must show that he
wholly identifies himself with the power which is belaboring
him. This occurs in the principle of jazz syncopation, which
simultaneously derides stumbling and makes it a rule. The
eunuch-like voice of the crooner on the radio, the heiress's
smooth suitor, who falls into the swimming pool in his dinner
jacket, are models for those who must become whatever the
ERIC
81
system wants. Everyone can be like this omnipotent society;
everyone can be happy, if only he will capitulate fully and sacri-
fice his claim to happiness. In his weakness sockty recognizes
its strength, and giver him some of it. His defensek >sness makes
•him reliable. Hence tragedy is discarded. Once the opposition
of (he individual to society was its substance. It glorified "the
bravery and freedom of emotion before a powerful enemy, an
exalted affliction, a dreadful problem."* Today tragedy has
melted away into the nothingness of that false identity of society
and individual, whose terror still shows for a moment in the
empty semblance of the tragic. But *Jie miracle of integration,
the permanent act of grace by the authority who receives the
defenseless person — once lie has swallowed his rebelliousness
— signifies Fascism. This can be seen in the humanitarianism
which Doblin uses to let his Biberkopf find refuge, and again in
socially-slanted films. The capacity to find refuge, to survive
one's own ruin, by which tragedy is defeated, is found in the
new generation; they can do any work because the work process
does not let them become attached to any. This is reminiscent
of the sad lack of conviction of the homecoming soldier with no
interest in the war, or of the casual laborer who ends up by
joining a paramilitary organization. This liquidation of tragedy
confirms the abolition of the individual
In the culture industry the individual is an illusion not merely
because of the standardization of the means of production. He
is tolerated only so long as his complete identification with the
generality is unquestioned. Pseudo individuality is rife: from the
standardized jazz improvization to the exceptional film star
whose hair curls over her eye to demonstrate her originality.
What is individual is no more than the generality's power to
stamp the accidental detail so firmly that it is accepted as such.
The defiant reserve or elegant appearance of the individual on
show is mass-produced like Yale locks, whose only difference
can be measured in fractions of millimeters. The peculiarity of
the self is a monopoly commodity determined by society; it is
falsely represented as natural. It is no more than the moustache,
the French accent, the deep voice of the woman of the world,
the Lubitsch touch: finger prints on identity cards which are
otherwise exactly the same, and into which the lives and faces of
every single person are transformed by the power of the gener-
ality. Pseudo individuality is the prerequisite for comprehending
tragedy and removing its poison: only because individuals have
ceased to be themselves and are now merely centers where the
4. Nietzsche, Gdtzcndammcrung, Wcrkc, Vol. VIII, p. 136.
81
82
general tendencies meet, is it possible lo receive them again,
' whole and entire, into the generality. In this way mass culture
discloses the fictitious character of the "individual" in the bour-
geois era, and is merely unjust in boasting on account of this
dreary harmony of general and particular. The principle of in-
dividuality was always full of contradiction. Individuation has
ncer really been achieved. Self-preservation in the shape of
class has kept everyone at the stage of a mere species being.
Every bourgeois characteristic, in spite of its deviation and in-
deed because of it, expressed the same thing: the harshness of
the competitive society. The individual who supported society
bore its disfiguring mark; seemingly free, he was actually the
product of its economic and social apparatus. Power based it-
self on the prevailing conditions of power when it sought the
approval of persons affected by it. As it progressed, bourgeois
society did also develop the individual. Against the will of its
leaders, technology has changed human beings from children
into persons. However, every advance in ; ndividuation of this
kind took place at the expense of the inau * ality in whose
name it occurred, so that nothing was left but the resolve to
pursue one's own particular purpose. The bourgeois whose ex-
istence is split into a business and a private life, whose private
life is split Kiio keeping up his public image and intimacy,
whose intimacy is split into the surly partnership of marriage
and the bitter comfort of being quite alone, * . edds with him-
self and everybody else, is already virtually a Nazi, replete both
with enthusiasm and abuse; or a modern city-dweller who can
now only imagine friendship as a "social contact": that is, as
» being in social contact with others with whom he has no inward
contact. The only reason why the culture industry can deal so
successfully with individuality is that the latter has always re-
produced the fragility of society. On the faces of private indi-
viduals and movie heroes put together according to the patterns
on magazine covers vanishes a pretense in which no one now
believes; the popularity of the hero models comes partly from a
secret satisfaction that the effort to achieve individuation has at
last been replaced by the effort to imitate, which is admittedly
more breathless. It is idle to hope that this self-contradictory,
disintegrating "person" will not last for generations, that the
system must collapse because of such a psychological split, or
that the deceitful substitution of the stereotype fo; the indi-
vidual will of itself become unbearable for mankind. Since
Shakespeare's ll<imlet t the unity of the personality has been
seen through as a pretense. Synthetically produced physiogno-
mies show that the people of today have already forgotten that
there was ever a notion of what human life was. For centuries
ERLC
83
society has been preparing for Victor Mature and Mickey
Rooney. By destroying they come to fulfill.
The idolization of the cheap involves making the average the
heroic. The highest-paid stars resemble pictures advertising un-
specified proprietary articles. Not without good purpose are
they often selected from the host of commercial models. The
prevailing taste takes its ideal from advertising, the beauty in
consumption. Hence the Socratic saying that the beautiful is the
useful has now been fulfilled — ironically. The cinema makes
propaganda for the culture combine as a whole; on radio, goods
for whose sake the cultural comr> odity exists are also recom-
mended individually. For a few coins one can see the film which
cost millions, for even less one can buy the chewing gum whose
manufacture involved immense riches — a hoard increased still
further by sales. In absentia, but by universal suffrage, the
treasure of armies is revealed, but prostitution is not allowed
inside the country. The best orchestras in the world — clearly
not so — are brought into your living room free of charge. It is
all a parody of the never-never land, just as the national society
is a parody of the human society. You name it, we supply it. A
man up from the country remarked at the old Berlin Metropol
theater that it was astonishing what they could do for the
money; bis comment has long since been adopted by the culture
industry and made the very substance of production. This is
always coupled with the triumph that it is possible; but this, in
large measure, is the very triumph. Putting on a show means
showing everybody what there is, and what can be achieved.
Even today it is still a fair, but incurably sick with culture. Just
as the people who had been attracted by the fairground barkers
overcame their disappointment *n the booths with a brave smile,
because they really knew in advance what would happen, so the
movie-goer sticks knowingly to the institution. With the cheap-
ness of mass-produce luxury goods and its complement, the
universal swindle, a change in the character of the art com-
modity itself is coming about. What is new is net that it is a
commodity, but that today it deliberately admits it is one; that
art renounces its own autonomy and proudly takes its place
among consumption goods constitutes the chara of novelty. Art
as a separate sphere was always possible only in a bourgeois
society. Even as a negation of that social purposiveness which is
spreacL g through the market, its freedom remains essentially
bound up with the premise of a commodity economy. Pure
works of art which deny the commodity society by the very
fact that they obey their own law were always wares all the
same. In so far as, until the eighteenth century, the buyer's pat-
ronage shielded the artist from the market, they were dependent
ERiC S3
84
on the buyer and his objectives. The purposelessness of the
great modern work of art depends on the anonymity of the
market. Its demands pass through so many intermediaries that
the artist is exempt from any definite requirements — though
admittedly only to a certain degree, for throughout the whole
history of the bourgeoisie his autonomy was only tolerated, and
thus contained an element of untruth which ultimately led to
the social liquidation of art. When mortally sick, Beethoven
hurled away a novel by Sir Walter Scott with the cry: "Why,
the fellow writes for money," and yet proved a most experi-
enced and stubborn businessman in disposing of the last quar-
tets, which were a most extreme renunciation of the ma~\et; he
is the most outstanding example of the unity of those opposites,
market and independence, in bourgeois art. Those who suc-
cumb to the ideology are precisely those who cover up the con-
* tradiction instead of taking it into the consciousness of their
own production as Beethoven did: he went on to express in
music ins anger at losing a few pence, and derived the meta-
physical Es Muss Sein (which attempts an aesthetic banishment
of the pressure of the world by taking it into itself) from the
housekeeper's demand for her monthly wages. The principle of
idealistic aesthetics — purposefulness without a purpose — re-
verses the scheme of things to which bourgeois art conforms
socially: purposelessness for the purposes declared by the mar-
ket. At last, in the demand for entertainment and relaxation,
purpose has absorbed the realm of purposelessness. Buc as the
insistence that art should be disposable in terms of money
becomes absolute, a shut in the internal structure of cultural
commodities begins to show itself. The use which men in this
antagonistic society promise themselves from the work of art is
itself, to a great extent, that very existence of the useless which
is abolished by complete inclusion under use. The work of art,
by completely .isimilating itself to need, deceitfully deprives
men of precisely that liberation from the principle of utility
which it should inaugurate. What might be called use value in
the reception of cultural commodities is rr laced by exchange
value; in place of enjoyment there ..re galleiy-visiting and fac-
tual knowledge: the prestige seeker replaces the connoisseur.
The consumer becomes the ideology of the pleasure industry,
whose institutions he cannot escape. One simply "has to" have
seen Mrs. Miniver, just as one "has to" subscribe to Life and
Time. Everything is looked at from only o^e aspect: that it can
be used for something else, however vague the notion of this use
may be. No object has an inherent value; it is valuable only to
the extent that it can be exchanged. The use • alue of art, its
mode of be«ng, is treated as a fetish; and the fetish, the work's
85
social rating (misinterpreted as its artistic status) becomes its
use value— ^he only quality which is enjoyed. The commodity
function of art disappears only to be wholly realized when art
becomes a species of commodity instead, marketable and inter-
changeable like an industrial product. But art as a type of
product which existed to be sold and yet to be unsaleable is
wholly and hypocritically converted into "unsaleability" as :oon
as the transaction ceases to be the mere intention and becomes
its sole principle. No tickets could be bought when Toscanini
conducted over the radio; he was heard \vithout charge, and
every sound of the symphony was accompanied, as it were, by
the sublime puff that the symphony was not interrupted by any
advertising: "This concert is brought to you as a public ser-
vice." The Mlusion was made possible by the profits of the
united automobile and soap manufacturers, whose payments
keep the radio stations going — and, of course, by the increased
sales of the electrical industry, which manufactures the radio
sets. Radio, the progressive latecomer of mass culture, draws
all the consequences al present denied the film by its pseudo-
market. The technical structure of the commercial radio system
makes 5t immune from liberal deviations such as those the
movie industrialists can still permit themselves in their own
sphere. It is a private enterprise vvhich really does represent the
sovereign whole and is therefore some distance ahead of the
other individual combines. Chesterfield is merely the nation's
cigarette, but the radio fs the voice of the natior. In bringing
cultural products wholly into the sphere of commodities, radio
does not try to dispose of its culture goods themselves as com-
modities straight to the consumer. In America it collects no
fee; from the public, and so has acquired the illusory form of
disinterested, unbiased authority which suits Fascism admirably.
The radio becomes the. universal mouthpiece of the Fiihrer; his
voice rises from street loud-speakers to resemble the howHiv. of
sirens announcing panic — from which modem propaganda can
scarcely be distinguished anyway. The National Socialist knew
that the wireless gav<* «hape to their cau*e just as the printing
press did to the Ra ^ ation. The metaphysical charisma of the
Fiihrer invented by the sociology of religion has finally turned
out to be no more than t!ie omnipresence of his speeches on the
radio, which are a demoniacal parody of the omnipresence of
the divine spirit. The gigantic fact that the speech penetrates
everywhere replaces its content, just as the benefaction of the
Toscanini broadcast takes the place of the symphony. No lis-
tener can grasp its true meaning any longer, while the Fiihrer's
speech is lies anyway. The inherent tendency of radio is to
make the sneaker's word, the false commandment, absolute. A
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9
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recommendation becomes an order. The recommendation of the
same commodities under different proprietary n^mes, the sci-
entifically based praise of tl e laxative in the announcer's smoom
voice between the overture from La Traviata and that from
Rienzi is the only thing that no longer works, because of its
silliness. One day the edict of production, the actual advertise-
ment (whose actuality is at present concealed by the pretense
of a choice) can turn into the open command of the Fiihter. In
a society of huge Fascist rackets which agree among themselves
what part cf the social product should be allotted to the na-
tion's needs, it would eventually seem anachronistic to recom-
mend the use of a particular soap powder. The Fuhrer is more
up-to-date in unceremoniously giving direct orders for both the
holocaust and the supply of rubbish.
Even today the culture industry dresses works of art like po-
litical slogans and forces them upon a resistant public at re-
duced prices ; they are as accessible for public enjoyment as a park.
But the Sisappearance of their genuine commodity character does
not mean that they have been abolished in the life of a free so-
ciety, but that the last defense against their reduction to culture
goods has fallen. The abolition of educational pnviiege by the
device <S clearance sales does not open for the masses the
spheres from which they were formerly excluded, but, given
existing social conditions, contributes directly to the decay ot
education and the progress of barbaric meaninglessness. Those
who spent their money in the nineteenth or the early twentieth
century to see a play or to go to a concert respected the per-
formance as much as the money they spent. The bourgeois who
wanted to get something out of it tried occasionally to establish
same rapport with the work. Evidence for this J to be found in
the literary "introductions" to works, or in the commentaries on
Faust. These were the first steps toward the biographical coat-
ing and other practices to which a work of art is subjected
today. Even in the early, prosperous dajs of business, exchange-
value did carry use value as a mere appendix but hsH developed
k as a prerequisite for its own existence; this was socially help-
ful for works of art. Art exercised some restraint on the bour-
geois as long as it cost money. That is now a thing of the past.
Now that it has IcSo ^very restraint and there is no need to pay
any money, the proximity of art to those who are exposed to it
completes the alienation anv assimilates one to the other under
the banner of triumphant objectivity. G cism and respect dis-
appear in the culture industry; the former becomes a mechani-
cal expertise, the latter is succeeded by a shallow cult of leading
personalities. Consumers now find nothing expensive. Never-
theless, they suspect that the less anything costs, the less it is
86
87
being given them. The double mistrust of traditional culture as
ideology is combined with mistrust of industrialized culture as a
swindle. When thrown in free, the now debased works of art,
together with the rubbish to which the medium assimilates
them, are secretly rejected by the fortunate recipients, who are
supposed to be satisfied by the mere fact that there is so much
to be seen and heard. Everything can be obtained. The screenos
and vaudevilles in the movie theater, the competitions for guess-
ing music, the free books, rewards and gifts offered on certain
radio programs, are not mere accidents but a continuation of
the practice obtaining with culture products. The symphony be-
comes a reward for listening to the radio, and — if technology
had its way — thefilr. would be delivered to people's homes as
happens with the radio. It is moving toward the commercial
system. Television points the way to a development which might
easily enough force the Warner Brothers into what would cer-
tainly be the unwelcome position of seiious musicians and cul-
tural conservatives. But the gift system has already taken hold
among consumers. As culture is represented as a bonus with
undoubted private and social advantages, they have to seize
the chance. They rush in lest they miss something. Exactly
what, is not clear, but in any case the only ones with a chance
are the participants. Fascism, however, hopes tc use the train-
ing the culture industry has given these recipients of gifts, in
order to organize them into its own forced battalions.
Culture is a paradoxical commodity. So completely is it subject
to the law of exchange that it is no longer exchanged; it is so
blindly consumed in use that it can no longer be used. There-
fore it amalgamates with advertising. The more meaaingles?
the tetter seems to be under a monopoly, the more omnipotent
it becomes. The motives are markedly economic. One could cer-
tainly live without the culture industry, therefore it necessarily
creates too much satiation and apathy. In itself, it has few re-
sources itself to correct this. / Ivertising is its elixir of life. But
as its product never fails to reduce to a mere promise the en-
joyment which it promises as a commodity, it eventually coin-
cides with publicity, which it needs because it cannot be enjoyed.
In a competitive society, advertising performed the social ser-
vice of informing the buyer about the market; it made choice
easier and helped the unknown but more efficient supplier to
dispose of his goods. Far from coding time, it saved it. Today,
when the free market is coming to an end, those who controi
the system are entrenching themselves in it. It strengthens the
firm bond between the consumers and the big combines. Only
those who can pay the exorbitant rates charged by the adver-
ts
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88
9
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tising agencies, chief of which are the radio networks them-
selves; that is, only those who are already in a position to do
so, or are co-opted by the decision of the banks and industrial
capital, can enter the pseudo-market as sellers. The costs of
advertising, which finally flow back into the pockets of the
combines, make it unnecessary to defeat unwelcome outsider
by laborious competition. They guarantee that power will re-
main m the same hands — not unlike those economic decisions
by which the establishment and running of undertakings is con-
trolled in a totalitarian state. Advertising today is a negative
principle, a blocking device: everything that does not bear its
stamp is economically suspect. Universal publicity is in no way
necessary for people to get to know the kinds of goods — whose
supply is restricted anyway. It helps sales only indirectly. For a
particular firm, to phase out a current advertising practice con-
stitutes a loss of prestige, and a breach of *he discipline im-
posed by the influential clique on its members. In wartime,
goods which are unobtainable are still advertised, merely* to
keep industrial power in view. Subsidizing ideological media is
more important than the repetition of the name. Because the
system obliges every product to use advertising, it has permeated
the idiom — the "style" — of the culture industry. Its victory is
so complete that it is no longer evident in the key pbsitions:
the huge buildings of the top men, floodlit stone advertisements,
are free of advertising; al most they exhibit on the rooftops, in
monumental brilliance and without any self-glorification, the
firm's initials. But, in contrast, the nineteenth-century houses,
whose architecture still shamefully indicates that they can be
used as a consumption commodity and are intended to be lived
in, are covered with posters and inscriptions from the ground
right up to and beyond the roof: until they become no more
than backgrounds f bills and sign-boards. Advertising be-
comes art and nothing else, just as Goebbels— with fore, ? eht —
combines them: Vart pour Vart t advertising for its own sake, a
pure Tepresep Jttion of social p^wer. In the most influential
American magazines, Life and Fortune, a quick glance can now
scarcely distinguish c^Ivertising from editorial picture and text.
The latter features an enthusiastic antf gratuitous account of the
great man (with illustrations of his life and glooming Hbits)
which -vill bring him new fans, while the advertisement pages
use so many factual photographs and details that they represent
the ideal of information which the editorial part has only begun
to try to achieve. The as enibly-line character of the culture in-
dustry, the synthetic, planned method of turning out its prod-
ucts (factory-like not only in the studio but, more or less, in the
compilation of '.neap biographies, pseudedocumentary novels,
88
89
and hit songs) is very suited to advertising: the important indi-
vidual points, by becoming detachable, interchangeable, and
even technically alienated from any connected meaning, lend
themselves to ends external to the work. The effect, the trick,
the isolated repeatable device, have always been used to exhibit
goods for advertising purposes, and today svsry monster
close-up of a star is an advertisement for her name, and every
hit song a plug for its tune. Advertising and the culture industry
merge technically as well as economically. In both cases the
same thing can be seen in innumerable places, and the mechani-
cal repetition of the same culture product has come to be the
same as that of the propaganda slogan. In both cases the insis-
tent demand for effectiveness makes technology into psycho-
technology, into a procedure for manipulating men. In both
cases the standards are the striking yet familiar, tha easy yet
catchy, the skillful yet simple; the object is to overpower the
customer, who is conceived as absent-minded or resistant.
By the language he speaks, he makes his own contribution to
culture as publicity. The more completely language is lost in
the announcement, the more words are debased as substantial
vehicles of meaning and become signs devoid of quality; Ihe
more purely and transparently words communicate what is in-
tended, the more impenetrable they become. The desnytliolo-
gization of language, taken as an element of the whole process
of enlightenment, is a relapse into magic. Word and essential
content were distinct yet inseparable from one another. Con-
cepts like melancholy and history, even life, were recognized in
the word, which separated them out and preserved them. Its
form simultaneously constituted and reflected them. The abso-
lute separation, which makes the moving accidental and its
relation to the object arbitrary, puts an end to the superstitious
fusion of word and thing. Anything in a determined literal se-
quence which goes beyond the correlation to the event is re-
jected as unclear and as verbal metaphysics. But the result is
that the word, which can now be only a sign without any mean-
ing, becomes so fixed to the thing that it is just a petrified for-
mula. This affects language and object *likc. Instead of making
the object experiential, the purified word treats it as an abstract
instance, and everything else (now excluded by the demand for
ruthless clarity from expression — itself nov banished) fades
away in reality. A left-half at football, a black-shirt, a member
of the Hitler Youth, and uo on, are no more than names. If be-
fore its rationalization the word hao given rise to lies as well as
to longing, now, after its rationalization, it is a straitjacket for
longing more even than for lies. The blindness and dumbness
of the data to which positivism reduces the world pass over into
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90
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language itself, which restricts itself to recording those data.
Terms themsel, become impenetrable; they obtain a striking
force, a power of adhesion and repulsion which makes them
like their extreme opposite, incantations. They come to be a
kind of trick, because the name of the prima donna is cooked
up in the studio on a statistical basis, or-because a welfare state
is anathematized by using taboo terms such as "bureaucrats"
or "intellectuals," or because base practice uses the name of the
country as a charm. In general, the name — to which mage most
easily attaches — is undergoing a chemical change: a metamor-
phosis into capricious, manipulable designations, whose effect
is admittedly now calculable, but which for that very reason is
just as despotic as that of the archaic name. First names, those
archaic remnants, have been brought up to date either by styl-
ization as advertising trade-marks (film stars' surnames have
become first names), or by collective standardization. In com-
parison, the bourgeois family name which, instead of being a
trade-mark, once individualized its bearer by relating him to his
own past history, seems antiquated. It arouses a strange embar-
rassment in Americans. In order to hide the awkward distance
between individuals, they call one another "bob" and "Harry,"
as interchangeable team members. This practice reduces re-
lations between human beings to the good fellowship of the
sporting community and is a defense against the true kind of
relationship. Signification, which is the enly function of a word
admitted by semantics, reaches perfection in the sign. Whether
folksongs were rightly or wrongly called upper-class culture in
decay, their elements have only acquired their popular form
through a long process of repeated transmission. The spread of
popular songs, on the other hand, takes place at lightning
speed. The American expression "fad," used for fashions which
appear like epidemics — that is, inflamed by highly-concentrated
economic forces— designated this phenomenon long before to-
talitarian advertising bosses enforced the general lines of cul-
ture. When the German Fascists decide one day to launch a
word — say, "intolerable" — over the loudspeakers the next day
the whole nation is saying "intolerable." By the same pattern,
the nations against* whom the weight of the German "blitzkrieg"
was thrown took the word into their own jargon. The general
repetition of names for measures to be taken by the authorities
makes them, so to speak, familiar, just as the brand name on
everybody's lips increased sales in the era of the free market.
The blind and rapidly spreading repetit : on of words with spe-
cial designations links advertising with the totalitarian watch-
word. The layer of experience which created the words for
their speakers has been removed; in this swift appropriation
SO
91
language acquires the coldness which until now it had only on
billboards and in the advertisement columns of newspapers. In-
numerable people use words and expressions which they have
either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger
off conditioned reflexes; in this sense, words are trade-marks
which are finally all the more firmly linked to the things they
denote, the less their linguistic sense is grasped. The minister or
mass education talks incomprehendingly of "dynamic forces,"
and die hit songs unceasingly celebrate "reverie" and "rhapsody,"
yet base their popularity precisely on the magic of the unintel-
ligible as creating the thrill of a more exalted life. Other stereo-
types, such as memory, are still partly comprehended, but
escape from the experience which might allow them content.
They appear like enclaves in the spoken language. On the radio
of Flesch and Hitler they nay be recognized from the affected
pronunciation of the announcer when he says to the nation,
"Good night, everybody!" or "This is the Hitler Youth," and
even intones "the Fiihrer" in a way imitated by millions. In such
cliches the last bond between sedimentary experience and lan-
guage is severed which still had a reconciling effect in dialect in
the nineteenth century. But in the prose of the journalist whose
adaptable attitude led to his appointmvat as an all-German edi-
tor, the German words become petrified, alien terms. Every
word shows how far it has been debased by the Fascist pseudo-
folk community. By now, of course, ^is kind of language is
already universal, totalitarian. AH the violence done to words is
so vile that one can hardly bear to hear them any longer. The
announcer does not need to speak pompously; he would indeed
be impossible if his inflection were different from that of his
particular audience. But, as against that, the language and ges-
tures of the audience and spectators are colored more strongly
than ever before by the culture industry, even in fine nuances
which cannot yet be explained experimentally. Today the cul-
ture industry has taken over the civilizing inheritance of the
entrepreneurial and frontier democracy — whose appreciation of
intellectual deviations was never very finely attuned. All are
free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as they have been free,
since the historical neutralization of religion, to join any of the
innumerable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology — since
ideology always reflects economic coercion — everywhere proves
to be freedom to choose what is always the same. The way in
which a girl accepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection
on the telephone or in the most intimate situation, the choice of
words in conversation, and the whole inner life as classified by
the now somewhat devalued depth psychology, bear witness to
man's attempt to make himself a proficient apparatus, similar
91
(even in emotions) to the model served up by the culture in-
dustry. The most intimate reactions of human beings have been
so thoroughly reified that the idea of anything specific to them-
selves now persists only as an utterly abstract notion: person-
£, y scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth
and freedom from body odor and emotions. The triumph of
advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel com-
pelled to buy and use its products even though they see through
them.
Source: Horkheimer, AA. and Adorno, T. W., The culture industry:
enlightenmer.7 as mass deception', Dialectic of Enlighten-
ment, Herder and Herder, New York, 1972, pp. 120-67.
The triumph of positive
thinking: one-dimensional
philosophy
H. Marcuse
The redefinition of thought which helps to coordinate
mental operations with those in the social reality aims at a
therapy. Thought is on the level with reality when it is
cured from transgression beyond a conceptual framework
which is either purely axiomatic (logic, mathematics) or co-
extensive with the established universe of discourse and
behavior. Thus, linguistic analysis claims to cure thought and
speech from confusing metaphysical notions — from "ghosts"
of a less mature and less scientific past which still haunt the
mind although they neither designate nor explain. The em-
phasis is on the therapeutic function of philosophical anal-
ysis — correction of abnormal behavior in thought and speech,
removal of obscurities, illusions, and oddities, or at least their
exposure.
In chapter IV, I discussed the therapeutic empiricism of
sociology in exposing and correcting abnormal behavior in
industrial plants, a procedure which implied the exclusion
of critical concepts capable of relating such behavior to the
society as a whole. By virtue of this restriction, the theoreti-
cal procedure becomes immediately practical. It designs
methods of better management, safer planning, greater effi-
ciency, closer calculation. The analysis, via correction and
improvement, terminates in affirmation; empiricism proves
itself as positive thinking.
The philosophical analysis is 01 uo such immediate appli-
cation. Compared with the realizations of sociology and
psychology, the therapeutic treatment of thought remains
academic. Indeed, exact thinking, the liberation from meta-
physial spectres and meaningless notions may well be con-
sidered ends in themselves. Moreover, the treatmc*^ of
thought in linguistic analysis is its own affair and its o\/n
right. Its ideological character is not to be prejudged by
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9
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correlating the struggle against conceptual transcendence
beyond the established universe of discourse with the strug-
gle against political transcendence beyond the established
society.
Like any philosophy worthy of the name, linguistic
analysis speaks for itself and defines its own attitude to
reality. It identifies as its chief concern the debunking of
transcendent concepts; it proclaims as its frame of reference
the common usage of words, the variety of prevailing behav-
ior. With these characteristics, it circumscribes its position
in the philosophic tradition— namely, at the opposite pole
from those modes of thought which elaborated their con-
cepts in tension v/ith, and even in contradiction to, the pre-
vailing universe of discourse and behavior*
In terms of the established universe, such contradicting
modes of thought are negative thinking. "The power of the
negative' 4 is the principle which governs the development
of concepts, and contradiction becomes the distinguishing
quality, of Reason (Hegel). This quality of thought was not
confined to a certain type of rationalism; it was also a de-
cisive element in the empiricist tradition. Empiricism is not
necessarily positive; its attitude to the established reality
depends on the particular dimension of experience which
functions as the source of knowledge and as the basic frame
of reference. For example, it seems that sensualism and ma-
terialism are per se negative toward a society in which vital
instinctual and material needs are unfulfilled. In contrast,
the empiricism of linguistic analysis moves within a frame-
work which does not allow such contradiction — the self-
imposed restriction to the prevalent behavioral universe
makes for an intrinsically positive attitude. In spite of the
rigidly neutral approach of the philosopher, tl.3 pre-bound
analysis succumbs to the power of? positive thinking.
Before trying to show this intrinsically ideological char-
acter of linguistic analysis, I must attempt to justify my
apparently arbitrary and derogatory play with the terms
"positive" and "positivism" by a brief comment on their
origin. Since its first usage, probably in the school of Saint-
Simon, the term "positivism" has encompassed (1) the vali-
dation of cognitive tho* £ht by experience of facts; (2) the
orientation of cognitive thought to the physical sciences as
a model of certainty and exactness; (3) the belief that prog-
94
95
ress in knowledge depends on this orientation. Consequently,
positivism is a struggle against all metaphysics, transcen-
dentalisms, and idealisms as obscurantist and regressive
modes of thought. To the degree to which the given reality
is scientifically comprehended and transformed, to the de-
gree to which society becomes industrial and technological,
positivism finds in the society the medium for the realization
(and validation) of its concepts — harmony between theory
and practice, truth and facts. Philosophic thought turns into
affirmative thought; the philosophic critique criticizes within
the ^cietal framework and stigmatizes non-positive notions
as mere speculation, dreams or fantasies. 1
The universe of discourse and behavior which begins to
speak in Saint-Simon's positivism is that of technological
reality. In it, the object-world is being transformed into an
instrumentality. Much of that which is still outside the
instrumental world — unconquered, blind nature — now ap-
pears within the reaches of scientific and technical progress.
The metaphysical dimension, formerly a genuine field of
rational thought, becomes irrational and unscientific. On the
ground of its own realizations, Reason repels transcendence.
At the later stage in contemporary positivism, it is no longer
scientific and technical progress which motivates the repul-
sion; however, the contraction of thought is no less severe
because it is self-imposed— philosophy's own method. The
contemporary effort to reduce the scope and the truth of
philosophy is tremendous, and the philosophers themselves
prochim the modesty and inefficacy of philosophy. It leaves
the established reality untouched; it abhors tiansgression.
Austin's contemptuous treatment of the alternatives to
the common usage of words, and his defamation of what we
"think up in our armchairs of an afternoon"; Wittgenstein's
assurance that philosophy "leaves everything as it is" — such
1. TIjc conformist atfituo s of positivism vis-a-vis radically non-con-
formist modes of thought appears perhaps for the first time in the positivist
denunciation of Fourier. Fourier himself (in La Fausse Industrie, 1835, vol.
I, p. 409) has seen the total commercialism of bou:geois society as the
fruit of "our progress tn rationalism and positivism. Quoted in Andre*
Lalande, Vocabulcire Tecnnique et Critique ae la Philosophie (Paris, Presses
Universitaires <3e France, 1958), r>. 792. For the various connotations of the
term "positive" to the new social scienct, and in opposition to "negative"
set Doctrine de Sauii-Simon, ed. Dougld and Halevy (Park, IT %e, 1924),
er|c
95
96
statements 2 exhibit, to my mind, academic sado-masochism,
self-humiliation, and self-denunciation of the intellectual
whose labor does not issue in scientific, technical or like
achievements. These affirmations of modesty and dependence
seem to recapture Hume's mood of righteous contentment
with the limitations of reason which, once recognized and
accepted, protect man from useless mental adventures but
leave him perfectly capable of orienting himself in the given
environment. However, when Hume debunked substances,
he fought a powerful ideology, while his successors today
provide an intellectual justification for that which society has
long since accomplished — namely, the defamation of alter-
native modes of thought which contradict ihe established
universe of discourse.
The style in which this philosophic behaviorism presents
itself would be worthy of analysis. It seems to move between
the two poles of pontificating authority and easy-going
chumminess. Both trends arc perfectly fused in Wittgen-
stein's recurrent use of the imperative with the intimate or
condescending "rfu" ("thou"); 3 or in the opening chapter
of Gilbert RyleV, The Concept of Mind, where the presenta-
tion of "DeScartcs 1 Myth" as the "official doctrine" about the
relation of body and mind is followed by the prr ninary
demonstration of its "absurdity," which evokes John Doe,
Richard Roe, and what they think about Hie "Average Tax-
payer."
Throughout the work of the linguistic analysts, there is
this familiarity with the chap on the street whose talk pkys
such a leading role in linguistic philosophy. The chumminess
of speech is essential inasmuch as it excludes from the
beginning the high-brow vocabulary of "metaphysics"; it
militates against intelligent non-conformity; it ridicules the
2. For similar declarations sec Ernest Ccllncr, Words And Things
(Boston, Beacon Press, 1959), p. 100, 256 ff. The propositus that philosophy
leaves everything as it is may be true in the context of Marx's Theses on
Fcucrbach (where it is at the same time denied), or as sclf-cliaracterizaticn
of nco-positivism, but as a general proposition on philosophic thought it is
incorrect
3. Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1960): "Unci
dcinc Skrupcl sind Missverstandnissc. Dcine Fragcn bezichen sich auf
Wortcr . . . M (p. 49). "Dcnk doch einmal garnicht an das Verstehen als
'sc'ischcn Vorgatig*!— Dcnn das ist die Redcweise, die dich vcrwirrt. Son-
dcrn frage dich . . " (p. 61). "Obcnege dir folgendcn Fall . . (p. 62),
and passum
97
egghead. The language of John Doe and Richard Roe is the
language which the man on the street actually speaks; it is
the language which expresses his behavior; it is therefore
the token of concreteness. However, it is also the token of a
false concreteness. The language which provides most of the
material for the analysis is a purged language, purged not
only of its "unorthodox" vocabulary, but also of the means
for expressing any other contents than those furnished to the
individuals by their society. The linguistic analyst finds this
purged language an accomplished fact, and he takes the
impoverished language as he finds it, insulating it from that
which is not expressed hi it although it enters the established
universe of discourse as element and factor or meaning.
Paying respect to the prevailing variety of meanings
and usages, to the power and common sense of ordinary
speech, while blocking (as extraneous material) analysis of
what this speech says about the society tnat speaks it,
linguistic philosophy suppresses once more what is contin-
ually suppressed in this universe of discourse and behavior.
The- authority of philosophy gives its blessing to the forces
which make this universe. Linguistic analysis abstracts from
what ordinary language reveals in speaking as it does — the
mutilation of man and nature.
Moreover, all too often it is not even the ordinary lan-
guage which guides the analysis, but rather blown-up atoms
of language, silly scraps of speech that sound like baby talk
such as 'This looks to me now like a man eating poppies,"
"He saw a robin," "I had a hat." Wittgenstein devotes much
acumen and space to the analysis of "My broom is in the
corner." I quote, as a representative example, an analysis
from J. L. Austin s "Other Minds": 4
"Two rather different ways of being hesitant may be distin-
guished.
(a) Let us take the case where we are tasting a certain taste.
We may say 'I simply don't know what it is: I've never
tasted anything remotely like it before . . . No, it's no use:
the more I think about it the more confused I get: it's
perfectly distinct and perfectly distinctive, quite unique in
4. In: Logic and Language, Second Series, ed. A. Flew (Oxford, Black-
well, 1959), p. 137 f. (Austin's footnotes are omitted). Here too, philosophy
demonstrates its loyal conformity to ordinary usage by using tno colloquial
abridgments of orainary speech: "Don't . . ." "isn't . .
ERJC ; go
my experience!' This illustrates the case where I can find
nothing in my past experience with which to compare the
current case: I'm certain it's not appreciably like anything
I ever tasted before, not sufficiently like anything I know
to merit the same description. This case, though distinguish-
able enough, shades off into the more common type of case
where fm not quite ceitain, or only fairly certain, or prac-
tically certain, that it's the taste of, say, laurel In all such
cases, I am endeavouring to recognize the current item by
searching in my past experience for something like it, some
likeness in virtue of which it deserves, more or less posi-
tively, to be described by the same descriptive word, and
I am meeting with varying degrees of success,
(b) The other case is different, though it very naturally com-
bines itself with the first. Here, what I try to do is to savour
the current experience, to pear at it, to sense it vividly. Im
not sure it is the taste of pineapple: isn't there perhaps just
something about it, a tang, a bite, a Jack of bite, a cloying
sensation, which isn't quite right for pineapple? Isn't there
perhaps just a peculiar hint of green, which would rule out
mauve and would hardly do for heliotrope? Or perhaps it is
faintly odd: I must look more intently, scan it over and over:
maybe just possibly there is a suggestion of an unnatural
shimmer, so that it doesn't look quite like ordinary water.
There is a lack of sharpness in what we actually sense, which
is to be cured not, or not merely, by thinking, but by acuter
discernment, by sensory discrimination (though it is of
course true that thinking of other, and more pronounced,
cases in our past experience can and does assist our powers
of discrimination)
What can be objectionable in this analysis? In its exact-
ness and clarity, it is probably unsurpassable — it is correct.
But that is all it is, and I argue that not only is it not enough,
but it is destructive of philosophic thought, and of critical
thought as such. From the philosophic point of view, two
questions arise: (1) can the explication of concepts (or
words) ever orient itself to, and terminate, in the actual uni-
verse of ordinary discourse? (2) are exactness and clarity
ends in themselves, or are they committed to other ends?
I answer the first question in the affirmative as far as its
first part is concerned. The most banal examples, it speech
may, precisely because of their ba*>al character, elucidate the
empirical world in its reality, and serve to explain our think-
ing and talking about it — as do Sartre's analyses of a group
9C
99
of people waiting for a bus, or Karl Kraus' analysis of daily
newspapers. Such analyses elucidate because the*' transcend
the immediate concreteness of the situation and its expres-
sion. They transcend it toward the factors which make the
situation and the behavior of the people who speak (or are
silent) in that situation. (In the examples just cited, these
transcendent factors are traced to the social division of la-
bor.) Thus the analysis does not terminate in the universe of
ordinary discourse, it goes beyond it and opens a qualitative-
ly different universe, the terms of which may even contradict
the ordinary one.
To take another illustration: sentences such as "my
broom is in the corner" might also occur in Hegel's Logic,
but there they would be revealed as inappropriate or even
false examples. They would only be rejects, to be surpassed
by a discourse which, in its concepts, style, and syntax, is of
a different order — a discourse for which it is by no means
"clear that every sentence in our language 'is in order as it
is.'" 5 Rather the exact opposite is the case— namely, that
every sentence is as little in order as the world is which this
language communicates.
The almost masochistic reduction of speech to the
humble and common is made into a program: "if the words
language,' experience,' 'world/ have a use, it must be
as humble a one as that of the words 'table/ 'lamp/ 'door.' n 0
We must "stick to the subjects of our every-day thinking,
and not go astray and imagine that we have to describe
extreme subtleties . . ." 7 — as if this were the only alterna-
tive, and as if the "extreme subleties" were not the suitable
term f or Wittgenstein's language games rather than for Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. Thinking ( or at least its expression)
is not only pressed into the straitjacket of common usage, but
also enjoined not to ask and seek solutions beyond those that
are already there. "The problems are solved, not by giving
new information, but by arranging what we have always
known." 8
The self-styled poverty of philosophy, committed with
all its concepts to the given state of affairs, distrusts the possi-
5. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, loc. c ;f , p. 45.
6. Ibid., p. 44.
7. Ibid., p. 48.
8. Ibid., p. 47. The translation k not exact; the German text has
Bcibringen newer Erfahrung for "giving .icw informatics."
9
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100
bilitics of a new experience. Subjection to the rule of the
established facts is total — only linguistic facts, to be sure, but
the society speaks in its language, and we are told to obey.
The prohibitions are severe and authoritarian: "Philosophy
may in no way interfere with the actual use of language." 9
"And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must
not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must
do away with all explanation, and description alone must
take its place." 10
One might ask what remains of philosophy? What
remains of thinking, intelligence, without anything hypo-
thetical, without any explanation? However, what is at stake
is not the definition or the dignity of philosophy. It is rather
the chance of preserving and protecting the right, the need
to think and speak in terms other than those of common
usage — terms which are meaningful, rational, and valid pre-
cisely because they are other terms. What is involved is the
spread of a new ideology which undertakes to describe what
is happening (and meant) by eliminating the concepts
capable of understanding what is happening (and meant).
To begin with, an irreducible difference exists between
the universe of everyday thinking and language on the one
side, and that of philosophic thinking and language on the
other. In normal circumstances, ordinary language is indeed
behavioral — a practical instrument. When somebody actual-
ly says "My broom is in the corner," he probably intends that
somebody else who had actually asked about the broom is
going to take it or leave it there, is going to be satisfied, or
angry. In any case, the sentence has fulfilled its function by
causing a behavioral reaction: "the effect devours the cause;
the end absorbs tjie means." 11
In contrast, if, in a philosophic text or discourse, the
word "substance," "idea," "man" "alienation" becomes the;
subject of a proposition, no such transformation <;f meaning
into a behavioral reaction takes place or is intended to take
place. The word remains, as it were, unfulfilled — except in
thought, where it may give rise to other thoughts. And
9. ib'uU p. 49.
10. Ibid., p. 47.
11. Paul Valery, "Poesie et pensee abslraitc/' in: Oeuvres, !oc. cit,, p.
1331. Also "Les Droits du poete sur la langue/' in: Pidces <nr Xart (Paris,
Gallimard, 1934), p. 47 f.
9
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100
through a long series of mediations within a historical con-
tinuum, the proposition may help to form and guide a
practice. But the proposition remains unfulfilled even then
— only the hubris of absolute idealism asserts the thesis
of a final identity between thought and its object. The words
with which philosophy is concerned can therefore never have
a use "as humble ... as that of the words 'table,' 'lamp/
'door.'"
Thus, exactness and clarity in philosophy cannot be
attained within the universe of ordinary discourse. The
philosophic concepts aim at a dimension of fact and meaning
which elucidates the atomized phrases or words of ordinary
discourse "from without" by showing this "without" as essen-
tial to the understanding of ordinary discourse. Or, if the
universe of ordinary discourse itself becomes the object of
philosophic analysis, the language of philosophy becomes a
"meta-language." 12 Even where it moves in the humble terms
of ordinary discourse, it remains antagonistic. It dissolves the
established experiential context of meaning into that of its
reality; it abstracts from the immediate concreteness in order
to attain true concreteness.
Viewed from this position, the examples of linguistic
analysis quoted above become questionable as valid objects
of philosophic analysis. Can the most exact and clarifying
description of tasting something that may or may not taste
like pineapple ever contribute to philosophic cognition? Can
it ever serve as a critique in which controversial human con-
ditions are at stake — other than conditions of medical or
psychological taste-testing, surely not the intent of Austin's
analysis. The object of analysis, withdrawn from the larger
and denser context in which the speaker speaks and lives,
is removed from the universal medium in which concepts are
formed and become words. What is this universal, larger
context in which people speak and act and which gives
their speech its meaning — this context which does not appear
in the positivist analysis, which is a priori shut off by the
examples as well as by the analysis itself?
This larger context of experience, this real empirical
world, today is still that of the gas chambers and concentra-
12. See p. 195.
102
tion camps, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of American Cadil-
lacs and German Mercedes, of the Pentagon and the Kremlin,
of the nuclear cities and the Chinese communes, of Cuba,
of brainwashing and massacres. But the real empirical world
is also that in which all these things are taken for granted or
forgotten or repressed or unknown, in which people are free.
It io a world in which the broom in the corner or the taste
of something like pineapple are quite important, in which
the daily toil and the daily comforts are perhaps the only
items that make up all experience. And this second, restrict-
ed empirical universe is part of the first; the powers that
rule the first also shape the restricted experience.
lo be sure, establishing this relation is not the job of
ordinary thought in ordinary speech. If it is a matter of find-
ing the broom or tasting the pineapple, the abstraction is
justified and the meaning can be ascertained and described
without any transgression into the political universe. But in
philosophy, the question is not that of finding the broom or
tasting the pineapple — and even less so today should an
empirical philosophy base itself on abstract experience. Nor
is this ahslractness corrected if linguistic analysis is applied
to political terms and phrases. A whole branch of analytic
philosophy is engaged in this undertaking, but the method
already shuts off the concepts of a political, i.e., critical
analysis. The operational or behavioral translation assimi-
lates such terms as "freedom/' "gov arnment," "England,"
with "broom" and "pineapple," and the reality of the former
with that of the latter.
Ordinary language in its "humble use" may indeed be of
vital concern to critical philosophic thought, but in the
medium of this thought words lose their plain humility and
reveal that "hidden" something which is of no interest to
Wittgenstein. Consider the analysis of the "here" and "now"
in Kegels Phaenomenology, or (sit venia verbol) Lenin s
suggestion on how to analyze adequately "this glass of water"
on the table. Such an analysis uncovers the history 1 * in every-
day speech as a hidden dimension of meaning — the rule of
society over its language. And this dis^very shatters the
natural and reified form in which the given universe of dis-
course first appears. The words reveal themselves as genuine
13. S« p. 79.
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103
terms not only in a grammatical and formal-logical but also
material sense; namely, as the limits which define the mean-
ing and its development — the terms which society imposes
on discourse, and on behavior. This historical dimension of
meaning can no longer be elucidated by examples such as
"my broom is in the corner ' or "there is cheese on the table."
To bo sure, such statements can reveal many ambiguities,
puzzles, oddities, but they are all in the same realm of
language games and academic boredom.
Orienting itself on the reified universe of everyday dis-
course, and exposing and clarifying this discourse in terms
of this reified universe, the analysis abstracts from the nega-
tive, from that which is alien and antagonistic and cannot be
understood in terms of the established usage. By classifying
and distinguishing meanings, and keeping them apart, it
purges thought :uid speech of contradictions, illusions, and
transgressions. But the transgressions are not those of "pure
reason." They are not metaphysical transgressions beyond
the limits of possible knowledge, they rather open a realm
of knowledge beyond common sense and formal logic.
In barring access to this realm, positivist philosophy sets
up a self-sufficient world of its own, closed and well pro-
tected against the ingression of disturbing external factors.
In this respect, it makes little difference whether the vali-
dating context is that of mathematics, of logical propositions,
or of custom and usage. In one way or another, all possibly
meaningful predicates are prejudged. The prejudging judg-
ment might be as broad as the spoken English language, or
the dictionary, or some other code or convention. Once ac-
cepted, it constitutes an empirical a "priori which cannot be
transcended.
But this radical acceptance of the empirical violates the
empirical, for in it speaks the mutilated, "abstract 0 indi-
vidual who experiences (and expresses) only that which is
given to him (given in a literal sense), who has only the
facts and not the factors, whose behavior is one-dimensional
and manipulated. By virtue of the factual repression, the
experienced world is the result of a restricted experience,
and the positivist cleaning of the mind brings the mind in
line with the restricted experience.
In this expurgated form, the empirical world becomes
the object of positive thinking. With all its exploring, expos-
104
ing, and clarifying of ambiguities and obscurities, neo-pbsi-
tivism is not concerned with the great and general ambiguity
and obscurity which is the established universe of experience.
And it must remain unconcerned because the method
adopted by this philosophy discredits or "translates" the
concepts which could guide the understanding of the estab-
lished reality in its repressive and irrational structure — the
concepts of negative thinking. The transformation of critical
into positive thinking takes place mainly in the therapeutic
treatment of universal concepts; their translation into opera-
tional and behavioral terms parallels closely the sociological
translation discussed above.
The therapeutic character of the philosophic analysis is
strongly emphasized — to cure from illusions, deceptions,
obscurities, unsolvable riddles, unanswerable questions, from
ghosts and spectres. Who is the patient? Apparently a certain
sort of intellectual, whose mind and language do not con-
form to the terms of ordinary discourse. There is indeed a
goodly portion of psychoanalysis in this philosophy — analy-
sis without Freud's fundamental insight that the patient's
trouble is rooted in a general sickness which cannot be cured
by analytic therapy. Or, in a sense, according to Freud, the
patient's disease is a protest reaction against the sick world
in which he lives. But the physician must disregard the
"moral" problem. He has to restore the patient's health, to
make him capable of functioning normally in his world.
The philosopher is not a physician; his job is not to cure
individuals but to comprehend the world in which they live
— to understand it in terms of what it has done to man, and
what it can do to man. For philosophy is (historically, and
its history is still valid) the contrary of what Wittgenstein
made it out to be when he proclaimed it as the renunciation
of all theory, ?s the undertaking that "leaves everything as it
is." And philosophy knows of no more useless "discovery"
than that which "gives philosophy peace, so that it is no
longer tormented by questions which bring itself in ques-
tion." 14 And there is no more unphilosophical motto than
Bishop Butler's pronouncement which adorns G. E. Moore's
Principia Ethica: "Everything is what it is, and not another
9
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14. Phifosophical Investigations, loc. cit., p. 51,
104
105
thing" — unless the "is" is understood as referring to the
qualitative difference between that which wi/ngs really are
and that which they are made to be.
The neo-positivist critique still directs its main effort
against metaphysical notions, and it is motivated by a notion
of exactness which is either that of formal logic or empirical
description. Whether exactness is sought in the analytic
purity of logic and mathematics, or in conformity with
ordinary language — on both poles of contemporary philoso-
phy is the same rejection or devaluation of those elements of
thought and speech which transcend the accepted system of
validation. This hostility is most sweeping where it takes the
form of toleration — that is, where a certain truth value is
granted to the transcendent concepts in a separate dimension
of meaning and significance (poetic truth, metaphysical
truth). For precisely the setting aside of a special reserva-
tion in which thought and language are permitted to be
legitimately inexact, vague, and even contradictory is the
most effective way of protecting the normal universe of dis-
course from being seriously disturbed by unfitting ideas.
Whatever truth may be contained in literature is a "poetic"
truth, whatever truth may be contained in critical idealism
is a "metaphysical" truth — its validity, if any, commits nei-
ther ordinary discourse and behavior, nor the philosophy
adjusted to them. This new form of the doctrine of the
"double truth" sanctions a false consciousness by denying
the relevance of the transcendent language to the universe
of ordinary language, by proclaiming total non-interference.
Whereas the truth value of the former consists precisely in its
relevance to and interference with the latter.
Under the repressive conditions in which men think and
live, thought — any mode of thinking which is not confined to
pragmatic orientation within the status quo — can recognize
the facts and respond to the facts only by "going behind"
them. Experience takes place before a curtain which con-
ceals and, if the world is the appearance of something behind
the curtain of immediate experience, then, in Hegel's terms,
it is we ourselves who are behind the curtain. We ourselves
not as the subjects of common sense, as in linguistic analysis,
nor as the "purified" subjects of scientific measurement, but
as the subjects and objects of the historical struggle of man
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106
with nature and with society. Facts are what they are as
occurrences in this struggle. Their factualitv is historical,
even where it is still that of brute, unconquercd nature.
This intellectual dissolution and even subversion of the
given facts is the historical task of philosophy and the philo-
sophic dimension. Scientific method, too, goes beyond the
facts and even against the facts of immediate experience.
Scientific* method develops in the tension between appear-
ance and reality. The mediation between the subject and
object of thought, however, is essentially different. In
science, the medium is the observing, measuring, calculating,
experimenting subject divested of all other qualities; the
abstract subject projects and defines the abstract object.
In contrast, the objects of philosophic thought are
related to a consciousness for which the concrete qualities
enter into the concepts and into their interrelation. The
philosophic concepts retain and explicate the pre-scientific
mediations (the work of everyday practice, of economic or-
ganization, of political action) which have made the object-
world that which it actually is — a world in which all facts
are events, occurrences in a historical continuum.
The separation of science from philosophy is itself a
historical event. Aristotelian physics was a part of philoso-
phy and, as such, preparatory to the "first science" — ontology.
The Aristotelian concept of matter is distinguished from the
Galilean and post-Galilean not only in terms of different
stages in the development of scientific method (an(* in the
discovery of different "layers" of reality), but also, and
perhaps primarily, in terms of different historical projects, of
a different historical enterprise v.hivh established a differeiu
nature as well as society. Aristotelian physics becomes ob-
jectively wrong with the new experience and apprehension of
nature, with the historical establishment of a new subject
and object-world, and the falsification of Aristotelian physics
then extends backward into tl past and surpassed experi-
ence and apprehension. 15
But whether or not they are integrated into science,
philosophic concepts remain antagonistic to the realm of
ordinary discourse, for they continue to include contents
which are not fulfilled in the spoken word, the overt behav-
15. Sec chapter VI above, especially p. '65.
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106
107
ior, the perceptible conditions or dispositions, or the prevail-
ing propensities. The philosophic universe thus continues to
contain "ghosts/ 1 "fictions," and "illusions" which may be
more rational than their denial insomuch as they are concepts
that recognize the limits and the deceptions of the prevailing
rationality. They express the experience which Wittgenstein
rejects — namely, that "contrary to our preconceived ideas, it
is possible to think 'such-and-such' — whatever that may
mean. 10
The neglect or the clearing up of this specific phil-
osophic dimension has led contemporary positivism to move
in a synthetically impoverished world of academic con-
creteness, and to create more illusory problems than it has
destroyed. Rarely has a philosophy exhibited a more tortuous
esprit de sdrieux than that displayed in such analyses as the
interpretation of Three Blind Mice in a study of "Meta-
physical and Ideographic Language," with its discussion of
an "artificially constructed Triple principle-Blindness-
Mousery asymmetric sequence constructed according to the
pure principles of ideography." 17
Perhaps this example is unfair. However it is fair to say
that the niost abstruse metaphysics has not exhibited such
artificial and jargonic worries as those which have arisen
in connection with the problems of reduction, translation,
description, denotation, proper names, etc. Examples arc
skillfully held in balance between seriousness and the joke:
the differences between Scott and the author of Waverly;
the baldness of the present king of France; Joe Doc meeting
or not meeting the "average taxpayer" Richard Roc on the
street; my seeing here and now a patch of red and saying
"this is red"; or the revelation of the fact that people often
describe feelings as thrills, twinges, pangs, throbs, wrenches,
itches, prickings, chills, glows, loads, qualms, hankerings,
curdlings, sinkings, tensions, gnawings and shocks. 18
This sort of empiricism substitutes for the hated world
of metaphysical ghosts, myths, legends, and illusions a world
of conceptual or sensual scraps, of words and utterances
which are then organized into a philosophy. And all this is
16. Wittgenstein, loc. cit tf j>. 47.
17. Margaret Mastcrrnan. in: British Philosophy in the Mid~Ccntttry t
<*1. C. A. Mart 1 (IJimSon, Allien and Umvin. 1957), p. 323
18. Cillxirl Ilvlc. The Concept of Mind, loc. cit., p. 83 f.
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108
not only legitimate, it is even correct, for it reveals the ex-
tent to which non-operational ideas, aspirations, memories
and images have become expendable, irrational, confusing,
or meaningless.
In cleaning up this mess, analytic philosophy concep-
tualizes the behavior in the present technological organiza-
tion of reality, but it also accepts the verdicts of this organi-
zation; the debunking of an old ideology becomes part of r
new ideology. Not only the illusions are debunked but also
the truth in those illusions. The new ideology finds its ex-
pression in such statements as "philosophy only states what
everyone admits," or that our common stock of words em-
bodies 'all the distinctions men have found worth drawing."
What is this "common stock"? Does it include Plato's
"idea," Aristotle's "essence, ' Hegel's Geist, Marx's VcrJ/ng-
lichung in whatever adequate translation? Does it include
the key words of poetic language? Of surrealist prose? And
if so, does it contain them in their negative connotation —
that is, as invalidating the universe of common usage? If
not, then a whole body of distinctions which men have
found worth drawing is rejected, removed into the realm of
fiction or mythology; a mutilated, false consciousness is set
up as the true consciousness that decides on the meaning
and expression of that which is. The rest is denounced — and
endorsed— as fiction or mythology.
It is not clear, however, which side is engaged in my-
thology. To be sure, mythology is primitive and immature
thought. The process of civilization invalidates myth (this is
almost a definition of progress), but it may also return
rational thought to mythological status. In the latter case,
theories which, identify and project historical possibilities
may become irrational, or rather appear irrational because
they contradict the rationality of the established universe of
discourse and behavior.
Thus, in *he process of civilization, the myth of the
Golden Age and the Millennium is subjected to progressive
rationalization. The (historically) impossible elements are
separated from th« possible ones — dream and fiction from
science, technology, and business. In the nineteenth cen-
tury, the theories of socialism translated the primary myth
into sociological terms — or rather discovered in the given
historical possibilities the rational co r e of the myth. Then,
2& i(,c
however, the reverse movement occurred. Today, the rational
and realistic notions of yesterday again appear to be mytho-
logical when confronted with the actual conditions. The
reality of the laboring classes in advanced industrial society
makes the Marxian "proletariat" a mythological concept; the
reality of present-day socialism makes the Marxiai idea a
dream. The reversal is caused by the contradiction between
theory and facts — a contradiction which, by itself, does not
yet falsify the former. The unscientific, speculative character
of critical theory derives from the specific character of its
concepts, which designate and define the irrational in the
rational, the mystification in the reality. Their mythological
quality reflects the mystifying quality of the given facts — the
deceptive harmonization of the societal contradictions.
The technical achievement of advanced industrial so-
ciety, and the effective manipulation of mental and material
productivity have brought about a shift in the locus of mysti-
fication. If it is meaningful to say that the ideology comes
to be embodied in the process of production itself, it may
also be meaningful to suggest that, in this society, the ra-
tional rather than the irrational becomes the most effective
vehicle of mystification. The view that the growth of repres-
sion in contemporary society manifested itself, in the ideo-
logical sphere, first in the ascent of irrational pseudo-phi-
losophies (Lebensphilosophie; the notions of Community
against Society; Blood and Soil, etc.) was refuted by Fas-
cism and National Socialism. These regimes denied these and
their own irrational "philosophies" by the all-out technical
rationalization of the apparatus. It was the total mobilization
of the material and mental machinery which did the job
and installed its mystifying power over the society. It served
to make the individuals incapable of seeing "behind" the
machinery those who used it, those who profited from it, and
those who paid for it.
Today, the mystifying elements are mastered and em-
ployed in productive publicity, propaganda, and politics.
Magic, witchcraft, and ecstatic surrender are practiced in
the daily routine of the home, the shop, and the office, and
the rational accomplishments conceal the irrationality of the
whole. For example, the scientific approach to the vexing
problem of mutual annihilation — the mathematics and cal-
ERIC
109
110
dilations of kill and over-kill, the measurement of spread-
ing or not-quite-so-spreading fallout, the experiments of en-
durance in abnormal situations — is mystifying to the extent
to which it promotes (and even demands) behavior which
accepts the insanity. It thus counteracts a truly rational be-
havior — namely, the refusal to go along, and the effort to
do away with the conditions which produce the insanity.
Against this new mystification, which turns rationality
into its opposite, the distinction must be upheld, The rational
is not irrational, and the difference between an exact recog-
nition and analysis of the facts, and a vague and emotional
speculation is as essential as ever before. The trouble is that
the statistics, measurements, and field studies of empirical
sociology and political science are not rational enough. They
become mystifying to the extent to which they are isolated
from the truly concrete context which makes the facts and
determines their function. This context is larger rnd other
than that of the plants and shops investigated, of the towns
and cities studied, of the areas and groups whose public
opinion is polled or whose chance of survival is calculated.
And it is also more real in the sense that it creates and de-
termines the facts investigated, polled, and calculated. This
real context in which the particular subjects obtain their
real significance is definable only within a theory of society.
For the factors in the facts are not immediate data of ob-
servation, measurement, and interrogation. They become
data only in an analysis which is capable of identifying the
structure that holds together the parts and processes of
society and that determines their interrelation.
To say that this meta-context is the Society (with a
capital "S") is to hypostatize the whole over and above the
parts. But this hypostatization takes place in reality, is the
reality, and the analysis can overcome it only by recogniz-
ing it and by comprehending its scope and its causes. So-
ciety is indeed the whole which exercises its independent
power over the individuals, and this Society is no unidentifi-
able "ghost." It lias its empirical hard core in th£ system of
institutions, which are the established and frozen relation-
ships among men. Abstraction from it falsifies the measure-
ments, interrogations, and calculations — but falsifies them in
a dimension which does not appear in the measurements,
interrogations, and calculations, and which therefore does
ERIC
110
not conflict with them and does not disturb them. They
retain their exactness, and are mystifying in their very ex-
SOftlQSS.
In its exposure of the mystifying character of transcend-
ent terms, vague notions, metaphysical universals, and the
like, linguistic analysis mystifies the terms of ordinary lan-
guage by leaving them in the repressive context of the es-
tablished universe of discourse. It is within this repressive
universe that the behavioral explication of meaning takes
place — the explication which is to exorcize the old linguistic
"ghosts" of the Cartesian and other obsolete myths. Lin-
guistic analysis maintains that if Joe Doe and Richard Roe
speak of what they have in mind, they simply refer to the
specific perceptions, notions, or dispositions which they hap-
pen to have; the mind is a verbalized ghost. Similarly, the
will is not a real faculty of the soul, but simply a specific
mode of specific dispositions, propensities, and aspirations.
Similarly with "consciousness," 'self," "freedom" — they are
all explicable in terms designating particular ways or modes
of conduct and behavior. I shall subsequently return to this
treatment of universal concepts.
Analytic philosophy often spreads the atmosphere of de-
nunciation and investigation by committee. The intellectual
is called on the carpet. What do you mean when you
say. . . ? Don't you conceal something? You talk a language
which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the
man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not
belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your
tricks, purge you. We shall teach you to say what you have
in mind, to "come clear," to "put your cards on the table."
Of course, we do not impose on you and your freedom of
thought and speech; you may think as you like. But once you
speak, you have to communicate your thoughts to us — in
our language or in yours. Certainly, you may speak your
own language, but it must be translatable, and it will be
translated. You may speak poetry — that is all right. We
love poetry. But we want to understand your poetry, and
we can do so only if we can interpret your symbols, meta-
phors, and images in terms of ordinary language.
The poet might answer that indeed he wants his poetry
to be understandable and understood (that is why he writes
112
it), but if what he says could be said in terms of ordinary
language he would probably have done so in the first place.
He might say: Understanding of my poetry presupposes the
collapse and invalidation of precisely that universe of dis-
course and behavior into which you want to translate it. My
language can be learned like any other languag 'in point of
fact, it is also your own language), then it will appear that
my symbols, metaphors, etc. are not symbols, metaphors, etc.
but mean exactly what they say. Your tolerance is deceptive.
In reserving for me a special niche of meaning and signifi-
cance, you grant me exemption from sanity and reason, but
in my view, the madhouse is somewhere else*
The poet may also feel that the solid sobriety of lin-
guistic philosophy speaks a rather prejudiced and emotional
language — that of the angry old or young men. Their vo-
cabulary abounds with the "improper," "queer," "absurd,"
"puzzling," "odd," "gabbling," and "gibbering." Improper
and puzzling oddities have to be removed if sensible under-
standing is to prevail. Communication ought not to be over
the head of the people; contents that go beyond common
and scientific sense should not disturb the academic and
the ordinary universe of discourse.
• But critical analysis must dissociate itself from that
which it strives to comprehend; the philosophic terms must
be other than the ordinary ones in order to elucidate the full
meaning of the latter. 10 For the established universe of dis-
course bears throughout the marks of the specific modes of
domination, organization, and manipulation to which the
members of a society are subjected. People depend for their
living on bosses and politicians and jobs and neighbors who
make them sp^ak and mean as they do; they are compelled,
by societal necessity, to identify the "thing" (including their
own person, mind, feeling) with its functions. How do we
know? Because we watch television, listen to the radio, read
the newspapers and magazines, talk to people.
Under these circumstances, the spoken phrase is an
expression of the individual who speaks it, and of those who
make him speak as he does, and of whatever tension or con-
tradiction may interrelate them. In speaking their own lan-
19. Contemporary analytic philosophy has in its own way recognized
this necessity as the problem of metalanguage; see p. 179 above and 195
below.
J O
o 112
ERIC
113
guage, people also speak the language of their masters,
benefactors, advertisers. Thus they do not only express them-
selves, their own knowledge, feelings, and aspirations, but
also something other than themselves. Describing "by them-
selves" the political situation, either in their home town or
in the international scene, they (and "they" includes us,
the intellectuals who know it and criticize it) describe what
"their" media of mass communication tell them — and this
merges with what they really think and see and feel.
Describing to each other our loves and hatreds, senti-
ments and resentments, we must use the terms of our ad-
vertisements, movies, politicians and best sellers. We must
use the same terms for describing our automobiles, foods
and furniture, colleagues and competitors — and we under-
stand each other perfectly. This must necessarily be so, for
language is nothing private and personal, or rather the pri-
vate and personal is mediated by the available linguistic
material, which is societal material. But this situation dis-
qualifies ordinary language from fulfilling the validating
function which it performs in analytic philosophy. "What
people mean when they say . . is related to what they
don't say. Or, what they mean cannot be taken at face value
— not because they lie, but because the universe of thought
and practice in which they live is a universe of manipulated
contradictions.
Circumstances like these may be irrelevant for the
analysis of such statements as "I itch," or "he eats poppies,"
or "this now looks red to me," but they may become vitally
relevant where people really say something ("she just loved
him," "he has no heart," "this is not fair," "what can I do
about it?"), and they are vital for the linguistic analysis of
ethics, politics, etc. Short of it, linguistic analysis can achieve
no other empirical exactness than that exacted from the peo-
ple by the given state of affairs, and no other clarity than
that which is permitted them in this state of affairs— that is,
it remains within the limits of mystified and deceptive dis-
course.
Where it seems to go beyond this discourse, as in its
logical purifications, only the skeleto n remains of the same
universe— a ghost much more ghostly than those which the
analysis combats. If philosophy is more than an occupation,
it shows the grounds which made discourse a mutilated and
9
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113
114
deceptive universe. To leave this task to a colleague in the
Sociology or Psychology Department is to make the estab-
lished division of academic labor into a methodological prin-
ciple. Nor can the task be brushed aside with the modest
insistence that linguistic analysis has only the humble pur-
pose of clarifying "muddled" thinking and speaking. If such
clarification goes beyond a mere enumeration and classifi-
cation of possible meanings in possible contexts, leaving the
choice wide open to anyone according to circumstances,
then it is anything but a humble task. Such clarification
would involve analyzing ordinary language in really con-
troversial areas, recognizing muddled thinking where it
seems to be the least muddled, uncovering the falsehood
in so much normal and clear usage. Then linguistic analysis
would attain the level on which the specific societal processes
which shape and limit the universe of discourse become visi-
ble and understandable.
Here the problem of * metalanguage' arises; the terms
which analyze the meaning of certain terms must be other
than, or distinguishable from the latter. They must be more
and other than mere synonyms which still belong to the
same (immediate) universe of discourse. But if this metalan-
guage is really to break through the totalitarian scope of the
established universe of discourse, in which the different di-
mensions of language are integrated and assimilated, it must
be capable of denoting the societal processes which have
determined and "closed" the established universe of dis-
course. Consequently, it cannot be a technical metalanguage,
constructed mainly with a view of semantic or logical clarity.
The desideratum is rather to make the established language
itself speak what it conceals or excludes, for what is to be
revealed and denounced is operative within the universe of
ordinary discourse and action, and the preva 4, ing language
contains the metalanguage.
This desideratum has been fulfilled in the work of Karl
Kraus. He has demonstrated how an "internal" examination
of speech and writing, of punctuaeion, even of typographical
errors can reveal a whole moral or political system. This ex-
amination still *aoves within the ordinary universe of dis-
course; it needs no artificial, "higher-level" language in order
to extrapolate and clarify the cammed language. The word,
the syntactic form, are read in the context in which they ap-
ERIC 1 1 4
pear — for example, in a newspaper which, in a specific city
or country, espouses specific opinions through the pen of
specific persons. The lexicographic and syntactical context
thus opens into another dimension — which is not extraneous
but constitutive of the word's meaning and function — that
of the Vienna press during and after the First World War;
the attitude of its editors toward the slaughter, the mon-
archy, the republic, etc. In the light of this dimension, the
usage of the word, the structure of the sentence assume a
meaning and function which do not appear in * 'unmediated*
reading. The crimes against language, which appear in the
style of the newspaper, pertain to its political style. Syntax,
grammar, and vocabulary become moral and political acts.
Or, the context may be an aesthetic and philosophic one:
literary criticism, an address before a learned society, or
the like. Here, the linguistic analysis of a poem or an essay
confronts the given (immediate) material (the language of
the respective poem or essay) with that which the writer
found in the literary tradition, and which he transformed.
For such an analysis, the meaning of a term or form
demands its development in a multi-dimensional universe,
where any expressed meaning partakes of several interre-
lated, overlapping, and antagonistic "systems." For example,
it belongs:
(a) to an individual project, i.e., the specific communi-
- cation (a newspaper article, a speech) made at a
specific occasion for a specific purpose;
(b) to an established supra-individual system of ideas,
values, and objectives of which the individual
project partakes;
(c) to a particular society which itself integrates dif-
ferent and even conflicting individual and supra-
individual projects.
To illustrate: a certain speech, newspaper article, or
even private communication is made by a certain individual
who is the (authorized or unauthorized) spokesman of a
particular group (occupational, residential, political, intel-
lectual ) in a specific society. This group has its own values,
objectives, codes of thought and behavior which enter —
affirmed or opposed — with various degrees of awareness and
explicitness, into the individual communication. The latter
thus "individualizes 0 a supra-individual system of meaning,
which constitutes a dimension of discourse different from,
yet merged with, that of the individual communication. And
this supra-individual system is in turn part of a compre-
hensive, omnipresent realm of meaning which has been de-
veloped, and ordinarily "closed," by the social system within
which and from which the communication takes place.
The range and extent of the social system of meaning
varies considerably in different historical periods and in ac-
cordance with the attained level of culture, but its bound-
aries are clearly enough defined if the communication refers
to more than the non-controversial implements and relations
of daily life. Today, the social systems of meaning unite
different nation states and linguistic areas, and these large
systems of meaning tend to coincide with the orbit of the
more or less-advanced capitalist societies on the one hand,
and that of the advancing communist societies on the other.
While the determining function of the social system of mean-
ing asserts itself most rigidly in the controve r sid, political
universe of discourse, it also operates, in a much more covert,
unconscious, emotional manner, in the ordinary universe of
discourse. A genuinely philosophic analysis of meaning has
to take all these dimensions of meaning into account because
the linguistic expressions partake of all of them. Conse-
quently, linguistic analysis' in philosophy has an extra-lin-
guistic commitment. If it decides on a distinction between
legitimate and non-legitimate usage, between authentic and
illusory meaning, sense and non-sense, it invokes a political,
aesthetic, or moral judgment.
It may be objected that such an "external" analysis (in
quotation marks because it is actually not external but rather
the internal development of meaning) is particularly out of
place where the intent is to cipture the meaning of terms by
analyzing their function and usage in ordinary discourse.
But my contention is that this is precisely what linguistic
analysis in contemporary philosophy does not do. And it
does not do so inasmuch as it transfers ordinary discourse
into a special academic universe which is purified and syn-
thetic even where (and just where) it is filled with ordinary
language. In this analytic treatment of ordinary language,
117
the latter is really sterilized and anesthetized. Multi-di-
mensional language is made into one-dimensional language,
in which different and conflicting meanings no longer inter-
penetrate but are kept apart; the explosive historical di-
mension of meaning is silenced.
Wittgensteins endless language game with building
stones, or the conversing Joe Doe and Dick Roe may again
serve as examples. In spite of the simple clarity of the ex-
ample, the speakers and their situation remain unidentified.
They are x and y, no matter how chummily they talk. But
in the real universe of discourse, x and y are "ghosts." They
don't exist; they are the product of the analytic philosopher.
To be sure, the talk of x and y is perfectly understandable,
and the linguistic analyst appals righteously to the normal
understanding of ordinary people. But in reality, we under-
stand each other only through whole areas of misunder-
standing and contradiction. The real universe of ordinary
language is that of the struggle for existence. It is indeed an
ambiguous, vague, obscure universe, and is certainly in need
of clarification. Moreover, such clarification may well fulfill
a therapeutic function, and if philosophy would become
therapeutic, it would really come into its own.
Philosophy approaches this goal to the degree to which
4 it frees thought from its enslavement by the established
universe of discourse and behavior, elucidates the negativity
of the Establishment (its positive aspects are abundantly
publicized anyway) and projects its alternatives. To be sure,
philosophy contradicts and projects in thought only. It is
ideology, and this ideological character is the very fate of
philosophy which no scientism and positivism can overcome.
Still, its ideological effort may be truly therapeutic — to show
reality as that which it really is, and to show that which this
reality prevents from being.
In the totalitarian era, the therapeutic task of philosophy
would be a political task, since the established universe of
ordinary language tends to coagulate into a totally manipu-
lated and indoctrinated universe. Then politics would ap-
pear in philosophy, not as a special discipline or object of
analysis, nor as a special political philosophy, but as the
intent of its concepts to comprehend the unmutilated reality.
If linguistic analysis does not contribute to such understand-
ing; if, instead, it contributes to enclosing thought in the
9
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circle of the mutilated universe of ordinary discourse, it is
at best entirely inconsequential. And, at worst, it is an escape
into the non-controversial, the unreal, into that which is
only academically controversial.
Source: AAarcuse, H., 'The triumph of positive thinking: cne-
dimensional philosophy', One Dimensional Man, RoutSedge
& Kegan Paul, London, 1964, pp. 170-99.
The method and function of an
analytic social psychology:
notes on psychoanalysis and
historical materialism
Psychoanalysis is a materialistic psychology which should be classed
among the natural sciences. It points to instinctual drives and needs as
the motive force behind human behavior, these drives being produced
by physiologically based instincts that are not directly observable in
themselves. Psychoanalysis has shown that man's conscious psychic
activity is only a relatively small sector of his psychic life, that many
decisive impulses behind psychic behavior are unconscious. In par-
ticular, it has unmasked individual and collective ideologies as the
expression of specific wishes and needs rooted in the instincts and
shows that our "moral" and idealistic motives are in some measure
the disguised and rationalized expression of instinctual drives.
Quite in line with the popular division of instincts into those of
hunger and love, Freud began by assuming that two groups, the
instincts for self-preservation and the sexual instincts, 1 served as the
real motive force behind man's psychic life. He labeled the energy
inherent in the sexual instincts as libido, and the psychic processes
deriving from this energy as libidinous. 2 With respect to the sexual
instincts, Freud extended the ordinary use of this term and included
under it all the urges which, like the genital impulses, are physically
conditioned, attached to certain erogenous zones of the body, and
seek for pleasurable tension-release.
Freud assumes that the chief principle of psychic activity is the
"pleasure principle," that is, the urge to discharge instinctual ten-
sions in a way that will bring the maximum amount of pleasure. This
pleasure principle is modified by the "reality principle": taking
reality into account may lead us to renounce or postpone pleasure in
order to avoid a greater discomfort or to gain even grcrter pleasure at
some future time.
Freud sees the specific instinctual structure of the individual
conditioned by two factors: his inherited physical constitution and his
life experiences— in particular, the experiences of early childhood.
Freud proceeds on the assumption that man's inherited constitution
and life experiences form a "complementary chain" and that the
specific task of analysis is to explore and uncover the influence of life
E. Fro mm
9
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120
experiences on the inherited instinctual constitution. Thus the analytic
method is exquisitely historical: it seefo to understand the drive
strueture through the understanding of life history. This method is
valid for the psychic life of healthy people as well as for the sick and
neurotic. What distinguishes the neurotic from the "normal" person
is the fact that the latter has successfully adapted his instinctual
structure to his real needs in life, while the former's instinctual
structure has run up against certain obstacles that hinder him from
satisfactorily adapting it to reality.
In order to make as clear as possible that sex instincts can be
modified and adapted to reality, we must point out certain character-
istics which clearly distinguish them from the instincts forsclf-prcscr-
vation. For example, unlike the instincts for self-preservation, the sex
instincts are postponable. The former arc more imperative because if
they arc left unsatisfied too long, death will ensue: in short, prolonged
postponement of their satisfaction is psychologically intolerable. This
means that the instincts for self-preservation have primacy over the
sex instincts— not that they play a greater role in themselves, but in
case of conflict they arc more urgent.
In addition, the sex-rooted drives can be repressed, while the
desires emanating from the instincts for self-preservation cannot sim-
ply be removed from consciousness and placed in the unconscious.
Another important distinction between the two groups of instincts is
the fact that the sexual instincts can be sublimated: in other words,
instead of being satisfied directly, a sexual wish can be satisfied in a
way that may be far removed from the original sexual goal and
blended with other ego accomplishments. The instincts for sclf-pres-
crvation arc not capable of such sublimation. Furthermore, the drives
toward self-preservation must be satisfied b> real, concrete means,
while the sex drives can often be satisfied by pure fantasies. A man's
hunger can only be satisfied by food; his desire to be loved, houcver,
can be satisfied by fantasies about a good and loving God, and his
sadistic tendencies can be satisfied by sadistic spectacles and fan-
tasies.
A final important distinction is that the sex drives, unlike the
drives toward self-preservation, can find expression in ways that are
highly interchangeable and replaceable. If one instinctual drive is not
satisfied , it can be replaced by others whose satisfaction is possible for
cither internal or external reasons. The intcrchangcability and re-
placeability of the sex drives is one of the keys to understanding both
neurotic and healthy psychic life, and it is a cornerstone of the
psychoanalytic theory. But it is also a social fact of the highest
significance. It permits the masses to be offered (and satisfied by)
those precise satisfactions that arc socially available and desirable
from the standpoint of the ruling classes. 5
Summing up, it can be said that the sexual instincts, which canbe
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121
postponed, repressed, sublimated and interchanged, arc much more
elastic and flexible than the instincts for self-preservation. The former
lean on the latter, and follow their lead. 4 The greater flexibility and
changeability of the sex instincts docs not mean, however, that ihey
can be left unsatisfied permanently; there is not only a physical but
also a psychic minimum existence, and the sex instincts must be
satisfied to some minimal extent. The differences between the two
groups of drives, as we have noted them here, suggests rather that the
sex instincts can make great adaptations to the real possibilities for
satisfaction that exist, that is, to the concrete conditions of life. They
grow and develop through this adaptation, and only in neurotic indi-
viduals do we find disturbances in this capacity for adaptation.
Psychoanalysis has specifically pointed to V modif iability of the sex
drives. It has taught us to understand the individual's instinctual
structure in terms of his life experiences, to sec how the former has
been influenced by the latter. The active and passive adaptation of the
biological apparatus, the instincts, to social reality is the key concep-
tion of psychoanalysis, and every exploration into personal psycholo-
gy proceeds from this conception.
In the very beginning — and even later on — Freud concerned
himself with the psychology of the individual. But once the instincts
were discovered to be the motive force behind human behavior, and
once the unconscious was seen as the source of man's ideologies and
behavior patterns, it was inevitable that analytic authors would make
an attempt to move from the problem of the individual to the problem
of society, from individual to social psychology. They had to try to use
the techniques of psychoanalysis to discover the hidden sources of the
obviously irrational behavior patterns in societal life — in religion,
custom, politics and education. This obviously meant that they would
encounter difficulties that were avoided so long as they restricted
themselves to the realm of individual psychology.
But these difficulties do not alter the fact that the inquiry itself
was a legitimate scientific consequence of the starting point of
psychoanalysis. If instinctual life and the unconscious were the key to
understanding human behavior, then psychoanalysis was* also entitled
and competent to say something about the motives underlying social
behavior. For •'society" too consists of living individuals who must
be subject to the same psychological laws that psychoanalysis discov-
ered in the individual.
Thus it seems erroneous if one — a Wilhelm Reich, lor exam-
ple—restricts psychoanalysis to the sphere of individual psychology
and argues against its applicability to social phenomena (politics,
class consciousness, etc.)/ The fact that a phenomenon is studied in
sociology certainly does not mean that it cannot be an object of
psychoanalysis (no more than study of an object's physical character
istics rules out study of its chemical aspects). What is meant is simply
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122
(hat it is an object of psychoanalysis only and wholly insofar ar.
psychic factors play a role in the phenomenon. The thesis tha(
psychology only deals with the individual while sociology only deal*
with "society" is false. For just as psychology always deals with a
socialized individual, so sociology always deals with a group of
individuals whose psychic structure and mechanisms must be taken
into account. Later we will discuss the role that psychic factors play in
societal phenomena, and point to the function of analytical social
psychology'
The theory of society with which psychoanalysis seems to have
both the greatest affinity and also the greatest differences is historical
materialism.
They seem to have the most points of contact because they both
arc materialistic sciences. They do not start from "ideas" but from
earthly life and needs. They arc particularly close in Uicir appraisal of
consciousness, which is seen by both as less the driving force behind
human behavior than the reflection of other hidden forces. But when it
comes to the nature of »he factors that truly condition mt-Vs conscious*
ncss, there seems to be an irreconcilable opposition between the two
theories. Historical materialism sees consciousness as the expression
of social existence; psychoanalysis sees it as determined by instinctual
drives. Certain questions arc unavoidable: do the two views contradict
each other? If not, how arc they related? Can the use of the
psychoanalytic method enrich historical materialism? If so, how?
Before we discuss thesr questions, however, it seems necessary
to examine the presuppositions that psychoanalysis brings to a study
of societal problems.* Freud never assumed isolated man, devoid of all
social tics, to be 'he object of psychology.
Individual psychology, to be sure, is concerned with the indi-
vidual human being, and it examines the ways in which he tries to
satisfy his instinctual drives. But only rarely and under specific
exceptional circumstances is it in a position to abstract from this
person's relationships with other individuals. In the individual's
psychic life, other people ordinarily must be considered as cither
models, objects, helpers or opponents. Thus, from the begin-
ning, individual psychology is simultaneously social psycholo-
gy — In this extended but legitimate sense. 7
On the other hand, Freud basically ruled out the illusion of a
social psychology whose object is a group as such, "society," or a
social complex with a "mass soul" or "societal soul. Rather, he
always proceeds from the fact that every group is composed only of
individuals and !hat only the individual as such is the sjbjcct of
psychic properties. Freud likewise refused to accept the notion of a
"social instinct." What people called the "social instinct," he felt,
was "not a primitive, elemental instinct." He sees the "origins of its
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122
123
development in a narrower circle, such as the family. 1 ' His views lead
to the conclusion that the social attributes owe their origin , intensifica-
tion', and diminution to the influence of specific living conditions and
environmental relations on the instincts.
Just as, for Freud, it is always socialized man who is the object of
psychology, so he sees man's environment and living conditions
playing a decisive role in his psychic development and in our theoret-
ical understanding of it. Freud recognized the biological and phys-
iological influence of the instincts; but he specifically emphasized to
what degree these instincts could be modified, and he pointed to the
environment, social reality, as the modifying factor.
Thus, psychoanalysis seems to include presuppositions that
make its method useful for investigations in social psychology and
that rule out any conflict with sociology. It seeks to know the psychic
traits common to the members of a group, and to explain these
common psychic traits in terms of shared life experiences. These life
experiences, however, do not lie in the realm of the personal or the
accidental — the larger the group is, the more this holds true — but
rather they are identical with the socio-economic situation of this
particular group. Thus analytical social psychology seeks to under-
stand the instinctual apparatus of a group, its libidinous and largely
unconscious behavior, in terms of its socio-economic structure.
Here an objection seems to be in order. Psychoanalysis explains
instinctual development in terms of the life experiences of the earliest
childhood'years: that is to say, in terms of a period when the human
being scarcely has anything to do with "society" but lives almost
exclusively in the circle of his family. How then, according to
psychoanalytic theory, can socio-economic relationships acquire such
significance?
There is no real problem here at all. Of course, the first critical
influences on the growing child come from the family. But the family
itself, all its typical internal emotional relationships and the education-
al ideals it embodies, arc in turn conditioned by the social and class
background of the family; in short, they arc conditioned by the social
structure in which it is rooted. (For example: the emotional relation-
ships between father and son arc quite different in the family that is
part of a *x>urgeois, patriarchal society than they arc in the family that
is part of a matriarchal society.) The family is the medium through
which the society or the social class stamps its specific structure on the
child, and hence on the adult. The family is the psychological agency
of society.
Up to now, the vast majority of psychoanalytic works which have
tried to apply psychoanalysis to social problems have not met the
requirements incumbent on any analytical social psychology. 8 Their
failure begins in their assessment of the family's function. They saw
clearly enough that the individual can only be understood as a
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124
socialized being. They realized that it is the child's relationships with
the various family members that have a decisive influence on his
instinctual development. But they have almost completely overlooked
the fact that the family itself, in its whole psychological and social
structure, with all its specific educational goals and emotional at-
titudes, is the product of a specific social and (in a narrower sense)
class structure; that it is in fact simply the psychological °gency of the
society and class from which it comes. Hjey had found the correct
starting point for explaining the psychological influence of society on
the child, but failed to take notice of it.
How was that possible? The psychoanalytic investigators were
simply duped by a prejudice that they shared with every bourgeois
investigator— even those who were progressive. They had turned
bourgeois, capitalist society into an absolute; and they more or less
consciously believed that it was the "normal" society, that its condi-
tions and psychic factors were typical for "society" in general.
But there was another special reason why the analytical authors
fell into this error. The object of their investigations were, first and
foremost, sick and healthy members of modern society and largely of
the middle classes; in short, they were members of the bourgeois
class, 9 with the same social background. What determined and differ-
entiated their individual lives, then , were the individual , personal and,
from a social standpoint, accidental experiences above this generally
shared foundation. All the persons studied shared the same psychic
traits, insofar as these traits were the product of an authoritarian
society organized around the facts of class structures and the me-
thodical pursuit of maximal profit. They differed psychologically only
insofar as one had an overly strict father who terrified him in child-
hood, another had an older sister who was thefocus of all his love, and
still another had such an overpossessive mother that he was never able
to break his libidinal ties with her.
To be sure, these personal experiences were of the utmost im-
portance for the development of the individual concerned. By remov-
ing the psychic problems that had arisen from these experiences,
psychoanalysis did its full duty as a therapy; it transformed the patient
into a human being who was now adjusted to the existing social order.
The goal of therapy did not go beyond that, nor did it have to.
Unfortunately, our theoretical understanding of the whole situation
did not get beyond that, either. Neglect of the social structure, which
conditioned the family structure, may have been a source of error; but
it was irrelevant in actual practice for individual psychology. When it
came to research in social psychology, however, what had once been
an irrelevant mistake now became a disastrous source of error affect-
ing the whole endeavor. 10
Psychoanalysis had focused on the structure of bourgeois society
and its patriarchal family as the normal situation. Following the
approach of individual psychology, it had learned to appreciate indi-
125
vidual differences in terms of the fo.:uitous traumas that befell indi-
vidual men. Jn the beginning, psychoanalytic researchers explained
the various phenomena of social psychology in a corresponding way:
they viewed them in terms of traumas, of socially fortuitous events.
This necessarily led to a renunciation of the authentic analytic method.
Since they did not concern themselves with the variety of life experi-
ences, the socio-economic structure of other types of society, and
therefore did not try to explain their psychic structure as determined by
their social structure, they necessarily began to analogize instead of
analyzing. They treated mankind or a given society as an individual,
transposed the specific mechanisms found in contemporary individu-
als to every possible type of society, and 1 'explained' ' the psychic
structure of these societies by analogy with certain phenomena (usual-
ly of a neurotic sort) typical of human beings in their own society.
In doing this, they overlooked a point of view that is fundamental
even to psychoanalytic individual psychology. They forgot the fact
that neurosis — whether a neurotic symptom or a neurotic character
trait— results from the "abnormal" individual's faulty adaptation of
his instinctual drives to the reality around him; most people in a
society, i.e., the "healthy" people, do possess this ability to adapt.
Thus phenomena studied in social (or mass) psychology cannot be
explained by analogy with neurotic phenomena. They should be
understood as the resuli of the adaptation of the instinctual apparatus
to the social reality.
The most striking example of this procedure is the absolutization
of the Oedipus complex, which was made into a universal human
mechanism, even though sociological and ethnological studies indi-
cated that this particular emotional relationship was probably typical
only of families in a patriarchal society. The absolutizing of the
Oedipus complex led Freud to base the whole development of man-
kind on the mechanism of father hatred and the resultant reactions,"
without any regard for the material living conditions of the group
under study.
Even when he started from a false sociological standpoint, how-
ever, a genius like Freud was able to make worthwhile and significant
discoveries. 12 But in the work of other analytical authors, this false
starting point led to results which compromised psychoanalysis in the
eyes of sociology, and of Marxist social theory in particular.
But the blame did not rest with psychoanalysis as such. In fact,
one only had to apply the classical method of psychoanalytic individu-
al psychology in a logical way to social psychology, in order to arrive
at results that would meet with no objection,. The fault was that
psychoanalytic authors did not utilize this method in a correct way
when they transferred ft from the individual to social groups and social
phenomena.
Here a further clarification is called for. We have emphasized the
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126
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modifiability of the instinctual apparatus through the influence of
external (and ultimately social) factors. But one should not overlook
the fact that the instinctual apparatus, both quantitatively and qualita-
tively, has certain physiologically and biologically determined limits
to its modifiability and that only within these limits is it subject to the
influence of social factors. Eecause of the force of the energy it sends
forth, moreover, the instinctual apparatus itself is an extremely active
force; inherent in it is the tendency to alter living conditions so that
they serve instinctual goals.
In the interplay of interacting psychic drives and economic con-
ditions, the latter have primacy. Not in the sense that they represent
the "stronger' ' motive; this question is spurious because we are not
dealing with quantitatively comparable motives on the same plane.
They have primacy in the sense that the satisfaction of the need for
self-preservation is tied up with material production; and that the
modifiability of the economic reality is more restricted than the
modifiability of the human instinctual apparatus — in particular, the
sexual instinct.
Applying the method of psychoanalytic individual psychology to
social phenomena, we find that the phenomena of social psychology
are to be understood as processes involving the active and passive
adaptation of the instinctual apparatus to the socio-economic situa-
tion. In certain fundamental respects, the instinctual apparatus itself
is a biological given; but it is highly modifiable. The role of primary
formative factors goes to the economic conditions. The family is the
essential medium through which the economic situation exerts its
formative influence on the individual's psyche. The task of social
psychology is to explain the shared, socially relevant, psychic at-
titudes and ideologies — and their unconscious roots in particular — in
terms of the influence of economic conditions on libido strivings.
So far, then, the method of analytic social psychology seems to
dovetail with the method of Freudian individual psychology and with
the requirements of historical materialism. But new difficulties arise
when this method is confused with an erroneous but widespread
interpretation of the Marxist theory: the notion that historical material-
ism is a psychological theory or, more specifically, an economistic
psychology.
If it were true, as Bcrtrand Russell claims, 11 that Marx saw
'"making money" and Freud saw "love" as the decisive motive of
human conduct, then the two theories would be as irreconcilable as
Russell believes. Consider his hypothetical example of the mayfly.
Assuming that such a creature could think theoretically, I do not think
it would say what Russell claims it would. Instead, it would say that
Russell had completely misinterpreted both psychoanalysis and Marx-
ism; that psychoanalysis actually investigates the adaptation of
biological factors (the instincts) to social reality, and that Marxism is
not a psychological theory at all.
126
127
Russell is not the only one to misconstrue the two theories. He is
joined by many other theoreticians, and his false view is matched by
many similar ones.
The notion of historical materialism being an ccnomistic
psychology is espoused by Hcndrik dc Man with special emphasis.
As we know, Marx himself never formulated his theory of human
motivation. As a matter of fact, he never explained what "class"
meant. Death cut short his last work, when he was turning to this
subject. But the basic conceptions from which he starts are not in
doubt. Even undefined, the tacit presupposition underlying his
work appears both in his scholarly and political activity. Every
economic thesis and every political opinion of Marx rests on the
presupposition that man's volition:., motives, which bring about
social progress, are dictated first and foremost by economic
interests. Present-day social psychology would express the same
thoughts in terms of the effect of the acquisitive drive on social
conduct. If Marx himself regarded such formulations as superflu-
ous, that is because he took it for granted that this was the object
and aim of contemporary political economy. 14
Now this "tacit presupposition" may well have been the self-
understood conception of all contemporary (i.e., bourgeois) econo-
mists; but it certainly was not the view of Marx himself » who did not
share the views of contemporary theoreticians on many points.
Though in a iess explicit way, Bernstein is not far from this
psychologistic interpretation when he tries to defend the honor of
historical materialism with this observation:
The economic interpretation of history need not mean that only
economic forces and motives arc to be recognized, but simply
that economics is always the decisive factor that serves as the
cornerstone for the great movements of histor>.'<
Behind these muddy formulations lies the notion that Marxism is
an economic psychology, which is purified and improved by Bern-
stein in an idealist sense. 16
The idea that the "acquisitive drive" is the basic or only motive
of human behavior is the brainchild of bourgeois liberalism, used as a
psychological argument against the possibility of the realization of
socialism." Marx's petit-bourgeois interpreters interpreted his theory
as an economistic psychology. In reality, historical materialism is far
from being a psychological theory; its psychological presuppositions
are few and may be briefly listed: men make their own history; needs
motivate men's actions and feelings (hunger and love) 18 ; these needs
increase in the course of historical development, thereby spurring
increased economic activity. 19
In connection with psychology, the economic factor plays a role
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128
in historical materialism only to the extent that human needs — primar-
; \y the need for self-preservation — are largely satisfied through the
production of goods; in short, needs are the lever that stimulates
production. Marx and Engels certainly stressed that the drive toward
self-preservation took priority over all other needs, but they did not go
into any detail about the quality of various drives and needs. 20 Howev-
er, they never maintained that the "acquisitive drive," the passion for
acquisition as an aim in itself, was the only or essential need. To
proclaim it a universal human drive would be naively to absolutize a
psychic trait that has taken on uncommon force in capitalist society.
Marx and Engels are the last people to whom one would impute
the idea of transfiguring bourgeois and capitalist traits into a universal
human trait. They were well aware of the place psychology had within
sociology, but they neither were nor wanted to be psychologists.
Moreover, apart from indications in the French Enlightenment litera-
ture (especially Helvetius), which should not, of course, be underes-
timated, they had no scientific mater list psychology at their dispos-
al. Psychoanalysis was the first to provide this psychology, and
showed that the "acquisitive drive," although important, did not play
a predominant role in man's psychic armament by comparison with
other (genital, sadistic, narcissistic) needs. Psychoanalysis, in fact,
indicates that in laige measure the "acquisitive drive" is not fhc
deepest cause of the need to acquire or possess things; it is rather the
expression of a narcissistic need or wish to win recognition from
oneself and others. In a society that pays the highest recognition and
admiration to the rich man, the narcissistic impulses will find expres-
sion as a "drive" to contribute to society in some important way.
Since narcissistic needs are among the most elemental and powerful
psychic strivings, it is most important to recognize that the goals
(hence the concrete content) of these narcissistic aspirations depend
on the specific structure of a society. The imposing role of the
"acquisitive drive," then, is largely due to the especially high valua-
tion of property in bourgeois society.
When the materialistic view of history talks about economic
causes — apart from the meaning we have just explained — it is not
talking about economics as a subjective psychological motive but as
an objective influence on man's activity in life. 21 All man's activity,
the satisfying of all his needs, depend.* on the specific nature of natural
economic conditions around; and it is these conditions that determine
how man shall live his life. For Marx, man's consciousness is to be
explained in terms of his existence in society, in terms of his real,
earthly life that is conditioned by the state of his productive
capabilities.
The production of ideas, conceptions and consciousness is di-
rectly interwoven with the material activity and the material
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129
activity of men; it is an expression of his real life. His thoughts
and intellectual ideas are seen to be the direct outflow of his
material activity. The same holds true for the intellectual produc-
tions that find expression in politics, law, morality, religion,
metaphysics, etc. Men are the producers of their conceptions and
ideas, but we are talking about real, concrete men who are
conditioned by the specific way in which their productive
capabilities and their corresponding intercourse develops. Con-
sciousness can never be anything but conscious being, and man's
being is his concrete life. 22
Historical materialism sees history as the process of man's active
and passive adaptation to the natural conditions around him. "Work
is, first and foremost, a process between man and nature, a process in
which man mediates, regulates and controls his interaction with nature
through his own actions. Vis-a-vis the natural elements themselves,
he is a natural force." 23
Man and nature are the two poles here, interacting with each
other, conditioning each other, and altering each other. The historical
process is always bound up with man's own nature, and natural
conditions outside man. Although Marx stressed the fe' t that man
greatly altered both himself and nature in the historical process, he
always emphasized that all such changes were tied up with the existing
natural conditions. This is precisely what distinguishes his standpoint
from certain iajalist positions that accord unlimited power to the
human will. 24 As Marx and Engcls said,
The presuppositions with which wc begin arc not arbitrary dog-
mas. They are real presuppositions, from which one can abstract
only in imagination. They involve real, living individuals, their
actions, and the material living conditions which they find or
have created. Thus these presuppositions arc verifiable in a
purely empirical way.
The first presupposition of human history is, of course, the
existence of living human individuals. So the first fact to be
verified is the physical organization of these individuals and the
resultant relationship between them and nature. Here we cannot
go into the physical nature of man nor the varied (geological,
climatic, etc.) natural conditions he finds around him. Every
description of history must start with these natural foundations,
and their modification in the course of history by man's activity. 2 *
After the correction of the most drastic misunderstandings, what
emerges as the relation between psychoanalysis and historical
materialism?
Psychoanalysis can enrich the overall conception of historical
materialism on one specific point. It can provide a more comprehen-
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130
she knowledge of one of the factors that is operative in the social
process: the nature of man himself. It locates man's instinctual ap-
paratus among the natural factors that modify the social process,
although there arc also limits to this modifiability. Man's instinctual
apparatus is one of the "natural" conditions that forms part of the
substructure (Unterbau) of the social process. But we arc not talking
about the instinctual apparatus "in general," or in some pristine
biological form, since it is only manifest in some specific fomi that
has been modified through the social process. The human psyche — or
the libidinal forces at its root— arc part of the substructure; but they are
not the whole substructure, as a psychologistic interpretation would
have it. The human psyche always remains a psyche that has been
modified by the social process. Historical materialism calls for a
psychology — i.e. , a science of man's psychic structure; and
psychoanalysis is the first discipline to provide a psychology that
historical materialism can really use.
The contribution of psychoanalysis is particularly important for
the following reasons. Marx and Enge^s postulated the dependence of
all ideological processes on the economic substructure. They saw
intellectual and psychic creations as "the material basis reflected in
man's head." In many instances, to be sure, historical materialism
could provide the right answers without any psychological presuppo-
sitions. But only where ideology was the immediate expression of
economic interests; or where one was trying to establish the correla-
tion between economic substructure and ideological superstructure.
Lacking a satisfactory psych >logy , Marx and Engels could not explain
how the materia/ basis was reflected in man's head and heart.
Psychoanalysis can show that man's ideologies arc the products
of certain wishes, instinctual drives, interests and needs which them-
selves, in Kiltie measure, unconsciously find expression as rationaliza-
tions — i.e., as ideologies. Psychoanalysis can show that while the
instinctual drives do develop on the basis of biologically determined
instincts, their quantity and coracnt arc greatly affected by the indi-
vidual's socio-economic situation or class. Marx says that men are the
producers of their ideologies; analytical social psychology can de-
scribe empirically the process of the production of ideologies, of the
interaction of "natural" and social factors. Hence psychoanalysis can
show how the economic situation is transformed into ideology via
man's drives.
An important point to note is the fact that this interaction between
instincts and environment results in changes within man himself, just
as his work changes extra-human nature. Here we can only suggest the
general direction of this change. It involves, as Freud has stressed
repeatedly, the growth of man's ego organization and the correspond-
ing growth of his capacity for sublimation. 26 Thus, psychoanalysis
permits us to regard the formation of ideologies as a type of "produc-
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131
tion process," as another form of the ''metabolism" between man and
nature. The distinctive aspect here is that 4 4 nature" is also within man,
not just outside him.
Psychoanalysis can also tell us something about the way
ideologies or ideas mold society. It can show that the impact of an idea
depends essentially on it.; unconscious content, which appeals to
certain drives; thm is, as it were, the quality and intensity of the
libidinal structure of a society which determines the social effect of an
ideology.
If it seems clear that psychoanalytic social psychology has a valid
place within historical materialism, we can now point to the way in
which it can immediately resolve certain difficulties that confront the
doctrine of historical materialism.
To begin with, historical materialism can now give a better
answer to certain objections. Some opponents, for example, pointed
to the role that ideals — e.g., love for the group, the desire for free-
dom — play in history. Historical materialism could, of course, spurn
this type of question as a psychological problem and restrict itself to an
analysis of the objective ec nomic conditions that affect historical
events. But it was not in a pusition to explain clearly the nature and
source of these real and potent human forces, nor could it explain the
role they played in the social process. Psychoanalysis can show that
these seemingly idea! motives are actually the rationalized expression
of instinctual, libidinous needs and that the content and scope of the
dominant needs at any given moment arc to be explained in terms of
the influence of the socio-economic situation on the instinctual struc-
ture of the group that produces the ideology. Hence it is possible for
psychoanalysis to reduce the loftiest idealistic motives to their earthly
libidinal nucleus without having to consider economic needs as the
only important ones. 27
To sum up: (1) The realm of human drives is a natural force
which, like other natural forces (soil fertility, natural irrigation, etc.),
is an immediate part of the substructure of the social process. Knowl-
edge of this force, then, is necessary for a complete understanding of
the social process. (2) The way ideologies are produced and function
can only be understood correctly if we know how the system of drives
operates. (3) When economically conditioned factors hit upon tht*
realm of drives, some modifications occur, by virtue of the influence
of drives, the social process operates at a faster or slower tempo than
one would expect if no theoretical consideration to the psychic factors
is given.
Thus, the use of psychoanalysis within historical materialism
will provide a refinement of method, a broader knowledge of the
forces at work in the social process, and greater certainty in under-
standing the course of history and in predicting future historical
events. In particular, it will provide a complete understanding of how
ideologies are produced.
The fruitfukiess of a psychoanalytic social psychology will de-
pend, of course, on the significance of the libidinal forces in the social
process. We could not even begin to treat this topic thoroughly in this
article, so I shall content myself with a few basic suggestions and
indications.
Suppose we ask which forces maintain the stability of a given
society and which undermine it. We can su; that economic prosperity
and social conflicts determine stability or decomposition, respective-
ly. But we can also see that the factor which, on the basis of these
conditions, serves as a most important element in the social structure
are the libidinal tendencies actually operative in men. Consider first a
relatively stable social constellation. What holds people together?
What enables them to have a certain feeling of solidarity, to adjust to
the role of ruling or being ruled? To be sure, it is the external power
apparatus (police, law courts, army, etc.) that keeps the society from
coming apart at the seams. To be sure, it is rational and egotistic
interests that contribute to structural stability. But neither the external
[>ower apparatus nor rational Interests would suffice to guarantee the
functioning of the society, if the iibidinal strivings of the people were
not involved. They serve as the "cement/' as it were, without which
the society would not hold together, and which contributes to the
production of important social ideologies in every cultural sphere.
Let us apply this principle to an especially important social
constellation: class relationships. In history as wc know it, a minority
rules over the majority of society. This class rule was not the result of
cunning and deceit, but was a necessary result of the total economic
situation of socie % of its productive forces. As Necker saw it:
4 Through the laws of property, the proletariat were condemned to get
the barest minimum for their labor/ 1 Or, as Linguet put it, they were
"to a certain extent, a conspiracy against the majority of the human
race, who could find no recourse against them/* 28
The Enlightenment described and criticized this dependency
relationship, even though it did not realize that it was economically
conditioned. Indeed, minority rule is a historical fact; but what factors
allowed this dependency relationship to become stabilized?
First, of course, it was rhe use of physical force and the availabili-
ty of these physical means to certain groups. But there was another
important factor at work: the libidinal ties — anxiety, love, trust —
which filled the souls of the majority in their relationships with the
ruling class. Now this psychic attitude is not the product of whim or
accident. It is the expressicn of people's libidinal adaptation to the
conditions of life imposed by economic necessity. So long as these
conditions necessitate minority rule over the majority, the libido
adapts itself to this economic structure and serves as one of the factors
that lend stability to the class relationship.
Besides recognizing the economic conditions of the libido struc-
ture, social psychology should not forget to investigate the psycho-
logical basis of this structure. It must explore, not only why this libido
structure necessarily exists, but also how it is psychologically possible
and through what mechanisms it operates. Exploring the roots of the
majority's libidinal ties to 'M ruling minority, social psychology
might discover that this tie is a repetition or continuation of the child's
psychic attitude toward his parents, particularly toward his father, ina
bourgeois family.* We find a mixture of admiration, fear, faith and
confidence in the father's .strength and wisdom, briefly, an affectively
conditioned reflection of his intellectual and moral qualities, and we
find the same in adults of a patriarchal class society vis-a-vis the
members of the ruling class. Related to this are certain moral princi-
ples which entice the poor to suffer rather than to do wrong, and which
lead them to believe that the purpose of their life is to obey their rulers
and do their duty. Even these ethical conceptions, which arc so
impoi Jant for social stability, are the products of certain affective and
emotional relations to those who create and represent such norms.
To be sure, the creation of these norms is not left to chance. One
whole basic part of the cultural apparatus serves to form the socially
required attitude in a systematic and methodical way. It is an impor-
tant task of social psychology to analyze the function of the whole
educational system and other systems (su_h as the penal system) in
this process.*
We have focused on the libidinal relationships between the ruling
minority and the ruled majority because this factor is the social and
psychic core of every class society. But other social relationships, too,
bear their own distinctive libidinal stamp. The relationship* between
members of the same class have a different psychic coloring in the
lower middle class than they do in the proletariat. Or, the relationship
to the political leader is different, for example, in the case of a
proletarian leader who identifies with his class and serves their inter-
ests even while he leads them, from what it is when he confronts them
as a strong man, as the great father who rules as omnipotent au-
thority."
The diversity of possible libidinal relationships is matched by the
wide variety of possible emotional relationships within society. Even
a brief sketch is impossible here; this problem would indeed, be a
major task for an analytic social psychology. Let me just point out that
every society has its own distinctive libidinal structure, even as it has
its own economic, social, political, and cultural structure. This libi-
dinal structure is the product of the influence of socio-economic
conditions on human drives; in turn, it is an important factor condi-
tioning emotional developments within the various levels of society,
and the contents of the "ideological superstructure. " The libidinal
structure of a society is the medium through which the economy exerts
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134
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its influence on man's intellectual and mental manifestations."
Of course, the libidinal structure of a society docs not remain
constant, no more than does its economic and social structure. But it
remains relatively constant so long as the social structure retains a
certain equilibrium — i .c. , during the phase of relative consolidation in
the society's development. With the growth of objective contradic-
tions and conflicts within the society, and with the acceleration of the
disintegration process, certain changes in the society's libidinal struc-
ture also take place We sec the disappearance of traditional ties that
maintained the stability of the society: there is change in traditional
emotional attitudes. Libidinal energies are freed for new uses, and
thus change their social function. They no longer serve the preserva-
tion of the society, but contribute to the development of new social
formations. They cease to be "cement, " and turn into dynamite.
Let us return to the question we were discussing at the beginning:
the relationship of the drives to life experiences— i.e. , to the objective
conditions of life. We have seen that analytic individual psychology
views instinctual development as the result of the active and passive
adaptation of the instinctual apparatus to the actual conditions of life.
In principle, the same relationship holds true between a society's
libidinal structure and its economic conditions: it is a process of active
and passive adaptation of the society's libidinal structure to the exist-
ing economic conditions. Human beings, driven by their libidinous
impulses, bring about changes in the economic conditions; the
changed economic conditions cause new libidinal goals end
satisfactions to arise. The decisive point is that all these changes
ultimately go back to the economic conditions, that the drives and
needs change and adapt themselves in accordance with economic
conditions.
Clearly, analytic psychology has its place within the framework
of historical materialism. It investigates one of the natural factors that
is operative in the relationship between society and nature: the realm
of human drives, and the active and passive role they play within the
social process. Thus, it investigates a factor that plays a decisive
mediating role between the economic base and the formation of
ideologies. Thus, analytic social psychology enables us to understand
fully the ideological superstructure in term? of the process that goes on
between society and man's nature.
Now we can readily summarize the findings of our study on the
method and function of a psychoanalytic social psychology. Its meth-
od is that of classical Freudian psychoanalysis as applied social
phenomena, It explains the shared, socially relevant, psychic altitudes
in terms of the process of active and passive adaptation of the ap-
paratus of drives to the socio-economic living conditions of the
society.
134
135
Its task is, first of all, to analyze the socially relevant libidinal
strivings: i.e., to describe the libidinal structure of a given society,
and to explain the origin of this structure and its function in the social
process. An im i ^rtant element of this work, then, will be the theory
explaining how ideologies arise from the interaction of the psychic
apparatus and the socio-economic conditions.
1. Impressed by the libidinal admixtures in the instincts for self-preservation and the
special significance of the destructive tendencies. Freud has modified hi.s original
position. Over against the life-maintaining (erotic) instincts, he now sets the death
instinct. Significant as Freud's argument is for this modification in his original position,
it is far more speculative and less empirical than hi.s original position. To me ttsccmsto
rest upon an intermingling of biological data and psychological tendencies, an inter-
mingling that Freud has otherwise avoided. It also stands in contrast with an original
, viewpoint of Freud, which saw the instincts primarily as wishing, desiring, and serving
man's strivings for life. One of the consequences of Freud's overall position, it seems m
me, is that man's psychic activity develops as an adaptation to life's processes and
necessities, and that the instincts as such axe contrary to the biological death principle.
Discussion about the hypothesis of death instincts is still going on within psychoanaly-
sis. In our presentation here, we take off from Freud's original position,
2. At the time of writing this paper I adhered to ihc Freudian libido theory and hence
speak of "libidinal forces" (energies) or of "libidinal structure" (or drive structure)
where today I would not refer to the "libido" but to passionate forces of various kinds.
For the main points of this paper this difference, however, is not too relevant. ( 1970).
3. The stimulation and satisfaction of sadistic impulses plays a special role. These
impulses grow when other instinctual satisfactions of a more positive nature are ruled
out on socio-economic grounds. Sadism is the great instinctual reservoir, to which one
appeals when one has no other— and usually more costly— satisfactions to offer the
masses; at the same time, it is useful in annihilating the "enemy."
4. Sec Sigmund Freud, Tfircv Essays on the Titcory of Sexuality*
5. "The real object of psychoanalysis is the psychic life of socialized man. The
masses come in for consideration only insofar as individual based phenomena crop up
in them (e.g., the problem of the leader), and only insofar as traits ot the 'mass
psyche'— anxiety, panic, obedience, etc— <:an be clarified from our know ledge of
individuals. It would seem that the phenomenon of class consciousness is hardly
accessible to psychoanalysis, and that sociological problems (mass movements. po!i«
tics, etc) cannot be the object of the psychoanalytic method" ( Wilhelm Reich . "Dialck-
tischcr Materialismus and Psychoanalyse," Unterdem Banner desMar.ximux 11 1, p.
737).
Because of the theoretical importance of this methodological problem. I stress my
difference with the standpoint of Reich just presented; in his latest works. Reich seems
to have modified this standpoint in a very fruitful way. Later on I shall refer to my man)
points of agreement with his outstanding empirical investigations into social
psychology.
6. On the methodological aspect, see my extensive treatment in E. Fromm, 77/t'
Dogma of Christ, op. cit., also S. Bemfeld, "Sozialismus und Psychoanalyse mit
Diskussionsbemcrkungcn von E. Simmcl und B. Lantos," DcrSoziatistischeArzt, II,
2-3, 1929; Reich op. eit.
7. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
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8. Leaving aside worthless investigations (e.g., A. Koinai's superficial studies of
psychoanalysis and sociology, and such works as Psychoanalyse der curopaischen
Politik), we would apply the same criticism to authors such as Rcik and Rohcim uho
have dealt with themes in social psychology. There arc exceptions, houevcr. S.
Bemfcld has focused admirably on the social conditioning of all pedagogical efforts in
Sysiphos oder tibcr die Grcnicn der Erzichung. Another exception is Wilhclm Reich,
whose evaluation of the role of the family is in broad agreement with the view developed
in this paper. Jn particular. Reich has done extensive research into the social condition*
ing and :hc social function of sexual morality.
9. Psychologically, we must distinguish in the individual the traits that arc typical for
the whole society Iroin the traits that axe typical of his class'. But sine* the psychic
structure of the whole society is stamped on the individual classes In certain basic traits,
the specific class traits, for all their importance, arc of secondary importance viva«vis
those of the whole society. Indeed one of the characteristics of a class society, concealed
by ideologies, is the opposition between the relative uniformity of the different classes*
psychic structure and their conflicting economic interests. The more a society breaks
down economically, socially and psychologically, the more the dominating andbinding
force of the overall society or rulingclass disappear the greater become the differences
in the psychic structure of the various classes.
10. I no longer believe that it is only on "irrelevant error" not to Understand the socially
conditioned traits of the individual patient. On the contrary, without such understanding
one misses essential factors in the character structure of the patient. (1970).
11. Sec Sigmund Freud. Totem and Taboo.
12. In the Futurt of an Illusion (1927), Freud softens this position that neglects sociil
reality and its changes. Recognizing the significance of economic conditions, he moves
from the standpoint of individual psychology and the question of how religion is
psychologically possible for the individual (a repetition of the child'sat'itude toward its
father) to the social psychological question why religion is socially possible and
necessary. Hb answer is that religion was necessary so long as mankind needed
rcligious.illustons (0 make up for their i^notencc (i.e.. the low degree of productive
capability) vis«a«vis nature. With the growth of technology and the concomitant matura:
tion of mankind, religion became a superfluous and pernicious illusion.
This book of Freud docs not consider all the socially relevant functions of religion. In
particular, it does not consider the important question of the connection between
spcciiic forms of religion and specific sfxial constellations. But in method and content
this work of Freud comes closest to a materialistic social psychology. As far as content
is concerned, we need only cite this sentence from it: " It need hardly be pointed out that
a culture which leaves so many members unsatisfied and discontent has little prospect of
lasting long, and is doing little to achieve that goal.**
Freud's book is in line with the standpoint of Marx as a young man. whocould use as
his motto: "The abolition of religion, the illusory happiness of the proletariat, is the
demand to promote his true happiness. The demand to give up illusions about his
condition is the summons to give up a condition which needs illusions. At its core,
criticism of religion is critic, sm of the vale of tears whose halo is religion* ' C'Zur Kritik
der Hcgclschen Rechtsphilosophic/* Lit. NacUass. I , | I923J. 385). In his latest work
dealing with problems in social psychology. Civilization and its Discontents, Freud
docs not develop this linecilher in method or in content. Rather. It should be regarded as
an antithesis to the Future of an Illusion.
13. In -Why Is Psychoanalysis Popular?" {Forward. 1927). Russell writes: "Of
course psychoanalysis is incompatible with Marxism. For Marx stresses the economic
motive which, at best, is tied up with sclf«prcscrvation. uhile psychoanalysis Stresses
the biological motive which is tied up with self'preic.vation through reproduction.
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137
Clearly the iwo points* of view are one-sided since both motives play a role."
Russell then talks about a hypothetical mayfly, which would have only organs for
eating in the larva Mage and only organs for love-making in the adult stage. What would
such an insect say, if it could think? Says Russell: 44 In the larva stage it would be a
Marxist, in the adult stage a Freudian." Russell then adds that Marx, "the bookworm of
the British Museum," is the representative of the larva's philosophy. Russell himself
feels closer to Freud, since the latter "is not insensitive to the joys of love-making, and
does not try to explain things in terms of "making money.' that is. in terms of the
orthodox economy created by dessicated old men."
14. Hendrik dc Man, 2ur Psychologic des Soziatismus. 1927. p. 281.
15. Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Soziatismus und die Aufgabcn der Soziat-
demokrarie f S\uitgm, 1899, p. 13.
16. Atthe very start of his book, DerhistorischeMateriatismus, Kautskyfinnly rejects
the psychologists interpretation. But he then goes on to supplement historical material-
ism with a purely idealist psychology, by assuming that there is a pristine "social
drive.'*
17. Indeed, many of the objections raised against historical materialism actually apply
to the specifically bourgeois admixtures smuggled into the theory by friends or oppo-
nents.
18. It is clear from the whole context that by "love" I refer to Freud's early formula-
tion, in which love was used in the popular Sense as being identical with sexuality,
including the pregenital; it would have been clearer if I had written "self-preservation
and sexuality." (1970).
19. 'Must as the wild beast must contend with nature to satisfy his needs, maintain his
life and reproduce, so the civilized man must do the same thing in all the form: "*f society
and with every possible means of production. As he develops, the range of his natural
needs broadens, because his needs do; but the productive capabilities, which satisfy
these needs, also expand" (Marx, DasKapitat, Hamburg, 1922, III, 2, p. 355, italics
mine).
20. In Marx** Contribution to the Knowledge of Man I have corrected this view and
have shown that Marx had a much more elaborate psychology than indicated in the text.
21. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, not yet published at the time
when this paper was written, Marx makes the point very explicit. He writes '*. . . the
only wheels that political economy sets in motion arc greed ..." Even a scholar with the
best intentions of being objective, R. Tucker, was influenced by the widely-held
opinion that Marx assumed greed to be a primary motive so that he mistranslated the
(difficult) German passage to mean the opposite, namely "the only wheels that set
political economy in motion are greed." (R. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl
Marx, Cambridge Univ. Press, 196K) (1970)
22. Marx and Engels, Part I of Deutunen Ideologic, Marx-Engels Archives, Band I, p.
239.
(1970)
23. Marx, Day Kapha! , op. cit. t p. 140.
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24. On this point, sec the work of Bukharin that underlines the natural factor in a clear
way: Die Theorie des historischen Materialismus, 1922. This whole question is
specifically dealt with in the illuminating work of K. A. Wittfogcl, "Geopolitik,
geographischer Mater iahsmus und Marxismus," Unter dem Banner des Marxismus
III, 1,4, 5.
25. Marx **nd Engels. op. tr/7., p. 237 f.
26. To mc. however, there seems to be an immanent contradiction in Freud's assump-
tion that the growth of the superego and of repressions is tied up with this also, for the
growth of the ego and one'scapacity for sublimation means that the person gains control
over the instincts in other ways rather than through repression.
27. Lack of any adequate psychology led many proponents of historical materialism to
inject a private, purely idealistic psychology in this empty place. A typical example is
Kautsky , who, not as openly idealistic as Bernstein and others, assumes that man has an
inborn ' 'social instinct," and describes the relationship between this social instinct and
social relationships in this way: "Depending on the strength or weakness of his social
instinct, man will tend more toward good or evil. But it depends no less on his living
conditions in society." (Op. cit., p. 262) Clearly Kautsky's innate social instinct is
nothing less than the innate moral principle; his position differs from idealist ethics only
in the way he expresses it. #
In his Theorie des historischen Materialismus* Bukharin devotes a whole chapter to
the problem of psychology. He rightly points out that the psychology of a class is not
identical with its "interests" — by which he means its real, economic interests, but that
the psychology of a class must always be explained in terms of its socio-economic role.
As an example, he cites the case where a mood of despair grips the masses or some
group after a great defeat in the class struggle. "Then we can detect a connection with
class interests, but this connection is of a distinctive sort: the battle was carried on by the
hidden motives of the parties involved, and now their army lies in defeat; from this
situation arises confusion and despair, and the people begin to look for miracles from
heaven" (italics mine).
Bukharin then goes on to say: "In considering class psychology, then, it is evident
that we are dealing with a very complicated phenomenon that cannot be explained on the
basis of naked interest alone. It must be explained in terms of the concrete milieu of the
class in question." Bukharin also notes that ideological processes are a particular type
of social labor. But since he has no suitable psychology available to him, he cannot go
on to explain the nature of this labor process.
28. Cited b> Griinberg in Vcrhandlungen des Vereins jiir Soziulpoliiik* Stuttgart,
1924, p. 31.
29. It should be remembered that this specific father-child relationship itself is socially
conditioned.
30. Sec Fromm, "Zur Psychologic des Vcrbrechcrs und dcr strafenden Gesellschaft,"
XVII Imago, 1 2. Not only docs the cultural apparatus serve to direct the libido forces
(especially the pregcnital and the partial dri j cs) in specific, socially desired directions;
it also serves to weaken the libido forces to the point where they no longer arc a threat to
social stability. This toning down of the libido forces— i.e., turning them back into the
pregcnital realm— is one of the motives of the sexual morality of the given society.
31. In Mass Psychology and Ego-Analysis* Freud focuses on the libido factors in the
relationship to the leader. But he takes both "leader" and •■masses" in an abstract
sense, disregarding the concrete situation surrounding them. He thus gives a universali-
ty to the psychic processes involved thaj does not correspond to reality. In other words,
he turns one particular type of relationship to the leader into a universal type Another
139
critical problem of social psychology, class relationships, is replaced by a secondary
problem: the ruler-mass relationship.lt is noteworthy, however, that in this work Freud
notes the general tendency of bou rgcois social psychology to disparage the masses, and
does not fall in with it.
32* What I have called here the "libidinal structure of society," using Freudian
terminology, I have in my later work called the "social character"; in . N pite of the
change in the libido theory, the concepts are the same.
Source: Fromm, E., 'The method and function of an analytic social
psychology: notes on psychoanalysis and historical
materialism', in Arato, A. and Gebhardt, E. (eds)The Essen-
tial Frankfurt School Reader, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lon-
don, 1964, pp.477 C Urizen Books, New York, 1978.
139
Annotated bibliography
-Sis
140
142
Primary sources in critical theory
Adorno, Theodor W., Prisms, Spearman, London, 1967.
Contains a wide range of essays on Kapko, Spengler and others. Most im-
portant are two essays that provide an analysis of the political nature of
'culture* and the sociology of knowledge.
Adorno, Theodor W., 'Sociology and psychology 1 , Part 1 , New Left Review,
no. 46, 1967, pp. 67-80; 'Sociology and psychology', Part 2, New Left Review,
no. 47, 1968, pp. 79-96.
Originally written in 1955, Adorno argues in this essay for a need to draw
upon the interdependent but irreducible spheres of sociology and psy-
chology in order to understand how society reaches into the individual.
An important attempt by Adorno to integrate Marxism and Freudian
psychoanalysis.
Adorno, Theodor W., 'On Culture and administration', Telos, vol. 37, Fall
1978, pp. 93-111.
Adorno provides a strong critique of those arguments that fail to view culture
as a political phenomenon. He claims that the traditionally oppositional
function of culture has given way to its neutralisation. Culture, in Adorno's
view, has increasingly come to represent a regressive desire to enshrine
technicians of communication. In other words, culture or critique has given
way to culture as administration.
Fromm, Erich, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, Simon and Schuster, New
York, 1962.
Subtitled 'My encounter with Marx and Freud* this intellectual biography
is an account of Fromm's attempt to reconcile Freud's psychoanalysis with
Marx's social and historical analysis as a basis for a 'humanist socialism
which is as different from Soviet communism as it is from capitalism'. Very
readable.
Horkheimer, Max, Critical Theory, Seabury Press. New York. 1972.
A seminal work in which Horkheimer spells out the basis for developing
a critical theory while simultaneously launching a major critique of
positivism.
Horkheimer, Max, Eclipse of Reason, Seabury Press, New York, 1974.
In this work, Horkheimer demonstrates the notion that a critique of knowl-
edge must be presented as a critique of ideology. That is, knowledge must
be seen in its historical context while its underlying interests must be
simultaneously uncovered. The object of Horkheimer's critique here is
instrumental reason.
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor W., Dialectic of Enlightenment,
Continuum, New York, 1972.
The most original work of critical theory, especially the chapter 'Enlight-
enment or mass deception'. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that science
and technology, traditionally seti since the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries as the means to overcome mysticism and ignorance, have become
new forms of domination. The rationality that informs science and tech-
nology has resulted in a mechanically reproduced art and culture that
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143
degrades the critical faculties and makes, so they argue, the manipulation
of individual and group consciousness easier. This book provides the most
comprehensive critique of mass culture.
Marcuse, Herbert, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into
Freud, Beacon Press, Boston, 1955.
Marcuse provides a radical reconstruction of some of Freud's most basic
assumptions. Marcuse develops a Freudian tradition of philosophical an-
thropology in which he attempts to situate the psychological and social
aspects of human behaviour in a critical theory perspective that rejects
Freud's ahistorical and pessimistic stance.
Marcuse, Herbert, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise 0/ Social
Theory, Beacon Press, Boston, 1960.
In this book, Marcuse engages and expands the Hegelian notion of the
dialectic. For Marcuse, reason and history merge within the two-fold pro-
cess of negative thinking, and in the attempt to reconstruct the world
according to emancipatory interests. Marcuse's best work on the meaning
and nature of the dialectic.
Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man, Beacon Press, Boston, 1964.
This book is probably Marcuse's most well known work. In it, he analyses
the way in which capitalist rationality has successfully integrated the
working class into existing class relations. Marcuse argues that capitalism
has not only provided the goods but has also colonised mass culture and
the sphere of everyday existence. His chapter on the development and use
of language to depoliticise the masses is quite interesting.
Marcuse, Herbert, The Aesthetic Dimension: Towards a Theory 0/ Marxist
Aesthetics, Beacon Press, Boston, 1978.
Marcuse launches a brilliant attack in this short text against orthodox
Marxism's treatment of art as a locus of emancipatory interests. He also
spells out in considerable detail wba^ he believes a radical theory of aes-
thetics might look like.
Secondary sources on critical theory
Arato, Andrew, and Gebhardt, Eike (eds), The Essential Frankfurt School
Reader, Urizen Books, New York, 1978.
This is really two books in one. First there are a number of original articles
previously unpublished in English by a number of diverse members of
the Frankfurt School. Second, the editors provide lengthy and excellent
introductions to each of the three major divisions of the text. A very im-
portant source.
Aronowitz, Stanley, False Promises, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1973.
Chapter on the colonisation of leisure presents a brilliant overview of the
Frankfurt School's analysis of mass culture and everyday life. Aronowitz
is a leading theorist on critical theory and is well worth reading.
Aronowitz, Stanley, The Crisis in Historical Materialism: Class, Politics,
and Culture in Marxist Theory, Praeger Press, New York, 1981.
An important but theoretically advanced book that examines, in part, the
strengths and weaknesses of critical theory against the task of restructuring
th(i corpus of Marxist theory.
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144
Buck-Morss, Susan, The Origin 0/ Negative Dialectics, Free Press, New
York, 1977.
Probably the best summation and analysis of Adorno's work yet published
in English, A well researched and informative book that looks admiringly
on Adorno's work. Also contains a number of informative accounts on the
work of Walter Benjamin who had a strong influence on Adorno.
Connerton, Paul (ed,), Critical Sociology, Penguin Books, London, 1976.
Contains a number of highly selected traditional writings by various mem-
bers of the Frankfurt School. Many of the articles have been abridged. Good
book to get a sampling of some of the best writings by critical theorists.
Held, David, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980.
An excellent introductory book which analyses the major contributions
of Adomo, Horkheimer, Habermas, Marcuse and others. This book is a must
for graduate students and provides one of the best primers on the subject
available in English.
Jacoby, Russell, Social Amnesia: A critique o/Con/ormist Psychology /rom
Adler to Laing, Beacon Press, Boston, 1975.
An important and spirited critique of neo-Freudian and post-Freudian
psychologies. An especially important ciitical analysis of what has been
labelled as humanistic psychology of the Rogerian and Maslow variety.
Jacoby borrows heavily from the spirit of Herbert Marcuse. An important
book.
Jameson, Fredric, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-century Dialectic Theoiies
0/ Literature, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1971.
Jameson is one of America's ablest Maxist literary critics. In this book, ho
provides two excellent chapters that are relevant for our purpose and in-
terest. His chapter on Adorno. and his final chapter on dialectical critique
are invaluable.
Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History 0/ the Frankfurt School
and the Institute for Social Research 2923-1950, Heinemann, London, 1973.
Jay's book is a contemporary classic cn the history of Ihe Frankfurt School,
and covers the period between 1923 to 1950. It is standard reading on the
subject.
Sources in education that provide a radical critique
of schooling and draw upon critical theory
Apple, Michael, Ideology and Curriculum, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Bos-
ton, 1979.
Apple's book was one of the first in the United States to draw upon the
critical traditions of Marxism in order to critique the nature and function
of schooling.
Bates, Richard J., The function of educational administration in the pro-
cesses of cultural transmission', paper presented at the Conference on the
Origins and Operations of Educational Systems, International Sociological
Association, Paris, August, 1980, in Curriculum Inquiry, in press.
A study of the implementation of a rational-bureaucratic model of knowl-
edge in classrooms suggests that current modes of educational adminis-
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tration are based on control, via rational planning, of social relations,
individual consciousness, and epistemology. and that the development
of sophisticated curriculum packages transforms the relationship between
teacher and student as teachers can now be held accountable for the mas-
tery of pre-specified goals.
Bates, Richard. J., Towards a critical practice of educational administra-
tion', paper prepared for the Annual Conference of the American Edu-
cational Research Association, New York, March, 1982, in T. Sergiovanni
and J.E. Corbally (eds). Administrative Leadership and Organisational
Cultures University of Illinois Press, Urbana, forthcoming.
This paper traces the roots of an alternative to the behavioural science
approach to educational administration and in examining this new
sociology of education argues for the location of a critical practice of edu-
cational administration in a cultural analysis of education. It is also argued
that a practice of a critical and reflexive educational administration is
necessarily located within a critique of domination and a commitment to
the struggle f.r a better world.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Passeron, Jean-Claude, Reproduction; In Education,
Society and Culture, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1977.
Bourdieu and Passeron's book is important because it adds to the Frankfurt
School's notion of culture through the analysis of schools as agencies of
social and cultural reproduction.
Cherryholmes, Cleo, 'Social knowledge and citizenship education', Cur-
riculum Inquiry, vol. 10, no. 2, Summer 1980, pp. 115-41.
Cherryholmes draws upon the work of Habermas in order to develop a
theory of knowledge and citizenship education. An important article.
Friere, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Seabury Press, New York, 1973.
One of the most important books ever published on radical pedagogy.
Freire's discussion of culture and education provides a theoretical frame-
work for developing many of the insights on culture first advanced by the
Frankfurt School.
Giroux, Henry A,, Ideology, Culture and the Process of Education, Temple
University Press, Phil., 1981.
Giroux draws heavily on the traditions of 'Western Marxism' in order to
develop a critical theory of schooling.
Giroux, Henry A., Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for
the Opposition, Bergen Press, South Hadley, Mass., 1983.
This book provides both an introduction to critical theory as well as <*
number of chapters that extend many of the insights first developed by
Adorno. Horkheimer and Marcuse.
Wexler, Philip, A Critical Social Psychology, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Boston. 1982.
Wexler provides an in-depth analysis of critical theory and its contribution
to social psychology. An important book.
Whitty, Geoff, Ideology, Politics and Curriculum, Open University Press,
London. 1981.
Whitty provides an excellent summation and critical analysis of the var-
ious work done on ideology. His development of a theoretical application
of the ( (instruct to curriculum theory and practice; is particularly good.
144
146
Willis, Paul, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working
CJass Jobs, Saxon House, Teakfield, England, 1977.
Willis provides an excellent study of working class youths who represent
the culture of opposition in an English secondary school. His treatment
of culture and resistance provides a useful complement to the work of critical
theorists such as Horkheimer and Marcuse.
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ESA84I Theory and practice in educational administration
Critical theory and educational practice
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ISBN 0 7300 0001 X.
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