7/30/2019 The Politics of Critical Theory

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www.platypus1917.org

Supplement to Issue #37 | July 2011

The Platypus ReviewStaff

Editor-in-Chief

Sunit Singh

Managing Editor

Nathan L. Smith

Editors

Spencer A. Leonard

Pam C. Nogales

Laurie Rojas

Laura Schmidt

Bret SchneiderBen Shepard

Ashley Weger

Copy Editors

Zebulon York Dingley

Jamie Keesling

Proof Editors

Jeremy Cohan

Edward Remus

Designers

Benjamin Koditschek

Web Editor

Gabriel Gaster

Statement of Purpose

Taking stock o the universe o positions and goals that constitutes letist politics

today, we are let with the disquieting suspicion that a deep commonality under-

lies the apparent variety: What exists today is built upon the desiccated remains

o what was once possible.

In order to make sense o the present, we fnd it necessary to disentangle the

vast accumulation o positions on the Let and to evaluate their saliency or the

possible reconstitution o emancipatory politics in the present. Doing this implies

a reconsideration o what is meant by the Let.

Our task begins rom what we see as the general disenchantment with the

present state o progressive politics. We eel that this disenchantment cannot be

cast o by sheer will, by simply carrying on the fght, but must be addressedand itsel made an object o critique. Thus we begin with what immediately con-

ronts us.

The Platypus Reviewis motivated by its sense that the Let is disoriented.

We seek to be a orum among a variety o tendencies and approaches on the

Letnot out o a concern with inclusion or its own sake, but rather to provoke

disagreement and to open shared goals as sites o contestation. In this way, the

recriminations and accusations arising rom political disputes o the past may be

harnessed to the project o clariying the object o letist critique.

The Platypus Reviewhopes to create and sustain a space or interrogating and

clariying positions and orientations currently represented on the Let, a space in

which questions may be raised and discussions pursued that would not otherwise

take place. As long as submissions exhibit a genuine commitment to this project, all

kinds o content will be considered or publication.

Submission guidelinesArticles will typically range in length rom 7502, 500 words, but longer pieces

will also be considered. Please send article submissions and inquiries about this

project to: review_editor@platypus1917.org.All submissions should conorm to the

Chicago Manual o Style.

The Platypus Review is funded by:The University o Chicago Student Government

Loyola University o Chicago

School o the Art Institute o Chicago Student Government

New School University

The Platypus Aliated Society

Supplement to Issue #37 / July 2011

"OpeningRemarks"continuesonpage2

ThePlatypusReview:THEPOLITICSOFCRITICALTHEORY1 SupplementtoIssue#37/July2011

The opening plenary o the third annual Platypus Afliated Society

international convention, held April 29May 1, 2011 at the School o the

Art Institute o Chicago, was a panel discussion between Chris Cutrone

o Platypus, Andrew Feenberg o Simon Fraser University in Vancouver,

and Richard Westerman o the University o Chicago, with Nicholas Brown

o the University o Illinois at Chicago as respondent. The panelists were

asked to address the ollowing: Recently, the New Let Reviewpublished

a translated conversation between the critical theorists Theodor Adorno

and Max Horkheimer causing more than a ew m urmurs and gasps. In the

course o their conversation, Adorno comments that he had always wanted

to develop a theory that remains aithul to Marx, Engels and Lenin, while

keeping up with culture at its most advanced. Adorno, it seems, was a

Leninist. As surprising as this evidence might have been to some, is it not

more shocking that Adornos politics, and the politics o Critical Theory, have

remained taboo or so long? Was it really necessary to wait until Adorno and

Horkheimer admitted their politics in print to understand that their primary

preoccupation was with maintaining Marxisms relation to bourgeois critical

philosophy (Kant and Hegel)? This panel proposes to state the question as

directly as possible and to simply ask: How did the practice and theory o

Marxism, rom Marx to Lenin, make possible and necessary the politics o

Critical Theory?The ull audio recording o the event is available at: http://www.archive.org/details/PlatypusForumThePoliticsOCriticalTheory.

THE THIRD ANNUAL PLATYPUSINTERNATIONAL CONVENTION

OPENING PLENARY:

THE POLITICSOF CRITICAL

THEORY

Waitingforhistory:Horkheimerand

Adornostheatreoftheabsurd

AndrewFeenberg

In2010theNewLeftReview(NLR65)translateda

dialoguebetweenHorkheimerandAdornoonanew

maniesto.1Thisdialogue,whichtookplacein1956,is

onlyunderstandableagainstthebackgroundoMarx

andLukcssinterpretationothetheory-practice

relation.InthistalkIwilltrytoexplainhowthat

backgroundblockstheproductionothemaniestoand

reducesdiscussionoittoabsurdity.Butrst,letme

showhowHorkheimerandAdornosetuptheproblem.

Theirdialogueisastrangedocument.Thepretension

toupdatetheCommunistManifestowrittenbyMarxand

Engelsin1848isastonishing,particularlygiventhe

sillinessomuchotheirtalk.Forexample,whatarewe

tomakeotherstexchangesonthemisplacedloveo

work,whichthendevolveintoaconversationaboutthe

analsoundsemittedbyamotorcycle?Thedialogue

returnsconstantlytothequestionowhattosayinatimewhennothingcanbedone.Thecommunist

movementisdead,killedobyitsowngrotesque

successinRussiaandChina.Westernsocietiesare

betterthantheMarxistalternativethatnevertheless

symbolicallyrepresentsanemancipateduture.

Horkheimerisconvincedthattheworldismadandthat

evenAdornosmodesthopethatthingsmightworkout

somedaystinksotheology.Horkheimerremarks,We

probablyhavetostartromthepositionosayingto

ourselvesthatevenithepartynolongerexists,theact

thatweareherestillhasacertainvalue.Insum,the

onlyevidencethatsomethingbetterispossibleisthe

actthattheyaresittingtheretalkingaboutthe

possibilityosomethingbetter.

Horkheimerasks,inthissituation,Inwhoseinterest

dowewrite?Peoplemightsaythatourviewsarejust

alltalk,ourownperceptions.Towhomshallwesay

thesethings?Hecontinues,Wehavetoactualizethe

lossothepartybysaying,ineect,thatwearejustas

bad[o]asbeorebutthatweareplayingonthe

instrumentthewayithastobeplayedtoday.And

Adornoreplies,cogentlyandrathercomically,Thereis

somethingseductiveaboutthatideabutwhatisthe

instrument?AlthoughAdornoremarkstentativelyat

onepointthathehastheeelingthatwhatweare

doingisnotwithoutitseect,Horkheimerismore

skeptical.Hesays,Myinstinctistosaynothingithere

isnothingIcando.Andhegoesontodiscussthetone

andcontentothemaniestoinsuchawayastoreduce

ittoabsurdity:Wewantthepreservationortheuture

oeverythingthathasbeenachievedinAmericatoday,

suchasthereliabilityothelegalsystems,the

drugstores,etc.Thismustbemadequiteclear

wheneverwespeakaboutsuchmatters.Adorno

replies,ThatincludesgettingridoTVprogrammes

whentheyarerubbish.Contradictinghimsel,

Horkheimerconcludestherecordeddiscussionwiththe

grimwords,Becausewearestillpermittedtolive,we

areunderanobligationtodosomething.

In1955,shortlybeorethisexchangeoccurred,

SamuelBeckettwroteWaitingforGodot.The

speculationsoVladimirandEstragonanticipateMax

andTeddiesabsurdistdialogue.Vladimirsays,or

instance:Letusnotwasteourtimeinidlediscourse!

Letusdosomething,whilewehavethechance!Itisnot

everydaythatweareneeded.Butatthisplace,atthis

momentotime,allmankindisus,whetherwelikeitor

not.Letusmakethemostoit,beoreitistoolate!2

ThisintroductiontothediscussionoHorkheimer

andAdornostextmayseemunair.Dotheydeservemy

mockery?Yesandno,toquoteHorkheimer.Inone

sensetheirtextisalreadysel-mocking.The

lightheartedtoneomanyotheexchangesshowsthem

tobewellawareotheliteralimpossibilityocarrying

outtheirproject.Horkheimerclaimsthatthetoneinwhichthemaniestoiswrittenmustsomehow

overcomeitsutilityinthepresentperiodwhenitcan

havenopracticaleect.Somethingsimilartakesplace

inthedialogue.Thetonerevealswhatcannotbe

explainedadequatelyaboutthecontradictionbetween

theexistentialsituationothespeakersandtheir

project.Buttheydotrytheirbesttomakethe

contradictionexplicit.

Theobstacleistheirconceptionotherelationo

theorytopractice.AdornopointsoutthatMarxand

Hegelrejectabstractidealsandreconstructtheconcept

otheidealasthenexthistoricalstep.Thismeansthat

theorymustbetiedtopractice,torealhistoricalorces.

AsHorkheimerlatersays:Realityshouldbemeasured

againstcriteriawhosecapacityorulllmentcanbe

demonstratedinanumberoalreadyexisting,concrete

developmentsinhistoricalreality(55).

But,Adornoargues,MarxandHegeldidnotliveina

worldlikeoursinwhichtheunwillingnesstotakethe

nextstepblockstheactualrealizationoutopia.Under

theseconditions,thetemptationtoutopianspeculation

returns,butthepressuretomeettheHegelian-Marxist

historicaldesideratumblockstheurtherprogresso

thought.Horkheimerconcludesthat,theideao

practicemustshinethroughineverythingwewrite

withoutanycompromiseorconcessiontotheactual

historicalsituation,aseeminglyimpossibledemand.

Thisyieldswhathecallsacuriouswaitingprocess,

whichAdornodenesas,inthebestcasetheoryasa

messageinabottle(56,58).

Whatismostpeculiaraboutthisexchangeisthe

reusalothesetwophilosopherstoderiveacritical

standardromphilosophicalrefectiononcehistorycan

nolongersupplyit.ThisiswhatHabermaswoulddo

later:admitthebreakdownotheHegelian-Marxist

historicalapproachandestablishaproperly

philosophicalbasisorcritique.Inonextsteplights

theway,perhapsethicscandothejobinitsplace.But

HorkheimerandAdornoinsistontheimportanceo

situatingtheirthoughthistoricallybothintermsotheir

ownpositionandtheabsenceoapartyanda

movement.AsHorkheimernotes,Wehavetothinko

ourownormoexistenceasthemeasureowhatwe

think.Howcancritiquenegatethegivensocietysince

thatsocietyisthecriticssoleexistentialsupport?The

criticisthehighestculturalproductothesociety.Inthe

absenceoanyrealisticalternativehiscapacitytonegate

thesocietyjustiesit.Hecanneitherescaperom

historyintothetranscendental,asHabermaswouldhave

it,norcanheresthishistoricalcaseontheprogressive

movementohistory.Nowonderthedialoguewavers

betweenthecomicandtheportentous.

HowdidMarxismendupinsuchabind?AsI

mentionedattheoutset,Ibelievethisquestionleads

backtoMarxandLukcs.Lukcssimportantbook

HistoryandClassConsciousnesscontainedthemost

infuentialrefectionontherelationotheoryand

practiceintheMarxisttradition.Herenewedthe

Hegelian-Marxisthistoricalcritiqueoabstractideals

thatunderliesthedilemmaattheheartothedialogue.

ThistextwasknowntoHorkheimerandAdornoanditsimpactontheirownrefectionsisobvious.

Lukcsintroducestheproblemotheoryandpractice

throughacritiqueoanearlytextinwhichMarx

demandsthattheoryseizethemasses.But,Lukcs

argues,itheoryseizesthemassesitstandsinan

externalrelationtotheirownneedsandintentions.It

wouldbeamereaccidentithemassesaccomplished

theoreticalgoals.Rather,theorymustberootedinthe

needsandintentionsothemassesiitistobereally

andtrulythetheoryotheirmovementandnotanalien

imposition.

Lukcstakesupthisthemeatamoreabstractlevelin

hiscritiqueoKantianethics.InLukcssterms,the

antinomyotheoryandpracticeisanexampleothe

moregeneralantinomyovalueandact,oughtand

is.Theseantinomiesariseromaormalisticconcept

oreasonintermsowhichtheoryandpracticearealien

toeachother.Thisconceptoreasonailstodiscoverin

thegivenactsosocialliethosepotentialitiesand

tendenciesleadingtoarationalend.Instead,thegivenis

conceivedasundamentallyirrational,asthemerely

empirical,actualresidueotheprocessoormal

abstractioninwhichrationallawsareconstructed.

Lukcsexplains,Preciselyinthepure,classical

expressionitreceivedinthephilosophyoKantit

remainstruethattheoughtpresupposesanexisting

realitytowhichthecategoryooughtremains

inapplicableinprinciple.3Thisisthedilemmao

bourgeoisthought:politicalrationalitypresupposesas

itsmaterialsubstratumanirrationalsocialexistence

hostiletorationalprinciples.Therationalrealmo

citizenship,illuminatedbymoralobligation,standsin

starkcontradictiontothecrudeworldocivilsociety,

basedonanimalneedandthestruggleorexistence.

But,ithisistrueobourgeoistheory,whatothe

theoryotheproletarianmovement?IsMarxismjusta

disguisedethicalexigencyopposedtothenatural

tendenciesothespecies?Thisisthefawoheroic

versionsocommunism,whichopposemoralitytolie.

Demandingsacriceortheparty,thenextgeneration,

andtheworker,conormspreciselytothebourgeois

patternLukcscriticizes.ThisisnotMarx.Startingrom

theHegeliancritiqueoabstractethics,theearlyMarx

arrivedatageneralconceptorevolutionarytheoryas

therefectionolieinthought.

ThereisorexamplealettertoRugeinwhichMarx

writes:Untilnowthephilosophershadthesolutionto

allriddlesintheirdesks,andthestupidoutsideworld

simplyhadtoopenitsmouthsothattheroastedpigeons

oabsolutesciencemightfyintoit.Instead,philosophy

mustproceedromactualstrugglesinwhichtheliving

contradictionoidealandrealappears.Thenew

philosophermustexplaintotheworlditsownacts,

showingthatactualstrugglescontainatranscending

contentthatcanbelinkedtotheconceptoarational

sociallie.Wesimplyshowit[theworld]whyit

strugglesinreality,andtheconsciousnessothisis

somethingwhichitiscompelledtoacquire,eveniit

doesnotwantto.Thecritic,Marxconcludes,

thereorecanstartwithanyormotheoreticaland

practicalconsciousnessanddevelopthetrueactualityoutotheormsinherentinexistingactualityasits

ought-to-beandgoal.ThisiswhatHorkheimermeant

byhisremarkthatsocietymustbemeasuredagainst

concretedevelopmentsinhistoricalreality.AsMarx

writeselsewhere,Itisnotenoughthatthoughtshould

seektorealizeitsel;realitymustalsostrivetoward

thought.

Marxslaterwritingsareambiguous,conservingonly

tracesothisrefexivetheoryoconsciousness,asor

exampleinthisbriepassageinThe18thBrumaireof

LouisBonaparte:

Justaslittlemustoneimaginethatthedemocratic

representativesareindeedallshopkeepersor

enthusiasticchampionsoshopkeepers....

Whatmakesthemrepresentativesothepetty

bourgeoisieistheactthatintheirmindsthey

donotgetbeyondthelimitswhichthelatterdo

notgetbeyondinlie,thattheyareconsequently

driven,theoretically,tothesameproblemsandsolutionstowhichmaterialinterestandsocial

positiondrivesthelatterpractically.Thisis,in

general,therelationshipbetweenthepoliticaland

literaryrepresentativesoaclassandtheclassthey

represent.4

Thispassageinvitesrevisiontosaythattheproletariat

Openingremarks

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3 The Platypus Review: THE POLITICS OF CRITICAL THEORY

the SPD in 1875. So, especially Adorno, but also

Horkheimer, had been deeply concerned with the

question o continuing the project o Marxism well ater

World War II. In the series o conversations between

them, Adorno expressed his interest in rewriting the

CommunistManiesto along what he called strictly

Leninist lines, to which Horkheimer did not object, but

only pointed out that such a document, calling or what

he called the re-establishment o a socialist party,

could not appear in Russia, while in the United States

and Germany it would be worthless. Nonetheless,

Horkheimer elt it was necessary to show why one

can be a communist and yet despise the Russians. As

Horkheimer put it, simply, Theory is, as it were, one o

humanitys tools (57). Thus, they tasked themselves to

try to continue Marxism, i only as theory.

Now, it is precisely the supposed turning away rom

political practice and retreat into theory that many

commentators have characterized as the Frankurters

abandonment o Marxism. For instance, Martin Jay, in

The Dialectical Imagination, or Phil Slater, in his book

oering a Marxist interpretation o the Frankurt

School, characterized matters in such terms: Marxism

could not be supposed to exist as mere theory, but had

to be tied to practice. But this was not a problem new

to the Frankurt Institute in exile, that is, ater being

orced to abandon their work in collaboration with the

Soviet Marx-Engels Institute, or example, which was

as much due to Stalinism as Nazism. Rather, it pointed

back to what Karl Korsch, a oundational gure or the

Institute, wrote in 1923: that the crisis o Marxism, that

is, the problems that had already maniested in the

era o the Second International in the late 19th century(the so-called Revisionist Dispute), and developed

and culminated in its collapse and division in World

War I and the revolutions that ollowed, meant that

the umbilical cord between theory and practice had

been already broken. Marxism stood in need o a

transormation, in both theory and practice, but this

transormation could only happen as a unction o not

only practice but also theory. They suered the same

ate. For Korsch in 1923, as well as or Georg Lukcs in

this same period, in writings seminal or the Frankurt

School Critical Theorists, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg

were exemplary o the attempt to rearticulate Marxist

theory and practice. Lenin in particular, as Lukcs

characterized him, the theoretician o practice,

provided a key, indeed the crucial gure, in political

action and theoretical sel-understanding, o the

problem Marxism aced at that historical moment. As

Adorno remarks, I have always wanted to . . . develop a

theory that remains aithul to Marx, Engels and Lenin

(59). So, the question becomes, aithul in what way?

Several statements in two writings by Horkheimer

and Adornos colleague, Herbert Marcuse, his 33

Theses rom 1947, and his book Soviet Marxism

rom 1958, can help shed l ight on the orientation o

the members o the Frankurt School towards the

prior politics o communism, specically o Lenin.

Additionally, several letters rom Adorno to Horkheimer

and Benjamin in the late 1930s explicate Adornos

positive attitude towards Lenin. Finally, writings rom

Adornos last year, 1969, the Marginalia to Theory

and Praxis and Resignation, restated and urther

specied the content o his Leninism in light o his

critique o the 1960s New Let. The challenge is to

recognize the content o such Leninism that might

otherwise appear obscure or idiosyncratic, but actually

points back to the politics o the early 20th century

that was ormative o Adorno and his cohort. Then, the

question becomes, what was the signicance o such

a perspective in the later period o Adornos lie? Howdid such Leninism retain purchase under changed

conditions, such that Adorno could bring it to bear,

critically, up to the end o his lie? Furthermore, what

could Adornos perspective on Leninism reveal about

Lenin himsel? Why and how did Adorno remain a

Marxist, and how did Lenin gure in this?

One clear explanation or Adornos Leninism

was the importance o consciousness in Adornos

estimation o potential or emancipatory social

transormation. For instance, in a letter to Horkheimer

critical o Erich Fromms more humane approach to

Freudian psychoanalysis, Adorno wrote that Fromm

demonstrated a mixture o social democracy and

anarchism . . . [and] a severe lack o . . . dialectics .

. . [in] the concept o authority, without which, ater

all, neither Lenins [vanguard] nor dictatorship can

be conceived o. I would strongly advise him to read

Lenin. Adorno thought that Fromm thus threatened

to deploy something o what he called the trick used

by bourgeois individualists against Marx, and wrote to

Horkheimer that he considered this to be a real threat

to the line . . . which [our] journal takes.16

But the political role o an intellectual, theoretically

inormed vanguard is liable to the common criticism

o Leninisms tendency towards an oppressive

domination over rather than critical acilitation o social

emancipation. A more complicated apprehension o the

role o consciousness in the historical transormation

o society can be ound in Adornos correspondence

on Benjamins essay The Work o Art in the Age o

Mechanical Reproduction in 1936. There, Adorno

commended Benjamins work or providing an account

o the relationship o intellectuals to workers along the

lines o Lenin. As Adorno put it in his letter,

The proletariat . . . is itsel a product o bourgeois

society. . . . [T]he actual consciousness o actual

workers . . . [has] absolutely no advantage over the

bourgeois except . . . interest in the revolution, butotherwise bear[s] all the marks o mutilation o the

typical bourgeois character. . . . We maintain our

solidarity with the proletariat instead o making

o our own necessity a virtue o the proletariat,

as we are always tempted to dothe proletariat

which itsel experiences the same necessity a nd

needs us or knowledge as much as we need the

proletariat to make the revolution. I am convinced

that the urther development o the . . . debate you

have so magnicently inaugurated . . . depends

essentially on a true accounting o the relationship

o the intellectuals to the working class. . . .

[Your essay is] among the prooundest and most

powerul statements o political theory that I have

encountered since I read [Lenins] The State and

Revolution.17

Adorno likely had in mind as well Lenins What is to be

Done?or Let-Wing Communism: An Inantile Disorder.

In the ormer, Lenin (in)amously distinguished between

trade union and socialist consciousness. But in the

latter work, Lenin described the persistent bourgeois

social conditions o intellectual workper se that would

long survive the proletarian socialist revolution, indeed

(reiterating rom What is to be Done?) that workers

became thoroughly bourgeois by virtue o the very

activity o intellectual work (such as in journalism or

art production), including and perhaps especially in

their activity as Communist Party political cadre. For

Lenin, workers political revolution meant governing

what would remain an essentially bourgeois society.

The revolution would make the workers or the rst

time, so to speak, entirely bourgeois, which was the

precondition o their leading society beyond bourgeois

conditions.18 It was a moment, the next necessary step,

in the workers sel-overcoming, in the emancipatory

transormation o society in, through and beyond capital.

Marxism was not extrinsic but intrinsic to this process,

as the workers movement itsel was. As Adorno put it

to Horkheimer, It could be said that Marx and Hegel

taught that there are no ideals in the abstract, but that

the ideal always lies in the next step, that the entire thing

cannot be grasped directly but only indirectly by means

o the next step (54). Lukcs had mentioned this about

Lenin, in a ootnote to his 1923 essay in History and Class

Consciousness, Reication and the Consciousness o the

Proletariat, that,

Lenins achievement is that he rediscovered

this side o Marxism that points the wa y to anunderstanding o itspractical core. His constantly

reiterated warning to seize the next link in the

chain with all ones might, that link on which the

ate o the totality depends in that one moment,

his dismissal o all utopian demands, i.e. his

relativism and his Realpolitik: all these things

are nothing less than the practical realisation o the

young Marxs Theses on Feuerbach.19

This was not ully a chieved in the revolution that began to

unold rom 1917 to 1919 in Russia, Germany, Hungary,

and Italy, but was cut short o attaining the politics o the

socialist transormation o society. Thirty years later, in

the context o the dawning Cold War ollowing the deeat

o the Nazis in World War II, Marcuses 33 Theses tried

to take stock o the legacy o the crisis o Marxism and

the ailure o the revolution:

[Thesis 3:] [T]o uphold without compromise

orthodox Marxist theory . . . [i]n the ace o political

reality . . . would be powerless, abstract and

unpolitical, but when the political reality as a whole

is alse, the unpolitical position may be the only

political truth. . . .

[Thesis 32:] [T]he political workers party remains

the necessary subject o revolution. In the original

Marxist conception, the party does not play a

decisive role. Marx assumed that the proletariat

is driven to revolutionary action on its own, based

on the knowledge o its own interests, as soon

as revolutionary conditions are present. . . . [But

subsequent] development has conrmed the

correctness o the Leninist conception o the

vanguard party as the subject o the revolution. It

is true that the communist parties today are not

this subject, but it is just a s true that only they can

become it. Only in the theories o the communist

parties is the memory o the revolutionary traditionalive, which can become the memory o the

revolutionary goal again. . . .

[Thesis 33:] The political task then would consist in

reconstructing revolutionary theory.20

As Marcuse put it in 1958, in Soviet Marxism,

During the Revolution, it became clear to what

degree Lenin had succeeded in basing his strategy

on the actual class interests and aspirations o the

workers and peasants. . . . Then, rom 1923 on, the

decisions o the leadership increasingly dissociated

rom the class interests o the proletariat. The

ormer no longer presuppose the proletariat as a

revolutionary agent but rather are imposed upon

the proletariat and the rest o the underlying

population.21

Adornos commentary in conversation with Horkheimer

in 1956, in a passage not included in the New Let Review

translation, titled Individualism, addressed what he

called the problem o subjectivity as socially constituted,

which he thought Lenin had addressed more rigorously

than Marx. Adorno said that,

Marx was too harmless; he probably imagined

quite navely that human beings are basically

the same in all essentials and will remain so. It

would be a good idea, thereore, to deprive them

o their second nature. He was not concerned with

their subjectivity; he probably didnt look into that

too closely. The idea that human beings are the

products o society down to their innermost core

is an idea that he would have rejected as milieu

theory. Lenin was the rst person to assert this.22

What this meant or Adorno was that the struggle to

overcome the domination o society by capital wassomething more and other than the class struggle o

the workers against the capitalists. It was not merely a

matter o their exploitation. For it was not the case that

social subjects were products o their class position so

much as bourgeois society under capital determined all

o its subjects in a historical nexus o unreedom. Rather,

class position was an expression o the structure o this

universal unreedom. As Horkheimer wrote, in The

Little Man and the Philosophy o Freedom,

In socialism, reedom is to become a reality. But

because the present system is called ree and

considered liberal, it is not terribly clear what this

may mean. . .

The businessman is subject to laws that neither

he nor anyone else nor any power with such a

mandate created with purpose and deliberation.

They are laws which the big capitalists and perhaps

he himsel skillully make use o but whose

existence must be accepted as a act. Boom, bust,

infation, wars and even the qualities o things and

human beings the present society demands are a

unction o such laws, o the anonymous social reality....

Bourgeois thought views this reality as

superhuman. It etishizes the social process. . . .

[T]he error is not that people do not recognize

the subject but that the subject does not exist.

Everything thereore depends on creating the ree

subject that consciously shapes social lie. And

this subject is nothing other than the rationally

organized socialist society which regulates its own

existence. . . . But or the little ma n who is turned

down when he asks or a job because objective

conditions make it impossible, it is most important

that their origin be brought to the light o da y so that

they do not continue being unavorable to him. Not

only his own lack o reedom but that o others as

well spells his doom. His interest lies in the Marxist

clarication o the concept o reedom.23

Such a clarication o what would constitute a

progressive-emancipatory approach to the problem o

capital was cut short by the course o Marxism in the

20th century. It thus also became increasingly dicult

to bring to the light o day the origins o persistent

social conditions o unreedom. In many respects, the

crisis o Marxism had been exacerbated but not overcome

as a unction o the post-World War I revolutionary

atermath. This involved a deepening o the crisis o

humanity: the Frankurt Institute Critical Theorists were

well aware that ascism as a historical phenomenon was

due to the ailure o Marxism. Fascism was the ill-begotten

ospring o the history o Marxism itsel.

A decade ater 1917, Horkheimer wrote, in a passage

titled Indications, that,

The moral character o a person can be inallibly

inerred rom his response to certain questions. . .

. In 1930 the attitude toward Russia casts light on

peoples thinking. It is extremely dicult to say what

conditions are like there. I do not claim to know where

the country is going; there is undoubtedly much

misery. . . . The senseless injustice o the imperialist

world can certainly not be explained by technological

inadequacy. Anyone who has the eyes to see will view

events in Russia as the continuing painul attempt

to overcome this terrible social injustice. At the very

least, he will ask with a throbbing heart whether it

is still under way. I a ppearances were to be against

it, he will cling to this hope like the cancer patient to

the questionable report that a cure or his illness may

have been ound.

When Kant received the rst news o the French

Revolution, he is said to have changed the direction o

his customary stroll rom then on.24

Despite what occurred in the unolding o developments

in 20th century history, Horkheimer and Adorno never

reversed course. Are we yet ready to receive their

messages in a bottle?

ResponsesNicholas Brown: It does seem to me that these three

papers are essentially raising the same question

though not explicitly. So that is the one I am going to

ask. I coness I never nished the Adorno-Horkheimer

dialogue, precisely because o the Beckettian favor. They

are obviously dealing with an impossibility there, which is

how are you going to maintain delity to Lenin without a

party, without a viable party to aliate with or without a

concept o party that is operative. O course the question

then becomes: What is to be done when theres nothing

to be done?

There is a tragic version o this in Negative Dialectics,

where Adorno knowingly throws in his lot with the

Stoics and rames his own position as essentially a stoic

position, knowing better than, or as well as, anyone that

the entire ethical orce o the Phenomenology o Spirit,

which Marx inherits, is the impossibility or the complicity

o the stoic position.

The sel-eacement o their language is similar

to what in the Phenomenology o Spirit is the unhappy

consciousnesswhich oscillates precisely or the same

reason as Adorno. Because their unhappy consciousness

is incapable, in the words o Chris quoting Lukcs, o

seizing the next link; because there is no next linkwhich

is again the problem o the party.

So that brings us to the question o the party in

Lukcs. My question or Andrew is What do we dowhat

is to be donewithout a party? You seem to suggest that

Marcuse oers an answer.

Richard shows that, or Lukcs, the party is not somuch a thing, necessarily, as it is a concept. The party is

that thing that mediates between the subject in history.

The moment we deny epistemology, the moment we deny

ontology, the moment we deny Kant, the moment we deny

representation, both as a philosophical and a political

concept, we are in this Hegelian universe and there

becomes an obligation to nd the party, the next link,

or a mediation. It is that obligation that Adorno nds

himsel unable to ulll. That is both the comedy and the

tragedy o Adorno. So my question or you is the same:

What does the philosophical concept o the party look

like today? Your answer is a sort o autonomist, Negrian

answer, which seems to be me to be an unsatisactory

solution, since Hegel is waiting or Hardt and Negri as

well. That the subject is a ction but nonetheless a ction

that is necessaryrather like a party is necessary.

And so, Chris, it seems that in Marx, in Lukcs, and

certainly in Adorno and Marcuse, there is an unresolved

tension between the notion o universal unreedom and

the notion o exploitation. The latter, within our present

moment has to do with ragility and who is and who is not

protected rom the winds o history, which is not quite the

same question as universal unreedom and disalienation.

The notion o disalienation, the romantic side o eruptions

in Marx, in Lukcs, and in the Frankurt school, seem to

be what needs to be abandoned in avor o the more hard-

headed emphasis on exploitation. I, or the Frankurt

School, the ideal was the next step or link in the chain,

what does the Hegelian idea mean in the present?

AF: What I like about Marcuse is that he was able to

separate two things, which or Marx, Lukcs, and Lenin

were essentially connected. One o those things was the

subject o revolution and the other was the orce able to

dereiy at least some portion o the social reality. In the

classical Marxist conception, its the workers who dereiy,

by their reusal to submit passively to the orms in which

their lives are cast, and its also the workers who are

going to create the new society. What Marcuse realized

was that you could have one without the other. You could

have dereiying gestures, express solidarity with them,

and articulate them theoretically without any condence

at all that those making such gestures were capable o

overthrowing the society and creating a new society. Ater

the events o May 1968 in France, it was clear that that a

historically new type o opposition had arisen, so I think he

was right to try and join Marxs theory to that opposition.

I think that is still a signicant alternative to the despair

o Adorno and Horkheimer or, on the other side, to the

attempts to revive a traditional Marxist proletarian party.

RW: My answer to what is to be done is that its not really

our place to say. I think that would be Lukcss response.

I think the party, or any orm o organization, rather than

being viewed as the instrument, is more to be seen as

the way in which the multiplicity o wills become, not

necessarily one, but at least learn to think o themselves

as united. Not so much or the specic decisions by which

they come to practical action, but more about the sel-

organization, the institutional orms they give themselves.

I think Lukcss critique o Hegel and, indeed, bourgeois

philosophy in general, stems rom the idea o a subject;

the idea that we should conceive o action as a subject

acting on a world a nd recognizing himsel. What he sees

in the party is the entity, i I can use such an ontologically

reiying term, the entity that is a subject in so ar as it

maniests itsel objectively through its organizational

orms. That is slightly dierent rom conceiving the party

as the agent.

CC: What we are discussing is political orm. In other

words, the party is a orm. What we are talking about is the

party as mediation: the mediation o theory and practice, a

mediation o subject and object positions.

On the notion o the Hegelian ideal as the next step

or Horkheimer and Adorno, I would oer something

speculatively, not literally: Andrew noted the undamental

ambiguity o the late Marx with respect to the way he

conceived philosophy as a young man. But I would argue

that the question o mediation recurs. The critique o

political economy is not merely an analysis o bourgeois

orms, but rather an analysis and critique o the incipient

consciousness o the workers movement. The workers

movement inherited political economy, bourgeois

critical consciousness, but only when the thought o the

bourgeoisie itsel had grown vulgar. Marx commends

Adam Smith or being willing to present society as sel-

contradictory. So I would situate the question o what is

the next step with respect to the question o the critique

o capital. How then would one rearticulate Marxs own

political praxis with his theoretical critique o capital,

which is the Hegelian attempt to raise social orm to the

level o sel-consciousness, or working class militants,

who were coming up against certain very determinate

obstacles in their political practice in the wake o the

revolutions o 1848. There was a meeting, i you will,

to put it back in Adornos more traditional terms, o the

intellectuals and the workers, around the question o what

is the purchase o the critique o capital.

Post-60s, there was a return to Marx: there was a return

to the Hegelian Marxism with respect to the critique o

capital. I we describe ourselves as intellectuals, then

the very point would be to ask, How can these ideas nd

traction? Korsch says that the crisis o Marxism threatens

to break the umbilical cord between theory and practice;

this means that these are two separate things. I would

stress mediation in the concept o orm, over the liquidation

o theory and practice in the concept o orm or party.

Q & A

I we as Marxists, communists, or would be radicals/

revolutionaries, are not in a position to speak, then we

should ask: What would be required to t ransorm ourselves

into those that could speak? How can we write like Lenin

and Mao? I was st ruck by the Adorno-Horkheimer dialogue;

Horkheimer was certainly not alone in attributing the deaths

in the Great Leap Forward to Mao and Stalin. What i instead

o putting their messages in a bottle, Horkheimer and Adorno

had sent their messages to China, and hadnt prematurely

written o that actual revolution?

RW: There isnt a prohibition on speaking as such. But

it depends on whether were speaking ex cathedra or rom

"Q & A" continues on page 4

7/30/2019 The Politics of Critical Theory

3/4

4Supplement to Issue #37 / July 2011

within something else. I agree with Habermas in his

insistence that when were talking about these things

we have to participate on an equal level with everyone

else. A danger that Lenin himsel noted, in those nal

urious letters demanding that the party should stay

as ar away as possible rom the soviets, was that in all

likelihood honest workers and peasants would be either

intimidated or look in awe at the wise men rom Moscow.

What we should do to be a ble to speak, then, is deny who

we are, i anything. I think that is always the danger or

anyone speaking with any badge o authority. It leads

to this kind o intellectual leadership problem where

precisely the reedom that people like Marx envisage is

sidelined.

AF: I disagree! There are no ignorant peasants any more.

Those who are the most vocierous in opposing any

intellectual authority are themselves intellectuals. So,

thats just another theory! I dont know that there is a

problem, really; its more a question o, Is there anyone

who is willing to listen? rather than, Are we oppressive

in putting orward our views? Thats my conclusion,

rom having participated in the good old days, in many

struggles over this question o authority.

CC: In terms o the sel- transormation o intellectuals,

it isnt a problem o whos speaking, but rather o

whats being said. I would introduce another kind o

Leninist category, namely, tailism. There is a problem

o articulating historical consciousness and empirical

realities. I want to return to an issue that was raised

by both Andrew and Richard that I thought was very

helpul with respect to reication. What Lukcs meantby reication was the Second International, the socialist

workers movement, as it had been constituted in that

historical juncture. And this is why he was sympathetic

to Luxemburg, because Luxemburg critiques that party

orm in the Mass Strike pamphlet, in which she argues

that social democracy had become an impediment or

obstacle to the workers movement in, I would say,

a subject-object dialectic: the workers movement

generated itsel historically into an object o sel-critique.

Now, why Horkheimers araid o China is the

apparent revolutionary success o what he and Adorno

considered to be counter-revolution, namely, Stalinism.

Having lived through the 30s and the transormation o

Marxism in Stalinism, to see Stalinism fourish as the

Marxism o the post-World War II period, they could

only regard as a sign o the regression o Marxism itsel.

Now, why didnt they send their messages in a bottle

to intellectuals in China? Because it would have been

a sure-re way o getting those Chinese intellectuals

executed on the spot. We could read their statements as

evincing an anti-Chinese biasprime acie. But there is

a dialectic there. As Horkheimer says, well, what about

the act that 20 million Chinese are going to die, but ater

that there wont be any more starving Chinese? He asks

what do we make o that? What Horkheimer and Adorno

had in mind is that, had the success o the revolution that

had opened in 1917 spread to Germany, had it spread

beyond, a revolution in China as took place in 1949, with

all the sacrices and the calamities that it entailed,

would have been unnecessary. This was their image o

emancipation; their concern was that the conditions

o barbarism were being conused or the struggle or

emancipation.

NB: On the space o intellectuals, when there is a mass

movement, the situation o the intellectual is both much

easier and much more dicult. It is easy because you

know what to do but the project o transormation that

youre talking about is hard. The problem were acing isa dierent one, which is that there is no mass movement.

And to the extent that there is one, its a totally corrupt,

right-wing one.

Adorno very clearly throws in his lot with the West,

so its not a matter o getting Adorno to actual Chinese

dissidents, its a matter o the question: Did Adorno have

to, that clearly, throw his lot in with the West and so

clearly server links with actual existing socialism? That

question is a little less clear-cut than whether it would

have been benecial to have Chinese dissidents parroting

the Adornian line.

Kant demanded that we think politically, in that we are

orced to comment on society as members o that same

society; we are obligated to contribute to the development

o society. Lukcs saw that only through the party can

society continue developing, thereore the question o

individual responsibility in history seems somewhat

misplaced. It is only the party that, having the ability to

shape history, is obligated to think about history. Can it

be that this i s what motivates Lenin and Luxemburg when

talking about the party? That is, when Luxemburg worries

about the vote in the Reichstag about the war credits, the

concern is about the decline o the party and the need to

reconfgure the party to aect history?

RW: I disagree. Lukcs doesnt think that the party can

change history, it is the class that can change history.

The party brings the class about. The party might be the

starting point but its emphatically not the end-point. To

say the party changes history directly would give it the

kind o heroic role that, I think, Lukcs is trying to avoid.

CC: I would say that the political party, or the agency

o political mediation, cant, itsel, emancipate society.

However, it can certainly block that emancipation, and

so be thought o negatively. The importance o the party

hinges on the issue o historical consciousness. So

where Im more in sympathy with Luxemburgs critiqueo the SPD in its political collapse is her charge that the

party is responsible or history, negatively. She is saying

that the party has been pa rt o bringing history to this

point o crisis, and it is the party that is tasked with sel-

overcoming in its orm o mediating political agency.

First: I fnd the Lenin describedmediated through Adorno

and Lukcscompletely unrecognizable rom the Lenin

o the collected works. But what I recognize as being

described as Lenin in Adorno and Lukcs is the resolution

o the Second and Third Congresses o the Comintern on

the role o the political party in the proletarian revolution.

Does this not encapsulate a alse history o the Bolshevik

party? A history o the Bolshevik party that projects back

the character which the Bolshevik party assumed between

1918 and 1921, under the civil war conditions, onto the pre-

history o the Bolshevik party beore 1917?

Second: For Marx and Engels, consistently, rom the 1840s

through to Engelss death, with a brie interlude in the period

in the First I nternational when they were in alliance with

the Proudhonists, the issue as stated in the 1871 Hague

Congress Resolution was that, the working class cannot

act except by orming itsel into a political party. How do the

attempts to make Marx more Hegelian satisactorily account

or this political aspect o Marx and Engelss interventions?

CC: Maybe the dierence that you see between the

Lenin that you would recognize and the Lenin o ocial

Comintern Leninism is the dierence that you then raise

between Marx himsel, in his own political practice, or

Marx and Engels, and the sort o Hegelianized Marx that

you nd in Lukcs and Adorno.

Lenin has a specic contribution in the history o

Marxism that cant be ignored, namely that hes the great

schismatic o Marxism, he divided Marxism.25 That is

precisely what esteems him in Adornos eyes. His is not a

minority vanguard view; it is about politics in the working

class. What Lenin introduces in the Second International is

the idea o competing working class parties that all claim

to be anti-capitalist, revolutionary, and Marxist. The crisis

o Marxism reers to the political controversies within

Marxism. To deny that is to say that politics is only the

workers vs. the capitalists and not an intra-working class

phenomenon. The Kautskyan party, the one class, one

party idea, that vis-- vis the capitalists the workers are o

one interest, and the attempt to be the party o the whole

class, denies that the content o political emancipation

can be disputed among the workers and among Marxistso dierent parties.

AF: It seems to me that the position Lenin took could

not be easily explained or justied in terms o Marxist

theory, and that what someone like Lukcs wa s engaged

in doing in 1923, or Gramsci in the Prison Notebooks,

was an attempt to ground that practice in Marxist theory

by nding the missing link. There are many dierent

statements in Lenin, in his early work, that dont add up to

a theory o what he was doing. But he knew what he was

doing, and it had a signicance historically, as Chris has

just explained. So the question could be asked separately

rom the historical acts o whether Lenin was doing the

right things in terms o Marxs theory. Lukcs recognized

that Lenin had done something historically important and

tried to gure out how to revise or interpret the theory in

such a way that it could encompass what he had done.

Lukcs did make an important advance theoretically in

terms o understanding how there could be a connection

between the working class, Marxist theory, and the

political parties that represent workers; how there could

be a connection grounded in an ontological relation, a

relation to reality that would be shared at dierent levels,

in dierent ways, between these dierent instances o the

movement. That is a very important theoretical idea, which

I dont think you can nd in Marx or Engels or in Lenin, but

is necessary to make sense o what happened, historically.

RW: Lukcs is very clear that he wants the party,

ultimately, to grow into a mass-based movement. But

in the interim, he explicitly states in the essay on pa rty

organization, every dierent school, every dierent take on

the very question o what the party should do needs to give

itsel organizational orms. Hes all or a broad,pluralist

sprouting o dierent practices, which, I think, undermines

the idea o a single, concentrated, vanguardist party. This

might risk radical sectarianism, but at least it avoids

reication, rom Lukcss perspective.

NB: Whether Lukcs and Adorno got Lenin right, is not the

same question and is useully distinct rom the question

o whether Lenin was politically useul, and what is to

be done today. On the Hegelianization o Marx, you cant

Hegelianize Marx, because Marx is more Hegelian than

Hegel!

I take it that the primary thrust o the argument that Adorno

is a Leninist is to enlist the Leninist Adorno in the project o

reconstituting the Let. What is the utility o Adorno as

Leninist?

CC: Adorno enlisted himsel to the Leninist project.

He says so: I want to be aithul to Lenin. What is the

content o that? He said this when 99. 99% o Leninists

in the world would not have accepted that Adorno was

being aithul to Lenin in any way. So I would turn the

issue around and say that I am interested in the Lenin

that becomes visible through Adorno. When Adorno says

a strictly Leninist maniesto, its not that this is against

Luxemburg. Its the Lukcsian attempt to grasp what

the Second International radicals had in common. Why

did Luxemburg call hersel a Bolshevik? She wrote an

essay in the last months o her lie titled What is German

Bolshevism? In other words, This is what we want.

Why are we with the Bolsheviks? Hers was comradely

criticismthats the point. So I am interested in how this

history o Marxism looks, specically through Adornos

eyes, through Lukcss eyes, through Korschs eyes; we

would be remiss to ignore the insights that they had into

that history.

AF: At this moment in history, we know so little about

the orces o opposition, their potential, and where

theyre going to come rom next, that we wont have the

theoretical basis and the basis in practical experience that

the socialist movement had at the time when these parties

were ormed and developed. Under present conditions,

we need to try and nd sources o opposition and tensionsaround the reiying power o the institutions wherever they

appear, even i they dont look or appear to be political.

We would prematurely close things down trying to have a

theory and a party that was trying to direct struggles.

CC: What is meant by the party? On the one hand, the

ormation o a party o a recognizable type rom history, at

the present moment, would oreclose possibilities. On the

other hand, I have my own reservations about the Hardt-

Negri moment that were in with respect to movementism,

which sees the party as the road to Stalinism. I we say

that the earlier socialist movement had an accumulated

historical experience, then we have to say that, or a

generation, weve been denied that. So were let saying,

OK, something like a party? to expand the notion o

orm. What Richard is pointing to, in terms o the

concept o orm, is very important. The danger is in

applying it too broadly, in what I raised earlier as tailism,

as a justication or what were already doing. Thats a

danger that I would resist at one end. At the other end, I

agree that it would be precipitous and still-born to try to

implement a party in a historical-model kind o way.

RW: The institutional memory o a party is crucial; I

think that its absence has led to a disastrous collapse

in progressive thought. I stressed the Luxemburgian

elements in Lukcs, earlier. This is where Lukcs

critiques Luxemburg, rightly, because a party can orm

this institutional memory.

To address Andrew: we dont really know what orces

there are there. The act o orming or supporting the

ormation o parties is one o the ways we can nd out.

I reer back to what I said earlier about Lukcs and his

insistence that every position should try and develop its

own organizational orms. Thats how we get to know.

I we treat it as a purely sociological question, I think

we risk alling back into the s ame reied standpoint o

just collecting acts, rather than engaging in practice.

Encouraging the development o parties, o institutional

orms in various ways, is a way in which those

oppositional orces can really come to be. Without that,

the orces wind up less coherent and less aware o their

opposition.

Without a push or the ormation o a party, without a strong

stance on a need or leadership, how can we apply these

various theories practically to the working class? The

conditions that existed in the 50s, 30s, or 20s are not what

we have today. Without a party, without leadership, whathope do we have?

RW: Id hesitate with that phrasing; it is dangerous to

talk about applying theories to the working class. T he

leadership issue strikes at that. It was al luded to beore,

but I think the Tea Party is quite successul, or all o

its obvious incoherencies and absurdities, precisely

because o its lack o a leader and the dispensability

o their totemic gures. There are voices, but there is

no one leader, so there are a number o dierent Tea

Parties. One o the reasons its so successul is that it is

widespread, diuse, and decentralized.

AF: O course i we had a party that had authority and

that was listened to, wed be in much better shape. But

how do you get there?

CC: What works or the Right cannot work or the Let.

Theres a undamental dierence between the Right and

the Letthat the Right thrives on incoherence in a way

that the Let cannot. I would al so say rather polemically,

or in a jaundiced ashion, that the Tea Parties are the

true children o the New Let.

The idea o theoretical leadership, in the sense o

theory that is applied, is precisely something that the

Marxist tradition wanted to overcome. That is what

they understood as a bourgeois notion o theory or

epistemology. Going all the way back to Kant, however,

there was already the idea o a sel-conscious practice:

its not about the abstract application o theory to

practice. Already with Kantand theres a continuity, I

think, between Kant and Hegel and Marxthe point is to

try to raise existing practices to sel-consciousness. This

is quite dierent rom crating a theory and applying it to

reality.

AF: I think that the L et still lives under the horizon

o demands and dissatisactions that emerged in the

1960s and 70s. Movements like environmentalist

movements, eminist movements, many other kinds o

protest that have emerged in remote areas o society,

such as medicine, come under the kinds o categories

elaborated in the New Let to articulate these new kinds

o dissatisactions. That is the contribution that Marcuse

made; Adorno and Horkheimer did not contribute to that

because they viewed the New Let as a rather minor blip

on the horizon. And Im actually extremely puzzled by

the eclipse o Marcuses thought on the Let and the rise

o this new vision o the Frankurt School as Benjamin,

Adorno, and Horkheimer. To me, it signies a certain

lack o political seriousness that people pass over the

only one who actually engaged with the kind o letism

that we are capable o today.

RW: Id also like to conclude by responding to the

lack o political seriousness. The reason or people

like Adorno and Benjamin coming back is that much

o the academic reception has been done in literature

departments or its been done through cultural studies.

I think the reason is precisely that there is a l ack o

direct engagement and direct activity. The importance

o engagement and some orm o practice, with some

degree o leadership that one attributes to ita

theoretical orm o praxisis the crucial thing, I think.

CC: I would end with a bid to take Adorno seriously

as a political thinker and not just as a literary gure.

Certainly, he does say, Music and a rt are what I know

Concluding remarks

and so they are what I write about. But he was being

a bit alsely modest. His work made a very strong

intervention in German sociology, introducing both

American empirical sociological technique andthe

Durkheimian approach, as opposed to a Weberian

approach, to the question o modernity and capital. In

his correspondence with Marcuse in 1969, in which

there was bitterness around the controversy stirred

up by the New Let, Adorno sa ys to Marcuse: Look,

its the Institute. Its the same Institute. Its our old

Institute. And Marcuse responds: How could you

possibly claim that the Institute in the 60s in the Federal

Republic o Germany is what it was in the 30s? To

this Adorno could only say, What about my books? In

other words, What about the books that the Institutes

existence has allowed me to write? That is, Adorno

was a lone champion o Hegelian Marxism within

German sociology and philosophy, as such his works

are powerul statements about, and try to keep alive,

the kind o insights that had been gained by the earlier

Marxist tradition o Lukcs and Korsch in the atermath

o the crisis o Marxism and the revolutions o the early

twentieth century.

So I would deend Adorno against his devotees. The

Adorno that fies in the humanities is a sanitized Adorno,

a depoliticized Adorno, an Adorno with the Marxism

screened out, or the Marxism turned into an ethical

critique o society. Whereas I think Adorno has a lot

more to say about the problem o theory and practicethat is politically important. |PR

Transcribed by Gabriel Gaster.

Andrew Feenberg

1. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Towards a New

Maniesto? trans. Rodney Livingstone, New Let Review65

(SeptemberOctober 2010). Hereater cited within the text.

2. Samuel Beckett, Waiting or Godot (New York: Grove Press,

1954), 51.3. Georg Lukcs, Reication and the Consciousness o the

Proletariat, in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist

Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: The MIT

Press, 1971 [1923]), 160.

4. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire o Louis Bonaparte, trans.

Saul K. Padover. Originally published in 1852. Available online

at .

Richard Westerman

5. Georg Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in

Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press, 1971 [1923]), xli.

6. Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness,ii.505: Auch

theoretisch handelt die kommunistische Partei nicht stellvertretend

r das Proletariat.

7. Ibid., ii.496: die voluntaristische berschtzung der aktiven

Bedeutung des Individuums (des Fhrers) und die atalistische

Unterschtzung der Bedeutung der Klasse (der Masse).

8. Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness,297-8.

9. Ibid., 275.

10. See, or example, Andrew Arato and Paul Breines, The Young

Lukcs and the Origins o Western Marxism (New York: Seabury,

1979).

11. Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness, ii.504: die

organisatorische Selbstndigkeit der kommunistischen Partei ist

notwendig, damit das Proletariat sein eigenes Klassenbewutsein,

als geschichtliche Gestalt, unmittelbar erblicken knne; . . . damit

r die ganze Klasse das eigene Dasein als Klasse ins Bewutsein

gehoben werde.

12. Ibid., ii.517: das Entstehen der kommunistischen Partei nur

das bewut getane Werk der klassenbewuten Arbeiter sein kann.

13. Ibid., ii.515: indem die kommunistische Partei zu einer Welt der

Ttigkeit r jades i hrer Mitglieder wird, kann sie die Zuschauerrolle

des brgerlichen Menschen . . . wirklich berwinden.

14. Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness, 299.

Chris Cutrone

15. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Towards a New

Maniesto, trans. Rodney Livingstone, New Let Review65

(SeptemberOctober 2010): 46. Hereater cited within the text.

16. Adorno to Horkheimer, March 21, 1936, quoted in Rol

Wiggershaus, The Frankurt School: Its History, Theories, andPolitical Signifcance, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge,

MA: The MIT Press, 1994 [1986]), 266. Moreover, Adorno wrote

that, I one is concerned to achieve what might be possible with

human beings, it is extremely dicult to remain riendly towards

real peoplea pretext or approving o precisely that element in

people by which they prove themselves to be not merely their

own victims but virtually their own hangmen. See Adorno to

Horkheimer, June 2, 1941, quoted in Wiggershaus, The Frankurt

School, 268.

17. Theodor W. Adorno, Letters to Benjamin, New Let Review

91 (September-October 1973): 67-68.

18. As Lenin wrote in Let-Wing Communism: An Inantile

Disorder: The most shameless careerism . . . and vulgar petty-

bourgeois conservatism are all unquestionably common and

prevalent eatures engendered everywhere by capitalism, not

only outside but also within the working-class movement. . . .

[T]he overthrow o the bourgeoisie and the conquest o political

power by the proletariat[creates] these very same diculties

on a still larger, an innitely larger scale. Available online at

.

19. Georg Lukcs, Reication and the Consciousness o the

Proletariat, in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist

Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: The MIT

Press, 1971 [1923]), 221n60.

20. Herbert Marcuse, 33 Theses, in Technology, War, and

Fascism, ed. Douglas Kellner (New York: Routledge, 1998), 217,

226227.

21. Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1958), 149.

22. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Diskussion ber

Theorie und Praxis (1956), in Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte

Schriten, vol. 19, Nachtrge, Verzeichnisse und Register

(Frankurt: S. Fischer, 1996), 71, quoted in Detlev Claussen,

Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2008), 233.

23. Max Horkheimer, Dawn and Decline, Notes 1926-31 and 1950-

69, trans. Michael Shaw (New York: Seabury, 1978), 5052.

24. Ibid., 72-73.

25. See Chris Cutrone, Lenins liberalism, Platypus Review36

(June 2011).

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2Supplement to Issue #37 / July 2011

too conronts problems that a re solved theoretically

by Marxism in a way that refects the similar practical

solution to which its lie circumstances drive the class.

Unortunately, the later Marx did not make such an

application o this suggestive remark. Instead, he

proposed the historical materialist theory o the

determination o thought by being. This deterministic

language leaves open the question o the relation o

Marxist theory to proletarian class consciousness.

This is the question Lukcs addressed. He needed to

show that Marxism was not related in a merely

accidental manner to the thought and action o

proletarians, that it is not a scientic consciousness

rom without, or which the proletariat would serve as a

passive, material basis, but that it was essentially

rooted in the lie o the class. His misunderstood

theories o reication and class consciousness relate to

the orm in which the social world is given immediately

to the consciousness o all members o a capitalist

society. Lukcs writes that in capitalist society reality

isimmediatelythe same or both the bourgeoisie and

the proletariat. And again: The proletariat shares with

the bourgeoisie the reication o every aspect o its lie.

However, the experience o reication diers depending

on class situation. It is interesting that Lukcs cites a s

evidence or this one o the ew Marxian passages on

alienation to which he had access. The property-owning

class and the class o the proletariat represent the same

human sel-alienation. But the ormer eels at home in

this sel-alienation and eels itsel conrmed by it; it

recognizes alienation as its own instrument and in it

possesses the semblance o a human existence. The

latter eels itsel destroyed by this alienation and sees in

it its own impotence and the reality o an inhumanexistence.

Bourgeois and proletarians experience the same

alienation, Marx claims, but rom dierent vantage

points. Similarly, Lukcs remarks that where the

capitalist perceives lengthening the work day as a

matter o increasing the quantity o labor power

purchased at a given price, or the worker this quantity

changes into quality. The worker goes beyond the

reied quantitative determinants immediately given in

the reied orm o objectivity o his labor because he

cannot ignore the real qualitative degradation o lie and

health associated with them. Thus, the quantitative

dierences in exploitation which appear to the capitalist

in the orm o quantitative determinants o the objects o

his calculation, must appear to the worker as the

decisive, qualitative categories o his whole physical,

mental and moral existence.

The proletariat sees beyond immediacy in the act o

becoming (socially) sel-conscious. This sel-

consciousness penetrates beneath the reied orm o its

objects to their reality. This more or less spontaneous

critique o reication gives rise to everyday practices

that can be developed into the basis o a revolutionary

movement by union and party organizations.

Lukcs thus claims that the workers response to the

reication o experience under capitalism is the

oundation on which Marxist dialectics arise. In a sense

one could say that Marxism and the proletariat share a

similar method, demystiying the reied appearances

each in its own waythe one at the level o theory, the

other at the levels o consciousness and practice. Where

the theory shows the relativity o the reied appearances

to deeper social structures, workers live that relativity in

resisting the imposition o the reied capitalist economic

orms on their own lives. Both theory and practice lead

to a critique o the economic and epistemological

premises o capitalism. As Marx himsel writes in

Capital, So ar as such criticism represents a class, it

can only represent the class whose vocation in history isthe overthrow o the capitalist mode o production and

the nal abolition o all classesthe proletariat.

Marx and Lukcs established the methodological

horizon o Marxism or the Frankurt School. This is the

background against which Horkheimer and Adorno

discuss their new maniesto. They accept the critique o

pure theory; but now that the proletariat no longer

supports a transcending critique o society, any

concession to practice drags theory back into the realm

o everyday political wheeling and dealing or, worse yet,

into complicity with the murder o millions by totalitarian

communist regimes. As Adorno remarks, What is the

meaning o practice i there is no longer a pa rty? In that

case doesnt practice mean either reormism or

quietism?

There appears to be no way out o the trap set by the

tension between norm and history, now that the

revolution has ailed. To return to the roasted pigeons

o absolute science, that is, to some sort o utopian or

transcendental thinking, is now impossible. But there is

no way to anticipate the next step o history toward a

better world. Horkheimer poses the dilemma in two

contradictory propositions, saying, on the one hand,

Our thoughts are no longer a unction o the

proletariat, and, on the other hand, that Theory is

theory in the authentic sense only where it serves

practice. Theory that wishes to be sucient unto itsel is

bad theory.

Is there no alternative within the Marxist ramework?

In act there is an excluded alternative occasionally

evoked in the course o the dialogue. This alternative,

reerred to derisively is Marcuse, who hovers like

Banquos ghost over the conversation. Adorno comes

closest to articulating this position and is pulled ba ck by

Horkheimer each time. At one point he remarks, I

cannot imagine a world intensied to the point o

insanity without objective oppositional orces being

unleashed (42). This will turn out to be the thesis

Marcuse hints at in One-Dimensional Man and developsinAn Essay on Liberation.But Horkheimer rejects this

view as overly optimistic. A bit later Adorno reuses to

accept that human nature is inherently evil. People only

become Khrushchevs because they keep getting hit over

the head (44). But again Horkheimer rejects the hope o

a less repressive uture and even ridicules Marcuse by

claiming he expects a Russian Bonaparte to save the day

and make everything right.

What are we to make o this ghostly presence o a

Marcusean alternative? It seems to me that these

remarks already anticipate and condemn Marcuses

openness to the return o the movement in the orm o

the New Let. Where Horkheimer and Adorno ultimately

rejected the New Let, Marcuse took the Hegelian-

Marxian- Lukcsian plunge back into history. Adorno

was sympathetic to the movement at rst but eventually

condemned what he called its pseudo-activism.

Marcuse was well aware that the New Let was no

equivalent to Marxs proletariat, but he tried to nd in it

a hint o those objective oppositional orces o which

Adorno spoke in 1956. In this way theory might be

related once again to practice without concession to

existing society, although also with no certainty o

success.

Marcuses important innovation was to recognize the

pregurative orce o the New Let without identiying it

as a new agent o revolution. We still live under the

horizon o progressive politics established by the New

Let; its issues are still ours although o course

transormed in many ways by time. But the most

signicant impact o the New Let is on our identity as

letists. The New Let invented a non-sectarian orm o

progressive opposition that denes the stance o most

people on the Let today.

Much to Marcuses surprise, on his 80th birthday,

Beckett published a short poem as a tribute to him. The

poem recognizes the obstinacy required by the

seemingly impossible demands o the Frankurt Schools

stance toward history. Here is the poem:

pas pas

nulle part

nul seul

ne sait comment

petits pas

nulle part

obstinment

Lukcss party andsocial praxis

Richard Westerman

The oundational texts o Critical Theory, Georg Lukcss

History and Class Consciousness [HCC] and Karl K orschs

Marxism and Philosophy, were the products o a crisis in

European Marxism. Both published in 1923, they

represented a response to both ailed and successul

revolutions: whilst the Bolsheviks had taken control o

Russia despite its relative underdevelopment,

Communist governments in Hungary and Germany had

rapidly been toppled due to a lack o popular support.

Notably, both Lukcs and Korsch had served in these

governmentsLukcs himsel on the ront lines with

the Hungarian Red Army. Though memorably

condemned as Marxism o the Proessors by the

nascent Soviet orthodoxy, the deeply philosophical

readings o Marx that Korsch and Lukcs developed

were very much the product o their personal

involvement in and response to practical revolutionary

situations.

The act that these books were written, as Lukcs

observed, as attempts, arising out o actual work or

the party, to clariy the theoretical problems o the

revolutionary movement is usually orgotten.5 This is

evident in the reception o the concept o reication.

Loosely, reication describes a social pathology in which

individuals understand society and social relations

through xed, unalterable laws, with the result that they

eel isolated and unable to change society. It is usually

wronglyassumed that Lukcss solution is an updated

version o German Idealism, according to which the

proletariat suddenly realizes that it is the creator o this

objective world, and so spontaneously reappropriates itscreation to ree itsel. As a result, Lukcss account o

the role o the party in the nal essay o HCC is read

through this misinterpretation o reication, and he is

accused o paving the way or a centralized state

controlled by an authoritarian party. On this standard

interpretation, Lukcs apparently believes that because

the proletariat hadnt realized that it was the subject o

history, the revolutionary party simply needed to act or

them. He is seen as endorsing a Blanquist party that

would deteriorate into post-revolutionary dictatorship.

Surprisingly ew o Lukcss interpreters have

recognized that he actually envisages a much more

democratic party. The central reason or this common

misrepresentation is a ailure to understand adequately

what Lukcs means by his central concept o reication,

and the way it s hapes his theory o party organization.

Most interpretations o Lukcs think reication is a

mistake made by a thinking subjecteven i the mistake

is attributed to social reasons. The party would then try

to correct this mistake. Reication does not, however,

describe an epistemology; rom the outset, it describes

a type o praxis. Lukcss party isnt there to play the

role o a wise leader to guide the proletariatits there

to provide a locus or genuinely dereied, and thus

dereiying praxis. Rather than a Blanquist cadre o

proessional revolutionaries, Lukcss party is

essentially a more institutionalized version o Rosa

Luxemburgs Mass Strike.

I am going to start by tracing the roots o the problem

Lukcs is trying to solve to Marxs critique o the

distinction between state and civil society in On The

Jewish Question[OJQ], and showing how this problem

clearly could not be solved by a vanguardist party. Ill

then consider Lukcss own position: Ill argue that his

vision o the party sits somewhere between Lenin and

Rosa Luxemburg, in that he sees the ormal organization

provided by the party as essential or real proletarian

class consciousness. Finally, Ill suggest a ew ways in

which this might provide a model or the sort odemocratic activity that might provide a counterweight

to existing social and political structures.

Marxs OJQ, written in response to Bruno Bauers

pamphlet on the question o ull Jewish emancipation

within the German state, radically reinterprets the

meaning o social reedom. Arguing that the

secularization o the state would only mean the

reproduction o religious division at the level o society,

Marx questioned the Hegelian division o state and civil

society. Civil society, or Hegel, was the realm o

particular satisaction and immediate social unity: the

individual was tied to other individuals through an

economic system o needs, rationalized through social

institutions built on this basic necessity. In contrast, the

state was the realm o rational reedom, in which

citizens were united as rational universal individuals.

For Marx, this was an a lienated orm o reedom: rst, it

meant that political orms seemed to come rom an

impersonal universal orce o reason, rather than ree

human action; second, it treated the categories o social

existence as invariable, necessary, and open only to

knowledge, not change. Marx proposed, thereore, that we

bring heaven down to earth and make society itsel into

the realm o reedom by transorming social relations

themselves. Real reedom thus means collective control

over such relations.

Its this sort o reedom that Lukcs sees in pa rty

activity. But I think it should be obvious at once why a party

that sought to carry out revolution on behal o the

proletariat would be unable to realize it. Such a party

would reduce the working class to the role o spectators,

just as unree as beore. In act, Lukcs is extremely clear

in his rejection o such a top-down party, and its hard to

see how an honest and rigorous reading could come up

with any other conclusion. He states explicitly that even

in theory, the communist party does not act on behal o

the proletariat,6 lest it reduce the masses to a merely

observing, contemplative attitude that leads to the

voluntaristic overestimation o the active signicance o

the individual (the leader) and the atalistic

underestimation o the signicance o the class (the

masses).7 And he repeatedly uses the word reication

to caution against xing any one organizational orm and

insulating it rom criticism or change by the masses.

Lukcs could not be more clear: a top-down, proto-

Stalinist party would represent a return to the lack o

reedom o capitalist society.

Lukcs draws heavily on Rosa Luxemburg, which was

perhaps rather an unusual tactic in 1922, when the

success o the Bolsheviks seemed to indicate a clearvictory or Lenins idea o a disciplined cadre o

revolutionaries. The mass strike in which she vested such

hopes was supposed to bring about the spontaneous

development o class consciousness by orcing all strata

o the working class into organizing themselves.

Luxemburgs party plays a very secondary role, little more

than a sort o secretarial role in act, and certainly not any

kind o leadership.

Nevertheless, Lukcs also repeatedly praises

Luxemburg or her insights. He explicitly endorses her

criticisms o Western European parties who

underestimated mass action, and thought only an

educated party was ready to assume leadership.8 However,

he suggests that she makes the opposite mistake, and

criticizes her or underplaying o the role o the party in

the revolution.9 As weve seen, he doesnt think this role

entails leadership in a conventional sense, so to

understand what Lukcs means, we need to look a little

more closely at his denition o reication.

Most interpretations o Lukcs take reication to be an

epistemological error. The problem they think Lukcs

identies is that the categories that capitalist society is

construed in are too abstract and ormal. As a result, they

think his project is to replace such categories with more

substantial ones that accurately refect the qualitative

underlying reality. Unortunately, this interpretation

doesnt withstand a close reading o the text.10

ReicationVerdinglichung, thingicationdoesnt reer

to a problem o abstraction, o quantity opposed to a

qualitative substratebut rather to the undialectical

ossication o orms as things that cannot be changed.

This is clear enough in the central essay o the book,

Reication and the Consciousness o the Proletariat.

Here, Lukcs presents an interpretation o what he calls

bourgeois philosophy, the classical German thought o

Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. He identies the epistemological

preoccupation o such philosophy: it starts rom the

separation o subject and object; thereore, its central

question is, How ar can our knowledge and its ormsmatch up with a reality that is external to consciousness?

This epistemological standpoint, Lukcs argues, reduces

us to mere spectators o society: we think it is only

possible to grasp it through predetermined orms.

Lukcss problem with this isnt that the orms are

wrongrather, its the very attempt to separate subject,

object, and consciousness rom one another. We can see

what Lukcs means by reication in the more detail in

the way he talks about the party.

In the rst place, Lukcss party essentially serves as

the institutional orm o proletarian class consciousness.

Without a party, such consciousness would be ormless

and immediate; the proletariat needs to give an

institutional orm to its sel- consciousness in order to

understand itsel properly. The party, thereore, is the

orm that the revolutionary proletariat gives itsel. The

leading sections o the working class organize themselves

in a party. As Lukcs puts it, the organizational

independence o the communist party is necessary, in

order that the proletariat can see its own class

consciousness, as a historical orm so that, or the

whole class, its own existence as a class can be raised to

the level o consciousness.11Whereas a Blanquist party

would be there to tell the workers what to think, the

Lukcsian party embodies the proletariat in its

organizational orms. Moreover, these orms arent just a

representation o what is a lready there a more or less

accurate representation o an underlying substrate o

labor or essence. Rather, Lukcs states that the party is

the proletariats act o sel-conscious becoming. Its only

by taking on orm or itsel that the proletariat really

becomes a class.

Furthermore, the close ties Lukcs establishes

between orm and existence indicate how reication could

return as a problem in the organization o the party.

Though tactical concerns play some role in organization,

this should not result in the imposition o certain orms in

the name o exigency. Rather, whats crucial is that orms

come rom the sel-organization o the proletariat. Theemergence o the communist party, as he says, can only

be the consciously-perormed work o the class-conscious

workers.12 As a result, organization is not a once-and-or-

all action: Lukcs is not trying to replace one set o

(abstract, quantiable, capitalist) orms with other, more

authentic, or qualitative orms. To do this would be, he

suggests, to risk the return o reicationwhich he

identies with the organizational structures o party

leadership. For Lukcs, its not so much what the party

does that matters, but more the opportunities it aords

proletarians to become actively involved in shaping the

orms o their existence. He writes, insoar as the

communist party becomes a world o activity or every one

o its members, it can overcome the contemplativity o

bourgeois man.13

Lukcs identies the party as the practical overcoming

o reication. Organization is the orm o mediation

between theory and practice.14 Like Luxemburg, he

rejects a Blanquist party that takes control on behal o the

workers. But he goes beyond Luxemburg in his insistence

on some kind o fuid institutional orm or proletarian

consciousness, without which it would be vague and

ineective. Dereication, thereore, is necessarily

practicalit means deliberate engagement in practices

that give orm to ones own existence. The party is

practical consciousness, the embodiment o such orms in

a way that a llows or their transormation.

Although Lukcss account rests very specically on the

conditions o the industrial working classes and the

phenomenological construction o proletarian sel-

consciousness, I think his undamental concept o

dereied praxis can help inorm progressive democratic

organization more generally. Even within current social

and political orms, the id