In the Hotel Abyss: An Hegelian-Marxist Critique of Adorno (Studies in Critical Social Sciences, 60) 9789004248984, 9789004248991, 9004248986

Citation preview

In the Hotel Abyss

Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor

David Fasenfest

Wayne State University Editorial Board

Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside G. William Domhofff, University of California-Santa Cruz Colette Fagan, Manchester University Martha Gimenez, University of Colorado, Boulder Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University Karin Gottschall, University of Bremen Bob Jessop, Lancaster University Rhonda Levine, Colgate University Jacqueline O’Reilly, University of Brighton Mary Romero, Arizona State University Chizuko Ueno, University of Tokyo

VOLUME 60

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss

In the Hotel Abyss An Hegelian-Marxist Critique of Adorno

By

Robert Lanning

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014

Cover illustration: “Sun Streaks” by Eric Lanning. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lanning, Robert,d1948 In the hotel abyss : an Hegelian-Marxist critique of Adorno / By Robert Lanning.   pages cm. -- (Studies in critical social sciences ; volume 60)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-24898-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969. 2. Methodology. 3. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. 4. Dialectic. 5. Critical theory. 6. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. I. Title.  B3199.A34L36 2013  193--dc23 2013034168

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1573-4234 ISBN 978-90-04-24898-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-24899-1 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS 1 Introduction�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 Background and Context������������������������������������������������������������������������������������9 The Orientation of the Present Study���������������������������������������������������������� 15 Adorno’s Form of Presentation���������������������������������������������������������������������� 17 Theory and Practice������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 22 The Management of Politics and Personal Relations������������������������������ 25 The Socio-Historical Context�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 27 2 Hegel, Marx, Dialectics������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 30 The Individual���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 34 Being and Self-consciousness������������������������������������������������������������������������� 37 Becoming������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 42 Contradiction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 44 Hegel’s Positivity, Critical Theory’s Positivism������������������������������������������� 46 A Note on Dialectical Logic����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 50 Mediation������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 51 3 Aspects of Adorno’s Method: Constellations and Images���������������������� 61 Adorno’s Bilderverbot and the Negation of Messianism������������������������� 77 4 Jazz, Radio and the Masses����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 83 The Masses and the Culture Industries�������������������������������������������������������� 86 The Jazz Essays���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 89 Marx, Music and Relative Autonomy���������������������������������������������������������101 Black Influence and Historical Materialist Analysis�������������������������������105 Radio��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������111 5 The Masses and Pro-fascist Propaganda���������������������������������������������������120 Pro-Fascism and the Masses�������������������������������������������������������������������������124 Irrationalism as the Basis of Analysis��������������������������������������������������������127 Lowenthal’s Anti-Fascist Writings��������������������������������������������������������������130 Adorno’s Study of Martin Luther Thomas������������������������������������������������132 The Approach of Others to Antifascism���������������������������������������������������143

vi

contents

6 Mediation�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������151 Hegelian Mediation�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������162 Adorno’s Mediation�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������165 7 Negative Dialectic, Identity and Exchange�����������������������������������������������172 Negative Thought���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������172 The Positive Moment in Dialectics�������������������������������������������������������������176 Identity and Identity Thinking���������������������������������������������������������������������184 Concept and Identity��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������193 Exchange������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������195 8 Conclusion���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������207 References���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������211 Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������219

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION Of the major points of Marx’s work, the most pertinent was that his method could expose the contradictions of capitalism and contribute to the organization of an alternative to it. In other words, it is possible to get from the initiation of critique to socialism. With much of Adorno’s work, that is not the case, neither in the method nor the expectation. The argument in this book is directed at the difference. Marx employed dialectics as the method of his orientation to political economy (1967: 30), to be able to reason through the experience of capitalism. For Hegel, dialectics was essentially the connection of elements of experience: “this dialectical movement which consciousness exercises on itself and which effects both its knowledge and its object, is precisely what is called experience” (1977: 55). Adorno rejected Hegel’s view of dialectics and experience as simply part of the “idealist machinery” (1973: 7). He did not consider dialectics a method, a “pure method” (1973: 144), but acknowledged the necessity of beginning with matter rather than thought, “unreconciled,” contradictory matter. Unreconciled, contradictory reality resists “unanimous interpretation;” contradiction existing in reality is “a contradiction against reality” (1973: 144–145). The notion of contradiction being located in reality and, therefore, against it certainly holds. But while it may be a contradiction against the whole of reality, as in the reality of capi talism – the social process as a whole, as we will see later – it is, most often, against a part of reality, a moment, with the complex of internal relations connecting all other parts to the whole clearly in mind. If not, how do we treat the contradictions of reality that are sublated by the partial and momentary resolution of the original contradiction? Adorno’s position is that no meaningful change in society is possible until the entire structure, ideology and existing culture industries of capitalism have been completely overcome. He embeds his theoretical orientation in a categorical approach, seeing contradiction as finality rather than an expression of both the process of thought and the process of a changeable reality. Thus, the contradiction in question is against the whole of reality taken categorically and absolutely. The philosophical orientation is on thinking and interpretation devoid of a structure for thinking through actual political

2

chapter one

change. The contradiction, rather, should be searched to its source, as the basis of developing adequate knowledge of process, development and change. But a perspective on actual politically-driven change is absent in Adorno’s work; his dialectics are dialectics of collapse, dissolution, and despair. Acknowledging that dialectics is thinking in contradictions, and on the basis of his concern to repudiate all forms of identity, Adorno asserts that his dialectics cannot be reconciled with Hegel’s which, by implication, “tend[s] to the identity in the difference between each object and its concept” (1973: 145). In relation to this, he begins Negative Dialectics placing the core principle of dialectics, non-identity in his view, against logic’s “principle of the excluded middle,” that “whatever differs in quality, comes to be designated as contradiction.” Dialectics, on the other hand, at its inception is “the consistent sense of non-identity” (Adorno 1973: 5). Contradiction, barred from the structure of formal logic, finds its home in dialectics. Adorno is correct about the difference between formal logic and dialectics. But herein lies the essential twofold problem in his recognition of the absence of the excluded middle in formal logic: first, the limits that any contradiction possesses for developing its relations with the reality in which it arose and in which it remains in sublation, albeit residually; secondly, the contradiction, in itself and in the process of sublation, constitutes the excluded middle, the de-legitimizing of formal logic, the progress of materialist dialectics. The core of Adorno’s dialectics is non-identity; non-identity, as he conceives it, is categorical and, as such, does not bridge the two moments of this process. In the excluded middle we see the moments of the process of change that leads to the sublation – aufhebung, transcendence and preservation. From such processes of transformation a space is opened further to witness and to reason, to see political reality meet its limits and its master, the historical subject carried forward by its own consciousness. Bertell Ollman argues that dialectics is a form of thought and analysis, “it proves nothing, predicts nothing and causes nothing to happen” (1993: 10). In that sense, Adorno rightly states that dialectics “does not begin by taking a standpoint.” But as philosophy it only operates as a human product and cannot be isolated from the human context; thought requires a thinker, the thinker thinks in and about particular times, places, events and conditions, however much he or she may wish to be insulated from the context and its obligations. Dialectics, logic, in themselves, are prior to any partisan, politically-driven viewpoint. It is the exposure to ideas,

introduction3 determinations, empirical evidence that produces choices precisely because of the method underlying the analysis. In this sense, Adorno is correct to say, “Experience lives by consuming the standpoint” (1973: 30). It is a higher level than Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason is centered on “thinking about thinking”. Hegel also began his Science of Logic by noting that dialectics did not begin from a “standpoint” but not in quite the same way as Adorno. Hegel’s dialectics produced a standpoint internal to the method when his indeterminate Being and Nothing were given only a moment’s distinction before vanishing into Becoming (Hegel 1969: 92). Such movement might satisfy the apparent neutrality suggested by Ollman, but it also indicates the reality that dialectics is imputed a standpoint in the process of its development and is in a position to lend its potential to a practical program without inherently privileging any partisanship. One can accept the idea that dialectics does not initially take a position, but it is more difficult, in fact not possible to consider the thinker, the agent of dialectical thinking, the person deeper into modernity than Hegel who employs dialectics, being without a standpoint, a partisan position on existing conditions, their history and contradictions, and being partial, at least, to a conceptual effort of the kind Bloch identified as forward thinking. Dialectics as a way of thinking can only be sustained momentarily without recognizing the social ground of its cogitation. In the pluralism of ideas and methods of reasoning and resolving, dialectics itself may not possess a standpoint inherent in its name, but the choice of dialectics by the thinking subject is a position taken. Beginning without an obvious standpoint may be a narrative device that holds the reader’s partisan interests at bay while the philosopher forms the argument; this is indicated by Adorno’s statement that dialectics in its materialist form has “degenerated into a dogma” (1973: 7). But, in fact, it is not widely evident in Negative Dialectics and elsewhere that he holds his particular interests at a distance; rather, from the outset his position is emphatic, especially his writing on culture, the condition of ‘the masses,’ and popular music. The style is one that rarely allows the reader full insight into why he holds the categorical positions he does. Thus, he continues in Negative Dialectics: “My thought is driven by its own inevitable insufficiency, by my guilt of what I am thinking” (1973: 5), evidence of the retention of the priority of thought/thinking in the abstract, from Kant. Cognizance of the insufficiency of one’s thinking should be a motive for its development and clarity. If dialectics is a search for knowledge, Adorno warns that it should not be for the comfort provided by the identity of contradictory elements found in the investigation of the social

4

chapter one

world. “Identity and contradiction of thought are welded together” [aneinandergeschweißt], he writes (1973: 6), although the weld suggests a more permanent relation than is necessary philosophically or evident historically. But the obvious question concerns the structure or structuring of consciousness, how it becomes structured under the conditions of its experience, thought, and analysis, how the demand for resolution of opposing phenomena and relations comes about rather than simply being there as an historical fait accompli that Adorno often imputes to the moment he fumes against. The position throughout Negative Dialectics and elsewhere is that identity is total, that totality is totally identical, formed by identity-thinking. Identity must be purged from consciousness, Adorno argues, as quickly as it is sensed or the being who identifies will succumb to the existing social order of identity-thinking. And he assumes this concerns the majority of beings. This position, a standpoint, assumes that all forms and instances of identity or unity are barriers to achieving a different social order and these must be completely transcended before new social structural arrangements, a new consciousness can be realized. For Adorno, unity in dialectics implies a non-contradiction theoretically unattainable and he continually pushes his readers toward a comprehension of this sense of identity, its inadequacy and danger. His ‘identity’ is categorical and inclusive of too much that is characterized by the dynamism that can be searched out and developed in reality; ‘identity’ is a concept, and he, quite correctly, sees the concept as claiming to cover reality but cannot precisely because of its movement, and yet he treats the concept of identity as if it is able to do so. Unity and identity are denounced along with the notion that there is a positive moment in the dialectic that possesses any intellectual, social or political value, and it is insisted here that the positive moment, however tendential and brief, is sublation. Adorno’s criticism of the “strive for unity” as a goal of consciousness, a matter of “the structure of our consciousness” (1973: 5), is a problem, it seems, for all but a minority of intellectuals, for there is no theoretico-practical relation in political and social thought for him that has resulted in a dialectical overcoming of existing conditions and the sublation of philosophical and practical problems. However, the striving for, or preoccupation with identity, is contingent on specific social, economic and historical relations, and thus, on consciousness, more or less developed. Contingency implies a set of conditions in which a specific complex of relations has arisen and developed, and which are surmountable under specifically different, negatively

introduction5 related conditions. But this development toward overcoming is not clearly evident in Adorno’s argument for negative dialectics; it admits of no positive moment of which sublation is at least a threshold. A sense of the nontranscendence of conditions of identity-thinking pervades his dialectics. That dialectics “does not begin by taking a standpoint” imputes to the method of thought neutrality it cannot long sustain. Dialectics does not have an immanent standpoint; dialectics is directed at exposing and analysing the determinants, the internal relations, of phenomena that in the socially and politically conscious individual will lead to a choice between alternatives. Dialectics is said not to begin with a standpoint, yet is said to be surrounded by the demand for a continuous sense of non-identity that is the standpoint of the theorist. Mihailo Markovic argued that an analysis of society is incomplete that is reduced to a mere description, or to structural analysis without examination of the change of those structures. Equally incomplete is research that seeks merely to explain and understand actually given phenomena without exploring the alternative possibilities. (1983: 556)

This concept of critique in this regard reflects Marx’s basic use of criticism by those who “want to find the new world through criticism of the old one … constructing the future [through] ruthless criticism of all that exists” (Marx 1975a: 142). He sought an alternative, not an interpretation. This is essentially the sense of criticism used by Horkheimer (1982: 206–207) in his most comprehensive early essay on critical theory. Adorno does indicate desirable changes in the structure of society, but those are most often only general and vague, beginning and nearly always ending with the intractable grip of modernity or capitalism or commodity fetishism, as in the growth into dominance of science and quantification of the Enlightenment and its business connections in capitalism, or the rise of jazz as a musical form and the immediate, permanent domination of it by market interests. These are macro-developments, big changes that, indeed, mean a great deal to the structure of society, its institutions, the psychology of a population, and although he speaks to that psychology often it is still in terms of total identity that cannot be addressed before total social change. His attitude toward the social movement of university students and the New Left was a partial and only temporary exception (see Adorno 1976a: 10–11). Adorno comes up short, then, with regard to the second part of Markovic’s prescription – change and alternatives as the real content of social science. Adorno recognizes only those alternatives that have

6

chapter one

‘miscarried’ (1973: 3) or have been proven erroneous, stated also in terms of macro efforts on the historical scale – communism in the Soviet Union, for example. He does not explore the ongoing efforts at developing alternative measures within the context of capitalism, not for capitalism but against its reality. This is not to argue for a reformist approach but to illuminate what is produced from the contradictions of capitalism itself, such as mass movements that are not imposed from outside but arise from capitalism’s internal contradictions and relations, and especially the oppositions of capitalism’s subordinates. These affirmative comments on Markovic’s concept of critique, particularly the second point concerning alternatives, may seem to be made without consideration of immanent critique as a method of critical theory, derived, with modifications, from Hegel and Marx. Fundamentally, the idea of an immanent critique is that there is a critique inherent in the object itself, what something, on one hand – a social structure, for example – thinks itself to be through the dominant agents of its construction and, on the other, the reality of the contradictions dwelling within it. Thus, an immanent critique is intended to expose the complexity of an object, exposing its contradictions, the falsity of its claim to legitimacy, to itself and its subjects through the medium of the critical theorist. Immanent critique will not take rationalizations for legitimate response. Thus, Horkheimer explained critical activity as a human activity which has society itself for its object. The aim of this activity is not simply to eliminate one or another abuse, for it regards such abuses as necessarily connected with the way in which the social structure is organized. … On the contrary, it [critical activity] is suspicious of the very categories of better, useful, appropriate, productive, and valuable … and refuses to take them as non-scientific presuppositions about which one can do nothing. (1982: 206–207)

The implication is that some action can be taken to address these presuppositions; the implication is one of possible alternatives. Contrary to Adorno’s position, Horkheimer denotes (1982: 219) the necessity of a struggle between social transformation and the theory that advocates it – the closest thing to a genuine relation between theory and practice. (We return to this below.) But, does this provide or suggest the practical alternative Markovic or Marx seems to support? Adorno believes that philosophy can and must stand on its own, and as with the problem of practice, is degraded by suggestions of its inter­ relationship with other disciplines; it may be applied to them but not with them. Hence, his immanent critique is based in the assumption of

introduction7 philosophy’s capacity to develop through its own processes. Marx’s attempt to transform philosophy was a practical and theoretical action that, for Adorno, was not successful and its traces cannot or are not ­worthy of discovery. He states at the beginning of Negative Dialectics (1973: 3) that the dictum of Marx was “crippled” by the attempt’s “resignation in the face of reality” and became the “defeatism of reason after the attempt to change the world miscarried.” This occurs repeatedly in Adorno’s work. This makes the principle of non-identity quite problematic and, as in other instances, a rather formal category that suggests of a type of logic ill-equipped for contradiction. As we will see, Adorno felt that interpretation was at the heart of philosophy and yet well-before the historical juncture in which that position was taken, Marx had argued that that moment for philosophy had passed, of necessity. As Bloch noted, in his 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, Marx did not rebuke philosophers for philosophizing but for only interpreting the world as if the class issues at the core of capitalism did not exist; contemplation as such is not an object of rebuke, but a call to philosophers to study reality is the message Marx wanted to communicate (Bloch 1971: 93–95). Adorno’s position is that interpretation is sufficient in itself to produce knowledge. Buck-Morss (1977: 154) suggests that Adorno’s very exposure of fetishism, reification and the sado-masochistic features of jazz are an example of his immanent critique. Indeed, it is, and it is predominantly one-sided as we will see in the chapter discussing jazz and popular music. It is insufficient because the mediating energy of critique is not, in itself, a direction. As we have noted, Adorno may be correct in his view that dialectics itself does not have a standpoint, but like any other method, it is nothing without an agent. We can see something of the difference in approaches by noting Marx’s ‘immanent critique’ of the Commune. His assessment of the contra­ dictions workers faced within that form of social organization required them to pursue a course of action. He argued that they could “not expect miracles from the Commune,” that the struggle would necessarily take place over a period of time “through a series of historical processes … against capital and landed property,” and through the “development of new ­conditions.” At that historical juncture the workers knew both ­concretely and theoretically “that great strides may be taken at once through the Communal form of political organization and that the time  has come to begin that movement for themselves and mankind” (Marx 1986b: 335, 491–92).

8

chapter one

Consistent with the implications of Markovic’s concept of critique, Marcuse considered “determinate negation” as the “governing principle of dialectical thought”: “it refers the established state of affairs to the basic factors and forces which make for its destructiveness as well as for the possible alternatives beyond the status quo” (1960: xi–xii). These are historical factors and forces and, therefore, must be an essential component in any analysis. Marx argued that criticism (critique) was focused on demonstrating to “the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something it has to acquire” in order to “possess it in reality” (1975a: 144). Thus, a crucial question about Adorno’s work is not simply whether he was wrong but what did he miss because of his particular approach to dialectics, to Marxism and politics, and where does his approach prove to be insufficient with respect to the goal of substantive social change? Another means by which to address this issue is by way of Hegel’s use of speculative thought. This approach is integrally related to consciousness, to the historical subject, and surpasses both the understanding and reflection upon which Kant centered his thinking. Hegel exceeds Kant’s formalism of the object by insisting that it is not substance but subject (1977: 9–10), that which has an “inner life … governed by spirit” (Verene 2007: 7). Spirit, in the first instance, Hegel denoted as consciousness (1977: 21); the subject is alive and self-moving. The speculative proposition in Hegel’s philosophy exposes the ordinary sense of identity between subject and predicate as a non-identity as well. The “distinction of Subject and Predicate” that is “destroyed by the speculative proposition” does not unify or identify the two in an ordinary sense, but brings them into “a harmony” (Hegel 1977: 38) so that their “identity” is one of difference in unity. The self-movement is facilitated by the tension that remains in this harmony, the subject’s consciousness and inner life.1 Thinking as mere reflection will capture and freeze the object of thought as a formal relationship out of which no alternative can emerge and be developed. This provides an uncomplicated space in which such objects as the working class or the masses can be thought as a simple reflection of capitalism for I believe Adorno treats them as mere ­substance  – not Aristotle’s cause and first principle nor Spinoza’s god/ nature complex, but matter alone devoid of inner life. Although Adorno (1976a: 4–5) lamented that speculation no longer held Hegel’s essential meaning it is not evident that he used the concept in a way consistent with Hegel’s use. 1 For another discussion of Hegel’s use of speculative, see Rose 2009: 51–53.

introduction9 Background and Context In the mid-1940s Adorno queried the interest of workers in their own class as a political means to social change. It was a legitimate inquiry, one taken up later by members of the Frankfurt School but with few attempts to address the class directly or to address the politics of class struggle. Marcuse was a partial, but important exception much after this period. In his aphoristic piece, “Puzzle-picture,” Adorno alludes to the social mobility and rough equality possible in an increasingly technological society – an “immanently socialist element in progress” – while capitalism retained its rigidity. His question about “subjective class membership” therein was answered, not surprisingly, in a deprecating fashion: “Sociologists … ponder the grimly comic riddle: where is the proletariat?” (Adorno 2005: 194). We should expect that Adorno would be concerned about the response of sociologists, but not political leaders of the organized working class. So, too, should we expect that for him the problem is grim and comedic, and comes in the form of a riddle; grim to match his own despair, comedic because of his tendency to be dismissive of the need for detailed and systematic analysis – little seems to be taken seriously except his conclusions, and a riddle because of his interpretive philosophical approach, a metaphor of a game, notwithstanding its common use in the philosophies of Antiquity. Or perhaps Adorno uses ‘riddle’ in its agricultural denotation – an instrument that separates the chaff from the wheat. The ‘comedic’ problem of the proletariat reflects the orientation of his social criticism: obscurantist language, images, and the turning-inside-out of concepts, a style hardly conducive to attracting the interest of working class activists to a comprehensive and coherent analysis of capitalism and the possibility of transcending its limits on human development. But that was never his intention. Nor would it have been conducive to developing a more critical side of the sociology of the day. This attitude was also not a favorable approach to attracting or developing the educated organic intellectuals of the working class in the factory or elsewhere, and those from other class backgrounds who joined their struggle. Given the historical period of his early writings in the 1930s and 40s, there is a nearly complete absence of reference to working class political actions or organizations. It is one of many reasons to ask to what extent Adorno, early or late, seriously sought an audience there or wanted his philosophical message to reach and influence activists or proletarian political organizations, an attitude consistent with most Frankfurt School members toward the working class as a possible historical agent of

10

chapter one

revolution. Indeed, Richard Bernstein suggested that this question became the Achilles heel of the School, for “what is the function of critical theory, if no such class seems to exist?” (1976: 183). Adorno was more emphatic than others in his dismissal of the working class and leads one to ask what aspects of Marx’s work he appropriated and why, or at least what kind of Marxist he was if it is possible that all variations in fact lead back to the same source for the same reasons and are, therefore, legitimate in their variation. But, that is a position we do not take. Adorno’s own final statement on the matter is his rather cynical self-exposé in the Preface to Negative Dialectics: “The author is prepared for the attacks to which Negative Dialectics will expose him. He feels no rancor and does not begrudge the joy of those in either camp who will proclaim that they knew it all the time and now he was confessing” (Adorno 1973: xxi). While the question of the proletariat’s class consciousness, their organization and means of confrontation with capitalism remains central to the problem of social critique and change, the axis of this issue for Adorno was the willful subordination of the working class beneath the weight of capitalism’s culture industry. Given the absence in his work of any recognition of the capacity and interest of the working class to contribute significantly to the overcoming of oppressive conditions of capitalist society in thought or in action, the self-imposed subservience of that class was, for him, irrevocable. It is that perspective that will be a major focus here. The development of class consciousness requires the expansion of thought, and Marxists have anticipated that thought will be advanced dialectically through its objectification in the efforts of individual development, class organization and class struggle. I have explored this further in my discussion of Lukács’ conception of “imputed class consciousness” (Lanning 2009). The absence of a place for the working class or other historical agent for Adorno made his metaphor of the ‘message in a bottle’ appropriate to his pessimistic outlook. Claussen (2008: 61) identifies the origin of the phrase in a letter written by Horkheimer; it was a form of communication for the work in which he and Adorno were engaged. Adorno used the phrase in Minima Moralia, alluding to messages “stuck in the mud” subsequently picked up and parodied by their new owners as “highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments” (2005: 209). The message in the bottle was critical theory, but it is questionable who the intended recipients were. Claussen suggests that the intended audience, when Horkheimer first used the phrase, was the “traditional addressees of the critical theory of society,” the proletariat. But the character of the audience changed as circumstances changed for Adorno who sought a wider,

introduction11 popular audience rather than a partisan one (or even a necessarily academic audience) for his first collection of essays, Prisms, published in Germany after the war (Claussen 2008: 211). It is an interesting change of intended audience as the agents Adorno hoped would help secure his reputation as a public intellectual and critic. If the message in a bottle is a form of communication why cast about for a different audience, except to argue that the nearest one, the working class outside Adorno’s door, was either uninterested or incapable? He knew the answer: the audience in contemporary capitalist culture is there for support of the artist, a support that takes place through the commodification of music, painting, the novel, drama, and in his case, academic discourse. That was a position he adopted toward the existing, dominant culture industry, but also a position he adopted for his preferred addressees. After all, if there was a possibility for an intelligent consumer among the public and in the universities then those sites could serve as the marketplace for the criticism he espoused. The audience he sought was not necessarily antithetical to the interests of the working class. His desired addressees consisted of intellectuals, students, well-read knowledgeable people interested in the social problems of the day: philosophy, education, antisemitism, and the re-building of culture and academic life in post-war Germany. These were legitimate audiences and some portion of them, such as university students, showed they were up to the task of confronting the state and capital on issues of war, economy and racism, although their actions were not always supported by Adorno. From such confrontations some degree of social change did issue, along with some measure of ideological and organizational skills useful for building and sustaining broadly-based political movements. It was an audience present for edification in matters of philosophy, sociology and culture, among other things; it was an audience worth having. Once listening and reading, this audience provided some institutional and popular security (see Adorno and Becker 1999) as well as personal refuge for Adorno; it provided conditions for teaching and writing, while for Horkheimer it provided a privileged withdrawal from public life (Claussen 2008: 208). Adorno cultivated his return to Germany and his new audience with questionable actions, not least of which was the Institute’s excising of ­provocative – for the cold-war environment of Germany – early writings of its members on antisemitism and class issues (Meszaros 1989: 100). This, however, was nothing new for Institute leaders. Horkheimer had been an obstacle to the conclusion and publication of Erich Fromm’s study of the

12

chapter one

Weimar working class, believing it to be “too Marxist” and a risk for “­negative consequences for the Institute” (Bonss 1984: 3). Additionally, the controversy over Walter Benjamin’s Baudelaire essays (which I address in chapter six) was more a conflict over Adorno’s demands that Benjamin adopt his esoteric style and that Benjamin discard his quasi-partisan historical materialist perspective. When a new essay fit the demands of Horkheimer and Adorno’s desire for political neutrality, the Institute published it; it was satisfactory to Adorno theoretically and stylistically (Adorno 2003; Buck-Morss 1977: 155–163; Meszaros 1989: 49). Adorno’s strive for acceptability extended as well to the targets of his criticism of the left and his choice of publishing venues, such as his attack on Georg Lukács (Adorno 2007b) published originally in 1961, first in the U.S. Army and Ford Foundation funded Die Monat and later in an English translation in the CIA sponsored Encounter (see Presentation IV in Adorno et al. 2007: 143). As well, he lectured on a comparison of German and American culture at the Third Armored Division’s Historical Society in 1956, writing to Horkheimer of the pleasant atmosphere and the “friendliness and humanity” of the generals attending (Kalbus 2009: 139). All this and more may be what Heinz Lubasz (1984: 79) refers to as the “ambivalence toward radicalism … of a certain type of middle-class left intellectual”, attributable to Adorno but perhaps equally so to many others in university positions from the 1960s on. The orientation to a desired audience and his long-standing deprecation of the working class as a possible agent against capitalism requires a closer examination of some of his writings that shed light on his attitude toward the group which, for Adorno, had even lost its status as a class and had become merely ‘the masses.’ Where his attitude is not outright dismissive of working class politics and people or utterly fails to take the opportunity of historical analysis, it is paternalistic and condescending. It is an attitude that reflects problems in Adorno’s conception and use of dialectics to which we have alluded, above, and which will be addressed further throughout this book. If Theodor Adorno set out to establish a status of supreme intellectual for himself, it has been accomplished, more so posthumously than during his lifetime. The essence of my argument here is that Adorno’s status has been bestowed, built-up and celebrated, ordained in the manner in which he set its foundation with his inaugural address in 1931 (2000a) and reaffirmed upon his return to Germany, as a detached intellectual, freefloating in a Mannheimian sense. Much of his work may remain attractive precisely because its style allows for interpretation and reinterpretation

introduction13 sufficient to maintain an audience and adherents of intellectual and political diversity. Adorno’s legacy fits well in an academic world selfdescribed and self-satisfied as postmodern. He was surely the vanguard of the postmodern – against philosophical systems (1973: 20–22), interpretive rather than historical in analysis (Adorno 2000a), giving priority to the refuge of discursive style more than to substance, esoterically pleasurable and career-building in its abstruseness. Other than his brief period of lecturing between 1931 and 1933, he began his university career only in the post-war period. By the time of his death in 1969 universities in Europe and North American had undergone a significant transformation. The expansion of the post-secondary system in the United States, for example, included not only an increase in the number of institutions but opened admission to applicants of socio-economic status, ethnicity and gender who would not have found a place in a university in an earlier period. The same trend was true for Canada, though slower, but even in this period two of its major universities, McGill and the University of Toronto, finally dropped their quotas on Jewish students. Increasingly, the teaching force in American universities operate on a two-tier system with upwards of 70% of faculty in the U.S. in non-secure forms of employment with little institutional support while the remainder hold employment security, little scrutiny beyond the moment of tenure, generally well-supported by their institutions as well as a textbook industry eager to profit from book sales to students and academics alike. The university, at least for tenured faculty, has indeed become a place of an elite core of professionals, effectively a managerial group at the department level. In this atmosphere, perhaps Adorno would be mindful that an early comment on the commodification of thought (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: xi–xii) would apply equally well to academia. The period of history in which Adorno’s work was written that is of primary concern here was a period few have had the audacity to ignore. With the important exception of the Holocaust, Adorno was one. Perhaps the North American students of the 1960s whose interest in Frankfurt School members propelled their writings into the public forum could be excused for a lack of knowledge about the political vibrancy and objective potential of the political and social movements of three and four decades earlier, although this would be less true of the red diaper babies at Port Huron or in the Mississippi Freedom Schools or at Draft Board confrontations. Out of concern for their security, members of the Frankfurt School wanted to function below the political radar in America to which they had been fortunate to emigrate. The member who most significantly broke that

14

chapter one

silence was Marcuse, and that was not until the volatility of the 1960s student and anti-war movements were about to be realized. Fromm had retreated to an interesting humanism informed by Marx’s early writings but distant from revolutionary practice. Lowenthal, as interesting in his use of Marxism as was Marcuse, was less of a public political presence. Horkheimer and Adorno had shifted to academic careers in Germany. Studies of Adorno’s work continue. The books for which he became well-known continue to be available or republished in new editions and translations; major and minor post-war treatises on music and literature have recently been translated. Two recent studies have attempted to capture his biography as a life of genius (Claussen 2008) (complete with a note to the reader: “How to read this book”) and his period of exile in the United States (Jenneman 2007). Claussen’s work is thorough, covering Adorno’s major works and relations with people in and out of the Frankfurt School circle, in Europe, England and the United States. Clearly sympathetic, Claussen begins with Horkheimer’s response to Adorno’s death, referring to him as a genius, followed by Adorno’s own negative view of the term as typically used. Claussen writes on Adorno’s collaboration with Thomas Mann on the music section of Dr. Faustus, and other collaborations, with Hans Eisler and Horkheimer, as well as his relations with Benjamin, Bloch and others. Claussen’s use of Adorno’s correspondence gives the study both a range and intimacy not achieved in other writings. Jenneman’s book focuses on Adorno’s work on radio providing useful background material on his interests and work during his relatively short period in the U.S. as well as important background material on the study of antisemitism and attitudes toward race, The Authoritarian Personality. But as we will see with respect to Jenneman there is hardly a glimpse at what is going on outside of Adorno’s immediate interests. Generally, Jenneman’s and Claussen’s works are intended to create a sympathetic and ultimately unproblematic picture of their subject to secure him against accusations of elitism. Despite these efforts, attempting to prove or disprove such claims misses the major problem: that Adorno’s attitude toward those in social classes below his strata of intellectuals is an inevitable outcome of his abandonment of the central requirements of historical materialist analysis. Though not unsympathetic, others have sought to critique Adorno’s work, as Susan Buck-Morss has, acknowledging his “vision of the intellectual elite as the formulators of … truth” (1977: 42). Her The Origin of Negative Dialectics, perhaps the most oft-cited resource on Adorno, establishes the links between his early and late philosophy and a detailed

introduction15 exploration of his method. She also provides three chapters on his intellectual relations with Benjamin, constituting some of the most enlight­ ening discussion of that issue alone. Gillian Rose’s earlier work, The Melancholy Science (1978), is perhaps more critical on some levels, focusing on Adorno’s method and style, illuminating and attempting to clarify many obscurities of his work. Other recent works where Adorno is not the central figure but his presence is inescapable have contributed much to the knowledge of his work and personality. Esther Leslie’s Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (2000), Erdmut Wizisla’s Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: the story of a friendship (2009) and Mark P. Worrell’s Dialectic of Solidarity (2009) are among those to be considered. Serious and less sympathetic critiques of Adorno’s work are rare. Meszaros devoted several pages to Adorno, scorning his style, excoriating his attitude toward class and questioning his other priorities designed essentially to feather his nest in post-war German academia (1989: 91–130). In his short work on the Frankfurt School, Zoltan Tar concentrated on Adorno and Horkheimer as the central figures of Critical Theory, pointing out numerous contradictions between their stated program and what actually emerged. The rather conservative philosophical background of both and the absence of systematic application of historical materialism and materialist dialectics contributed to Tar’s conclusion that “Critical Theory ­dissociated itself from the basic tenet of Marxism: the unity of theory, empirical research, and revolutionary praxis”, a disengagement that led to, among other things, “a social philosophy of despair” (Tar 1977: 79, 202). Tar’s edited collection with Judith Marcus (1984) provides some of the most important critiques of Adorno and other central figures of the Frank­ furt School and is crucial to any complete understanding of the School’s theoretical perspective and politico-philosophical shortcomings. All of these works and others will have a place in this critique. The Orientation of the Present Study Except in a marginal way, Adorno’s work on literature and classical music are not addressed in this study. My major interest is in two areas: the works that employ an orientation to dialectics and ostensibly to Marxism, and works that directly or indirectly address the working class and eschew a meaningful praxis. Adorno will have his own defense of these areas of interest in these pages, but these issues I find most problematic in at least two senses. First, I share with others such as Tar (1977) questions about

16

chapter one

Adorno’s interest in and use of Marxism as a systematic and critical perspective. Adorno was free to choose his theoretical orientation, but notwithstanding the need for any theory to be fully understood, developed and expanded consistent with changing social conditions. And once some relationship to Marxism is implied, including dialectics, that selection must be complete at least in the sense that Marxism requires a certain orientation to analysis with a view to concrete action that begins with the struggle between social classes and requires continuous attention to the relations of theory and practice and to the development of consciousness. Adorno avoided the class struggle altogether, and without that his attempts at exploring the relation of theory to practice and vice versa were insufficient to sustain his connection to Marxism, however tangential he claimed this to be. His failure to treat the working class, whether politically active or not, as subjects of history, in reality or potentially, is most serious. Secondly, largely contingent on the first and as we have alluded to already, Adorno’s orientation to social criticism and analysis includes condescension toward those who did not share his views or the benefits of his own development; his was not a criticism of different perspectives or interests, it was a disdain that other perspectives against what he saw as obvious conclusions could be taken up at all. His defense was that the structure of capitalism, of modern, totally administered society, not only fostered but demanded degrading interests be taken up – jazz and other forms of popular music, for example – and people who did so, did so willingly to the detriment of themselves and others, a willingness that fostered the reproduction of existing relations of capitalism. In this sense Adorno exhibited the modernist tendencies of late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature. Georg Lukács described this as a view of “man as solitary, asocial, unable to enter into relationships” (1963: 20). But Lukács’ statement was given from a standpoint; that is, every reader knew that his dialectics and materialist orientation to history was the ground of a partisan position as it was, in a different sense, in the later work of Adorno’s colleague, Marcuse. As has been suggested above, one of the more serious problems with Adorno was that he provided criticism but no means by which targeted thought or conditions could be sublated or transcended. Such a practical orientation would have to be premised on the belief that thought and social conditions may be reified but that is not a permanent condition, something difficult to discern in his work. Together these problems point to a larger one – that Adorno’s work, for all the claims made about it, has been systematized into a constriction on concrete means to address the problems of capitalism; it serves as a

introduction17 control mechanism in the world of academia as had philosophy before Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. In examining these issues, another task of this effort will be to demonstrate where others in Adorno’s own time exhibited actions and thinking very much contrary to his perspective. I also want to show that Adorno made a choice between alternatives: to demonstrate that capitalism was insurmountable and that the working class would, itself, choose unreflective acquiescence over challenge to capitalism and a revolutionary future. In fact, the organized working class was developing a theoretical perspective on capitalism and its culture that included as an intrinsic element the empirical evidence that alternative and oppositional action was being put to concrete use in politics and culture. Adorno’s Form of Presentation Notwithstanding the significance of Adorno’s use of dialectics, perhaps the single most important point with which to begin is the form of Adorno’s presentation, the early work that is much of the concern here, but the later Negative Dialectics as well. Adorno was a philosopher, one who in the European manner claimed the social sciences within the domain of philosophy. His style of writing was not unusual among philosophers claiming some relation to Marxism and social critique in the inter-war period although there are few other instances of the use of his style among the original Frankfurt School members. Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch both used a similar style in much of their work – images developed from esoteric language, literary and historical analogies not fully elaborated, and an unsystematic form of presentation. Benjamin was probably the least offender over the course of his work and Bloch set this form aside as less likely to be conducive to understanding in books such as Natural Law and Human Dignity and On Karl Marx. The accessibility of many of Bloch’s and Adorno’s works suffered because of their style of presentation. The form of the argument is more than its style, linguistic and otherwise. Specifically, in Benjamin’s early writings and in Adorno’s the form centers on constellations, and in a somewhat different manner it exists in much of Bloch’s work. Adorno’s use of constellations is discussed further in chapter three, but for the moment it can be said that its usefulness lies in its imaginative possibilities: what can emerge as concrete prospects from the arrangement and relation of elements, a more systematic approach for Bloch than for Adorno.

18

chapter one

As a general form of presentation, the key to a successful Marxist analysis is its grounding in historical reality. Benjamin did this best when he abandoned his early appeals to constellations for analyses centered historically or arranged in terms of correspondences, although Lukács had considerable praise for Benjamin’s use of allegory (1963: 40–44; 1984). Bloch used this form of presentation with a consistent appeal to dialectics, the concrete historical elements held as a backdrop but nevertheless with a strong sense of presence in much of his work. He, of course, was more poetic, even mystical in his presentation than others, but provided a steady sense of movement in his distinction between objectively real possibilities and the possibilities of not-yet. This form of presentation differs from other Marxists of the period, not least of which were philosophers such as Lukács and Korsch. Theirs was the traditional academic form of presentation characterized by more clear links to historical evidence and systematic theoretical perspec­ tives, extensive assessment and critique of the arguments of others and of course a more obviously partisan position attached to the communist movement. Adorno developed a form of presentation that is furthest removed from the principles and needs of historical materialism. There are the masses, for example, whose collective impotence and preoccupation with the ­latest gadget became baneful to Adorno, an annoyance, causing him immense irritation at times – the dancing crazes, the jazz mania, the material fads. But he needs them, for the distance of his form of presentation from comprehensive historical analysis requires casting a group in a terminal idiom to justify what is essentially his defeatist perspective on their own attitude and the objective potential for social change. The form of presentation serves the purpose of criticism of capitalism, the masses, the culture industry, total administration, etc., but rarely does it enter the terrain of critique as we have discussed it above. Adorno tells us what he believes we need to hear about the problems of capitalism and about our neighbors or co-workers who don’t think as clearly and critically as we do. Despite its quick judgements and the stylistic obstacles, his message is an easy one, perhaps more in contemporary academia than at the time of writing. More than he and his supporters would like to believe, the form of his presentation is more doctrine than treatise. It is a message to one faction of the converted – those who have thought the problems and presented their conclusions, but for whom thinking through them is not a priority, and those for whom the errors of others’ practice has become the proof of the necessary aloofness of theory.

introduction19 The enduring problem of this form of presentation, especially with Adorno, is the over-reliance on images, analogies, and abstractions to express ideas that arise because of the relation of subjects to their history. Where that history is underdeveloped in the argument, where the dialectics expressed in images and analogies are esoteric hints instead of clarification, the necessary knowledge the writer possesses is incompletely conveyed, whatever the level of its sophistication and thoroughness. Because of Adorno’s consistent form of presentation of unarticulated historical connections, and inexplicit relations of reality, operating as a needed sense of difference manifested in an unfailing condemnation of the masses, it is hard to reconcile Lowenthal’s criticism of those who saw in Adorno’s work a “secret hostility to history” (1989a: 56). Despite similarities with Adorno in style, neither Benjamin nor Bloch lowered themselves to such denunciation. A work of philosophy or social criticism can legitimately carry whatever form and stylistic variances its authors choose; where it becomes questionable are those instances in which a specific social group is one of the objects of the work. This is not a call for the dumbing down of philosophical discourse or social critique, but it does suggest the significance of a philosophical language and presentation that can address its message to a variety of levels of political and philosophical literacy. One aspect of the argument here is that Adorno failed even to attempt to form his presentation in a way that mediated the existing political intelligence and interests of the working class either in Germany or America. Commenting on Adorno and Horkheimer, Gillian Rose suggested that “they seemed to recreate the evils of the old academic community – indulging in intense, idiosyncratic cultural criticism deeply embedded in the scholarly and institutional constraints which they were committed to transcend” (1978: 8). An example of this is the premise of Dialectic of Enlightenment, the authors’ description of its fragmentary character; such a claim is of questionable legitimacy as it suggests a justification for the incompleteness of the book and appears as a defense of the absence of connection of the fragments to traditional disciplines or existing philosophical systems. This is, in part, rationalized by giving over to dominant “societal mechanisms” the effect of language “devalued” by the tendency of all “form[s] of linguistic expression … toward accommodation” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: xii). Lukács’ remark about James Joyce can be applied to Adorno: technique is absolute; style is the ‘formative principle’ of the work (1963: 18), and since Adorno’s style is so much bound to his method we should regard it

20

chapter one

as an operative principle of his work as a whole. If style is a vehicle for communication, the very character of that form was intentionally limited as a matter of esoteric principle. For Kolakowski (1984: 95), Adorno’s last work, Negative Dialectics, was not only written in a style of “pretentious obscurity” but it was also “devoid of literary form”. Adorno’s style places his work at the unstable edge of comprehension, whether immediately or after deliberation. Rose (1978: 12) notes that he “discussed his method and style in everything he wrote, often at the expense of discussing the ostensible subject of the piece”. Not only with respect to his use of constellations in philosophical inquiry, words, phrases, propositions were tossed out under the assumption that a kind of spontaneous combustion would announce their combination. The relationship or arrangement of the elements was never very clear, but ultimately whatever the relationship they could purportedly be brought together and illuminated to “‘see beyond’ the subject” (Rose 1978: 12). Distinctly different than other commentators, Rose discusses Adorno’s style pointing out crucial rhetorical features. She explicates parataxis, for example, “placing propositions one after the other without indicating relations of coordination or subordination between them.” She also notes his use of the technique of chiasmus, “a grammatical figure by which the order of words in one clause is inverted in a second clause” (Rose, 1978: 13). Adorno, Rose remarks, “refused to define terms … [but] the same term is used in many different senses” (1978: 15). Meszaros recognized the same problem in that often Adorno’s “arbitrary statements were ‘substantiated’ by nothing but equally arbitrary analogies” (1989: 93). His use of indirect communication and ironic inversion constitutes writing from “the subjective standpoint” of which Minima Moralia, Rose suggests, is the best example. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of his style – at least in terms of accessible communication – is what Buck-Morss refers to as his “antithetical concept pairs” (1977: 59) opposing meanings, unexplained, turning language inside-out, frustrating any hope of a clearly organized and practically usable critique, always with the purpose of reminding the reader of the significance of ‘non-identity.’ For Rose, such a style means that Adorno’s works are “read far too literally” but should be read as method which, like Nietzsche, was designed to “resist popularisation” (Rose 1978: 16, 19). Lowenthal acknowledged this problem with Adorno, as did colleagues such as Paul Lazarsfeld, but consigned it to Adorno’s “striving for ­genuine experience in production as well as in received productive imagination” (Lowenthal 1989a: 60; 1989c: 129).

introduction21 Adorno sought a style as a defense against, even a refuge from the necessity of a fully developed dialectical explication. Style as a motivation for pursuing an obscure dialectics allowed him to minimize the historical element, but permitted the operation of his analysis to assume that the reader or listener should possess the knowledge that could be developed by such an investigation. Arguably, some listeners and readers will possess such knowledge, but it is an unMarxist and undialectical position to hold that one can escape the obligation of developing and communicating substantive knowledge that arises out of social analysis. His degree of explanation is several steps below that of an Executive Summary, short on a potential for analysis by which the body of knowledgeable and interested persons might be expanded, and the structure of society and its culture meaningfully comprehended and changed – a project that throughout his career he evoked as not feasible until it happened; in effect, not achievable until it was completed. We will later expand on the earlier comment regarding Adorno’s view of the concept-object relation, perhaps the most useful aspect of his dialectics in that there is a dissimilarity between an object and the concept of it. But it seems ill-conceived to employ his view of that relationship as an explanation, even a defense of his style as Martin Jay has done when he argues that we should not take some of Adorno’s statements as “perfectly true to reality” (Jay 1984: 265). This provides too much of a privileged space for the language and other peculiarities of an intellectual’s claims, accusations and ungrounded assertions when, in fact, Adorno presents such statements as components of his thesis of reality. It must also be acknowledged that Adorno’s approach to teaching seems to have been the opposite of his style of writing. In recorded lectures published posthumously, such as Introduction to Sociology (2000c) and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (2001), Adorno was open to the prior knowledge students might bring to the lecture hall, attempting to take them beyond their doubts to a recognition of a basis for understanding the difficulties of Kant, for example. He also attempted to deflect students’ idolatrous relation to every word of the professor or scholar, and instead develop a basis for pursuing their own knowledge (2001: 284). His teaching techniques, such as the “double movement”, should also be noted with respect to students’ approach to texts. “On the one hand, [the process of thought] should immerse itself in the text, and keep as closely to it as possible; on the other hand, it should retain a degree of self-control, remove itself from immediate contact and look at the ideas from a certain distance” (2001: 37).

22

chapter one Theory and Practice

If there is an “absolute power of capitalism,” as Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1982: 120) it would seem to be delusional to attempt to act against it, either in polemic, critique, or on the street. The closed and categorical character of Horkheimer and Adorno’s position is intended to illuminate the strength of the consolidated system of capitalism and its culture industries, and acknowledge its imperative of domination over its consumers. The “absolute power of capitalism” is typical of the categorical statements found in Adorno’s work, although one discerns in early writings, as has Martin Jay, a sense of “optimism that would be absent from his later work” (1984: 258). Elaborating his method of constellations in his 1931 inaugural lecture, “The Actuality of Philosophy,” he argued that once such a configuration was established “the demand for its [reality’s] change always follows promptly” (2000a: 34). Although the content of that transformation is not articulated, and certainly not its practical means, one reads this as both evidence of sincerity with respect to the problems of reality Adorno may have wanted to address. Significantly, others on the left have taken the view that capitalism’s power is, if not ‘absolute,’ then powerful enough to prevent meaningful change both materially and in the development of consciousness. Although not in the same manner as Adorno, and somewhat unexpectedly, Mészáros in Beyond Capital (1995), focused on the nature of capital, its fundamental structure that set the conditions for maximum expropriation of surplus labor and the creation of ever more surplus value. The nature of capital refers to its “unalterable” character, by which Mészáros means “its objective structural determination” (1995: 112–13). No amount of reform of political action short of changing the entire structure can reconstruct this intentionality, which is essential to capitalism’s substance and direction. His position suggests that the objective conditions of capitalism are always sufficient to suppress the emergence of alternative forces objectively favorable to the struggle for socialism, for trade union demands, for racial and gender equality. This position withholds the actuality of correct objective conditions for such struggles until a point in time at which the struggle itself becomes qualitatively different as a struggle to consolidate socialism. Though differently as well from Adorno, Willis Truitt alludes to the same barrier of capitalism’s power that disallows consideration for a lengthy and developmental approach to the possibility of an ethics for a revolutionary program. In this case Truitt gives priority to tactics over

introduction23 e­ thics, the former having priority in the period of revolutionary struggle while ethics acquires its historical significance as an “ethics of duty” (Truitt 2005: 84–85) only in the period of building socialism.2 The present argument is not one for a gradualist approach to social change. But the tendency in each of these perspectives seems to be to highlight capitalism’s insurmountably oppressive character to the exclusion of genuine efforts of social change that do not yet have the capacity to result in a full-scale development of revolutionary and conclusive possibilities. Views such as these shut out actions, organization, and the development of consciousness that make headway into the terrain of social transformation. Further, such views are predicated on rigidly defined categories that endanger the realization of the dialectical method. In Adorno’s case, such rigidity – the sense so often of absoluteness – is a point of departure toward safer sailing away from the shop and street wars of the actual proletarian struggle, with an approach that affirmed the separation of theory from practice.3 Such a categorical approach indicates the non-integral relation, i.e. external relations, of theory and practice. In fact, Adorno cites the promotion of the unity of these two fundamentals as a central problem. “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.” This remark is directed to “the East [and] left-wing Hegelianism” (1973: 143), likely with Lukács, Bloch and Soviet Marxism in mind, at least. At the other extreme of the political world, he continues, are “the short-winded intellectual habits of the Western side” (1973: 143). As often, neither element in this false dichotomy is treated to an analysis that specifies the problem. The independence of theory needs to be recovered and maintained to ensure its superiority with respect to practice, to make the changes practice continually pursues. The diminishing of theory occurred because, for Adorno, it was defeated by power, by which the reader may assume the politics of the Communist International, but more generally important, theory suffered from its combination with practice. He implies the necessity of theory’s exclusive place against the failures brought about by the prioritizing of practice. He allows this dichotomizing to stand as sufficient analysis without demonstrating the necessity of theory’s independence and superiority against concrete moments of its relation to 2 See Lanning 2005. 3 See also Lubasz, 1984: 80. Lubasz also points out the diversity of opinions regarding the relation of theory and practice of various members of the Frankfurt School (see also 86, 89–91).

24

chapter one

practice. It is the absence of a substantive relation between theory and practice in Adorno’s work that deprecates human self-activity. E.V. Ilyenkov (2008: 138–140) noted that in the relation between theory and practice, theory, like “the reduction of the concrete to the abstract,” was a disappearing moment in that relation that had “no significance by itself, divorced from other moments.” In that process, Practice no longer has a higher goal outside itself, it posits its own goals and appears as an end in itself. That is why each separate step and each generalisation in the course of working out a theory is constantly commensurated with the data of practice, tested by them, correlated with practice as the highest goal of theoretical activity.

Theory can indeed “reflect” on “historical practice,” Adorno writes, but if “[p]ractice itself was an eminently theoretical concept” (1973: 144) theory must keep at the ready its capacity to show its potential for practical grounding, but this is something theory cannot do having been liquidated “by dogmatization” (Dogmatisierung). The “irresistible” degradation of theory, the irrationality of “the primacy of practice,” (1973: 143) are not only the basis of his perspective on practice, but indicate his bias against political intervention as a material force operating at moments that are relatively autonomous from theory, but which must nevertheless be informed by its relation to it. But the issue here goes beyond the theorypractice relationship; for Adorno, the unifying relation of theory and practice constitutes an ‘identity’ and, therefore, an example of identitythinking. These are combined in, for example, his attitude toward Bloch whose inadequate critique of Marxism largely associated with ‘the East’ left Bloch “identical with himself,” as Claussen (2008: 297) remarks, not willing to jettison his utopian orientation despite changes in society that, from Adorno’s perspective, disallowed the possibility of genuine socialism. Adorno is partly correct to advocate for theory’s ‘non-identity’ with practice but his demand for the independence of theory, unlike Ilyenkov’s perspective, fundamentally changes the relationship between two necessarily interdependent elements. In Adorno’s hands the relation becomes a hierarchical one in which theory always holds sway; this hierarchy undermines a relation that should allow the priority of one over the other when such prioritization is required by the circumstances of an historical moment. The dialectical approach demands that the independence of either theory or practice is sustainable only relatively, as a moment. If that moment shows the priority of theory it does so as theory is shaped by practice as in the reversal of priorities. Like the priority of being over

introduction25 consciousness (Lukács 1979: 411; 1978b: 31–32), the priority of theory over practice can be sustained only in a dialectical relation. To argue for the independence of theory ignores Marx’s principle that the fundamental unit of analysis of two or more entities is the relation between or among them (Ollman 1993: 38), a dialectical principle that may include the ­relative autonomy of phenomena, but the continuity of developing relations as well. We will return to the issue of Adorno’s guiding concept of ‘non-identity’ in chapter seven. Politically Adorno was, and remains, a safe bet behind the lectern, inside his books or as a subject of debate; he would not be on either side of the class struggle if that was possible, nor would he stand in the middle, for to him the class struggle was already lost. He wanted to think himself outside altogether, commenting, showing his genius in obscure sentences to be replicated by generations of critical academics. There is little dialectical space in Adorno’s work; his claim of neutrality clear-cut the space in which the roots extended to both sides of conflict in capitalism, a space in which their internal relations, distinctions and differences could be a common ground of struggle. This absence repeatedly turns us back toward the identity-thinking he claimed to despise and the formal logic sublated historically and practically by Hegel and Marx, but the distinct shadow of which overhangs Adorno’s work. The Management of Politics and Personal Relations Many artists, intellectuals and academics have their unpleasant side. Adorno was no exception. He was certainly sheltered, even “spoiled,” in his childhood and youth to the point, as Lowenthal notes, that his attitude toward Hitler’s likely duration in power showed a “naïve unfamiliarity with the real world” (1989a: 63–64). Because of his position close to Horkheimer when the latter was Director of the Institute for Social Research, Adorno functioned as a gatekeeper of publication, the entry of others into the inner circle and the financial assistance the Institute had to offer. Lowenthal’s correspondence with Horkheimer at this time shows not only criticisms of Adorno’s work but also the anxiety generated by a possible confrontation with him (1989d: 164, 172, 181–182, 198). It is also well-known that Benjamin kept his relationships isolated from one another where Adorno was concerned. Erdmut Wizisla’s (2009) book on the relationship between Benjamin and Brecht reveals Adorno’s attempts to ‘protect’ Benjamin from Brecht’s influence intellectually and politically.

26

chapter one

Adorno and others were concerned that aspects of Benjamin’s intellectual development would go awry under Brecht’s influence; Adorno was concerned that Brecht might take his place as Benjamin’s intellectual companion (Wizisla 2009: 15–17). Notwithstanding possible criticism of Benjamin’s work, Adorno’s attitude seemed to assume that his elder associate was somehow incapable of determining his relations with others and what intellectual stimuli he might enjoy independent of another’s paternalistic direction. Benjamin was not the only target of Adorno’s personality. During Bloch’s difficult time in exile in America, without financial support from the Institute or elsewhere, he survived on odd jobs. At one point he lost his dishwashing job for working too slowly but subsequently got work packing paper. Under the circumstances Adorno’s comment is cruel and unforgiveable: He now has no time for writing. His relation to paper has finally become realistic. He packs it in bundles eight hours a day, standing in a dark hole. He has escaped the concentration camp, but this will knock some sense into him. (Adorno qu. in Claussen 2008: 296)

And later, notwithstanding the fact that Bloch was not a practicing revolutionary in the way that Lukács had been, for example, and certainly not the way communist party leaders had been during the first half of the 20th century, Adorno’s attitude toward him was directed essentially at his political choices in ‘the East,’ his post-war choice to reside in the German Democratic Republic and his continued commitment to the possibility of socialism. Fromm, too, apparently felt the bite of Adorno’s personality in the dispute over his Weimar study of the working class partly because of Horkheimer’s relation with Fromm and Lowenthal (Bonss 1984: 2). The sometimes problematic relationship between Adorno and Sigfried Kracauer is also well-known (Jay 1986: 217–236). Kracauer’s experiences of antisemitism were seen by Adorno to have been somewhat self-induced by Kracauer’s thin-skinned personality (Campbell 2007: 9–10; Adorno 1992: 59–60). Evidently, despite Kracauer’s mentorship role in Adorno’s youth, the quality of intellectual pursuit did not cohere with the former’s expectations. There seemed to be almost excessive satisfaction, if not gloating, in Kracauer’s record of his conversation with Adorno in 1960 over theoretical matters; Kracauer seems to be satisfied that he has made Adorno at least a little uncomfortable with respect to the latter’s own views (2012: 127–132).

introduction27 Without attempting to evaluate Adorno’s personality, we will see that various statements by him in the works at issue here appear to reflect a rather closed and unreflective person. The Socio-Historical Context The writings of Adorno under discussion here are a selection mostly confined to the period of the 1930s to the early 50s. The period in which most of these were written was perhaps the most significant in the 20th century with respect to the organized challenge to capitalism in Europe and in North America before the Second World War. For the majority of this period, since 1937, Adorno was living in the United States on the east and west coasts where, besides some places in the rural south and industrial north, opposition to capitalism was most visible and vibrant. The two most important components of this challenge were the labor movement, especially the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1935, and on the political front the Communist Party of the United States (CP). While these two organizations were not integral, the success of the CIO would have been doubtful without the work and influence of communist organizers in the rank-and-file of many of the CIO-affiliated unions. Many members of the CP were veterans of conflicts with the skilltrades-based American Federation of Labor. That organization’s exclusion of the “unskilled” was challenged most significantly by the Wooblies (IWW) who, along with socialists, communists, anarchists and liberals, mounted campaigns to address a wide range of class-related issues at local and national levels. Campaigns to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti throughout the 1920s, and in the next decade Angelo Herndon and the Scottsboro Boys gained international attention and established voices of protest rarely heard and struggle rarely seen. Left wing political and cultural organizations were pervasive in America during this period, largely associated with labor organizations. Ethnic groups also organized in various ways to retain aspects of their politi­ cal  and cultural backgrounds and establish better footing on new soil, ­especially for younger generations. Socialist Sunday Schools in the early decades of the century were clearly class-focused, emphasizing the wide disparities in American life and the unequal burden of war on the working class (Teitelbaum 1993). The Communist Party devoted much effort to the political socialization of the young with the expectation of securing a new generation of activists. Some of these made their mark in the inter-war

28

chapter one

and WWII periods, some much later in the 1950s and 60s (Mishler 1999; Kaplan and Shapiro 1998; Levine and Gordon 2002). Recent localized studies have shown the extent of inequalities and exploitation that motivated neighborhood organization and action, and the extent of communist activity in wider urban life (Kosak 2000; Storch 2007; Naison 1983). A vibrant history of college-level student organizing also began in the 1930s. Liberal and socialist students and many of their professors engaged in activity around political, class and corporate issues (Cohen 1997). Efforts to educate the adult working class raised the political and intellectual content in college and university courses (Gettleman 2002). Estimates of CP membership during the inter-war years are varied and of questionable reliability. An important and objective measure of influence, however, was the large number of union locals and larger union bodies led by communists. This has been thoroughly investigated and analyzed by Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin (2003) and the results along with other material from communist sources and recent studies provide an inescapable conclusion: while neither entirely communist nor entirely active, a significant proportion of the American working class, through its self-activity and organizing efforts, was neither convinced of the dominance of capitalism nor willing to acquiesce to the manipulation of its culture industries (Boyer and Morais 1955; Bonosky 1953; Allan 2001; Kelley 1990; Solomon 1998). All this was virtually ignored by Adorno. His were not political tracts; he avoided that kind of expression. But his orientation to the masses, the working class and others on issues such as jazz and popular music, profascist agitation, and popular media, might have been quite different had he been willing to take into account the evidence of working class political and cultural activities and their organizing abilities. Setting aside this evidence allowed him to write with a clean slate, unencumbered by material reality that would have made his categorical positions nonsensical. *** The discussion that follows begins with dialectics as developed by Hegel and Marx. This is followed by chapters addressing specific issues Adorno took up early in his career: his interpretive orientation to philosophy built around constellations, his writings on jazz, popular music and profascist agitation specifically related to the masses. We proceed then to a discussion of mediation, an aspect of dialectics I consider lacking in Adorno’s work, in this case discussed initially with regard to his relations with

introduction29 Benjamin. The final chapter is devoted to aspects of Negative Dialectics that includes issues of exchange and identity. I side with Buck-Morss’ assertion that Adorno was consistent in his theoretical approach over the duration of his career, notwithstanding the development of aspects of it over time. This makes Negative Dialectics generally applicable to issues he addressed in earlier works. The title of this book is taken from comments Lukács made, initially in  The Destruction of Reason, about the pessimism and emptiness of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, describing his system as rising “up like a modern luxury hotel on the brink of the abyss, nothingness and futility. And the daily sight of the abyss between the leisurely enjoyment of meals or works of art, can only enhance one’s pleasure in this elegant comfort” (Lukács 1980: 243). In the Preface for the re-publication of The Theory of the Novel (1971b) Lukács included Adorno as one of the German intelligentsia having taken up residence in what he then called the “Grand Hotel Abyss”.4

4 A different translation of the passage quoted appears in the Preface of The Theory of the Novel.

CHAPTER TWO

HEGEL, MARX, DIALECTICS This chapter will discuss aspects of dialectics crucial to Hegel and Marx, and in some ways to Adorno. But our primary task here is to lay the basis of assessing the differences in the perspectives of Adorno on the one hand, and Hegel and Marx on the other, with the obvious recognition that the last two differed significantly from each other. These points will be used further in the discussion of Adorno’s approach to theoretical and practical problems in later chapters. Despite Adorno’s rejection of formal logic, his denunciation of identity thinking, and his view of the limited possibility of transformative action within capitalist society, his approach has much in common with the categorical trappings of formal logic: a thing is always what it is and not other than it is. At times his analysis begins with an object or phenomenon and becomes its opposite, not as a dialectical transformation of a detailed process but as a pronouncement of its occurrence. This is why Buck-Morss (1977: 186) suggests that his negative dialectics had “the quality of quicksilver: just when you think you have grasped the point, by turning into its opposite it slips through your fingers and escapes”. Where this is most problematic and where it affects whatever connections he had to Marxism is in his perspective on social change as I have noted in the previous chapter. For example, references to “the absolute power of capitalism” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 120), and to jazz that can never be viewed outside the “features of commodity production inherent in it” (Adorno 1941: 167) are manifestations of his unwillingness to view social reality except through the dichotomy of the of capitalism and its insurmountable conditions, on the one hand and on the other the meaningful change that can occur only on the unconditional destruction of those conditions. Supporting this view was the absence of a meaningful relation of theory and practice, regarded by Adorno as unfeasible without undermining the value of theory in itself. This view was expressed as well by Horkheimer. “But in regard to the essential kind of change at which the critical theory aims, there can be no corresponding concrete perception of it until it actually comes about. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the eating here is still in the future” (1982: 220–221). In Adorno’s work we see a



hegel, marx, dialectics31

future orientation in embryonic form in some early writings, such as the call for music to express its “social condition and to call for change”, and to “reach out beyond the current consciousness of the masses” (2002d: 393– 394). But what he considered to be the intractable powers of the culture industry embedded in the minds and behaviors of people in capitalist society, and in the structure of society as a whole, are powers that prevent the materialization of potentiality in the Hegelian orientation to future development. Implicitly, he claimed support for a future development, but what he says of Hegel’s approach to change is actually a mirror of his own: “in him [Hegel], connection is not a matter of unbroken transition but a matter of sudden change, and the process takes place not through the moments approaching one another but through rupture” (Adorno 1993: 4–5). It will become evident in these pages that such a claim does not meet the reality of Hegel’s work. Notwithstanding the problem implied in his position on social change, Horkheimer’s comparison of traditional and critical theory in the foundational statement of the Frankfurt School recognized the necessity of keeping the search open “at every turn” for the “reasonable conditions of life” (1982: 199). Similar to Adorno, Horkheimer argued that critical theory was not interested in the improvement of the existing structure of capitalism because the system structured the social environment and the individual toward an uncritical acceptance of the rules and conditions – both individual and social – that permitted capitalism to function. But Horkheimer recognized the possibility of drawing out alternatives from existing social conditions. Critical theory considers the overall framework which is conditioned by the blind interaction of individual activities (that is, the existent division of labor and the class distinctions) to be a function that originates in human action and therefore is a possible object of planful decision and rational determination of goals. (Horkheimer 1982: 207)

Like Adorno, Horkheimer sees a complete transformation of society as the only meaningful goal, although he does locate the transformation in the “intensification of the struggle with which the theory is connected” (1982: 219). But neither man has a theory of political action nor sees the merit of critical theory forming and engaging in a systematic organization of the practical activity of political struggle and progressive change. The intensification of the struggle is something that emerges indirectly from critical theory not directly out of the moments of conflict informed by its theoretical analysis.

32

chapter two

By contrast, Marcuse was more committed than they in recognizing the greater potential in the contradictions exposed by dialectical analysis. In his study of Hegel, he accepted the latter’s dialectical reasoning that potentiality, movement and change lie in the essence of phenomena. “It is the essence of the actual to be always more and other than what it is at any point. The immediate actuality which we find before us has in itself ‘the determination to be sublated’ [Hegel] to be the mere ‘condition’ for another” (Marcuse 1987: 96). While this statement would cohere with Adorno’s overwhelming concern with non-identity that by implication excluded the conundrums of actual or potential practice, Marcuse was interested to lift dialectics, especially the discovery of contradictions, from a purely theoretical context to a place in which its relevance to political practice could be demonstrated. The sense of process, change, development that is absent in Adorno finds expression in the work of others. Bloch, for example, distinguishes three categories of the dialectical process and premises his version of it on the capacity of hope, forward-thinking and anticipatory consciousness. In addition, Front is the foremost segment of time, where what is next is determined. Novum is the real possibility of the not-yet-known … with the accent of the good novum (the realm of freedom), when the trend toward it has been activated. Matter is not just mechanical mass, but … both that which has being in accordance with possibility and hence that which in a particular case ­conditionally determines the capacity of something to become historically manifest…. (Bloch 1971: 38)

Adorno’s rejection of formal logic and his concentration on the problems of identity thinking and equivalence are central to his theoretical approach. But, rather than a rejection, the sublation of formal logic (Ilyenkov 1977: 109–114) is a necessity for anyone who approaches social phenomena from a dialectical perspective. But Adorno’s concentration on identity-thinking and equivalence retains elements of a formalistic or categorical approach that is integral to the kind of thinking he rejects as a driving power of bourgeois society. Hegel’s dialectical logic was intended to reconstruct the boundaries that established knowledge through formal logic, although he recognized that philosophers were drawn to formal categories for the immediate but incomplete knowledge such categories could provide. He contrasted ­formalism with “the inner activity and self-movement of [an object’s] existence”. The formalist approach, he argued, citing the speculative Philosophy of Nature, creates a false unity of distant elements and fails at



hegel, marx, dialectics33

“expressing the Notion itself or the meaning of the sensuous representation” (Hegel 1977: 30). In his objective idealist fashion, instructive for historical materialists as Marx knew, Hegel argued that formalism, despite its inadequacies, “will not vanish from science … till the cognizing of absolute actuality has become entirely clear as to its own nature” (1977: 9). Hegel’s caution against formalism also recognizes the attraction of ­categorization – more strongly, compartmentalization – as everyday thinking allows and encourages. The residual formalism (see Kracauer 2012), appearing in Adorno’s work as categorical thinking, corresponds somewhat to part of Hegel’s statement, above: not until X exists or becomes known will Y occur. But Hegel was clear that until something like ‘absolute reality’ was actualized it remained only at the level of a formal possibility. Further, it is difficult to find Hegel’s other condition in Adorno’s work, that ‘inner activity and self-movement’ are the constant companions of the existent awaiting its full realization, its actuality. Adorno’s excessive reliance on non-identity acts as a constraint on this actualization. This suggests that even with the process of development and change that is dialectics, Adorno compromises the method by introducing an end result as a condition of the investigation. Dialectical development has its stages, levels and discontinuities but these are not formalized by a preceding false unity of dissociated objects or events. A formalist approach to knowledge is in some ways, as Hegel suggests, immediately rewarding, especially for the purposes of establishing knowledge and therefore having a basis for its dissemination. A formal or categorical approach provides a neatly trimmed block of ideas and data that can be named as cause, event, or thing, and that is free of what might generate complications, such as moments, contradictions, or transitions. Dialectics recognizes the distinction between the immediate and the comprehensive, the generative process and the moments that at any point can be cited as the existent X or Y. This is the difference between the ‘S is not P’ of formal logic and the ‘S is not yet P’ of Bloch’s dialectics, where P is anticipated, grounded in the internal dynamics of its relation to S. The residual formalism that I suggest plagues Adorno’s perspective does throw us back to the boundaries of formal logic. In the dialectical approach to logic, Hegel negated the command that formal boundaries had over knowledge but not because of the advancement of philosophy as such. The crucial point had to do with the inherent irrationalism of formal logic, the residual of which exists in any formalistic approach regardless of the extent that logic’s boundaries have been retained or ­transcended. The problem lies in the absence of any sense in which a

34

chapter two

­ ossible other is in some measure immanent in the original, not as a seed p awaiting its inevitable sprout but as an element to be influenced in its development by the mediative power of interactions and contradictions of multiple determinants. The absence of such recognition neutralizes the very contradictions that move the object and the problem outside of its immediate existence. The initial emergence of becoming and its sublation is dependent on contingent relations that bring about the unrest of a thing at least in the same measure as its inherent qualities. The unrest or instability of a thing is constituted by its contradictory determinants pressing for emergence in the field of possibilities. What is possible is not yet fully in ­existence as a relatively autonomous thing but “as the given reality conceived as the ‘condition’ of another reality” (Marcuse 1960: 151). However, in Marcuse’s development of Hegel’s proposition on facts, “the fact is, before it exists” (Hegel 1969: 477), he expresses it insufficiently in terms of constellations: Before it exists, the fact ‘is’ in the form of a condition within the constellation of existing data. The existing state of affairs is a mere condition for another constellation of facts, which bring to fruition the inherent potentialities of the given. (Marcuse 1960: 151–152)

As to the conception of ‘fact’, Hegel is correct; as to the existing facts being a condition for other facts we can also support. But we want to always ensure that what is inherent is developed in relation to, and is inseparable from, its contingent relations. This will be a major point of concentra­tion here. The Individual In his early period in Frankfurt, Hegel had placed the individual at the centre of his inquiries. In large measure, this was due to his recognition of the social changes affecting the quality of life, what he saw as the instrumental objectification of the individual only to be overcome by a vague moralistic conception of love (Lukács 1975: 112–113). Lukács’ comment on Hegel’s position is telling with respect to the relation between the subject and the objective environment that forms and shapes it, and the way this complex is approached in idealism. It is perhaps unintentionally a reflection of Adorno’s lifelong pre-occupation with the absence of the critical capacity in the bourgeois subject. Reflecting on Hegel’s reduction of the



hegel, marx, dialectics35

social problems producing what he will later understand as alienation, Lukacs comments: For man in bourgeois society the entire world consists of impenetrable, incomprehensible objects mechanically separated from man and each other; he drifts among them in empty, unsatisfying activity. He has no real, substantial relationship with the objects, his fellow men or even with himself”. (Lukács 1975: 116)

But Lukács himself did not succumb to such a reduction. Social change occurs through the actions of classes, within which are the individuals who, in their distinct forms of labor, constitute the primary content of class and who must come to understand the determinants of themselves as the subjects of the history of a class-divided society. As subjects, individuals establish a relative autonomy within the structural pressures and contradictions of their class in relation to other social conditions. Adorno is not directly concerned with the individual; the individual is there as an indistinguishable element in a mass and is the eager and unreflective consumer of the culture industries of capitalism. He is far less concerned about the role of the individual as a force of political or cultural action, as a distinguishable, conscious individual. But consciousness within the individual is a crucial, if embryonic, aspect at the beginning of Hegel’s Phenomenology (1977: 55), where consciousness requires development so that it acquires a consciousness of consciousness. Increasingly through the 20th century, it has been possible to generalize a level of consciousness based upon the growth of both institutionallybased knowledge such as formal education and knowledge derived through experience in political action and in other contexts. The development of consciousness is based on access to such forms of knowledge, the precondition of which must be a self-aware interest in social participation, and the guide for development within individuals must be an ­interest in knowing and exercising their capacity for critical self-reflection. In Hegel’s terms (1977: 113–114), this is the development of self-consciousness as, initially, being-in-self and, through struggle, an independent selfconsciousness. Lukács (1980b: 135) emphasized that the struggle for self-development and self-mastery came through elementary, progressive acts of freedom; that is, the possibility of relatively free action as an objective expression of the subject’s conscious opposition to the power of ­existing objective forces. There is no guarantee that such consciousness and action will come about even if proper, comprehensive knowledge is ascribed either from outside the individual or achieved by his or her

36

chapter two

c­ reative development of what has been internalized from the experience of self-activity. Lukács’ much disputed and too often rejected notion of imputed class consciousness organizes the individual’s consciousness around a program of collective action and succeeds only on the basis of the individual’s interest in choosing among existing alternatives or those alternatives that may emerge through the growth of political organization and action. While the degree of individual interest may reflect the conditions of alienation, neither interests nor conditions negate the potential of conscious development. The individual response to and development from the pressures of the relations of any social structure must be a central element of any consideration of Marxism and of dialectics in a social context, for it is the relative autonomy afforded by modernity that provides the space in which the economic, cultural and political relations are experienced. That one or another ideological position is adopted, or is used to adopt aspects of the content of the social environment always involves the individual in a complex of opportunities and possibilities. Where Adorno sees the acquiescence of the masses to the immediate environment he should also see not only the power of the culture industry but also the possibilities for developing the individual’s relation to such powers and the possible alternatives in the face of it. This is true as well if we focus on the class as a whole in which the individual’s interests are grounded. Where such alternatives exist, as they almost always do to one degree or another, each must be assessed in terms of its origin, development and influence on decisions and the direction considered, rejected or taken. But such a practice is only relevant to a philosophical approach that has as one of its foundational pillars the continuous attention to the developmental and mediating elements of the process toward the fully-developed individual whose self-consciousness is an active instrument in a broad effort of social transformation. Adorno’s criticism of the structure of capitalism embedded in the culture industry is the ostensible foundation of his conception of the tasks of philosophy. This perspective provides a façade that allows him to retain his status as a quasi-Marxist for his audience while providing the cover for his more dominant focus: demonstrating the irrevocable alienation of the masses of modern society, their insurmountable ignorance, as much if not more self-imposed than a consequence of the structure and relations of economics and culture. Hence, it is necessary in this discussion to maintain some sense of the place of the individual, the alienated object of capitalism, in order to



hegel, marx, dialectics37

provide the space for its becoming the self-conscious subject of history. Even while the ostensibly predominant interest in Marxism is in classes, we only see classes arising as conscious collectivities in situations in which a class presence has been produced, in the genuine sense of the term, brought forward, from – in this case – a political response to an immediate or historically extended problem. This must begin through a discussion of dialectics, through Hegel’s Logic and its historical materialist development by Marx and others. In taking this course it is worth acknowledging Ilyenkov’s introductory and concluding note to his Dialectical Logic (derived from a comment by Lenin) that provided an historico-philosophical analysis of logic from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, that the work “could rightly bear one of three possible titles: Logic, Dialectics, or The Theory of Knowledge” (1977 8: 370). Being and Self-consciousness Marx argued that the final chapter of the Phenomenology both summarizes Hegel’s approach at that juncture of his career and provided the bridge to its historical materialist correction. He comments: “For Hegel the human being – man – equals self-consciousness” (1975b: 334). Considered in reverse, self-consciousness is the human being, or as Marx would argue in the same work, self-consciousness is the full development of the capacities of the species-being (Marx 1975b: 275–277). To be self-conscious is to know that one’s subjective sense of being is actualized only in its objective presence, its social action. Whenever real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature posits his real, objective essential powers as alien objects by his externalisation, it is not the act of positing which is the subject in this process: it is the subjectivity of the objective essential powers, whose action, therefore, must also be something objective. (Marx 1975b: 336)

Self-consciousness is the essence of the non-alienated human being, or the person self-consciously attempting to emerge from conditions of alienation. This is Hegel’s Spirit, der Geist. The full realization of self-­ consciousness is a process of development and change, externalization and recollection. This process is neither linear nor is its end result necessarily awaiting fruition at the inception of the process. As noted in the previous chapter, contingent conditions of social, economic and historical relations will shape the process of development. The seed is not waiting

38

chapter two

its inevitable sprouting; rather the seed is open to determinants in its environment that may nourish, delay or nullify its inherent potential. Hegel’s argument in this regard is that a particular quality realizes its ­otherness in ‘absolute continuity.’ A quantum, therefore, in accordance with its quality, is posited in absolute continuity with its externality, with its otherness. Therefore, not only can it transcend every quantitative determinateness, not only can it be altered, but it is posited that it must alter. (Hegel 1969: 225)

Read linearly, the seed becomes the plant, an exploited population a subordinated class. In this respect the argument is structured categorically as if the process attains insulation from contingent conditions and interventions as it proceeds in development to its end. However, an object’s otherness, like the object itself, is not linear in its development, nor is an immanent trajectory guaranteed for it, for otherness is just as contingently influenced as is the original object. Hegel implies as much in his Encyclopedia: Thus e.g. the plant is developed from its germ. The germ virtually involves the whole plant, but does so only ideally or in thought: and it would therefore be a mistake to regard the development of the root, stem, leaves, and other different parts of the plant, as meaning that they were realiter [in reality] present, but in a very minute form, in the germ. (1873: § 161)

The manner in which such processes are affected by varied and unanticipated contingencies confirms their objective character. Their objectivity is further confirmed by the inadmissibility of an imminent future state arising unconditionally. The complex of possible contingencies arising from either the natural or social environment or their combination, presents new problems, contradictions and alternative avenues of development whether forced or relatively autonomously chosen (Lukács, 1978a, 106–07). The plant and the human being are distinguished by their relative complexities, each having its distinct, but at times roughly integrated trajectory of development, contingency and change. The otherness as such of specific entities is pre-figured as indwelling potential but its course of development is neither fixed in form nor in content. Other realities, external objects, can be restricted or abundant in volume, variety and influence, etc., only by their contexts, their historical determinants – an object’s present condition at a given moment in its development. The more important immanent quality is not a logically anticipated end result found in embryo nor is it the outcome that becomes necessary solely under the influence of possible contingencies. Rather, it is the



hegel, marx, dialectics39

c­ ombination of the latter with the indwelling potential for its realization through which contingent relations become manifest and are appreciated as such. This is different than the notion that each object contains, in embryo or idea, its precise future development. The point here is that the seed to be developed must be integrated with objects and conditions that favour its development or that can intercede and move its development in another direction. The seed of object A must be affected by and be the effect of the contingent relations offered by objects or processes X, Y and Z, just as the seeds in any of those objects or processes must affect and be the effect of contingent relations of A. These are the internal relations of dialectics. This does not speak to a hierarchy but to a priority of quality that exists prior to its influence by other factors that shape and  determine an end result that becomes necessity, even though such a “necessity” may be only momentary. The emergence and consolidation of what is deemed to be immanent or becomes necessary through the complex of relations is the unity of necessity and contingency. (As we will discuss below, Hegel would prefer a rephrasing of the last point; not ‘unity’ but ‘inseparability’ or ‘unseparatedness’ of necessity and contingency.) Thus, notwithstanding Hegel’s fundamental orientation to selfconsciousness development through the mind, he nevertheless retains and develops an orientation to the objective world, the material origin of determinants. The being or condition to be developed requires self-consciousness of externality and otherness, and these provide the fundamentally necessary awareness of the possibility of reality changing the being or condition because they are objects in reality. Suppose a being which is neither an object itself, nor has an object. Such a being, in the first place, would be the unique being: there would exist no being outside it – it would exist solitary and alone. For as soon as there are objects outside me, as soon as I am not alone, I am another – another reality than the object outside me. For this third object I am thus a different reality than itself; that is, I am its object. (Marx 1975b: 337)

This further diminishes any claimed dominance of an imminent future condition as such. Implicitly referring to Hegelian potentiality and certainly reflecting his argument about identity and concepts, Adorno focuses on the object’s (the individual’s) immanent character. “What is, is more than it is.” But the “more” “remains immanent” and is not “imposed.” The implication here is that what a thing or individual becomes is the effect of its indwelling potential coming to fruition, although a caveat is that its “innermost core”

40

chapter two

is both essential and “extraneous to it” (Adorno 1973: 161). This formulation does not exclude the contingent influences coming to the object from outside itself, such as the crystallization of communication with others (1973: 162), the object’s development is a shared construction by external factors that are the “extraneous” component of its core. Anticipating the argument in later chapters, one might ask whether the alienated individual, for example, has simply and formally an alienated essence, or is it an essence diverted from development toward liberation by contingencies absolutely beyond its control, or only beyond its immediate, unmediated control? The last of these is where the emphasis must lie for the “innermost core” can interact with “extraneous” influences or the latter can intervene – from a conscious source – to shape the development of that core. But the caveat to any of these formulations is Hegel’s insistence on inseparable components at the outset, a point addressed below. The relationship between the individual and society – the concrete effect of one on the other – synthesize immanent qualities and distinctly contingent influences that, as it is at any specific moment and as the relation proceeds to develop, undermines any notion of a linear advance from the condition of immanence. It is that non-linear conception of movement that provides the space for self-consciousness. Self-consciousness cannot arise through contingent relations alone, nor merely out of an imminent condition or the mere assertion that there is potentiality dwelling within. Notwithstanding Hegel’s aforementioned priority of the mind, Lukács argues that Hegel’s conception of social being does actually have an existence which is independent of the individual ­consciousness of particular men, and has a high level of an autonomously determining and determined dynamic in relation to the individual. But this does not change the fact that the movement of this dynamic is a specific synthesis of individual acts and passions … [the] causes and results [of which] are still very clearly distinct from what the individual himself thought, felt or intended. (1978a, 25)

Self-consciousness is not only a product of such processes but is also a buttress against the ascendance of a mechanical conception of movement through immanence alone, for self-consciousness concerns possible trajectories. First, self-consciousness must take as one of its objective responsibilities the possible future condition of a thing or social condition and its potential growth given its determinations and mediations. Secondly, to be legitimately called self-consciousness it must meet the obligation to  know its determinants, the pace and complexity of development, the  direction of movement and the possible discontinuities that may



hegel, marx, dialectics41

occur in each. These may be seen as contingent moments of the essential ­quali­fication: “Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-­consciousness” (Hegel 1977: 110) which is more than merely another being. Hegel describes being as movement beyond the immediate, a path of knowing that goes “beyond being or rather … penetrating into it” as it moves toward becoming essence (1969: 389). The knowing subject is a selfconscious subject. Yet self-consciousness, though evidently developmental in its concreteness, its actuality, is not to be understood at the inception of the process as gradual, cumulative, quantitative change but as quality. The self-conscious subject as a knowing subject exists as quality, the goal of a thinking subject and the material of the subject’s knowledge. As quality, self-consciousness has its determinants and is, itself, determinate. We begin with something, a determinate thing that is a quality. Quality is “immediate determinateness” and as “primary” is that with which “the beginning must be made.” In this Hegel corrects previous philosophies that had assumed that quality is preceded by quantity (1969: 79–80). But, for Hegel, a quality is immediate (1969: 111) and then it moves, is moved; it changes, develops. Outside of the natural world, although not entirely exclusive of it, development is social: what is observed and responded to is determinate quality in the context of the social. This is presented initially by Hegel in his objective idealist manner but, as noted earlier, with at least one foot in the objective, material world. What is at issue for individual development is that initially we perceive, experience things as immediate qualities, largely due to their familiarity and use within particular contexts as with virtually anything that is immediate. It is integral to the history of human social development. We have long since learnt from ethnography that, long before counting, i.e. the quantitative comprehension of objects, was developed, human beings practically mastered in a purely qualitative manner, on the basis of qualitative perceptions, those complexes of facts that we are today accustomed to grasp quantitatively. (Lukács 1978a: 105)

Max Raphael’s (1945) analysis of paleolithic cave paintings is an example of this. Paulus Gerdes (2003) offers a concrete example of this premise in his historical materialist analysis of the origins of geometry. Counting or any valuation of social facts built on the accumulation of things springs from an existent to which additions are amassed to present the quality as qualitatively different than it was, as an other without complete loss of the essential characteristics.

42

chapter two

Thus, if the individual human being is our starting point we have begun with a quality – the eventual being of self-consciousness – a capacity that lies within the species; it is a capacity to be developed as a future condition of the individual itself. This quality – self-consciousness – is more “in itself” and in its otherness when we consider the possible direction and intensity of its development through a deliberate selection of variables – contingent relations – consistent with the augmentation of Hegel’s ­determinate being by Marx’s species-being. Becoming Dialectics is movement. This is central to Hegel’s Science of Logic in his discussion of the first two concepts, being and nothing, which are given only a moment’s distinction before vanishing into becoming. Becoming sustains each of being and nothing because it is their difference. “Their difference is therefore completely empty, each of them is in the same way indeterminate; the difference, then, exists not in themselves but in a third …” (1969: 92). Hegel rejects what is an apparent obvious third, opinion, as inappropriate to an exposition of logic. The appropriate, necessary third element is becoming which, as Lukács points out, carries “objectively greater ontological weight than being” (1978a: 64). The “empty” difference is due to the indeterminate nature of being and nothing; to the extent they are distinct from one another that distinction must be expressed by becoming – a third element arising from their difference (Hegel 1969: 417–418). Because becoming arises from the ‘empty difference’ between being and nothing as each vanishes into the other (Hegel 1969: 84, 90, 105) the concept of becoming quickly loses itself as such; becoming at this point, out of the unity of being and nothing, “is determinate being” (1969: 106). Hegel asserts two crucial points particularly important for the present discussion. First, as we alluded to earlier, he finds the term unity to be an “unfortunate” subjective expression of comparison, more so than identity (1969: 91) because it rests on the similarity of one or more components of different objects. (Identity is also a subjective term but less so.) Secondly, his suggestion for replacement terms for unity, unseparatedness and inseparability, allows for the retention of the relation between being and nothing – a relation containing “mediation within itself” (1969: 74, 91) and, therefore, shows the positive side of the relation, a requirement of Hegel’s dialectics (1969, 73; Lukács 1978a, 41). Becoming is mediation.



hegel, marx, dialectics43

Thus while unity became a term of reference in the discourse of dialectics under Marxism, and indeed has a practical value as a term of organizational activity, it does not, in Hegel’s terms, point toward a higher level of relationship. Determinate being, however, already denotes the formation of an object from the influence and effects of its environment, the complex of internal relations in which it finds itself. Determinate being retains a dynamic character and is, therefore, an expression of movement toward synthesis and resolution. Recognition of the determinateness of an object calls for a full recollection of the path to its composition and condition in relation to other objects at any moment. However, the sense in which ‘unity’ may be insufficient is if it is taken to imply things coming together, or being brought into unity, as in the unification of ‘similar’ but non-­ identical objects or phenomena. Hegel’s terms, unseparatedness and inseparability, refer to his concept of the whole in which each component, each particular, contains the whole. In one respect, Hegel is saying that components do not come together nor are they brought together, for they  were never fully apart. In other words, each component already exists  within the whole, totality. Rotenstreich (1944: 245) understands Hegel’s position as an argument that the “whole is a simultaneous entity.” He­ ­develops this further: totality precedes the assumption of particular terms. The particular terms are merely a manifestation of totality. The totality of logical possibilities cannot be considered as assumed by way of induction; totality precedes each particular possibility, as the totality of possibilities preceding each particular possibility. (1944: 251)

On the other hand, even as this totality of possible relations already exists, Hegel also argues that as “a concrete object” it is “affected by contingency and arbitrariness” which depends on which determinations the subject brings to it. It is the mediated development of components that allows for the development of a “given synthesis1 [in order] to discover its implicit content” (Rotenstreich 1944: 253). Hence, Hegel’s meaning of dialectic: “the Dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connection and necessity to the body of science…” (Hegel 1873: §81). Unity must carry this connotation as a reference to its underlying structure, relations and the task it has already, but not yet, carried out. 1 Rotenstreich uses the triad thesis, antithesis, synthesis in his analysis. Hegel rejected the “triadic form” as intuitive in Kant and otherwise a “formalism” without, however, citing explicitly the above mentioned triad.

44

chapter two

Determinate being sublates becoming although the latter – as the d­ ominant sense of movement – is preserved in the determinate being and as it appears in its positive moment to cease movement. That is, becoming ceases as an active process at a specific juncture of sublation – development and change – but it does not lose its potential for revival and continuation as a “negation [that] always has to be supplemented from the positive side” (Lukács 1978a: 41). Thus, determinate being consists of, as in Marx’s concrete, “a synthesis of many determinations” (Marx 1986a: 38) and arises through its sublation of becoming as a unity of those determinations, but not as multiple factors, objects or mediations brought together but a togetherness of internal relations already existing in totality. Hegel explains the two senses of sublation (aufhebung) as ‘to preserve’ and ‘to cause to cease.’ In dialectical terms, it refers to what “has only lost its immediacy, but is not on that account annihilated” (1969: 107). The determinate being that sublates becoming is a self-consciousness that is itself and nothing else. Yet as self-consciousness it is obligated to secure knowledge of those determinations to eventually be for-itself. We return to this in chapter seven. Contradiction Lukács found that contradiction had been raised to the central category in Hegel’s thought (1978a: 2). Indeed, this is borne out in the first pages of the Logic in Hegel’s discussion of the place of negation (1969: 53–55). If the dialectic is “the real vehicle of history” (Lukács 1978a: 3) it is because contradictions are recognized, exposed and activated. Hegel’s effort to understand the character of reality as dialectical was theoretical but grounded in aspects of the socio-historical context in which he lived. Contradiction increasingly became not only the foundation of his thought but of “all thought and being” as such and his “fundamental humanist tendency” (Lukács 1975: 97, 146, 204). Hegel’s proposition, “everything is inherently contradictory” (1969: 339), gives us a sense of the relations of things as well as the motive force of movement; contradiction is, then, movement and change considered dialectically. Movement exists in two inseparable, integrally related domains, internal and external. The latter provides the premises of physical relations and empirical explanations of reality. External movement exhibits the “immediate existence” of contradiction as in the assertion that a ­moving object is here and not here at a particular temporal and spatial



hegel, marx, dialectics45

juncture. External contradiction is more readily applicable to inorganic nature, though not exclusively. Zeno’s arrow (Marquit 1978–79) is a prime example of this. Internal contradiction illuminates a similar kind of motion in “the fact that something is, in one and the same respect, selfcontained and deficient, the negative of itself” (Hegel 1969: 440). Internal contradiction applies to the inorganic but is more applicable to organic nature, the social and the individual. Internal contradiction should be the means by which opposing determinations within a single entity – person, social condition, political organization – are understood and addressed as “immediately represented in the determinations of relationship.” Hegel cites left, right, father, son, and so on, as examples, the opposition existing for one only in so far as its opposite, its other, exists. “Opposites, therefore, contain contradiction in so far as they are, in the same respect, negatively related to one another or sublate each other and are indifferent to one another” (1969: 441). The problem (to which Adorno is specifically drawn) is that ‘ordinary thinking’ (Hegel) is not aware of contradictions other than their presence as a constraint or interruption with respect to the immediate or anticipated satisfaction of a situation, the instrumentality of desire, want or need. Ordinary thinking differs from “Intelligent reflection [which] consists … in grasping and asserting contradiction” (Hegel 1969: 441). Intelligent reflection is a capacity of self-conscious, determinate being. We have just noted, above, its obligations as such. Thus we can say as a further example of internal contradiction, that ordinary thinking and intelligent reflection oppose one another within the social condition of the individual and within the individual’s mind. Intel­ ligent reflection is not the end result, it grasps the contradiction, a­ rticulates it and brings it to the threshold of critique through consciousness. Intel­ ligent reflection sublates ordinary thinking. Why sublate but not neutralize or annihilate? Because the basis and rationale of ordinary thinking (common sense)2 is a manifestation of the complex of consciousness and social conditions. In Marxist terms, false consciousness is produced from this relation. The development of consciousness by intelligent reflection occurs on that basis of undeveloped thinking. In the movement that resolves that contradiction the residual significance of that basis must be 2 Common sense, however seemingly informal, is an immediate response to phenomena and legitimated through the requirement denoted in the roots of the word, common. In Latin communis refers to common, but when munis is distinguished it carries the meaning of obliging or obligation; in common sense that is an obligation to adhere to the established consensus of meaning and action, and in this sense carries formal sociological and logical implications.

46

chapter two

retained as it is overcome.3 Consequently, every contradiction must become an object of knowledge; the possible resolution arising from ­contradictions – raising the contradiction to a higher level – sublates the earlier moment of intelligent reflection. Intelligent reflection observes and responds to a quality by referring to those factors and processes by which it is formed. In this way Hegel denies things, qualities, their own unconditional security, but ensures their integrity by the awareness of contradictions that will break that integrity. Hegel’s Positivity, Critical Theory’s Positivism Before pursuing other aspects of dialectics it is important at this point to provisionally address a problem in Adorno’s dialectics: the rejection of the ‘positive moment’ to which we have alluded; or, more relevant to the subject, the rejection of any behavior that appears to be positively oriented to the appearance of advancement, progress, partial resolution or sublation of contradictions; in other words, anything short of the complete negativity and annihilation of existing conditions. We will necessarily have to return to this in the chapter on negative dialectics (chapter seven), but brief attention to this issue belongs to this general discussion of dialectics. Two central elements of Marx’s dialectics are relations and development. Ollman (1993, 33–38) has forcefully argued that relations between and among phenomena, especially what he classifies as internal relations, are essential for understanding their concrete determinations and their development. Adorno’s emphasis on negativity and a continuous state of non-identity undermines the necessity to comprehend, contextualize and build on the outcome of moments of a process. If such moments come to be seen as ends in themselves, the problem of positivity arises, and the process of development and change is seen to be sufficient, requiring no further movement. This is where the emphasis on “positive” as problematic should lie. Another emphasis should be that such moments do not necessarily constitute a gradual step toward full resolution of any contradiction but recognition of such moments cannot be reduced to an accusation of mere reformism or gradualism in social change. From a Marxist

3 Lukács made the point that the conditions under which false consciousness occurred must be investigated to understand the circumstances and processes of its development. See Lukács 1971: 52.



hegel, marx, dialectics47

perspective positive moments must be conditions of labor, exploitation and so on that are objectively, though relatively, different than previous moments; to put it in other terms, these are moments in which the potential for future development is demonstrably altered against the backdrop of relations developed historically up to that juncture. Marx’s “categories are negative and at the same time positive: they present a negative state of affairs in the light of its positive solution, revealing the true situation in existing society as the prelude to its passing into a new form” (Marcuse 1960: 295). Although distinct from the positive moment in dialectics, for reasons to be discussed below, it is crucial to consider the concept of ‘positivity’ in Hegel’s early writings and his gradual transformation of the concept into ‘externalization’ and ‘alienation’. Adorno specifically criticizes Hegel’s view of the positive moment as if it was identical with Hegel’s early use of positivity, although it is not clear to which of Hegel’s writings he is referring. He argues that the non-identical is neither positive nor “obtainable by a negation of the negative”. The positive that Hegel believed emerged from negation “has more than its name in common with the positivity he fought in his youth” (Adorno 1973: 158). Horkheimer’s critique of traditional theory articulated critical theory’s concern with positivism, distancing its orientation from Marx’s focus on a critical political economy. The concern with positivism was more extensively, if cursorily, developed in Dialectic of Enlightenment. There are connections to be made between Hegel’s concept of positivity and its later revision and development, externalization and alienation, and the meaning of positivism that became the dominant object for critical theory, Adorno in particular. Adorno’s rejection of positivism is a response that parallels his rejection of the positive moment in dialectics as if the latter constitutes an immutable identity. Lukács (1975: 314) notes that positivity, for Hegel, referred “to a quality of social formations, objects, things”. He quotes an early definition Hegel used in his discussion of religion in his Berne period. “A positive faith is a system of religious propositions which are true for us because they have been presented to us by an authority which we cannot flout” (qu. in Lukács 1975: 18). For Hegel, a positive religion or a positive faith is distinguished from a “virtue religion” by the fact that the latter seeks to fulfill the essential aim of all religions, the development of morality (Hegel 1971: 68). A positive religion reduces the human element to adherence to the commands of a religious authority (1971: 71). He accepts the “positive principle” of “knowledge of duty and God’s will” although it must be premised on

48

chapter two

“the commands of virtue” (1971: 75). Morality, given priority over mere doctrine, assumes the relative autonomy of the religious subject, and that duty is based on reason rather than the power of religious authority. Thus, the distinction between the religious and the historical subject. Lukács understood Hegel’s positivity to refer to the “suspension of the moral autonomy of the subject” (1975: 18). Thus it is the positive authority of a doctrine (or the authority of a positive doctrine), inseparable from the institution behind it that negates the relative autonomy of the subject. The “feelings” of a positive religion, writes Hegel (1971: 167), “are forcibly and mechanically stimulated, the actions are done to order or from obedience without any spontaneous interest”. Hegel’s main objection, as Lukács (1975: 19) points out, is that positive elements are “incompatible with freedom and the dignity of” human beings; that is, positivity diminishes the capacity of the human subject, especially so when the person uncritically accedes to it. Further, for Hegel, the theological elements of morality must be removed; they are morality’s positive elements, they can be known and therefore they can and should be superseded by the person who becomes an historical subject (Lukács 1975: 19). For Hegel, unity in relation to positivity is a ‘false union’. He regards positivity as the unification of the ‘irreconcilable’; things that are (a) contradictory, and (b) can interact, recognize their togetherness, or become unified but cannot reach a relation that resolves their contradiction at a dialectically positive moment, as sublation. If the latter occurs, this inability results in things remaining essentially positive. Thus, the negative must be found or introduced, in some way come to the relation and, with respect to the subject, to consciousness. In other words, positivity can unite two entities but not, as Hegel wrote, in the way “they should be”. Lukács regards this as an unclear synthesis of “a mere idea” (1975: 127–128), but significantly “the only way to eliminate the positive is through human activity,” for Hegel’s conception of positivity in these passages is akin to the materialist conception of “false reflections of objective reality” or a false synthesis (Lukács 1975: 127, 154). This, of course, does not negate Hegel’s primary interest in accounting affirmatively for religion. But he also problematizes notions of religion explained as merely manifestations of human nature, arguing against the “empty” “universal concepts of human nature” (Hegel 1971: 170). Hegel eventually replaced positivity with externalization and alienation (Lukács 1975: 333–334), two concepts that indicate a reified state of phenomena. In his still early use of positivity with respect to religion, the connection to these two concepts is implied, but so, too, is the significance of



hegel, marx, dialectics49

the positive moment or social sphere. A religion becomes positive when the social ‘mood’ senses a need for greater freedom thereby beginning the creation of and transition to the new form: “then and only then can [the] former religion begin to appear a positive one” (Hegel 1971: 170); that is, when it has been at least partially surpassed in the consciousness of the subjects. In other words, any religion that can be described in Hegel’s terms as one that requires the renunciation of one’s will and requires the subject to “shudder before an unknown Being” (1971: 169) is not positive until its subjects become conscious of their subordinated to it. Its positivity affirms an authority relation that diminishes the subject, and it is the immediately available authority of the positive religion that confirms the alienation of the subject; i.e. without an attempt at negation. Lukács points out that the concept of positivity “had placed a one-sided emphasis on the dead, alien aspect of social institutions” (1975: 333), that is, the old institution of religion that had been distanced by a change of mood, yet remained an authority. The concept of externalization emerged with Hegel’s increasing understanding of economics and the development of his basic triad of need, work and enjoyment, along with labor as the annihilation of the object (Lukács 1975: 324). Externalization is “a specific mode of human activity as a result of which specific social institutions come into being and acquire the objective nature peculiar to them” (Lukács 1975: 314). Hegel describes the process of externalization through the activity of work: “In labouring, I make myself into a thing …[and at] the same time I externalize this existence of mine, making it something alien to myself, and preserve myself therein” (Hegel 1983: 123). This process points to a progressive humanist element in Hegel, as well as the groundwork for the later development of a materialist analysis of economics. But Hegel is limited to a belief in the possibility that the subject will overcome alienation within itself. Nevertheless, this passage (from his Realphilosophie) essentially refers to the subject externalizing his or her existence to the authority of an institution, an institution in which truths “must be held to be truths independently of our own opinions” (Hegel qu. in Lukács 1975: 18). What Hegel is leading to here, perhaps indirectly, is the positivism that was the object of critical theory’s conception of modern society. Since Comte, positivism had been a guarantee, if only embryonic, of the direction of change and predictability, and when formalized as scientific knowledge it became established truth, capturing social development and relative human autonomy in an evolutionary string of events as unnaturally ‘natural’ as the positivity of religion. Positivism’s ‘truths’ that are independent “of our own opinions” may, in fact, be truth. But what Hegel

50

chapter two

saw as alienating and what critical theorists saw as the pressure toward conformism was the absence of relatively autonomous engagement of the subject with the moral principles that should underlie the rational construction of social relations. This brief discussion does not fully answer the question about the validity of a notion of a positive moment in dialectics. What it does do is set the basis for a distinction between Hegel’s early conception of positivity and Adorno’s attribution of it to positivism as such on the one hand, and the contextualization of the positive moment in dialectics that surpasses the immediacy of identity on the other. This topic is developed further in chapter seven. A Note on Dialectical Logic We have already noted that in contradictions the place of unity (unseparatedness) in opposing moments and forces becomes the ‘vanishing’ (Hegel) of one thing into another – being, nothing, becoming. A is enunciated, and not-A, the pure other of A; but it only shows itself in order to vanish. In this proposition, therefore, identity is expressed—as negation of the negation. A and not-A are distinguished, and these distinct terms are related to one and the same A. Identity, therefore, is here represented as this distinguishedness in one relation or as simple difference in the terms themselves. (Hegel 1969: 416)

Marquit (1990: 150) suggests that Hegel is qualifying his concept of identity dialectically in that “the law of identity is meaningful only if the identity is also associated with a difference.” Hegel’s employment of third elements in his logic has implications directly related to mediation if we take the latter in its simplest connotation – an intermediary. This is ultimately too simplistic, although it is sufficient as a beginning. Logic itself includes its own law in this matter. “The determination of opposition has also been made into a law, the so-called law of the excluded middle: something is either A or not-A; there is no third” (Hegel 1969: 438). Hegel then corrects this principle of formal logic. The third element is that which is said to be excluded. The third element, therefore, is that which is “neither A nor not-A” (1969: 438), that which is ultimately objectified by being named as absent or not possible in formal logic. The object, ‘neither A nor not-A,’ does exist since it is stated to be comprised of the ‘A’ and the ‘not-A;’ the linguistic and concrete copula is the ‘neither’/‘nor’ in the statement, denoting a relation to an actual object



hegel, marx, dialectics51

where there was none in traditional logic. Further, the implication of the law of contradiction is “that there is not a third that is indifferent to the opposition” (1969: 438), but the third that Hegel recognizes as a necessity in his logic is, in fact, indifferent to the opposition of the two original extremes but present in A and not-A. In its indifference, the third does not take either the side of A or not-A, but is related to each and because of that relates each to the other. Indifference to the opposition means that the presence and purpose of the third lies, first, in its non-intervention in the opposition as such; secondly, its presence and purpose is to nullify the exclusivity of the original two, thereby entering the relation between them. This is both an empirical and a cognitive exercise. To repeat what was noted earlier, this is what Hegel meant in his discussion of being and nothing, that becoming arises through this relation but neither being nor nothing are annihilated as the third emerges (Hegel 1969: 107). Thus, there is an affirmation of non-identity of ‘A’ and ‘not-A’. This is a negative moment, but it is not a negation of being and becoming as such, but a sublation of their separateness. Equally, if not more important to this condition of non-identity is what Hegel sees produced, brought forward, from this relation: the positive moment of the emerging third, ‘A and not-A’ (combined), or as Lukács put it, noted earlier, negation must “be supplemented from the positive side” (1978a: 41). Hegel’s perspective on this issue put an end to categorical thinking in philosophical and social analysis. The relationship between essence and phenomena, too, requires a third element, a material object; together these constitute a “three-term relation” as Marquit (1981, 321) puts it citing an example from Marx: “Thus, capital presupposes wage labour; wage labour presupposes capital. They reciprocally condition the existence of each other; they reciprocally bring forth each other” (Marx, 1977: 214). Marquit asserts that “the third term obviously represents the forces of production” and subsequently refers to such relations as “mediated” or “indirect contradictions”, in contrast to the direct contradictions of logic (1981: 321). Mediation The process of development and change that are central to dialectics are represented by social phenomena that are mediated or in a different expression, contradictions that mediate the sublation of an oppositional relation. Mediation as a process of sublation and resolution is often ­objectively incomplete, a momentary settlement of tension or opposition,

52

chapter two

or a partial resolution of a contradiction, or a preservation of phenomena even as they are superseded – aufhebung. This incompleteness or momentariness are reasons for not emphasizing a mechanical movement toward a pre-determined end (e.g. from seed to tree), given the possible contingent interventions that may occur. Mediation needs to be understood as having two distinct but related (non-exclusive) expressions, and to be operative in two domains. I make these distinctions here not only for theoretical reasons but, more importantly, for reasons of praxis. To suggest that mediation has different expressions is not to suggest there are different forms of mediation, or different interpretations of it. Rather, two expressions only speaks to the manner in which mediation is enacted and the vantage point4 from which it is experienced, a vantage point that leads to a more complete understanding of its practical import – in cognition as well as in practice. These expressions of mediation ultimately amount to its substantive action, the negation of immediacy and the unleashing of potential development inherent in objects and developed through relations with other objects. This action requires elaboration and clarification which will be taken up here and later in this discussion. To be clear, when referring to two distinct expressions we are not referring to two types of mediations; the two expressions are not divergent but are continuous. In practice, one might also refer to these somewhat inadequately as sequential. We will begin with what we might provisionally call the ‘second stage’ of the process of mediation. Consider Hegel’s example of the plough as a tool by which a person enjoys, in the immediate sense, the produce derived from using it to work on the land. We can elaborate this example as the mediation of the relationship between (a) an agrarian laborer to (b) the soil, a relation that is intended to result, simply put, in (c) food on the table. Hegel states, To this extent the means is superior to the finite ends of external purposiveness: the plough is more honourable than are immediately the enjoyments procured by it and which are ends. The tool lasts, while the immediate enjoyments pass away and are forgotten. (1969: 747)

In this example, the plough is the means by which relations among (a) the laborer, (b) the soil and (c) produce of the land are to be enjoyed; it is established as a productive relation, and as a relation that negates the 4 For the concept of the vantage point and its value in dialectics, see Ollman 1993.



hegel, marx, dialectics53

inherent oppositions between the laborer and the land that, without the tool, can only produce so much sustenance but has the potential to produce plenty with superior technology, even the most elementary plough. The end result is “active in its means” (Hegel 1969: 745–6) as mediation. But the means is the external middle term of the syllogism which is the realization of the end; the rationality in the means manifests itself as such by maintaining itself in this external other, and precisely through this external other. (Hegel 1969: 747)

In this case the plough is a ‘third’ element in the relationship of agrarian laborer and food on the table. The plough is external, yet integral to the quality of the relation of laborer to soil. In the production of food a plough as such is not absolutely necessary, but the laborer establishes a relation with it to produce food of a certain quantity and quality. Notwithstanding Hegel’s rejection of the triadic form, an agrarian laborer, plough and ­produce (food) form a triangle in which, given Hegel’s terms, at the apex there appears to exist the superior element of the complex, the plough, (not separable from the other elements of the triangle), and the agrarian laborer’s efforts are channeled through that element to the end, food. This  expression of mediation is distinguished as the intervention of an ‘external other’ that arose through the opposition of labor and land. We will return to this. Without the plough, the agrarian laborer can still produce food for the table but less efficiently, in less quantity using instruments of lesser quality than with the plough, just as the agrarian laborer will later do better at production with more qualitative interventions – ploughs of different configurations, a plough attached to a tractor, multiple ploughs attached to a single tractor with greater horsepower, and so on. That the plough in Hegel’s view is the superior element in this triangulation, reflects the qualitative function of it in relation to the agrarian laborer’s time and energy to get the land to produce food, as well as the function of enabling the agrarian laborer to produce more food than he needs immediately and selling the surplus in the marketplace, producing income, profit, household security, and so on. The quality of the mediation is carried further by Marx in his example of the creation of a consuming public via the product which is possible provided historical conditions prevail for certain qualities of a public to be created, as when an “objet d’art … creates a public that has artistic taste and is capable of enjoying beauty” (Marx 1986a: 28–30). The need of the agrarian laborer and the potential embodied in the soil exist in a relation: the tool, the plough, mediates the becoming of the

54

chapter two

food that will arise from the relationship of soil, seed and labor. Need and possibility, laborer and land, oppose one another; they are related through the plough in their opposition to one another, a relationship that develops the capacities in each that are drawn into the relation with compatible capacities in the other. Both the agrarian laborer and the land undergo transformation as a result of the intervention of the plough, but it is a particular quality of transformation specific to this relationship which does not exclude other transformations from, for example, natural factors. The ‘intervention’ of the third, the plough, as the practical intervention distinguishes three dissimilar elements that are pressed into a relationship. The intervening element is a necessary development of the relation of the original two components; it is not inevitable or a product of evolution, but one that is worked out, so to speak, through the human discovery that an instrument configured into something that comes to be called a plough can address a need by reducing the opposition. The plough is not arbitrary, but neither is it an outcome that is inherent in the original relation. The plough is determined to be the necessary intervening third by those human beings who imagine they can create an instrument to solve their problem of food production, and it is derived from their awareness of those aspects of their natural and constructed environment that are adequate, at least, for the crafting of the plough.5 The third element also denotes purposiveness acting through intelligence “that externally determines the multiplicity of objects by a unity that exists in and for itself, so that the indifferent determinateness of the objects become essential through this relation” (Hegel 1969: 736; see also 734). In formal logic the concluding term of a syllogism offers an immediate termination of the argument. In recognizing that the excluded but actually existing third relates the two premises, Hegel’s third is not an end but mediation, distinguished by “possessing within itself a negative moment” (1969: 675). The third in logic finds its place as the middle term of a syllogism, uniting the two extremes (Hegel 1969: 683). The determinations articulated in the syllogism “confront each other as extremes and are united in a different third term” as in the particular uniting the individual and the universal (1969: 667), and the ‘something’ that has been formed by its determinations and has thus been constituted and unites determination and constitution in its position and function as the middle, mediating term (1969: 124). 5 On necessity in this sense, see Gerdus 2003, on the necessity of geometric angles.



hegel, marx, dialectics55

Marx employed Hegel’s logic in his analysis of value and exchange in which two commodities are united by a third term, value (Marx 1967: 45; Ilyenkov 1977: 331ff). A third element that is neither linen nor coat, for example, and is indifferent to the opposition of these two materials as such, is able to unite them containing, as value does, something of the relative value of linen from which the coat is made and something of the equivalent value of the coat that exists as potential to be developed from the linen. The third or middle term that is developed to rationally express a relation between two other things does not do so simply because a like component such as a natural fibre is contained in both make them comparable. Equally significant is the presence of an identical property of each object that makes them comparable and is expressed by the middle term, in this case labor. Comparable in this instance means that two things are subject to comparison because each represents “the same common element” (Marx 1971b: 143–144, footnote); they are comparable because of the common element, not simply because they are similar. Marx uses space as the common property by which the distance between two things can be expressed. Similarly, when explaining exchangeable commodities he concludes that the “two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchangevalue, must therefore be reducible to this third” (Marx 1967: 45). So, two common components, natural fibre and labor, are ranked: fibre as a natural component initiates production; labor, the social component, completes the production and is extended into exchange relations. In Hegel’s example of the plough, mediation appears to be expressed as a triangulated relationship as noted above. This is incomplete and inadequate, but important from a particular vantage point. In fact, Hegel’s position is that a mediating element expressed as a distinguishable ‘third’ such as the plough in this example does not intervene exclusively from outside the relation between a subject and a desired result. Thus, we take a step backward to the first stage of the sequence or process. We have already begun to do so in a point made above, that the laborer and the land are related through the plough in their opposition to one another. That is, any mediating element (any ‘third’ or middle term) arises from the relation itself, the opposition between the original elements; arising from but retaining its indifference to the opposition itself, as noted earlier, mediation within itself (Hegel 1969: 74). In other words, the initial expression of mediation is the interaction – a reciprocation6 – between opposites so 6 The predominant meaning of reciprocate is equal return, but in this case at least, it should not be taken to mean a symmetrical relation.

56

chapter two

that the idea of an innovative instrument, such as a plough, arises from the contradiction between the need for food and the inability to turn sufficient soil to plant a crop able to satisfy the needs of a number of people. Without recognition of that contradiction, no intervening instrument would arise because none would be sought. But the intervening instrument in this case, when the need of it becomes a conscious requirement, is not something that arises outside the relation (Hegel’s ‘external other’, above, still holds) but is integral to the initial relation of hungry people and capacity to plant, grow and harvest. While the instrument may not be an immediate result in time of the contradiction, it is something that emerges from a combination of the initial contradictory relationship and the recognition of the need for the production of such an instrument, or the factors that inhibit its production. In this case, once the plough comes to consciousness through the laborer’s imagination, the recognition of its necessity, it is evident that the contradiction and the resolution comprise a triangulated relation that includes a distinguishable third as a practical intervention arising from the initial contradiction; it is observed as an introduction or intervention of a third element when, in fact, it was the reciprocal relation of laborer and soil that generated the idea, initially, of the plough. We do not need a distinct, intervening ‘third’ (one that nevertheless arose from the relations between the original two) to form a triangulated expression of mediation as in the case of the plough; this is evident in Marx’s comments in the Grundrisse on production and consumption. There mediation, no less significant or superior a component in the relationship, emerges directly from interaction rather than what may appear as an external intervention. But, again, this is the initial step of the process of mediation; the ‘intervention’ appears as such only from a particular vantage point. Marx writes, “Production is thus directly consumption, consumption is directly production. Each is immediately its opposite.” Production and consumption are separated as phenomena and oppose each other in the economic system, and yet as integral elements these make up the basis of that system. The choice in analysis is to retain this immediate separation, reifying the opposition, or to consider such opposition valid only if the determinants are developed and analyzed, that is, the qualities in each that will render the opposites inseparable but fruitful in their relation. Marx continues, At the same time, however, a mediating movement takes place between the two. Production mediates consumption, for which it provides the material; consumption without production would have no object. But consumption also mediates production by providing for the products the subject for



hegel, marx, dialectics57 whom they are products. The product only obtains its final finish in consumption. A railway on which no one travels, which is therefore not used up, not consumed, is only a railway [potentially]. (Marx 1986a: 28)

Each is opposite the other, yet elements of each form the mediating relation, making it possible for each to be ‘completed’ in the other. Every object contains a potential for mediation with another for no object or phenomena is considered so stable that its composition or place in reality sufficiently guards against change. In each of production and consumption there is implied a) other elements, and b) movement or force for changing the relationship between both actions and within the make-up of the actions themselves, and facilitating the emergence of a qualitatively different relation. We will refer to this expression of mediation as that which arises from a reciprocation, even while it remains contradictory; i.e. without any sense of equality between the two initial elements. However, due to the interaction of the two, the realization of the potential for change and development, in this case, for example, the character of the market, is in each as it vanishes into the other; mediation itself effectively becomes a third force as it develops out of the contradictions of the inherent qualities of each object. If the vantage point is that of the internal relations of things it does not appear as an ‘intervention’ but as a product drawn from the integral relations of the original objects. Thus, production and consumption, for Marx, are opposites and dynamic in that each, as Hegel argues (1969: 82–83, 90, 105), vanishes into the other as an immediate, independent object, or process. Production and consumption interact as Hegel defined mediation itself as “a process towards another state.” Hegel’s discussion of consciousness as an aspect of the relation between Lord and Bondsman further illustrates this form of mediation. Each of two consciousnesses supersedes itself as an independent consciousness, a consciousness in-itself begins an existence for itself through another consciousness (Hegel 1977: 110). Like Marx’s production and consumption, Each is for the other the middle term, through which each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself ; and each is for itself and for the other, an immediate being on its own account, which at the same time is such only through this mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another. (Hegel 1977: 112)

Thus, using Hegel’s example again, the need mediates the production of food; the contradiction between need and not having necessitates the imagination and subsequent building of the plough, the idea of which emerges from the initial contradiction – need and not having, laborer and

58

chapter two

soil. In the reciprocating expression of mediation we do not see a distinguishable third element as the intervention in the original two, in contrast to the vantage point that perceives the mediating element of the plough. But where we are addressing contradictions in which human agency plays a part, as between laborer and land, it is the imaginative, self-­ conscious subject, the subject aware of its capabilities, its place in the complex of relations – one of the original sides of the contradiction – that employs its imagination and creativity to develop the opposition. Consciousness of a particular quality, able to comprehend its potential, moves and develops itself in its contradiction. Besides its two expressions mediation must also be understood as having two domains, a generalized domain and a particular domain where mediation can be seen to act in ways specific to a component of the context. These are not categorical and, therefore, cannot be treated as separate. Again, there is a theoretical interest in this distinction as well as an interest in its value for practice, especially because vantage point remains a crucial position for each domain. The generalized domain is the mode and relations of production; in developed capitalism it is its entire organized system. This becomes important when we examine Adorno’s criticism of Benjamin in chapter six. The generalized domain of mediation is the totality of economic, social and other processes. The prevailing mode of production mediates, effects, influences all aspects of social relations, notwithstanding the potential for the relative autonomy of any such relation. In bourgeois thought, however, each of these relations, each ‘fact’ of society appears as nothing more than an isolated immediacy (Lukács 1971: 183–185). With the generalized domain of mediation we can come back to the reciprocal relation of production and consumption. Both production and consumption are abstractions of capital. An analysis of the internal relations of capital reveals that each partially determines the other along with additional determining factors, and that each is a component of the complex of capital. Marx’s method as illustrated in the Grundrisse demonstrates the set of internal and historical relations relevant to the discussion of this type of mediation. Thus, the complex of capital, the processes and relations of which it develops, its resulting production and, in turn, ­consumption constitutes a broad, many-tentacled mediation. This is particularly relevant when considering cultural production and other superstructural activities. The interaction that takes place between production and consumption is, itself, the mediating element, but the interaction can only develop through, and because of this broader complex of relations.



hegel, marx, dialectics59

It  may seem trite, but it is essential to dialectical thinking that neither production nor consumption in the context of capital would exist as abstractions of capital without the complex of historical, technological and class relations that make up the active relations of capital. The context of any relation, however complex, presents, as a whole, a body of knowledge available as means to mediate a relation. Marx’s consideration of conditions, concrete determinants, mediated the complex of the whole. Mediation, then, must be understood, in part, as a cognitive action whose fruit is a tool in discontinuous relation to the original elements. Further, an integral element of the complex and, therefore, of mediation is the individual who properly makes the abstraction of production and consumption from capital, and who comprehends the mediation that is the interaction between them. Abstraction is a mental category. A complex of relations presents a multitude of possible abstractions along with a range of possible instruments, concepts, ideas that may be used in mediation. Thus, mediation and abstraction as mental or cognitive acts are acts that reflect consciousness of the entire complex that constitutes the context of mediation between or among phenomena. While the generalized domain of mediation is the source of social development in its basic economic forms as well as necessarily influencing aspects of the superstructure, it cannot completely subsume all specific domains of mediation. The latter may obtain within particular conditions a relative autonomy from the generalized domain (e.g. art). In other words, particular instances of mediation operate within the frame of the mode of production but specifically in the location in which they are generated and relate to opposing sides of a contradiction. What makes up their content need not be wholly confined to economically-derived motivations. Thus, Hegel’s plough emerges from the generalized domain of the mode of production that is the basic mediation of all relations and includes all possible, relevant contingent relations. We noted above with respect to the triangulated expression of mediation, the dissimilar elements “pressed into a relationship” – this is generalized mediation or mediation in the whole social process because the pressure derives from the mode of production. But in the same place we noted that the plough became necessary as a deliberate response by the human beings concerned. That the plough became necessary implies alternatives; thus, the invention that becomes intervention was a choice between alternatives in a specific domain of human activity. This is most important when we consider such issues as class conflict and political parties or other organizations constituted to address and

60

chapter two

resolve social contradictions. Class conflict is the contradiction between two socially and economically constituted classes. In that contradiction, following Marx, each class mediates the other – in this case, in varying expressions and intensities of conflicting relations. The contradiction between the two is the mediation of their relations. But, it is historically evident that as a result of the recognition of an initial contradiction, political organizations arise – trade unions, workers’ parties, student organizations, and on the other side, the state, employers’ organization and so on. These intervene in the relation between classes, develop the relation, draw it toward a more clear expression of the oppositional content of the relation, and propagate the necessity of conflict and its possible resolutions to broaden the mediating element by attracting ever larger and more organized numbers to both sides of the relation. These appear as interventions, yet arose organically from the components of the initial contradiction. In specific domains of mediation, an individual or organization constitutes the intervening element of a relationship or process and is less complex than Marx’s relation of production and consumption. As an example we can use Lucien Goldmann’s citing of the change in the “real consciousness” of Russian peasants through the year 1917 from supporters of the Tsar to at least tacit supporters of the Bolsheviks (Goldmann 1977: 32–33). At issue was Lenin’s slogan, “land to the peasants”. The Bolshevik organization, through which the slogan was communicated, and the ensuing discussion and agitation mediated the transition from one quality of consciousness to another. This led, in turn, to a reformation of the political alliance of sectors of the peasantry with the Bolsheviks in an effort to overturn the peasants’ previous political alignment. Lenin’s introduction of the slogan and accompanying organizational direction were qualitative interventions. In other words, for Lenin there was no simple intervention of the Bolsheviks between peasants and their land. Not just any slogan would have the same effect as “land to the peasants,” although other ­slogans, tactics by other organizations would and did have some effect on peasants’ political orientation and action. But the qualitative character of Lenin’s mediation was based on his understanding of peasants’ his­ torical relation to the land and the direction the Bolsheviks wanted to move them.

CHAPTER THREE

ASPECTS OF ADORNO’S METHOD: CONSTELLATIONS AND IMAGES Discussing the sexual meaning and dream content of jazz, Adorno provides an example of his method. Although he refers to the “social function of jazz” as a “concrete historically determined constellation of social identification and sexual energy” this concrete constellation is conditioned by his interpretation of its elements: hot music, derivations of salon and march music, authoritative expressions of the band leader and the unfree subject – “a victim of the collective” (2002b: 488). If we follow Adorno’s original exposition of the method we will, presumably, benefit from the flash of knowledge the agglomeration of elements will produce. While he argues for what is concrete and historically determined underlying the connection of the elements of the constellation, the absence of historical evidence and clarity as to the relations among elements become glaring omissions. The absence of these, however, affirms for Adorno the power of esoteric theorizing, of thought that is generated by an image, a snapshot of reality as perceived. At least in his initial period of intellectual activity, the method was the construction of constellations for philosophical interpretation. From an historical materialist perspective a number of questions arise from this approach. Is there any accounting for the determinants of a constellation’s elements, or any accounting for what these elements are determinate of? What is the character of the relationship of each of these elements to others, to the complex as a whole? In other words, is this complex an inter-connected whole, dialectically sustained and changeable through its historically determined internal relations? With modifications, Adorno appropriated Walter Benjamin’s somewhat obscure exposition of a method in his The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Trauerspiel), to form the basis for his 1931 inaugural lecture, “The Actuality of Philosophy” (2000a). The employment of constellations as a presentation of his thought was a more or less continuous component from that point on of Adorno’s cultural criticism. Notwithstanding his consideration of materialism and dialectics in “Actuality,” his use of ­constellations as a form of analysis brings into question his relation with

62

chapter three

Marxism most certainly at the level of method. A focus on constellations draws attention to a key point of Adorno’s perspective – that whatever degree of development took place over the years, his philosophical and political outlook retained a strong coherence with its original moment. Benjamin, too, continued to compose many of his works around the idea of constellations, such as Arcades Project and the “Second Empire” essay on Baudelaire. But Benjamin’s approach was far more grounded in the material of history and the structure of social relations than Adorno’s use of this perspective. In “Actuality” Adorno was attempting to formulate a program for his own work and to identify the task of philosophy. While his claims to a materialist perspective are numerous in that lecture, it is not of great depth and is of significant distance from the historical materialism of Marx; as well, Adorno affirms the significance of dialectics for philosophy without much substantiation. Whatever the impact of materialism on his program, it is overshadowed by some fundamental shortcomings in the method. In the 1931 lecture, Adorno reduced philosophy to tasks that fundamentally originate in the subjectivity of the philosopher. Adorno began his lecture with a brief review of late trends in philosophy and the relation of the discipline to science, the latter with respect to whether science could take the place of philosophy – “liquidate” it; essentially, whether philosophy had been negated altogether by the positivism of the distinct sciences. It was his intention to reinvigorate philosophy by explaining and contextualizing its actuality; namely, could the “cardinal philosophic questions” (2000a: 29) be answered. The empirical methods could be left to the sciences; philosophy would emphasize interpretation. Adorno juxtaposed science to philosophy while retaining (2000a: 32) an aspect of the relation at least from the side of philosophy: “the idea of science is research; that of philosophy is interpretation,” and more specifically, “philosophy perceives the first findings which it lights upon as a sign that needs unriddling” (2000a: 31). Finding or assigning meaning – “to portray reality as meaningful” (2000a: 31) – is not the task of philosophy and it is not to “justify” reality as implied in the work of the positive sciences. This position is related to Adorno’s use of ‘intentional’ and ‘unintentional’ truth and reality. He eschewed the teleological version of history which was history as ‘intentional.’ ‘Unintentional history’ or ‘unintentional reality’ emerged from human-constructed constellations. The connection with materialism is superficially present in that the interpretive task of philosophy is centered on this unintentional reality, aspects of reality that do not emerge individually through subjective intentions but come



aspects of adorno’s method63

together in function or purpose that is unintentional in relation to the initial conscious or unconscious activity. This is a rejection of truth being intentionally contained within history and revealed by its movement and development, a rejection of aspects of Hegel’s view of history. Here the basis of a connection with historical materialism is clear. To what extent is it sustained? In the previous chapter we have given some details of Marx’s method, derived and developed in large measure from that of Hegel; it is sufficient at this point to note that the burden of historical materialism is to reconstruct the determinants of objects and phenomena, their internal relations and development not as the intention of history but as the objectively knowable construction and substance of any historical condition. Given Adorno’s use of constellations, it is not clear that this is what he has in mind. His view of history in method is confined to historical images in configurations constructed through an unclear and unsystematic process of selection. The historical images and the subsequent configurations do not arise as intentional history, and it is not clear how these arise through the intention or interest of the historical subject. Adorno’s emphasis is on selection and experimentation by the philosopher. He proposes this approach in contrast to the research of the positive sciences, or that which is framed by formal categories “which assumes the reduction of the question to given and known elements,” an approach that would tend toward “fixed meaning” (2000a: 31). Positivism, as we have noted, was a central interest of critical theory. In “Actuality” it appears more as a ‘straw-man’ argument; what is contrasted with the method of constellations is not comprehensively developed, and while the reduction he alludes to may certainly capture positivism, the matter of “fixed meaning” becomes a routine object of Adorno’s criticism whether directed at positivism or elsewhere. Interpretation is a step in the method preceded by elements of science’s questions “brought into various groupings long enough for them to close together in a figure out of which the solution springs forth, while the question disappears” (2000a: 32). The “function of riddle-solving,” he argued, “was to light up the riddle-Gestalt like lightning and negate it…” (2000a: 31). What the philosopher negates are the “isolated” elements of reality discovered and “articulated” by science to which philosophy is always bound (2000a: 32). In this way Adorno retained a provisional relationship with materialism. Buck-Morss (1977: 100) refers to the constellation as making the contradictions visible. If that is the case, the burst, the flash of congealing and dissolving is given sufficient powder by Adorno to

64

chapter three

illuminate only a second of darkness but not enough to sustain a beacon. But we will see Adorno’s later qualifications of the constellation below. While retaining a connection with materialism, Adorno superimposes the produce of science on the construction of figures or images by the philosopher whose task it is, again, to interpret unintentional reality. It is these images that mediate the tenuous relation between materialism and the philosopher’s task. “While our images of perceived reality may very well be Gestalten [form, shape], the world in which we live is not; it is constructed differently than out of mere images of perception” (2000a: 31). Yet, such images reappear as a tool of analysis when articulated as a constellation by the philosopher and interpreted. Which elements converge or are assembled into a constellation? This is not articulated except as the philosopher’s prerogative and the allusion to “the thinking of materialism” (Adorno 2000a: 32). But it is a crucial consideration of the method that becomes all the more important because the answer is inexplicit. Buck-Morss understands Adorno’s approach to be somewhat similar to Dilthey’s historico-cultural perspective, although distinguished from it by Adorno’s emphasis on unintentionality (1977: 78–79). Dilthey and Adorno, like Benjamin, focused on cultural objects. Through hermeneutic procedure Dilthey wanted to interpret the artist’s or producer’s original meaning (Rickman 1979: 69, 148), while Adorno wanted to concentrate his interpretation on outstanding features of cultural objects – what they intend, so to speak, in themselves that is of interest to those who later appropriate that object via listening, reading, viewing. (His ‘message in a bottle’, noted in chapter one, may well be a cultural object in this sense.) While meaning, for Dilthey, emerged through the subjective, Adorno (notwithstanding my earlier point concerning his subjectivism) laid claim to interpretation through the objective structure of the economy, the location of the unintentional. This distinction between the two is substantive. Similarities in the hermeneutic language of Dilthey and Benjamin, as Buck-Morss points out, “illuminates the non-identity of the two positions” (1977: 79). However, this still does not address sufficiently the similarities of language between Dilthey and Adorno or the structure and presentation of their respective interpretations that, especially in the case of Adorno, do not get us beyond subjective rationale of the selection of elements by which the constellation is constructed. His ‘thought experiments’ with the commodity structure provide little relief to this problem, but provides distance from other aspects of Dilthey’s orientation, such as his irrationalist vitalism.



aspects of adorno’s method65

But what should be taken from Dilthey through Husserl to, even peripherally, Heidegger is more telling; namely, their intuitional components drawn into Adorno’s method. While the unintentional, as used in this ­context, must be accepted as an understanding of reality it is also a freefloating element in Adorno’s program where objects and ideas are grasped experimentally through their viability within a proposed constellation, a viability evident only at the bursting-point, the point in which it can be assumed that the appropriate relations (for Marx, concrete determinations) have congealed and ignited to the point of dissolution, as Adorno would have it. Constellations were constructed by “trial combinations,” the successful combinations “fall[ing] into a figure which can be read as an answer, while at the same time the question disappears” (2000a: 32). The selection of phenomena, the trial and error combinations were to be the interpretive functions of the philosopher’s primary task, riddle-solving. While Adorno makes claims to the objective character of phenomena and the process of constellation construction, the claim of the latter’s sudden illumination of the complex lends the entire process and result a subjective and arbitrary character. Adorno provides a sense of dialectics valuable to a process of analysis even if it does not help his own method emerge from the subjective. The notion that a constellation is formed from certain ideas and material elements that converge into a question, constitutes a formative and formal sequence. That “the solution springs forth while the question disappears” understates the necessary residual character of the question. The justifiable questions, as Lukács remarked in his critique of Weber’s sociology, are those that are “posed by reality itself” (Lukács 1980a: 614–615). If the question disappears what has happened to the component of the constellation that formed the question? The procedure expresses something of Adorno’s excessive concentration on continuous negativity. The question must remain at least residually, for the question can only be formed by the material conditions out of which it arises and is consciously constructed. If we apply this problem to a principle of Marx’s the difference in positions becomes more clear. Marx asserted that the working class is the only class not interested in its continuation, but to be organized toward its own ­dissolution. Hence, the question of its existence and the determinants of its transformation are a product of the conflicts and contradictions that become evident in the history of its internal and external relations and may result at some historical juncture in a solution “springing forward”. But this would be due (as discussed in chapter two) to the internal

66

chapter three

r­ elations that the two classes had recognized as their unity in difference since it was the needs of the bourgeois class that created its other; that which springs forward from this contradiction is integral to that relation. Although there may be objective forces in that intervention, or priorities designated among possible contingencies, the elements of selection and interpretation carry less weight than the material history of class. If the conditions of the working class under capitalism are transformed, they are sublated, they do not disappear, such conditions are not annihilated. Thus, the ‘question’ remains as historical fact and the root of the transformation. That the question might be annihilated by the solution devalues the internal relations of the determinants of the transformation, if such are more than an agglomeration of subjective selections of the philosopher and are powerful enough to elicit an answer. They can only do so adequately when their internal relations are enunciated. Thus, BuckMorss’ comparison of Adorno’s and Marx’s method needs qualification. She notes that Marx’s analysis of the commodity was “governed by principles of abstraction … identity … and reification.” Adorno’s constellations “were constructed according to principles of differentiation, non-identity, and active transformation” (1977: 98). First, the ‘identity’ attributed to Marx should more accurately be designated as unity (or in Hegel’s preference, unseparateness) of aspects of commodity production, a unity already in the totality of relations, premised on his use of identity as “[different] expressions of the same fact” (Marx 1968: 410–411), a point explored further in chapter seven, below. Secondly, the degree of transformation of elements in Adorno’s constellations cannot be significant or sustained; the suddenness of their transformation is attributable to the shallowness of the relations the analyst constructs around them. In Adorno’s formulation there is an unnecessary division of labor between philosophy and the sciences. Science is assigned the tasks of research and the construction of questions while philosophy, although it “always remains bound” to science (2000a: 32), is assigned tasks of interpretation and illumination. Yet when Adorno uses the commodity structure as an example of his program for philosophy his “interpretation” is only possible because the commodity structure, as Marx articulated it, is a structure of rational scientific thinking. The components of the commodity structure are relevant based on the rational discovery of their determinants and form the binding material of Marx’s method. Interpretation assumes that the object must be read again and read differently if we are to be able to understand it. What, in fact, this means with respect to the commodity structure, its internal relations and so on is unclear. What is



aspects of adorno’s method67

clear is that Adorno’s call to interpret, implies, quite rightly, that a different quality of consciousness may well be what provides the difference between a first reading and reading again, but it is not something he extends to ‘the masses’ who are, in effect, stuck at the first, erroneous reading. Our discussion of identity and change (chapter seven) will clarify this point. Interpretation is superfluous for at best it can only inform the rearrangement of the components based on a ‘re-reading’ of the evidence. But that, too, is a scientific endeavour to which, as Adorno argues without clarifying details, philosophy must remain bound. Adorno cites the relationship of configuration to reality by its “philosophically certified [name]: dialectic” (2000a: 34), and links the interpretive process to praxis and social change. But, the argument that through the construction of a configuration of reality “the demand for its [reality’s] change always follows promptly” is not clearly defined, although we might take a cue from the statement, “the historical images are manageable and comprehensible instruments of human reason…” (2000a: 36). Notwithstanding the underdeveloped, yet clearly existing dialectical aspects of Kant’s work based in ‘synthetic judgements,’1 the method Adorno proposes is an experiment in thought and relies on thought that is possible a priori, clearly associated with Kant’s process of knowledge development. For example, Kant defines synthesis as the act of putting different representations together, and of comprehending their manifoldness in one item of knowledge…. This knowledge may at first be crude and confused and hence in need of analysis, yet synthesis is what really gathers the elements for knowledge and unifies them into a certain content. (Kant 2007: 103–104)

The problem lies in Adorno’s reticence to commit the theoretical to a meaningful relation with practice. Thus, there must be more to ground the selection of elements gathered into a constellation as well as the interpretation of them. What is it in the elements of a constellation that links one component with another and leads to the burst of truth? Or to knowledge? The answer is the pretence of contradiction, a superficial view taken merely by naming the problematic objects and their relations with others without a comprehensive enunciation of those relations – what brought them about, where do they stand at a particular historical juncture, to what will the contradiction lead if fully 1 See, for example, Adorno’s argument that dialectic, though in crude form, is already present in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Adorno 2001: 87–88).

68

chapter three

developed and sublated. With no answer to such questions in “Actuality”, too much space is left for the philosopher to exercise a privileged selection and interpretation. For example, Jameson (1990: 96) cites several statements from the long note, “Man and Animal,” in the “Notes and Drafts” section of Dialectic of Enlightenment in support of his notion that this piece is “one of the central ‘constellations’ of that work.” While it may be described as a poetic sojourn through a supposed history of the human-animal relationship and that between men and women, it hardly qualifies, as Jameson argues, as one of the “philosophical ancestors of the ecology movement” or as more than a gesture of “Frankfurt School proto-feminism.” As is typical of Adorno, especially evident in the Dialectic of Enlight­ enment, the piece takes only the slightest deviation from a subjectively posited moral norm to undo reason from all that it is or may become. Unreasoning creatures have encountered reason throughout the ages – in war and peace, in arena and slaughterhouse, from the lingering death-throes of the mammoth overpowered by a primitive tribe in the first planned assault down to the unrelenting exploitation of the animal kingdom in our own days. (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 245–246)

The genus-condition of animals is described as non-rational,2 without speech, experiencing short-term happiness if happiness at all. Humans infuse their own “emotions and needs” into animals and in the condemnation of the character of fellow-men by consigning the failed to the body of an animal in folklore and fairy tales. The form of domination of humans over animals is masculine; subordinated women are assigned to care for animals. Adorno creates a false dichotomy between humans and animals; the relations this dichotomy illuminates are one-sided, the bridge between the two consists only of instrumental, exploitative domination of one over the other. As we noted in the introduction, this cannot be put down to the rational distance between concept and object. The cognitive difference exists that affects, for the animal, “new constraint[s] beyond which no idea can reach.” But, does “every moment” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 246) of an animal’s life bring about such constraints and negativity? Indeed, the religious and ritualistic relation of human to animal is historically demonstrable as a constant reminder of human rationalization of 2 Unvernunft is translated as irrational whereas its meaning is, more accurately, ­dumbness, stupidity or non-reasoning.



aspects of adorno’s method69

their own superiority and power. But assertions of an absolute, ungrounded and de-contextualized character are what sustains Adorno’s “non-­identity” between humans and animals. Animals are only remembered when the few remaining specimens, the counterparts of the medieval jester, perish in excruciating pain, as a capital loss for their owner who neglected to afford them adequate fire protection in an age of iron and steel. The tall giraffe and the white elephant are oddities of which now even the shrewdest schoolboy would now hardly feel the loss. (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 251)

The human – animal relation is one-sided, such as the Nazi’s choice to “add spice to power through the terror [Great Danes and lion cubs] … inspire” (1982: 253) and the “distorted faces” of the manipulated lineage of the Pekingese (1982: 251). That “woman is not a being in her own right, a subject” describes her historical condition, but hardly serves as historical materialist analysis. To Jameson’s comment about ‘proto-feminism,’ above, one could easily reply that women combined with the remarks on animals in Horkheimer and Adorno’s analysis are like Russian dolls – aphorisms tucked neatly inside one another, devoid of an illumination of the roots of their existence and development. The examples from this brief text annunciate the pretence of contradictions for they are surely not the contradictions of a fully inclusive dialectics, nor do they have the stature of contradictions so crucial to Hegel’s logic. Indeed, this is a note or draft, not a fully-developed essay although it is among the longest in that section of Dialectic of Enlightenment, yet Jameson gives it the status of exemplar with respect to Adorno’s method. It was a dated text by the time of Jameson’s comment with respect to cultural attitudes toward animals. Nevertheless, like many of Adorno’s jazz articles, as we will see, the text was written in a vacuum with respect to the internal relations of its various components at the time and, in fact, in the longer history and contextualization of those relations. Adorno structures the text as a panel of oppositions that are not drawn out as an assertion of their contradictoriness, but merely as oppositions. This is what occurs when the determinations of phenomena, and determinations of their opposition, are not clearly grounded in an exposition of their relations so that the sublation of determinants can be demonstrated through the levels and intensity of the interaction. Nor is there any sense in which the relations are mediated. Again, we acknowledge the draft-character of this text, but one would assume that a more developed text would elaborate and clarify the lacunae of “Man and Animal.”

70

chapter three

Similar to Jameson, Buck-Morss makes an argument for Adorno’s 1936 essay, “On Jazz”: it contains “the meat-and-potatoes principle of dialectical logic … that what appears to be one thing was essentially its opposite” (Buck-Morss 1977: 100). Hegel, Marx, and others show that this ‘staple’ is more complex, less immediately revealing than this comment suggests. We will return to the essay and the topic of jazz in the following chapter. But if “Man and Animal” is a good example of a constellation it also serves to illustrate the fundamentally arbitrary make-up of that theoretical tool. Thus, an obvious question is what prevents Adorno from using elements for which he can clearly define the objective determinants and that illustrate the sublations that emerge from relations of contradiction? Buck-Morss asserts the following about Adorno’s constellations: Each of Adorno’s essays articulates an ‘idea’ in Benjamin’s sense of constructing a specific, concrete constellation out of the elements of the phenomenon, and it does so in order that the sociohistorical reality which constitutes its truth becomes physically visible within it. (1977: 96)

The sociohistorical reality that becomes visible will be conditioned by the interpreter’s purpose and intellectual sources, and many of Adorno’s essays exhibit only the most vague of sociohistorical contexts. But for all the problems associated with the use of constellations as a form of analysis, Benjamin does it with a more thorough material grounding, not leaving his analysis at the level of ideas alone. The same applies to Buck-Morss’s comment on Marx’s analysis of the “mystery of commodities,” although he submitted these to dialectical and historical analysis rather than interpretation. “When Marx set out to ‘decipher’ the mystery of commodities, he noted explicitly that their true nature was ‘imperceptible,’ that it had  “absolutely no connection to their physical qualities’” (Buck-Morss 1977:  96). This is both narrowly correct and incomplete. First, the complete phrase that includes the word ‘imperceptible,’ is that commodities are “social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses” (Marx 1967: 77, emphasis added). Secondly, Marx is writing of commodities in the sense of an abstraction, “things qua commodities,” and in the context of fetishized relations. It is commodity fetishism that produces a special “social relation” between producers and their products, a relation that obscures the origin and properties of things and relations to other phenomena. That Marx was concerned with the sociohistorical character of things, whether sheep, wool coats or gold, is evident in his discussion of commodities and exchange in the first chapter



aspects of adorno’s method71

of Capital. In other words the qualities and relations are present and can be understood, thus they are perceptible through reason and critique in finding an alternative to appearance and immediacy. The fact that Adorno was less concerned with economic factors, as Buck-Morss notes, and more concerned “to discover the truth of the social totality (which could never be experienced in itself) as it quite literally appeared within the object in a particular configuration” (Buck-Morss 1977: 96), actually does make a substantial difference in both the outcome of the project and its content. She notes the differences between Adorno’s and Marx’s criteria for analysis (1977: 98), with Adorno’s emphasis on the “phenomenal elements” out of which constellations were to be formed by the philosopher. However, despite his acknowledgement in “The Actuality of Philosophy” of the materialism of Marx’s analysis of the commodity, Adorno preferred a less material, less grounded approach to construct his constellations. It was not organized around determinate relations but his own intuitive selection, motivated in large measure by his rejection of any conception of totality as irrelevant to philosophy. His selection of elements is determined by his imputing to objects and phenomena the criteria and relevance for their admission to the constellation. He determines the relevance of particular elements in their “isolated” state, arguing simultaneously that “philosophy must learn to renounce the question of totality” (Adorno 2000a: 32). This is evident in the fragment “Man and Animals”. In Marxist and Hegelian dialectics, isolation is only a momentary possibility. This was never a simple notion of the interrelation or interconnection of things, but of the linkages provided by determinants, contradiction, sublation, and partial resolution at a higher level. The rejection of totality, ignoring the explicit significance of determinate relations follows hand-in-hand with Adorno’s crucial distancing of his program from the social: “the truth content is in principle different from the historical and psychological conditions out of which it grows” (2000a: 33). If there is no such connection, it is hardly possible that this vague materialism could be seen as even a precursor to taking up Marx’s more ­fully-developed method. Nor is it possible to see this as more than a fundamentally subjective approach. But at that point in the essay Adorno was questioning the possible resolution of the thing-in-itself problem using the commodity structure as his example. Kant’s thing-in-itself fundamentally neutralized efforts to investigate and analyse it with the claim that it cannot be known to us (Kant 2007: 23–24). Adorno, then, asserts the misdirection of Lukács’ attempted resolution to the problem when he sought to show “that somehow the

72

chapter three

social conditions might be revealed under which the thing-in-itself problem came into existence” (2000a: 33).3 In this regard, Buck-Morss acknowledges the influence of Husserl on Adorno’s method (1977: 96). Although not citing Adorno, Lukács points to the consequences of an approach without the depth and intensity of relations. “The relation of the ideas to objective reality is disrupted … from that of concrete content, and a ‘method’ is created that blurs and indeed erases the distinction between true and false, necessary and arbitrary, real and merely imagined” (Lukács 1980: 483). Commenting specifically on Husserl’s method, Lukács states that it amounts to “nothing more than the subjectivist-idealist statement: it is my ideas which determine the essence of reality” (1980: 483). Marx’s method is a movement of concretization, the “ascent from the abstract to the concrete” (Ilyenkov 2008: 59–60 and passim.); that is, a concretization of abstract elements, abstractions of socio-historical reality that once concretized reveals totality. His method is detailed in the economic manuscripts in the section, “The Method of Political Economy” (Marx 1986a: 37–45). Through examples, beginning with ‘population,’ he outlines the process of analysis in which the value of several aspects of the method that are developed in contrast to that of earlier political economists. Of particular importance with respect to Adorno’s method of ­constellations is Marx’s emphasis on controlling abstractions via concretization, through the internal relations that inform the interactions of all components. By itself, each component remains an abstraction; the correlation of each through analysis results in the concrete concept of ‘population’. The movement of analysis is to locate all phenomena that are determinants of population that contain aspects or attributes of other phenomena – as a part of the internal relations of each – including population itself. Upon completion of this process population is concretized by the agglomeration of all phenomena through the internal relations discovered in the process of analysis. This process not only produces the concrete population but contributes to the concretization of each component as these are internally related to all other components culminating in population as concrete. All the components of population, then, cohere by way of their internal relations, because each and all are determinants of population. Marx’s principle in this process is that the “concrete is concrete because it is a synthesis of many determinants, thus a unity of the 3 Lukács’ attempt to work out this problem is found in the section, “The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought” of the chapter on reification in History and Class Consciousness (1971).



aspects of adorno’s method73

diverse … from abstract determination by way of thinking to the reproduction of the concrete” (1986a: 38). Unlike Adorno’s approach, Marx’s is a “summing up” of internal relations of each component that contains some of the attributes of components to which they are related (Ollman 1993: 37). The “course of abstract thinking,” Marx writes (1986a: 39), “which advances from the elementary to the combined corresponds to the actual historical process.” The relationship of thinking to the historical process gives priority to materialist, concrete analysis; in this way no social phenomena or combination could be understood immediately but only as it historically developed out of and in relation to other phenomena. While there is evidently a relationship among the components of Adorno’s constellations, they have been subjectively posited and this cannot bear a strong relation to those phenomena in Marx’s method that are dialectically and historically related. In the latter’s analyses there is no flash of an answer and no disappearing question. It is not possible to construct a simple comparison between Marx’s method and Adorno’s. The latter’s is neither a critique nor a develop­ ment  of Marx’s method. Referring to Adorno’s 1931 lecture, Buck-Morss (1977: 24) suggests that it is difficult to attribute to it a Marxist sense while affirming that it was “not Marxism.” However, his later discussion of constellations in Negative Dialectics does approach Marx’s method most ­significantly in his referencing of the history contained in objects making up the constellation, and the consciousness of that history “by a knowledge mindful of the historic positional value of the object in its relation to other objects…” (Adorno 1973: 163, see also 172). The processes that have contributed to the formation of the object become known when the object is understood in the constellation, implicitly acknowledging the neces­ sity of relations among the various elements. Although he maintains the notion of the constellation’s sudden burst of revealing knowledge, this will not occur by way of a single action but through the effect of a combination of contributing factors. If we use Marx’s method to address an implicit question of Adorno’s, What is the relation between human beings and animals? the analysis would look much different and the outcome more concrete. The root of Adorno’s comparison is that animals are not humans, animals do not possess the capacity to think, animals are subject to domination by humans; the result of these factors is that animals are unavoidably miserable in an environment populated also by the wilful terror of human beings. “Happy animals there are, but then how short-lived is their happiness! The life of

74

chapter three

an animal, unrelieved by the liberating influence of thought, is dreary and harsh” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 246–247). But even here Adorno does not take animals as they are with capacities relevant to their species and to the contexts in which they live without being dominated and exploited by human beings. Rather, the harsh and dreary lives is a consequence of having no capacity for thought, by which he means human thought; a false dichotomy. A Marxist analysis would begin with the essential differences between the two. Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion, or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. (Marx and Engels 1976a: 31)

A determinant of each, human and animal, is “physical organization” of the brain, its structure and capacity. Thought, which is Adorno’s basic distinction, plays a part, but for Marx and Engels it is not thought as such, but that capacity to construct in the imagination and physically produce tools external to their physical organization with which, as a consequence, humans produce their subsistence. Hegel’s plough is an example of this. Marx’s example of the architect and bee is a further qualifica­ tion  of the basic difference (Marx, 1967: 174), as is the human being’s ­initial “animal consciousness” toward nature as “a completely alien, ­all-­powerful, unassailable force” (Marx and Engels 1976a: 44). Humans produce their subsistence, animals find it or, in the case of domestic ­animals are given it. Additional determinants are the varied purposes that form relationships between humans and animals: the relationship that produces meat and hide; the relationship between a human and a greyhound that produces the comparatively short-lived muscularity designed to win race prizes; the relationship that produces domestic care, comfort and security for people and dogs or cats or horses without the domination and exploitation that govern the relationships in Adorno’s constellation. But within that constellation is the residual formalism constructed of the dominating structure of capitalism and its culture industry, and its entrapment that, for Adorno, must be overcome before the relation between humans and animals (as well as other relations) can contain a non-exploitative content. If the constellation of animals and humans is one of overwhelming domination by the latter, Adorno perpetuates it. We will see Adorno return to this idea in his essays on popular music, jazz and profascist



aspects of adorno’s method75

a­ gitation where the focus shifts from animals to the working class devoid of “the liberating influence of thought.” How did Benjamin employ the method he outlined in Origin? In addressing this question, the issue is not whether Adorno employed the method accurately as it was articulated by Benjamin, particularly since the method was of provisional status in the latter’s own work at the time though developed in other ways later. Rather it is the substantial ­differences between the two authors that are largely due to the respective intellectual sources and the purposes they brought to their individual projects. As Adorno would do, Benjamin (1998: 33) begins his The Origin of German Tragic Drama with a rejection of philosophical systems, “except where they are inspired in their basic outline by the constitution of the world of ideas”. Benjamin preferred philosophical contemplation based on constellations indirectly relating to or underlying an idea, exuding “the brilliance of the mosaic” (1998: 29), of fragments held together. Concepts, he argued, mediate the relations of phenomena and ideas as the latter are expressed through objects. Although not without qualification as to its limits (1998: 43), the method is inductive, gathering the multiplicity of ideas for representation (objects, phenomena) by criteria not fully explicit. Benjamin claimed Origin could be adequately read only by thorough knowledge of the Kabbalah. Sholem wondered about Benjamin’s rationale for this claim that was made to others but never to him despite his knowledge of Kabbalah texts. He suggested that the common understanding of the Kabbalah was its difficulty to decipher inner secrets and that Benjamin may have wanted to defend his method in the first chapter against “the reproach of [its] incomprehensibility” (Scholem 1981: 125).4 This may have been the case, but Scholem also acknowledges what Benjamin knew: the mysticism and revelation of mystery in the Kabbalah and its various interpretations (Scholem, 1998: 4–6 and passim). Thus, whether originally intended or not the Kabbalah model indirectly had its presence in Origin but the discussion of the “mysteries” was more materially based. Adorno, however, revelled in the power of the philosopher’s privileged knowledge upon which an even more privileged interpretation of inner secrets could be made; in his work, the riddle stood in the place of Benjamin’s Kabbalah mystery. 4 Sholem also points out that Benjamin may have modified a comment Sholem had made to students, “that in order to understand the Kaballah, nowadays one had to read Franz Kafka’s writings first, particularly The Trial” (Sholem 1981: 125).

76

chapter three

Beyond the introductory chapter, Origin is indeed more easily comprehensible. Adorno’s constellations, with their sudden, unexplained bursts of light differ from Benjamin’s analysis of the baroque tragic dramas. His approach was to focus on the allegories and their multiple elements as illustrative techniques of the dramas. Benjamin provides a clear historical and material context (though not, strictly speaking, the model of historical materialism) in which dialectics is evident in the relations he discusses: history, objects, convention, the dialectical relation of antimonies and that of written language and sound, and most importantly, the allegory as an object of knowledge. The secreted meanings drawn into the open are based on a theological orientation, though less apparent than in his essays on language of the same period (see for example, Benjamin 1996). For Benjamin, allegory is a schema of knowledge that does not emerge as a natural expression of an object or idea; rather, it is a cultural product of the allegorist’s comprehension and critique that intervenes in the power of the symbol that attempts to establish an unequivocal relation to the subject. If the object becomes allegorical under the gaze of melancholy, if melancholy causes life to flow out of it and it remains behind dead, but eternally secure, then it is exposed to the allegorist, it is unconditionally in his power. That is to say that it is now quite incapable of emanating any meaning or significance of its own; such significance as it has, it acquires from the allegorist. (Benjamin 1998, 183–184)

A passage in Adorno’s “Actuality” appears to be somewhat similar; in fact, he sets apart his philosopher from Benjamin’s allegorist. Historical images that form important aspects of Origin are, for Adorno, the “manipulation of conceptual material by philosophy” (2000a: 36). Produced by human beings, historical images are “legitimated in the last analysis alone by the fact that reality crystallizes about them in striking conclusiveness” but they are borne of “fantasy which abides strictly within the material which the sciences present to it, and reaches beyond them only in the smallest aspects of their arrangement: aspects, granted, which fantasy itself must originally generate” (2000a: 36–37). This is another example of a method and style intended to render knowledge opaque, to make it a privilege to access. Buck-Morss argues that this was Adorno’s attempt to give priority to the object and to avoid the absence of dialectics in subjective idealism and the inadequacies of “vulgar materialism”; but she is also aware of the difficulties of realizing such a program without distorting the object itself (1977: 90).



aspects of adorno’s method77

Adorno offers what is, in the end, no clear method. He continues from the passage, above: If the idea of philosophic interpretation … is valid, then it can be expressed as the demand to answer the questions of a pre-given reality each time, through a fantasy that rearranges the elements of the question without going beyond the circumference of the elements, the exactitude of which has its control in the disappearance of the question. (2000a, 37)

What are these elements? What is their spatial arrangement that gives them a circumference in which the fantasy can comfortably work? More­ over, how can this be compatible to any degree with a dialectics of the object? In Benjamin’s initial use of imagery, constellations are altered toward an ostensibly more materialist reading by Adorno in the 1931 lecture, but Benjamin also revised his use of them a decade after the Trauerspiel book, especially in “The Paris of the Second Empire,” which Adorno rejected as insufficiently mediated. The latter essay was constructed around images and constellations that had not only a more materialist grounding but also a stronger and more explicit basis in Marxist analysis. Benjamin’s initial use of constellations was clearly a product of the mind through his analogy of the “timeless constellations” of ideas in relation to objects and heavenly constellations (1998: 34) but later became more materialist and less theological. In Adorno’s hands the interpretation of the philosopher is fundamentally intuitive and subjective. While he claimed otherwise, his version of interpretation does not meet the threshold of an historical materialist analysis. A major part of this can be attributed to Adorno’s style; he understands the images and constellations he creates; he believes them to be self-explanatory if one follows fully his construction and if one takes as given the assumptions drawn from his interpretation. Adorno’s Bilderverbot and the Negation of Messianism Constellations are only one use of images in Adorno’s work. Images can provide us with a mental image obviously, or a physical layout in the imagination of a social condition or problem. But the onus is on those who ‘imagine’ or ‘project’ in this sense to provide an explication of the image from root to material actuality of a condition or problem. Another example of Adorno’s images is the curiosity that appears in a few instances within his writings that advances his dissuasion from

78

chapter three

­ ossible concrete action. This is the backward reach to a prohibition on p images and has been taken up by several commentators. Bilderverbot is the German word for the English, aniconism, the biblical ban on idolatrous images or images of false gods. Adorno took some licence with this metaphor and others have taken additional liberty with his use of it. He does not employ Bilderverbot in strictly religious terms, its origins in Judaism or its adoption into Christianity and Islam, but in terms that are theological, including the claims of negative theology. The manner in which he appropriates such images – more to the point, the image of such images – exposes his use of Bilderverbot as a denial – the banned image – of a possible alternative. If Pritchard’s argument is accepted that Adorno’s use of the Bilderverbot is the “reality of ‘damaged life’” and the “revelation of fallen reality” (2002: 295), then the metaphor is an effective denial of an important development out of late nineteenth-century Judaism, secular messianism. While Adorno and others refer to Bilderverbot as the ban on images, more than one commentator has erroneously called it a ban on the naming of God. In the first instance, the Torah demands no outright ban on images, only those deemed to be in denial of God and, thus, for purposes of idolatry – false gods, craven images (Exodus 20: 4–5; 34: 14, 17); it is a ban on any alternative to the one God.5 The Torah’s ban on images is specified and limited. As to the ban on naming, the voice answering Moses’ question on Mt.  Sinai merely refused to give a name by which the deity could be defined (Exodus 3: 13–15). Being defined and having one’s attributes known “in the biblical world implied some measure of control over the person”; the attributes of God, according to Philo and much later Maimonides, could only be stated in the negative (Magonet 1998: 13; Sandmel 1979: 93; Biale 2011). This is consistent with Adorno’s argument about the inadequacy of concepts and the potential entrapment by their definitions. But, given the many substitutes for the name of God (YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Adonai, ha-Shem) among the religious, the ‘ban’ is limited in effect.6 Thus, Jay’s claim that it is “the Jewish taboo against uttering the sacred” (1973: 262, 263) is quite a narrowly defined ban, linguistically and traditionally; a taboo that hardly defines 5 Despite the commandment, the idea of a single God in Judaism was not established until several centuries later with the canonization of the Torah. See Arnold 1995: 49–50; Magonet 1998: 15–18. 6 This may have been the first instance of the well-known custom among Orthodox Jews to find ways of circumventing Sabbath laws. See Dundes 2002; Ettinger 2009.



aspects of adorno’s method79

Jews as a whole. Nor can Horkheimer’s claim that philosophy intends to organize language so that “all things are called by their right names” be legitimately linked even indirectly to this ban (Horkheimer 1974a: 179; Jay 1973: 262), or his inexplicable claim that an essential relation between idealism and Jewish thought was the “impossibility of giving a name to the Divine” (Horkheimer 1974b: 113). Finlayson points out Adorno’s assertion that the ban has been exacerbated. The latter states that “Once upon a time the image ban extended to pronouncing the name…” (1973: 401–402); however, both ‘bans’ purportedly occurred in the same historical moment which, according to the stories of the Jewish bible is not consistent with the history of one god, as noted above. Finlayson’s reading of Exodus 20: 7 contributes to the confusion by suggesting that the ban on pronouncing the name of God is found there when that verse actually prohibits the taking of the name in vain; that is, showing a lack of respect.7 Jay argues that Horkheimer and Adorno are not approaching this issue in theological terms; nevertheless the claims that he and others make imply a connection to religious elements of Judaism that are limited in scope and do not consider the secular alternative that informed so many struggles for social change beginning in the late 19th century. If the ban is sustained beyond images affirming or opposing religious representation and theological explanation, i.e. into the 20th century and beyond, then of what does the concept, or image, consist? In other words, can the ban be meaningfully extended to a form or picture, and if so is it limited to God, an idol, or extended to a future orientation? Or, given the claims about the ban, is it all these rather indiscriminately treated as a singular truth? Pritchard notes that for some readers of Adorno’s statements it was a theological matter, negatively so; for others, including other critical theorists, Adorno’s ‘allegiance’ to the ban “undermines any contribution [to] emancipatory praxis” (Pritchard 2002: 291–292). Adorno’s oft-quoted statement upholding the Bilderverbot is as follows: The materialist longing to grasp the thing aims at the opposite: it is only in the absence of images that the full object could be conceived. Such absence concurs with the theological ban on images. Materialism brought that ban into secular form by not permitting Utopia to be positively pictured; this is 7 Both the King James version and the Masoretic Text used for the 1917 Jewish Publication Society Hebrew bible limit Exodus 20: 7 to that meaning of the commandment. However, the New English Bible cites making “wrong use of the name” and those who “misuse his name” as violations of the commandment.

80

chapter three the substance of its negativity. (Adorno 1973, 207; see also Pritchard 2002: 291; Finlayson 2012: 26;8 Comay 1997: 55)

This remark is preceded by a concern for the relation of theory and practice, and the object of theory in relation to knowledge. At issue for Adorno, as we have noted, is the problem of the unity of theory and practice; what is not at issue for him is the relation between the two as a mediating one. “The object of theory is not something immediate…” (Adorno 1973: 206), thus it is not immediately either an image of God, theologically speaking, nor the projection toward a secular utopia – the object of “emancipatory praxis”. Such mediation that would emerge from the relation of theory and practice would not be intended to “carry home a replica” (1973: 206) of the object of theory, that would be too mechanical and too immediate. But the ‘negativity’ that Adorno attributes to materialism in this instance is not an absence of an image or a projection of possible of utopias. The absence, rather, is Adorno’s unwillingness to conceive of the image or the picture in terms other than the absolute, the finality of the construction of utopia. In other words, it is his unwillingness to see it in the same way he conceives of the inability of concepts to fully or adequately, for more than a moment, cover the dynamic substance and relation of things. Pritchard argues that, in fact, this is the orientation of Adorno, but it remains a theological orientation, an end of emancipatory praxis, not one that is open to the contingencies that mediate what is not yet complete. Thus, her argument does not hold that Adorno’s view of the ban is directed at “the social reality that begs close scrutiny and careful correction” (Pritchard 2002: 301), especially premised on the rather static account that things have an “excessive character”; rather, things are dynamic, they do not hold still and are not to be held motionless, that is the meaning Adorno cites as the problem of concepts that he does not extend to other domains. Adorno concedes that the ban goes beyond pronunciation of the name. The ban allows him an avenue to despair: the ban has been extended against hope: “the mere thought of hope is a transgression against it, an act of working against it” (1973: 402). But this remark is still within the realm of the theological, extending it, illegitimately, to the secular – the hope of something new, something changed, something imagined and worked toward enaction – utopia. Finlayson suggests that Adorno’s “austere negativism” is based on two claims, that there are no possible “vestiges of the good, of utopia, or right 8 Finlayson’s is a slightly different translation than that in Ashton’s translation of Negative Dialectics.



aspects of adorno’s method81

living”, and existing conditions make “a reliable conception of the right life” impossible (2012: 5). He suggests that the last of these claims is linked to Adorno’s view of the ban on images; both, in fact, appear to have that connection. Notwithstanding the remarks on theology, above, Finlayson is correct that much of the literature on Adorno’s views of the ban place too great an emphasis on the religious element (2012: 8). I have suggested that the adherence to the ban, directly or through metaphor, is a denial of the Messianic strain in Judaism, especially its secular manifestation. Although not limiting critique and change to political activism alone, Horkheimer’s intention was that critical theory be broader and more intense than the exposure of bourgeois culture since “understanding the negativity and relativity of the existing culture does not imply that the possession of such knowledge constitutes, in itself, the overcoming of this historical situation” (1974a: 183). Although the last part of this statement held in critical theory, much of it, especially in Adorno’s work, revolved around the possession of a perspective on existing cultural problems. Thus, the ‘damaged life’, ‘fallen reality’ limitations on language became the concentration. Implications that Adorno’s approach had strains of Jewish philosophical and historical experience might be sustainable if these were less selective and, fundamentally, less arbitrary. Rabinbach (1985: 82) refers to modern Jewish Messianism as a phenomenon that “is a Jewishness without Judaism”. Benjamin, Bloch, Lukács, and others claimed affinity to some secular version of Messianism in more or less revolutionary form. But long before them, secular messianism (in versions of more or less adherence to Judaism) had taken hold among European and Russian Jews. Not every socialist organization can be said to be guided by this orientation, but many of their members or would-be members were moved by the Haskala beginning in the late 18th century in the same period as gradual emancipation in Germany began up to the moment of its formalization in the early 1870s;9 notably, this period of a century also included the development of Reform Judaism that emphasized Jewish tradition and its moral content. This was a period of growing anti-Semitism on the one hand and, on the other, developing consciousness of the place of Jews in European society and the expectation that greater possibilities could be won. Weisberger (1997) has argued that European Jews not only embraced the idea of socialism as a political option in the post-emancipation period, but also saw it as an ethical 9 See Goldfarb (2009) for a broader discussion of the process and consequences of emancipation.

82

chapter three

choice as the process of secularization became an alternative to traditional Judaism. Within this movement, the idea of messianism emerged as a legitimate secular idea because of its place in traditional Judaism and because it “is inherently volatile and can produce profound political reverberations” (Weisberger 1997: 115). For a Jew (Adorno had limited connection to Judaism10) who proclaimed a socialist orientation or anyone informed by messianic principles (these might be the same) how is it possible to have a future orientation limited by constraints on its communication and imagination? The language of the image ban – for Adorno and others, including contemporary commentators – appears to be none other than the ban on what moves the imagination of utopians, for whom its realization is possible but beyond any feasibly foreseeable future. The difficulty is the extent and legitimacy of the extrapolation from Jewish traditions to critical theorists’ visions or assertions that would correspond with either the earthly future or the hereafter that reflects its principles back on the present seated in a future prospect. I have noted the ban on naming God which is not a real ban at all, given the various circumventions of it and the temporal distance from the purported ban to the point at which Judaism established the only-one-god principle of its faith. Further, any orientation of future conditions or possibilities drawn from that historical period cannot claim any notion of afterlife, or the hereafter – for Judaism at that time gave priority to the earthly existence, the problems and possible resolutions, not to what might be beyond this life (Telushkin 2010, 186–189). Certainly Jewish secularism, messianic or not, gives priority to this-worldly actions and prospects. The point is that what has been portrayed as a perspective informed by historico-religious practices has been illegitimately appropriated to ban secular models of action that would reveal and settle the future.

10 Adorno was born to a Catholic mother and a fully assimilated father of Jewish background. He was baptized Catholic and later confirmed as a Protestant but maintained atheism in his adult life except for a brief flirtation with Catholicism. After the fate of Jews began to be known in the early years of the war, Adorno wrote that he could no longer separate himself from that fate (Claussen 2008: 267).

CHAPTER FOUR

JAZZ, RADIO AND THE MASSES In 1930 when the Nazi Party assumed power in the German state of Thuringia an ordinance was imposed that Adorno considered “a new legal situation” (2002a: 496). The ordinance was directed “against ‘Negro culture’ … prohibiting ‘jazz band and drum music, Negro dances, Negro songs, Negro plays’” (Kater 1992: 24). The legal precedent was significant for Adorno because its substance reflected the cultural correctness of the law, “a drastic verdict that was long ago decided in fact: the end of jazz music itself. For no matter what one wishes to understand about white or Negro jazz, there is nothing to salvage” (Adorno 2002a: 496). Whatever suspicions Adorno may have had of National Socialism at the time, at least the fascists’ legislative efforts against jazz could be affirmed as an appropriate decision. The “clever art composers” will have to find another means of developing music, Adorno (2002a: 496) continued, “but in the surviving clubs the last interjected false bar [Scheintatk], the last muted trumpet, if not unheard, will soon die away without a shock”. Claussen (2008, 195) merely states that “Adorno reacted to the Nazi ban on ‘Negro jazz’ in 1933” with the essay “Farewell to Jazz”, failing to note that it was an affirmative reaction wholly agreeing with a ban on a particular kind of music associated with an historically oppressed group of people. Adorno (2002b: 485) attempted to soften his initial response a few years later suggesting that the Nazi ban, though “powerless,” had more to do with “the surface tendency to reach back to pre-capitalist, feudal forms of immediacy and to call these socialism”. This makes little sense because at one stroke it nullifies his argument relating jazz and military march music and displaces the rise of jazz in its various forms from its development in the period of the consolidation of capitalism from the late 19th century. In this chapter I focus on aspects of Adorno’s views of the masses evident in his discussion of jazz, popular music and radio. His views not only place the masses in a position of subordination to the culture industry but assign to them significant responsibility for their own social condition of subordination and the reproduction of capitalism that was the source of their oppression. From his point of view they did this willingly, in large measure to satisfy their pathological needs. In both the jazz and anti-fascist

84

chapter four

essays (discussed in the following chapter) Adorno accomplishes this through a style that rests on assumptions that require, in his view, little explanation; it is a categorical language that relies on, as we have noted, Adorno’s “antithetical concept pairs” (Buck-Morss 1977: 59). The style and language of this work are legitimized behind the barricade of theory against which practice, in Adorno’s view, can make few, if any, substantive inroads. Once paired with practice, theory becomes subordinate to it. Beginning in the late 19th century, and certainly after World War I, the relatively greater availability of free time, in no small measure a result of technological development, encouraged the growth of an entertainment sector, broadly-based and varied in content. It is here that the popular music once limited to collective social activity by specific customs and use, as well as technological conditions, took on the characteristics of commodities: utility and a value-form, characteristics fully realized in the context of exchange relations (Marx 1967: 54) in the growing consumer society. But much of what made up or was incorporated into that sector had its roots in popular culture, some of which, especially prior to World War I, drifted into the petty mode or small commodity production with little exchange of commodities to produce surplus-value and little need for it. Everything Adorno wrote about popular music and jazz must be understood within the frame of one focus of his work, ‘the culture industry.’ This concept was intended to serve as the most adequate expression of contemporary capitalism, an abstraction of the complex of production relations. Adorno’s use of ‘culture industries’, however, often became the conceptual cover for, and consequently the inadequate expression of the internal relations of capitalism. An historical frame and a clearly articulated process of development for Adorno’s conception of the culture industry were not aspects of his work on that issue. We have noted Horkheimer’s comment (in Claussen 2008) as to his intention for the chapter on the culture industry in Dialectic of Enlightenment, an unfulfilled intention for the whole chapter buried the concreteness of historical materialism and failed to address the contradictions of capitalism to which he alluded. But, most importantly for the present discussion, the culture industry as a concept served Adorno as the sufficient basis for analyzing the masses which he had otherwise avoided by hiding his message in a bottle. As Horkheimer and Adorno (1982: 132) initially defined it, the culture industry was produced out of “the general laws of capitalism” and its best examples were located in the developed market of “liberal industrial



jazz, radio and the masses85

nations.” It was an industry mis-named as entertainment; it was, rather, nothing more than business arrangements to defend the existing social order. Vagueness, repetition, monotony, reliance on the facts of the existing “world as such” were standard elements of the culture industry (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 136, 144, 147–148). The culture industry smothered creativity, disallowed meaningful dissent by turning both creativity and opposition into saleable commodities. No one escapes. The grip of the culture industry obscures boundaries that would otherwise identify the contradictions and oppositional forces that have developed in capitalist relations but which are absent in Adorno’s ahistorical account. He and Horkheimer attest to the lack of opposition through incorporation into the mainstream of existing institutions and ideology. [C]ulture now impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio, magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part. Even the aesthetic activism of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of the iron system. (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 120).

Radio, film and later astrology columns and television all reflect the prevailing order and the need for conformity, or exhibit the utter destructiveness of new technology. Adorno might well have respected Benjamin’s opening paragraph in his essay on art and mechanical reproduction in which he alluded to Marx’s method that showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. What could be expected, it emerged, was not only an increasingly harsh exploitation of the proletariat but, ultimately, the creation of conditions which would make it possible for capitalism to abolish itself. (Benjamin 2003b: 251)

One can find elements of truth in many of the statements made about the culture industry, but they do not constitute a substantive historical materialist analysis. In Dialectic of Enlightenment the analysis comes in the form of statements that are categorical, characterized by an often impenetrable, dogmatic style, and free of the encumbrances of complex socio-historical relations. Aspects of the argument within that text convey the liberating or disempowering function of the culture transformed by the Enlightenment, often alluding to both. For example, “Every progress made by civilization has renewed together with domination that prospect of its removal” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 40; see also xiii) expresses the kernel of truth within the dialectic but also begs for further historical analysis to demonstrate its veracity. Regardless of the aims of Enlightenment, such as

86

chapter four

knowledge, freedom, security, peace (Sherratt 1999: 36) it is “harnessed to the dominant mode of production” just as in antiquity it was harnessed to the household economy (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 93, 60–61). It is not a relation that implies possible elasticity or anomalous but allied relation between culture and economy; the meaning for him is, rather, that culture is yoked to a wagon and utterly controlled by the muleskinner of capitalism. Under these circumstances, capitalism and culture have no relationship except the categorical determination of the latter by capitalism and the unnavigable space between categories they nevertheless share. Besides some esoteric and ultimately subjective interpretation, what does it mean, for example, in Adorno’s later reconsideration of the culture industry, to suggest that the color film with which “the genial old tavern” is represented is actually more destructive than bombs could ever be?1 There are also missed opportunities. Why remind the reader, for example, that culture “in the true sense … raised a protest against the petrified relations” (Adorno 1991b: 86, 89) and not explore this potential of culture, not to mention an explication of culture’s “true sense.” The Masses and the Culture Industries Although the technical issues he raises are not to be dismissed, Adorno’s essays on jazz and popular music are aimed at the psychological, cognitive and emotional condition of its audiences. While ostensibly directed toward the working class the responses of other strata are effectively treated in the same way. The perspective I take here is that, regardless of appearances otherwise, Adorno’s ostensible focus on capitalism and its culture industries, although obvious elements of the constellation he creates, actually gives way to his preoccupation with those sectors of the population he believes incapable and uninterested in engaging in negative thought. For Adorno, the way in which the masses appropriate jazz and popular music is a manifestation of their alienation and subservience. What or who are ‘the masses’ to Adorno? He alludes to only minor distinctions in class when applying this term in reference to the audiences of jazz and popular music. Because of the absence of specifics, ‘the masses,’ like ‘mass’ used generically, becomes an undifferentiated generalization with respect to status, attitudes, frustrations and group adherence. The 1 Kracauer commented on the use of color in his Theory of Film, describing it as a weakening effect and alluding to the normality of black and white (1997: xlvii).



jazz, radio and the masses87

terms ‘mass’ and ‘masses’ have had more positive or politically affirmative meanings than pejorative ones; the former have been associated with the political and labor left over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Marx and Engels contrasted ‘mass’ – “the great mass of the proletariat” – with “the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties” (1976b: 497); this phrasing alludes to the internal relation of the two and the potential dialectical development from mass to Lenin’s vanguard. One also thinks of The Masses, one of the most important political and cultural publications of the early 20th century left in America (1911–1917); one thinks also of the innumerable calls to revolt in the factory or the street that referenced not an undifferentiated glob but a collective force of frustration, alienation and commitment moving in a new direction – a mass, more voluminous and heavier than a clique or an elite. But ‘the masses’ as often used by upper classes also referred to the unwashed, uneducated crowd transformed by a shout into an uncontrollable mob. The term is a political one regardless of the perspective from which it is employed. Hence, the term could well be used in the way Adorno does without violating one of its historical connotations; but if there is a prior need, as in the case of the jazz essays, to precede its use with sociological characteristics and qualities, it will have quite another meaning. Without such an intervention, the reader has little choice but to assume that all who might fall into the most prevalent definition of the masses will be tarred with the same disparaging brush. Adorno’s use of ‘masses’ is a way of collapsing all social classes below the level of the bourgeois class into a single field. The working class, perhaps the middle, lower-middle classes, the lumpenproletariat (this is not clear), are the targets of these components of capitalist development and, for Adorno, these are the social groups most willing to exchange their human potential for material goods and the momentary illusion of happy alienation. Thus, implicitly the term is used in its standard lexical sense of “a coherent body of matter” (Oxford). Masses cohere because of the similarity of the substance of each particle, melding, thus adhering to the similar construction of particles on all sides and, therefore, losing the particularities of any individual adherent. A mass has no shape except that which is thrown onto the potter’s wheel, rubbed, squeezed and thumbed until the shape has satisfied the potter. But, finally, with respect to Adorno’s orientation to dialectics, ‘the masses’, as he uses the term, violates his view of concepts in general in the sense, as he rightly argues, something always remains after the definition, or that once a concept is defined it is necessary to discover what it “covers” (2000a: 32; 1973: 153–154).

88

chapter four

The masses, degraded by their own complicity in ‘massification’ have nothing remaining after being herded into the pen. Not surprisingly, the masses are treated differently by some of Adorno’s associates during the period of most of the essays on jazz, albeit while sharing some of his criticisms. Most significantly is Kracauer’s discussion of the masses with respect to cultural activities, particularly the essays on film on the late 1920s, and in aspects of The Salaried Masses. In the film essays the masses manifest the characteristics and pre-occupations of alienated beings, moved and shaped by the immediate externalities of cultural innovations, technological and architectural façades. If they looked backward from Berlin, for example, the masses might recognize a heritage they refused to accept any longer, a refusal prompted and legitimized by the economic changes that left the provinces behind (Kracauer 1995b: 325). They accepted as culturally attractive the ‘rubbish’ the upper class left them when they tired of it (1995b: 324), perhaps the basis of Adorno’s denigration of the democratization of jazz, as we will see below. Kracauer continues this line of criticism in other essays, such as “Little Shop Girls go to the Movies” and “Film 1928”. But a crucial difference from Adorno’s work is Kracauer’s dialectical approach to the problem he addresses as, at once, a cultural and a political problem. The distraction of the movie palaces, the films, the revues, and so on, is not treated as the inalterable goal of capitalism’s culture industries. Rather, Kracauer accepts the dialectical necessity of this distraction, for it is the externalizing of the masses’ reality and, as such, “discloses” distraction as the “disorder of society,” that is essential for sustaining that alienation. Here, in pure externality, the audience encounters itself; its own reality is revealed in the fragmented sequence of splendid impressions. Were this reality to remain hidden from the viewers, they could neither attack nor change it; its disclosure in distraction is therefore of moral significance. (1995b, 326)

Kracauer had earlier noted the marginal subversiveness of some films, although neutralized by critics giving priority to innovation and aesthetics in, for example, Potemkin (1995a: 291). Hence, the masses have, potentially, another side to their acquiescence to being shaped by outside forces. It is this recognition that imputes to the masses a consciousness of its own and lends Kracauer’s conception of them a meaning more clearly associated with the political connotation given to the term, ‘the masses’. We will return to others’ conceptions and implications of the masses in the following chapter.



jazz, radio and the masses89 The Jazz Essays

Eric Hobsbawm referred to Adorno’s writings on jazz as “Some of the stupidest pages ever written about jazz” (qu. in Witkin 2000: 145). Robinson has countered with apologetics for Adorno’s perspective. “Adorno could not have known that when he took up his pen to polemicise against jazz he was writing about a specifically German brand of music,” and this can be assumed because Adorno “will be treated [in Robinson’s article] not as a socio-cultural theorist but as an astute observer of the popular music of his time” (Robinson 1994: 1). He also argues that Adorno’s essays can only be understood in the Weimar context, despite his emigration and subsequent jazz writings. This begs the question as to his motivation for support of the Nazi law against Negro music, not simply the general category of jazz. Adorno’s jazz essays were written over a twenty year period (1933–1953) when not only were there changes in jazz and popular music, but equally important there were significant changes in his location, from Germany to England to America and back to Germany, and the corresponding opportunities to comprehend jazz in different cultural contexts with their respective historical determinants. Robinson discusses the rather stunted development of jazz in Germany, the substance of which, he suggests, was the motivation for Adorno’s initial, negative reaction. But he also notes that Adorno’s exposure to the more wide-ranging jazz in the U.S. did not cause him to revise his views, even when he was able to assess the genre in its original milieu and to take advantage of comprehensive histories of jazz as he did in reviewing two books on the topic (Adorno, 1941: 167–178; Robinson 1994: 2–4). Witkin (2000: 147) makes a similar point that Adorno’s period in Oxford, where he could have been exposed to a variety of jazz, caused no revision or modification of in his views. Gracyk (1992: 533) notes how resistant Adorno was to alternative knowledge, especially with respect to jazz composition whether involving musical technicalities or empirical evidence concerning its socio-historical context. The absence of an historical element in virtually all of Adorno’s work also deprived him of an adequate basis for understanding the relationship of jazz not only to European but to African music as had the German musicologist Erich M. von Hornbostel in the mid-1920s (Herskovits 1958: 262–263). Notwithstanding the general adequacy of Hobsbawm’s verdict, Adorno’s view of jazz requires more than dismissal for it is indicative of much deeper issues, the most important of which are the problems of method and his undialectical approach to cultural analysis. Adorno’s

90

chapter four

approach must be taken seriously if only as a means of emphasizing the necessary components of historical materialist analysis that are absent or inadequately represented in his jazz essays. Historical context and material evidence is the place to begin. Robinson discusses the context of jazz in Germany in the period immediately after the First World War, noting the absence of American performers until the mid-1920s. He argues that German jazz musicians had to rely on their own “commercial traditions, upon which they imposed vague notions as to the actual sound and nature of the fabled music from America” (Robinson 1995: 4). The economic climate, at least, diminished the possibility of a substantive musical exchange during that period. However, Rainer Lotz has discussed the much longer exposure of Europeans, Germans in particular, to the music of African Americans. Although performing primarily ‘coon songs’ and cake walks, Germany at the end of the 19th century was a place for black entertainers from the U.S. as well as a destination for early sound recordings of black music made in the 1890s (Lotz 2007: 75–85; see also Southern 1983: 304–305). The rags of Scott Joplin, which certainly go beyond coon songs and cakewalks, were among the music performed and recorded on metal discs up to World War I. Lotz (2007: 73) argues that “Europeans had been exposed to black music and even knew how to perform and arrange it for mechanical music before the end of the nineteenth century”. Thus, if German musicians had to rely on their own commercial music some of that was likely the black-influenced music of the late 19th century and the jazz of African Americans of the early 20th. Most certainly, by the time Adorno wrote his first jazz essays the field had changed considerably, including the introduction of march-influenced music. But if Adorno knew more of the history of jazz than his essays indicated, he was more influenced by the immediate presence and perceived problems of a few specific forms which did no justice to the wider field of the music and those who played it. American, British and Canadian musicians were playing extensively in Germany from the mid-1920s and included bands playing ‘symphonic jazz,’ dance bands, purist jazz artists performing New Orleans or Chicagostyle jazz, including those whose reputations were well-established and would continue to grow, such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong (Kater 1992: 6–11). Variations of jazz were played in Germany in the late 1920s and early 30s, including indigenous variations very likely to have been one target of Adorno’s dislike, the type of music related to American ‘nut jazz’ centering on drum noise and musical distortion that was



jazz, radio and the masses91

intended to be humorous rather than a serious representation of the genre (Kater 1992: 14). Another likely object of Adorno’s criticism, implied by his comment about “jazz being stabilized as a pedagogical means of ‘rhythmic education’” (2002a: 496), was the inclusion of jazz in Leipzig’s Karl Marx primary school in 1932 and the earlier development of an academic jazz class at the Hoch’she Konservatorium in Frankfurt under the directorship of Adorno’s former teacher Bernhard Sekles (Kater 1992: 17). But ultimately, for Adorno, jazz was nothing other than the music of fascism (Robinson 1994: 20–21; Adorno 2002b: 485). For someone who considered this music to be ‘static’ (Adorno 1981: 121; 1991a: 30; Gracyk 1992: 534), his views of jazz are themselves reified in standard Adorno-trope. His attitude toward the genre was personal bias combined with wilful ignorance. His writings on the topic are notorious for their absence of concrete and thoroughly analyzed examples, and for their lack of historical contextualization. The purpose of these writings was not confined to disparaging a form of music but was in tended to demonstrate the total acquiescence of its practitioners and consumers to the dominance of the culture industry, an acquiescence that facilitated its reproduction and further entrenchment as a commodity. Prior to the essays specifically devoted to jazz, Adorno produced an essay more comprehensive in its coverage of music, both as form and style, and in terms of technical characteristics. Parts of “On the Social Situation of Music,” published in 1932, evidence his early but unsustained approach to historical materialism. In this essay there is a clear contextualization of music’s social conditions and an acknowledgement that in the interaction between music and social theory both have an “obligation … to reach out beyond the current consciousness of the masses” (2002d: 393, 394). As with any art form, then, music can be seen as a vehicle advancing the mental outlook, the social awareness of a group. Contrary to his later, more inflexible view of social change Adorno’s attitude in this essay is consistent with a genuinely Marxist approach in that the role of music is not merely to become more widespread, politically or otherwise, as ‘use’ music, one form of music’s commodification, but by developing “in agreement with the state of social theory – all those elements whose objective is the overcoming of class domination” (2002d: 394). Music that lacked awareness of socio-historical knowledge could not make this contribution to social change; its situation could only change with the change of society (Adorno 2002d: 393) thus reinforcing not only the relation between art and social theory, but affirming, with reservations, the necessary connection between theory and practice.

92

chapter four

In his review of Walter Hobson’s American Jazz Music, Adorno cites the author’s discussion of the “language of jazz,” remarking that these claims are made “without any attempt at an historical or pragmatic analysis of its elements” (1941: 167). This may be an accurate criticism but hardly distinguishes Hobson’s method from Adorno’s regular practice of ignoring or subordinating historical factors. For example, in the opening of his 1941 essay, “On Popular Music,” he alludes to the difference between ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music, “a difference of levels considered so well defined that most people regard the values within them as totally independent of one another.” These different levels require clarification, Adorno admits, but he rejects “an historical analysis of the division as it occurred in music production and of the roots of the two main spheres.” While he qualifies circumventing an historical method as one that would necessitate examining differences in both European and American contexts, it is precisely this approach that could have provided the material he was lacking in his understanding of popular music and jazz. Since he was concerned only “with the actual function of popular music in its present status” the convenient dichotomy of ‘popular’ and ‘serious’ was unreflectively retained (Adorno 2002c: 437). Without detailing every aspect of Adorno’s criticism it is more advisable at this point to provide a series of hypotheses derived from his essays followed by a fuller discussion of aspects of Adorno’s work in this area. (This discussion excludes the important issue of black or Negro contributions to jazz which will be treated in a separate section.) In what follows, there is a loose categorization of elements of his view of jazz and popular music that, as noted in chapter one, constitute an example zof Adorno’s method of immanent critique. Buck-Morss (1977: 154) noted that “Adorno made the characteristics of fetishism, reification and exchange visible ‘inside’ the phenomenon of listening to music”. I would argue that this is a superficial visibility, more precisely, an immediate visibility of characteristics that is neither developed nor analyzed giving the attribution of immanent critique, in this case, an unsteady claim to veracity. a) Jazz and popular music are commodities because, as noted above, they arise from “the general laws of capitalism” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 132). b) Regardless of its apparent expression of free music, looseness, innovation, improvisation, etc., jazz music is standardized by the requirements of the capitalist marketplace (Adorno, 1991a: 43; 2002a: 496;



jazz, radio and the masses93

2002c: 438, 440, 445), the demands of its audience taken in by the pseudo-individuation of the experience of jazz (1981: 126; 1991a: 31); despite appearances, there is no actual variety (2002c: 499; 1981: 123, 124). c) The standardization that negates free expression in jazz, (b) above, commands the obedience of the masses (1991a: 42; 2002c: 460–461) in listening (2002c: 442; 1991a: 41) and behavior (1981: 126; 2002c: 455), even though the masses fail to comprehend the music (1981: 128; 2002c, 444) which, at best, serves only as a diversion (2002c: 458) and a partial satisfaction of their base instincts and drives (2002b: 490). d) Obedience, (c), is made possible by the total subjection of the masses: their passivity (2002c: 465–466; 1991a: 30), their need for psychological adjustment (2002c: 460; 1981: 131) their unreflective identification with bits of music (2002c: 455), industry stars (1981: 128) and a willingness to be manipulated (2002b: 474; 2002c: 442–443). e) The masses accept their subjection, (d), because they relish their role as customers (2002c: 458) possessing a tune as their personal property (1981: 33–36; 2002a: 497) and having acquiesced to the notion that any possible revolt only entraps them further in existing social relations (1981: 46). As a list of components of Adorno’s essays, stated here as hypotheses, this is incomplete. But if these are treated as experimental elements of a constellation they will, upon agglomerating in some configuration, flash Adorno’s conclusion. (a) Commodities For the moment in which he wrote and thereafter it is possible to understand but not completely accept a basic point of Adorno’s that jazz is a commodity in the strict sense: its suitability for use permeates its production in terms none other than its marketability…. It is subordinate to the laws and also the arbitrary nature of the market, as well as the distribution of its competition or even its followers. (Adorno 2002b: 473)

Through the music of Tin Pan Alley, dance music, the popular song on the screen, and the technical distribution of music on vinyl, tape and eventually digital, it remains a commodity. That the popular use of the music that pre-dated but informed jazz generally escaped commodification ‘in the strict sense’ that he implies is not of concern to Adorno, an issue to which we return below.

94

chapter four

A key statement in “On Jazz”2 relating the problem of alienation to standardization asserts that “the use value of jazz does not sublate alienation, but intensifies it” (2002b: 473). The use-value of objects is almost always directed toward immediacy, although not necessarily in a temporally proximal sense, but in the sense that use implies a value to the subject in existing conditions and relations. Hence, when Adorno states that “the immediacy of its use [is] not merely in addition to but also within the work process itself” (2002b: 473), he makes an important assertion. This unity is created for particular circumstances of music: listening, dancing, film and other entertainment. Adorno repeatedly cites the music industry in terms of the production of commodities (1941: 167; 1981: 124; 2002b: 477, 478; 2002c: 454, 456; 2002d: 391; Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 160) but, as often, he is caught up in the problem of immediacy. The immediacy of use “within the work process itself” is directed to musicians as the producers of the commodity, jazz. But an object is not a commodity until it is exchanged (Marx 1967: 48). The production of music, in the club, cabaret or recording studio, is an object of exchange, not for kind but for the “universal equivalent” (Marx 1967: 90), money: the ticket sold at the door before the performance begins, the royalty received beyond the time of the recording session, and so on. The immediacy of use implies the immediate using up of the object, music as it is heard and danced to; this is his perception of the character of the commodity, jazz, not a statement of its commodity value. Value acquired through the medium of exchange is expressed in objects deemed to be equivalent: labor, value and ultimately, exchange value. One of Marx’s initial characteristics of a commodity is its embodied labour. “Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time” (Marx 1967: 97). The internal relations of production denote a process that leads to money-value, the exchange of goods for money, but it begins in the social production, labour, of the object. Having reached the point of exchange for money deepens the significance, the meaning, of the commodity in the exchange relation. As we will see in chapter seven, the masses, according to Adorno, are blinded by equivalence, and the value of this insight – via Marx – though significant is overrated and, in any case, is only one component of the latter’s analysis. Granted,

2 In his contribution to The Intellectual Migration, Adorno says of his 1936 jazz essay that it “to be sure suffered severely from a lack of specific American background but at any rate dealt with a theme that could pass as characteristically American” (1969: 340).



jazz, radio and the masses95

the complexity of the exchange relation is historically different for linen and coat than for ticket and dance music. The sale and acquisition of cultural commodities such as a night at the cabaret is a market relation, and they do, indeed, get used up in an immediate temporal and spatial context. However, residual elements of such moments are not entirely confined to market relations. Adorno alludes to such residual elements in his derogatory remarks about reducing music to quotation listening and other abuses (2002c: 456; 2002e: 261–265). Notwithstanding the problem of alienation the consumer of music as a commodity does not treat it as something he or she can exchange again in the marketplace; rather it is treated as something that can be ‘exchanged’ as a medium of social engagement. Therefore, it can result in culturally significant non-market relations, secondary but nevertheless integral to its original market relations. b) Standardization Tin Pan Alley is the label given a kind of musical produced for some venues in the period prior to and immediately after World War One, especially for theatre and variety shows. The music turned out by musicians in this context was voluminous: timing, wording, phrasing standardized for public performance and sheet music sales. As such Tin Pan Alley became entrenched as an institution of cultural production and marketing, and a deserving target for any discussion of standardization. But Adorno hardly confines his comments to this form of music. To Adorno jazz was of “industrial origins,” characterized as something for “immediate consumption,” something “progressive, modern, up-todate” that was “disguised as art appreciation” through such techniques as improvisation (Adorno 2002a: 497) that covered the requirements of standardization. Here he is partly correct, but only to the extent that historical research demonstrates the industrial origins of some kinds and some aspects of jazz music such as its instruments (2002d: 414), recording and distribution. Research shows that jazz as a musical genre was at least concurrent with industrial development but its precursors pre-dated industrial forms. Adorno’s attitude toward improvisation is evidence of another lacuna in his orientation to both music and method. Improvisation, as with all innovations in capitalist culture becomes, in Adorno’s view, merely one more standardized element of jazz, a “rehashing of basic formulas” in which even the deviations ultimately conform to a benchmark. Thus, any musician’s claim of improvisation as innovation is nothing other than a

96

chapter four

declaration of pseudo-individuation (Adorno 1981: 123, 126). In other words, as the musician creates, the culture industry grasps his or her score, deviations and creativity, and immediately readies and reifies them for the marketplace. The marketing of music and musicians amounts to the same thing. In some respects in a capitalist society, this could be true of any form of creativity. Adorno rightfully connects improvisation with a desire to be free of conventions, although such relative freedom becomes compromised. We have noted in the introductory chapter his standard for social change and we alluded to his view of improvisation in his review of Sargeant’s jazz text. It is worth quoting in full: Sargeant regards it as his main task to show the origins of jazz patterns in the forms of Negro folk music. This tendency seduces even him at times to overrate the improvisatory freedom of jazz production, although as soon as he carries through his technical analyses he becomes fully aware that it is not true freedom. (Adorno 1941, 168)

This is more than a turn of phrase regarding “true freedom.” Improvisation in jazz arises within a specific cultural and economic environment and is without question an expression of relative autonomy within the broader context of alienation. Adorno’s statement presumes musicians themselves believed their key to freedom was their ability to mix notes, vocalize, riff and so on. There are at least two elements of this: music-making (of any kind for a market), with which Adorno seems most concerned, and musical means of breaking away from standards, whether internal to a form of music or social conditions, as a means of breaking open new possibilities. These issues are at least a recognition of alternative or oppositional cultural forms and, therefore, legitimate ground for dialectical analysis. As we have noted above, Adorno’s focus is commodified, standardized music made for the market in advanced capitalism, a market in which the culture industries are sophisticated enough not only to master mass production and promotion, but to have constructed a self-serving theory of consumer need. The source of the need is social and emerges through the problem of alienation. The need is satisfied by the musical product; there is no intention in the production of this commodity that the satisfied need will address the problem and source of alienation, but only to mask it. Thus, theatre, variety shows, clubs and cabarets, dance venues, military parades and later movie houses and radio, even in their early stages of growth were markets for a variety of music.



jazz, radio and the masses97

c) Obedience Conscious acquiescence to the demands of the market through jazz and popular music ran parallel to other claims that more clearly illustrated obedience and the wilful absence of self-control. Listening to such music, for example, was something people could not help but do given their mental states, such as sado-masochism, that diminished their strength of mind (Adorno 1981: 122). The “purposeless” syncopation in jazz, which “of all the tricks available … [was] the one to achieve musical dictatorship over the masses” (1981: 125) also corresponded with premature or incomplete orgasm (2002b: 490). In a passage on fans (“fanatics,” as he noted in “Perennial Fashion – Jazz”) in “On Popular Music” he referred to fans flocking unreflectively to “join the ranks”, and a footnote is appended: “On the back of the sheet version of a certain hit, there appears the appeal: Follow Your Leader, Artie Shaw” (2002c: 468). Despite a recognition of the distinction between use value and surplus value, Adorno immediately collapses both into the basis for obedience and subjection. Such demand for conformity and the implied relinquishing of control provided links among the masses, their music and their attraction to fascism. The connection has many tentacles of which, according to Adorno, the need for selfish possession and the hurting of others are two. We will also address the problem of obedience and conformity in the following chapter as well. d) Subjection of the Masses Notwithstanding the overall sense of an arrested, categorical argument, the relation of the masses to music is characterized in a number of specific, but related ways. Consistent with Adorno’s orientation to commodity power within capitalism, the masses were exploited, oppressed by the market structure, specifically, for example, by the music publishers whose “propaganda apparatus hammers hits into the masses” (2002b: 475). The masses are also related to the market through their acquiescence to all manifestations of the power of capital. Even while the masses may want to resist or break away from the “fetishized commodity world” they do not want to fundamentally change it (2002b: 478). Adorno characterized popular music as an expression of the alienation of the masses; that focus rather than the more generalized and structural problem of alienation was the object of his criticism. The working class was the irreducible and unrecoverable substance of the indistinguishable mass. As jazz became more popular it moved down the strata of society from its original home among the upper-middle class. In doing so it

98

chapter four

became “more reactionary,” more “beholden to banality,” until it ultimately “glorifies repression itself…. The more democratic jazz is, the worse it becomes” (Adorno 2002b: 4753). There is an explicit measure of acceptance for the forum of upper class jazz consumption, a more “intimate reception than merely being delivered up to loudspeakers and the bands in clubs for the masses…” (2002b: 474; see 2002d: 419). The democratization of jazz, like the development of industrial society since the Enlightenment, in which conformism is a requirement for production, results only in the “impotence of the worker” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 37) – the machine operator, the domestic, the saxophone player. The “pseudo-democratization” of class relations through jazz confirms the “consciousness of the epoch:” immediacy, tricks, deception (2002b: 475). Here Adorno begins to create positive links between jazz and popular music on one hand and on the other the authoritarian threats growing in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Such threats become manifested in the manipulability and acquiescence of the working class, even as they are “victims” (2002b: 474). The concern with authoritarian politics of National Socialism in this instance and elsewhere is a far different response than his affirmation of their laws to ban ‘Negro music.’ Adorno held similar views regarding the connection between traditional music, folk music, and “nationalist tendencies” in Europe (Jenemann 2007: 59). Adorno’s point is to show that jazz and popular music, while existing in a commodity form, have their real significance, even durability in the moment of their use – for the musician who makes the music, the audience member who appropriates it in the same moment, but also the listener of radio and recorded music. The audience and the listener have, respectively, bought their ticket and their radio set but it is the use of the music, repeated attendance and repeated listening, that secures, for Adorno, their subordination. A good portion of the working class had succumbed to the attraction of “utility” music, (Adorno 2002c: 456, 464) jazz, movie sound tracks or advertising jingles that served as popular music, attractive because of their dependable, easy-to-memorize patterns. Like the masses’ acquiescence to formulaic music, they read, among other things, the novels of “official optimism” where, according to Adorno (2007b), the proletariat triumphs against the oppressor because the Party has prescribed the plot, the characters and the outcome. 3 See Robinson (1994: 19) for a different translation.



jazz, radio and the masses99

e) Customers The attraction to popular music, Adorno argues, is in part the need to possess it as something of the fans’ very own, to restructure it, and revise it as they please. “Their pleasure in possessing the melody takes the form of being free to misuse it. Their behaviour toward the melody is like that of children who pull a dog’s tail. They even enjoy, to a certain extent, making the melody wince or moan” (2002c: 456). There is a sense in this of personal attacks made from the conviction of his intellectual and cultural superiority. His ostensible target was the commercialization of music in all forms but particularly popular music, appealing as it did in his view, to the baser instincts of the masses. This was not a concern of Adorno’s alone. In his classic of jazz history, Shining Trumpets (1946), Rudi Blesh took up the issue in a manner not dissimilar from Adorno. Commercialism [is] a cheapening and deteriorative force, a species of murder perpetrated on a wonderful music by whites and by those misguided negroes who, for one or another reason, choose to be accomplices to the dead. … Commercialism is a thing not only hostile, but fatal to [jazz]. (qu. in DeVeaux, 1998, 488)

Similarly, Winthrop Sargeant, whose Jazz: Hot and Hybrid, Adorno reviewed in 1941, argued that by the mid-1930s with advent of ‘hot jazz,’ that there was really nothing new – in fact, it was essentially the same kind of music it was in 1900 (1959: 259) but with “changes in formula designed to create a public demand for dance bands, sheet music, phonograph records, or other products of the commercial music industry” (1959: 16). But this is capitalism and commercialization of virtually all matter is unavoidable in the system. The question is, What is to be the response to such commercialization, and will it be allowed to dominate and bury the essence of the music and the relations that brought it about, or can these be sustained in some way? Although in a less categorical manner, Adorno’s concern is both affirmed and qualified in an appreciative essay on Mahalia Jackson by Ralph Ellison. He offered an example of precisely the dilemma of commercialism and cultural production to which Adorno alludes, but he avoided the condemnation of either the singer or her audience. Ellison remarks, “Since the forties this type of vocal music, known loosely as ‘gospel singing’ has become a big business, both within the Negro community and without” (1995: 253). Although an admirer of Bessie Smith, Jackson’s religious commitment steered her away from performing jazz and blues. Singing in the church was her chosen place, not solely because of the gospel that her music surrounded, but also because it was the religious and

100

chapter four

cultural center of the many African American communities in which she performed, whether in a small town or in the midst of urban areas. The “function of her singing,” Ellison writes, “is not simply to entertain, but to prepare the congregation for the minister’s message, to make it receptive to the spirit…” (1995: 255). It may be argued that her commercial career in ‘entertainment’ and music that became profitable was accidental, in a dialectical sense, to the quality of Jackson’s voice and the intention she had for her music and her audiences, whether inside or outside the Negro church. Marx is explicit that a distinction must be made between a system of production and capitalist exploitation of it (1967: 398); the same would apply in substituting a musical and cultural form for industrial production. Marx’s argument is crucial to developing the knowledge – political knowledge – that individuals can attain within such systems of production and exploitation, and the dialectical retention of the distinction is crucial to the potential of individual and class development. At the same time, manipulations of African American musicians in terms of style, appearance and behavior were normative occurrences and designed to expedite market consumption. As Angela Davis (1998: 123, 152–154) has argued, during the 1920s and 30s recording companies (including the black-owned Black Swan) chose their African American blues artists based on voices and lyrics with which a white audience would likely be more comfortable. In choosing not to record those who more clearly represented the conflicts and socioeconomic patterns of African American life, such selectivity became as much a class issue as a racial or cultural one. Thus customers and what they consume takes us back to the substance of the initial hypothesis concerning commodities. Merely concentrating on the commodification of music and its descent into commercialism, as Adorno does, sets up all cultural production as nothing but a manifestation of the structure and purpose of capitalism. Commodification cannot be ignored, but neither can the process that transforms cultural practices into commodities, or the reasons people undertake cultural activity as a means of self-expression, social presence and resistance. These are precisely the historical materialist points that Adorno does not include – the method and the analysis that provides the link and therefore denies the convenient, and false, dichotomy of cultural practice at one end of a continuum and its commodification at the other, and which at its most developed and problematic stage, is out of the sphere of control of the artist. Clearly a change in the structure of society would enhance the range of control an artist has. But would a change in social structure preclude the



jazz, radio and the masses101

development of art forms such as jazz? This was, of course, a problem in the Soviet Union for a time, but that approach to jazz is neither an inherent nor necessary component of socialism. The argument becomes simplistic and self-serving to suggest that all forms of music that are commodified leads to the increased alienation of both artist and consumer. Sidney Finkelstein (1988: 111) made the point that jazz could “be defined but only in terms of a flexible, growing art, which changes under the conditions in which it is performed change, and because thinking individuals arise who, responding to new needs, add something new to something old”. Similarly, Zora Neale Hurston discussed the changes in Negro spiritual music that obscured some of its unique historical features: their “jagged harmony”, “dialect in the religious expression”, and the “audible breathing” that is “the antithesis of white vocal art”. She believed that Negro glee clubs held much responsibility for the absence of these features, especially the variation in performance the roots of which informed later jazz. “Keys change. Moreover, each singing of the piece is a new creation. The congregation is bound by no rules. … so that we must consider the rendition of a song not as a final thing, but as a mood. It won’t be the same next Sunday” (Hurston 1970: 224). But what if such music becomes a viable commodity, even through the ‘standardization’ of its inherent variation of wording, keys and untamed harmonies? It may produce surplus-value in the production and exchange relation, but does that fact render it so far removed from the original intentions, and relative autonomy of artist and audience, that the music is immediately and permanently reduced to utility, privatization and profit? Kracauer makes a similar argument. Remarking, parenthetically, on the rapid rise of films as big business, he writes, (Yet in stigmatizing the commercialization of art, the discerning critic will have to acknowledge that it does not necessarily do away with art. Many a commercial film or television production is a genuine achievement besides being a commodity. Germs of new beginnings may develop within a thoroughly alienated environment.) (Kracauer 1997: 217–218)

Marx, Music and Relative Autonomy That Adorno’s interest in jazz did not include the history of the music is not a sufficient reason to ignore such history or to claim that its “false ­origins” were inventions of intellectuals. Thus, in remarking on black

102

chapter four

musicians­in jazz he notes that jazz is an urban phenomenon, an accurate statement of its commercially established period, but one that facilitates his conclusions more than it reveals the historical conditions of the development of the music. In turn, the urban industrial-commercial setting is reduced to the characterization of “the black man function[ing] as much as a coloristic effect as does the silver of the saxophone” (Adorno 2002b: 477). Although he did not completely rule-out the origins of jazz in African American traditions, in reviewing Hobson’s and Sargeant’s books Adorno considered there was only “negative proof” of such a link (1941: 169). There was a clear recognition by Hobson of the inequality reflected in employment opportunities for African Americans as house musicians for radio and movie studios (1941: 170). But analysis must go beyond the notion of criticizing jazz in order to expose it as the means by which people of African descent were drawn in and exploited by capitalism, and by which they learned the skills of conformism and consumption. That is an important part of the story, but only a part. Adorno’s position is one from which he would not be moved “even if folkloric research should confirm the African origin” of this form of music (2002b: 477). Adorno’s comments and suggestions for characters and the use of types of jazz for the film Syncopation, which Jenemann (2007: 113–114) believes vindicates Adorno with respect to blacks in jazz, hardly lifts him from the notion that blacks are no more than a “coloristic effect”. The problem is the manner in which he binds African Americans and the origins of jazz to a commodity alone and to the problem of authoritarianism. The historical notion of jazz’s ­origin in march music and its adaptation by fascists in Italy (2002b: 485), again, attempts to saddle the masses with the vehicle of their own oppression. A beginning of a more significant effort at an historical materialist analysis can be found in Marx’s work. There is a crucial passage in the 1844 manuscripts (Marx 1975b: 300–302) in which he discusses the development of the human senses. He writes, “beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear,” the “care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play….” Read in a way that emphasizes ‘beautiful’ and ‘finest’ – that there is a hierarchy of music and, therefore, of sense development – could appear to buttress Adorno’s perspective. In the bourgeois world of arts (as well as any other sector), money is the “truly creative power” as it is for the education by which one’s appreciation and talent can be developed. “If I have the vocation for study but no money for it,” Marx writes, “I have no vocation for study – that is, no effective, no true vocation. On the



jazz, radio and the masses103

other hand, if I have no vocation for study but have the will and the money for it, I have an effective vocation for it” (1975b: 325). If in referencing “beautiful music” Marx had in mind the classical composers that may reflect a personal taste, but it cannot be transposed to the 20th century to privilege a particular kind of music and degrade the experience and choice in the appreciation and performance of other forms of music. His remarks do not bind historical materialist analysis to the symphony or the cantata. One cannot refer to this view as Eurocentric either for that would diminish or ignore the significance, then and now, of other folk traditions in music (Finkelstein 1989). Experience and choice have much to do with socio-historical context, the conception in time and place and among groups of people as to what music is – its use-value in particular contexts such as in magic, ritual, organized religion, military ceremonies, social movements and popular celebration. This is not to reduce musical choice to cultural relativism but to emphasize its socio-historical context in which a judgement of its quality is developed in comparison with standards internal to the type. In turn, the centering of the socio-historic type of music in this way does not rule out innovation and deviation from established standards. When Marx alludes to the production of “the rich man profoundly endowed with all the senses” (1975b: 302) he is referring to the fully-­ developed individual, fully aware of his or her “essential powers,” senses fully humanised. “Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility … either cultivated or brought into being” (1975b: 301). Thus, the “beautiful music” “can only exist for me insofar as my essential power exists for itself as a subjective capacity…” (1975b: 301). The musical sense through the sense of hearing, in itself, is a capacity relatively free of social coercion or constraint to hear or not to hear music, to want or not to want certain music, to take from one’s socio-historical context music that is a free object for one’s developing capacity. Marx’s allusion to the ‘rich man,’ the fully developed human being, is a future orientation – the end of the alienation within capitalism in which music, listening, all the senses are attributed an exchange relation in the marketplace; that sets music in an economic domain but does not negate the possibility of the capacity of relative freedom, noted above. The goal of this future orientation is that of free humankind who are a long ways historically and developmentally from persons with no musical sense at all. But this dichotomy cannot persist; there is much in between these

104

chapter four

periods of time without collapsing the analysis into relativism. However, that future orientation cannot delineate a particular kind of music that is the vehicle by which such powers are exercised and developed, nor does it preclude consideration of the role or function of music up to that point in the historical future. Lukács argued that all problems of aesthetics – material, psychological, etc. – are specific to the “aesthetic Setzung,” its positing or material setting and can only be understood in comparison to other types of reaction in the historical context – economic, political, and so on (Lukács 1979: 405). Further, he noted that all reflection – that is, not confined to the aesthetic – are reflections of the same objective reality (1979: 412). Distinct spatial components of that reality are populated by distinguishable social groups and their corresponding reflections are the basis of the direction analysis can take in order to establish their development and relations with other components. It is the historical element in the analysis that illuminates the change in content of the social environment, the relations of production and the relations among social groups that, in turn, explains the change in aesthetic form. The critique of the process of change in aesthetic forms – not the closing off of critique by a mere posture against capitalism – constitutes aesthetic analysis. Adorno is concerned with the relationship of music to the pervasive condition of alienation as structured by the relations of capitalism and modern culture. He uses the problem of alienation as a buttress against the full consideration of the origins and place of jazz in his period of analysis. But the problem of alienation, and that of commodification, appears to be less of a problem with respect to classical music and Adorno’s unconventional others, such as Schoenberg, than jazz and popular music. Here what may have been a preference for Marx becomes the non-alienated musical and aesthetic standard for Adorno. From Marx’s analysis there are two central elements of critique. First, given the possible socio-historical contexts, the development of essential powers of the senses will be evident in the entire variety of musical forms: no hierarchy, no relativism except where class consciousness of superior positions prevails. The goal of these powers for themselves must also have a range of actuality and levels of development. This will be more or less possible given such contextual elements as the binding of music to ritual or to the possession of particular commodities or to the celebration of progressive struggle. If we follow Marx’s argument we see a range of less to more development of the senses in themselves and we can examine the moments of development in relation to the context in order to have some



jazz, radio and the masses105

appreciation for the level of consciousness with which the individual approaches the object through and for these essential powers. Without diminishing the problem of unfreedom, what Marx represents in this passage, “my essential power [that] exists for itself,” is intended to locate the object of music in the historical trajectory of both objective musical development and the subjective development of musical sense without creating a cultural hierarchy of music. That these developments become more free at some future time remains important but so, too, are the moments that lead to it. The understanding of this freedom must be premised not only on the dialectical movement of history in the context of capitalism but in the individual’s potential development within that oppressive context, as we have shown above, and in chapter two. Black Influence and Historical Materialist Analysis It is worth stating again that if there is no historical element in the dialectical analysis then the internal relations and the base they form for the development of contradictions cannot be fully developed and understood. Although it does not follow that every consideration of jazz must include an ethnography of African music, it must nevertheless be a backdrop to any serious historical materialist analysis. Unless one assumes, as does Adorno, that jazz and related music begin and end in the marketplace of modernity, forms and functions of art must be considered in their precommodity context and in their non-market relations. That the knowledge of this in the first half of the twentieth century pales in comparison to the present would not justify Adorno’s lack of consideration of the development of jazz through African roots in pre-slavery, Christian spirituals in the period of slavery and beyond in North America, and the relative autonomy of black artists in the period after the end of Reconstruction – all three periods encompassing enormous contradictions, especially the last. He was at least aware of some of this musical history in North America as evidenced in Hobson’s and Sargeant’s books that he reviewed (1941: 174). Most important to an appropriate analysis is Marx’s discussion of Greek art. His emphasis was on its emergence in a particular quality of social development and its continued enjoyment throughout other forms of social development and indicates art’s relative independence from economic conditions (Marx 1986a: 46–48). Further, under pre-capitalist conditions, the production of music, dance and sculpture in Africa are examples of communal production (1986a: 108). The form of the music varied as well,

106

chapter four

but a general characterization by Eileen Southern suggests a link to later blues and jazz forms: “In essence, the musical performance consisted of repeating a relatively short musical unit again and again with variations in its repetition” (1983: 16). The variety of functions of music in African cultures (Southern 1983: 6–8) were, of course, compromised by colonialism and the slave trade, but extended to or revived in North America under the extreme contradiction between African indigenous conditions and those of slavery. But that contradiction was, in part, crucial to the development of new musical forms such as the spiritual, ragtime, blues and jazz, mediated by a number of factors not least of which was the general adoption of Christianity by slaves and their descendants and the consequence of that religious forum for their music (Southern 1983: 127–131; DuBois 1965: 337–340; Genovese 1976: 248–250). The importance of this adaptation, Melville Herskovits argued, cannot lead to a conclusion as to the precise origins of the varieties of black music. He cites an anthropological observation that concerns the large-scale migration of any people: “Had the Negro slaves been taken to China instead of to America, they would have developed folksongs in the Chinese style;” but under the conditions of slavery they devised “songs made … in European style” (von Hornbostel, qu. in Herskovits 1958). This obvious statement nevertheless provides a basis for Adorno’s rethinking the characterization of Negro spirituals: “One generally regards the Negro spirituals as a pre-form. However, there is at least the possibility that their melodies are of white origin and were merely transformed by the Negroes of the South” (Adorno 1941: 169). The retention of African elements in the North American context, in situations where conditions did not restrict their expression, is not only unsurprising but is both expected and essential to the further development of various forms of music. For example, the opening chapter of Ted Gioia’s history of jazz briefly discusses the music and dance that took place in New Orleans’ Congo Square from the early 19th century (2011: 3–5). Southern notes that such dances must have begun much earlier given the 1786 ordinance forbidding them until the end of church services on Sundays (1983: 136). In any case, sources confirm the use of instruments and dance formations characteristic of African rituals (especially Southern 1983: 10–14 and Herskovits 1958: 75). The Congo Square (or Place Congo) activities continued until late in the century, ending sometime before the first jazz bands began to play in the city (Gioia 2011: 3–5; see Kodat 2003). Pre-dating the technological capability and a market for reproducible music, these were community, not commodified events and performances. The musicians and dancers were a mixture of free-born and slave



jazz, radio and the masses107

living under the constraints of racial and economic subordination. The object of their musical sense, therefore, could not entirely be ‘for itself’ as an expression of their full and free development. If Marx contends that the formation of the senses is a “labour of the entire history of the world down to the present,” Congo Square and much that preceded it is a part of that history. The music must be assessed as a moment in that historical labor of the senses, in the labor perpetrated by oppression and the laboring toward freedom. The power of music and community there did not prevent a later commodification of jazz or directly free the enslaved; rather, it influenced what Marx called the “social organs,” those that “develop in the form of society; thus, for instance, activity in direct association with others, etc., has become an organ for expressing my own life, and a mode of appropriating human life” (Marx 1975b: 300–302). Consequently, what of the feeling of solidarity, the momentary, relative freedom of expression, and the interpersonal contact that the music brought about? The essential power of music in this example, or in the ‘Pinkster Day’ celebrations (Southern 1983: 54–57), has behind it a history of uncertain duration but a history nonetheless. These examples and others concerning “free time” of the slaves, their use by their owners as instrumentalists and singers for white gatherings and celebrations, are among the contradictions of slavery in the United States. It is in such contradictions that music makes more of Sunday ‘free time’ than simply hours without work, and mediates relations of solidarity and conflict. In the period after emancipation when neither racism nor economic coercion had ceased to degrade the lives of former slaves the need to continue building a culture that both reflected their history and assisted in preparing them for different, somewhat better times was at the forefront of their lives when circumstances permitted and in the background when the situation called for it. Another element in Marx’s work for addressing the problem at hand concerns the object of consumption that “is not an object in general, but a definite object that must be consumed in a definite way, a way mediated by production itself” (Marx 1986a: 29). A page earlier Marx had concluded his discussion of the mediation of production and consumption by each other: “The product only obtains its final finish in consumption” (1986a: 28). (We return to this passage later in the chapter on mediation.) Lukács discussed this relationship extensively pointing out the “social character” of consumption as a response to the mediation of need. Music, in any form, is not a need like hunger, but its cultural value such as the

108

chapter four

Congo Square activities and contextually related social gatherings, as well as the achievements of jazz performance, were needs satisfying, if possible, efforts to retain and develop aspects of a culture, whether as conscious solidarity, efforts to thwart the dominance of the history of oppression or the socialization of younger generations as an alternative. Need, in such instances, “remains constant,” Marx argued, retaining its “natural characteristics” in relation to its object. “It is only when, as the result of production, that [the] object is subjected to change … that the new relationship emerges: the shaping of the need by the object as a process” (Lukács 1978b: 62). This applies to any form of production, including art. Lukács quotes Marx in the same paragraph: “The object of art, like every other product  – creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty.” The differences in the determination of “beauty”, or of art for that matter, are not to be concluded at this juncture of Marx’s argument; we have alluded to the problem above as it relates to the socio-historical context of aesthetic production. But Marx continues: “Production therefore produces not only an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object” (Marx 1986a: 30). In light of Adorno’s position, what arises here, quite obviously, is the necessity of a debate about the character of particular needs, consumption and production. But in the case of jazz and popular music the point at which his criticism begins and ends is capitalism’s constructed subject for jazz and that subject’s acquiescence to the demands of the capitalismpopular music complex. There are insufficient considerations of the internal relations of the production and consumption of music that discloses their possible mediations. Much of a dialectical approach is missing from Adorno’s efforts, for what he names as subject has no way of developing in an alternative direction from acquiescence, in this case, partially through the music. Nothing here or in any further elaboration of the historical details up to the period of Adorno’s writing leads us directly to jazz. But an historical materialist analysis, while acknowledging and building on points reflecting relative autonomy, nevertheless makes evident that oppression bears various features that align it with particular times, places and conditions, and creates at least an outline of the movement of conditions based on their formation, contradiction and development. That outline of movement traces the internal relations progressing toward the concretization of consciousness, knowledge and creativity. Without that kind of materialist element, there is only the imagination of comprehensive knowledge that begins with a conclusion, as Adorno often does in his



jazz, radio and the masses109

discussions of jazz, for there is no grip on its process. The movement out of slavery, the adaptation to ‘free labor,’ the relative liberty to imagine, write, sing, to literally blow one’s own horn, cannot be reduced solely to the commodity-drive of capitalism and total oppression alone without losing – literally – the desire for freedom of every African American and every liberal, communist or ethically decent person who ever wore out a pair of shoes marching or hired the first black musician in a band. Reduction to commodity alone is not a critique and reduces Marxism to mechanical dogma of slogans and posturing; it is an expression of despair. As commodities, jazz and popular music do satisfy “human wants”, even those that are derived from “fancy” (Marx 1967: 43). Commodities can take any form; they can be durable or momentary, they can have more or less monetary value on the market, and they can generate surplus value; however, the latter, as a basic characteristic of a commodity, is not necessary to satisfy a human want, despite the fact, Marx argued, that the wealth of capitalist societies rests on “an immense accumulation of commodities” (1970: 27; 1967: 43). Marx is also clear at the beginning of Capital that it is “a work of history” (1967: 43) to understand the various uses of things. Thus, any discussion of material production must specify its ‘definite historical form’ which leads to understanding the non-material form of production, or ‘spiritual production’ that corresponds to the material (Marx 1963: 285). As manifestations of the culture industry, jazz and popular music cannot be seen to be merely a capitalistic intervention into the realm of African American and other popular cultures. Because of the technology that facilitated its development, jazz and popular music combine material and ‘spiritual’ forms of production. Marx does not specify the full meaning of spiritual production. Regardless of how much the term ‘spiritual’ in specific contexts connotes something external to and above the human group, this is not the meaning Marx had in mind. Rather, the sense of spiritual – by way of its correspondence with material – references a totality of relations that make up, as Max Raphael (1968: 193) put it, “the inner wholeness of the individual.” This is comprised of three essential sets of relations: being and non-being, consciousness, and the “positing of value” in relation to the actuality of potential. Concentrating on painting Raphael provides a sense of an aesthetic orientation to various forms of art as aspects of creative development and attitudes toward nature and the historical world.4 It is the creative development of the human being – “creative abilities and 4 See, for example, Raphael 1945.

110

chapter four

understanding by means of spiritual production” (Lifshitz 1973: 83) – that is a productive act for individual development and for “shaping a more just society” (Raphael 1968: 189). Notwithstanding a possible development into a commodity with more than an immediate use-value that satisfies a particular need, a form of art has a social function beyond both the satisfaction of individual needs and its development into a saleable commodity (Finkelstein 1988, 18). This is clearly evident in the Congo Square activities, but the significance of a broadly conceived social function should also be an aspect of the development of jazz and popular music in the period of Adorno’s essays. Building on Marx’s dialectical approach to revolutionary subjectivity in relation to developing technology and factory legislation, the definite historical form of spiritual production, corresponding with its material base, is a central component of identifying the social function of these forms of music. That the cultural industries become organs of the production, distribution and control of music does not preclude – within the context of developing capitalism – the development of forms of music that initially and for some duration are valuable primarily for a social purpose – gatherings, ceremonies, celebrations. Nor does it preclude the production and performance of music for remuneration of the musicians, the organization of which is a residual expression of the “petty mode of production” as Marx discusses toward the end of Capital I (1967: 713–714). The real question is what it means to the musicians and those who appropriate their music as a public when the technological means are developed and the resources of capital make possible the recording, distribution and the relation of these to the performance and popularity of jazz. As we noted above, “Here as everywhere else,” Marx wrote, “we must distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process” (1967: 398). While working, performing, within this developed process of production is carried out by the alienated subject, Marx nevertheless insists that therein lies at least some of the means by which such alienated subjects become “fully developed human beings” (1967: 454, 458), to be further developed through mediation by other forces. He argues that the scientific consciousness upon which technology grows in capitalist production is a product of human labour that is a resource – again, to be mediated by other forces – by which free human development will come to be realized. We can extrapolate from the particulars of Marx’s discussion some general principles of labor and creativity relevant to critique Adorno’s ahistorical criticism of jazz. We have noted already the development of



jazz, radio and the masses111

recording technology used by early jazz musicians and others before the end of the 19th century, as well as the Tin Pan Alley phenomena of mass production of music and printed scores for a broadening entertainment sector. This occurred decades after the formal freedom of African Americans was achieved, but still in a social environment characterized by racism manifested across virtually every aspect of daily life. Jazz’s development within the context of a growing sector of entertainment, increasingly commanded by large corporations and the influence of their capital, shifted small-scale spiritual production and its labor toward material production increasing capital through that labor’s productivity. Simultaneously, however, this sector of capital dominance produced ­relatively autonomous individuals who exercised a degree of individual choice as alienated subjects and who nevertheless could appropriate resources in their conscious development toward becoming fully developed human beings. Radio One of the instruments of monopoly capitalism’s culture industry is radio. Although cultural “monopolies are weak and dependent in comparison” to basic industries, radio parallels the insurmountability of the power of the steel barons and chemical giants (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 122). Radio does so because, like industrial monopolies, there is no “machinery of rejoinder” to the power of a communications vehicle whose “programs are all exactly the same” (1982: 122) belying the notion that there is “consumer choice” (1982: 123). In the intractable “promotional” bias of radio (2002c: 443) the audience has no choice but to “accept what the culture manufacturers offer” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 124). Jenemann (2007: 61) appears to accept Adorno’s conclusion that there was “no productive use of radio by the masses” in relation to its own stated purpose. These ideas were developed around the same time as Adorno’s work in the Princeton Radio Research Project, roughly the period of writing Dialectic of Enlightenment. Insofar as Adorno addresses the phenomena of radio, he notes its corporate base and implied additional economic and cultural phenomena, adding a series of conditions that corporations, like jazz, weave into their productions: obedience, absence of choice, acquiescence. Thus, he asserts that the power of capitalism and the conditions it produces, in turn, facilitate the capitulation of the audience just as, in his terms, the worker capitulates to the boss at the steel mill, and the dancers to the commands of the

112

chapter four

band leader. Further elaborated and nuanced analysis has been closed off, replaced by a description of capitalist industry and its cultural arm in categorical terms with the additional claim for certainty: “the whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 126). Film is added to the constellation and as such is essentially a replication of radio’s place in the culture industry. Its power, especially the sound film, lies in the “objective nature of the products themselves,” an objective power capable of negating the “imagination and spontaneity” of the consumer. Like radio there is no possible avenue of response – the audience can do nothing but watch, listen and absorb. Such objective domination is inherent in “the huge economic machinery which has always sustained the masses whether at work or at leisure” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 127). The objective element of Adorno’s constellation is the structure of the radio industry which, like the film industry, develops its communicative and persuasive powers from the system of economic production. Adorno’s claim that all radio programs are the same is an unreflective position premised on cursory observation formalized against concrete evidence of actual and possible alternatives, an approach that makes the mere description of capitalism and the culture industry more appealing as a fait accompli than the prospects developed from organizing and intervention. Granted, such interventions may well be of a liberal character, consistent with the needs of the economic and political system, limited by liberalism’s claims to formal freedoms taken up by individuals and institutions alike. But such interventions, whether as liberal reforms or the projects of more oppositional sectors of society, are equally dismissed by Adorno ostensibly because these cannot alter the essence of capitalism, its essential structure and its culture industries. Beneath the surface of his dismissal lies his refusal to “reduce” his theoretical perspective to the uncertainty of concrete, politically motivated intervention. Adorno’s views of radio and its use by and effects on the working class were shaped by his sometime colleague in research, Paul Lazarsfeld. Adorno’s view of the working class was much like Lazarsfeld’s which was shaped by the latter’s first experience in Austria studying the social and political impact of radio. Lazarsfeld’s 1931 listener research carried out in Vienna surveyed 110,000 people, almost half of whom were described as ‘workers and employees.’ The results of the survey were a disappointment for his colleagues in the Socialist Party; the results showed that workers preferred light comedy and popular music programs over those preferred by the Socialist Party itself: “chamber music, literary reading, symphony



jazz, radio and the masses113

concerts and lectures about music.” Middle-class respondents, on the other hand, preferred precisely those kinds of radio programs (Douglas 2004: 126–127). Douglas (2004: 142–143) suggests that the failure to consider listeners’ contradictory relationship with radio regarding specific kinds and contents of programming indicate a bias in Lazarsfeld’s research toward a preconceived negative correlation between the working class and cultural programming of this period; it was an outlook that he also took with him into the projects of the Office of Radio Research (ORR) after his emigration to the United States. As we will see in the following chapter, contradictions in the results of Lazarsfeld’s public opinion surveys were not unlike those in Erich Fromm’s research of the period on political attitudes in Germany. Lazarsfeld’s research with the ORR included its own surveys and the results of others on the relation between radio listening and reading, with reading preferences more positively correlated with higher levels of education and urban residency than rural living compared to radio listening. Lazarsfeld also cited research published in Fortune magazine showing a similar correlation: those with higher levels of income preferring reading to radio listening, and those with lower incomes showing a preference for radio (Lazarsfeld 1940: 136–138). Similar correlations emerged from a survey of preferential sources of national and international news based on sex, income and locality. Lazarsfeld summed up the results: In terms of group differences, the results are very clear-cut: (1) preference for radio over print increases with decreasing economic status; (2) women exhibit a stronger preference for radio than do men; (3) preference for radio is greater among rural people than among people in metropolitan centers. (1940: 219)

One problem with this research was that Lazarsfeld provided the quantitative data with very little contextualization such as the character and quality of print sources or the content of radio programming. A partial exception to this type of research was the work of his colleague Herta Herzog (1944). While she reported on research that supported the general ORR perspective, she was also more interested in the particularities of women listeners and readers with respect to education, income, locality and substance of program or reading material. While there were differences in reading preferences – for example, radio listeners preferring “true story” reading compared to the “more sophisticated” reading of non-listeners. Herzog qualified problematic, and possibly biased, ORR categorical separations of program types such as ‘educational’

114

chapter four

and ‘service.’ The latter included topics such as “proper behavior, selfimprovement, public and private morality and the possibility of upward mobility;” but these were appropriated by listeners as educational (Douglas 2004: 144). Similarly, Varga (1996) has shown that the nationwide Canadian radio program, “School for Parents,” beginning in 1942, offered advice by child-care experts that, notwithstanding a critique of its ideological orientation, combined the broadcast with pamphlets, study guides and focus groups to become an active, multi-faceted educational program in contrast to one of passive listening. Neither Herzog nor Lazarsfeld included alternative programming or reading in their research. One implication is that the mainstream press and radio was considered neutral and therefore the logical field of quantitative sociological study. However, it may be assumed that the majority of listeners of labor-­ generated radio tuned in precisely because of its alternative content: the interest in workers’ issues, membership in trade unions and programming that evaluated aspects of the structure of capitalist society. The same may be said of the readership of left-wing newspapers and magazines of the Depression period and after. It would not be a stretch to suggest, then, that Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in America did not consider surveying leftwing or labor print and radio because of their assumption of its bias while not considering the possibility of their own. Bias in the mainstream press was not explored. Hence, there is much to support Douglas’s claim about “ORR’s elitist bias: it was taken for granted that those from the lower levels needed to be put under the microscope but not those from the same educational and economic level as the interviewers themselves” (2004: 143). But there was, indeed, much more going on in radio broadcasting than programming that was all “exactly the same” as Horkheimer and Adorno claimed. In an historical materialist analysis, one would be obliged to consider the objective character of radio in terms of its technological base and its various social and cultural functions without diminishing its basic structuring by the interests of capital and the legitimating function of the state. Those interests have been evident almost since the invention of this instrument of communication. Independent radio in its infancy was virtually shut down in the United States during the first world war because it was viewed as an unregulated security risk. But the Radio Act of 1927 “required stations to operate in the ‘public interest, convenience, or necessity’” (Fones-Wolf 2006: 15), a piece of legislation coincident with the recognition of advertisement as the normative means of financial support for radio (MacDonald 1979: 16–20). Thus, radio emerged in a liberal political and economic environment, not entirely exclusive of the influence of



jazz, radio and the masses115

state interests. Just before World War II the darker side of the liberal environment had an impact on radio when the National Association of Broadcasters created its voluntary code of ethics that forbade its members from selling air time for controversial issues (Fones-Wolf 2006: 63ff.). This immediately constrained the ability of the labor movement to continue to promote its cause. This was significant, although not altogether victorious for the new code, for trade unions had already claimed radio as an instrument of their own. Contradictory listening practices of radio audiences were arguably an inherent feature of the interaction between popular culture and radio as an instrument that brought forward a variety of resources and entertainment, legitimizing dominant ideological perspectives, but also providing space for alternatives such as labor and perspectives on racial equality. For example, Douglas notes that much of radio programming of the 1930s depicting African Americans, either blacks performing as blacks or whites acting the part, was built around stereotyped characterizations such as coon acts, mammies, and other characters in dialect. So strong was such stereotyping around speech that some black performers were required to take dialect lessons to meet the standard imposed by program producers. Wonderful Smith, an African American actor, was fired from the Red Skelton Show in 1948 because, as he put it, “I had difficulty sounding as Negroid as they expected.” But importantly, two African American newspapers petitioned to have degrading programming removed from the air (MacDonald 1979: 331, 334). Equally important was the presence of African Americans on radio during the Depression years that was significant for transcending stereotyped roles. Music and comedy were the major content of such programs; much of the music was jazz that, in contrast to Adorno’s limited view, exhibited the broad range of the genre. But listeners could also hear other programs featuring African Americans, such as “John Henry, Black River Giant,” a CBS series in the early 1930s, and Paul Robeson in dramatic and musical performances such as “Freedom’s People” on African American culture. A fifteen minute daily news program that began in 1935 on WJTL Atlanta, devoted to interests of the African American community, increased to five and a half hours a week by the end of the decade (MacDonald 1979: 332, 339–347). Fones-Wolf demonstrates labor’s use of radio during the depression years as a vehicle for public education about unions, a tool for recruiting workers into unions and organizing effective rebuttals to the claims of management in strike situations. Unions, such as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), developed their own programs

116

chapter four

to convey their basic message, to help overcome individuals’ fears of signing union cards, and to portray unionism as a normal aspect of life. The ILGWU had its own Drama Department broadcasting, among other things, a series of plays about its history and Upton Sinclair’s The Flivver King, about Ford Motor Company (Fones-Wolf 2006: 55–58). Soap operas, children’s programs, music, as well as instructive talks about unions were important elements of labor’s use of this medium. “Labor on the Air,” a production of the San Francisco Union Council covering the west coast, into Canada and out at sea, was receiving 1000 letters a day from listeners in 1940, and estimated its audience to be 300,000 to 400,000 (Fones-Wolf 2006: 48). It is indeed curious that Adorno could compile the information on profascist radio broadcasts, discussed in the following chapter, during this same period without at least acknowledging the existence of organized labor’s alternative use of the instrument. It could not have been for the absence of information which the medium itself provided (some of which is discussed by Jenemann, 2007), and Fones-Wolf provides several references to articles about labor and radio in readily available mainstream publications of the time such as Variety and Billboard. Other than the comments from Dialectic of Enlightenment and elsewhere on radio in general, Adorno’s concerns centered on radio music, particularly the performance and broadcasting of classical music. It is not the intention to address issues of classical music here, but aspects of Adorno’s writings about classical music on the radio are related to his writings on jazz. In “The Radio Symphony” (2002e) Adorno’s major concern was with the “fate of the ‘integral form’” of the symphony, in that case Beethoven’s work; the general orientation of the essay was to criticize NBC’s Music Appreciation Hour (MAH) for its poor pedagogical structure and the effects of that teaching on listening children. Where this essay made contact with the jazz essays was precisely in the problem of the integral whole. We have seen that he was critical of the consumer of jazz, the live audience or through radio, for his or her tendency to recall or otherwise concentrate on a fragment of music, the tendency to repeat it as well as to alter it. That radio offered the listener of classical music an opportunity to hear a piece more than once, and the fact that the opportunity came with interruptions was a normative relation to listening through this (and later) technology (Adorno 2009: 252). Through radio the symphony, according to Adorno, had become trivialized because it has degenerated to “empirical time” which disrupts the “suspension of time-consciousness,”­



jazz, radio and the masses117

(2009: 256, 258, 261) one of the qualities of great symphonic music. Unlike the concert hall, the radio facilitates the degradation of music by allowing for the fetishization of its character through a sense of individual ownership of it by way of “quotation listening” – in part or in whole (2009: 263, 330. 352). “The radio phenomenon produces an attitude in the listener which leads him to seek color and stimulating sounds” (2009: 267). Adorno’s concern was with a particular form of music connected historically to specific domains of listening, specific customs of appreciation, and deference to the perceived cultural superiority of that form of music and the social situation of its usual audience. There is little doubt that the forms of music current in the 20th century affirmed and facilitated a different kind of listening that required less detailed and technical musical knowledge, less attention and concentration. The current technological capacity to rerun films in one’s living room again and again is surely also a sign of the fragmentation of attention that, from music to film to relationships, carries over into the classroom. Similarly, Adorno’s criticism of the MAH reducing music education to a “personality cult in music” certainly has its basis in reality. He acknowledges music’s progressive period, “in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,” and its regressive character in his own period (2009: 360–361). It is not pertinent to the argument here to dispute this reduction to personalities, but it is worthwhile noting Adorno’s own tendency to shift his argument from a concrete problem to the issue of ‘greatness’ equivalent to the relevance of personality. For example, in his radio discussion on education in 1969 with Hellmut Becker he initiated the conversation with a reference to Kant’s concept of tutelage in the latter’s “What is Enlightenment.” In that context, a resource for addressing the question of individual “capacity and courage” with respect to education in Adorno’s period as well as Kant’s own, is deferred at least momentarily to draw the issue back to “Kant’s greatness” (Adorno and Becker 1999: 21). Such a deferment appears to give priority to Kant’s intellectual qualities as much if not more than the resource he provided for Adorno and Becker’s discussion. It is not surprising that when considering the technical issues as well as the general cultural issues brought about by the advent of radio, Adorno would ignore important comments on the medium by Benjamin. In the first instance the difference in the perspectives of the two must be recognized: Adorno consigned the technology to the absolute control of corporate interests while Benjamin’s interests were in the use and likely development of the medium, addressing briefly various problems to be

118

chapter four

considered. For example, whereas Adorno treated the problem of the accuracy of sound and innuendo of symphonic music on the radio as problems of the medium (2002e), Benjamin was concerned that the audience be treated as having some expertise with respect to voice, diction and language that radio should and could address technologically in order to attract and retain a discerning audience (1999a: 543–544; 1999b: 585). Benjamin was not addressing music in those essays but something much more basic, the human voice; as an instrument for communicating to an audience it should sound human, like a neighbor’s voice. He understood that radio needed to relate to the interests of its audience including the public’s growing understanding of the technology. Indeed, those interests may have reflected something of the social conditions of alienation, but in his view the precise application of radio was not embedded in the instrument but constructed around the form and substance of debate (1999b: 583), how the instrument might come to be used. Jenemann (2007, 64–66) makes much of Adorno’s criticism of the radio voice, especially its perceived authority in religious and other broadcasts – the disembodied voice, the voice of God. To the extent that listeners ­perceived the radio voice in this way would be irrational, but so too is this strain of criticism, well-worn and without a concrete grounding and, fundamentally, an implicit characterization of the working class that suggests that the more knowledgeable can actually see the godless physical mechanisms behind the radio’s façade whereas the working class cannot. *** Much of Adorno’s perspective on jazz and popular music was motivated by a problem already noted – that society must undergo a capitalismdefeating change before effects of the culture industries can be remedied. If one establishes a distance from this perspective it can be seen more readily that his criticism of the culture industry and capitalism itself hardly achieves a crude political economy with respect to the structure of capitalism and its institutions. There is no systematic critique of the manner in which capitalism interacts with culture. What one does find – objectively – is a smack at record companies, the producers of color film, the creators of the jitterbug and much else smeared with the slime of capitalism’s oozing pockets. This is not enough for an historical materialist critique that asks Adorno (and others), What is the possible alternative? But I do not want to suggest that Adorno was completely wrong about his relation of jazz to the culture industries. The issue is more associated



jazz, radio and the masses119

to accuracy within the complexity of such relations. Ralph Ellison provides a sense of this complexity. Writing on Charlie Parker, he indirectly addresses the production of the subject. He reflects on the efforts of Parker and others of his time to move away from the “traditional entertainer’s role – a heritage from the minstrel tradition” (1995: 259). A confusion of “artistic quality with questions of personal conduct” diminished jazz as an art form to the point at which it became identical with the black race. Ellison argues that the attempt to reject the role of entertainer failed because the audience demanded the music be combined with a certain attitude and behaviour associated with the race. This is not necessarily a negative relation, but depends on the context: genre of music, audience, socio-historical time, and a crude sociology that attempts to understand these relations. However, one can see an implicit argument here about the commodification of jazz and the production of a standardized behaviour for the subject and for its consumption by an audience. But he does acknowledge that what is, in effect, a process of commodification does not escape classical music performance, something Adorno does not adequately address, just as it does not escape the jazz performer. “Perhaps they realized that whatever his style, the performing artist remains an entertainer, even as Heifetz, Rubinstein or young Glenn Gould” (Ellison 1995: 260).

CHAPTER FIVE

THE MASSES AND PRO-FASCIST PROPAGANDA Mark Worrell’s (2009) examination of the Institute for Social Research’s antisemitism project has brought attention to a long dormant piece of social science research. Despite some unsustainable assumptions in the design and procedures of the project, it was an attempt at a fairly new approach to attitudinal research in the United States. Worrell is aware of some of the project’s shortcomings and these problems cannot be overlooked. It is argued here that these problems actually provide substantive material for a critique of Adorno’s approach to social issues, for his involvement in this research in particular and the extent to which he can be identified with the antisemitism project as a whole. This chapter will compare Adorno’s efforts at addressing profacist agitation in the U.S. and studies by others with whom he was associated. The general approach will be to demonstrate that his disparaging attitude toward the masses framed his outlook as it did with his studies of radio, jazz and popular music, closing off possible alternative orientations that would offer a more complex account of these phenomena. The problem of hate propaganda, such as its manifestation in crime and racist expressions are addressed in the contemporary liberal democratic society in different ways than during the period of Adorno’s research. Legislation presently exists in many nations to limit speech and action, and to punish those who engage in some forms of prejudicial activities aimed at identifiable groups. In North America, programs for schools, communities and workplaces exist to address the occurrence of hate speech, for example, that are generally intended to be preventative as well as corrective measures. In terms of an approach directed toward cognitive processes, these programs work at enhancing the level of awareness of what is normative for their particular environments. A direct approach for young children may be taken because a one-to-one correspondence of action and result is most effective, or for adults for whom it is made clear that racist expressions at their place of work will result in disciplinary action. A less direct approach may be taken for the cognitively mature who may benefit from discussions of human rights principles and legislation,­the historical basis of prejudicial attitudes and workplace or



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda121

community incidents, on the assumption such processes are able to engage and critique participants’ subjective attitudes and cognitive abilities. Such a program might suitably include Adorno’s interest in corrective measures as indicated in The Authoritarian Personality. Social groups targeted by particular forms of propaganda, especially in the contemporary period, are seldom convinced that the impact of their experience are actually restricted to their social group. Prejudice and hatred have a tendency to be diffused to affect other populations as well as institutional arrangements. The classic statement of antisemitism, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, for example, made claims about Jews that were strengthened by additional objectives such as the hatred of democracy, liberalism and modernity (Bronner, 2000). During the inter-war years when fascists were moving toward state power in Europe, antisemites and pro-fascists were widely evident on the radio airwaves in North America, in pulpits, on speaking tours and through their publications. Their efforts were largely rooted in the claims of American freedom and individualism that could be sustained by the development of a different political system. This necessitated taking the wider net cast by the Protocols to rage against the encroachments of the liberal state, the intrusion of others in an historically privileged national culture, and the loss of respect and security for the individual. The historical evidence of antisemitism among American workers and the middle-class during the period before, after and during the Institute’s project is undeniable. But in the end it is difficult to support Worrell’s position that the antisemitism project “was the most important piece of empirical research in the history of Marxist sociology” (2009: 11). Even while flawed, we can concur with its importance, but to accept the claim that the project was Marxist sociology would be to validate the notion that members of the Institute involved in this research were, in fact, Marxist in their method of analysis and in their political orientation. While I have given tacit support to the Marxism of Marcuse and, to some extent, Lowenthal, the former was not a participant in the anti-Semitism project. Kracauer was a participant in the film aspect of the project but he was not a member of the Institute. The antisemitism project involved some of the Institute’s core members and other associates, and a large number of volunteers who acted as interviewers. The latter were not trained in research techniques, but were given a set of instructions and a set of ten basic and four supplementary questions. These were memorized and reduced to seven questions (Worrell 2009: 84–85, 301–302, 304–305). From 1000 initially recruited to the project, 270 workers were selected as interviewers.

122

chapter five

The Institute’s instructions provided the rationale for what became a less-than-systematic technique with little oversight as to the quality of questioning, the extent of probing, and some reasonable certainty of objectivity and accuracy in the recording of interviews. The instructions cited “the defects of poll methods, of formal interviews, of official questions: the worker gets defensive, the questions are poorly worded….” The “new method” promoted by the Institute was “guided conversations” conducted by workers with workers, the success of which was based on a kind of “free association” technique facilitated by “probing questions”, including “challenging statements” made by participants (Worrell 2009: 300). The validity of any single interview, the reliability of interviews conducted with differently formed questions, the prospects of objectivity and accuracy, were based on the Institute’s “confidence in the working man…” as both field worker and research participant (Worrell 2009: 301).1 The interviewees did not represent a structured sample of any kind but were intended to be randomly selected “from such groups of workers as could be easily contacted” (Worrell 2009: 70). However, screening out certain workers and later eliminating completed interviews took place on the shop floors under the authority of union officials, some of whom were motivated by concern for the image of their union, or in some cases possibly motivated by officials’ own antisemitic opinions in refusing to allow interviews to take place. Screening for the appropriate candidates included eliminating those who appeared to have Jewish physical features, whether they were Jewish or not. In addition, there was a conscious effort to avoid interviewing union activists (Worrell 2009: 299–300), shop floor organizers who, besides their knowledge of collective agreements, working conditions, employer policies, regulations and the like, would also have in many cases shared and propagated trade union principles such as fairness, equality and anti-racism. This was not an easy project to undertake. The fact that several American cities were selected for the project increased the labor involved as well as the logistical challenges.2 The major expectation seemed to be to accumulate as much evidence as possible of attitudes for later categorization and discussion of its implications for combatting antisemitism. The responses to the seven basic questions were assigned to a multiplicity of 1 The quotation is from the Project’s instruction to interviewers. 2 Seven cities were selected plus “Smaller N.J. [New Jersey] communities, as well as a three-state group (Massachusetts, Maryland and Wisconsin) which, together, yielded only eight interviewees.



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda123

categories of analysis that suggests the responses were comprehensive, and it must be accepted that the “guided conversation” approach may have revealed what a standard interview schedule might have, even with an acceptable level of probing. However, other aspects of the method remain problematic. Due to the absence of any systematic sampling in the Institute’s project there were other factors that may have skewed the results, such as an over-representation of well-educated workers in non-manual occupations (Worrell 2009: 83–84), the decision to not interview in the textile sector because of its greater proportion of Jewish workers and bosses, and the questionable attempt to include participants from a large number of unions that resulted in far too many of such workplaces contributing less than a handful of interviewees (2009: 289–290). In short, there were serious problems with the process of selection, interviewing, adequate training, the quality of questioning and the demeanor of the interviewer that lead to questions about the standard of objectivity in the project as a whole. Although, as noted, such projects were fairly new to American social science it would be difficult to imagine any of the long-established requirements and cautions common to research design texts of the contemporary period being immaterial to the reliability of earlier research.3 Notwithstanding the importance of antisemitism then and now, the shortcomings in the design of the project and its procedures suggest that certain aspects of the Institute’s empirical work were planned to affirm existing views of its members or funders and to accumulate data into viable, unproblematic social science categories. There were precedents of more systematic approaches to research such as this that included interviews with large numbers of people in multiple locations and occupations. The Institute could have drawn on models such as Fromm’s study of political attitudes conducted in Germany beginning in 1929. Although it was questionnaire-driven, and did not include interviews, it was a systematic survey of the kind Paul Lazarsfeld developed and used in both European and later American research. (I return to Fromm’s project below.) In terms of personnel close to the Institute, another model would have been the ground-breaking Middletown studies by Robert Lynd and Helen Lynd, the results of the earliest having been published over a decade before the Institute’s antisemitism project. Their study was known to Institute members and was acknowledged as influential in the Institute’s publication of its Studien über Autorität und Familie in 3 See, for example, Babbie 2001: 258–262.

124

chapter five

1936 (Jay 1973: 125).4 The Lynds did structure their sample of working and business class families, randomly selected to begin with but refined later, such as excluding responses from African Americans in the final tabulation because of their small proportion in Middletown’s general population. They used casual conversations as part of their data but relied on the whole on interview schedules drawn up beforehand and adhered to with minor deviations regarding, for example, religious views (Lynd and Lynd 1929: 507–509). Their small group of trained interviewers was intended to assure consistency in the style of questioning and the quality of recording. Pro-Fascism and the Masses Especially in the short content analysis of Martin Luther Thomas’ fascist radio program and in his later analysis of astrology columns in the early 1950s, Adorno’s characterization of the masses is built on the foundation of his perspective already seen in the critique of his jazz and popular music essays. The Thomas material was intended to draw attention to the means by which people were attracted to the messages of fascism in the United States. It was among several pieces of research on American fascism carried out in the same period, such as Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman’s Prophets of Deceit (1948/1987), Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee’s The Fine Art of Propaganda (1939/1972), George Seldes’ Facts and Fascism (1943), John Roy Carlsson’s Under Cover (1943), and Ben Hecht’s A Guide for the Bedevilled (1944). More recent studies relevant to that period include Neil Baldwin’s Henry Ford and the Jews (2001). Together these indicate the extent and seriousness of the problem of fascist sympathies and antisemitism in America at the time. Given the predominantly Jewish make-up of the Institute, antisemitism may have been a backdrop for Critical Theory as a whole, but it did not widely or frequently appear as a topic in the work of Institute members. It was argued by Adorno that “Elements of Antisemitism,” the final chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment added after initial publication, contained the 4 As a member of the sociology department, Robert Lynd was influential in obtaining space for the Institute at Columbia University. He later became an object of Horkheimer’s criticism for advocating the interjection into the objectivity and detachment of philosophy and social science, that science “help search out the content and modes of expression of … shared loyalties.” See Lynd (1964: 239); for Horkheimer’s criticism, see 1974a: 185. For an assessment of the Lynds’s work and methods over all the Middletown Studies, see Caccamo 2000.



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda125

theme of the entire book (Jay 1980: 143–144) but The Authoritarian Personality, clearly devoted to issues of antisemitism and racism, was the only widely accessible work he produced on these topics. In that text Adorno and his co-researchers attempted to lay the foundations that would rebut antisemitic thinking, and provide an argument against irrationalism and against the recurrence of fascism. This alludes, at least, to a practical outcome Adorno hoped for with such empirical studies but which retained his desired dissonance between theory and practice. Adorno’s studies were, of course, quite distant from a politically-driven polemic designed to outline an explicit strategy for the exposure and defeat of irrational thinking. Nevertheless, making connections between his studies of irrationalism and antisemitism on the one hand, and some of his other philosophical and cultural works provides both crucial links between the two and an imperative that dialectical thinking is a precondition for neutralizing irrationalist propaganda. Such a practical program of how consciousness or certain modes of thinking might be changed was more implied or hoped for than intentionally organized (Adorno 1994c). But Adorno nevertheless declared unequivocally that this was a goal toward the end of Negative Dialectics: the fact of Auschwitz is seen as the buttress against its recurrence. “A new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler on unfree mankind: to arrange their thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen” (1973: 365).5 While the imperative may carry the explicit and emphatic meaning, ‘Never Again’, it is not a comprehensive demand for the quality of structural change that would ensure the prevention of a repetition. A major focus of Adorno and Lowenthal during the inter-war and postwar periods, was the irrationalist basis of antisemitic and fascist propaganda. They insisted that this form of irrationalism was compounded with rationality. Antisemitic and pro-fascist forms of propaganda, while irrational in substance and effect, were nevertheless calculated, planned and organized. According to Adorno, fascist propaganda “builds up an imagery of the Jew, or the Communist and tears it to pieces without caring how much this imagery is related to reality;” such propaganda used an oratorical style that “might be called an organized flight of ideas” (1994b: 222–223). He referred to irrationalist propaganda as a kind of “emotional planning” 5 It must be said that this statement is leaps ahead of Adorno’s rhetorical question of despair and passivity, “Can one write poetry after Auschwitz?” He subsequently revised the statement.

126

chapter five

that Lowenthal argued was facilitated through the rationalization of values (Adorno 2000b: 29; Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 28). Propagandists and agitators6 attempted to make their ideas popular as a new normative frame of meaning and social interaction, and as the sustaining values of institutional arrangements. To achieve this, agitators exploited the feelings of dissatisfaction, dislocation, instability and insecurity. While Adorno and others focused on the public efforts of specific ideologues, the background to their analyses was capitalism, its ideology of individualism, the competitiveness central to economic development and interpersonal relations, exploitation as a source of wealth-production, and the reduction of language and thought to the communication strategies of advertising. Because many irrationalist philosophers and pro-fascist agitators held occupations of status in academia, politics and religion, Adorno and Lowenthal viewed irrationalism as the underpinning of capitalism’s culture industry. In one of his most incisive literary critiques, Lowenthal identified irrationalism as, among other things, “the pagan awe of unlimited and unintelligible forces of nature, the mystique of blood and race, … the abrogation of individual responsibility [and] anti-intellectualism…” (1986a: 185). Reliance on what the individual experiences and what she can learn from it reinforces the belief that sufficient knowledge is obtained through one’s defense of existing society and that a fundamental condition of truth is the absence of an imperative to discover it (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 144). This means that people need not extend their interests beyond what they think they know of existing circumstances or advocate alternative social conditions. Adorno referred to this as the adoration of the existent, the unreflective reverence for what is deemed factually existing at any moment in the minds of the consumers of propaganda. He considered this a psychological process that “may set the stage for the more obvious effects” (2000b: 44–45) such as the need to advocate for re-establishing social conditions that affirm a state of affairs perceived to have been the natural foundation of society but which have been lost or usurped by others. In the period of Adorno and Lowenthal’s research, these “others” were Jews, New Deal advocates and European exiles.

6 Lowenthal used this term to distinguish reactionaries and fascists (or pro-fascists) from reformers and revolutionaries; see Leo Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 15–21.



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda127 Irrationalism as the Basis of Analysis

Regardless of their distinctions, irrationalism must be understood to have an integral relation to rationalism, as Loewenthal and Adorno insisted, for it is in arguing against irrationalism that the “rational attitude”, as Karl Popper later called it, is necessarily illuminated. It is a common relation among those discussed here. Writing in the post-war period, Popper was motivated to address the attack on reason by all forms of totalitarianism. A liberal in orientation to the issue, he considered the “rational attitude” (1966, 225) to be a “readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience,” an attitude related to the “scientific attitude”, both of which required a degree of intellectual modesty.7 To say that irrationalism is the opposite kind of attitude is the beginning of a definition provided that it is noted that irrationalists such as pro-fascist agitators do not reject the rational attitude entirely, but argue that it is only possible for a small proportion of people – the elite of the propagandists in this instance, or in the case of Plato, a belief in the limited distribution of “intellectual intuition” (Popper 1966: 227–228; Plato 360 bce). In Popper’s view, irrationalism was founded on the belief that the majority of people are weak in intellectual skills, a division that extends the foundation of irrationalism to a belief in the natural inequality of human beings. Such intellectual weakness allows irrationalism to take root in the emotions and passions of persons against the capacity to reason (Popper 1966: 228, 234–235). Despite the obvious political and philosophical differences between Popper and Lukács there are some similarities to their approaches to irrationalism, as well as similarities with those of the Frankfurt School. Lukács regarded irrationalism as an “international phenomenon,” a “campaign” against Enlightenment philosophy and the French Revolution, a response to class conflict, an opposition to modernity, against the bourgeois notion of progress and against movements toward socialism. The crisis in the bourgeois idea of progress in Germany, for example, in the mid-19th century, concerned the population’s normative dependence on authority. Irrationalism was expressed, in part, as a disappointment in the masses’ capacity to understand the gradualism of democracy; namely, their 7 I will not suggest here that one side or the other was correct in the rather infamous “debate” on positivism concerning Popper, supposedly on the one hand, and Adorno and others, on the other, but Popper’s defence, not of his position, but of the circumstances around the debate should be noted. See Popper 1984.

128

chapter five

response to insufficiently realized expectations of the equalization of opportunity and participation in the democratic process (Lukács 1980: 16, 18–19, 68ff.) There are a number of components to Lukács’ meaning of irrationalism: its rejection of the notion that the external world can be known, its claim that the scientific method has inherent limitations, and its denial of social progress; in short, its rejection of Enlightenment values.8 The communicative style of hate propaganda, then and now, centers on what Lukács (1980: 104) considered the “decisive hallmark” of irrationalism: the avoidance of answering questions raised by science and progress, but viewing such questions and the problems raised as problems unable to be resolved. The most fundamental element of irrationalism for Lukács, was its equation of understanding with reason, as if cognition need not go beyond the immediacy of understanding that is deemed to be self-­limiting, but nonetheless of sufficient substance with which to conclude the process of thinking. Opposing this perspective, reason treats contradictions and limits to thinking as “problem[s] to be solved” (Lukács) and as “the beginning and sign of rationality” (Hegel).9 Lukács’ position was that Irrationalism, … stops at precisely this point, absolutizes the problem, hardens the limitations of perception governed by understanding into perceptual limitations as a whole, and indeed mysticizes into a ‘supra-rational’ answer the problem thus rendered artificially insoluble. (1980: 97–98)

The crucial point is the decision to cease inquiry and settle for an emotionally satisfying explanation of reality. He asked the question, what happens “if thought … stops short of the difficulties and shies away from them … [or] hypostasizes the inability of specific concepts to comprehend a specific reality into the inability of thought … to master the essence of reality intellectually?” (1980: 100). What happens, he continues, “if a virtue is then made of this necessity and the inability to comprehend the world intellectually is presented as ‘higher perception,’ as faith, intuition …”? (The relation between irrationalism and hate propaganda is further developed in Lanning 2012.) For Hegel this limitation on thinking made it “a merely subjective and formal activity, and the objective world that confronts thinking counts as something fixed and present in its own right” (qu. in Anderson 1995: 68). 8 See also Wolin 2004: 3. 9 The phrase from Hegel, quoted by Lukács (1980: 97), is from the Hegel’s Logic (i.e. the Shorter Logic) where it is translated as “a beginning and a trace of rationality” (Hegel 1975: §231).



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda129

The constraint on knowledge is also self-imposed by an unreflective belief in a perception and experience of reality, and by dependency on the authority of the leader or the legitimacy of existing social relations, such as the division of labor and the hierarchy of social classes and status positions (Adorno 2000b: 45; 1994b: 110, 159ff.; Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 153; Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 117). Dependence on authority requires no further investigation of reality beyond the awareness that it is sustained by existing, normative relations: economic, political and cultural. In racist or pro-fascist agitation such dependence is manifested psychologically and socially in ways that leaders, listeners, group members or loose adherents to a cause, will give priority to eliminating the identified enemy rather than advocating changes in the social structure (Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 16). For Adorno, this problem of dependence was at the heart of the Enlightenment’s hope for the liberation of the individual (Adorno and Becker 1999). Adorno and Lowenthal analyzed the irrationalist basis of antisemitic and pro-fascist propaganda in the inter-war period. Like Popper and Lukács, they insisted that irrationalism was compounded with rationality, the central organizational principle of modernity (Adorno et al. 1982: 309– 310; Adorno 2000b: 29; Lowenthal 1986a: 185; Seymour 2000: 301); that is, irrational in substance and effect, but nevertheless calculated, planned and organized. For these theorists, neither Nazism in Europe nor pro-­ fascist activities in America were spontaneous expressions of social outcasts, but manifestations of ideas that had long been present. Irrationalism in mainstream philosophy and social science served to create a social atmosphere conducive to promoting racism and the support of fascist politics. American propagandists such as Martin Luther Thomas, Gerald B. Winrod and Gerald L.K. Smith, among others, grounded their hopes for a reactionary movement on social and economic insecurities widely experienced during the Depression. Lowenthal called this atmosphere a “social malaise,” a condition which, as Adorno saw it, was of unquestioning dependence on a type of authority central to the legitimation of intolerance. The experience of personal or social problems is not denied but appropriated for its ‘truth-functional’ (Steiner 1997: 82, 86) value that affirms the dilution of or threat to traditional, established relations of culture. In this way experience is sufficient to identify and affirm the language and actions of knowledgeable insiders whose expertise, cultural and ethnic backgrounds are consistent with the agitator’s historical myth. Adorno regarded the limiting of knowledge to the immediate and existent as a

130

chapter five

“defamation of the intellect”, a “resentment against” the intellect that throws the consumer of propaganda back to the perceived security of common sense (Adorno 2000: 96). Lowenthal’s Anti-Fascist Writings Before examining further details of Adorno’s projects on antisemitism and pro-fascism, Lowenthal’s work in this area offers an important comparison. Later, we will examine aspects of the work of Kracauer and Bloch. Each of these exhibits a greater application of both Marxist and dialectical analyses than does Adorno. In his Prophets of Deceit written with Norbert Guterman, Lowenthal analyses “themes of agitation” rather than the more instrumental ‘devices’ Adorno cited in his study of Martin Luther Thomas. Lowenthal’s ‘themes’ are far more comprehensively discussed and contextualized. He places his recognition of the alienation problem within modernity in a dialectical frame of analysis. In Prophets, the characterization of the problem as a ‘social malaise’ pointed to the context of modernity as its origin, not the agitator himself or the psyche of the masses; the social malaise “is a psychological symptom of an oppressive situation” (Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 25). The contradictions that have arisen in the social life of the individual from one historical period to another through radically differing relations of production have resulted in psychic and social manifestations of a condition: “Distrust, dependence, exclusion, anxiety”. The problem can “be explained only by the social process in its totality” (1987: 24, 26). The appeal to totality is not an escape from detailed analysis, found clearly in Lowenthal’s earlier essay “Toward a Psychology of Authoritarianism” (1987a) but a reference to the general condition of particular societies in historically specific times, such as the ancestor cult in China and the caste system of India that are examined as cultural forms of authority, along with a systematic examination of authority in European modernity. Central to his analysis are the mediating factors of economic conditions and the attendant contradictions that underlie individual responses; in particular, the modern division of life into public and private spheres and the impossibility of isolating the condition of one sphere from its mediated development by the other. He finds the central contradiction of modernity in “the fact that existing institutions, traditions, and persons become recognized as legitimate in one manner, through voluntary subjection of oneself to the symbols, notions, or commandments of the



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda131

institutions, traditions, or persons” (1987a: 260). There is no “form of social existence” that developed without this voluntary element. The complicating factor for the individual is the “plethora of authoritarian relationships” (1987a: 263), the command or need to conform to which can be seen in a range from objective social interests to individualistic interests alone. Although he rejects doing so as “fruitless positivism,” Lowenthal argues that every society will have its standard of rational voluntarism or conformity that will be linked to forms and relations of production, the state, education, gender and science, for the authority relation is the “decisive and fundamental relationship” (1987a: 264). The “follower” in Prophets is a person who responds to what he or she perceives as “the disintegration of individualism,” by a willingness to join the “pseudocommunity” of believers the agitator can provide through his or her organization. It is the agitator who characterizes the disintegration as a result of forces that need not or cannot be explained (Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 117). What is more important is the need for self-­ preservation in actual or imagined communities of “Simple Americans”, a metaphor for self-appraised purity and exclusion of others. Acquiescence to the appeal of this false solution to social and personal problems does not relieve the individual of responsibility; acquiescence is one – only one – response to objective contradictions in the social environment: ­relations of modernity, the crisis of the individual, the commodification of everything. The agitator is aware of these problems on the surface; the goals of the agitator require that such problems not be demystified. The themes the agitator uses for obtaining the audiences’ commit­ ment are “distorted versions of genuine social problems” (Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 150). To the extent that these are manifested as psychological factors they cannot be dismissed or put down to the masses’ inability to make objective inquiry into the source of the problems. Thus, using interview material from the Institute’s antisemitism project, Lowenthal both recognizes the prejudicial attitudes of workers toward the educated Jew and alludes to those who may be “unconsciously expressing a strong desire for knowledge and learning” (1987b: 210–211). He suggests that antisemitism itself is “a condensed, perverted, manipulated concept of all social conditions that [workers] resent or reject” (1987b: 241). He repeatedly alludes to the contradictions that produce the problems, and to the agitator’s function as the medium through which the alienated can feel some sense of satisfaction. The agitator has an ‘objective’ function in the crisis periods of modernity: “To recognize and play upon those ­disturbing sicknesses of modern life that run-of-the-mill politicians ignore,

132

chapter five

and then to divert his followers from any rational attempt to regain health” (1987b: 151). In contrast to Adorno’s study of Martin Luther Thomas, Lowenthal provides a more consistent sociological analysis that establishes the relations of the problem complex. There is no sense of a residual formalism or categorical thinking in his approach that reifies the masses, nor is the antisemite simply a construction of modernity or a clever and persistent speaker with a pocketful of devices. Lowenthal’s interest in the possibility that there is a desire for learning, for knowledge is an allusion to the necessary alternative to antisemitism that the masses can appropriate and develop a form of education that leads to self-consciousness in Hegel’s sense of recognizing the other. Adorno’s Study of Martin Luther Thomas In his content analysis of Martin Luther Thomas’ radio broadcasts, Adorno purports to analyse the tactics of the pro-fascist agitator, to illuminate the means by which Thomas creates a bond that portrays himself as a trustworthy messenger. His audience, from whom he seeks support for the message and which seeks from Thomas, in exchange, a salve for their frustrations, are to see him as only one of many communicators of the same message. The study of Thomas’ broadcasts was written between 1938 and 1943 (Jenemann 2007: 52) and was likely intended as a part of the Institute’s larger project on antisemitism. While Lowenthal, in his Prophets of Deceit, covered the speeches and texts of fourteen agitators, Adorno concentrated on Thomas alone. Like the jazz essays discussed in the previous chapter, but unlike Lowenthal’s research, Adorno provides no historical context to Thomas’ speeches, his radio program, his connections with specific Protestant denominations or the fascist movement in the United States. Adorno’s contextualization consists only of footnotes as citations for the dates of Thomas’ addresses quoted or referred to. Waggoner, who is sympathetic to Adorno’s project nevertheless notes the neglect of historical contextualization, such as the absence of distinction between Christian fundamentalism and Pentacostalism. However, he does not consider the charge of “bad history” to be valid; the more important issue is that Adorno, Waggoner rationalizes, “had philosophical and critical concerns that outweighed expectations of fidelity to someone’s opinions about what actually happened, about the timing or the conceptuality of



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda133

historical breaks, and so on” (Waggoner 2004: 25–26). In the Thomas study, as in the astrology study later, the focus is primarily on the technique of the agitator and the astrologist. In fact, Adorno’s primary interests, unlike the writings on similar issues by Neumann, Lowenthal and Fromm, are revealed in his assumptions of the psychology and character of the working class. Adorno does two things: 1) he structures his argument much like that of the agitator in that what the latter projects as the substance of what sells the message, the ‘devices’, corresponds to Adorno’s view of the character traits of the masses; and 2) because the primary target is the psychology and behaviour of the masses it diverts attention from the essential ­problem – the forms of irrationalism to be countered by an analysis that provides a full comprehension of the message and an alternative to it. Thus, in the first case, Adorno responds to the agitator’s attempt to develop a personal relationship with his audience; the very message and devices of the agitator confirms the character of its intended audience. In Adorno’s view, any objective discussion presupposes an intellectual freedom and strength that hardly exists within the masses today. Moreover, the ‘coldness’ inherent in objective argumentation intensifies the feeling of despair, isolation and loneliness under which virtually every individual today suffers …. (Adorno 2000b: 1)

Here, the term ‘masses’ is not qualified but appears to refer to, as we noted in chapter four, everyone below the level of the bourgeois class. The whole of the masses need not be in attendance to be characterized in the same way as Thomas’ audience; the masses are identical with it. The audience “cannot think … is too weak to maintain a continuous process of making deductions” (Adorno 2000b: 34). His later distinction of “large sectors of the population” affirms the points of identification: lower education, ­manual labor, and unsophisticated personality and mode of behaviour (2000b: 53). He would use the same generalizations of cognitive ability and lack of education to characterize those who sought guidance and gratification from astrology (1994a: 61). That much of Adorno’s commentary mimics Thomas’ approach to the masses, and this is not stated fri­ volously, he contributes to the credibility of the pro-fascist form of com­munication in America by imputing attributes to the audience that he sees as facilitating their reception of Thomas’ message. This is distinctly different than Lowenthal’s approach.

134

chapter five

What the audience hears from Thomas are scripted forms of revelation and action. The revelations can be divided into two components. The first concerns who the agitator is and why he does what he does, while the second contains information about the problems he projects to the audience that reveal factors that undermine their sense of individualism and freedom. The perceived viability of the second component enhances the audiences’ feelings about the character of the messenger. This sense of solidarity allows Thomas to request minimal action that mostly concerns support for his mission; the most important category of action, then, is faith. The questions he proposes are introductions to the revelatory knowledge he provides and are followed by prepared answers he provides for his audience; together these purport to reveal the insight into trends in politics and the economy, the truth about who controls policy, manufacturing and other aspects of social life. The solutions to these problems are not explicit; Thomas’ proposed solutions are not plans of action to be taken up by the audience. Rather, he and other agitators were content with the acts of faith that provided them with unquestioning spectators equipped with a stock of scripted responses for service at the kitchen table, the office party and the factory lunch room. In order to achieve their goals, agitators relied on what Adorno referred to as devices or tricks that were designed to draw the audience to the propaganda. It is only necessary to cite a few examples here from Adorno’s study. The “lone wolf device” with which Adorno opens the study (2000b: 4–6), projects the agitator’s lonely but passionate drive to inform; Thomas is a man detached from everything big and powerful, his message is from one little man to another. The ‘fait accompli technique’ (2000b: 42–47) most clearly represents the scripting of the message and response in that it refers to the assumed agreement between the agitator and the audience that the issue is one “that previously had been decided” (2000b: 42); consequently, there is no need to think about choices. This device turns the feeling of impotence into a feeling of power by giving up one’s relatively independent will to assume a spot on the winning side. Not surprisingly, Adorno sees this technique embedded more broadly throughout modern mass culture, particularly in the cinema (2000b: 44). The ‘communists and bankers device’ (2000b: 108–113) collapses two presumably antagonistic groups as schemers undermining the property and security of ordinary  people; it succeeds because Thomas avoids an explanation of bourgeois property relations or the proposed socialization of property by communists.



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda135

Drawing on Bloch’s Heritage of our Times, which we discuss below, Geoghegan argues that in that work the “‘duped’, ‘seduced’ and ‘intoxicated’ (Bloch’s terms) have a great deal of space devoted to them, but the duper, the seducer and the intoxicator do not” (Geoghegan 1996: 116). This is an important point of criticism that might suggest that Adorno’s ‘devices’ were an appropriate focus on the agitator. The object of those devices was primarily the uneducated, unthinking audience, the devices becoming only convenient means of exposure. Despite such criticism Bloch’s analysis, like Lowenthal’s and Kracauer’s is more comprehensive with respect to the conditions – social and psychological – that can be returned to as both explanation and analysis as fascism assumed increasingly consolidated power. The devices are important, but they do not work separate from existing conditions in and beyond the audience, but devices cannot be deemed useful on the assumption of ready-made roots in the audience, a restricted range of thinking and that a message that appeals to the immediate sense of frustration and alienation makes an audience more receptive and the message more relevant. This is precisely Adorno’s approach to the masses here and in the jazz and popular music essays. Thomas approached radio broadcasts as forms of communication that included the exchange or sharing of information, just as we have noted radio programs that despite Horkheimer and Adorno’s assertion that they provided no rejoinder did provide for some indirect interactions, including market outcomes. Thomas’ broadcasts were interactions through the returns of money at his request for supporting his movement and the further possibility of individual audience members taking up the fascist cause in some other context besides listening and nominal action through donations. Where such action took place the degree of direct or indirect relation to Thomas’ message might be more or less clear depending on the circumstances. In order to retain listeners Thomas possessed a certain attitude toward their sense of alienation and their need for some level of immediate satisfaction. He relied on the conspiratorial script, citing truths deemed to be so obvious that the immediate concerns of those caught up in the everyday life of working and making ends meet would negate the need for alternative explanations. This is a problem quite obviously not confined to the context of Adorno’s Thomas study or to The Authoritarian Personality. The language of conspiracy relies on an unwavering assertion of its particular claims that nevertheless can change in subsequent moments – a

136

chapter five

contradictory consistency among propagandists – but their momentary inflexibility is an important communicative method. Neumann (1966: 436–439) identified the tendency of fascist propaganda to shift its topics, targets and promises as it rose to power. Straight-forward assertion is the strength of propaganda in relation to what are perceived to be the immediate needs of an audience; the assertion fits the scripted messages, repeatable with minor additions or revisions but remaining a restricted frame of information for the presumed limited interests and abilities of the audience; that such a message can be changed later is merely bound up in its assertion. We have already noted Adorno’s view of the absence of intellec­ tual  ­freedom and strength in the masses. The following are additional reflections on the problem of the masses as an audience of pro-fascists. While these may also be aspects of Thomas’ message, these are not interpretations or explanations of the message; rather they are Adorno’s assertions: a) The masses are incapable of taking up objective discussions of social issues because they lack the ability to distance themselves from a personal relationship to the problem before them and the relative autonomy to make that break (2000b: 1). b) Agitators develop a following, in part, because of the masses’ need to be ‘insiders’ (2000b: 3, 54), and therefore feel they are privy to certain knowledge; having been given that privilege they then have a personal stake in the message and a personal relation with the messenger. c) When the masses feel personally involved in the message, the otherwise secret knowledge, they feel a sense of being integral with the speaker to the extent that both speaker and audience lose their selfcontrol and let emotions flow freely (2000b: 7–9). The masses’ reaction to the fascist message is like their response to jazz – they want to give themselves over to it “because they must.” The pressure to give in is relieved when the individual makes the agitator’s cause his or her own (2000b: 9). d) The ‘choice’ to adopt such a cause is not one resulting from the strength of the individual, but merely a representation of “the neurotic curiosity prevailing within modern mass culture … [and] to know the dark and sinister side of those lives in which we cannot take part” (2000b: 54). Similarly, in his study of the astrology columns, Adorno argued that a major purpose of the columns was “to satisfy the longings of people who



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda137

are thoroughly convinced that others (or some unknown agency) ought to know more about themselves and what they should do than they can decide for themselves” (1994a: 52). The astrologist’s and the agitator’s message, “rarely if ever adequately express social or psychological reality, but manipulate the reader’s [or listener’s] ideas of such matters in a definite direction” (1994a: 52). The astrology advice suggested to readers that they experienced situations they could not manage on their own nor could these situations be explained beyond the understanding imputed by the astrologist (1994a: 74). Despite his assertion that the astrologist and the agitator manipulate the newspaper reader or audience, Adorno had already established the fertile field of his criticism – the absence of intellectual ability among the audience members or newspaper readers. Hence, the ground of receptivity was primarily a problem of the masses themselves, not the manipulative talents of others. This is consistent with the irrationalist denial of the knowability of the external world. The status of the individual is not determined or conditioned by identifiable social conditions but by fate. Giving priority to fate over relative autonomy facilitates the irrational dependence on authority and on the existing social relations, neither of which, it is claimed, have a knowable origin other than an unarticulated tradition or the immediacy of experience. To the agitator and his or her audience, social scientific investigation and explanation are of no help (Hodges 1970: 89; Adorno 2000b: 43). But, again, both the agitator and Adorno impute this aspect of irrationalism to the masses. The irrationalism of pro-fascist ideas often involves an accommodation of normative, reasonable behaviour consistent with social expectations, but also accepting – at least at the level of communication – intolerant, even ruthless messages. Adorno’s analysis of astrology as an irrationalist backdrop to popular culture shows how superficial reasonableness of argument and the neutrality of an underdeveloped sociology at once argue for social conformism and acknowledge at least two aspects of irrationalism discussed here, its claim that there are limits to knowledge and its appeal to authority: The continuous encouragement to talk things over with others appeals to the conviction of many people mentioned previously, that others know more about them and their own difficulties than they know themselves – an all-pervasive sense of self-alienation. It is in this connection that the concept of ‘understanding’ crops up in the [astrology] column. Sociologically the stress on understanding, being understood as well as understanding others, probably reflects social atomization, the reverse and concomitant of collectivization. (Adorno 1994a, 130–131)

138

chapter five

This simplistic sociology settles on the understanding of experience. Thus, propaganda gives priority to individually-generated meaning consistent with Max Weber’s original sociological definition of understanding: the ‘direct understanding’ of the subjective meaning a person gives to an act, or the ‘explanatory understanding’ of the subjective motive in relation to conditions under which it is pursued (Weber 1978: 8–9). So long as the causes of these conditions are not sought or the individual’s own meaning not subjected to critical scrutiny, propaganda remains on the safe ground of common sense. Adorno makes a similar analysis in Negative Dialectics in which the “committee as a microcosm of the group of its members and eventually of their totality” is a representation of the individual’s inferiority in the face of the established group (1973: 307–308). In that context, his claim on the same page against formalization of decisions only pits individual against committee, as if the committee was a stand-in for a neo-Kantian conception of society – already established against which thorough knowledge is limited and in which no protest can prevail. As in the music essays, Adorno introduces aspects of Freudianism as a means of analysing the problem. Without reference to any data, Adorno argues that the astrology columns are addressed to the “average lowermiddle-class reader,” a population well-known to the psychoanalytic literature as having “certain infantile fixations.” He cites Freud to attest that, “Even the popular psychologist today has heard that the petty bourgeois is likely to be an anal character” (Adorno 1994a: 86–87). While aspects of Adorno’s characterization of the masses can be found in some people within a population, his attribution of characteristics is categorical – ­without contextualization or nuance. The relationship of Thomas’ audiences to the problem of leadership clearly has historico-empirical veracity. The allusions to Hitler or the Fuhrer throughout the study, some more useful for discussion than others, denotes the problem of the leader as an exemplary power and an entity upon which adherents are dependent for direction and justification. The leader’s ability to answer all questions through, for example, the fait accompli device no doubt leads some to join the side perceived to be winning, since it takes “less independence and moral courage” to make that decision than to choose the side that appears to be losing. This reflects the individual’s irrepressible urge in modern culture to be “let in” (2000b: 54) to the space dominated by a well-led herd already in place, not only to the audience listening to the pro-fascist speaker but the customer in the music store, for this same image appears in the essay on popular music where



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda139

the decision to join in, dance or purchase is automatically a “decision to conform” (2002c: 466). The categorical treatment comes about because Adorno is unwilling to consider the working class political movements going on around him and earlier in the 1930s that were a viable and genuine expression of anticapitalism and self-consciousness. This was not the case with many national governments in Europe and North America prior to the outbreak of war. The threat to which most governments were attuned was the internal development of these same mass movements promoting socialist ideas and attempting to manifest their strength in the control of trade unions and other organizations. This orientation of the state resulted in far greater numbers of bloodied heads and jail time among participants of such movements than for those who advocated the social and economic policies of Hitler and Mussolini. Inside these mass movements, determination together with vacillation at times and in-fighting over strategy and leadership had its own negative impact on the effectiveness of anti-fascist and other political actions. Governments of various nations were blind to the actualities and potential of fascist politics not only in Germany and Italy but in England, France and elsewhere in Europe and certainly North America. While the threat was much less in the United States, the interest of the state in eradicating these organizations was largely non-existent, until the threat materialized on its doorstep. Regardless of anyone’s commitment to or condemnation of particular political affiliations, the fact remains that working people, en masse, along with intellectuals, artists and others were a visible force in the anti-fascist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist struggles in the period in which Adorno thought and wrote the works we are concerned with here. This history has been well-written and is too extensive to be explored here.10 When reading Adorno’s examples of limitations to the masses’ thinking, we do not get a sense of urgency as we would with direct communication of antisemitic, pro-fascist propaganda that included clear and 10 I have cited some sources at the end of chapter one in the section, “Socio-historical context”. Suffice it to cite here only a few other sources specifically concerned with the anti-fascist struggle. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Ceplair (1987) provide fairly objective accounts of the anti-fascist movements in France, England and the U.S. Rosenberg (2011) has provided a welcome local (for the most part) history of the Jewish response to homegrown fascism in pre-war England. Localized histories of the American Communist Party provide important discussions of anti-fascism that was integral to working class organization and struggles, and especially the fight against racism; see Naison (1983) and Healey and Isserman (1993) for two such histories. There are also many histories of the popular front support for the Spanish Republic.

140

chapter five

endangering threats to targeted groups. But this absence is precisely the point. What grips Adorno, as well as Lowenthal, in their respective prewar antifascist works is the evidence of support (directly or indirectly) for such propaganda in Europe and America. The exposure of this support and its potential threat is what ostensibly motivated these writings. But underlying that, for Adorno, is the need to address the insubstantial, inadequate mode of thinking which, itself, is the vehicle that carries the support of propaganda. In the Thomas study (as well as the later in his The Stars Down to Earth) the exposure of content is substantive, the analysis is minimal. The analysis of thinking and non-thinking is taken up by Adorno later in Negative Dialectics, but still without the necessary connection with practice which, in this case, was required to defeat antisemitism and fascism. Belief or faith is not only a response to propaganda, in that the subject accepts it as facts already established (Adorno 2000b: 42–43), but it is support for the common sense of what is said or written in relation to the subject’s immediate circumstances, desires or perception of problems. ‘Immediate’ is not confined to a single moment but to the subject’s perception of a fact or problem that has retained its effect, perhaps over a long term (a central component of antisemitism) because of its enduring psychological impact and its call to the subject as a ‘problem’ to be ‘solved’, the immediacy is the emotional and unanalysed effect. An example of this is part of an interview from The Authoritarian Personality: You never see a Negro driving (an ordinary car of which the subject mentions a number of examples) but only a Cadillac or a Packard…. They always dress gaudy. They have that tendency to show off…. Even though he can’t afford it, he will buy an expensive car just to make a show…. (Adorno et al. 1982: 308)

About this interviewee’s comment, Adorno remarks that it is an example of the “distortions that occur when experience is viewed through the lens of congealed stereotypy” (1982: 307) by which he meant “the tendency [to] mechanically … subsume things under rigid categories” as his colleague Nevitt Sanford defined the term (1982: 44). The issues in The Authoritarian Personality may be different to a large degree from the Thomas study (including the method), but the language and the projection are abundantly similar to Adorno’s stereotyping of the masses in that study and in his jazz articles. This excerpt is an example of superficial triggers that produce a rigid, formulaic response, such as the perception of difference in smell or the all-powerful Jewish influence (Adorno et al. 1982: 302, 306). To the audience, these are indisputable, these are reality itself; they are facts



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda141

“against which the idea of fact was originally coined” (Adorno 2000b: 45). As with the concept, Adorno is being consistent here in registering ‘fact’ as more than it is in itself, something that has a history of being made, and which cannot be explained by the fact alone. However, as noted above, the immediacy of such ‘facts’ of experience exhibits a rational character in the mind of the agitator and the listener – that is, as a rational element of irrationalism—where it is perceived as a ‘problem’ to be ‘solved’. ‘Problem’ and ‘solved’ are in quotation marks because they occur in the presentation of agitators and in the minds or actions of their audience, but the meaning of these terms in such contexts is consistent with Lukács’ analysis of the terms in the hands of the irrationalist who “absolutizes the problem” and renders it “artificially insoluble” (Lukács 1980: 97–98). Jews, Negroes and foreigners are problems for some of the interviewees in The Authoritarian Personality because the interviewees are interested in limiting (if not eliminating) their presence and influence. Recognition of a ‘problem’ provides a veil of rationality that shows the agitator or listener to have come to a conclusion that there is a problem through “hard thinking and mature experience.” “The term ‘problem’ is taken over from the sphere of science,” writes Adorno (1982: 312), “and is used to give the impression of searching, responsible deliberation” and, therefore, an object of thought that has an element of relativism, the selective consideration and affirmation of two (at least) sides of any problem. The equivocal character of the term, problem, implies a rational working through the elements of an issue but actually suggests to Adorno a “pattern of conformist ‘sensibleness’ [that] lends itself very easily to the defense of various kinds of irrationality” (1982: 313) such as the apologetic comments that there are good and bad Jews – e.g. the ‘white’ and the ‘kike’ (1982: 316, 360). It is a ‘sensibleness,’ a ‘reasonableness’ that allows for a conformist, unproblematic functioning of the individual in society (Adorno1994a: 80). The compulsive reaction to adopt the propagandists’ message is not entirely devoid of self-interest to forego a level of relative autonomy. Discussing the loss of self-control Adorno allows his already established conclusions about the working class to denigrate whatever degree of actual choice they may have without an adequate analysis of the range of alternatives. The choice is divided in two parts in the Thomas study, the psychological manifestation of “social and cultural pressure” and “economically by becoming an employee (rather than remaining a selfsustaining social unit)” (2000b: 9). The last of these is inexplicable; remaining a self-sustaining social unit by not becoming an employee was, then and now, a rarity under modern industrial and commercial conditions. It

142

chapter five

is inexplicable because Adorno is implying either an imagined state of autonomy, or that the loss of independence under the conditions of modernity is insurmountable, which is also an imaginary state. In the first case such a claim to a self-sustaining condition is something neither the middle nor the working classes ever had. Given the historical context and the absence of appropriate analysis, his claims become a convenient form of blaming the victim. Adorno’s reference to independence and selfsustained individuality does not refer to anything concrete and historical, other than a bourgeois figure. As we will see, Bloch and Kracauer take a more dialectical view of this issue.11 Adorno is quick to take this period of modernity – problems and all – as a standard for elevation and autonomy of the subject. Discussing the humbleness and folksy ways acclaimed by Thomas under the ‘democratic cloak’, Adorno reminds the reader of the fact Thomas is actually praising. Thomas’ acclamation of these humble ways reflects the fact that large sectors of the population – in fact all those who are excluded from the privilege of education, and through manual labor, bear the burden of civilization – preserve certain traits of rudeness and even savagery which may be called upon in any critical situation. (2000b: 53)

For Adorno, the problem is that “the agitator indirectly praises this” fact. More seriously, however, he echoes Thomas, taking the fact as a given “reflection” of reality. That there were – and still are – segments of the population willing to give themselves over to violence and cruelty may be evident, but in his usual style Adorno not only chooses not to distinguish, but by ignoring the anti-fascist movements assumes that the consciousness manipulated by fascist propagandists is a consciousness that cannot develop in an alternative direction and would choose not to go there if it could. The Thomas study might well have been published with more developed material but was not during Adorno’s lifetime. The short essay, “Antisemitism and Fascist Propaganda,” published originally in 1946 is largely a summary of his discussion of the devices and tactics of Thomas, described there as one of the West Coast agitators. The essay is devoid of vilification of the masses that are found throughout the Thomas study, and is devoid of the ungrounded statements that make the Thomas study problematic, except for one passage in which consumer behavior 11 I will not discuss it here, but Fromm’s 1941 Escape from Freedom was also a more thorough and nuanced analysis.



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda143

and the adoption of fascist ideology appear as interdependent actions (Adorno 1994b: 224). That essay stands alongside his “Research project on Antisemitism: Idea of the Project,” written in 1941 as the outline for the Institute’s film project for which Kracauer wrote the initial and some (at least) subsequent versions of the film’s screenplay (Gilloch and Kang 2007). The Approach of Others to Antifascism If we have found Adorno’s writings on antisemitism and pro-fascist movements to be problematic, part of a critique of them should be an examination of the perspectives, style and, especially, philosophical/dialectical approach of others doing such work in the same period, particularly those known to Adorno. Merely to note differences is not the intention here; rather, it is to illustrate the value of more systematic approaches and, especially, the difference his work presents with respect to the confusion of premises and conclusions. In the first instance, nowhere in the work of Bloch, Kracauer, Fromm or Lowenthal do we encounter the kind of approach we find in Adorno’s study of Thomas and related writings. We have noted his disparaging view of the masses’ capacity for objective discussion, the relinquishing of selfcontrol and acquiescence to the leader. His emphasis on the devices for manipulation becomes an obstructive form of analysis directed primarily at the masses rather than the agitator. Certainly one source that Adorno was well aware of was the research project Fromm led on political attitudes and character traits among Germans that began in 1929. The results of the study were not published in Adorno’s lifetime. However, the editor of the published volume, Wolfgang Bonss, notes some of the controversy over Fromm’s work in which Adorno figured. Fromm’s research team was made up of many members of the Institute, a considerable contrast to the latter study on antisemitism discussed at the beginning of this chapter. However, Horkheimer and others doubted the validity of the project, a problem that apparently influenced subsequent controversies that sprang up around personal relations that included Adorno’s efforts to achieve membership in the Institute (Bonss 1984: 2). Despite Fromm’s conclusion that it was deficient character structure among German workers that prevented them from defeating the rise of Nazism, the surviving data do not point unequivocally in that direction. While the study was not without its problems it does illustrate important

144

chapter five

differences in views on politics, authority and social attitudes depending on adherence to specific political platforms (National Socialist, Social Democratic, Communist and others) and indicates the strength of a potential opposition.12 More important is the work of Bloch and Kracauer. It is unnecessary for a social analyst to have a completely uncritical view of the working class, or the masses as it might be conceived from various vantage points. Integration into modernity, the conflicted consciousness often found in the mix of social problems and personal reactions, the potential for false consciousness and errant directions have all been widely evident in the 20th century. With respect to Adorno’s attitude toward the working or middle classes, one might argue that he was likely drawing on the category of ‘employee’ in Kracauer’s work of 1929, and perhaps also drawing on Bloch’s use of the same term in his Heritage of Our Times. A discussion of these works as distinct from the method of Adorno’s Thomas study reveals some of the latter’s shortcomings. A critical ethnology informed by Kracauer’s reading of Marxism, Die Angestellten provided a portrait of the office worker as the personnel occupying what Bloch called “the new centre” (1991: 26, 36). The new of that centre consisted of the society-wide proportion of ‘employees’13 that had grown rapidly in the interwar period compared to industrial workers, although the latter retained its numerical superiority. The new also referred to the kind of work the employees performed, its standardization 12 The cumulative data and correlations are discussed in Chapter IV of the study. Four classifications of responses were used: Radical, Authoritarian, Compromise and Neutral, and it is in the correlations that some problems of classification and interpretation are evident. One is worth citing here as it is relevant to the present discussion. Question 426 concerning respondents’ choice of the greatest historical personalities resulted in answers that included Lenin or other revolutionary socialists being classified as Authoritarian rather than Radical. The basic rationale for this classification was that “…it was clearly all the same to them whether a strong leader fought for Socialism or for something else: it was the figure of a strong leader which was decisive” (Fromm 1984, 212; see also Tables 4.2 and 4.5, pages 212 and 214, respectively). This reflects Fromm politics as well as most of the Institute’s personnel, and it increased the Authoritarian group by a few percentage points, simultaneously reducing the proportion of Radicals. Importantly, if all the types of “response syndromes and political orientations” are aggregated on Table 4.14 (page 224), types 1,2 and 9 with clear Radical or neutral orientation to the three question complexes, accumulate to nearly half the respondents (46.7%). 13 It is unfortunate, as Quintin Hoare reports, that his translation of Die Angestellten had to be rendered significantly different in English in relation to the subject of the book. “The problem arises because specific German social legislation has given far sharper definition to categories that in English remain approximate and essentially descriptive” (121). Thus, a title that means “employee” in reference to a specific type becomes “the salaried masses” in English which only distinguishes a group in the otherwise ill-defined aggregation.



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda145

in terms of routine, types of people, and leisure activities, the diversions from drudgery different from that in the factory, that were a boon to the culture industries. Kracauer’s work is not directly related to the problem of fascism but provides a perspective on class that is more complex than a simple assertion of the loss of independence to which Adorno refers. However, as Inka Mülder-Bach has pointed out, “the ‘aura of horror’ in which he sees [the employees] shrouded already anticipates the political catastrophe that he foresaw earlier than others” (2000: 6). As such, Kracauer’s work, and others such as Fromm’s study of the Weimar working class, concerns the consumers of the culture industries of capitalism and the future audience of National Socialist propaganda. But in neither case are they to be taken as a monolithic, acquiescing mass. Kracauer excels in this regard compared to Adorno’s treatment of Thomas’ audience. Indeed, Kracauer’s employees are said to have little control over the trajectory of their lives, but this becomes evident to the reader in a less categorical form, and therefore fosters a more clear understanding of the success of fascist propaganda on some proportion of these workers by classification according to educational certification, selection of employees via body type and appearance (Kracauer 2000: 38), personality (43–44), the problem of ageing (53–59), and the attempts to redress grievances (60–67). In the histories of Germany and America people have taken these experiences and conditions in different directions, but it is these different trajectories that make the reasoning through of the successes of fascism more accessible and complete. The employees are essentially already proletarianized. Their positions in the office, on the sales route, and other jobs, hardly protect them from the caprices of their masters and provide only as much security as the market will allow, and therein lies the crux of their individual and collective problem. Most are members of trade or employers’ unions in which they seek protection from downturns in the economy, rationalization and redundancy, and also find redress for the wrongdoings of employers, managers and fellow employees. There is a dialectic to Kracauer’s investigation, a clear contextualization of the employees, the daily conflicts they face, especially in relation to social and occupational hierarchies, and the manifestations of the structural contradictions of capitalism. The absence of independence among the employees is evident in his observation of “the transfer of the commodity labour-power” through the labor exchange in which the work history and skills of an employee mediate the speed with which they exit the exchange to another job (2000: 65–66). The employees exhibit a loss of some degree

146

chapter five

of relative autonomy with respect to obtaining employment, but within the specific context also gain some degree of autonomy by attaining educational and trade certificates relevant to particular kinds of work. Kracauer moves from descriptive and sympathetic introductory chapters that discuss the topics already noted to later parts of the text that capture the motivations of employers to develop the degree of loyalty and compliance in their employees that confirms the complex labor-power requirements of capitalism. An important element of his analysis is the employers’ use of sport and other company associations – “patriarchal events staged as ‘company communities’” (2000: 77) – designed as distractions from union activity. In the employers’ view, the “moral pressure” of such an environment serves as an example of healthy class collaboration. These are forms of entrapment in a “ghostly battle … for the souls of the masses” (2000: 80). Occupational status reinforces the subjectively affirmed divisions of labor in the structure of capitalism affecting the psychological outlook of the employees at different levels. In contrast to Adorno’s position on the masses, it is instructive to note Bloch’s opening aphorism in his Heritage of our Times: “We still are. But it only half works. The little man holds too much back. He still thinks, for himself alone” (1991: 11). The employee allows himself to be moulded into the image his employer produces for him thus assuming and reproducing false consciousness (Bloch 1991: 22, 25). Entertainment, fun and other diversions offered by capitalism soothe the contradictions of society, such as the status differences evident in the characters and situations in popular film and the newspaper border separating news from entertainment that marks “a gradual descent into fun” (Bloch 1991: 27–30). Bloch’s dialectics, Hegelian and partisan, disallows a dismissal of the working and middle classes’ perceived compliance with the demands of capitalism and its culture by a proportion of their members, or their acquiescence to the attractions of fascism because none of these conditions are an end, but are processes that can be disrupted and redirected. That being in society half works, as Bloch writes, that there is still thinking, though misdirected, is the ground upon which he analyses aspects of support for National Socialism. He continues this idea discussing the distinct responses associated with the color of employees’ collars, noting that those who are dependent or victims of the master, believe themselves to be other than they are (1991: 21). Bloch also believes this, but in a contrary manner, for it is the crux of his argument: attention to the aufhebung of history, demographic changes – one foot in the village the other in the cinema. Bloch’s philosophical emphasis is on process (Hudson 1982: 69; Geoghegan 1996: 28–29) pushing him beyond mere reportage of a cultural



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda147

malaise; he articulates the history of the problem if only in skeletal form and in less than easily accessible language. His most significant contribution occurs with his assertion of the dialectic by which time and conditions of the past retain an influence on the present and its distinct conditions. This is inescapable, for the cognitive image and impact of the past is necessarily parallel to the empirical reality of the mobility available to people, although not without constraints. Hence, he coins the concept of non-contemporaneity, the meaning of which is shaped by his use of ‘heritage’ and ‘inheritance.’ Non-contemporaneity refers to what is inherited from the past and is to some degree preserved in the present; these will influence the moment and may even seek to dominate the subject’s consciousness again as the experience did in earlier times (Bloch 1991: 105–106). He does this in a manner, for example, as Hudson has remarked, in the same way that he “stressed in his essay on Thomas Mann’s political manifesto, [that] it was necessary to be first revolutionary, and only then think of inheriting the past in a way which activated its good contents” (Hudson 1982: 12). Nothing in the past can be fully retrieved to be as it once was, although what we inherit has some value for present purposes. This built on a basic principle of Hegel’s dialectics in that just as there is always something left over from the concept as it is immediately defined, history and experience leave something remaining after their moment has been transcended, sublated. Heritage is neither advancement from remembrance of the past nor regression on the hope of revival. The non-contemporaneous, however, in the context of his discussion of fascism, tends to bring forward that which is incompatible with the present, although it may nevertheless find a place. Bloch also exposes myths drawn on by fascism to compromise the relations of modernity. Thus, “capital … resorts to a new deception, a mythological one, and gives rewards to all ‘non-contemporaneous’ stocks which frankly nurture this deception or are encapsulated within themselves, alien to the times, unconscious.” Two of the non-contemporaneous groups are peasants and the middle class (a third is youth). “The impoverishment of peasants and the middle classes joins that of the proletariat; fascism thus becomes necessary to oppress the proletarians completely and to separate the newly proletarianized elements from them ideologically” (Bloch 1991: 53). The peasantry retains its non-modern cultural traits such as ownership as an expression of a sense of freedom, a nonindustrial orientation to production, attachment to the land and a sober outlook (Bloch 1991: 99–100). The memories of the middle-class “make it completely alien to the times” (1991: 101) that serve to suppress what

148

chapter five

should be a revolutionary tendency given their current impoverishment; drawing on those memories of the past fill their talk in the pub and the worksite. The non-contemporaneous is intended to provide a reasoned view of the alienated, and the propensity of a proportion of the population to view Nazism sympathetically, tacit support from a position of relative comfort and superficial satisfaction. It is the irrational upon which he sets his critique, “but not all that is ‘irrational’ is simply dissolvable stupidity” (1991: 5). That which continues to influence from the past, such as conceptions of nation and soil, and older means of production constitute the objective non-contemporaneous. The subjective element lies in the “accumulated rage” of impoverishment and complaint once merely treated contemplatively. As contradictions these meet as the subject ‘activates’ the objective element (Bloch 1991: 108–109); each mediates the other, the objective elements having a longer duration, passed over temporally and materially but remaining influential when new material conditions and frustrations converge. These contradictions need relief which is found initially in complaint or withdrawal from conflict but ultimately find their deliverance in one or another social movement: social democratic, communist or fascist. Thus, the contradictions must be forced in one direction or another, which is possible when the potential within each of these elements is sublated. The illumination of contradictions, however, brings to light the absence of leadership. But the leadership – of a kind – will emerge as mediator. Such a dialectical complex is shaped by the weight of partisanship and for Bloch contradiction cannot be left without naming the direction of its possible resolution: “the ‘Triple Alliance’,” the proletariat, the impoverished peasants and middle class. The “genuinely contemporaneous contradiction has the duty of being concrete and total enough to detach the genuinely non-contemporaneous contradictions from reaction too and bring them up to the tendency” (Bloch 1991: 113–114). Bloch treats the non-contemporaneous dialectically, and does so as the forces of fascism are building around him. Rabinbach (1977) argues that Bloch was taking up an analysis he felt the left had failed to pursue in Germany leaving the field of the working and middle classes open for National Socialism. His efforts at an intellectual level along with many others gained legitimacy in light of the catastrophe that followed that failure in which members of these classes played a significant role.14 14 The literature is too numerous and generally well-known to list. Two works that reflect some of the problems about which Bloch was concerned are Browning (1992) and Hilberg (1992).



the masses and pro-fascist propaganda149 ***

It is an important part of the argument that the rationalization and control of the economy in industrial society causes people to believe they are “objects of processes which they often fail to understand and which are utterly beyond their control” (Adorno 2000b: 43). But it is the continuous reduction to psychological attributes of all decisions regarding leadership and responses to objective economic conditions that allows Adorno to address this as a problem of the indiscriminate masses rather than a more complex social and political problem. He does this in the Thomas study through a report of the content, without other data and argument to support his contentions. However, when he did have a collection of data his solution was essentially the same. The Authoritarian Personality provided Adorno and his colleagues with interview responses from people from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. But here, too, the project was centered on personality traits, such as “stereotypy, emotional coldness, identification with power, and general destructiveness” to be addressed as such rather than explicit connection with “[h]istorical factors or economic forces” that were “beyond the scope of our study.” The absence of elaboration on what is meant by “rational arguments” and efforts to address discrimination toward a particular group sows doubt about any solution based in educational efforts and/or consciousness-raising that Adorno and his colleagues implicitly proposed. Such doubt is evident among the concluding statements of the study: [C]loser association with members of minority groups can hardly be expected to influence people who are largely characterized by the inability to have experience, and liking for particular groups or individuals is very difficult to establish in people whose structure is such that they cannot really like anybody; and if we should succeed in diverting hostility from one minority group we should be prevented from taking satisfaction by the knowledge that the hostility will now very probably be directed against some other group. (Adorno, et al. 1982: 477)

Indeed, efforts to eliminate discrimination are necessarily long-term. To what extent is it possible that Adorno could have mitigated his generalizations with other data and argument illustrating the absence of adherence or resistance to the messages of fascist supporters? He was probably the least likely of all the Frankfurt School members to identify himself with socialist or communist movements either in Germany or in the U.S., although this might have been easier in the latter context given the United Front policy of the American Communist Party and the p ­ ositive response

150

chapter five

to it by artists and intellectuals from less radical political orientations. The point is that Adorno, as in so much of his work, was not interested in basing his views on an analysis of historical data; he limited his engagement with empirical evidence, for the most part, to that which could be rendered psychological rather than socio-historical. That Adorno completely neglected the evidence of organized opposition on the streets, on farm land and in the factories of America permitted him to perpetuate his arguments on the basis of imagery and esotericism, and to denigrate the legitimacy of working class politics by ignoring it, thus affirming the non-existence of an historical agent for socialism. But there is something more problematic in Adorno’s approach to which we have alluded earlier. Each of the concepts, jazz, the masses, the culture industry is, in Adorno’s view, identical with itself, and as such these concepts are contrary to his principle of non-identity as the central principle of his dialectics and more specifically to his view of concepts. Such concepts are identical with themselves where contradictions within them and the relations they share with others have been ignored, excluded or reified. His limitation lies in his unwillingness to consider the importance of a systematic philosophy, or systems in general, denying to these concepts a location in which their relations can be fully identified and from which historical analysis can be developed. Further, as we have noted, practical measures to address propaganda are not to be found or even alluded to by Adorno, notwithstanding the minor implications in The Authoritarian Personality. The theory-practice relation remains undeveloped. Hegel’s remarks on the difference between ordinary thinking and intelligent reflection provide a theoretical outline for the necessity of intervention into the former. We have already noted in chapter two that intelligent reflection is the “grasping and asserting [of] contradictions”. Such reflection, or “thinking reason” as Hegel also refers to it, “sharpens … pictorial thinking …into opposition”; that is, an inferior form of thinking develops the contradiction “receiving in [it] the negativity which is the indwelling pulsation of self-movement and spontaneous activity” (Hegel 1969: 441–442). The occurrence of self-movement by way of contradictions is the mediation of the opposite terms of the contradiction, but what emerges through the self-movement of sublation requires a concretization that is the object of consciousness, for what emerges is essentially a possibility of alternative actions. It is the consciousness of the subject that is shaped by its own mediation or by an intervening other that sharpens a new direction.

CHAPTER SIX

MEDIATION Aspects of Marxist and Hegelian conceptions of mediation have been discussed in chapter two. Of concern here is, one the one hand, Adorno’s assertion of the necessity of mediation, and on the other, the fact that far less employment of this aspect of dialectics is evident in much of the work under discussion here. Perhaps nowhere does the concern regarding his use of mediation more importantly arise than in his remarks on one of Benjamin’s Baudelaire essays submitted to and rejected by the editors of the Institute’s journal. The disagreements Adorno had with Benjamin regarding “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire” are well known. However, despite the assertion of Rainer Rochlitz (1996: 194–195) that the dispute between them and their respective cultural and political positions are not “current anymore” that dispute should be at the center of any discussion about the dialectical component of their respective writings and, specifically, the place of mediation in their use of the dialectical method. What interests us in the first part of this chapter are those aspects of the essays on which Adorno commented and which can be compared to his own work. Without rising to an unqualified defense of Benjamin’s work on Baudelaire, the “Second Empire” essay and “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” reflect a difference between Benjamin’s self-direction in the former, its structure and content that defines its place in his larger project, and the second essay as a response to editorial directives framed, in part, by Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s concerns about political exposure. The differences between Benjamin and the other two do remain important as does the impact on Benjamin in his dire circumstances at the time. The two essays are significantly different. It is a difference that is more pronounced considering Adorno’s reasons for rejecting the earlier essay and why the later one was finally published in the Institute’s journal. Rochlitz (1996: 194) simply states that the “Motifs” was the “more explicitly theoretical essay”. Brodersen (1997, 240) suggests more accurately that it showed “the influence of those who had commissioned” it. Lowenthal (1989b: 74) supported the publication of the “Second Empire” essay and maintained that the “shift of emphasis” in “Motifs” gave the first essay “a

152

chapter six

weight of its own.” Brecht, frustrated by the criticisms and the hesitance of the Institute to publish the work, offered to have it published in Das Wort, the German exile journal. Once “Motifs” was completed and submitted, Benjamin remarked in a letter to Margarete Steffin: “Now I’m awaiting the storm clouds that will break over my head over this text” (Wizisla 2009: 172; emphasis in original). Benjamin wrote and submitted his essay in a period of time in which Horkheimer and Adorno were eschewing their tenuous connection with Marxism and keeping their options open with respect to their security in America. Aspects of Adorno’s politics that may have contributed to this dispute are evident in his attitude toward Benjamin’s relationship with Brecht, as well as Benjamin’s interest in working class politics, and his sometime interest in the USSR and communist party membership. BuckMorss (1977: various, but esp. 139–150) has noted the differences in Benjamin’s relationships with Scholem, Brecht and Adorno – each possessing a certain importance for Benjamin and each influencing him differently and reacting differently to him. It is of little wonder that Benjamin kept these relationships insulated from each other for it was in each that he found a distinct kind of intellectual support, dialogue and criticism for his interests. Hannah Arendt cites Adorno’s suggestion that Benjamin tried to outdo Brecht in radicalism with his “Work of Art” essay; but, she notes, it was likely that Benjamin feared Adorno (Arendt 1969: 52, note 5; Wizisla 2009: 15–17), a fear that may have been linked to Adorno’s gatekeeping powers in the Institute. Perhaps it was because of the distance of each of these friendships that Benjamin found himself thoroughly isolated in 1939 unsuccessfully seeking the relative security that each of the others had found in Palestine, Denmark and America. Whatever the problematic character of his relations with Scholem and Brecht, perhaps Benjamin had put too much stock in his relationship with Adorno and others in the Institute hoping that the first Baudelaire essay would solidify their support and provide a way out of the European quagmire. That was not to be, and it was Adorno’s self-serving reaction to the essay that became another brick in the wall for Benjamin. The basis of Adorno’s rejection of “Second Empire” was, in his view, the absence of sufficient mediation. He put his criticisms in terms of concern for Benjamin’s reputation, suggesting that the use of “Marxist categories” were neither suited to Marxism nor to Benjamin. [I]t would also be most beneficial to the cause of dialectical materialism and the theoretical interests represented by the institute if you surrendered to your specific insights and conclusions without combining them with other

mediation153 ingredients, which you obviously find so distasteful to swallow that I really cannot expect anything good to come of it. (Adorno 2003: 103)

This comment implies that Adorno himself employed materialist dialectics; it also suggests a paternalistic projection of what he believed Benjamin actually wanted. “In the end, there is more of that one truth in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals than in Bukarin’s ABC [of Communism]” (Adorno 2003: 103). What were Adorno’s objections to the “Second Empire” essay? First, his concerns built on his initial intellectual reaction to Benjamin’s style and his own commitment to the theoretical approach Benjamin had employed in the Trauerspiel, aspects of which have been discussed in chapter three, and much of which had been surpassed by the time of his work on Baudelaire. In his letter to Benjamin of 10 November 1938, Adorno references criticisms and concerns he had registered with Benjamin about his work over the years. He seemed to be offended as much by his elder associate’s lack of adherence to his advice as he was about the content of the essay, which he criticized as having unelaborated theoretical support for the motifs in the study (Adorno 2003: 100, 102). It is interesting that Adorno focused on sections he considered lacking in explanation and elaboration, for as myself and others have argued, it is just such a style that Adorno intentionally adopted to maintain the esoteric character of his own work and serve as a buttress against political engagement. Further, the essay contains its own theoretical component and actually appears more like Horkheimer had imagined his and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: “filled to the bursting point with historical and economic material” (Claussen 2008: 142). Among other passages in the “Second Empire” essay, Adorno objected to Benjamin’s inclusion of Marx’s comments on Napoleon’s wine tax from his “Class Struggles in France”. Marx was reflecting the reality of the time, including the establishment of customs offices (toll houses) at town boundaries that reflected Napoleon’s legislation and which changed “every town into a foreign country” (Marx, qu. in Benjamin 2003a: 7). Benjamin used the themes of poverty and waste in Baudelaire’s “The Ragpicker’s Wine” to reflect on the broader contextualization of the burden of taxation – on wine and other commodities – over a longer period of time. Marx had noted the political use of taxation from Bonaparte forward, its effect on the peasantry and on the economy more generally in France of the period (Marx 1978: 49–50, 60–61). But Adorno objected to Benjamin exhibiting a “tendency to relate the pragmatic content of Baudelaire’s work directly to adjacent features in the social history of his

154

chapter six

time, especially economic ones.” For Adorno, this passage showed evidence of “artificiality,” a particular and apparently peculiar “concreteness,” that suggested the “direct connection drawn between the wine tax and L’ Ame du Vin [‘The Soul of Wine’] ascribes to phenomena the very spontaneity, tangibility and density that capitalism has stripped from them” (Adorno 2003: 101). Benjamin’s treatment of Baudelaire’s correspondances were seen by Adorno, and later Arendt, as having an immediate, direct link, but each of them accepted the value of these in a different manner, Adorno as a limitation, Arendt as legitimation of Benjamin’s interest in “small, even minute things” (Arendt 1968: 11; Adorno 2003: 101). Adorno’s criticism that Benjamin’s essay was not “mediated through the process as a whole” (2003: 101)1 may strike one as a contradiction given Adorno’s rejection of totality as a philosophical concept of identity. Despite the admonition to Benjamin that he had “obscured” the mediation “by materialist-historiographic invocation” (Adorno 2003: 102), much of the “Second Empire” essay is actually mediated by the core of social development, the growth of the commodity economy, in the “social process as a whole”. The “materialistic-historiographic” is Adorno’s reference to Benjamin’s Marxist approach. For Adorno, this necessitated the rejection of Benjamin’s preference for citing economic features to which Adorno gives no more weight than “adjacent … [to] the social history of [Baudelaire’s] time” while Benjamin treated them as integral. Because mediation by economic factors is diffused throughout society, as Marx argued, specifically in relation to the system of production (1986a: 107–109), it does not follow that mediation of particular phenomena either must have an immediate and perceptible effect on the social totality, nor does it follow that such mediating factors cannot have such an effect. This is what we have referred to in chapter two as the general domain of mediation – economic activity governing the relations of capitalism – that will effect particular phenomena, but the immediate visibility of those specific effects are, at the same time, somewhat obscured by that very generalization. What strikes the attentive reader is the interest Benjamin has in contextualizing the “Second Empire” essay within a broad array of events and political concepts rather than images. Images can be drawn from what he writes, but the events and concepts he employs are weightier in their use in materialist analysis. In this he has clearly moved away from the theoretical outline of the first chapter of the Trauerspiel. While we may not 1 In another translation of the 10 Nov letter, (Adorno, et al., 2007c: 129) the phrase is “total social process”.

mediation155 conclude that Benjamin’s connections in this essay are modeled strictly on Marx’s method, his work does not rely on the interpretive model he initiated nor from Adorno’s adoption of it. Rather his ‘sociocritical’ method is grounded in an examination of concrete material conditions about which Baudelaire wrote; it is comparative, providing a more complete picture of the atmosphere of the time through Saint Beuve, Hugo and others. The comparative approach, nominal though it was, was intended to illuminate the atmosphere much like his concentration on objects in The Arcades Project and an approach that avoided simply pitting one poet, or one commentator against another, such as Marx, Engels or Poe. Benjamin was implementing what he had argued in his 1934 talk, “The Author as Producer” as an attitude toward literary criticism. There he expressed a kind of tendentiousness, applicable to poetry as much as to literary criticism, being able to make clear connections between Baudelaire’s sympathies and his own illumination of them. The illumination is not the flash of a completed constellation as Adorno would have it but is established by weaving concrete connections through historical reality. The method exhibits a political tendency that need not be or result in an expressed revolutionary commitment or resolution (Benjamin did not, after all, consider Baudelaire to be a revolutionary poet) while it nevertheless may show evidence of an important moral relation to the working class. The political tendency is achieved, Benjamin argues, through the process of specialization that links that tendency to the quality of the work. The specialist of this kind develops out of the employment of his or her artistic interest, writing for a purpose – “adapt[ing] this [productive] apparatus [of artistic quality] to the purposes of the proletarian revolution” (Benjamin 1999c: 780). This is a “mediating activity” between the artist’s talent, technical skill and interest, and its development or transformation into revolutionary practice. Such mediating activity is significant because of the potential for positive results (sublation) that may emerge from the partial settling, at least, of a contradiction between class origin and political tendency. Throughout the “Second Empire” essay Benjamin cites economic changes that mediated transformation in public activity, literature (popular and belles lettres), political interventions, and the structure of urban space – the development of modernity and the task of shaping it that Baudelaire gave to himself (Benjamin 2003a: 49). New forms of advertising and abbreviated writing such as the physiologies and short news items were mediated in their development, in part, by changes in the pattern of daily life – the boulevard press, the stretching of daytime activities into

156

chapter six

evening with the introduction of gas lamps, the coincidence of leisure time and the cocktail hour, the sheltered arcades that facilitated the leisure stroll, exemplified at the extreme by those who walked their pet turtles. So, too, was the crowd qualitatively transformed into which the flâneur’s leisure walk was absorbed into the “commodity soul” (Marx), and became “the newest asylum of outlaws … the latest narcotic for people who have been abandoned” (Benjamin 2003a: 31). Baudelaire’s was a poetry of experience – his night walks, the crowd, the experience of gamblers and others. As such, the poet imitates the storyteller in which tale, teller and the material environment cannot be separated (Benjamin 2003c: 316; 2002: 146). In this Benjamin shows an almost complete engagement with the commodification of society that allows for a focus on the flaneur whose individuality is mediated by such economic and cultural changes – he is free to roam and observe; his space in the city, open yet sheltered, can only come about in an environment in which place blends with commodity in the arcades and solitude is realized in the crowd of the masses momentarily freed of their labors. The masses had been preceded by the bohème who, after a taste of revolution, found the knowledge and literature of the urban atmosphere increasingly shaped and constrained by the marketplace of news and entertainment. Benjamin rounds-out Baudelaire’s Paris noting the poet, himself an unsettled figure, nevertheless understood that “it takes an heroic constitution to live modernity” (Benjamin 2003a: 44), part of which was the acquiescence to the disintegration of the aura in order to experience modernity (Benjamin 2003b). Benjamin illuminates the contradictions of modernity that come about through the complexities of production and the simplicity by which both people and material goods become the refuse of capitalism. The task of the poet is to know the reality of which he or she writes and, notwithstanding Baudelaire’s problematic despair, that knowledge of reality is furthered by Benjamin’s contextualization of “The Ragpicker’s Wine” with quotations from commentators of the time, Frégier and Foucaud. The former comments on the behavior of workers and their families, including children, who go out to the town gate, purchase wine and return home having become “half-drunk” in the process. In an allusion to their state of alienation, Benjamin references a policeman’s view that “workers who imbibed that wine displayed their enjoyment – full of pride and defiance – as the only enjoyment granted them,” a pride and defiance turned inward with cheap wine that, according to Foucaud, “has saved the government structure from quite a few blows” (Benjamin 2003a: 7–8).

mediation157 Although Adorno claims that he will demonstrate the error of Benjamin’s analysis, there is little of this; his criticisms are intended to be sufficient and self-explanatory, especially his criticism of Benjamin “directly” relating historical occurrences to Baudelaire’s poem that demonstrates the absence of mediation. Adorno’s complaint against the “materialistic-historiographic” and his projection of its distastefulness upon Benjamin characterizes the relationship as purely causal; that is, unmediated. In short, Adorno erroneously imputes to Benjamin a cause and effect relationship typical of vulgar Marxism: capitalism causes wine tax causes poverty causes despair causes waste. The perceived absence of mediation that is at issue for Adorno is but a cover for his attitude toward Benjamin’s choice of Marx as a resource and the clarity of the complex of the poet’s imagination and emotions, and the critic’s (Benjamin’s) analysis. These concretizations are indicative of Adorno’s later conclusion that an integral relation between theory and practice is impossible without theory suffering a loss of status. While Benjamin’s analysis could be further developed by extending the mediations, what is there makes Adorno’s comment all the more suspect, that “Materialist determination of cultural characteristics is possible only when mediated through the process as a whole” (Adorno 2003: 101). Adorno himself refrains from such clarity relying instead on the story he constructs to support his constellations. There are other examples of the use of such mediation both in terms of its general domain and its specific effects. As noted earlier, Lowenthal argued for the publication of the “Second Empire” essay based on its own significance alongside “Motifs” (Lowenthal 1989b: 74). His own work on Knut Hamsun (1986a) (published in 1934) exhibited literary criticism in the ideological connections between Hamsun’s novels and fascist ideas. Lowenthal set up his critique, in part, as a constellation made up of solitude, the middle class, the relation of the sexes, anti-intellectualism, and so on. Unlike Adorno, he made connections through the internal relations of these components that were evident or implied in passages from Hamsun’s work and the underlying ideology that informed the basis of National Socialism. Lowenthal’s analysis is deeper than Benjamin’s “Second Empire” but in an excursus to a later essay on Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1986b, 1986c) he takes a form closer to Benjamin’s. There Lowenthal correlated characters, speech and social functions in the drama with changing and developing class forces. In his “Excursus” on Act I, Scene 1 (1986c), he used the characters and their interactions to argue that Shakespeare was demonstrating the historical movement from feudalism

158

chapter six

to a more clearly distinguishable class-structured society. Feudal royalty recedes to the background and works its authority indirectly, while the structure of power relations between a declining form of authority on the one hand, and the emerging class relations among the master, the boatswain and the crew on the other hand, become more clearly defined, mediated through the larger process of social structural change. Unlike Adorno’s approach, in both of these critiques, Lowenthal did not begin with an image of society, already fully dominated and impenetrable, but with relations of a clear social context. Lowenthal’s approach is similar to what Arendt cites as Benjamin’s “doctrine of the superstructure” as his central theoretical orientation, and as the chief problem Adorno referenced in his 10 November letter. Adorno’s views are brought out most strongly in his comment on the “artificiality” that allegedly came out of Benjamin’s replacement of “bindingly literal” statements with “metaphorical” ones (Adorno 2003: 101). Arendt’s comments indicate a different reading. Benjamin used this doctrine [of the superstructure] only as a heuristicmethodological stimulus and was hardly interested in its historical or philosophical background. What fascinated him about the matter was that the spirit and its material manifestation were so intimately connected that it seemed permissible to discover everywhere Baudelaire’s correspondances, which clarified and illuminated one another if they were properly correlated, so that finally they would no longer require any interpretative or explanatory commentary. He was concerned with the correlation between a street scene, a speculation on the stock exchange, a poem, a thought, with the hidden line that holds them together and enables the historian and the philologist to recognize that they must all be placed in the same period. (Arendt 1968: 11)

The ‘doctrine of the superstructure’ reflects Benjamin’s ability to tackle the conundrum of the vulgarized base-superstructure relation showing that economic forces are not required to do more than condition the attributes and further development of superstructural components. That such components develop only relatively independently, they also do not and need not continuously and explicitly make visible the economic forces that shape them, thus seeking legitimation for every relation and consequence that occurs between or among the relations of institutions, art, the economy and other features of society. Benjamin’s method possesses the capacity of literary critique and illumination to find a pathway from the relations of the superstructure to the roots of the social structure as a whole. An example of what Arendt and Adorno were concerned about is Benjamin’s comparison of a poem by Saint-Beuve on the response of a

mediation159 man of leisure to a drunken cab driver and Baudelaire’s “Cain and Abel” (Benjamin 2003a: 9–10). Benjamin makes the connection between Cain as “the ancestor of the disinherited” in Baudelaire’s poem and de Cassagnac’s writing on the origin of the proletariat. He did not know whether Baudelaire was aware of the latter’s work but he believed Marx was and had “parried” de Cassagnac’s ‘racial theory’ in Capital, citing the proletariat as “the peculiar race of commodity-owners” (2003a: 9–10; Marx 1967: 682). Further, Benjamin suggests that from between the lines of “Satanic Litanies” Blanqui’s head emerges in Baudelaire’s own “radical rejection of those in power” (2003a: 56), but this is only partly an independent correlation of Benjamin’s since he was aware that Baudelaire had drawn Blanqui’s head on a manuscript page. Benjamin’s approach is complicated by what can be seen as residual influences of his theological and allegorical methods in earlier works, as well as his surrealist pursuits and his own excursus into the attraction of corresponding elements in nature and history.3 These approaches share the problem of excessive directness of art and its meaning, and connections, inherent or imputed, to aspects of reality. For this and other reasons his efforts tend to tease and run from a systematic analysis that he desires. Despite a degree of eclecticism, Benjamin is here and elsewhere committed to a critique of capitalism and its dominance in and over culture. That he is hesitant then committed then hesitant again may have been an aspect of his personality, but the “Second Empire” essay offers an amalgam, not a compromise of these forces or motivations to produce a critique of Baudelaire that does not avoid the broader historical context. The ‘doctrine of the superstructure’ is attractive for Benjamin, in part, because of his commitment to observation. The perceived ‘unmediated’ observances aside for the moment, the superstructural component that drove this commitment was consciousness. Such texts as One-way Street, “A Berlin Childhood”, “Moscow”, “Marseilles” and others concern the inten­tion behind the use of sight and hearing, the intention to be aware and to be conscious of hidden relations. At first blush and beyond, these are potential or actual everyday occurrences that could benefit in their comprehensive development in consciousness from a clear analysis that is secondary to observation itself through Marx’s method. Notwithstanding its ultimate value, a ready-made orthodox approach need not accompany the everyday occurrence of observation and correspondence. On the 2 Marx did not cite de Cassagnac specifically. 3 See “On the Mimetic Faculty”.

160

chapter six

ground, in other words, Benjamin was responding and naming, as in his early essay on language (1996: 62–74), the ever-growing complexity of what arises from the forces and relations of production. He recognized this in Baudelaire as well where consciousness underlay the attitude of his poetry, “a plan … at work in its composition” (2003c: 318). It is consciousness of modernity and is preparation for its “shocks”, to prepare a “shock defence” but which, in fact, is an offensive to “parry the shocks … with [Baudelaire’s] spiritual and physical self” (2003c: 318–319). Benjamin, like Marx, did not see the economic base in a deterministic relation to the superstructure, and in the period in which he wrote saw accurately that the superstructure was becoming ever more complex. The standard pyramidal representation of base and superstructure could well be inverted to graphically and conceptually illustrate this expansion and complexity against a developing economy that was more or less stable in terms of its capitalist mode of production and the accompanying relations. A clear, conscious annunciation of the dialectical relations between base and superstructure is, as Williams argued (1980), one of “setting limits and exerting pressures”, fully within the rational control of human beings, rather than a mechanical sense of determination. Within the highly developed superstructure of modernity, one should be able to start at any point in the complex and reach any other point by way of the internal relations of all components, their unseparateness, as Hegel argued, but also discern any such relationship in the system of production, indirect as it may be, provided that consciousness, from which such movement only becomes genuinely possible, is led by a perspective that recognizes the dialectical relation between base and superstructure, the relations in a total complex, and the contradictions that are the motive power of the unity and sublation of both. Benjamin expected his connections to speak for themselves once he had recognized them; once established his observational consciousness could give way to the analytical component. This does not nullify the claim of absence of mediation, but it does provide a basis for a more nuanced contextualization of Benjamin’s approach, an approach that is not reductionist, nor does it construct barriers to the imputation of consciousness or to the connections he makes in the Baudelaire essay and elsewhere. In chapter two, two expressions of mediation were discussed, not as two types of mediation but two expressions in relation to distinct vantage points. We have suggested that the context of mediation is social totality, but specifically as a complex of complexes in which determinants can be

mediation161 delineated and drawn together in consciousness to affect specific relations but which also retain the full sense of totality. Totality gives us the complex of relations and determinants, dialectics provides the means by which these can be understood to interact in contradiction and sublation. Here mediation needs to be discussed in terms of its quality. In our expression of mediation as reciprocation, mediation occurs by way of the interaction of the qualities inherent in two phenomena, the sublation arising directly out of this relation. But we also noted that mediation has a cognitive component in that the analyst or activist can move or shape determinants, as contingent relations or by bringing them together into a contradictory or antagonistic relation as an intervention. Like the intervention of Hegel’s plough something may be introduced into a previously oppositional relation but which has initially arisen as a result of that opposition, particularly the consciousness and imagination of the subjects involved. However, in Adorno’s view, Benjamin’s work lacks mediation altogether. Benjamin relates Baudelaire’s work to contextual features of his time as correlations, as Arendt remarked, but not with a sense of determinism. Adorno’s orientation to mediation as something that can be illuminated only through the total social process disallows correlation of such particulars. He effectively says that Baudelaire’s ragpicker poem could not be mediated by Napoleon’s wine laws, or by the enjoyment of drunkenness, or the virtual insulation, as Marx suggested, of every town bound by a series of customs booths. Benjamin appears to be saying that out of a particular instance of history and experience we can see that the ragpicker’s wine is made from the fruit of Napoleon’s law; that the law, the custom booth, the ragpicker himself emerge from and are mediated by particular historical and economic circumstances, oppositions created by the wine laws and the market relations of capitalism, and from which no intervention but the salve of cheap wine emerges. Benjamin, as we have noted, includes many aspects of the economy and the superstructure, but he does not name them all, to do so would reduce the poet’s and the critic’s imagination to a shopping list, and would be over-concretized, an issue about which Adorno was also concerned. Benjamin writes to develop the correspondances and correlations into more than an image. When the new industrial processes gave refuse a certain value, ragpickers appeared in the cities in larger numbers. They worked for middlemen and constituted a sort of cottage industry located in the streets. … The eyes of the first investigators of pauperism were fixed on him with the moot question: Where does the limit of human misery lie? (Benjamin 2003a, 8)

162

chapter six

Many more instances of Benjamin’s style could be cited, but the historical element and intention behind the mediations he chose were almost entirely beyond Adorno’s interest. Baudelaire, poet of despair though he is, unwittingly ends up with Benjamin as the champion of his subjects. The poet, uncertain of what he can do against the pressures of reality, must nevertheless provide some explanation in poetic form for the thoughts and actions of the people about whom he writes. His consciousness will allow him to go only so far, to a correspondence with another aspect of reality, but not beyond. The critic, Benjamin, takes us there, rescues Baudelaire from himself and saves us from the poet’s limitations. He does not tell us that the half-drunk family is one devoid of the intellectual capacities that the pro-fascist’s audience lacked, according to Adorno. Nor does he tell us that such a family will inevitably appear on the barricades when such a need is driven to the surface. But Benjamin does tell us where the possible connections to consciousness are: How did the tax laws come about?, What is the nature of a covered walkway in modern life?, What led the Bohème to see only a flawed memory of themselves in the ragpicker? Hegelian Mediation In Hegel’s discussion of Lord and Bondsman in the Phenomenology his expression of mediation differs from that of the later Science of Logic in which the example of the plough is located. In the Phenomenology, one expression of mediation is in terms of reciprocation, interaction out of which sublation occurs. This expression merely operates without the intervention of a distinguishable, quasi-independent third element; ­mediation in this case is the interaction between two entities. Hegel’s comment was noted in chapter two, “Each is the mediating term to the other…” (1977: 112). Notwithstanding the mediating interventions that come about historically – Hegel’s plough or the intervention of political parties through their slogans or actions – in-itself the relation between master and bondsman is one of opposition, yet their relationship is constructed and mediated through the changes brought about and actively manifested by the relationship of each to the other. “The lord is the consciousness that exists for itself… [but] is mediated with itself through an other consciousness.” Developing consciousness as he does, the bondsman is nevertheless held in subordination. One has mastery over his ­existence, the other does not (1977: 115). Each mediates the other existing

mediation163 as “an immediate being on its own account” only through this mediation (1977: 112). In Hegel’s terms, the mediation of one with the other is transformative in that each does to the other what it does to itself. In this unequal relation the entity that was and remains master nevertheless discovers its dependence on the other who, through the transformative mediation of the two, has become an “independent consciousness” in relation to and in opposition to the master. The roles are by no means reversed but are nevertheless changed in relation to each other. What caused the change? At one moment it is the master’s capacity to relate to the other both immediately and mediately; at a subsequent moment the master recognizes that dependence is no longer exclusive to the bondsman yet the bondsman’s oppression, while still secure, is not the same oppressive state as before but a bondage seeded with a degree of self-consciousness, the potential for independence. The central element of this transformation is the bondsman’s self-activity, at one time the fear of the master that was “the beginning of wisdom,” but later the self-activity of the bondsman’s own labor that “forms and shapes the thing” in the environment of this pair and, ultimately, the consciousness of each (Hegel 1977: 118). Inherent characteristics of each of the lord and bondsman mediate the relation as consciousnesses, and, beyond Hegel, as social qualities bound to economic relations. Hegel’s lord subordi­nates the bondsman’s human qualities, except for that of physical labor; the bondsman is made an object of the master’s needs which can only, in a Marxist sense, be expressed by consciousness in social terms. Simply put, the master brings to the relationship resources of land, capital and the need for labor; the bondsman brings his capacity to labor and his desire for survival. Even in the simple relation of master and servant the complex of determinants for each is greater than we have noted here for illustrative purposes. In any case, the needs or desires of the master are readily apparent and determine the origin of the relation. On the other hand, the servant, unable to liberate himself but “being a selfconsciousness­in the broad sense” works on the relation, shapes his self-consciousness and his potential liberation through labor, the positive consequence, of this mediation (Hegel 1977: 115–116, 118–119), the sublation of the contradiction, by no means the absolute resolution of it. There is an element in this relation of self-activity that Marx would later develop, and while Hegel recognizes the limits to this, the negative consequence of the mediation, fear, and the contradictions in the relation, cannot be resolved in a way that results in an end to the servant’s social condition.

164

chapter six

Hegel’s discussion of lord and bondsman is perhaps the most important illustration of the power of mediation in that the relation is the key to comprehending the dynamic of human development as a counterpressure to alienation. In Hegel, the individual and its other are central. As we have seen in the previous two chapters, the images Adorno creates – masses, culture industries, orgiastic frenzy, fanaticism, etc. – have no Hegelian other and as a consequence effectively close off further possibilities for development. It may be possible for Adorno to see the trek of families to the borders of their towns, to drink cheap wine and compromise themselves in despair to be a phenomenon without mediation because he allows them no conscious other. But do we know that such an other cannot be sought by them or imputed to them by external but related entities? Neither may resolve the problem, but either would make the problem conscious and potentially soluble. Self-consciousness is realized through action. Hegel’s discussion in the first few pages of this section of the Phenomenology appears to be a sequence of actions toward self-consciousness. Self-consciousness develops by way of knowledge of an other and the unity of self-consciousness with itself. Self-consciousness is something to be achieved and to do so requires a continuous effort, a desire for it and for life. Because self-­ consciousness is only satisfied and genuinely achieved through an other, the process of developing it is social. Consciousness “has come outside itself” the significance of which is twofold. First “it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not regard the other as essential being, but in the other sees its own self” (Hegel 1977: 111). All this precedes the key illustration that summarizes and, in effect, completes, but is moreover the starting point of such a relation of and with self-consciousness. Recognizing another self-consciousness in the process of developing one’s own appears, Hegel writes, “as the action of one self-consciousness”, but is actually one and the other self-consciousness at once (1977: 111). The relation consists of movement, activity, “some sort of striving, even struggle” (Pippin 2011, 16) that is “the double movement of the two”. Hegel then puts the issue in the language of syllogism where self-consciousness is the middle term between “the act of the one” and the act “of the other” (1977: 112). Thus, self-consciousness arises in this relation, becomes at least momentarily satisfied in this relation even though it is one of unequal beings, or in other circumstances, unequal and opposing phenomena. But, on the other hand, if consciousness is imputed to the ­individuals in these circumstances, then one’s other can be an other

mediation165 external to oneself or one’s other in the not-yet, but developing self-consciousness, or each mediating the other. Adorno’s Mediation One of the problems that arises in trying to discern Adorno’s use of mediation is the virtual absence of a place for labor and consciousness as we find in Hegel’s pair, unified in their opposition. One instance of this problem is in his discussion of Hegel’s concept of spirit where it is understood by Adorno to be society and social labor. These are not completely invalid understandings of Hegel’s concept but to arrive at these leaps must be taken at the expense of not only Hegel’s complex meaning but the material site of that meaning – namely, the action and development of the individual. For Hegel, the in and for itself that is the essence of being, which becomes conscious of itself, is spirit, “ethical substance”, “the unmoved solid ground and starting point for the action of all…” (1977: 263–264). Spirit, then, is consciousness in general which embraces sense-certainty, perception, and the Understanding, in so far as in its self-analysis Spirit holds fast to the moment of being an objectively existent actuality to itself, and ignores the fact that this actuality is its own being for self. (Hegel 1977: 264)

Consciousness “in general” covers much ground so, clearly, social labor and eventually through development, society, can be manifestations of spirit. Adorno (1993: 17, 18) cites Hegel’s definition of spirit in the Encyclopedia as “essentially active, productive” and affirming Marx’s (1975b: 333) view of Hegel’s consciousness of the objectivity of labor. In the context of the discussion immediately above, the bondsman’s labor, the master’s need of it and the active relation of the two beings arising from their relation, we have an example of spirit as “active, productive”. But Adorno leaps from the introduction of spirit to spirit as social labor to spirit as society neither of which are given a developmental context of consciousness. In Marx’s terms social labor is active within a social division of labor, it is not labor for the immediate use-value for the laborer (Marx 1985: 121–122). Adorno’s leap cannot accommodate Spinoza’s complex of thinking and extension as one (1949: 83–84, Prop 7). Adorno sees society as spirit to be a change to an alien experience within Hegel’s philosophy, “a shift to something of a different kind incompatible with the sense of Hegel’s philosophy …” (1993: 19). Spirit’s identification with society does not fully develop the mediating factor of labor which, as Adorno says, is what humans use “to reproduce the life of the species, things that come

166

chapter six

into being in society objectively, independently of reflection, without regard to the specific qualities of those who labor or the products of labor” (1993: 20), because this argument excludes the mediating factor of consciousness. The qualities of laborer and produce are most significant in that the quality of labor – or as we have remarked earlier, the quality of mediation – is the individual manifestation of labor which at some later point is collectivized and is substantial for the development of the relation of labor to consciousness, that is, consciousness as spirit. What, then, is Adorno’s use of mediation ? A key passage from Negative Dialectics is important. What transmits [mediates]4 the facts is not so much the subjective mechanism of their pre-formation and comprehension as it is the objectivity heteronomous to the subject, the objectivity behind that which the subject can experience. (1973: 172)

That objectivity is not available inherently or immediately; the subject will acquiesce, says Adorno, to the general consensus, to “automatically parrot the consensus omnium,” “the average value of such objectivity,” unless the subject resists “to free itself as a subject” (1973: 170–71). Thus, in his terms such resistance is, itself, resisted for the subject will only “automatically parrot” the consensus. All of this can be accepted on superficial evidence, that is, only at the level of immediacy. Adorno affirms Hegel’s view of language, that some words “do not express what is contained in them”. “Whatever is more than such a word … contains a becoming-other that has to be taken back, or is a mediation” (Hegel 1977: 11). This passage and the surrounding discussion are also taken up in Adorno’s view of the inadequacy of a concept’s definition. If a concept is what it claims to be by its definition, and its definition affirms what it is, then Adorno quite rightly sees this as a problem: the concept’s “immanent claim is its order-creating invariance against the change in what it covers” (1973: 153). If that is the case, then the “general consensus” must, too, be viewed as a concept that does not, beyond the moment, accurately serve the reality it proclaims, just as the bondsman at the threshold of self-consciousness is not the bondsman of an earlier moment of his relation to the master. That immanent claim restricts the subject from thinking outside the concept, what it defines and its relation to other things as it is presented in its immediacy. 4 Rose (1978: 62) translates vermittelt more accurately as “mediates”. In Ashton’s translation of Negative Dialectics vermittelt is rendered as “transmits”, but ubersenden, transmits, does not appear in the German text. Variations such as vermittlung, mediation, for example, are used by Adorno in the pages that follow.

mediation167 Adorno suggests that this intolerance was “historically dictated by the threat of nature” (1973: 172) and the Dialectic of Enlightenment indicated the totalitarian culprit in his own period was the culture industry. The former solidifies his emphasis on identity and identity-thinking. “In fear, bondage to nature is perpetuated by a thinking that identifies, that equalizes everything unequal” (Adorno 1973: 172). But here Adorno steps further back, to the threat of nature, than is required. The reference backward that is necessary is to the origin and development of self-consciousness. That is, itself, an opposition to an earlier subordination – to the master who believes he has built himself from nature and from god, to all subordinations between and beyond them. If from his objective idealist position, Hegel can discern the bondsman’s potentiality and the material conditions from which it will arise, it is incumbent on Adorno to draw this forward to the wine-drinking workers, the ragpicker and the trumpeter of Negro music. Each is mediated by the total social process of the general domain of mediation but also by way of particulars of it: Napoleon’s wine laws, the refuse of the marketplace, and the immediacy of the cabaret. Hegel is cognizant of the servant’s potential; his analysis recognizes the subordinate subject through its development of the self-consciousness of its actions in relation to the master that are the counterparts of the master’s actions toward him. Adorno requires us to take a step backward from the resistance within consciousness where Hegel recognized the fruit of an objective idealist relation at the threshold of materialism he was vaguely aware of, yet marginally enacted. The point is that the concepts Adorno uses must also be subject to his and Hegel’s inquiry: how much do concepts adhere to the reality they purport to define and what moves them away from adherence to their definitions; or, in other words, makes their definitions larger and more complex? If we take, for example, dominance and subordination, personify them as master and bondsman, respectively, and denote the two as a relation, it becomes a task to understand how each of them, and their relation ceases to be, in and of itself, what it appears to be, or by what is immediately known about it. The bondsman is an alienated being and exists in conditions of alienation; the bondsman is the individual manifestation of a condition of the total social process. It is the bondsman’s relations with the master that are key to overcoming this condition, not by eliminating such conditions but using them as a springboard for the development of selfconsciousness. Hegel’s narrative is of one master, one bondsman; it is both the social condition of alienation and the relations developed by this or that bondsman that will shape the development. (Of course, the caveat

168

chapter six

here is that the bondsman acts without the benefit and power of a broad organization of bondsmen.) That development occurs, in part, as a consequence of the greatest problem for the human subject, the fear of death (Hegel 1977: 117), a fear that emerged from the goal of master and servant alike, that “each seeks the death of the other” (1977: 113), not merely as the physical death of the body, but the death that is a life without “recognition as an independent self-consciousness” (Hegel 1977: 114), an emphasis on the need for the other. On this point of mediation as a total process and/or the effect of particular phenomena, Lowenthal argued that the “social process in its totality” exploited by fascist agitators, explained the social malaise that was a “blend” of “[d]istrust, dependence, exclusion, anxiety and disillusionment” (Lowenthal and Guterman 1987: 24–26). He also several times cited this as a problem for the individual psyche. Social malaise as a general domain of mediation may engulf the society as a whole creating a backdrop for the environment of interaction that promotes the decision to attend a fascist rally or read an antisemitic newsletter. But such a backdrop to all possible social activities does not result in all possible members of society making the same decision. The individual’s reaction to, acceptance or rejection of distrust, dependence and so on, whether singularly or in association with others, confirms the effects of these conditions on the distinct psychological and social conditions of members of the population. Thus, the critic must push him or herself to inquire as to the possible mediations of the potential for reaction or for progress. Hegel would like to give the relation between master and servant more meaning for potential development of each than Adorno does for the makers of jazz music. Hegel would consider the corporate executive and the trumpeter as a pair that possesses that component of the masterbondsman relation that is the refusal of each to recognize the other beyond the categorical and superficial meaning of what each is to the other, but which, in the end, they are forced to recognize because of their co-dependence. However, Adorno’s relation of the jazz musician and the popular music audience, with the personnel of the culture industry, does not consider how they may begin to act on their mutual struggle for recognition and to achieve self-consciousness, a struggle that is both within each and between them. The central element in such a relation is the interaction of a mediating element: “work [that] forms and shapes the thing”. Hegel continues: The negative relation to the object becomes its form and something permanent because it is precisely for the worker that the object has independence.

mediation169 This negative middle term or the formative activity is at the same time the individuality or the pure being-for-self of consciousness which now, in the work outside of it, acquires an element of permanence. It is in this way, therefore, that consciousness, qua worker comes to see in the independent being [of the object] its own independence. (Hegel 1977: 118)

It is this process, and the resulting relative autonomy achieved, that moves the concepts off their respective pedestals of reified meaning and shows them to be alive and, themselves, integral to the struggle for recognition. In the final chapter of The Dialectic of Enlightenment the authors discuss the historical development of the ego, projection. The real ego is the most recent constant product of projection. In a process that could only be completed historically with the powers of the human physiological constitution, it developed as a unified and at the same time eccentric function. (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 189)

The ego’s development is ongoing though it “calcifies … [if] it proceeds positivistically”, losing connections with its historical determinants. It can be recovered only through that mediation by which the meaningless sensation brings a thought to the full productivity of which it is capable, while on the other hand the thought abandons itself without reservation to the predominant impression, is that pathological loneliness which characterizes the whole of nature overcome. (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 189)

Mediation for the purpose of reconciliation takes place as “conscious projection” and self-reflection (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 189). Here the cognitive element in mediation is evident. In Negative Dialectics, selfreflection is “cogitation” (1973: 148), the meaning of which includes both reflection and mediation; thus, to reflect is to think and to mediate, through thinking, one’s relation to an object or to the historical element of the ego. Now, if we return to Adorno’s criticism of Benjamin for failing to see that mediation takes place through the whole social process we must wonder why the latter’s individual objects or historical developments are insufficient, that is, are not capable of making the connections that lead to the whole social process, when the ego of Horkheimer and Adorno’s presentation begins with a “meaningless sensation” and overcoming “the whole of nature” to return to the “full productivity” of thought. I grant that the full productivity of thought may envelope the social process as a whole. But, the key point here, I believe, is the qualification, if thought “proceeds positivistically”. If we are correct about the dialectical interrelations of phenomena and, indeed, our remarks about the superstructure we can connect the whole social process if we follow the internal relations

170

chapter six

that link the phenomena; this appears to be what the authors have done in this case, and to find the difference from Benjamin’s efforts in the Baudelaire essay, one would have to locate the positivistic elements of his connections mediated by the wine laws, economic conditions, and so on. Further, building on his comment in Negative Dialectics on the impossibility of a meaningful relation between theory and practice, Adorno seems to entrench that impossibility with his distinction between immediate occasions and mediating causes. He does so by constructing constellations touching on historical events from the French Revolution to the Second World War, the rationale for slum clearing (bombing German cities), the development of stronger families, colonialism in Latin America, and other factors. The motive appears to be to illustrate the fate of “deeper causes” regardless of which side of the political spectrum they may arise. “Occasion” and “mediation” in his discussion are not to be considered outside the whole social process. While it remains true that on one level “such moments [occasions] derive their potency from that historical entirety alone” (1973: 302), the potency that Adorno claims of those moments is given no historical ground. It serves, largely, to justify the “unfettered” (Kracauer) negativity of his dialectics, “that it would free dialectics from … [the] affirmative traits” that emerge from negation (Adorno 1973: xix). Because Adorno refuses a necessary link between theory and practice his concept of mediation remains only at the theoretical level and rarely, such as in the case of the ego and self-reflection, explores what is mediated and the process of it. This approach disallows the specifying of a single mediating element that would identify and trace backward the formation and development of phenomena until it can assemble the internal relations that form the totality. Further, it disallows the critic space to impute the motivation and outcome of cogitation as a choice of mediating elements. It must be clear that this “choice” is neither individualistic nor relativistic, but permits the critic to begin analysis at, or continue it from any point with the examination of a concept. Adorno holds that mediation lies in a material’s history, the closest he comes to acknowledging something like the philosophy of internal relations. For idealism, the inner history is immediacy; for materialism, it is the “measure … of the immediacy in being” (1973: 52). The becoming of an object, like pure negativity, is never settled until its dissolution and therefore the language of the concept – the concept itself – is not capable of completely or continuously representing the object; neither language nor the concept is ever adequate to reality. This, writes Adorno, applies to Benjamin, whose use of concepts “tends to an authoritarian concealment

mediation171 of their conceptuality” (1973: 53). The implication is that Benjamin thought what he was seeing in his concepts, what he was seeing in history, was immediate truth, unmediated by the becoming of reality from beneath the cover of inadequate language. A closer examination reveals otherwise. Adorno is theoretically correct about the limits of language with respect to its incapacity to lock-in and continuously, accurately, identify a moving object. But like the perpetual negativity of his dialectics, he thus renders the use of language inert, for the constant reminder of its inadequacy leads to muted voices and stalled practice, people hesitant to speak for fear that reality has overtaken their word. Like his negative center of dialectics, practice can never catch up to the uninterrupted insufficiency of the spoken or thought word that momentarily tells the tale the speaker spoke or the thinker thought. Adorno’s perspective here as elsewhere is dialectical up to the point of its reification as theory in fear of practice.

CHAPTER SEVEN

NEGATIVE DIALECTICS, IDENTITY AND EXCHANGE Negative Dialectics continues Adorno’s interests in developing the theoretical particularities of his philosophical perspective. We have examined aspects of his dialectics, his imputed limitations of the masses and the internal limits to practice in his approach with respect to jazz and popular music, fascism and mediation. This chapter addresses Adorno’s use of identity and exchange in relation to negative dialectics. Negative Thought A foundational component of Adorno’s dialectics is negativity. He stretches negativity until it becomes an abstraction from which there is no possible development of the concrete; it voids the openness of a systematic dialectic that was possible in Hegel’s objective idealism and Marx’s materialist dialectics. That Adorno later commented on the connecting point of idealist and materialist philosophy, specifically around the dialectics of becoming (1973: 52), does not relieve him of this shortcoming. The orientation to negativity in dialectics is not, in itself, the major issue. Rather, as Kracauer (1969: 201) commented, the major issue lies with “unfettered” negativity, its arbitrary character and its perpetuity in thought. Social change may require a more or less continuous negativity but action cannot be tied to such a stream of thought that ignores the positive moment that does not neglect the negative, but is a moment that sees annulment as a denial of possibilities. Adorno’s negative dialectics gives to negativity the power of dialectics itself; in doing so he gives priority to negativity and negation as the command of thought that defies Hegel’s triad: being, nothing, becoming, as discussed in chapter two. The uninterrupted character of negativity tends to exclude, as mere identity, its opposing but necessarily inclusive, mediated moment through which sublation develops. The constant negativity neglects the potential to be developed within the moment a contradiction is sublated except, it seems, that development which will lead directly to a new negativity. A new contradiction will occur; however, before it, too, can be negated, its relations must first be developed to the



negative dialectics, identity and exchange173

point at which social conditions and human agency can move toward and attempt that negation. The logical possibilities of a new set of relations must be fully developed through mediation. We are not approaching dialectics as an abstract thought process alone, but as a process that includes human subjects, their conditions and interests. Human subjects, were they to consent to a continuous, uninterrupted series of negations would find themselves in a process of adjustment that required an immediate transformation of their achievements; that is, from an actual achievement to an immediate sense of its inadequacy. To some degree, this is what happens in the everyday life of political challenge, but it is how the subject experiences change and challenge to commitment as both satisfaction and desire for further advancement and resolution that guides the material intervention of dialectical thought. Time and social conditions must be considered which are, in themselves, affirmations of movement; consciousness must be addressed and developed where it can be. All this and more is implicit recognition that the need to negate another contradiction is, if not inevitable, then objectively probable. It is with the complexity and quality of the concept of change in dialectics that contests the separateness and rigidity of formal logical thinking. Further, it is possible that continuous negativity may lead to the perspective that the path toward development and/or dissolution is a linear one. But a dialectical approach to the movement and development of social reality would necessarily provide an understanding that while the partial resolution of contradictions may appear as moving ahead, moving forward, may in fact require that the path allows for movement sideways and backwards. Positions change and once an advance is made from them no full return is actually possible. This is what we have seen in Bloch’s analysis of the German lower and middle classes before and through the establishment of a fascist regime. But an attempt to return to a position is not always a regression or a retreat. The loop from the linear path may well be the recovery of the adequate resources necessary for forwardthinking and the positive moment of a negation, however temporary that moment should be. Adorno’s argument in Negative Dialectics thus begins: Negative Dialectics is a phrase that flouts tradition. As early as Plato, dialectics meant to achieve something positive by means of negations; the thought figure of a ‘negation of the negation’ later became the succinct term. This book seeks to free dialectics from such affirmative traits without reducing its determinacy. (1973: xix)

174

chapter seven

In this law of dialectics, from Adorno’s perspective, the first negation is a negative moment because it is the realization of change against a preceding condition, but the sublation that occurs is inadequate, was not negative enough (1973: 160) and, therefore, requires another negation; thus, further negation, and further still, will be necessary until the sum total of conditions are annihilated, making room for something else. What that something is, is not apparent in the argument. Absolute change of conditions by way of continuous negation implies the possibility of a procession of determinants to be negated one after the other. But how does this sequence of negations occur, what are the mediations that develop successive contradictions for the negative side of dialectics? Here the constellations of the 1931 inaugural lecture, “The Actuality of Philosophy”, are modified: the sudden flash of a resolution has been altered to a series of binary glimmers and darkness – on/off, on/off, on/ off – as each contradiction succumbs to its negation. The second negation (negation of the negation) is also, in the tradition, a positive moment, and in that sense movement and change from the previous condition; it is a positive moment that is not identity, except where such a moment is deemed to be the satisfactory conclusion of the process, a moment reified. Both moments of negation are said by Adorno to be reduced to an identification with the existing relations and conditions of their moments; this is the essential argument with which he advocates ­continuous non-identity, the incessant negativity. To ‘achieve something positive’ becomes mere affirmation of identity-thinking. He does not sway from this position, one he held since the beginning of his philosophical work. Negation, in Adorno’s view, is never permitted a moment’s rest on the outcome of a process – a positive moment that is housed in sublation – for the outcome must immediately be seen as non-identical or it has merely drawn the subject into the trance of identity-thinking. In his view, the contentment experienced immediately by the masses negates not only the need for further pursuit, but also the discomfort felt in the initial contradiction. Because of the absence of a sustained sense of mediation in his dialectics he cannot argue differently; namely, that it is not the outcome that is seen to be identical, but, rather, the outcome is made to be understood and accepted as identical in a consciousness of reality gripped by immediacy. Even if this may be inevitable under the conditions the consciousness of the moment perceives it, it remains neither a necessary nor permanent condition. One motivation for Adorno’s perspective is understood: capitalism is extremely adaptable. A fundamental example of dialectical movement



negative dialectics, identity and exchange175

and development of history, Marx and Engels argued in The Communist Manifesto, was the once revolutionary bourgeois class that became the source of the destruction of human relations in all forms. An other­ wise  forward-looking moment became identified with the existent that attained dominance through its accumulation of economic and other forms of power – it became the oppressor, it brought forward the commodity, it submerged everything into the commodifiable. But this initial positive moment – a projection of alternative, progressive relations – ­produced, over time and tension, the conditions that allowed the class it created to struggle against the capitalist descent into repressive conditions in the interest of its own negation, despite arising to this struggle through and beyond reified thinking. The process even produced a fragment of the dominant class that realized its broader human interests were with the subjugated class. This example may seem to validate the motive for Adorno’s perspective. But neither the bourgeois class nor the opposition it created developed and struggled in perpetual negation without, to put it in very simple terms, the stock-taking necessary for the next encounter. Herbert Marcuse, too, was a negative thinker, remarking on the power of such thought in his “A Note on the Dialectic” that prefaced the later edition of Reason and Revolution. In his criticism of the “established universe of discourse,” he nevertheless noted delays in “the emergence of new modes of existence with new forms of reason and freedom” (1960: viii). The negation of old forms of existence by new ones are not an appeal to the affirmative traits of the existent, they do not preclude further contradiction, further negation, further advancement, or a future positive moment; “negation is a positive act”. “Thought ‘corresponds’ to reality only as it transforms reality by comprehending its contradictory structure” (Marcuse 1960: x–ix). Marcuse does not deny a problem with which Adorno was concerned. Dialectics begins with unfreedom, the “power of the given facts” (Marcuse 1960: x) – a quality we have discussed with respect to Hegel’s Logic in chapters two and five. But dialectics proceeds to the historical subject’s mastery of the conditions of unfreedom on the assumption that “wounded” by knowledge humankind will be healed by it (Marcuse 1960: x, xiii). In Marcuse’s dialectics, liberation develops out of the desire for freedom, a desire that contradicts the conditions of oppression and alienation. This is the only possible means by which the idea and practical realization of liberation can emerge; any other claim is neither materialist dialectics nor even that of the objective idealism of Hegel. Thought must be grounded.

176

chapter seven

For Marcuse, it must become political (1960, xiii), its relation to practice must become necessary and integral; not to do so is to consign thought and practice to “the unfree world” (1960: xii), to “the power of the given facts.” The negative in thought is directed against the facts upon which immediacy stands and thrives as an ideology. Thus, Adorno writes, “Thought as such, before all particular contents, is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it….” But the “revolt against being importuned to bow to every immediate thing” (Adorno 1973: 19) is not alone a condition of negative thinking for it is the interest, the conscious need to revolt against it that moves thought toward a moment of sublation before it moves to comprehend and then challenge a newly found contradiction. Adorno suggests something of this when he writes that thinking is not only “spiritualized control of nature” but also “heeds a potential that waits in the object” (1973: 19). What is missing is some sense of the weight of this perspective on nature and potential in relation to each other, but more importantly the practical, mediating measures to be taken in the presence of slumbering potential. One is always reminded that Adorno is writing of his conception of philosophy as interpretation, a view inconsistent with Marx’s eleventh thesis. The Positive Moment in Dialectics In chapter two Hegel’s concept of positivity and the object of critical theory, positivism, were examined. We concluded that the distinction between the two was substantial. Hegel’s positivity, certainly after it transformation into alienation and externality, could not have been, as Adorno implied, the positivism Hegel fought against in his youth. Even Hegel’s negative as an outcome of dialectics that “is simultaneously a positive” is, for Adorno, an “overly positive” speculation (Adorno 1973: 15–16). But Hegel’s was a negative philosophy, for negativity “constitutes the genuine dialectical element” (1969: 55, 442), but it must be recalled that his negative dialectical element (noted in chapter two) is also intended to bring out and develop “immanent connection and necessity” (Hegel 1973: §81). Hegel’s negativity was “a counterthrust to any form of positivism” (Marcuse 1960: vii, 27), to any common sense reliance on the facts as immediately presented. The meaning of negation is not the simple negative with respect to one thing cancelling out another; nor does it mean doing away with or eliminating an other. “Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way of being



negative dialectics, identity and exchange177

negated in such a manner that it gives rise to a development, and it is just the same with every kind of conception or idea” (Engels 1987: 132). If every determination is a negation (Spinoza, Hegel) so, too, is every negation a sublation. Negation always carries with it the notion of moving to, revealing or opening up another state or condition of existence; sublation, aufhebung, that is both preservation and transcendence. In other words, the existing moment or condition is overcome, without that existing moment or condition being annihilated. The negated moment appears to disappear; the appearance of its disappearance is negated by its residual presence. The negated moment, as sublation, carries the determinants of a subsequent condition of reality. Lukács points out that the ‘first moment’ of dialectics for Hegel is his proposition giving priority to human activity in the course of historical and social development, and self-production (Lukács 1975: 75), and that Hegel’s gradual abandonment of positivity for a more dialectically informed concept, externalization, was due to his increasing awareness of the role of human activity (Lukács 1975: 314). Thus, a dialectical approach to a question must trace the interrelations that bind together the ideas, events, the cognitive and social development of the human beings involved. The magnitude of the most important contradictions leading to moments of development and change must be given their due weight and explication. With this in mind and having summarily explained the sense of negation in use in the sources noted, we return to the moment of sublation. The negative carries the conditions for a resultant positive within it and vice versa, a complex we become knowledgeable of in reflective thinking. Notwithstanding the limits of reflection Hegel writes of it here in the context of contradictions: Even a slight experience in reflective thinking will make it apparent that if something has been defined as positive and one moves forward from this basis, then straightway the positive has secretly turned into a negative, and conversely, the negatively determined into a positive, and that reflec­ tive thinking gets confused and contradicts itself in these determinations. (Hegel 1969: 436)

He goes on to remark on each element – positive and negative – as “having meaning only in this relation.” Despite the fact that the negative moment seems to have the spotlight predominantly in that it indicates a different state or condition or a “newer and more developed form [with] its own contradictions” (Anderson 1995: 90–91), it is clear that the positive moment, that is, the moment of sublation, must be considered as

178

chapter seven

important­as the relation that is negated as it ‘vanishes’ (Hegel) into its opposite. As Anderson notes, this new form or level of development has its own contradictions but the new contradictions may or may not be mediated or developed in significant tension to bring about another change, even a quantitative change. If these conditions do occur and develop it may take place in more or less time from the threshold of the new stage or form, the factor of time itself being effected by the range of objectively possible interventions. The determinations of any new moment or stage must become a matter of consciousness (more or less developed) and material factors must present themselves or be forced into this new condition before its contradictory elements can be moved again toward significant change. Given that our most important component in this process, from the point of view of revolutionary change, is human beings, their responses to new conditions are crucial. The positive  moments of sublation and its prior determinants are the context in which human beings become aware of the immediacy of new conditions, acquiesce to them or mediate the development of their further negation. Once the contradiction in the relation between things has been both surpassed and preserved, a positive moment exists; it is produced by that sublation or, again, given the Latin root of the word, it is brought forward or brought into existence by that sublation. The concept of aufhebung, so crucial to Hegel’s and Marx’s dialectics, unavoidably affirms the restructuring of a moment, as a relation both positive and negative, as positive within the negative, as negative within the positive. The conception of ‘positive’ in a Hegelian and Marxist sense can be none other than one aspect of the moment of aufhebung, the moment at which relations of a contradiction are not sustained as a contradiction but its elements preserved in the residue of their internal relations as change and development occur. Such a moment, whether we speak of it as sublation, aufhebung or positive, becomes problematic the more its achievement, so to speak, is deemed sufficient, the more its relative autonomy as a moment is permitted to stand against its relations. But this is not, or rather need not be identity; it becomes identity if the moment is reified. As movement, partial resolution, it is evidence of the self-active power of subjects as they confront reality, and it provides the ground on which action proceeds. The two components of the contradiction remain related through mediation of their opposition. The result is only one of identity to the extent that this contradiction within the unity remains unrecognized; on that account the relation or condition will become purely positive where the relation



negative dialectics, identity and exchange179

establishes itself as an authority over the subject as, for example, the authority of commodity fetishism (Marx) or the culture industry (Adorno). Alternatively, consciousness of this continuing condition of contradiction may force a further intervention. In Marxist discussions of dialectics the phrase most commonly used to denote different but related phenomena is ‘unity of opposites,’ which does not necessitate identity where identity is taken to mean non-contradiction. We noted earlier Hegel’s important caution to the use of the term unity, that “unfortunate word”, and his preference for “unseparatedness” or “inseparability” (1969: 91). Notwithstanding this caution, the real issue is the process, the historical moments of interaction where ‘unity,’ ‘unification,’ can retain the dynamism that is assumed in dialectics as a whole but lies in the essence of the relation between or among phenomena which is one of inseparability. In this sense, a degree of ‘non-identity’ within unity is retained. Unity does not imply a neutralizing or dissolution of differences, nor does it necessitate that once dialectical unification is achieved, differences will be subsumed entirely under the resulting entity. Unity is a dynamic relation between phenomena, a relation that is more or less active and which is realized through the subsequent sublation of objects in opposition. Contradictory elements ‘unify’ only in the sense that they come into or are brought into a relation; the unity in contradiction exists until the moment of sublation (and residually thereafter), which ‘completes’ the dialectical relationship of the moment resolving the contradiction but not foreclosing the possibility of another arising. Since Hegel’s caution suggests all logical relations are already in existence, to say that contradictory elements come into or are brought into relation references the cognitive and/or practical act that heightens or sharpens the import of a specific contradiction at a particular juncture. The moment of sublation should be the foundation of the full expression of mediation which, from a vantage point that sees what initially emerges from the contradiction, a choice is made to press one or another force against the opposing elements that then moves the opposition toward some degree of resolution. Adorno’s emphasis on non-identity is to continuously anticipate and guard against relations he believes are taken to be equivalent. But in the emphasis on non-identity he comes close to reifying this concept as the only acceptable and permanent relation between phenomena because, as we will discuss below, the concept of ‘identity’ that should be at the center of concern is the term that represents acquiescence to conditions and relations as they are. As an aspect of his negative dialectics, it is the continuous negative relation that ‘identity’ disallows. However,

180

chapter seven

‘non-identity’ can be as much reified as a permanent state of difference as can ‘identity’ as a state of equivalence. Hegel recognized the inseparability of master and servant but not an identity of them. But the point of Hegel’s pairing is that the relation changes. Hegel chose the master and servant relation to avoid absolute mastery and absolute servitude; these were already negated by the sociohistorical context and the possibility of their re-emergence is negated by the relation between them that over time and tension loses some of its initial qualities and gains others. This relation does not unify them as one, it does not create an identification of them, but illuminates why they are together on the basis of their internal relations, all of which structure the relation of the pair. The sublation of that negation is not a friendship between master and bondsman but, at least, the relative autonomy of the self-consciousness of both. But Adorno objects with the introduction of his negative dialectics, the “hinge” of which is the “turn toward nonidentity” (1973: 12). The nonidentical in thinking and in social reality is to be sought continuously and finding it is never difficult with Adorno’s approach – it must be everywhere and everywhere retained regardless of any attempt at sublation or the recognition of the inseparability of opposing phenomena. Any positive moment such as self-development through the mediation of labor must be negated, any “negation of particularities … remains negative” (Adorno 1973: 158). On the other hand, he is quite right that to “negate a negation does not bring about its reversal…” (1973: 159). Somerville puts the meaning of negation in simple terms denoting its positive moment. “The term ‘negation’ was used to designate the new state or condition into which something grows. Since this growth represents a passage from the old state or condition, the new state is considered a negation of the old” (Somerville 1981: 66). Adorno continues the above sentence not with a sense of development or change from which different opportunities, such as developed consciousness, can grow, but with the call to out-negate negation. This was noted at the beginning of the chapter. The sentence in its entirety reads: “To negate a negation does not bring about its reversal; it proves, rather, that the negation was not negative enough” (1973: 159–160). Adorno’s view in this case is misleading and comes, apparently, from an over-zealous certainty of his continuous negativity at the theoretical level. No contradiction can be negated beyond the contents and relations that brought it about and in which it exists. However, it may be concluded that the social forces that have developed a contradiction were not sufficiently developed to completely negate the original condition. But this is



negative dialectics, identity and exchange181

a different matter than that which is of concern to Adorno, and it is crucial to the practice side of the theory-practice relation. The conditions and relations of a contradiction including what is ultimately an attempt to negate it are matters of human agency and the social or natural conditions that can be developed to address the contradiction. For example, the first plough did not solve the contradiction of food production and subsistence, a contradiction revealed at one moment by the inadequacy of the bare-handed use of sticks or rocks to furrow the ground. Under such conditions, the negation of the problem of production and subsistence was momentarily successful, eventually incomplete but under different circumstances developed to the level of a new contradiction of production and subsistence. These new circumstances can be recognized and assessed only in terms of a variety of material and historical factors, including the quality of consciousness and imagination of the agrarians on the land. We come back, then, to a central point in the critical theory of Adorno and Horkheimer, the latter’s view that no change takes place “until it actually comes about” (1982: 220–221), and Adorno’s later echo, “What is negated is negative until it has passed” (Adorno 1973: 160), attitudes that are the result of having no theory of action that can recognize and take up the changes human agency develops. Adorno makes the point that at least some of Hegel’s dialectical positives retained their negativity (1973: 38), and were recognized as such by Hegel. Adorno (1973: 38, footnote) contextualizes this view by citing the problem of immediacy in a passage from the preface to the Phenomenology. Hegel is discussing the self-awareness of Spirit that must bear a lengthy path of discovery which is ultimately the move from being-in-itself to a condition of being “recollected-in-itself”, ready for transformation into the form of being-for-self (Hegel 1977: 17). In its entirety, it is not a process crucial to the argument here but aspects of it are relevant to this discussion of negativity. The movement from being-in-itself to recollection is a movement of negation which also retains the “character of uncomprehended immediacy, of passive indifference, as existence itself….” But it is also a movement that has left the subject with a familiarity with the path, its moments and “shapes” the subject has undertaken, but “such knowing” of the familiar “never gets anywhere” because they are “uncritically taken for granted.” In explaining this, Hegel discusses the analysis of an idea by breaking it up into its “original elements [which means] to return to its moments” (1977: 18); distinguishing these moments, or “elements”, is the act of “the most astonishing and mightiest of all powers,” the Understand­ ing (1977: 18). His illustration is the “circle that remains self-enclosed and,

182

chapter seven

like substance, holds its moments together.” The circle’s “moments”, aggregated to produce the circle, drew it out of its determinant elements. By “accident” the circle as a containment of its elements is broken; this accident is the “portentous power of the negative … the energy of thought” (1977: 19). The positive moment is the circle completed by its determinants; the negative is the independence of the accident and, thereby the circle’s free elements that nevertheless retain their circle determinants; thus, the completed circle is the sublation of its determinants as individual determinants rearranged as a result of the resolution of their contradictions. Momentarily, ultimate elements are at rest and self-contained by the thing they produce at a specific juncture and are sustained until the instant of its fracturing when in a moment of “utter dismemberment it finds itself” (Hegel 1977: 19). The negative is bound to the object in sublation such as when Spirit exhibits its power “by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it”, it is a power that is held also by the subject (Hegel 1977: 19). That negative moment gives us something else, the character of which does not matter at the instant only that the elements of one idea or object are imbued with its nature and at another moment relatively freed to be pushed, pulled, pounded toward another. All this is not a rejection of the positive “which closes its eyes to the negative”. The subject develops its knowledge – being-for-self – with eyes open to the relation of one to the other when is stares the “negative in the face”. Adorno’s rejection of the “positive” is categorical, an overreaction. Marx is most clear about the role of sublation in his discussions of labor, exchange value, scientific knowledge and fixed capital (machines) in the Grundrisse and in the first volume of Capital including his discussion of the Factory Acts in the latter volume. Starosta (2011) has generalized the issues discussed there as “human productive subjectivity.” Marx was making clear that the critique of capitalism included both the development and mechanisms of it, and the possibilities for liberation that capitalism unwittingly offered its subjects. We note, again, Marx’s principle that the distinction be recognized between the productiveness of an economic system that is due to its “process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process” (1967: 398). Thus, labor under conditions of capitalist production results in conditions of alienation for the population of workers in general; labor benefits capital by the latter’s exploitation of it. But labor is an essential human activity (Marx 1975b: 228, 275, 277) and even the “overcoming of … obstacles is in itself a manifestation of freedom” (Marx 1986a, 530). Under conditions that are distinct from exploitative conditions, the laborer has a different relation to its



negative dialectics, identity and exchange183

object so that labor becomes “a positive, creative activity” (Marx 1986a: 532). The conditions for such creativity do not wholly prevail in capitalist society, but neither are they completely absent. The laborer who can create a different, more liberating relation to her work nevertheless carries into that activity the conditions of alienation as a generalized social condition. Hegel’s complex of Lord and Bondsman is integrally related to Marx’s comments. But how does Marx address the problems presented by an exploitative system of production that also has a potential to provide the basis of liberation? As he states in his initial discussion of commodities in Capital, understanding their character and variety is “a work of history” (1967: 43); it is working backwards from any condition to discern its historical determinations (1986a: 38). The unfinished revolution of modern industry is propelled by technological developments, multiplying the variety of skills required of labor and compelling itself (modern industrial capitalism) to fulfil these requirements to ensure that labor possesses the skills required to produce surplus value out of that technology and its processes. Thus, factory legislation arises to address the sanitary conditions of work and to initiate limited (in the late 19th century) education and training for workers, some reasonable measures to ensure the reproduction of labor-power, a manifestation of the moral element in the value of labor-power – all of which, over time and under renewed potential moment to moment sets the basis for “the fully developed individual” to fulfill the needs of capital, indeed, but also to open further opportunities to make it possible “for the individuals of a class, etc. to overcome” oppressive, exploitative conditions by negating the relations that have produced them (Marx 1967: 454– 459, 164–165, 168; 1986a: 101). It is within capitalism that the oppositional fragment against alienation and exploitation develops. Even under oppressive conditions reification is not an absolute state. The realization of socialism alone does not produce what Lukács, for example, referred to as the “active creature, which is the true nature of [the] human species” (1991: 125). In its moment, an environment of socialism will make such a contribution, but so too does capitalism construct, instrumentally in terms of its own interests, conditions in which opposition to oppression may be developed. Marx could never have advocated revolution if such conditions were not an unin­tentional development within the structure of capitalism, however much their potential might defy capitalism’s purpose. That is, socialist democracy will secure the conditions for Marx’s ‘fully developed’ human being to advance its freedom, but the conscious imperative for such

184

chapter seven

development­arises amidst the contradictions, exploitation, and alienation of capitalism. Hence, a condemnation of capitalism and its culture industries, the reification of consciousness and the acquiescence of the masses to external forces all have their place. Without a consistent connection to the historical development of these conditions one is left with the notion that only when capitalism is superseded completely will the conditions then be available for the quality of human experience that Marx foresees. Adorno’s “unfettered dialectics” was the advocacy of continuous negativity that “seems inseparable from a certain arbitrariness, an absence of content and direction” (Kracauer 1969: 201). Adorno does not anticipate or speak to this comment but creates a false dichotomy when he writes: “A dialectics no longer ‘glued’ to identity will provoke either the charge that it is bottomless … or the objection that it is dizzying” (1973: 31). Identity and Identity Thinking The preface of Negative Dialectics concerns Adorno’s immediate task as well as brief reflections on his work and thought. Thought is his work; his work is theory. In his lectures on Kant he reminded students of Aristotle’s premise that “philosophy is really a matter of ‘thinking on thinking’” (Adorno, 2001: 82). He begins Negative Dialectics with a caveat to this principle: “the appearance of identity is inherent in thought itself, in its pure form. To think is to identify” (1973: 5). Notice that he moves immediately from appearance to the categorical assertion, “To think is to identify.” S is P. Adorno’s assertion is not the same as Hegel’s discussion of identity, “usually adduced as the first law of thought”. Hegel cites the “A = A” of formal logic, “an empty tautology … [that] leads no further” for identity, on its own terms, is different and, therefore, has relevance only in its relation to difference (1969: 413–415). Adorno imputes to the thinker the formal logical meaning of “to think is to identify” and does not, again, lead us out of that formalization. One cannot read such statements of Adorno’s without thinking also about appearance and immediacy, and understand that the central terms – identity and concept, integrally related as they are – must be transitory to a consciousness interested in whether immediacy equals permanence. In other words, we could grant Adorno this identity as an immediate condition, a first step in the process of thought. But why is there no second step? For this to occur the subject would have to recognize the mediating influences that are necessary to draw together the



negative dialectics, identity and exchange185

internal relations of objects to allow for thinking that is able to identify that which is not identical to immediate thought. That is a position contrary to his notion of thought in itself being resistance. Indeed, things may appear identical and in some ways are; identity appears universal; but appearance is to be treated by the conscious, self-reflecting mind as a transformable immediacy unless the subject reifies it, or it is accepted as reified ideologically. Just as ideology appeared in the camera obscura (Marx and Engels 1976a: 36) upon analysis it was, like the object in the eye, a first perception from a physical sensation, an appearance, and as important as appearances are, the initial sensation on the eye is only that. Consciousness of the inversion is the key to clarifying the distortion of reality. Horkheimer made this point in his discussion of critical theory with respect to the perception of the subject. What the subject sees, at the very least, is the intentional construction of society, its objects and systems, and the changes in them over time. What appears to be natural or actually is understood in relation to the social world, its construction that is recognized before it may be contradicted by the subject whose “conscious human action unconsciously determines not only the subjective side of perception but in larger degree the object as well” (Horkheimer 1982: 201). Since his text is concerned with dialectics the reader would expect Adorno to move through the statement, “To think is to identify”, detailing and explaining the character and the quality of thought he has in mind, illustrating its movement, its transcendence of the immediate, its dialectical character, its Hegelian ground in reality, and in practice. The determined reader will find that he does something of this, but formally, in thought alone and then incompletely – it is thought operating against practice. It is incomplete thought, for it fails to find ground as Marx indicated thought should: “Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and the power, the this-worldliness of his thinking in practice” (Marx and Engels 1976a: 3). Negative Dialectics addresses the problem of ‘identitarian’ thinking, what Adorno also calls the “identity principle”. The claim of identity is not dissociated from the ideas of particular social interests. The need for identity and protection against contradictions serves to sustain the ideology of a social group; identity, stasis, one-sidedness are, therefore, the primal forms of ideology (Adorno 1973: 148). Adorno’s approach is intended to demonstrate such stasis in human thought and relations that are sustained by the ideological position of identity between ideas and things in which a stated concept or relation of equality between elements, such as

186

chapter seven

concept and reality, carries a legitimacy that is an offense against contradictions in reality. Adorno recognizes the capacity of dialectics to reveal what is incompatible with a relation deemed to be one of identity. He locates the origin of identity in thinking commanded by formal logic that “tolerates nothing that is not like itself,” (1973: 142–143) and, simultaneously, in the fear of nature. Such an historical orientation to identity in formal logic makes its use normative; where it is continuous beyond the epoch of history in which its decline was pressed by Hegel and Marx, at least, it becomes the  false consciousness of the thinking subject. When Adorno states, “Contradiction is non-identity under the aspect of identity” (1973: 5), his reference is to the “total identity” of formal logic, “whose core is the principle of the excluded middle.” In formal logic there is no way of legitimately accounting for the conceptualization of a thing as both itself and something other in its development, limiting the content of thought by requiring its adjustment to the existent as primary and singular. In the Enlightenment period, the dominant mode of thinking was that of formal logic so much so that Enlightenment thinkers moved the formation of bourgeois society by way of quantification (Horkheimer and Adorno 1982: 7). Production and the division of labor in the development of capitalism are expressions of the formal logic that governs it (Horkheimer 1982: 216). The goal to which traditional thinking is directed is to the exclusion of antagonism and contradiction in thought (Adorno 1973: 149; Horkheimer 1974a: 167), the exclusion of non-identity. In traditional thinking the element of changeability or transformation through contradiction is suppressed (Adorno 1973: 142). Thus, Adorno writes, “Dialectics is the consistent sense of non-identity” (1973: 5). That is, nonidentity is not an aspect of the immediacy presented by logic in thought or reality. If that is the case, non-identity must be discovered and developed. Thus, if dialectics includes the ‘excluded middle’ (the thing that is both A and not-A, as discussed in chapter two) then the essence of dialectics is its capacity to know change as a condition of an object or event given its relations and the mediations to which it is subjected, the activation of contingencies. Hegel remarks that the contradiction is “the negative as determined in the sphere of essence, the principle of all self-movement”. Implicitly referencing the principle of Zeno’s paradox, he remarks on the similarities for the condition of external and internal self-movement: “that something is, in one and the same respect, self-contained and deficient, the negative of itself” (Hegel 1969: 440). However, the very notion of something being and not being itself, begs the question as to what, or where, a thing



negative dialectics, identity and exchange187

is in each moment of its contradictory states. Zeno’s arrow will continue its trajectory as the archer planned it, all environmental conditions remaining the same for the length of the flight. Thus, we can know with relative certainty where it is and is not in any specific point in time, where it is and where it will be at two distinguishable points in time. The situation is more complex where material contingencies intervene and create contradictions. Thought is social; the social initiates the process of thinking. For Marx, the control of material production translates into the control of mental production: what thought is of more or less value, what form of thinking – analysis – is most efficaciously related to the process of production and the benefits of it for those who control its means (Marx and Engels 1976a: 59–60; 446–447). Thinking what the subject observes is derived from the social, it is experienced through the senses in interaction; one is aware of something conceptually and/or experientially at a particular moment. Identity exists in the immediate; in time and space it is either reified and in that way sustained and frozen, or it is approached as momentary, as merely the appearance of identity, and sublated. As Parkinson (1970: 129) remarks about Lukács’ formulation of individuality in his aesthetics, the determinants of individuality – and in any other object – exist in undeveloped and unanalysed form. As such it is always in the state of a transformable immediate. Hence, the conditions under which thinking is identification requires further development and articulation, what should be done with the thought that is frozen in the immediacy of a concept that presents itself as identical with its object. Adorno’s assertion – to think is to identify – is incomplete not merely because he has overlooked the necessity of emphasizing that the ground of thought is the real addressed through abstractions “in the imagination” (Marx and Engels 1976a: 31), but he also limits his theoretical orientation forcing it to stop at that point where it is thought itself that identifies in the absence of the influence of the social. Adorno’s concession that “theory reacts to the world” is insufficient for he immediately links it to the free movement of consciousness in a problematic duality: that thought has a properly dialectical “mode of conduct,” “the immanent process,” and an “unbound” mode of conduct “like stepping out of dialectics,” a statement that is rationalized by his preference for the free spirit of the man of letters, free of systems (Adorno 1973: 30–31). If thought, properly dialectical, is related to the “unbound”, outside-thesystem thought, one should assume that this is a dialectical relation, the same force that rebels against the system and “liberates the dialectical

188

chapter seven

movement in cognition” (1973: 31). Hence, Adorno views thought as less free though crucial to the “immanent process” that characterizes the internal working or thinking within a system, and more autonomous outside it. Here Adorno exhibits his stand against totality which he considers identitarian, but also exhibits a different variety of his “antithetical concept pairs” (Buck-Morss) in that he needs to preserve a space for a process of thinking that requires freedom from the possibilities of the HegelianMarxist dialectic in which thinking is grounded in and mediated by the complexity of reality out of which the process of change can be known and developed. The immediate only exists in that kind of thinking as a complex of determinants and possibilities, the thinking of a demanding consciousness. Adorno does not view the interaction of these two modes of thinking (within and outside the system) as dialectically mediated contradictions out of which emerges the sublation of both in a qualitatively different relation. Rather, he interjects an undialectical element in this relation: “Both attitudes of consciousness are linked by criticizing one another, not by compromising” [Kompromiß] (Adorno 1973: 31). It is not clear, of course, what compromise means in this context, but it seems to lend support to Adorno’s refusal to accept anything that could be construed as a positive moment, however temporary, upon which a systematic and incremental mobility of consciousness can establish itself integrally with political action. In two or more interacting objects where sublation occurs the result will be that each element of the contradiction (as well as the contradiction as a complex) will lose some of its original characteristics, and will take on characteristics of other elements. Hence, each is itself and not; this is not a compromise of the qualities of each object but their change due to the sublation that occurs as a result of their mediated interaction. The aphorism that theory “reacts to the world, which is faulty to the core” (Adorno 1973: 31) is the guarantor of a Mannheimian free-floating thinker compelled to resolve a dilemma by limiting the possibility of resolution to thought alone. Thus the duality with which he begins is reduced to a dualism over a genuinely dialectical approach: extending the immanent process beyond what were perceived to be its boundaries while remaining within the boundaries where the contradictions of reality can be fruitful. To argue that “to think is to identify” or to suggest that the “appearance of identity is inherent in thought” (Adorno 1973: 5, emphasis added) can only mean that in the immediate sense identity is a cognitive result when I think about a thing, an event, or an idea. If thought is identity (or identification of a concept with its definition) it is a moment that begs for



negative dialectics, identity and exchange189

transcendence; that is quite different than thought as identity arising as an already reified complex from the observation of a specific aspect of reality. Rather, reality is not so totally constraining or completely formative of thought that the props of such immediacy cannot be subject to transformation, and this is, in part, due to the course of action of an object’s internal relations or determinants, and the subject’s consciousness of them. Hence, Marcuse’s awareness of the potential of the transformation of reality through comprehension of it. In Adorno’s criticism of identity-thinking there is less of a sense of the movement of thought than there is of posing dichotomies. While traditional thinking excludes anything outside its rigidly defined categories, Adorno demands what turns out to be quite similar, the exclusion of any measure of unity in difference to avoid any appearance of identities, regardless of the fact that dialectical analysis considers such relations to be representations of reality, moments in larger and longer processes – the unity of opposites that, together, has a dialectical path of devel­opment. He finds in the historical substance – not a subject – but acquies­cence to the formal categorical representation of reality. It is, to Adorno, the normative mode of thinking in bourgeois society and that is its proper historical grounding. But without relativizing thought to the subject’s simple conditioning in its social environment, Adorno cannot close off its moments of potential development. This is a point at which his dialectics falters, for his claim that the exclusion of non-identity is normative is assessed as a manifestation, even the triumph, of what is immediately observed or experienced; where there is no space for mediation granted, it is stripped of its transitory potential and dealt a permanence unworthy of critical thinking. His first point of argument is not that critical thought awaits a determinate mediation but that the observation and experience of, and acquiescence to phenomena are assumed by people to be, as Goldmann has put it, an “adequate knowledge of reality” (1977: 35). But Goldmann has a solution to this problem. In a discussion of the possible transformation of social groups, each “tends to have an adequate knowledge of reality; but its knowledge can extend only to a maximum horizon compatible with its existence”, its “nature,” acquired from the conditions under which it arose and developed. The group’s knowledge of itself, its future prospects and the limits to its consciousness are shaped by these characteristics, although neither the development of consciousness within the group, nor the structure of the group itself is permanently fixed by these conditions (Goldmann 1977: 34–35). Given the strength of these structuring characteristics of a social group, and arguably this applies as

190

chapter seven

well to its individual members, becoming aware of qualitatively new knowledge, will be effective for that group if its members treat it in a way that requires the deliberate disappearance of the group or its transformation “to the point of losing its essential social characteristics” (1977: 34). Marx took the same position with respect to the working class itself. That is, its members must become conscious of the characteristics that make them what they are: a subordinate social group, bondsmen not lords consciously dissatisfied with those characteristics. Adorno’s use of identity as he expresses it is most often in need of an adjective such as absolute, for his use is too often without measure or comparability but synonymous with the arbitrary distance of a false dichotomy. His intention is to negate the influence of formal logic and common sense, both of which exclude or obscure contradictions in an attempt to convince the subject that either there are no contradictions or that such exist but cannot be resolved; hence, conformity becomes an unproblematic, natural, ‘logical’ response. But unless we know what the underlying and interconnecting determinants are we are engaging in anything but an historical materialist analysis. It is Adorno who imputes to identity its inevitable and unredeemable character because he at once claims the total domination in capitalism and the culture industry over its subjects, and projects subjects’ acquiescence to subordination as an outcome without alternative. The subject in bourgeois society cannot experience anything else, according to Adorno. This is the message of his writings on jazz and his perception of the fascist agitator’s audience. But if dialectics is at least a cognitive act it cannot function without reference to the determinants of thinking about social phenomena in contradiction and in change, and that may require the kind of imputation – as an intervening mediation – of conscious actions to ensure that the substance in the experience of immediacy can become a subject. Adorno works in such a way as to effectively neutralize contradictions or determinants of objects and conditions upon which historical materialism empowers understanding to reason through the immediate conditions. Where these are not articulated, explicated and understood it is implicitly a rejection of their transcendent potential. The perhaps unintentional neutralization of contradictions in this way leaves the person or social group with no opportunity to resolve them and as a result take their place as genuine subjects of history. Beginning with an image of domination and imputing its unavoidable weight upon consciousness disallows any resolution of the contradictions of bourgeois society. The idea that elements of culture can be anything other than what bourgeois society



negative dialectics, identity and exchange191

intended is denounced by Adorno. We have already noted the categorical approach to social change taken by he and Horkheimer; this becomes an attitude that closes off possible conscious development as well as the historical process and objective possibility of social change. Horkheimer and Adorno assert that “It is the triumph of invested capital, whose title as absolute master is etched deep into the hearts of the dispossessed in the employment line…” (1982: 124). How did the communists, the socialists and anarchists respond? Not with an affirmation that the etching was a permanent and debilitating condition. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno confines dialectics to theory alone. Experience is “mental experience.” Adorno considers it typical that people will reject non-identity as a negativity that encroaches upon their peaceseeking minds, the mind that survives so long as contradictions are kept at bay. His corrective is “critical self-reflection” which will keep the people from narrowing the “abundance” of possible reactions to the experience of negativity and sustain the open relationship between thought, the subject, and its object (1973: 30–31). Thus, the “less identity can be assumed  between subject and object, the more contradictory are the demands made upon the cognitive subject, upon its unfettered strength and candid self-reflection” (1973: 31). This statement asserts Marx’s objective halfway because “Theory and mental experience need to interact” (Adorno 1973: 31, emphasis added). Negative dialectics is taken up with mental experience that seeks the non-identical as the assurance of the mobility of thought, by which the subject can retain the open relation with the object. But both theory and mental experience in Adorno’s presentation remain in the cognitive domain; social experience does not figure in the formulation, and theory as we have seen that relates to practice only as its superior. The object of Adorno’s writing, which should be the historical subject in its objective relations, stands alone, its grounding is only thought that suffices as the substitute for the possible alternatives that may be imputed to it. Yet the individual, as Adorno would have it, contrary to Hegel’s bondsman, can never find a dialectical unity with its other, constrained as the individual always is, in Adorno’s view, by its wish for simple positivity. But such a unity only means that the potential lies within the relationship for the subordinate to become conscious of and force to the surface the contradictions between opposites; that means something qualitatively different than simple identity in a positive moment. While Horkheimer initially took an historical materialist approach to appearance, Adorno chose to freeze the relations he observed as real and

192

chapter seven

sustained in their effect on the subordinate of bourgeois society. His position is that these effects are inevitable given the structure and conditions of bourgeois society, and that these are insurmountable conditions. In terms of his approach, the immediate appearance of reality and its effect is an identity, a one-to-one correspondence: bourgeois society equals domination which, in turn, equals oppression. It is an interesting proposition that has its parallels in liberal sociology such as W.I. Thomas’ ‘definition of the situation’: if situations are defined as real they are real in their consequences. Adorno’s use of identity in his dialectics contradicts Marx’s in a way that diminishes the dynamic character of the concept. The relation between human beings and nature, for example, is a dialectical relation of natural science and the “science of man”, two distinct categories nevertheless “identical” in the realization of the essential powers of human beings in the objects of nature (Marx 1975b: 304). As Ollman points out, when Marx uses the term identity, as in Theories of Surplus Value, for example, it is a reference to a “[different] expression of the same fact” (Ollman 1993: 42; Marx 1968: 410–11), and thus can only point to the dialectical integrity of distinct objects or phenomena. This is possible, Ollman argues, because of Marx’s employment of a philosophy of internal relations to articulate the unity of phenomena despite their distinctions or differences. Perhaps Marx’s most frequently cited instance of “identity” in this sense is that of production and consumption, to which we have referred in the chapter on mediation. However, this is not identity simply put; rather it is identity in difference, or as Marx put it later (1968: 505) it is the “unity of these two phases”, production and consumption. It is possible to see this if one accepts two aspects of Marx’s method: internal relations of phenomena and totality. With respect to the former, Ollman argues that there must be a “commitment to view parts as identical … even before they have been abstracted from the whole.” With respect to totality, differences discovered in the components of phenomena do not “contradict the initial assumption of identity, that each part through internal relations can express the same whole” (Ollman 1993: 43, emphasis added). The flexibility offered by the relations of Marx’s categories indicates that any one aspect of reality is integrally related to others. In order to retain the whole, Marx requires the totality of relations, the abstraction of components to discover their distinctions from others, even while they retain their ‘identity’, their potential unity in difference, with all other components of the whole. Marx’s concept of ‘identity’ is no absolute, rigid or reified concept, but one that retains its dialectical relations, its internal relations, its



negative dialectics, identity and exchange193

contradictions and the potential for sublation. It is a dynamic rather than a passive concept. Benjamin was aware of this principle and applied it to his analysis of Baudelaire and other work. Concept and Identity One of the important aspects of Negative Dialectics is Adorno’s discussion of concepts; this aspect, to some degree, synthesizes the perspectives of Hegel, Marx and others. The dialectical meaning of concepts – their use in analysis – is a central aspect of negative dialectics; it reflects the dynamism that has distinguished dialectical thinking from formal logic. The dialectical approach emphasizes this dynamism by attempting to force a limit to our satisfaction with what we see, define or have defined for us. Concepts only “cover” an object with a meaning that registers what it is at the moment; but that coverage does not cause the thing to cease its movement and development. Therefore, the concept leaves a “remainder” (Adorno 1973: 5). That concepts have a primacy in philosophy does not guarantee the identity of the philosopher’s thought with what the concept purports to cover (1973: 136). Adorno argues that concepts “refer to nonconceptualities” due to their momentary reflection of reality (1973: 11); that is, what cannot yet be satisfactorily defined by the concept. “Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence.” We have noted this remark earlier, originating in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Equivalence, in the terms given it by Horkheimer and Adorno, claims to sufficiently cover the concept of exchange relations; hence, exchange value becomes the “universal domination of mankind” because it embodies this notion of identity (Adorno 1973: 178). Adorno will say, quite rightly as we have noted, that no concept completely covers its object, so in what way, to what extent are exchange relations covered by the concept of equivalence? He understands the limits of the concept: concepts are “moments” and even for “one engaged in it … [it] must not be mistaken for what it is in itself” (1973: 11). The non-identity of a concept with what it represents is the “hinge of negative dialectics” (1973: 12). The difficulty lies in the absence of Adorno’s own adherence to his view of concepts. He appears to want to follow Hegel in this matter: “But the living nature of man is always other than the concept of the same, and hence what for the concept is a bare modification, a pure accident, a superfluity, becomes a necessity, something living, perhaps the only thing that is natural and beautiful” (Hegel 1971: 169). Thus, in the formation of concepts for philosophical inquiry, the concept’s

194

chapter seven

“immanent claim is its order-creating invariance as against the change in what it covers” (Adorno 1973: 153), that is, the identity between itself (concept) and what it is intended to reference, some aspect of reality. As a triumph of order and stability over dynamism – movement and change – the concept conceived in this way serves the identity principle (Adorno 1973: 11–12, 153–156; Horkheimer 1974a: 167–168). Unrelieved by dialectical thinking, the concept represents stasis, excluding that which is immediately marginal to the definition, yet in its changing may at some point become the concept’s center. In conforming to the identity principle the concept limits thought to what is defined. On the surface this is an affirmation of Adorno’s maxim, “To think is to identify,” and as a matter of cognitive and linguistic convenience it serves the purposes of communication and intellectual inquiry. It does so poorly, however – and this is Adorno’s point – if the dynamic and dialectical character of phenomena are subsumed and disappear under the convenience of the concept. This would be an instance of false consciousness, a consciousness that requires development. The difficulty is that the limitation is imposed on reality by Adorno who concentrates only on some of its aspects to the exclusion of others where people demonstrably see that the concepts obscure the movement potentially developing in, between and among phenomena. The identity principle at work in the subject’s appropriation of exchange as identity is a manifestation of false consciousness. Arguably, to name an attitude or approach to reality calls for the necessary intervention into the distortion to which a subject may adhere. It is at least important to recognize the complexity given that concepts are a necessary operational component of philosophy (Adorno 1973: 11), but admittedly, it remains difficult to continually enunciate this complexity upon each use of a concept. However, the use of a concept does oblige its user to fully develop this complexity, satisfying the momentary employment of the concept but leaving open its representation of the possible development of what it defines, its full coverage of the object’s movement through the alteration of the relations it subsumes under the concept. It is not clear that Adorno sufficiently enunciates the relations that are covered by the concept of equivalence in much the same way that we pointed to the differences, above, between Marx’s and Adorno’s uses of identity. Once that is sufficiently carried out, however, the concept becomes more satisfactorily usable, even if in a momentary context. Ollman, citing Engels’ preface to volume three of Capital, discusses Marx’s use of concepts which were to be anything, but “fixed, cut-to-measure, once and for all applicable definitions” (Ollman 1971: 4–6). He offers



negative dialectics, identity and exchange195

several examples, such as “mode of production” as well as other concepts Marx employs that perform the same functions as mode of production indicating how much Marx’s concepts are governed by relations. Bologh (1979: 34–37), too, accepts Marx’s use of concepts as being about relations, including subject-object relations. She notes the distinction Marx makes between abstractions and concepts. The former refer to the apparent independence from subjects or conditions of existence of objects. Concepts include the subject–object relation and are the way totality is appropriated. But Marx argues that concepts also include abstractions of that totality as a “one-sided relation within an already given concrete whole” (Bologh 1979: 20, 37; Marx 1986a: 38). As we have pointed out in the chapter on Adorno’s constellations, Marx’s method is concerned primarily with establishing relations, but it is also about constructing concepts that mediate reality, such as the concept of “population” discussed there, disaggregated into other concepts – class, family, etc. The changing character of reality – cumulative, discontinuous, and so on – always governed Marx’s concepts. Exchange Jameson’s affirmation of Adorno’s perspective is important to note: Of identity we have seen that it is in fact Adorno’s word for the Marxian concept of exchange relationship…: his achievement was then to have powerfully generalized, in richer detail than any other thinker of the Marxist or dialectical tradition, the resonance and implications of the doctrine of exchange value for the higher reaches of philosophy. (Jameson 1990: 26)

The veracity of Jameson’s statement is limited to the implication that Adorno took the concept of identity in a different direction than others, but it does not include a critique of Adorno’s use of identity as a sub­ stitute or advance on Marx’s discussion of exchange relations to which we now turn. In the first chapter of Capital Marx acknowledges the ‘mysteriousness’ of the commodity in all its facets, but his intention is to demonstrate that the commodity is mysterious only when approached superficially, in its immediacy, as an appearance; the mystery dissolves once the commodity’s origin and relations are comprehended. In that chapter there is not a word about false consciousness; clear references to alienation or reification cannot be found there. But fundamentally, if a mystery or an illusion or an image from the camera obscura is alluded to – in this case, the

196

chapter seven

commodity, its value, its exchange relations – it serves no purpose other than as an object of critique in order to expose the apparent relation as real, but to be a relation of a different kind – that is, explaining the character of capitalism. As objects of critique, the commodity, value and exchange are addressed in such a way as to reveal the source of false consciousness and explain the reified relations of labor, production and exchange. This is where a critique, such as that of Marx, differs significantly from Adorno’s because it provides both analysis and an alternative to the relations and conditions it analyses. Thus, for example, “Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation … it appears to be something accidental and purely relative … [something] inherent in commodities” (Marx 1967: 44, emphasis added). Further, discussing value determined by labour time, Marx writes, “Some people might think” that the product of the “more idle and unskilful” would be more valuable due to more labour time being spent on production (1967: 46, emphasis added). Marx is clearly articulating that the commodity and its relations appear to be mysterious, not only to the working class producer and consumer of them but to various welleducated­economists of his day and earlier in the century. Thus, identity in Capital operates on two levels. At one level it has to do with the relations among components in the context of totality, “[different] expressions of the same fact”. On another level, Marx is addressing what is seen or experienced subjectively as identity in exchange, an experience that requires critical explanation to show that it is actually a socially constructed equivalence or exchangeableness in the contexts of particular relations established by “socially recognised standards of measure” (Marx 1967: 43). Exchange values with respect to one or many commodities do “express something equal,” but not identical, although they may “at first sight”. Further, these are mere “expressions [of] the phenomenal form,” the appearance of something that is a part of the commodity, “yet distinguishable from it” (1967: 44–45). Marx discusses the conception of the real world in relation to the category of exchange value, abstractions of which are the “population which produces under definite conditions, as well as a distinct type of family, or community, or State, etc.” (Marx 1986a: 38). The mystery of immediate production and exchange relations is proved to be a soluble mystery by the “enormous consciousness” that becomes aware of the alien conditions as a result of its existence in capitalist production relations as whole (1986a: 390–91). In fact, what Marx is referring to in his allusion to the mystery of the commodity is its reification through which the commodity



negative dialectics, identity and exchange197

presents itself initially; that is, the ‘mystery’ is the expected form of the observation and experience of the commodity. The resolution of the mystery is clearly detailed in the commodity chapter of Capital as is the observation and inadequate understanding of the commodity as demonstrated by Barbon, Smith, Ricardo and others. Additionally, Marx notes that circulation “appears to be simply a never-ending process:” commodity exchanged for money, money exchanged for commodity “ad infinitum;” the immediacy of appearance is central to his exposition. “It is, however, quite incorrect to proceed as do the economists: as soon as the contradictions of the money system emerge suddenly to focus only on the end results, forgetting the process which mediates them, seeing only the unity without difference, the affirmation without the negation” (Marx 1968: 132). Although he alludes to false consciousness in some places in his work (e.g. 1973: 52, 171–172, 186, 302) Adorno does not explore this problem; it is evident from discussions in chapters five and six that this is considered an insurmountable condition. In discussing identity in the context of capitalism and its mode of production, one must consider the importance to capitalism that its subjects appropriate the exchange of commodities as a legitimate identity of one for the other. Similarly, one must consider that among the most efficient skills useful for production and one that is among the most socially stabilizing elements of capitalism is a diminished quality of consciousness, a consciousness that does not or chooses not to fully comprehend the character of capitalist relations, a consciousness that is content with the immediate satisfactions provided by work and its remuneration, and which accepts that radical, long-term social change is not feasible. Such a diminished quality of consciousness is the essential meaning of false consciousness. False consciousness, where it exists – and it does not exist universally – is a mental component of labor power and is as vital to capitalism as any muscle or brain power, or any specialized knowledge of machinery and technology. That social classes are major expressions of social development requires us to see erroneous, incomplete, and unsubstantiated views of social and economic relations “as class-conditioned” (Lukács 1971: 52). False consciousness is not a permanent state of the individual or the class as a whole but a discoverable condition that can be altered. Alternatively, we may see aspects of social reality reflecting accurate and complete understanding of the organization of society, at least with respect to objective historical developments. Thus, to argue that a viewpoint regarding exchange relations, for example, is an expression of false consciousness is not simply a claim that another view is correct; to be a valid claim it must

198

chapter seven

include a demonstration of the error by an explicit and systematic method of analysis that can be repeatedly applied in different contexts to establish its veracity. In a letter to Franz Mehring, Engels argued against the judgments of certain ideologists who based their claims on thinking and reasoning alone, without an apparent willingness to comprehend, in concrete reality, the material source of their knowledge, a disjuncture that constituted the inadequacy of their view of reality (Marx and Engels 1975: 434). But Engels was not willing to simply exchange the theoretical for the concrete and experiential. Of necessity, the two remain dialectically related. False consciousness is not just about having different perspectives. It is false in relation to some other quality of consciousness that can be shown to be necessary for comprehending a given socio-historical context. From an historical materialist perspective false consciousness has to do specifically with a demonstration of the objective relations of capitalism. If one’s depth of understanding is limited due to systemic structural constraints, and/or limited access to the knowledge base of particular institutions, then the person may be said to possess false consciousness because of the immediate objective conditions she encounters. Under such circumstances, the focus should be on the identifiable structural barriers and obstacles within an individual’s thinking that restrict or prevent discovery of more comprehensive knowledge and development of a higher degree of consciousness. At first this might consist merely of conjecture about how these barriers might be broken down or made more permeable in order to allow access to the requisite knowledge. This assumes, however, that a person is interested in doing so. That is, the subjective factor that is relevant here must still be considered; specifically, the interest and willingness of the individual to develop knowledge in opposition to that which is prescribed as normative and pragmatic by dominant social forces. Reification is an objective problem of society that is manifested concretely in the lives of individuals as their false, but malleable consciousness. Thus, the ‘mystery’ of exchange must be explored. Marx argues (1967: 61) that equivalence is “a specific form of value” with respect to two commodities in an exchange relation. But because of the “dual form of existence” (as commodity and as exchange-value, money) that parallels the temporally and spatially distinct acts of buying and selling, actual equality between the two commodities is not attained but is expressed by Marx as “the continual movement toward equalisation” (Marx 1986a: 85–86). Exchange relations are “characterised by a total abstraction from use-value.” Different objects are deemed equivalent because both are “reducible to [a] third” object (Marx 1967: 45) in that a



negative dialectics, identity and exchange199

quantity of one can be exchanged for a different quantity of another, the exchange of ‘equivalence’ facilitated by that ‘third’. The equivalence between two commodities in capitalist exchange relations is achieved by a third element that is both symbolic and objective (Marx 1967: 44, 80; 1986a: 78, 82, 99). Marx’s historical research served as the basis for this statement, but his dialectical approach allowed for comprehending the actual mode of operation in recognizing and addressing the problem of two different objects for which another is sought to make them exchangeable. We have noted in chapter two that a common element is required for comparison (there we cited Marx’s example of space, in Capital, to compare distance). Equally important with respect to exchange is Hegel’s insistence that the third object be ‘indifferent’ to the other two, so that, for example, gold has no direct relation, in itself, to linen or to a coat. In this way Hegel’s third element both establishes and dissolves the ‘identity’ between the two original objects. The exchange of an object represents something quantitative, from the point of view of everyday perception of exchange, a single object can have multiple exchange-values (Marx 1967: 44). Thus, it has many possible equivalents, or many ways in which its value can be expressed, as it is expressed only through exchange. In modern capitalism or in a traditional barter system this ‘third’ is money, gold, silver, or the “bars” used by West African tribes (Marx 1986a: 80), anything agreed upon by the “guardians” of commodities as they submit them to exchange (Marx 1967: 88). This third element is the measure of the exchangeability of two items in an economic system sufficiently developed to require such a third for the measure of exchange. As the exchangeable measure of each item, the third element acquires more power in generalized social relations, than either of the two distinct commodities. However, this third need not strictly be a material object (gold, silver, etc.) Because that “third” mediates between extremes, Marx classifies it as “the movement or the relationship” that comes to “appear as mediation with it [i.e. the movement or relationship] itself” (Marx 1986a: 257). This is an element of dialectics central to Marx’s formulation of the exchange schema. The basis of Marx’s argument is that each commodity produced has a distinct use-value derived from its physical, natural properties that when combined with human labor addresses a concrete human need. The varieties of usefulness of an object can be understood by examining the differences in their utility in different historical contexts; usefulness is an issue for Marx primarily in the sense that every thing has a use. Particular uses are not immanent in objects although the inherent or natural qualities of a thing may determine or condition its use. A horse-drawn wagon is not

200

chapter seven

immanent in a tree, but a tree contains inherent qualities that make its use in wagon-making valuable. Once it is known that flat boards can be derived from a standing tree, its use-value in wagon-making also becomes known. Different qualities of objects lend those objects to different uses. Some species of cacti can stand as high and as thick as a useful tree for wagon-making, but its wagon-making qualities are nil. Hence, “Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption…” (Marx 1967: 44). No one with the remotest knowledge of the structural requirements of a wagon would confuse the tree and the cactus for the purpose of wagon-making; it is readily recognized and accepted that there is no equivalence between the two for that purpose. An examination of these two objects shows they are not equal in terms of strength, density and durability. The standard of measure is a matter of convention (Marx 1967: 43); knowledge of commensurability requires knowledge of social relations as well as, in this case, knowledge of the structure of natural objects. Thus, it is objective knowledge of properties that becomes ‘conventional’ – strength and durability are standards by which we choose appropriate wagon-making materials; it is ‘conventional’ that we decide that labor-time cutting the tree and transforming the raw timber into lumber is the means by which we will determine the economic value of the wagon. In this way we determine in actuality, not by imputing identity to the relation, that two things are equivalent to each other precisely because of this conventional measurement. To emphasize the point, in reality objects can be equivalent in terms of their economic value; to claim that they are identical because one thing can be exchanged for another merely reflects reification and false consciousness and ignores the origin and conditions of their possible exchangeableness. While some of what Adorno says about equivalence has a degree of veracity in that it reflects only the alienated and reified condition of bourgeois society; it illuminates a problem at the level of criticism rarely rising to the level of a thorough dialectical critique of capitalist society. “What is different is equalized. That is the verdict which critically determines the limits of possible experience” (Adorno 1973: 12). The references to Marx, in Capital, indicate there is substance to this view. Commodity fetishism, reification, in reducing all relations to relations between things, is the expression of this reduction of qualities to quantities. But the solution to the problem is not simply its presentation, a demonstration of awareness; the question of conscious development of experience has yet to be answered. For Adorno, the expression of exchange in the context of capitalism concerns relations that are not merely economic but serve to buttress the



negative dialectics, identity and exchange201

ideology necessary to repel recognition and consideration of contradictions in the reality of economic activity. Exchange accomplishes this by shaping the manner and extent of people’s interest beyond the immediacy of the economic relations by which they manage everyday life. The equivalence of things, commodities, relations in thought manifested by way of exchange in the context of concrete economic activity serves also to ensure the subject’s acquiescence to the dominance of capitalist relations in terms of authority, inter-personal relations, and the subject’s cognitive development and expression, as well as the class character active in all such relations. Exchange relations accomplish this by way of “identifying” what is bought with what is sold; two entities exchanged are equal to one another. The difference between the two commodities is subsumed by the equivalence of their exchange values, or as Adorno would have it, their identity via exchange value. The obvious elements of these relations are the labor ‘equal’ to an amount of wages, the ‘exchange’ of an amount of wages equal to a period of labor necessary for the production of a commodity. Consistent with Lukács’ use of reification, exchange relations under capitalism turns human beings into objects and creates, in turn, false consciousness about the origin and organization of such relations. Ultimately, the human subject becomes ‘identical’ with this impersonal exchange of commodities through its own commodification, the valuing of each of the subject’s marketable fragments: labor, time, needs, disposition, and so on. Identity in exchange relations is the form cognition takes that provides the means of survival in the immediacy of those relations despite their actual social and economic contradictions. But as a structure it is dependent on the absence of the recognition of contradictions in those relations, specifically in the equivalence of objects (commodities) and activity (labor) thus appearing to the subject to be a necessary set of relations sufficiently attractive to reduce the subjects’ interest in thinking through the contradictions of those relations. To do so would be an impediment to a stable experience in capitalism, but collectively might put the survival of capitalism at risk. Thus, ‘exchange value’ as a concept covers the non-identity between things, not only covering over their difference but, by obscuring or excluding the unnamed contradictions, it distinguishes the naming of their identity in exchange and the entire exchange relation as separable from other aspects of reality. Marx alludes to the static character of identity-thinking in his discussion of exchange relations by noting that people begin their understanding of these relations at the end of the process; that is, at the moment of the presence of the commodity, taking “a course directly

202

chapter seven

opposite to that of [the] actual historical development” of the “forms of social life” (1967: 80). Equivalence is a quantitative concept, expressing a quantitative relation between things – one thing can be exchanged ‘equally’ for another. This is true so long as each has sufficient qualities to confirm that it is actually identical or can be so determined by way of social consensus. On the other hand, “only that which is homogeneous can be quantified” (Goldstein 1988: 135). But identity must be viewed as a qualitative concept as Adorno indirectly indicates with his statement, “Identity is the primal form of ideology” (1973: 148). If subjects accept that two objects are identical because they can be exchanged, this reflects a quality of consciousness and a quality of relations deemed to be legitimately functional. Thus, it is possible to see Adorno’s conception of identity as having integral quantitative and qualitative meanings. The difficulty lies in the absence of contextual details of the process of exchange and of the subjects engaged in it. Adorno’s presentation is not helped by the unfortunate emphasis in Ashton’s translation of Negative Dialectics where Tausch is rendered as ‘barter’, implying a context quite distinct from the capitalism about which Adorno is writing. This translation is formally legitimate because connotations of Tausch include exchange, barter and swap. Translation of the term to barter, however, implies a relation that English normally reserves for trade of things of similar social value or of things deemed of equivalent importance for use regardless of the difference in their qualities or their monetary value; that is, only approximately commensurable. The term is also used to denote a system of economy in which these kinds of trade dominate. The context in Negative Dialectics is one of exchange interactions of buying and selling goods, services or labor. However, so strong is Adorno’s sense of identity in this discussion that the implications of the English meaning of barter, even swap, are justified and the problem must be considered in that light. Barter is the ‘social model’ of the identity principle. The barter principle [Tauschprinzip], the reduction of human labor to the abstract universal concept of average working hours is fundamentally akin to the principle of ­identification … it is through barter that non-identical individuals and performances become commensurable and identical. (Adorno 1973: 146)

Historically, the diffusion of the identity principle through economic relations constrains human development and reifies thought in its relation to that development. Human activity is “levelled” by the barter principle, negating “individual spontaneities and qualities … as helplessly dependent on the whole” (1973: 178).



negative dialectics, identity and exchange203

Adorno’s assumption here is that the singular factor of labor-time, identified by Marx as the measure of value, contains no divisions. If Adorno’s assumption is correct, the relation of each laborer to his or her production, and to the objects of consumption (the producing and purchasing of values), would be absolutely identical with the process of the exchange of values – his barter principle. This would, in effect, be a simple one-for-one exchange, money in exchange for a commodity as well as for the labor required for its production. One could speculate on what moves Adorno’s Tausch closer to the connotation of barter rather than exchange. Given what we have said above concerning his orientation to the masses and related issues, one notices there is no division of labor, or status divisions, operable anywhere in his discussion; there are no class divisions, only categorical capitalism, categorical cultural industries, and the categorical masses. Neither are there divisions in what Marx called “the productiveness of labour” such as “the average amount of skill … the state of science … the social organization of production” among other things that qualify that singular measure of value (1967: 47). How can exchange be seen as an exchange of equivalents without also considering the possibility of these differing conditions? Perhaps, Adorno’s “performances” (1973: 146) is an attempt to address differentiations in skill but that is not clear. One of the most important conditions of production Marx was concerned about was the matter of surplus labor, that for which the worker was not paid, or as he puts it, “the extortion of unpaid labour”. “The value contained in a commodity is equal to the labour-time expended in its production, and the sum of this labour consists of paid and unpaid portions” (Marx 1971a: 42, 44–45). Thus, the standard of measure is retained but is qualified by an economic and social condition, the social condition – the division of labor and classes – that if treated as a mystery merely sustains the valuation of commodities, whether objects bought and sold on the market, and especially one of such exchangeables in this case, laborpower. In Adorno’s use, labor as the unconditional measure of the value of commodities allows for the assumption of a convenient identity, equally an imputation of false consciousness in the masses where the mystery of the commodity like the mystery of fascist oratory is said to be incapable of analysis. He and Horkheimer argued that “the exchange of gifts stands for the principle of equivalence”. Even where there is no one-to-one exchange of gifts the presentation of a gift by one person earns a gift from the other at a later time or indirectly through a gift to a relative or associate (1982: 49).

204

chapter seven

However, it is precisely the temporal distance between the giving and receiving of a gift in return that distinguishes barter economies from giftgiving economies. In his classic study Mauss (1967: 35) noted that barter developed out of credit-based systems resting “on the system of gifts given and received on credit, simplified by drawing together the moments of time which had previously been distinct”. Horkheimer and Adorno also do not give weight to the non-market relations of gift exchange, part of which is the consideration of the gifter that the gift possesses a reasonable use-value to show obligation, friendship or commitment (Lapavitsas 2004), while barter economies explicitly reduce the “social, cultural, political or personal transaction costs” (Appadurai 1986: 9). Money in a capitalist economy serves as the ‘third’ by which value is expressed, and in other economies, as noted, it may be gold or “bars” or any other item parties agree will serve this purpose. Barter does not possess such a third element in the form of money or other material symbols. Barter is a direct relation between two things exchanged between persons or groups of people. Barter is “the exchange of objects for one another without reference to money” (Appadurai 1986: 9). If a third element can be cited in barter economies it would be the social consensus that facilitates exchange through barter, that is, commensurability of exchange is determined culturally. This basic definition usually serves to characterize less developed economies, but it is also worth noting that Appadurai’s definition generally serves to explain aspects of economic relations between nations in late modernity, such as the Soviet Bloc nations when they existed and others due to the inconvertibility of currencies. In contexts in which the third element is a social convention, barter is premised on the immediate or eventual return of an item deemed to be equivalent in value and may also be deemed equivalent in use. Thus, while barter is direct exchange, it is not the exchange of identical values. In capitalist exchange relations, two things are commensurable because they are measured against each other by a third element. In a strictly barter economy, at least as most commonly understood anthropologically, two things are not commensurable where there is no cultural convention to measure one against the other. Where there is comparability it is in the quality of the exchange; it is not limited to the articles exchanged but to the context of the relationship between the parties (and, again, such exchange may occur over time). In the context of Adorno’s discussion – modern capitalism – barter is the focus because it corresponds to the directness of exchange, one-for-one, which makes the equivalence determined by the commensurability of two commodities to a third appear identical in the



negative dialectics, identity and exchange205

immediacy of the exchange act, an immediacy similar to that of false consciousness, to buying and selling in the modern marketplace. But such appearance is a matter of consciousness which Adorno does not address as a false but malleable consciousness. Adorno’s equation of capitalist economic relations and those of barter attempt to reinforce the identity principle which is, at this stage, the barter principle, Tauschprinzip. Marx confirms the similarity of the two with regard to the introduction of money as the third element whether in the barter system or in international trade (1986a: 80). Further, Marx is more clear that the exchange value of a commodity expressed in money has “a special existence alongside the commodity” (1986a: 79, 85); that is, it is not directly and immediately identified with it, while Adorno’s concentration on the subject’s acquiescence to the identity principle in economic relations leaves little space for considering the distinction between money and the commodity. Adorno does imply that identity thinking and the inequality of exist­ing relations should be overcome. His position is worth quoting at length. When we criticize the barter principle as the identifying principle of thought, we want to realize the ideal of free and just barter. To date, this ideal is only a pretext. … If no man had part of his labour held from him any more, rational identity would be a fact, and society would have transcended the identifying mode of thinking. This comes close enough to Hegel. The dividing line from him is scarcely drawn by individual distinctions. It is drawn by our intent: whether in our consciousness, theoretically and in the resulting practice, we maintain that identity is the ultimate … that we want to reinforce it – or whether we feel that identity is the universal coercive mechanism which we, too, finally need to free ourselves from universal coercion…. (Adorno 1973: 147)

However, his pre-occupation is with exchange as an expression of the identity orientation of the subject in capitalist society. He attempts to show that exchange, barter, is pervasive in history – a truism – and that its presence has been one of alienation and domination: “identity is the universal coercive mechanism” (1973: 146, 147). His perspective lacks the qualifications found in Marx’s analysis. In addition to the remarks above, Marx also more appropriately considered barter in an anthropological context where “the object of [barter] was the direct possession of the exchanged commodity, its consumption” in contrast to trade which is directed toward “the acquisition of money, of exchange values” (1986a: 86). Further, Marx’s more intricate complex of relations when considering equivalence as a form of value was not addressed by Adorno for he does not discuss

206

chapter seven

equivalence in terms of proportions of each object in exchange, definite quantities of each. He does not explore value as a social category, the determination of value based upon social relations, and the relation between individual and social labor (1967: 61–66). For Adorno, there is no need for these qualifications based in materialist history. He violates his analysis of concepts by designating barter as equivalence here and identity there, and with such designations proposes to cover that complex of relations Marx enunciates and the historical determinants of each of the components of the exchange. This, of course, is the problem with all abstractions in so far as their internal relations are not recognized and analyzed. With Adorno, such relations, the development and sublation of their preceding moments, serve primarily as elements of a constellation that are subsumed in the instant of its explosion into truth, the flash entirely negating, not merely sublating the fuse that lit it. He is no doubt correct about the general perception of exchange as the equivalence of “individuals and performances,” and provisionally asserts an interest in “transcending the identifying mode of thinking” (1973: 147). It is in this assertion that we notice much of the problem of Adorno’s entire orientation: thought, thinking with little or no connection to practice or to the mediating intervention at the theoretical level. Critical theory, he writes, will show “it up for what it is – an exchange of things that are equal and yet unequal” (1973: 147), but this appears only as a tease of the problem not as a link between theory and practice by which the transcending is realized.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CONCLUSION Much of Adorno’s material that has been discussed here could not be considered his major works, with the exception of Negative Dialectics. But the latter, as has been noted, does carry on the essential philosophical and political orientation of some of his earlier work, work that may not be the most important of his career but work that has garnered much attention since the revival of critical theory by the New Left in the 1960s. The earlier material, though some of it unfinished such as the Martin Luther Thomas study, nevertheless provides a perspective of its author’s consistent view of such phenomena as jazz, popular music, the masses and provides insight to Adorno’s perspective on the problems of capitalism. His methodological orientation, the agglomeration of aspects of reality into constellations, remains a problem as well for an unclear and essentially subjectivist approach to philosophical and social analysis. The focus here has been the way in which Adorno and others analyzed aspects of modernity from a dialectical perspective. Some of those others were his colleagues, others not, some his intellectual companions but with significant differences. We must think here of Bloch and Kracauer, particularly their approach to the encroachments of fascism, its historical development, its relation to ‘the masses’. What is missing or insufficient in Adorno’s work discussed here? The enduring effect of his approach has been to provide a position from which criticism of capitalism and its culture industries can be undertaken without an obligation to see within them some of the resources integral to the movement and change that materialist dialectics can provide. That this perspective is underdeveloped reveals only a rather superficial exposure of capitalism’s inherent contradictions, and at the same time it exposes the absence of mediation to develop such contradictions to the point of the sublation of them. When such an absence is evident in reality, it should be regarded as momentary, historically speaking, as an instance in the development of a consciousness and, therefore, the internal and contingent relations that would that would allow for the superseding of the contradiction. For Adorno, the absence is too often expressed categorically as a permanent feature. That he consciously avoided searching out and

208

chapter eight

recognizing those existing resources closed off their development to him and, therefore, limited the impact of critical theory as a whole. As criticism, rather than critique, this was a precious find; it allowed Adorno to establish a position at the initiation of criticism but required no movement or reconsideration as it was articulated and developed. It is like an amulet worn as identity, as privileged vision, at once a posture and conclusion. The absence of recognition for the positive moment in dialectics actually diminishes the usefulness of his approach for political practice and social change. As has been discussed here, the positive moment, as the sublation of a contradiction, lends itself to the positivist adoption of reality only when consciousness is frozen, only when actual relations are reified. Reification and false consciousness are neither pervasive nor permanent conditions, but in order to realize movement away from those conditions there must be conscious and systematic intervention. That is the task of dialectics as a mode of thought and the role of its human agent as a means of action. Adorno makes assumptions that too often turn out to be his conclusions. The absence of a strong element of mediation is most problematic for political practice. We have noted in chapters four and seven the absence of any meaningful divisions of population or classes where analysis might be usefully drawn to specific instances of internal relations and social action. In Adorno’s case the notion of a social process as a whole must be related to his negative dialectics and his cultural criticism. In such works as the jazz essays, Martin Luther Thomas and aspects of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno began with an image of society thoroughly dominated by the culture industry, or in the case of the Thomas study, willful acquiescence of the masses, and responded to these images solely in terms of their overwhelming, impenetrable force. Having no sense of radical politics and despising the notion of a roughly reciprocal relation between theory and practice, Adorno’s position is that if there is to be any mediation, it cannot involve only a part or fraction of the whole. His political position, as we have noted, is that capitalism must be completely defeated in all its aspects before the possibility of any meaningful change can be considered. Hegel’s example of two consciousnesses mediating one another, or Lukács’ belief that political organization is, itself, mediation has no part to play in a conception of capitalism that revolves around such an unrelenting negativity. The priority given to an endless negativity, the reduction of a theorypractice partnership to a one-sided relation, the absence of a sense of

conclusion209 political action and social change among other things have been among the matters of discussion here. Another issue is that Adorno devotes no significant space and importance to consciousness, particularly its place in the development of the individual and consequent social expressions. I have noted earlier what I consider to be problematic leaps in his conception of Hegel’s spirit that virtually abandons the individual consciousness for spirit as society and social labor. This means that the individual is left without means by which to establish the kinds of relations necessary to transcend the mentality Adorno ascribes to the masses. That mentality may be real in the sense that Goldmann attributed to it, that it describes “what people actually think” in particular circumstances at any point in time. But such a position ignores “what changes are likely to occur” (Goldmann 1977: 32–33) given opportunities for self-development as well as mediating interventions.

REFERENCES Abbreviation: MECW: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works. Adorno, Theodor. 1941. “Review of Walter Hobson, American Jazz Music and Winthrop Sargeant, Jazz Hot and Hybrid.” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 9, 167–178. ——. 1969. “Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America.” pp. 338–370, in The Intellectual Migration, edited by Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard UP. ——. 1973. Negative Dialectics. New York: Continuum. ——. 1976a. “Introduction.” pp. 1–67 in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. London: Heinemann. ——. 1981. “Perennial Fashion – Jazz.” pp. 119–132, in Prisms. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ——. 1991a. “On the fetish character of music and the regression of listening.” pp. 26–52, in The Culture Industry. London: Routledge. ——. 1991b. “The culture industry reconsidered.” pp. 85–92, in The Culture Industry. London: Routledge. ——. 1992. Notes on Literature, v.2. New York: Columbia University Press. ——. 1993. “Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy.” pp. 1–51 in Hegel: Three Studies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ——. 1994a. “The Stars Down to Earth: The Los Angeles Times Astrology Column.” pp. 46–171 in The Stars Down to Earth and other Essays on the Irrational in Culture. London: Routledge. ——. 1994b [1946]. “Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda.” pp. 218–231 in The Stars Down to Earth and other Essays on the Irrational in Culture. London: Routledge. ——. 1994c [1941]. “Research Project on Anti-Semitism: the Idea of the Project.” pp. 181–217 in The Stars Down to Earth and other Essays on the Irrational in Culture. London: Routledge. ——. 2000a. “The Actuality of Philosophy.” pp. 23–39 in The Adorno Reader, edited by Brian O’Connor. London: Blackwell. ——. 2000b. The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——. 2000c. Introduction to Sociology. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——. 2001. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——. 2002a [1933]. “Farewell to Jazz.” pp. 496–499 in Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 2002b [1936]. “On Jazz.” pp. 470–495 in Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 2002c [1941]. “On Popular Music.” pp. 437–469 in Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 2002d [1932]. “On the Social Situation of Music.” pp. 391–436 in Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 2002e [1941]. “The Radio Symphony.” pp. 251–270 in Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 2003. “Letter to Benjamin, November 10, 1938.” pp. 99–105 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v. 4, 1938–1940. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 2005. Minima Moralia. London: Verso.

212

references

——. 2007a. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——. 2007b. “Reconciliation under duress.” pp. 151–176 in Adorno, et al. Aesthetics and Politics. London: Verso. ——. 2009. “Analytical Study of the NBC Music Appreciation Hour.” pp. 163–215 in Current of Music. London: Polity. ——, et al. 1982. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: W.W. Norton. —— and Hellmut Becker. 1999. “Education for maturity and responsibility.” History of the Human Sciences, 12(3), 21–34. ——, et al. 2007. Aesthetics and Politics. London: Verso. Allen, James S. 2001. Organizing in the Depression South: A Communist’s Memoir. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press. Anderson, Kevin. 1995. Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” pp. 3–63 in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1968. “Introduction.” pp. 1–55 in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations. New York: Shocken Books. Arnold, Abraham J. 1995. Judaism: Myth, Legend, History and Custom. Montreal: Robert Davies Publishing. Babbie, Earl. 2001. The Practice of Social Research. 9th Edition. Belmont, CA.: Wadsworth/ Thomson Learning. Baldwin, Neil. 2001. Henry Ford and the Jews. New York: Public Affairs. Benjamin, Walter. 1996. “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man.” pp. 62–74 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v.1, 1913–1926. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 1998. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: Verso. ——. 1999a. “Reflections on Radio.” pp. 543–544 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v.2(2), 1931–1934. Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 1999b. “Theatre and Radio.” pp. 583–586 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v.2(2), 1931–1934. Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 1999c. “The Author as Producer.” pp. 768–782 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v.2(2), 1931–1934. Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 2002. “The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov.” pp. 143–166 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v. 3, 1935–1938. Edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 2003a. “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire.” pp. 3–92 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v. 4, 1938–1940. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 2003b. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproduction.” pp. 251–283 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v. 4, 1938–1940. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. ——. 2003c. “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire.” pp. 313–355 in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, v. 4, 1938–1940. Edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press. Bernstein, Richard J. 1976. The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Biale, David. 2011. Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bloch, Ernst. 1971. On Karl Marx. New York: Herder and Herder. ——. 1991. Heritage of Our Times. Cambridge: Polity Press.



references213

Bologh, Rosalyn. 1979. Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx’s Method. Boston: Routledge, Kegan Paul. Bronner, Stephen Eric. 2000. A Rumour About the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bonosky, Phillip. 1953. Brother Bill McKie. New York: International Publishers. Bonss, Wolfgang. 1984. “Introduction.” pp. 1–38 in The Working Class in Weimar Germany by Erich Fromm. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Boyer, Richard O. and Herbert M. Morais. 1955. Labor’s Untold Story. New York: United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Brodersen, Momme. 1997. Walter Benjamin: A Biography. London: Verso. Browning, Christopher. 1998. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper. Buck-Morss, Susan. 1977. The Origin of Negative Dialectics. New York: The Free Press. Caccamo, Rita. 2000. Back to Middletown: Three Generations of Sociological Reflection. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Campbell, Jan. 2007. “Editorial.” New Formations, 61: 7–19. Carlson, John Roy. 1943. Under Cover. New York: E.P. Dutton. Ceplair, Larry. 1987. Under the Shadow of War: Facsim, Anti-Fascism and Marxists. New York: Columbia University Press. Claussen, Detlev. 2008. Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cohen, Robert. 1997. When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America’s First Mass Student Movement, 1929–1941. New York: Oxford University Press. Comay, Rebecca. 1997. “Materialist Mutations of the Bilderverbot.” pp. 55–84 in Sites of Vision: The Discoursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy, edited by David Michael Levin. Cambridge: MIT Press. Davis. Angela Y. 1998. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. New York: Vintage Books. DeVeaux, Scott. 1998. “Constructing the Jazz Tradition.” pp. 485–515 in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, edited by Robert G. O’Meally. New York: Columbia University Press. Douglas, Susan J. 2004. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DuBois, W.E.B. 1965. “The Souls of Black Folk.” pp. 207–389 in Three Negro Classics. New York: Avon Books. Dundes, Alan. 2002. The Shabbat Elevator and Other Sabbath Subterfuges: An Unorthodox Essay on Circumventing Custom and Jewish Character. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. Ellison, Ralph. 1995 [1958]. “As the Spirit Moves Mahalia.” pp. 250–258 in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, edited by John F. Callahan. New York: The Modern Library. ——. 1995 [1962]. “On Bird, Bird-Watching and Jazz.” pp. 256–265 in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, edited by John F. Callahan. New York: The Modern Library. Engels, Frederick. 1987. “Anti-Dühring”. pp. 5–309 in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 25. New York: International Publishers. Ettinger, Yair. 2009. “Ultra-Orthodox balk at new rabbinical ban on Sabbath elevators.” Haaretz, Sept. 30. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/ultra-orthodox-balk-at -new-rabbinical-ban-on-sabbath-elevators-1.7009. Finkelstein, Sidney. 1988. Jazz: A People’s Music. New York: International Publishers. ——. 1989. Composer and Nation. New York: International Publishers. Finlayson, James Gordon. 2012. “On not being silent in the darkness: Adorno’s singular Apophaticism.” Harvard Theological Review, 105(1), 1–32. Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth. 2006. Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fromm, Erich. 1965 [1941]. Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon Books. ——. 1984. The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Genovese, Eugene D. 1976. Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Vintage Books.

214

references

Geoghegan, Vincent. 1996. Ernst Bloch. New York: Routledge. Gerdes, Paulus. 2003. Awakenings of Geometrical Thought in Early Geometry. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press. Gettleman, Marvin E. 2002. “‘No Varsity Teams’: New York’s Jefferson School of Social Science 1943–1956.” Science & Society, 66(3): 336–359. Gilloch, Graeme and Jaeho Kang. 2007. “Below the Surface: Siegfried Kracauer’s ‘Test-film’ Project.” New Formations, 61: 149–160. Gioia, Ted. 2011. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press. Goldfarb, Michael. 2009. Emancipation. New York: Simon & Schuster. Goldmann, Lucien. 1977. Cultural Creation in Modern Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Goldstein, Leonard. 1988. The Social and Cultural Roots of the Linear Perspective. Minneapolis: MEP Publications. Gracyk, Theodore A. 1992. “Adorno, Jazz, and the Aesthetics of Popular Music.” The Musical Quarterly, 76(4): 526–542. Healey Dorothy Ray and Maurice Isserman. 1993. California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hecht, Ben. 1944. A Guide for the Bedeviled. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Hegel, G.W.F. 1873. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic. Trans. William Wallace. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/index.htm. ——. 1969. Science of Logic. Translated by A.V. Miller. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books. ——. 1971. Early Theological Writings. Translated by T.M. Knox. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ——. 1975 [1873]. Hegel’s Logic. Translated by William Wallace. London: Clarendon Press. ——. 1977. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——. 1983. Hegel and the Human Spirit: A Translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805–1806). Translated by Leo Rauch. Detroit: Wayn State University Press. ——. 1991. Encyclopedia Logic. Translated by T.F. Geraets. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Herskovits, Melville J. 1958. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon. Herzog, Herta. 1944. “What do we really know about daytime serial listeners?” pp. 3–33 in Radio Research 1942–43, edited by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank Stanton. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Hilberg, Raul. 2003. The Destruction of the European Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hoare, Quintin. 1998. “Translator’s Note.” pp. 121–122 in The Salaried Masses, translated by Quintin Hoare. London: Verso. Hodges, H.A. 1970. “Lukács on Irrationalism.” pp. 86–108 in Georg Lukács: The Man, His Work and His Ideas, edited by G.H.R. Parkingson. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Horkheimer, Max. 1974a. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Seabury Press. ——. 1974b. “The German Jews.” pp. 101–118 in Critique of Instrumental Reason. New York: Continuum. ——. 1982. Critical Theory. New York: Continuum. —— and Theodor Adorno. 1982. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum. Hudson, Wayne. 1982. The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Hurston, Nora Zeale. 1970. “Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals.” pp. 223–225 in Negro: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Cunard. New York: Frederick Ungar. Ilyenenkov, E.V. 1977. Dialectical Logic. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ——. 2008. The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s. Capital. Dehli: Aakar Books. Jameson, Fredric. 1990. Late Marxism. London: Verso. Jay, Martin. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. ——. 1980. “The Jews and the Frankfurt School: Critical Theory’s Analysis of AntiSemitism.” New German Critique. Winter: 137–149. ——. 1984. Marxism and Totality. Berkeley: University of California Press.



references215

——. 1986. “Adorno and Kracauer: Notes on a Troubled Friendship.” pp. 217–236 in Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America. New York: Columbia University Press. Jenemann, David. 2007. Adorno in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kalbus, Mark. 2009. “A Short Introduction to Adorno’s Mediation between Kultur and Culture.” Social Text, 27(2): 139–143. Kant, Immanuel. 2007. Critique of Pure Reason. London: Penguin. Kaplan, Judy and Linn Shapiro. 1998. Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kater, Michael. 1992. Different drummer: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. Kelley, Robin D.G. 1990. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Kodat, Catherine Gunther. 2003. “Conversing with ourselves: Canon, freedom, jazz.” American Quarterly, 55(1): 1–28. Kolakowski, Leszek. 1984. “The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory.” pp. 95–115 in Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by Judith Marcus and Zoltan Tar. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. Kosak, Hadassa. 2000. Cultures of opposition : Jewish immigrant workers, New York City, 1881– 1905. Albany : State University of New York Press. Kracauer, Siegfried. 1969. History: The Last Thing Before the Last. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 1995a. “The Little Shopgirls go to the Movies.” pp. 291–304 in The Mass Ornament. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ——. 1995b. “Cult of Distraction.” pp. 323–328 in The Mass Ornament. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ——. 1997 [1960]. Theory of Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——. 2000 [1930]. The Salaried Masses. London: Verso. ——. 2012 [1960]. “Talk with Teddie.” pp. 127–132 in Siegfried Kracauer’s American Writings, edited by Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lanning, Robert. 2005. Review of Willis H. Truitt. Marxist Ethics: A Short Exposition. Nature, Society and Thought, 18(4): 563–571. ——. 2009. Georg Lukács and Organizing Class Consciousness. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press. (Reprinted 2010 by undercurrent books.) ——. 2012 “Irrationalism: The Foundation of Hate Propaganda.” Journal of Hate Studies, 10(1): 49–71. Lapavitsas, Costas. 2004. “Commodities and Gifts: Why Commodities Represent more than Market Relations.” Science & Society, 68(1): 33–56. Lazarsfeld, Paul F. 1940. Radio and the Printed Page. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Lee, Alfred McClung and Elizabeth Briant Lee. 1939. The Fine Art of Propaganda. New York: Leslie, Esther. 2000. Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism. London: Pluto Press. Levine, June and Gene Gordon. 2002. Tales of Wo-Chi-Ca: Blacks, Whites and Reds at Camp. San Rafael, California: Avon Springs Press. Lifshitz, Mikhail. 1973. The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx. London: Pluto Press. Lotz, Rainer. 2007. “Black Music prior to the First World War; American Origins and German Perspectives.” pp. 66–88 in Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, edited by Neil A. Wynn. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Lowenthal, Leo. 1986a. “Knut Hamsun, 1860–1952.” pp. 185–217 in Literature and the Image of Man. New Brunwick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ——. 1986b. “Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” pp. 57–89 in Literature and the Image of Man. New Brunwick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ——. 1986c. “Excursus A The Tempest, Act I, Scene 1.” pp. 91–97 in Literature and the Image of Man. New Brunwick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ——. 1987a. “Toward a Psychology of Authoritarianism.” pp. 253–300 in False Prophets: Studies on Authoritarianism. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

216

references

——. 1987b. “Images of Prejudice: Antisemitism among U.S. Workers during World War II.” pp. 193–251 in False Prophets: Studies on Authoritarianism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. ——. 1989a. “Recollections of Theodor W. Adorno.” pp. 62–72 in Critical Theory and Frankfurt Theorists. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books. ——. 1989b. “Walter Benjamin: The Integrity of the Intellectual.” pp. 73–85 in Critical Theory and Frankfurt Theorists. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ——. 1989c. “Correspondence of Leo Lowenthal with Theodor W. Adorno.” pp. 127–149 in Critical Theory and Frankfurt Theorists. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ——. 1989d. “Correspondence of Leo Lowenthal with Max Horkheimer.” pp. 150–217 in Critical Theory and Frankfurt Theorists. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. —— and Norbert Guterman. 1987. “Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator.” pp. 9–177 in False Prophets: Studies on Authoritarianism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Lubasz, Heinz. 1984. “The Dialectical Imagination by Martin Jay.” pp. 79–92 in Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by Judith Marcus and Zoltan Tar. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. Lukács, Georg. 1963. “The Ideology of Modernism.” pp. 17–46 in The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. London: Merlin Press. ——. 1971. History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press. ——. 1971b. The Theory of the Novel. Cambridge: MIT Press. ——. 1975. The Young Hegel. London: Merlin Press. ——. 1978a. The Ontology of Social Being: Hegel. London: Merlin Press. ——. 1978b. The Ontology of Social Being: Marx. London: Merlin Press. ——. 1979. “Introduction to a Monograph on Aesthetics.” pp. 404–419 in Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ——. 1980a. The Destruction of Reason. London: Merlin Press. ——. The Ontology of Social Being: Labour. London: Merlin Press. ——. 1984. “On Walter Benjamin.” pp. 173–178 in Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by Judith Marcus and Zoltan Tar. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ——. 1991. The Process of Democratization. Albany: State University of New York Press. Lynd, Robert S. 1964 [1939]. Knowledge for What? New York: Grove Press. ——. and Helen Merrell Lynd. 1929. Middletown. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. MacDonald, J. Fred. 1979. Don’t Touch That Dial: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920– 1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Magonet, Jonathan. 1998. The Explorer’s Guide to Judaism. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Marcus, Judith and Zoltan Tar, eds. 1984. Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. New Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction Books. Marcuse, Herbert. 1960. Reason and Revolution. Boston: Beacon Press. ——. 1987. Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press. Marković, Mihailo. 1983. “The Idea of Critique in Social Theory.” http://www.marxists.org/ archive/markovic/1983/critique.htm. Marquit, Erwin. 1978–79. “Dialectics of Motion in Discrete and Continuous Spaces.” Science & Society, 42(4): 410–25. ——. 1990. “A Materialist Critique of Hegel’s Concept of Identity of Opposites.” Science & Society, 54(2): 47–66. Marx, Karl. 1963. Theories of Surplus Value, Part 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ——. 1967. Capital, Vol. I. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ——. 1968. Theories of Surplus Value, Part 2. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ——. 1970. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ——. 1971a. Capital, Vol. 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ——. 1971b. Theories of Surplus Value, Part 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ——. 1975a. “Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843.” pp. 141–145 in MECW, v. 3. New York: International Publishers.



references217

——. 1975b. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” pp. 229–346 in MECW, v. 3. New York: International Publishers. ——. 1977. “Wage Labour and Capital.” pp. 197–228 in MECW, v. 9. New York: International Publishers. ——. 1978. “Class Struggles in France.” pp. 45–145 in MECW, v. 10. New York: International Publishers. ——. 1985. “Value, Price and Profit.” pp. 101–149 in MECW, v. 20. New York: International Publishers. ——. 1986a. “Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58 (Grundrisse)”. MECW, c. 28. New York: International Publishers. ——. 1986b. First Draft of The Civil War in France. pp. 437–514 in vol. 22 of MECW. New York: International Publishers. ——, and Frederick Engels. 1975. Selected Correspondence. Moscow: Progress Publishers. —— and Frederick Engels. 1976a. “The German Ideology.” pp. 19–539 in MECW, v. 5. New York: International Publishers. —— and Frederick Engels. 1976b. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” pp. 477–517 in MECW, v. 6. New York: International Publishers. Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The Gift. New York: W.W. Norton. Meszaros, Istvan. 1989. The Power of Ideology. New York: New York University Press. ——. 1995. Beyond Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press. Mishler, Paul C. 1999. Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. Mülder-Bach, Inka. 2000. “Introduction.” pp. 3–22 in The Salaried Masses. London: Verso. Naison, Mark. 1983. Communists in Harlem during the Depression. New York: Grove Press. Neumann, Franz. 1966 [1942]. Behemoth. New York: Harper and Row. Ollman, Bertell. 1993. Dialectical Investigations. New York: Routledge. Parkinson, G.H.R. 1977. Georg Lukács. London: Routledge. Pippin, Robert B. 2011. Hegel on Self-Consciousness. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Plato. 360 bce. Timaeus. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html. Popper, Karl. 1960. The Open Society and its Enemies. v. II. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——. 1984. “Reason or Revolution?” pp. 155–165 in Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research, edited by Judith Marcus and Zoltan Tar. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. Pritchard, Elizabeth A. 2002. “Bilderverbot meets body in Theodor W. Adorno’s inverse theology.” Harvard Theological Review, 95(3): 291–318. Rabinbach, Anson. 1977. “Unclaimed Heritage: Ernst Bloch’s Heritage of our Times and the Theory of Fascism.” New German Critique, 11: 5-21. Rabinbach, Anson. 1985. “Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jewish Messianism”. New German Critique, 34: 78–124. Raphael, Max. 1945. Prehistoric Cave Paintings. New York: Bollingen/Pantheon. ——. 1968. The Demands of Art. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rickman, H.P. 1979. Wilhelm Dilthey: Pioneer of the Human Sciences. Berkeley: University of California Press. Robinson, J. Braddord. 1994. “The Jazz Essays of Theodor Adorno: some thoughts on jazz reception in Weimar Germany.” Popular Music, 13(1): 1–25. Rochlitz, Rainer. 1996. The Disenchantment of Art. New York: The Guilford Press. Rose, Gillian. 1978. The Melancholy Science. New York: Columbia University Press. ——. 2009. Hegel Contra Sociology. London: Verso. Rosenberg, David. 2011. Battle for the East End. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications. Rotenstreich, Nathan. 1944. “Some Remarks on the Formal Structure of Hegel’s Dialectic.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5(2): 242–254. Sandmel, Samuel. 1979. Philo of Alexandria: an introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

218

references

Sargeant, Winthrop. 1959. Jazz, hot and hybrid. (New, enlarged edition.) London: Jazz Book Club. Scholem, Gershom. 1981. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. New York: Schocken Books. ——. 1998. Kabbalah. New York: Meridian. Seldes, George. 1943. Facts and Fascism. New York: In Fact. Seymour, David. 2000. Horkheimer and Adorno: Enlightenment and Antisemitism. Journal of Jewish Studies, LI(2): 297–312. Sherratt, Yvonne. 1999. “The Dialectic of Enlightenment: a contemporary reading.” History of the Human Sciences, 12(3): 35–54. Solomon, Mark. 1998. The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Somerville, John. 1983. The Philosophy of Marxism: An Exposition. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press. Southern, Eileen. 1983. The Music of Black Americans: A History. 2nd edition. New York: W.W. Norton. Spinoza, Baruch. 1949 [1677]. Ethics. Translated by William Hale White. New York: Hafner Press. Starosta, Guido. 2011. “Machinery, Productive Subjectivity and the Limits to Capitalism in Capital and the Grundrisse.” Science & Society, 75(1): 42–58. Steiner, George. 1997. Errata: An Examined Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Stepan-Norris, Judith and Maurice Zeitlin. 2003. Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions. New York: Cambridge University Press. Storch, Randi. 2007. Red Chicago: American Communism at its Grassroots, 1928–35. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Tar, Zoltan. 1977. The Frankfurt School: The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. New York: John Wiley. Teitelbaum, Kenneth. 1993. Schooling for “good rebels”: socialist education for children in the United States, 1900–1920. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Telushkin, Joseph. 2010. Hillel: If Not Now When?. New York: Next Book Schocken. Truitt, Willis H. 2005. Marxist Ethics: A Short Introduction. New York: International Publishers. Varga, Donna. 1996. “Communicating the Authority of Child Care Expertise: Canada’s School for Parents, 1942–1960.” Women’s Studies in Communication, 19(3): 335–353. Verene, Donald Phillip. 2007. Hegel’s Absolute. Albany: State University of New York Press. Waggoner, Matt. 2004. “Reflections from a Damaged Discipline: Adorno, Religious Radio, and the Critique of Historical Reason.” Culture and Religion, 5(1): 23–40. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weisberger, Adam M. 1997. The Jewish Ethic and the Spirit of Socialism. New York: Peter Lang. Williams, Raymond. 1980. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” pp. 31–49 in Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso. Witkin, Robert. 2000. “Why did Adorno ‘Hate’ Jazz?” Sociological Theory, 18(1): 145–170. Wizisla, Erdmut. 2009. Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: the story of a friendship. New Haven: Yale University Press. Wolin, Richard.2004. The Seduction of Unreason. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Worrell, Mark P. 2009. Dialectic of Solidarity: Labor, Antisemitism and the Frankfurt School. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

INDEX Adorno, Theodor passim alienation 36, 86–87, 94, 97, 104, 118, 137 animals 68–69, 73–74 astrology 85, 124, 133, 136–138 attitude toward others 25–27 barter 203, 204–206 Bilderverbot 77–82 concepts 4, 9, 39, 80, 87, 150, 167, 193–194, 206 consciousness 4, 31, 67, 91, 98, 116, 125, 142, 149, 165–167, 188, 205 constellations 17, 20, 22, 28, 112, 157, 170, 174, 195, 207 See also method under Adorno culture industry 10–11, 18, 31, 74, 83–86, 91, 96, 109, 111, 112, 118, 126, 150, 167, 168, 179, 190, 208 dialectics (including negative) 1–2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 21, 30, 33, 47, 62, 65, 67, 76, 87, 150, 153, 171, 172–176, 179, 180, 184, 185–187, 189, 191, 192, 193 equivalence 94, 193, 194, 200–201 fascism 91, 97, 125, 140 fact 140–141 Hegel 63 historical materialism 62, 91 identity (identity-thinking) 2–5, 8, 24, 29, 30, 32, 39, 47, 67, 154, 167, 174, 184–195, 201–203, 205, 206, 208 images 9, 19, 63, 64, 67, 76, 77–79, 81, 164, 208 immanent character 39–40 immanent critique 6, 7, 92 interpretation (philosophy) 1, 7, 12, 61–64, 66, 68, 75, 77, 86, 176 jazz commodity 93–95, 102 customers 99–101 obedience 97 place of Blacks in 102, 106 standardization 95–96 subjection of the masses 97–98 labor 165, 166 Marxism 91, 152 Martin Luther Thomas 124–125, 129, 132–143 mediation 151, 152, 154, 157, 161, 165–171, 189, 207, 208

method 61–82 music 91 popular 92 serious 92 symphonic 116–117 negative thought 86, 172–176 non-identity 2, 5, 7, 8, 20, 24–25, 32–33, 46, 66, 69, 150, 174, 179–180, 186, 189, 191, 193 ordinary thinking 45 philosophy 6–7 See also Adorno, interpretation positive moment 46–47 See also dialectics positivism 50, 62 See also positivism style 17–21, 84 See also Adorno, method working class 9–12, 112, 150 See also jazz, Negro music under African Americans, Princeton Radio Research Project African Americans 99–101 musical influence 90, 105–111 “Negro Music” 83, 89, 96, 98 alienation 35, 36, 37, 47–49, 86–88, 94–95, 96, 97, 101, 103, 104, 118, 130, 135, 137, 156, 164, 167, 175, 176, 182–184, 195, 205 Allen, James S. 28 American Federation of Labor (AFL) 27 Anderson, Kevin 128, 177–178 antisemitism 11, 14, 26, 120–125, 130, 131–132, 140, 143 Antisemitism Project, Institute for Social Research 120–123 Appadurai, Arjun 204 Arendt, Hannah 152, 154, 158, 161 Arnold, Abraham J. 78n5 Auschwitz 125 authority 47–49, 118, 122, 127, 129, 130–131, 137, 143 Babbie, Earl 123n Baldwin, Neil 124 barter 199, 202, 204 See also Adorno Baudelaire, Charles 12, 62, 151–162 Becker, Helmut 11, 117, 129 Benjamin, Walter 14, 25–26, 85 Baudelaire essays 12, 151–162 commodification 156

220

index

concepts 21 consciousness 159–160, 162 constellations 22, 61–62, 75–77 mediation 75 method 155 modernity 156, 160 radio 117–118 style 17–19 becoming 34, 37, 41, 42–44, 50–53, 166, 170–171, 172 being 3, 24, 32, 35, 37–42, 45, 50, 51, 57, 103, 109, 163–167, 169–170, 172, 176, 181–182, 186 Bernstein, Richard J. 10 Biale, David 78 Blesh, Rudi 99 Bloch, Ernst 3, 14, 23–24, 26 anti-fascist writings 135, 144, 146–148, 173 dialectics 32, 33, 146 non-contemporaniety 147–148 philosophy 7 style 17–19 Bologh, Rosalyn 195 Bonosky, Phillip 28 Bonss, Wolfgang 12, 26, 143 Boyer, Richard O. 28 Brecht, Berthold 15, 25–26, 152 Brodersen, Momme 151 Bronner, Stephen Eric 121 Browning, Christopher 148n Buck-Morss, Susan 7, 12, 14–15, 20, 29, 30, 63, 64, 66, 70–73, 76, 84, 92, 152 Caccamo, Rita 124n Campbell, Jan 26 capitalism 1, 5–8, 9–11, 16, 109, 126, 145, 146, 154, 156, 157, 159, 161, 174, 182–184, 186, 190, 196, 197–204, 207, 208 Carlson, John Roy 124 Ceplair, Larry 139n class conflict 59–60, 127 class consciousness 10, 36, 104 Claussen, Detlev 10, 11, 14, 24, 26, 82, 83, 84, 153 Cohen, Robert 28 Comay, Rebecca 80 commodification 11, 13, 91, 93, 100, 104, 107, 119, 131, 156, 201 commodity 5, 30, 64, 66, 70, 71, 84, 91, 93, 94–96, 98, 101–102, 105, 109, 110, 145, 154, 156, 159, 175, 179, 195–203, 205 Communist Party (US) 26, 27, 139, 149, 152 communists 27, 28, 134, 191

Congo Square, New Orleans 106, 110 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) 27 consciousness 4, 8, 45, 150, 173, 174 See also Adorno, Benjamin, Hegel, Marx contingent relations 34, 38–40, 42, 59, 161, 207 contradiction 1, 34, 44–46, 58, 67, 69, 71, 85, 106, 130, 148, 150, 172, 173–174 culture industry 10, 11, 18, 31, 36, 74, 83–86, 91, 96, 109, 111, 112, 118, 126, 150, 167, 168, 179, 190, 208 Davis. Angela Y. 100 determinate being 42–45 determinations 3, 40, 43–46, 54, 65, 69, 71, 173, 177, 178, 183 DeVeaux, Scott 99 dialectical logic 32, 50–51, 70 dialectics 5, 23, 33, 36, 42, 160, 174–175 See also Adorno, Bloch, Hegel, Lukács, Marcuse, Marx negative moment 51, 54 positive moment 4–5, 42, 44, 46–47, 48–49, 50, 51, 174, 176–184 Dilthey, Wilhelm 64 Douglas, Susan J. 113, 114, 115 DuBois, W.E.B. 106 Dundes, Alan 78n6 Eisler, Hans 14 Ellison, Ralph 99–100, 119 Engels, Frederick 74, 87, 155, 175, 177, 185, 187, 194, 198 Enlightenment 5, 19, 22, 85–86, 98, 127, 128, 129, 186 equivalence 32, 180, 196, 198–200, 202–206 See also Adorno Ettinger, Yair 78n6 false consciousness 45, 46n, 144, 146, 186, 194, 195–196, 197, 198, 200, 203, 205, 208 fascism 124, 125, 140, 145, 207 Finkelstein, Sidney 101, 103, 110 Finlayson, James Gordon 79, 80–81 Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth 114–116 formal logic 2, 25, 30, 32, 33, 173, 184, 186, 190, 193 See also Hegel formalism 8, 32, 33, 43n, 74, 132 Freud 138 Freudianism 138 Fromm, Erich 11–12, 14, 26, 113, 123, 133, 142n, 143, 144n12, 145

index221 Genovese, Eugene D. 106 Geoghegan, Vincent 135, 146 Gerdes, Paulus 41 Gettleman, Marvin E. 28 Gilloch, Graeme 143 Gioia, Ted 106 Goldfarb, Michael 81n Goldmann, Lucien 60, 189, 209 Goldstein, Leonard 202 Gordon, Gene 28 Gracyk, Theodore A. 89, 91 Healey, Dorothy Ray 139n10 hate propaganda 120, 128 Hecht, Ben 124 Hegel, G.W.F. alienation 35, 37, 47–48, 49, 167, 176 being 3, 34, 35, 40, 41, 163–164, 165, 167, 169, 172, 181 becoming 3, 34, 41, 42–44, 50, 51, 166 concepts 42, 48, 167, 169, 193 consciousness 1, 8, 35, 57, 162–163, 169 contradiction 44–45, 48, 128, 150, 163, 177, 178, 179, 186 determinate being 3, 42–45 dialectics 1, 3, 43, 50–51, 147, 176 externalization 37, 47–49, 177 fact 34 formalism 32–33 formal logic 32, 50, 184 identity 8, 42, 50, 184 inseparability/unseparatedness (unity) 39–40, 42–43, 179–180 intelligent reflection 45–46, 150 mediation 42, 52–57, 59, 161, 162–165, 168–169 objective idealism 33, 41, 167, 172, 175 ordinary thinking 45, 150 positive religion 47–49 positivity 46–50, 176, 177 rationality 53, 128n9 self-consciousness 35, 37–42, 132, 163, 164, 166, 167–168 speculative thought 8, 32 sublation (aufhebung) 44, 48, 51, 163, 182 Heidegger, Martin 65 Herskovits, Melville J. 89, 106 Herzog, Herta 113 Hilberg, Raul 148n historical materialism 15, 18, 62, 63, 76, 84, 91, 100, 108, 114, 118, 190 Hitler, Adolph 25, 125, 138 Hoare, Quintin 144n13

Hobsbawm, Eric 89 Hobson, Walter 92, 102, 105 Hodges, H.A. 137 Holocaust 13 Horkheimer, Max 5–6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22, 25, 26, 30, 31, 47, 68, 69, 74, 79, 81, 84–86, 92, 94, 98, 111, 112, 114, 124n, 126, 129, 135, 143, 151, 152, 153, 169, 181, 185, 186, 191, 193, 194, 203, 204 Hudson, Wayne 146–147 Hurston, Nora Zeale 101 Husserl, Edmund 65, 72 identity See Adorno, Hegel identity-thinking 30, 32 Ilyenenkov, E.V. 24, 32, 37, 72 International Ladies Garment Workers Union 115–116 immanent critique 6–7 See also Adorno immediacy 44, 50, 52, 58, 71, 83, 94, 98, 128, 137, 140, 141, 166, 167, 170, 174, 176, 178, 181, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 195, 197, 201, 205 individual 5, 31, 34–37, 39, 40, 42, 45, 59, 100, 101, 103, 105, 109, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117, 121, 126, 129–131, 133, 137, 138, 141, 145, 164, 165, 168, 183, 191, 197, 198, 202, 206, 209 internal relations 1, 5, 25, 39, 43, 44, 46, 57, 58, 61, 63, 66, 69, 72–73, 84, 87, 94, 105, 108, 157, 160, 169–170, 178, 180, 185, 189, 192, 206, 208 irrationalism 33, 125–126, 127–130, 133, 137, 141 Isserman, Maurice 139n Jackson, Mahalia 99 Jameson, Fredric 68–70 Jay, Martin 21, 22, 26, 78–79, 124, 125 jazz 83–111 Jenemann, David 14, 98, 102, 111, 116, 118, 132 Jewish Messianism 81–82 Judaism 77–82 Kalbus, Mark 12 Kang, Jaeho 143 Kant, Immanuel 3, 8, 21, 43n, 67, 71, 117, 138 Kaplan, Judy 28 Kater, Michael 83, 90–91 Kelley, Robin D. G. 28 Kodat, Catherine Gunther 106 Kolakowski, Leszek 20 Korsch, Karl 18

222

index

Kosak, Hadassa 28 Kracauer, Siegfried 26, 33, 86n, 88, 101, 121, 130, 135, 142–146, 170, 172, 184, 207 Lanning, Robert 10, 23n1, 128 Lapavitsas, Costas 204 Lazarsfeld, Paul F. 20, 112–114, 123 Lee, Alfred McClung 124 Lee, Elizabeth Briant 124 Lenin, V.I. 37, 60, 87, 144n12 Leslie, Esther 15 Levine, June 28 Lifshitz, Mikhail 110 Lotz, Rainer 90 Lowenthal, Leo 14, 19–20, 25, 121, 124, 125, 126, 129, 151, 158, 168 anti-fascist writings 129–132, 133, 135, 140, 157 Lubasz, Heinz 12, 23n2 Lukács, Georg 16, 18, 23, 25, 29, 34–35, 38, 41, 48, 51, 65, 71–72, 104, 107–108, 128 becoming 42, 44 being 40, 42, 44 irrationalism 127–128, 141 positivity 49 Lynd, Helen Merrell 123 Lynd, Robert S. 123, 124n MacDonald, J. Fred 114, 115 Magonet, Jonathan 78 Maimonides 78 Mann, Thomas 14, 147 Marcus, Judith 15 Marcuse, Herbert 9, 14, 34, 47, 121, 175–176 dialectics 8, 32 Marković, Mihailo 5, 8 Marquit, Erwin 45, 50–51 Marx, Karl 5, 7, 25, 37, 47, 66, 153, 159, alienation 103, 110 art 105–106, 110 being/species being 37, 39, 42, 103, 110, 183 commodity 66, 70, 71, 94, 109, 156, 159, 179, 195–200, 201–202, 203, 205 consciousness 8, 37, 74, 165 consumption 56–60, 107, 192, 200, 203, 205 determinations 44, 65, 183 dialectics 1, 43, 46, 51, 71, 172, 178, 179, 199 exchange/ exchange value 55, 70, 84, 94–95, 103, 182, 195–200, 205–206 exploitation 100, 110, 182 human senses 102–103, 104–105, 107

mediation 53, 56, 58, 60, 107, 110, 154, 199 method 1, 58, 63, 66, 72, 73, 85, 155, 159, 192, 195 production 56–57, 60, 100, 105, 107–109, 110, 154, 182, 187, 192, 195–196, 203 value 55, 84, 94, 165, 187, 196, 198, 203 working class 65, 87 Marxism 15–16, 36 masses 83–84, 86–87 Mauss, Marcel 204 mediation 34, 51–60, 107, 150, 151–171, 172–174 See also Hegel, Marx generalized domain of 58–60, 154, 157, 168 specific domain of 60, 157 Meszaros, Istvan 11, 12, 15, 20, 22 middle class 12, 87, 97, 113, 121, 138, 144, 146–148, 157, 173 Mishler, Paul C. 28 modernity 3, 5, 36, 105, 121, 127, 129–132, 142, 144, 147, 155, 156, 160, 204, 207 Morais, Herbert M. 28 Mülder-Bach, Inka 145 Naison, Mark 28, 139n Nazism 83, 129, 148 negation 8, 44, 47, 49, 50–52, 170, 172–178, 180–181, 197 Neumann, Franz 133, 136 Ollman, Bertell 2, 3, 25, 46, 52n, 73, 192, 194 Parkinson, G.H.R. 187 Pippin, Robert B. 164 Philo 78 Plato 127 Popper, Karl 127 positivism 47, 49, 63, 127n7, 131, 176 Princeton Radio Research Project (Office of Radio Research) 111, 113 Pritchard, Elizabeth A. 78–80 Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion 121 radio 14, 83, 85, 96, 98, 102, 111–119 See also Benjamin Rabinbach, Anson 81, 148 Raphael, Max 41, 109 rationality 53, 125, 128n9, 129, 141 reification 7, 66, 72n, 92, 171, 183, 184, 195, 196, 198, 200, 201, 208 Rickman, H.P. 64 Robinson, J. Braddord 89–90, 91 Robson, Paul 115 Rochlitz, Rainer 151

index223 Rose, Gillian 15, 19–20, 166n Rosenberg, David 139n Rotenstreich, Nathan 43 Sandmel, Samuel 78 Sargeant, Winthrop 96, 99 Scholem, Gershom 75, 152 Sekles, Bernhard 91 Seldes, George 124 self-activity 24, 28, 36, 163 self-consciousness 37–42, 44, 58 See also Hegel, Marx Seymour, David 129 Shapiro, Linn 28 Sherratt, Yvonne 86 Sinclair, Upton 116 Smith, Gerald L.K. 129 Smith, Wonderful 115 social change 5, 8, 9, 11, 18, 23, 30, 31, 34, 35, 46, 67, 79, 91, 96, 172, 191, 197, 208–209 socialism 1, 22–24, 26, 81, 83, 98, 101, 127, 144n12, 150, 183 Socialist Party (Austria) 112 Solomon, Mark 28 Somerville, John 180 Southern, Eileen 106–107 Spinoza, Baruch 165 spiritual production 109–110, 111 Starosta, Guido 182 Steffin, Margarete 152 Steiner, George 129 Stepan-Norris, Judith 28 Storch, Randi 28 subjective 9, 20, 37, 42, 62, 64, 65–68, 71, 73, 77, 86, 103, 105, 121, 128, 138, 146, 148, 166, 185, 196, 198

sublation (aufhebung) 2, 4, 5, 32, 34, 45–46, 51, 69, 70, 71, 150, 155, 160, 161, 163, 172, 174, 176, 177–180, 182, 188, 193, 206–208 See also Hegel superstructure 59, 158–161, 169 Tar, Zoltan 15 Teitelbaum, Kenneth 27 Telushkin, Joseph 82 theory and practice 6, 16, 22–25, 30, 80, 91, 125, 157, 170, 206, 208 totality 4, 43–44, 58, 66, 71, 72, 109, 130, 138, 154, 160, 161, 168, 170, 188, 192, 195, 196 Truitt, Willis H. 22 understanding 137–138 unity See inseparability/unseparatedness under Hegel Varga, Donna 114 Verene, Donald Phillip 8 von Hornbostel, Erich M. 89, 106 Waggoner, Matt 132–133 Weber, Max 65, 138 Weisberger, Adam M. 81–82 Williams, Raymond 160 Winrod, Gerald B. 129 Witkin, Robert 89 Wizisla, Erdmut 15, 25, 26, 152 Wolin, Richard 128n8 working class 15–17, 66, 86–87, 155 See Adorno, Marx Worrell, Mark P. 15, 120–123 Zeitlin, Maurice 28 Zeno 45