Adorno’s politics

The transformation of the world failed

The above first thesis is perhaps most directly expressed at the beginning of Negative Dialectics:

Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed. The summary judgement that it had merely interpreted the world is itself crippled by resignation before reality, and becomes a defeatism of reason after the transformation of the world failed. ⁷

The first remarkable aspect of this passage is Adorno’s claim that the moment of the realization of philosophy was missed. ⁸ This suggests that Adorno thought there was a window of opportunity for a revolution – presumably, he is thinking here of the period from the Russian Revolution and the later stages of the First World War to fascism taking power in Italy, Germany and Spain and the show trials in Moscow. During this period, class conflict was often openly fought, with a number of failed revolutionary attempts in Germany and elsewhere, while the Soviet Union was struggling to survive and establish a socialist society. The factors that explain the failure of the revolution in Germany and elsewhere are manifold – ranging from open repression to more subtle hindrances – and I cannot do justice to them here. The crucial point is that the missed opportunity had world-historical significance for Adorno. Indeed, it presents the foundational problem for (what was later known as) the Frankfurt School. Its members asked: Why and how was this opportunity missed? How could it happen that the proletariat – and humanity as a whole – remained in servitude? In particular, how could this be, despite the fact that, at least in the industrial West, the objective conditions for a social world without hunger and the need for domination had been in place?

One of the most damaging disappointments of these tragic times was the tyrannical nature of the Soviet Union. The Moscow show trials of 1936 are a turning point for Adorno and Horkheimer, and after these trials, they refused to support the regime or, even, place any hope in its future. These trials brought down the final curtain on freedom of expression and the possibility of critique, and revealed this supposedly socialist society as the bureaucratic dictatorship that it had become. Turning Marxist theory into dogma and suppressing (critical) thinking were – at least in Adorno’s view – important factors for why the transformation of the world failed, ⁹ both in the Soviet Union and later nominally socialist regimes. This necessitated renewed reflection – as Adorno says in the above-quoted passage, ‘Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed.’ ¹⁰ If the transformation of the world has failed, then this does not leave unaffected the theory that said we should transform, not merely interpret, the world. ¹¹ Critical scrutiny of Marxist theory and its wider philosophical background is required, ¹² with some of its elements having been shown to be deficient (about which more later). ¹³ Not least, what we need is an analysis of the Soviet Union and of how and why it embarked on the wrong path – a path that included the use of forced labour and torture, ¹⁴ and the repressions of the more progressive socialist developments in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. ¹⁵

Praxis is postponed for the foreseeable future ¹⁶

To understand this second thesis, we need to clarify first what Adorno means by ‘praxis’ [Praxis]. Like many of the terms he uses, this term has multiple meanings in his writings and often more than one of them is at play. We might want to distinguish at least 6 meanings: ¹⁷

Praxis as activity/behaviour [Tätigkeit].

What explains this pessimistic assessment of the historical conditions? One of the decisive factors – perhaps the decisive factor – is that, according to Adorno, the proletariat has been integrated into the capitalist social world in such a way as to blunt its revolutionary potential. ²⁰ As early as 1942, Adorno highlights this factor as key in understanding the failed opportunities of the 1920s and 1930s, ²¹ and it remains significant in the years after the Second World War. ²² There are at least three aspects at play here. First, Adorno claims that Marx’s Immiseration Thesis – in a nutshell, the thesis that capitalism would tend to immiserate and impoverish more and more people, so that in the end they would have nothing to lose but their chains – turned out to be false, at least as far as the industrialized West is concerned. ²³ In other words, substantial parts of the working class had been materially integrated into capitalist society by way of higher living standards. Second, the proletariat has been integrated in terms of its consciousness ²⁴ – in fact, generally the social control of late modernity extends to people’s minds. Thus, while the class structure persists objectively, class consciousness is largely lacking and has been diminishing since the 1920s and early 1930s. ²⁵ Specifically, Adorno repeatedly highlights the use of mass media and culture (the ‘culture industry’, as he calls it) as socially integrative forces – they distract people from their own real concerns, mould their desires and wishes (not least via advertisement), and provide ample room for the projection of their dreams and fears (see, most notably, the culture industry chapter in the Dialectic of Enlightenment). ²⁶ Third, the tyrannical outcome of nominal socialism in the Soviet Union, later in its satellites, and then in China and Asia presents a key barrier for emancipation. ²⁷ In a postscript to a 1955 study of workers at a factory in Germany, Adorno writes that the fact that the workers operate completely within the capitalist system – even when they complain and criticize capitalism – is to a large extent explained by their rejection of the Soviet Union and disillusionment about socialist alternatives. ²⁸

With the integration of the proletariat, the key element is missing from the Marxist view of a radical transformation: a social group that is (1) capable of gaining consciousness of the social world; (2) also capable of transforming this world; as well as (3) required by its increasingly miserable condition to transform it (and in such a way, so as to free the whole of humanity, not just to replace one set of particular interests with another). These various elements now come apart. Those who can gain insight into the deeply problematic nature of late-modern society might no longer be able to transform it and often rely on material and other privilege to gain the critical vantage point (they inhabit the ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’, in Lukács’ memorable phrase). ²⁹ Those who could transform the social world are no longer best placed to understand it and are often too materially integrated to enter into radical opposition to this world, but instead pursue narrow interests within it (say when the German, highly skilled working class pursues its narrowly conceived interests against less skilled working classes in Germany and other countries). Finally, those who are most miserable might have neither the capacity to understand nor, crucially, to transform the social world. According to Adorno, no other social subject that reunites the three aspects has replaced the proletariat or could do so in the foreseeable future.

A second decisive factor for why revolutionary practice is blocked is that such practice would presuppose free and possibly autonomous individuals, but – according to Adorno – they do not exist any longer. ³⁰ While Marx might have been wrong in claiming that capitalism will impoverish more and more people materially, the Immiseration Thesis has proved to be correct if understood differently: capitalism – despite appearances and ideological claims to the contrary – has diminished increasingly the freedom of its members, and the same holds true of the nominally socialist regimes that sprung up in opposition to it. Capitalism presents itself as offering an unprecedented expansion of choice, but this choice is mainly one among its ‘immense accumulation of commodities’. Underneath this shallow appearance, genuine freedom and autonomy are, in fact, denied to all of us – either in ways we do not realize (because we internalized external pressures) or, if need be, by open repression. ³¹ Ever since the end of the liberal phase of capitalism and the transition to the administered phase in the 1930s, the internal mechanisms of the modern social world no longer (re-)produce the kind of freedom that would be required for revolutionary activity. ³²

One further factor for Adorno is that no appropriate forms of revolutionary, but non-repressive, collective agency have yet developed. ³³ While I briefly return to this issue below, it is already noteworthy that he suggested that every organization has an internal tendency to expand and to become divorced from the purposes for which it exists. ³⁴ Again, the nominally socialist regimes serve as cautionary tales in this regard.

There is no right life in the wrong [life], not even in politics

The famous claim that wrong life cannot be lived rightly is originally the conclusion of Adorno’s reflections about the damaged individual’s life within the private sphere (and emblematically for it, the home). ³⁵ Yet, it is warranted to extend this thesis to the political sphere too. Indeed, what is characteristic for Adorno about the impossibility of right living in the private sphere, is characteristic also for the public and political sphere: the modern social world engenders an antinomical structure of our option space, such that whatever we do, we cannot but act and live wrongly. ³⁶ In the private sphere we, among other things, should not make ourselves at home in the world, yet cannot but do so in order to survive at all. Similarly, in the political sphere, the various options open to us individually and collectively are also problematic. We have already seen that Adorno thinks that revolutionary practice is blocked (see thesis 2), but this is not the only form of political and public activity that is wrong for him.

The closest Adorno comes to recommending a form of living is to endorse a defensive stance of resistance against the bad forms of life that late-modernity, on his view, structurally cannot but produce. This form of not joining in may range from refusing to go to the cinema to criticizing sexual morality and laws based on it to – as we will see later – fighting fascist regimes. Still, at the same time, Adorno always insists on the fact that even resistance and not joining in are not without their faults – even in pursuing them, we do not and cannot achieve right living. For a start, he is keenly aware that resistance against repression can itself easily become repressive, ³⁷ presumably despite the best intentions of the actors involved and for structural reasons. One might think here of how the nascent Soviet regime became internally repressive partly as a consequence of civil war and external pressure. To take another example, resistant movements against German occupation during the Second World War probably had to be organized in such a way as to involve blind command structures and severe punishment of suspected collaborators or traitors without the usual safeguards of due process. All things considered, these steps might have been necessary and unavoidable, but Adorno’s point is that we would be mistaken to think that this means that nothing has gone wrong here – he denies that what is practically necessary always coincides with right living. Even in less extreme settings, there might be a tendency to suppress reflections and doubts among the ranks of a party or protest movements or to accept ‘collateral damage’ in order to achieve maximum effect without delay. Indeed, even where resistance does not involve repression by those engaged in it, there is the further danger of its provoking repression, ³⁸ and this might in turn lead the resistance to become more violent and repressive, resulting in an escalation of violence and a net increase of repression. An illustration of this is the German student movement of the 1960s, the state’s reaction to it, the left-wing terrorist cells that emerged in the 1970s in response to that, and, in turn, the state’s reaction to them. For example, the terrorist group ‘Movement 2 June’ [Bewegung 2. Juni] was named after the day on which a peaceful demonstrator – Benno Ohnesorg – was shot dead by a German policeman in Berlin. It responded, in part, to the fact that the policeman in question was cleared of having committed any offence by the courts, which sparked mass protest and led to disillusionment with the German state. The action of groups such as Movement 2 June then led to restrictions of liberties and other forms of state repression. Invoking this example is not to say that Ohnesorg should have not gone demonstrating in the first place, but merely to note that such acts of peaceful non-conformity do not guarantee right living, partly because they can have – however unintended – negative consequences that detract from any unqualifiedly positive appraisal of them.

Even when we move along the spectrum to more ordinary politics, to reformist attempts of ameliorating current conditions, Adorno suggests that we will fall short of right living. He thinks that the late-modern social world would require fundamental change – for broadly Marxist reasons: this world is so structured that it cannot but produce misery, alienation and even tendencies towards totalitarian domination, with Auschwitz not an accident, but an example of ‘the indifference of the life of every individual, which history is moving towards: already in their formal freedom they are as fungible and replaceable as under the boots of the liquidators’. ³⁹ However, the required transformation cannot be achieved by way of piecemeal reforms. ⁴⁰ Such reforms might have a role to play in preventing the worst (more on this below under thesis 8); but reforms will always be limited and ultimately not threaten the current social world. Moreover, constructive and positive engagement with the social world – in short, making suggestions for improvements – is also problematic for another reason: if not repressed, then such contributions make one an accomplice of a social world that deserves to be changed, not made more inhabitable; ⁴¹ it suggests that we could administer this world for the better, when, in fact, this is unadministrable. ⁴²

Right living is also not found beyond the public or political sphere. Adorno repeatedly criticizes the idea of an ethics focused exclusively on individual conduct. ⁴³ Such an ethics overlooks that right living requires a political transformation of our social world – ‘the quest for right living is the quest for the right form of politics’. ⁴⁴ Moreover, Adorno objects to withdrawing from society and not intervening in it at all – for, even when this is done out of protest or disgust, it just leaves in place or even inadvertently strengthens a status quo that deserves to be changed. ⁴⁵ In fact, he even criticizes withdrawing into pure contemplation, rejecting it as resignation, ⁴⁶ despite his otherwise positive comments on contemplation. ⁴⁷ Surprisingly perhaps, he even admits that a focus on the aesthetic realm – something of which he himself it is often said to have been guilty – is an expression of false consciousness. ⁴⁸ Perhaps more surprisingly still, Adorno also concedes that even theory is affected by the illness of our social world. ⁴⁹ In particular, the failure of the revolutionary practice and especially the integration of the proletariat mean that theory no longer has a social referent of the sort that Marx and Marxism envisage: a subject that is both capable to change the social world and forced by its own dire situation to do so. Critical theorists can no longer think of themselves as the avant-garde of a revolutionary class; they completely lack a connection to social or economic power. ⁵⁰ Where Marx could still talk of philosophy as the head and the proletariat as the heart of the movement, ⁵¹ only the head remains and this – Adorno concedes – leaves matters in a worse state: to stay with the metaphor, the head is drained of its lifeblood.

In sum, for Adorno, whatever one does in this social world, one does it wrongly – be it political activity or private decency, be it praxis or theory. Good intentions and readiness to act on them do not suffice to change this; ⁵² as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved by good intentions, and the experience of nominal socialism would provide ample examples here. This leads us to the fourth thesis, for as Adorno writes:

Those, however, who can do nothing that does not threaten to turn out for the worse even if meant for the best, are constrained to thinking; that is their justification and that of the happiness of spirit. ⁵³

Theory has priority in the current conditions

While this fourth thesis might seem to contradict what I just said in respect to the third thesis, this is only so if we ignore one important aspect of Adorno’s claim that there can be no right living in our social world: this claim is compatible with saying that some forms of living are worse than others, and that engaging in critical theory (along with a certain defensive political praxis – something I will come back later in thesis 8) is the least bad form of living. There are three main, interrelated reasons for this: first, the failure of revolutionary practice requires us to reflect critically on the revolutionary theory (as mentioned earlier, if the transformation of the world failed, its interpretation also requires rethinking); second, thought has – at least in the current context – more resources to avoid negative, unintended repercussions than praxis (revolutionary or otherwise); and, finally, one of the main obstacles to revolutionary practice and one of the main factors towards renewed barbarism is the integration, even poisoning of consciousness, against which theorizing can offer some immunization strategies. Let me expand on each of these three reasons in turn.

In a dialectical inversion not untypical of Adorno’s thinking, he writes:

The desperate state of affairs, that the praxis on which everything depends is thwarted, paradoxically affords thinking the breathing-space which it would practically be criminal not to use. ⁵⁴

One of the key reasons why Adorno thinks that praxis demands that theory takes precedence now is that the failed transformation of the world revealed problems in revolutionary theory – some of which I mentioned already above. Specifically, one of the important elements that have been missing for revolutionary praxis to become possible again is a renewed analysis of the situation and its constraints. ⁵⁵ Prior to having this analysis, revolutionary praxis or attempts to resurrect it are doomed. One important aspect here is the issue of finding forms of organization and, more generally, praxis that are not repressive. Crucial for this is to analyse those well-intentioned forms of praxis that backfired, sometimes terribly – such as the nominally socialist regimes.

Adorno sometimes overstates his case in ways that conflict with some of his other key insights: ⁵⁶

The Archimedian point – how a nonrepressive praxis might be possible, how one might steer between the alternatives of spontaneity and organization – this point, if it exists at all, cannot be found other than through theory. ⁵⁷

This claim is in tension with Adorno’s otherwise Hegelian thinking that theorizing cannot anticipate practical solutions, but – like the owl of Minerva flying at dusk – can only reflect upon them and bring them to consciousness. Indeed, Adorno often rejects the view that theory, that philosophy, could provide immediate, concrete instructions or directives for praxis. ⁵⁸ Similarly, he rejects that praxis is mere implementation of theory. ⁵⁹ Indeed, according to Adorno, it is not accidental that Marx’s theory lacks an account of the concrete steps of transformation – the emancipation of the proletariat could only be its own doing, with an emphasis on doing. ⁶⁰ However, Adorno does not, in fact, require making the very strong claim of the just quoted passage – a weaker claim would do, namely, the claim that the first step towards a non-repressive praxis is to analyse how praxis can and has become repressive, despite the best intentions of the actors. Admittedly, it would leave room for some forms of practical attempts at finding non-repressive praxis, but this should be welcome, even from Adorno’s own perspective. ⁶¹

The second reason why engaging in theory has currently priority is the following. Adorno claims that theorizing has more resources that prevent it from sliding into repression or inadvertent support of the status quo. For a start, theory can reflect on itself, whereas praxis requires theory for this task. ⁶² Insofar as revolutionary activity is blocked and reflection on revolutionary praxis and theory alike is both required and the only thing radical we can genuinely undertake in the historical situation, theory has priority within this situation. Also, theory’s reflectiveness means that it is further away from repression than immediate action, which has an affinity with blind violence, with ‘striking out’ [Zuschlagen]. ⁶³ Moreover, while theory is implicated, too, in what is wrong with our social world in various ways, it also points beyond it. According to Adorno, thinking is essentially characterized by not accepting things passively or at face value. ⁶⁴ While critical thinking can be suppressed as much as critical praxis can, the validity of what is thought outlives those who thought it and in this sense its critical potential cannot be completely eradicated:

Whatever has once been thought can be suppressed, forgotten, can vanish. But it cannot be denied that something of it survives. For thinking has the element of universality. What once was thought cogently must be thought elsewhere, by others: this confidence accompanies even the most solitary and powerless thought. ⁶⁵

This might strike us as unrealistically optimistic, especially if Adorno’s otherwise bleak analysis of our social world and human history is true. Moreover, it is not clear that one could not make a similar claim about praxis – cogently carried-out practice will be (re-) discovered once again, at least if the problems to which it was the solutions are encountered again. Still, Adorno’s thought might be that cogently carried-out revolutionary practice in response to the late-modern social world has not yet seen the light of the day, but cogently thought-out critical theory of this world has. This might explain why Adorno places his trust first and foremost in theorizing. In any case, the initial consideration continues to hold: critical reflection on what went wrong is the order of the day, and, thus, it is to theory, not to praxis, that we have to turn.

There is another aspect here: while the individual theorist lacks power because he or she is at the margins of society (and no longer the avant-garde of a major social class), this very marginal existence also means that theorists are exempted or excluded from practices of the kind that integrate the majority of people into the social world – be it via the disciplinary effects of the workplace or other integrative social pressures inherent in many practices. ⁶⁶ There is dialectic irony here: by lacking real force and being good for nothing in the current world, philosophy has critical potential. ⁶⁷

A third reason for theory’s priority is that an analysis of and an enlightenment about distortions in our consciousness is necessary both, in the first instance, as a defensive act against irrational and fascist tendencies objectively present in our social world, and, second, for revolutionary practice. In a nutshell, Adorno thinks that one of the main reasons why Auschwitz happened and why a capitalist society in the West and a repressive bureaucratic regime in the East can sustain themselves, despite both disregarding the real interests of the individuals living in them, is a distortion of consciousness and an increasing reduction of genuine experiences that could reveal this distortion. Of utmost practical importance is thus to change our consciousness and enhance our ability to have as unrestricted experiences as possible. Yet, in line with the dialectical inversion mentioned above, this practical necessity is a task for theory. This is so because our consciousness and abilities to experience are partly distorted by the way we conceptualized the world – and the critique of this conceptualization can, at least in our historical situation (where transformative practice is blocked), only be the work of theory. It is here where Negative Dialectics, Adorno’s magnum opus, and also his posthumously published Aesthetic Theory have their place: as philosophical critiques of ways of conceptualizing and experiencing the world. Generally, one of the main aims – perhaps the main aim – of Adorno’s theorizing was to contribute to immunizing people against those factors and tendencies that distort consciousness and restrict experience (not least because such distortions and restrictions can contribute to the re-emergence of fascism, which remains a latent possibility in our social world). ⁶⁸ Adorno’s contribution mainly consisted in criticizing distorted thought forms. ⁶⁹ Still, his theorizing also has a more directly practical implication: namely, educating the educators. ⁷⁰ Adorno’s public engagement throughout the 1950s and 1960s in radio and television involved a number of talks on education and how it can and should instil critical thought in pupils and students. ⁷¹ Similarly, he was very active in teaching and examining future teachers and writing about their profession. ⁷² A striking aspect of this work is that Adorno rejected any forms of propaganda or other forms of manipulative persuasion, ⁷³ at least in democratic settings. ⁷⁴ To become a subject requires for Adorno that one is treated as one, or at least as if one were one. In this way, theory’s role in practice is not to provide concrete directives, but to enable a change in the consciousness of the actors – it is, thus, a largely indirect role. Crucially, though, theory changes by remaining theory; it intervenes qua theory. ⁷⁵

In these ways, theory for Adorno has priority – or as he puts it more emphatically at one point, ‘Despite all its unfreedom, theory is the guarantor [Statthalter] of freedom in the midst of unfreedom.’ ⁷⁶ Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind both the historical index of this claim – theory’s priority is restricted to the current, non-revolutionary situation – and the fact that there is something decidedly sub-optimal, second best, about this situation – for given the deeply problematic nature of our modern social world (and its thought forms), it would be far preferable if we were in a context where (revolutionary) praxis could have priority over interpreting the world. It is just that we are not in such a context, however much we (have reasons to) regret this. Adorno’s point is not that it is always best to concentrate one’s efforts on theorizing, but that doing so (along with undertaking certain defensive acts to which we come below) is the least bad form of living in what is a very bad context. Moreover, the situation may change – given the antagonistic nature of the modern social world, ‘situations may arise today or tomorrow which, while they are very likely to be catastrophic, at the same time restore the possibility of practical action which is today obstructed’. ⁷⁷ However, such a change cannot be forced into existence (neither by theory nor direct political activism), and until it occurs, theorizing retains its priority.

Theory is a form of practice

Adorno would not be the thinker he is, if he simply accepted the dichotomy between theory and praxis. While for him there is, indeed, a distinction between practical and theoretical activity, this distinction should not be absolutized or overstretched. For one thing, both are forms of activity (the first sense under thesis 2 above). At least in this minimal sense, theory is just as much praxis as revolutionary activity. ⁷⁸ However, this is not the only sense in which the distinction breaks down: theory, according to Adorno, is also praxis in at least two other senses – theory is praxis-as-resistance; ⁷⁹ and it is even a constitutive part of practice-as-revolutionary-activity. ⁸⁰ As far as the first is concerned, what I said under thesis 4 reapplies here: thinking is resistance in both (1) not accepting states of affairs for what they are or appear to be; ⁸¹ and (2) its capacity to immunize us from the distorting influences on consciousness. Indeed, to see through the hostility to theorizing – that is, to realize how this hostility is encouraged by the social world and serves to maintain it – is itself a form of praxis-as-resistance. ⁸² Its very existence is already an act of defiance against the repression of independent thought that is essential for the smooth working of the status quo. Similarly, theory is a (necessary but not sufficient) part of practice-as-revolutionary-activity insofar as revolutionary activity builds on the analysis of the current situations, and, in fact, is animated by this analysis. Indeed, if praxis is not so animated (as it was insufficiently in the nominally socialist regimes), it fails and becomes wrong – and as such, it is, in fact, no longer praxis at all:

Praxis without theory, lagging behind the most advanced state of cognition, cannot but fail, and praxis, in keeping with its own concept, would like to succeed. False praxis is no praxis. ⁸³

In sum, contrary to what Adorno’s critics on the New Left believed, theory is not something other than praxis, but rather is in, at least, three senses, itself a form of praxis. If anything, theory is often too practical for those hostile to it, albeit here in a further sense still: it requires laborious and patient work; ⁸⁴ in contrast to the immediate gratification that actionism promises (see thesis 10 below).

Theory should not be beholden to political activity

Adorno thinks that theory should maintain a certain independence especially vis-à-vis direct political action and tactic. ⁸⁵ The reasons for this are manifold.

First, Adorno argues that division of labour produces here, as in many other areas of life, better results than merging two activities and having them carried out together by the same actors. At one point, he offers an interesting analogy: the rigorous pursuit of physics has yielded many useful results for practical activities in other human spheres, and, specifically, nuclear physics might have enabled the development of a new form of energy-generation, but this happened as a by-product of autonomous theorizing, not as a consequence of aiming for a new energy source or of having been commissioned to find one. ⁸⁶

Second, Adorno also criticizes the demand that theory should be practically applicable, utilizable, or exploitable by pointing out that what is practically applicable, utilizable, or exploitable is determined by the wrong social world that we should change. ⁸⁷ It is the nature of this world that it allows only reforms and activities that stay within it, so that whenever we limit theory by what is practically possible, we make radical social critique impossible. Thus, rather than enabling revolutionary practice, such a demand would be to abandon it. Moreover, this demand is also infected by the constant pressure to contribute to social production characteristic of both capitalist and nominally socialist regimes ⁸⁸ – by the productivist ethos to utilize every minute to the full and to keep all wheels constantly turning. Rather than accepting and partaking in these pressures, we should criticize them and refuse to join in, where we can. ⁸⁹

Third, and picking up a theme from earlier (see thesis 4), it would be too much to ask of theory to require that it provides a blueprint for a better world: ⁹⁰ at least when it comes to ethical and political activities, theory is a reflective medium, not so much a predictive one. Theory cannot solve problems in this area of life, but has to rely first on the development of practical solutions which it can then help refining. Theorizing, even imagining, is bound by the materials of the status quo and, if at all, it can yield only something radically different from it at a too abstract level to be directly applicable in practice.

All of this is not to say that critical theory has no practical telos – according to Adorno, every thought has such a telos. ⁹¹ However, this practical orientation is merely indirectly prescribed in theoretical activity – otherwise, it sabotages thinking and thereby itself. To return to an earlier analogy: nuclear physics has a connection to possible praxis, not because it stands under the imperative of yielding practical implementations, but because it involves an exercise of reason, which by its nature has a connection to the practical teloi of humanity; similarly, critical theory should not be subjected to the demands of practical applicability (as measured and shaped by the current social world), but retains nonetheless a connection to the possible practice of a freed humanity, which is its orientating interest. In this way, ‘The theory that is not conceived as an instruction for its realization should have the most hope of realization’; ⁹² and philosophy ‘ effects change precisely by remaining theory’. ⁹³

Democracy has only shallow roots in postwar [West] Germany

This thesis is based, in part, on sociological work of the institute, particularly in the 1950s but also the 1960s. ⁹⁴ This mostly qualitative research revealed that there remained significant scepticism about democracy among the West German population. While democracy was formally adhered to under the watchful eyes of the western allies, it had not become part of people’s convictions and activities in the way it had in the USA. ⁹⁵ Instead of a healthy public sphere, there was a mentality of subordination to authority as well as distrust of intellectuals and public criticisms of the state. ⁹⁶ An active citizenship was largely lacking. For the most part, people quietly accepted Adenauer’s politics of restoration, despite the fact that its democratic credentials were questionable – notably when it came to (1) permitting previous National Socialist officials back into positions of power; (2) outlawing the Communist Party; and (3) barring from any positions in the civil service all members from the (mainly communist) Society of People Persecuted by the Nazi Regime – Federation of Anti-Fascists [Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten] (VVN-BdA). The fragile state of West German democracy and rule of law also emerged vividly during the so-called Spiegel Affair (1962), in which the editor of a German weekly magazine (Der Spiegel) was illegally deprived of his liberty and imprisoned for months after this magazine had revealed NATO’s rather negative assessment of the West German armed forces. Starting in 1966, a right-extreme, racist party, the NPD, had entered parliaments in several states of the West German federal republic, and threatened to pass the 5% hurdle at the national level too. ⁹⁷ Adorno was particularly worried by the state of emergency legislation [Notstandgesetze] accepted by the German Bundestag in 1968 and spoke out publicly against it – referring back to how similar clauses in the Weimar Republic’s constitution had led to an erosion of democracy in the early 1930s and ultimately to Hitler’s gaining power. ⁹⁸ There were also actual signs of violent repression: as already mentioned, a student named Benno Ohnesorg had been shot at a demonstration in Berlin in 1967, but the police officer who shot him was let off scot-free. Adorno denied that West Germany was a fascist state during the 1960s. Still, he feared that it might develop into one. ⁹⁹ Indeed, even in the USA, where democracy had reached into everyday life, a ‘veering towards totalitarian forms of domination’ was a latent possibility in Adorno’s eyes, if only because he thought that ‘[s]uch a danger is an inherent tendency of modern society’. ¹⁰⁰

In sum, Adorno saw Western Germany as a fragile democracy which needed nurturing, not least because the existing and past alternatives to it were so much worse, including the nominally socialist regimes to the East – which brings us to the next thesis.

Political activity in the West should be critical but broadly defensive

While the liberal-capitalist West deserves radical change – a change that is, however, blocked for the foreseeable future (see thesis 2) – its socio-political system provided the least bad alternative available in the 1960s. In this context, its positive gains – such as freedom of expression, rule of law, material wealth, and public health systems – should be defended. Such defence might even include trying to extend the range of areas of life that benefit from these gains (for example, campaigning to secure for same sex couples the legal rights that so far only heterosexual couples enjoyed). The defensive stance is directly related to the previous thesis about the fragility of democracy in West Germany and, ultimately, in every country. Democracies need active participation of citizens in public life ¹⁰¹ – with Adorno’s radio and TV appearances as a good example of what he might have had in mind. Interestingly, the defence of the liberal-capitalist West might be best served by critical engagement with it. ¹⁰² Presumably, this is partly because a lively public sphere of accountability is more likely to preserve the gains in question than glorifying adoration or an unqualified defence. However, in rare cases, more emphatic support might be required – or at least, even stronger criticism of the alternatives. ¹⁰³ Adorno goes as far as to suggest that under the current circumstances even paltry reforms have more legitimacy than they would otherwise have. ¹⁰⁴

It is important to emphasize that Adorno’s defence of western liberal democracies rests on instrumental and historical grounds – on avoiding the worst in a given situation. It is not an endorsement of these regimes as such. To rephrase Churchill: liberal democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others available in the 1960s.

This view puts Adorno at loggerheads with his friend and fellow-member of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse, who – partly because of the war in Vietnam – thought that it was far from certain that the West-dominated status quo was better than anything else that could take its place, despite also doubting that there was a revolutionary situation. ¹⁰⁵ Marcuse candidly asks whether this status quo really is the lesser evil for the majority of people, when one considers the plight of those who live in Vietnam or in the ghettos of South America. ¹⁰⁶ This disagreement is intimately linked to the next thesis.

Political violence should be restricted to resistance in fascist contexts

While Adorno did not exclude the use of (political) violence categorically for all circumstances, he was adamant that it had no place within democratic societies. ¹⁰⁷ One of the main considerations seemed to have been that violence tends to breed further violence, leading to an ever-expanding cycle of violence, not its end. ¹⁰⁸ In this way violent protest might make things much worse, inadvertently fostering more repression than would otherwise have been used in democracies. Only against a fascist regime are violent means of resistance legitimate – for example, Adorno accepted that it would be permissible to use violence for this purpose against the Greek military junta. ¹⁰⁹ Presumably, such a regime is so morally reprehensible that the danger of a violent backlash is not decisive any more as a consideration. While ends are not indifferent to means, ¹¹⁰ in certain emergency situations almost all means are legitimate – just that 1960s West Germany was no such emergency situation. ¹¹¹

Adorno here was in disagreement with the student protest movement, or at least the most radical wing of it. In fact, as early as April 1968, activists, who later formed the core of the Red Army Faction [Röte Armee Fraktion], committed arson attacks against two retailers in Frankfurt in protest against the war in Vietnam and the complacency about this war among the German public. Beyond his moral objections, Adorno also thought it foolish to import guerrilla tactics into the western democracies, remarking in 1969 that ‘[m]odels that do not prove themselves even in the Bolivian bush cannot be exported’. ¹¹² But even those who did not want to realize Adorno’s theory with Molotov cocktails, but only with sit-ins and occupations, came into opposition to him. ¹¹³ He accepted that sit-ins may be a legitimate form of protest in some contexts. For example, Adorno thought that the smearing campaign by right-wing newspapers and magazines against the left had already indirectly contributed to an assassination attempt on a leader of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke; and he considered sit-ins to prevent or disrupt the distribution of these publications were among the permissible means to respond to this. ¹¹⁴ However, he remained concerned about any breaches of rules and any forms of criminal activity, even if done for progressive aims. ¹¹⁵

Most famous perhaps is the episode that took place on 31 January 1969: Adorno (along with the co-directors of the Institute of Social Research) called the police to clear 70 students from the premises of the institute whom he/(they) perceived to be in the process of occupying it. (It is, actually, unclear whether the students wanted to occupy the building – they always maintained that they were just wanting to use the rooms for a meeting to discuss their future actions, having been thwarted in (re-)occupying the sociology department. Still, they refused to leave despite being repeatedly asked to do so by Adorno and his co-directors.) This episode and the subsequent trial of the perceived leader of this group – Adorno’s own PhD student Krahl – accelerated the already simmering fall-out with the students, who subsequently twice disrupted Adorno’s lectures, leading him to abandon the lecture series. At the end of the semester, he left distraught for a mountain vacation, during which he succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 65.

This fall-out with the students was also at issue in Adorno’s 1969 disagreement with Marcuse, who bluntly noted that ‘if the alternative is the police or left-wing students, then I am with the students’. ¹¹⁶ Beyond Adorno’s negative attitude to many forms of protests in the West, another matter of contention was his view that whoever deplores the violence and repression of the South Vietnamese and US forces also has to deplore the means employed by the Vietcong (notably its use of torture) – he seemingly equated the two in moral terms. ¹¹⁷ Against this, Marcuse insisted on a clear moral distinction between violence used in fighting aggression and that employed by the aggressor and in repression. ¹¹⁸ Although Adorno might have accepted the validity of this distinction for some contexts – most obviously for the context of fighting fascist regimes – he clearly rejected it for the context of the democratic West and also seemed to think that the torture employed by the Vietcong was indefensible, even if used as part of a liberation movement.

Undoubtedly, some of Adorno’s calls in this late 1960s context were mistaken – most obviously his decision to call the police to clear out the institute, when there was no real danger to persons and it was not even clear that an occupation was taking place. Marcuse is also right that Adorno largely neglected the plight of people at the peripheries; how this plight was, at least in part, the implication of the West’s maintaining its high living standard; and how the countries of the West were (formally) democratic at home, but far from respectful of democracy and individual rights abroad. Still, Adorno’s rejection of using of violence in democratic settings has much to be recommended, not least because history contains many a tale of how violence can spiral out of control (something about which he repeatedly warned). The conservative critics of the 1970s who accused him, and the Frankfurt School generally, of paving the way for left-wing terrorism were clearly mistaken: whatever influence his writings might have had on Ulrike Meinhoff and the other members of the Red Army Faction, they blatantly disregarded the letter and the spirit of his work in what they did. In the postwar West German context, Adorno’s work licensed only the weapons of criticism, not criticism by weapons.

Assigning primacy to political activity, actionism [Aktionismus] is the true resignation in the face of our social world

By eschewing much political activity and insisting on doing theory instead, Adorno was accused by the student movement, and others outside it, of resignation. Many of those inspired by his critical theory felt betrayed by what they perceived as a failure to draw the practical consequences from this very theory. Adorno, however, retorted that it is the opposite position – the one he entitles ‘actionism’ [Aktionismus] – that is in truth expressive of resignation and, more even, that it is regressive and bordering on authoritarianism. Actionism is less idiomatic in English than in German, and so it might be worth spelling out what Adorno has in mind here. The German Duden notes two meanings: (1) striving to change people’s consciousness or the existing state of affairs in society, art, or literature by engaging in targeted provocative or revolutionary actions; and (2) exaggerated urge to engage in activities (often derogatory). This ambiguity is very fitting: while the first meaning is what the student protest aimed for, the second is what Adorno accused them of. Many of the reasons for this we have already encountered: the fact that the current situation calls for renewed reflection and analysis, not action; the dangers that even practice that aims at resistance and progressive change might provoke a net increase in repression; the lack of non-repressive forms of collective agency; and the absence of a revolutionary subject and situation. The following 4 considerations add to and partly draw on the picture presented so far.

First, Adorno suspects that actionism is actually a vain attempt to compensate for both (1) the fact that revolutionary activity is blocked and (2) the disintegration and paranoia of individuals by engaging in largely blind activities for their own sake. ¹¹⁹ Presumably, what he means here is not that this is the result of a conscious decision, but rather that the self-styled acts of resistance and provocation are, in fact, mere compensatory measures of keeping busy – indeed, he once likens them to captured animals that frantically pace up and down in their cages. ¹²⁰ In this way, the activities are more like pseudo-activities, such that the tragedy of the failed transformation of the world in the early 20th century is now repeated as the farce of pseudo-revolutions. ¹²¹

Second, actionism is driven by the pleasure principle, ¹²² even by narcissism. ¹²³ This explains why it is attractive to its participants and also why critique of it is so unwelcome. Still, the foregrounding of pleasure itself cannot be what Adorno criticizes – after all, he himself argues that the postponement of pleasure for greater satisfaction later rarely lives up to its promise, whether at the individual or social level, and that we should resist this postponement strategy. ¹²⁴ Rather, his point seems to be that the satisfaction in question is merely an Ersatzbefriedigung, a vicarious satisfaction. ¹²⁵ Also, what he criticizes is that the pursuit of instant gratification is replacing the one of critical reflection – making it more likely that the protest movements are coopted into the mainstream. Instead of a real analysis of the concrete situation and its possibilities, actionism is blindly pursuing narcissistic gains at the expense of the painstaking and demanding reflective work that is necessary. This is partly revealed in the activists’ refusal of critical introspection. ¹²⁶ Moreover, Adorno highlights the danger that actionism develops a dynamic of its own, whereby actions are undertaken merely to maintain the momentum of the movement (often by way of publicity stunts), independently of the wisdom or necessity of undertaking the acts in question. ¹²⁷

Third, Adorno objects to what he perceives as a refusal and also inability to make genuine and unrestricted experiences. ¹²⁸ As seen already (thesis 4), Adorno emphasizes that it is exactly in this area where those that were lucky enough not yet to be coopted should act – by criticizing the conceptualizations that distort and narrow our experiences, and by educating people to develop their experiential capacities. Adorno thinks these crucial efforts are undermined by people’s jumping headfirst into political activities and cutting short debate with reference to practical urgency. Generally, he criticizes the lack of analysis and the fact that, in the absence of theory, praxis becomes delusional. ¹²⁹

Fourth, he objects to the various coercive, authoritarian aspects of actionism. For a start, he is concerned how debates are reduced to instrumental considerations about tactics. ¹³⁰ Actual open discussion of the genuine issues is repressed. Instead, appeals to solidarity are used to shame and coerce people into action, even when they do not agree with what is being done or with the reasons for doing it. ¹³¹ This can go as far as requiring people to sacrifice themselves for the movement – something Adorno finds reminiscent of fascist political repertoires. ¹³² Generally, he accuses the actionists of exhibiting fascist character traits, such as drawing a sharp and exhaustive distinction between the in-group and others (between friends and enemies); or viewing critical attitudes as destructive; being indifferent to the content and shape of that against which one revolts or the complexities and the unintended consequences of doing so; cherishing decisionism and voluntarism; identifying with the collective at the expense of the individual; being full of anger and indignation in a way that involves the readiness to inflict one’s rage on others. ¹³³ One might argue that this accusation overshoots the target – Marcuse certainly thought it did. ¹³⁴ Specifically, Marcuse defends the actionism of the students as a legitimate reaction of those who cannot bear any longer the suffocating and demeaning state of the world. ¹³⁵ Interestingly, Adorno rejects this, and elsewhere explains why: while situation-based reaction to injustice and suffering has legitimacy in certain contexts – indeed, in such contexts, such reactions have more legitimacy than reasoning ¹³⁶ – this is true only of the most extreme circumstances, when faced with the ‘uttermost horror’, ¹³⁷ by which he presumably means fascism and other totalitarian domination. Within liberal democracies, such immediate reactions do not have the legitimacy that trumps the need for critical reflection. Moreover, if Adorno is right that the objective conditions breed certain authoritarian and fascist tendencies and character traits, then forgoing critical reflection and introspection is to forgo perhaps the only counter-strategies at our disposal. By ignoring the dangers within, we sabotage the resistance to the dangers without. To face up to this, to assign critical reflection priority, is not a sign of resignation, but the only way to keep the flame of resistance alive.

There is also a further coercive element that is internalized by the actionism of the student movement: the compulsion to positivity. ¹³⁸ Rather than objecting to the social trend of demanding always a positive, constructive element, even as part of radical criticism, actionism aligns itself with this trend. In contrast, Adorno is an avowed negativist: ¹³⁹ we can only know the bad (or parts thereof), not the good or what a free social arrangement would be; and the bad has normative force by itself to demand its own abolition. The reason for epistemic negativism is that our consciousness is determined by the current, radically evil social world, so that we cannot even imagine what a reconciled society and the human good emerging in it would be like. ¹⁴⁰ In line with the Hegelian–Marxist critique of abstract utopianism, theory cannot anticipate what utopia would (concretely) consist in. ¹⁴¹ What is bad and that we should avoid it, on the other hand, we can recognize and identify – history has taught us this painful lesson over and over again. Radical critique cannot be constructive or positive – for all positive or constructive suggestions will remain within the confines of the status quo, not point beyond it. Instead, radical critique should orientate itself on the basis of great evils; it should oppose barbarism ¹⁴² and the recurrence of Auschwitz. ¹⁴³ To accuse critical thinkers of resignation, when they do not offer positive goals, is to blame the messenger, to act ‘as though the obstruction were [their] fault, not the signature of the thing itself’. ¹⁴⁴

Despite his criticisms, Adorno also praises the student movement. He acknowledges that it helped in reforming and democratizing universities as well as in highlighting stultification processes and open repression, such as the murder of Benno Ohnesorg. ¹⁴⁵ He would have also welcomed some of the longer-term changes that it contributed to achieving in Germany (after his death), such as a more permissive sexual morality, or greater equality between the sexes.

Moreover, Adorno also acknowledges that the student movement was born in response to objective social tendencies, ¹⁴⁶ such as the integration of formerly progressive organizations (for instance, unions or social-democratic parties) into the capitalist mainstream. ¹⁴⁷ (Notably, the German Social-Democratic Party [SPD] had entered into a ‘grand coalition’ with the conservatives in 1966, leaving hardly any opposition in parliament and none that was on the political left.) Indeed, Adorno blames some of the failures of the student movement on objective social tendencies: for example, its personalization (including personality cult of leaders) is a response to ‘the fact that within the anonymous apparatus the individual does not count any more’; ¹⁴⁸ its tendency to formal process and institutionalization, even in protesting against institutions, exhibits how society has formed them to the core; as does its fetishizing of means and technical gadgets. ¹⁴⁹ In fact, primacy of practice is the implicit credo of late modernity and just repeats the blind supremacy of material praxis (that is, praxis as productive labour) originally in the pursuit of survival for the species, but now surplus-value augmentation. ¹⁵⁰ Rather than an expression of freedom, its origin as a reflex to deprivation marks praxis even now as a form of unfreedom. ¹⁵¹ Indeed, prioritizing praxis is ‘the programme of absolute domination of nature’, ¹⁵² an arch-bourgeois project that deserves to be criticized, not accepted, as (Adorno thought) even Marx wrongly did.

Instead of subscribing to the primacy of praxis, Adorno would agree with Habermas that the student movement should concentrate mainly on democratizing universities, on preventing the ‘interlocking of instruction and research with power and prestige’ (i.e. on maintaining the autonomy of research and teaching), and on securing a critical education for an increasing share of the population. ¹⁵³

Participation in political activity requires justification to each individual

More implicit than explicit, Adorno’s theory and his practical engagement contain a criterion for participation in political activity. In effect, he demands that political activity has to be such that the justification and nature of the proposed activity are transparent to those who are asked to participate in it. ¹⁵⁴ As examples of activities where this criterion was met in his eyes, he highlights both his participation in protests against the introduction of state of emergency legislation and his attempts to reform the penal code, specifically by removing those elements that are based on a restrictive sexual morality. Indeed, once this criterion was met, Adorno would throw his weight behind the measure in question – as a former assistant and then co-director of the Institute of Social Research, Ludwig von Friedeburg, attests: ‘One could completely rely on him [Adorno], once he had appreciated the justification for a cause: he would stand firm and support you through thick and thin.’ ¹⁵⁵

One might argue that the criterion in question is too demanding – indeed, that it is practically crippling. While radical political organizations should be as democratic as possible, this should not come at the expense of political effectiveness. Lenin’s idea of ‘democratic centralism’ is often presented as squaring that particular circle. However, Adorno would have been suspicious of this proposal. For, while it might secure freedom of discussion, it also entails that the minority can be outvoted and is strictly bound to act on the majority’s decision. Indeed, as Leninism is often understood and as it was practised, the decisions of the higher bodies of a party organization are binding on lower bodies and party members, whatever the latter’s view of the matter. At least Adorno’s settled view is incompatible with this, requiring as it does that those participating have to receive a justification that is acceptable to each, not just to the majority or the higher bodies within an organization. ¹⁵⁶ Indeed, in a clear dig against Brecht, Adorno notes already in 1953: ‘The sentence that a thousand eyes see more than two is a lie and the exact expression of the fetishism of collectivity and organization, which to pierce is the highest obligation of social insight today.’ ¹⁵⁷

It should be clear that the proposed criterion presents a norm, but that this norm is neither derived from an ideal-theoretical account of political activity in a just society, nor based on the ideal speech situation, nor in any other way departing from Adorno’s negativism. Rather, it is a norm that arises from the historical experience of misfiring emancipatory politics and ‘a concrete analysis of the concrete situation’ (and thus, according to Lenin, ‘the very gist, the living soul, of Marxism’). ¹⁵⁸ This norm might not apply in a revolutionary situation or in the emergency of resisting fascist regimes, but has its time and place in the actual historical circumstances of West Germany’s 1960s.

Summing up the discussion in a slogan is probably unwise and Adorno would have not approved of it, but let me take up the provocative stance that he sometimes assumes, and conclude that Adorno’s view comes down to saying that people have tried to change the world, in various ways; the point in the 1960s was to interpret it. ¹⁵⁹