TRADITIONAL AND CRITICAL
THEORY
What is "theory"? The question seems a
rather easy one for contemporary science. Theory for most researchers is the
sum-total of propositions about a subject, the propositions being so linked with each other that a few are basic and the rest derive from these. The smaller the number of primary
principles in comparison with the
derivations, the more perfect the theory. The real validity of the theory depends on the derived propositions being consonant with the actual facts. If
experience and theory contradict each
other, one of the two must be re-examined. Either the scientist has
failed to observe correctly or something is
wrong with the principles of the theory. In relation to facts, therefore, a theory always remains a hypothesis.
One must be ready to change it if its
weaknesses begin to show as one works through the material. Theory is
stored up knowledge, put in a form that
makes it useful for the closest possible description of facts. Poincare
compares science to a library that must ceaselessly
expand. Experimental physics is the librarian who takes care of
acquisitions, that is, enriches knowledge by supplying new material. Mathematical physics—the theory of natural science
in the strictest sense—keeps the catalogue; without the catalogue
one would have no access to the library's rich contents. "That is the
role of mathematical physics. It must direct generalisation, so as to
increase what I have called just now the output of science."1 The
general goal of all theory is a universal systematic science, not limited to
any particular sub-
1. Henri Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, tr. by
W[illiam] J[ohn] G[reenstreet]
(London: Walter Scott, 1905), p. 145.
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AND CRITICAL THEORY
ject matter but embracing all possible
objects. The division of sciences is being broken
down by deriving the principles for special
areas from the same basic premises. The same conceptual apparatus which was elaborated for the analysis
of inanimate nature is serving to
classify animate nature as well, and anyone who has once mastered the use of it, that is, the rules for derivation, the symbols, the process of comparing
derived propositions with observable
fact, can use it at any time. But we are still rather far from such an ideal situation.
Such, in its broad
lines, is the widely accepted idea of what theory is. Its origins supposedly coincide with the
beginnings of modern philosophy. The third maxim in
Descartes' scientific method is the decision
to carry on my reflections in due order,
commencing with objects that were the most simple and easy to understand, in
order to rise little by little, or by degrees, to knowledge
of the most complex, assuming
an order, even if a fictitious one, among those which do not follow a natural sequence relative to
one another.
The derivation as usually practiced in
mathematics is to be applied to all science. The
order in the world is captured by a deductive
chain of thought.
Those long chains of deductive reasoning,
simple and easy as they are, of
which geometricians make use in order to arrive at the most difficult demonstrations, had caused me to
imagine that all those things
which fall under the cognizance of men might very likely be mutually related in the same fashion; and
that, provided only that we abstain from receiving anything as true which is
not so, and always retain the order which is necessary in order to deduce the one conclusion from the other, there can be
nothing so remote that we cannot reach to it, nor so recondite that we cannot
discover it.2
Depending on the
logician's own general philosophical outlook, the most universal propositions from which the
deduction begins are themselves regarded as
experiential judgments, as
2. Descartes, Discourse on Method, in The
Philosophical Works of Descartes,
tr. by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19312),
volume 1, p. 92.
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inductions (as with John Stuart Mill), as
evident insights (as in rationalist
and phenomenological schools), or as arbitrary postulates (as in the modern axiomatic approach). In the
most advanced logic of the present time, as
represented by Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen, theory is defined "as an enclosed system of propositions for a science as a whole."3 Theory
in the fullest sense is "a
systematically linked set of propositions, taking the form of a systematically unified deduction."4
Science is "a certain totality
of propositions . . . , emerging in one or other manner from theoretical work, in the systematic order of which propositions a certain totality of objects
acquires definition."5
The basic requirement which any theoretical system must satisfy is that all the parts should intermesh
thoroughly and without friction.
Harmony, which includes lack of contradictions, and the absence of superfluous,
purely dogmatic elements which have
no influence on the observable phenomena, are necessary conditions, according to Weyl.6
In so far as this traditional conception of theory shows a tendency, it is towards a purely mathematical
system of symbols. As elements of the
theory, as components of the propositions and conclusions, there are ever fewer
names of experiential objects and ever more numerous mathematical
symbols. Even the logical operations
themselves have already been so rationalized
that, in large areas of natural science at least, theory formation has become a matter of mathematical
construction.
The sciences of man
and society have attempted to follow the
lead of the natural sciences with their great successes. The difference between those schools of social science which are more oriented to the investigation of facts and
those which concentrate more on principles has nothing directly to do
with the concept of theory as such. The
assiduous collecting of facts
3.
Edmund Husserl,
Formale und transzendentale Logik
(Halle,
1929), p. 89.
1929), p. 89.
4. Husserl, op. cit., p. 79.
5. Husserl, op. cit., p. 91.
6.
Hermann
Weyl, Philosophie der Naturwissenschaft, in Handbuch
der Philosophie, Part 2 (Munich-Berlin, 1927), pp. 118ff.
der Philosophie, Part 2 (Munich-Berlin, 1927), pp. 118ff.
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AND CRITICAL THEORY
in all the disciplines dealing with social life, the gathering of great masses of detail in connection with
problems, the empirical inquiries, through careful questionnaires and other
means, which are a major part of
scholarly activity, especially in the Anglo-Saxon universities since Spencer's
time—all
this adds up to a pattern which is, outwardly, much like the rest of life in
a society
dominated by industrial production techniques. Such an approach seems quite
different from the formulation of abstract principles and the analysis of basic
concepts by an armchair scholar, which are typical, for example, of one
sector of German
sociology. Yet these divergences do not signify a structural
difference in ways of thinking. In recent periods of contemporary society the
so-called human studies Geisteswissen-scMften) have had but a fluctuating market value and must
try to imitate the more prosperous natural
sciences whose practical value is
beyond question.
There can be no
doubt, in fact, that the various schools of sociology
have an identical conception of theory and that it is the same as theory in the natural sciences. Empirically oriented sociologists have the same idea of what a fully
elaborated theory should be as their
theoretically oriented brethren. The former,
indeed, are persuaded that in view of the complexity of social problems and the
present state of science any concern with general principles must be
regarded as indolent and idle. If theoretical work is to be done, it must be
done with an eye unwaveringly on the facts;
there can be no thought in the foreseeable
future of comprehensive theoretical statements. These scholars are much enamored of the methods of exact formulation and, in particular, of mathematical
procedures, which are especially
congenial to the conception of theory described above. What they object to is not so much theory as such but theories spun out of their heads by men
who have no personal experience of the problems of an experimental science. Distinctions like those between community and
society (Ton-nies), mechanical and organic solidarity (Durkheim), or culture
and civilization (A. Weber) as basic forms of human sociality prove to be of questionable value as soon as one
attempts to
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CRITICAL THEORY
apply them to concrete problems. The way that
sociology must take in the
present state of research is (it is argued) the laborious ascent from the
description of social phenomena to detailed comparisons and only then to the
formation of general concepts. The
empiricist, true to his traditions, is thus led to say that only complete inductions can supply the primary propositions for a theory and that we are still far from
having made such inductions. His
opponent claims the right to use other methods, less dependent on progress in data-collection, for the formation of primary categories and insights. Durkheim, for
example, agrees with many basic
views of the empirical school but, in dealing with principles, he opts for an
abridgement of the inductive
process. It is impossible, he claims, to classify social happenings on the basis of purely empirical
inventories, nor can research make
classification easier in the way in which it is expected to do so.
Its [induction's] role is to put into our
hands points of reference to which we can refer other observations than those
which have furnished us with
these very points of reference. But for this purpose it must be made not from a complete inventory
of all the individual characteristics
but from a small number of them, carefully chosen ... It will spare the observer many steps because it will guide him . . . We must, then, choose the most
essential characteristics for our
classification.7
Whether the primary principles are gotten by
selection, by intuition, or by pure stipulation makes no difference, however, to their function in the ideal theoretical
system. For the scientist must certainly apply his more or less general
propositions, as hypotheses, to ever new facts. The phenomenologically oriented
sociologist will indeed claim that once an essential law has been ascertained every particular instance will, beyond
any doubt, exemplify the law. But
the really hypothetical character of the essential law is manifested as soon as
the question arises whether
7. Er-ile Durkheim, The Rules of
Sociological Method, tr. from the eighth ed^ion by Sarah A. Soiovay and
John H. Mueller (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1938), p. 80.
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TRADITIONAL
AND CRITICAL THEORY
in a particular case we are dealing with an instance of the essence in question or of a related essence, whether
we are faced with a poor example of one type or a good example of another type.
There is always, on the one hand, the conceptually formulated knowlege and, on the other, the facts to be
subsumed under it. Such a subsumption or establishing of a relation between the simple perception or verification of a
fact and the conceptual structure of our knowing is called its theoretical explanation.
We need not enter
here into the details of the various kinds of classification. It will be enough to indicate briefly
how the traditional concept of theory handles the
explanation of historical events. The answer emerged clearly in the
controversy between Eduard Meyer and Max Weber. Meyer
regarded as idle and unanswerable the
question of whether, even if certain historical personages had not
reached certain decisions, the wars they
caused would nonetheless sooner or later have occurred. Weber tried to show that if the question were indeed
idle and unanswerable, all historical
explanation would become impossible.
He developed a "theory of objective possibility," based on the theories of the physiologist, von Kries,
and of writers in jurisprudence and
national economy such as Merkel, Liefmann, and Radbruch. For Weber, the historian's explanations, like those
of the expert in criminal law, rest not on the fullest possible enumeration of all pertinent circumstances
but on the establishment of a
connection between those elements of an event which are significant for historical continuity, and particular, determinative happenings. This
connection, for example the judgment
that a war resulted from the policies of a statesman who knew what he was about, logically supposes
that, had such a policy not existed, some other effect would have followed. If one maintains a particular causal nexus between
historical events, one is necessarily
implying that had the nexus not existed, then in accordance with the rules that govern our experience another effect would have followed in the given
circumstances. The rules of experience
here are nothing but the formulations of
our knowledge concerning economic, social, and psychologi-
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CRITICAL THEORY
cal interconnections. With the help of these
we reconstruct the probable course of
events, going beyond the event itself to what will serve as explanation.8 We are thus
working with conditional propositions as applied to a
given situation. If circumstances
a, b, c, and d are given, then event q must be expected; if d is lacking, event r; if
g is added, event s, and so on. This
kind of calculation is a logical tool of history as it is of science. It is in this fashion that theory in the
traditional sense is actually
elaborated.
What scientists in
various fields regard as the essence of theory thus corresponds, in fact, to the immediate tasks
they set for themselves. The manipulation of
physical nature and of specific
economic and social mechanisms demand alike the amassing of a body of knowledge such as is supplied in an ordered set of hypotheses. The technological
advances of the bourgeois period
are inseparably linked to this function of the pursuit of science. On the one hand, it made the facts
fruitful for the kind of scientific knowledge that
would have practical application
in the circumstances, and, on the other, it made possible the application of knowledge already possessed.
Beyond doubt, such work is a moment in the
continuous transformation and
development of the material foundations of that society. But the conception of theory was absolutized,
as though it were grounded in the
inner nature of knowledge as such or justified in some other ahistorical way, and thus it became a
reined, ideological category.
As a matter of
fact, the fruitfulness of newly discovered factual connections for the renewal of existent
knowledge, and the application of
such knowledge to the facts, do not derive from purely logical or methodological sources but can
rather be understood only in the context of real
social processes. When a
discovery occasions the restructuring of current ideas, this is not due exclusively to logical
considerations or, more par-
8. Max Weber, "Critical Studies in the
Logic of the Cultural Sciences
I: A Critique of Eduard Meyer's Methodological Views," in Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social
Sciences, ed. and tr. by Edward A. Shils and Henry A.
Finch (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949), pp. 113-63.
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TRADITIONAL
AND CRITICAL THEORY
ticularly, to the contradiction between the
discovery and particular elements in
current views. If this were the only real issue, one could always think up further hypotheses by which one
could avoid changing the theory as a whole.
That new views in fact win out is
due to concrete historical circumstances, even if the scientist himself may be determined to change his
views only by immanent motives. Modern theoreticians of knowledge do not deny the importance of historical
circumstance, even if among
the most influential nonscientific factors they assign more importance to genius and accident than to
social conditions.
In the seventeenth
century, for example, men began to resolve the difficulties into which traditional astronomy had
fallen, no longer by supplemental constructions but by adopting the Copernican system in its place. This change was not
due to the logical properties alone of the Copernican theory, for example its
greater simplicity. If these properties were seen as advantages, this very fact points beyond
itself to the fundamental
characteristics of social action at that time. That Coper-nicanism, hardly mentioned in the sixteenth
century, should now become a
revolutionary force is part of the larger historical process by which mechanistic thinking came to
prevail.9
But the influence
of the current social situation on change in scientific structures is not limited to comprehensive
theories like the Copernican system. It is also true
for special research problems in everyday life.
Sheer logic alone will not tell us whether
the discovery of new varieties in particular areas of inorganic or organic nature, whether in the
chemical laboratory or in
paleontological research, will be the occasion for modifying old classifications or for elaborating new
ones. The theoreticians of knowledge
usually rely here on a concept of theology which only in appearance is immanent to their science. Whether and how new definitions are purposefully drawn up
depends in fact not only on the
simplicity and consistency of the system but also, among other things, on the directions and goals of
9. A description of this development may be
found in Henryk Gross-mann,
"Die gesellschaftlichen Grundlagen der mechanischen Philosophie und die Manufaktur," Zeilschrijt filr
Sozialforschung 4 (1935), 161ff.
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CRITICAL THEORY
research. These last, however, are not
self-explanatory nor are
they, in the last analysis, a matter of insight.
As the influence of the subject matter
on the theory, so also the application of
the theory to the subject matter is not only an intrascientific process but a social one as well. Bringing hypotheses to bear on facts is an activity that
goes on, ultimately, not in the
savant's head but in industry. Such rules as that coal-tar under certain conditions becomes colored or
that nitro-glycerin, saltpeter, and other materials have great explosive force, are accumulated knowledge which is really
applied to reality in the great
industrial factories.
Among the various philosophical schools it
is the Positivists and the Pragmatists
who apparently pay most attention to the connections between theoretical work and the social
life-process. These schools consider the prevision and
usefulness of results to be a
scientific task. But in reality this sense of practical purpose, this belief in the social value of his
calling is a purely private conviction of the scholar. He may just as well
believe in an independent, "suprasocial,"
detached knowledge as in the
social importance of his expertise: such opposed interpretations do not influence his real activity in
the slightest. The scholar and his
science are incorporated into the apparatus of society; his achievements are a factor in the
conservation and continuous renewal
of the existing state of affairs, no matter what fine names he gives to what he does. His knowledge
and results, it is expected, will correspond to
their proper "concept," that is, they must constitute theory in the
sense described above. In the
social division of labor the savant's role is to integrate facts into conceptual frameworks and to keep the latter up-to-date so that he himself and all who use them may
be masters of the widest possible
range of facts. Experiment has the scientific role of establishing facts
in such a way that they fit into theory as
currently accepted. The factual material or subject matter is provided from
without; science sees to its formulation in clear and comprehensible terms, so
that men may be able to use the
knowledge as they wish. The reception, transformation, and
rationalization of factual knowledge is the scholar's special
196
TRADITIONAL
AND CRITICAL THEORY
form of spontaneity, namely theoretical activity, whether there is
question of as detailed as possible an exposition of a subject as in history and the descriptive branches of
other special disciplines, or of the
synthesis of masses of data and the attainment of general rules as in physics. The dualism of thought and being,
understanding and perception is second nature to the scientist.
The traditional idea of theory is based on
scientific activity as carried on within the division of labor at a particular
stage in the latter's development. It corresponds
to the activity of the scholar
which takes place alongside all the other activities of a society but in no immediately clear
connection with them. In this
view of theory, therefore, the real social function of science is not made manifest; it speaks not of what
theory means in human life, but
only of what it means in the isolated sphere in which for historical reasons it comes into existence.
Yet as a matter of fact the life of society is the
result of all the work done in
the various sectors of production. Even if therefore the division of labor in the capitalist system functions
but poorly, its branches, including science, do not
become for that reason self-sufficient
and independent. They are particular instances of
the way in which society comes to grips with nature and maintains its own inherited form. They are moments in the social process of production, even if they be
almost or entirely unproductive in
the narrower sense. Neither the structures of industrial and agrarian
production nor the separation of the so-called guiding and executory functions, services, and works, or of intellectual and manual operations are eternal
or natural states of affairs. They
emerge rather from the mode of production practiced in particular forms of society. The seeming self-sufficiency enjoyed by work processes whose
course is supposedly determined by
the very nature of the object corresponds to the seeming freedom of the
economic subject in bourgeois society. The latter believe they are acting
according to personal determinations,
whereas in fact even in their most complicated calculations they but exemplify the working of an incalculable social mechanism.
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CRITICAL THEORY
The false
consciousness of the bourgeois savant in the liberal era comes to light in very diverse philosophical systems.
It found an especially significant expression at
the turn of the century in the
Neo-Kantianism of the Marburg school. Particular traits in the theoretical activity of the specialist are
here elevated to the rank of universal categories, of instances of the world-mind, the eternal "Logos." More
accurately, decisive elements in social
life are reduced to the theoretical activity of the savant. Thus "the power of knowledge" is called
"the power of creative origination."
"Production" means the "creative sovereignty of thought." For any datum it must be possible
to deduce all its determinations
from theoretical systems and ultimately from mathematics; thus all finite magnitudes may be derived from the concept of the infinitely small by way of the
infinitesimal calculus, and this process is precisely their
"production." The ideal to be
striven for is a unitary system of science which, in the sense just described, will be all-powerful.
Since everything about the object is
reduced to conceptual determinations, the end-result of such theoretical work is that nothing is to be regarded as material and stable. The
determinative, ordering, unifying function is the sole foundation for all else,
and towards it all human effort is
directed. Production is production of unity,
and production is itself the product.10 Progress in awareness of freedom really means, according to this
logic, that the paltry snippet of
reality which the savant encounters finds ever more adequate expression
in the form of differential quotients. In
reality, the scientific calling is only one, nonindependent, element in the work or historical activity of man,
but in such a philosophy the former
replaces the latter. To the extent that it conceives of reason as actually determining the course of events
in a future society, such a hypostatization of Logos as reality is also a camouflaged Utopia. In fact, however, the self-knowledge of present-day man is not a
mathematical knowledge of nature which
claims to be the eternal Logos, but a critical
10. Cf. Hermann Cohen, Logik der reinen
Erkenr.tnis (Berlin, 1914) pp.
23ff.
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TRADITIONAL
AND CRITICAL THEORY
theory of society as it is, a theory dominated
at every turn by a concern for
reasonable conditions of life.
The isolated consideration of particular
activities and branches of
activity, along with their contents and objects, requires for its validity an accompanying concrete
awareness of its own limitations.
A conception is needed which overcomes the one-sidedness that necessarily arises when limited
intellectual processes are detached from their matrix in
the total activity of society. In the idea
of theory which the scholar inevitably reaches when working purely within his own discipline, the relation between fact and conceptual ordering of fact
offers a point of departure for such
a corrective conception. The prevailing theory of knowledge has, of
course, recognized the problem which this
relation raises. The point is constantly stressed that identical objects provide for one discipline
problems to be resolved only in
some distant future, while in another discipline they are accepted as simple facts. Connections which provide physics with research problems are taken for
granted in biology. Within biology,
physiological processes raise problems while psychological processes do not. The social sciences take human and
nonhuman nature in its entirety as given and are concerned only with how relationships are established
between man and nature and between
man and man. However, an awareness of this
relativity, immanent in bourgeois science, in the relationship between theoretical thought and facts, is not
enough to bring the concept of theory
to a new stage of development. What is needed
is a radical reconsideration, not of the scientist alone, but of the knowing individual as such.
The whole
perceptible world as present to a member of bourgeois society and as interpreted within a
traditional world-view which is in continuous interaction
with that given world, is seen by the perceiver as a sum-total of facts; it is
there and must be accepted. The
classificatory thinking of each individual is one of those social
reactions by which men try to adapt to reality
in a way that best meets their needs. But there is at this point an essential
difference between the individual and society.
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CRITICAL THEORY
The world which is given to the individual
and which he must accept and take
into account is, in its present and continuing form, a product of the activity of society as a whole.
The objects we perceive in our surroundings—cities, villages, fields, and woods—bear the mark of having been worked on by
man. It is not only in clothing and
appearance, in outward form and emotional
make-up that men are the product of history. Even the way they see and
hear is inseparable from the social life-process
as it has evolved over the millennia. The facts which our senses present to us are socially preformed
in two ways: through the historical
character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the
perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human
activity, and yet the individual perceives
himself as receptive and passive in the
act of perception. The opposition of passivity and activity, which appears in knowledge theory as a dualism of
sense-perception and understanding, does not hold for society, however,
in the same measure as for the individual.
The individual sees himself as passive and dependent, but society,
though made up of individuals, is an active
subject, even if a nonconscious one and,
to that extent, a subject only in an improper sense. This difference in
the existence of man and society is an expression of the cleavage which has up to now affected the historical forms
of social life. The existence of society has either been founded directly on oppression or been the blind
outcome of conflicting forces, but in any event not the result of conscious spontaneity on the part of free individuals.
Therefore the meaning of "activity" and "passivity"
changes according as these concepts are
applied to society or to individual. In the bourgeois economic mode the activity of society is blind and
concrete, that of individuals abstract
and conscious.
Human production
also always has an element of planning to
it. To the extent then that the facts which the individual and his theory encounter are socially produced, there
must be rationality in them, even
if in a restricted sense. But social action always involves, in addition,
available knowledge and its application. The
perceived fact is therefore co-determined
by
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TRADITIONAL
AND CRITICAL THEORY
human ideas and concepts, even before its
conscious theoretical elaboration
by the knowing individual. Nor are we to think here only of experiments in natural science. The
so-called purity of objective event
to be achieved by the experimental procedure is, of course, obviously connected with technological
conditions, and the connection of these in turn with the
material process of production is evident. But it is easy
here to confuse two questions: the question of the mediation of the factual
through the activity of society as a whole, and the question of the influence of the measuring instrument, that is, of
a particular action, upon the object
being observed. The latter problem, which continually plagues physics, is no more closely connected with the
problem that concerns us here than is the problem of perception generally, including perception in
everyday life. Man's physiological apparatus for sensation itself
largely anticipates the order followed in
physical experiment. As man reflectively records reality, he separates and rejoins pieces of it, and concentrates on some particulars while failing to
notice others. This process is just
as much a result of the modern mode of production, as the perception of
a man in a tribe of primitive hunters and
fishers is the result of the conditions of his existence (as well, of course, as of the object of perception).
In this context the
proposition that tools are prolongations of human organs can be inverted to
state that the organs are also
prolongations of the tools. In the higher stages of civilization conscious human action unconsciously
determines not only the subjective
side of perception but in larger degree the object as well. The sensible world which a member of industrial
society sees about him every day bears the marks of
deliberate work: tenement houses,
factories, cotton, cattle for slaughter, men, and, in addition, not only objects such as subway trains,
delivery trucks, autos, and airplanes, but the
movements in the course of
which they are perceived. The distinction within this complex totality between what belongs to unconscious
nature and what to the action of man
in society cannot be drawn in concrete detail. Even where there is question of experiencing
natural objects as such, their very naturalness is
determined by con-
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trast with the
social world and, to that extent, depends upon the latter.
The individual, however, receives sensible
reality, as a simple sequence
of facts, into his world of ordered concepts. The latter too, though their context changes, have developed
along with the life process of society. Thus, though the ordering of reality by understanding and the passing of
judgment on objects usually take
place as a foregone conclusion and with surprising unanimity among members of a given society, yet
the harmony between perception and traditional
thought and among the monads or
individual subjects of knowledge is not a metaphysical accident. The power of healthy human
understanding, or common sense, for
which there are no mysteries, as well as the general acceptance of identical
views in areas not directly connected
with class conflicts, as for example in the natural sciences, are conditioned by the fact that the
world of objects to be judged is in
large measure produced by an activity that is itself determined by the
very ideas which help the individual to
recognize that world and to grasp it conceptually.
In Kant's philosophy this state of affairs is
expressed in idealist form. The doctrine of purely passive sensation and active understanding suggests to him the
question of whence the understanding
derives its assured expectation that the manifold given in sensation will always obey the rules of the
understanding. He explicitly rejects the thesis of
a pre-established harmony, "a kind of
preformation-system of pure reason," in which
reason has innate and sure rules with which objects are in accord.11
His own explanation is that sensible appearances are already formed by the transcendental subject, that is, through the activity of reason, when they are received by
perception and consciously judged.12
In the most important chapters of the
Critique of Pure Reason Kant tried to give a more detailed explanation of the "transcendental
affinity" or subjective dell.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 167, tr. by Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 19332), p.
175. 12. Cf. Kant, op. cit., A 110, pp. 137-38.
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TRADITIONAL
AND CRITICAL THEORY
termination of sensible material, a process
of which the individual is
unaware.
The difficulty and obscurity which, by Kant's
own admission, mark the sections on the deduction and schematism of the pure concepts of understanding may be connected
with the fact that Kant imagines the supra-individual activity, of which the individual is unaware, only in the idealist
form of a consciousness-in-itself,
that is a purely intellectual source. In accordance with the theoretical vision available in his day,
he does not see reality as
product of a society's work, work which taken as a whole is chaotic, but at the individual level is
purposeful. Where Hegel glimpses
the cunning of a reason that is nonetheless world-historical and objective, Kant sees "an art concealed
in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of
activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open
to our gaze."13
At least Kant
understood that behind the discrepancy between fact and theory which the
scholar experiences in his professional work, there lies a deeper unity,
namely, the general subjectivity upon
which individual knowledge depends. The activity of society thus appears to be a transcendental power, that
is, the sum-total of spiritual factors. However, Kant's claim that its reality is sunk in obscurity, that is, that it is
irrational despite all its
rationality, is not without its kernel of truth. The bourgeois type of economy, despite all the ingenuity of the
competing individuals within it, is
not governed by any plan; it is not consciously directed to a general goal; the life of society as a whole proceeds from this economy only at the cost of
excessive friction, in a stunted
form, and almost, as it were, accidentally. The internal difficulties in the supreme concepts of Kantian philosophy,
especially the ego of transcendental subjectivity, pure or original apperception, and consciousness-in-itself, show the depth and honesty of his thinking. The
two-sidedness of these Kantian
concepts, that is, their supreme unity and purpose-fulness, on the one hand, and their obscurity,
unknownness, and
1 13. Kant, op.
cit., B 181, p. 183.
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impenetrability, on the other, reflects
exactly the contradiction-filled
form of human activity in the modern period. The collaboration of men in society is the mode of existence
which reason urges upon them, and so they do apply
their powers and thus confirm their
own rationality. But at the same time their work and its results are alienated
from them, and the whole process with all its waste of work-power and human
life, and with its wars and all its senseless
wretchedness, seems to be an
unchangeable force of nature, a fate beyond man's control.
In Kant's theoretical philosophy, in his
analysis of knowledge, this
contradition is preserved. The unresolved problem of the relation between activity and passivity, a
priori and sense data, philosophy
and psychology, is therefore not due to purely subjective
insufficiency but is objectively necessary. Hegel discovered and developed these contradictions, but finally resolved them in a higher intellectual realm. Kant claimed
that there existed a universal subject which, however, he could not
quite describe. Hegel escaped this
embarrassment by postulating the absolute
spirit as the most real thing of all. According to him, the universal has already adequately evolved
itself and is identical with all
that happens. Reason need no longer stand over against itself in purely critical fashion; in Hegel reason has become affirmative, even before reality itself is
affirmed as rational. But, confronted with the persisting contradictions
in human existence and with the impotence
of individuals in face of situations
they have themselves brought about, the Hegelian solution seems a purely private assertion, a personal peace
treaty between the philosopher and an inhuman world.
The integration of
facts into existing conceptual systems and the revision of facts through simplification or
elimination of contradictions
are, as we have indicated, part of general social activity. Since society is divided into groups and
classes, it is understandable that
theoretical structures should be related to the general activity of society in different ways
according as the authors of such structures belong to one
or other social class. Thus when the
bourgeois class was first coming into being in a feudal society, the purely scientific theory which arose with it
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tended chiefly to the break-up of the status
quo and attacked the old
form of activity. Under liberalism this theory was accepted by the prevailing human type. Today,
development is determined
much less by average men who compete with each other in improving the material apparatus of production and its
products, than by conflicting national and international cliques of leaders at the various levels of command in
the economy and the State. In so far as theoretical thought is not related to
highly specialized purposes
connected with these conflicts, especially war and the industry that supports it, interest in theory has waned. Less energy is being expended on forming
and developing the capacity of thought without regard to how it is to
be applied.
These distinctions,
to which others might be added, do not at all change the fact that a positive social function is
exercised by theory in its traditional form: that is, the
critical examination of data
with the aid of an inherited apparatus of concepts and judgments which is still
operative in even the simplest minds, as well as the interaction between facts and theoretical
forms that goes on in daily professional activity. In this intellectual work the needs and goals, the experiences and skills,
the customs and tendencies of the contemporary form of human existence
have all played their part. Like a material
tool of production, it represents potentially an element not only of
the contemporary cultural totality but of a
more just, more differentiated, more harmoniously
organized one as well. To the extent that this theoretical thinking does not deliberately lend itself to concerns which are external and alien to the object but
truly concentrates on the problems
which it meets in the wake of technical development and, in this connection,
itself turns up new problems and transforms
old concepts where necessary—to this extent it may rightly
regard the technological and industrial accomplishments of
the bourgeois era as its own justification and be confident of its
own value.
This kind of
theoretical thinking considers itself to belong to the realm of the hypothetical, of course, not of
certainty. But the hypothetical
character is compensated for in many ways. The
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uncertainty involved is no greater than it
need be, given the intellectual and technological means at hand at any given
time, with their proven general usefulness. The
very elaboration of such hypotheses,
however small their probability may be, is itself a socially necessary and valuable accomplishment
which is not at all hypothetical. The construction of
hypotheses and theoretical activity in general are a kind
of work which in present social circumstances has a real usefulness; that is,
there is a demand for it. In so far as it is underpaid or even neglected, it only shares the fate of other concrete and
possibly useful kinds of work which
have gotten lost in the present economy. Yet these very kinds of work presuppose the present economy
and are part of the total economic
process as it exists under specific historical conditions. This has nothing to do with the question of whether scientific labor is itself productive in the
narrow sense of the term. In the present order of things there is a
demand for an immense number of so-called
scientific creations; they are honored
in very varying ways, and part of the goods emerging from strictly productive work is handed over for them,
without anything at all being
thereby settled about their own productivity. Even the emptiness of certain areas of university activity, as well as all the idle ingenuity and the
construction of metaphysical and nonmetaphysical ideologies have their
social significance, no less than do other
needs arising out of social conflicts. However,
they do not therefore further the interests of any important large sector of society in the present
age. An activity which in its existing forms contributes to the being of
society need not be productive at all, that
is be a money-making enterprise. Nevertheless it can belong to the existing
order and help make it possible, as
is certainly the case with specialized science. We must go on now to add that there is a human activity which has society itself for its object.14
The aim of this activity
14. In the following pages this activity is
called "critical" activity. The
term is used here less in the sense it has in the idealist critique of pure reason than in the sense it has in the
dialectical critique of political economy.
It points to an essential espect of the dialectical theory of society.
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is not simply to eliminate one or other
abuse, for it regards such abuses
as necessarily connected with the way in which the social structure is organized. Although it itself
emerges from the social structure,
its purpose is not, either in its conscious intention or in its objective significance, the better functioning
of any element in the structure. On the contrary, it is
suspicious of the very categories of
better, useful, appropriate, productive, and valuable, as these are understood in the present order,
and refuses to take them as nonscientific
presuppositions about which one can do nothing. The individual as a rule must
simply accept the basic conditions of his existence as
given and strive to fulfill them; he finds his
satisfaction and praise in accomplishing as well
as he can the tasks connected with his place in society and in courageously doing his duty despite all the
sharp criticism he may choose to
exercise in particular matters. But the critical attitude of which we
are speaking is wholly distrustful of the rules
of conduct with which society as presently constituted provides each of its members. The separation
between individual and society in
virtue of which the individual accepts as natural the limits prescribed for his activity is relativized in critical theory. The latter considers the overall
framework which is conditioned by the blind interaction of individual
activities (that is, the existent division
of labor and the class distinctions) to
be a function which originates in human action and therefore is a possible
object of planful decision and rational determination of goals.
The two-sided
character of the social totality in its present form becomes, for men who adopt the critical attitude, a
conscious opposition. In recognizing the present
form of economy and the whole
culture which it generates to be the product of human work as well as the
organization which mankind was capable of and has provided
for itself in the present era, these men
identify themselves with this totality and conceive it as will and
reason. It is their own world. At the same time, however, they experience the fact that society is
comparable to nonhuman natural processes, to pure mechanisms, because
cultural forms
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which are supported by war and oppression are
not the creations of a unified, self-conscious will. That
world is not their own but the world
of capital.
Previous history
thus cannot really be understood; only the individuals
and specific groups in it are intelligible, and even these not totally, since their internal dependence on an inhuman society means that even in their conscious action
such individuals and groups are
still in good measure mechanical functions. The identification, then, of men of critical mind with their society is marked by tension, and the tension
characterizes all the concepts of
the critical way of thinking. Thus, such thinkers interpret the economic
categories of work, value, and productivity exactly as they are interpreted in
the existing order, and they regard any other
interpretation as pure idealism. But at the same time they consider it rank dishonesty simply to accept the interpretation; the critical acceptance of
the categories which rule social life
contains simultaneously their condemnation. This dialectical character of the self-interpretation of contemporary man is what, in the last analysis, also
causes the obscurity of the Kantian
critique of reason. Reason cannot become transparent to itself as long as men act as members of an organism which lacks reason. Organism as a naturally
developing and declining unity cannot be a sort of model for society,
but only a form of deadened existence from which society must emancipate itself. An attitude which aims at such an
emancipation and at an alteration of society as a whole might well be of service in theoretical work carried on within
reality as presently ordered. But it
lacks the pragmatic character which attaches to traditional thought as a socially useful professional activity.
In traditional
theoretical thinking, the genesis of particular objective facts, the practical application of the
conceptual systems by which it
grasps the facts, and the role of such systems in action, are all taken to be external to the
theoretical thinking itself.
This alienation, which finds expression in philosophical terminology as the separation of value and
research, knowledge and action, and other polarities,
protects the savant from the tensions we have indicated and provides an assured
framework
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for his activity. Yet a kind of thinking
which does not accept this
framework seems to have the ground taken out from under it. If a theoretical procedure does not take
the form of determining
objective facts with the help of the simplest and most differentiated conceptual systems available, what
can it be but an aimless
intellectual game, half conceptual poetry, half impotent expression of states
of mind? The investigation into the social conditioning
of facts and theories may indeed be a research problem, perhaps even a whole
field for theoretical work, but how can such
studies be radically different from other specialized efforts? Research into ideologies, or sociology of knowledge, which has been taken over from the critical
theory of society and established as
a special discipline, is not opposed either in its aim or in its other
ambitions to the usual activities that
go on within classificatory science.
In this reaction to
critical theory, the self-awareness of thought as such is reduced to the discovery of the
relationship that exists between intellectual
positions and their social location.
Yet the structure of the critical attitude, inasmuch as its intentions go beyond prevailing social ways of
acting, is no more closely related to social disciplines thus conceived than it is to natural science. Its opposition to
the traditional concept of theory
springs in general from a difference not
so much of objects as of subjects. For men of the critical mind, the facts, as they emerge from the work of
society, are not extrinsic in the
same degree as they are for the savant or for members of other professions who all think like little savants. The latter look towards a new kind of organization
of work. But in so far as the
objective realities given in perception are conceived as products which in principle should be under human control
and, in the future at least, will in fact come under it, these realities lose the character of pure factuality.
.The scholarly specialist "as"
scientist regards social reality and its
products as extrinsic to him, and "as" citizen exercises his interest in them through political articles,
membership in political parties or social service organizations, and
participation in elections. But he does
not unify these two activities, and
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his other activities as well, except, at
best, by psychological interpretation. Critical
thinking, on the contrary, is motivated today
by the effort really to transcend the tension and to abolish the opposition
between the individual's purposefulness, spontaneity, and rationality, and those work-process relationships on which society is built. Critical thought has a
concept of man as in conflict with
himself until this opposition is removed. If activity governed by reason is proper to man, then existent social practice, which forms the individual's
life down to its least details, is
inhuman, and this inhumanity affects everything that goes on in the society. There will always be
something that is extrinsic to man's
intellectual and material activity, namely nature as the totality of as yet unmastered elements with which society must deal. But when situations which
really depend on man alone, the
relationships of men in their work, and the course of man's own history are also accounted part of
"nature," the resultant
extrinsicality is not only not a suprahistorical eternal category (even pure nature in the sense described
is not that), but it is a sign of
contemptible weakness. To surrender to such weakness is nonhuman and irrational.
Bourgeois thought is so constituted that in
reflection on the subject which exercises such thought a
logical necessity forces it to recognize an
ego which imagines itself to be autonomous. Bourgeois thought is essentially abstract, and its principle is an individuality which inflatedly believes itself to
be the ground of the world or even
to be the world without qualification, an individuality separated off from events. The direct contrary of such an outlook is the attitude which holds the
individual to be the un-problematic
expression of an already constituted society; an example would be a nationalist ideology. Here the rhetorical
"we" is taken seriously;
speech is accepted as the organ of the community. In the internally rent society of our day, such thinking, except in social questions, sees nonexistent
unanimities and is illusory.
Critical thought and its theory are
opposed to both the types of thinking just
described. Critical thinking is the
function
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neither of the isolated individual nor of a
sum-total of individuals. Its subject is rather a definite individual in his
real relation to other individuals and groups, in his
conflict with a particular class,
and, finally, in the resultant web of relationships with the social totality and with nature. The subject
is no mathematical point like the ego
of bourgeois philosophy; his activity is the construction
of the social present. Furthermore, the thinking subject is not the place where
knowledge and object coincide, nor
consequently the starting-point for attaining absolute knowledge. Such an illusion about the thinking subject,
under which idealism has lived since
Descartes, is ideology in the strict sense, for in it the limited freedom of the bourgeois individual puts on the
illusory form of perfect freedom and autonomy. As a matter of fact, however, in a society which is untransparent
and without self-awareness the ego,
whether active simply as thinker or active
in other ways as well, is unsure of itself too. In reflection on man, subject and object are sundered; their
identity lies in the future, not in
the present. The method leading to such an identification may be called explanation in Cartesian language, but
in genuinely critical thought explanation signifies not only a logical process
but a concrete historical one as well. In the course
of it both the social structure as a whole and the relation of the theoretician to society are altered, that
is both the subject and the role of
thought are changed. The acceptance of an essential unchangeableness between subject, theory, and object thus distinguishes the Cartesian conception from
every kind of dialectical logic.
How is critical thought related to
experience? One might maintain that if such
thought were not simply to classify but also to determine for itself the goals which classification serves, in other words its own fundamental direction, it
would remain locked up within itself,
as happened to idealist philosophy. If it did not take refuge in Utopian
fantasy, it would be reduced to the
formalistic fighting of sham battles. The attempt legitimately to determine practical goals by thinking
must always fail. If thought were not
content with the role given to it in
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existent society, if it were not to engage
in theory in the traditional
sense of the word, it would necessarily have to return to illusions long since laid bare.
The fault in such reflections as these on
the role of thought is that
thinking is understood in a detachedly departmentalized and therefore spiritualist way, as it is
today under existing conditions
of the division of labor. In society as it is, the power of thought has never
controlled itself but has always functioned as a nonindependent moment in the work process, and the
latter has its own orientation and tendency. The work
process enhances and develops human life through the conflicting
movement of progressive and retrogressive periods. In the historical form in which society has existed, however,
the full measure of goods produced for
man's enjoyment has, at any particular stage, been given directly only to a small group of men.
Such a state of affairs has found expression in
thought, too, and left its mark on philosophy and
religion. But from the beginning the desire
to bring the same enjoyment to the majority has stirred in the depths of men's hearts; despite all the
material appropriateness of class
organization, each of its forms has finally proved inadequate. Slaves, vassals,
and citizens have cast off their yoke. This
desire, too, has found expression in cultural creations. Now, inasmuch as every individual in modern times
has been required to make his own the
purposes of society as a whole and to recognize these in society, there
is the possibility that men would become
aware of and concentrate their attention upon the path which the social work process has taken without
any definite theory behind it, as a result of disparate forces interacting, and with the despair of the masses acting
as a decisive factor at major turning points. Thought does not spin such a possibility out of itself but rather becomes aware
of its own proper function. In the
course of history men have come to know
their own activity and thus to recognize the contradiction that marks
their existence. The bourgeois economy was concerned that the individual should maintain the life of society by taking care of his own personal happiness. Such
an economy has within it, however, a dynamism which results in a
fantastic
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degree of power for some, such as reminds us
of the old Asiatic dynasties, and in
material and intellectual weakness for many others. The original fruitfulness of the bourgeois
organization of the life process is thus transformed into a paralyzing barrenness, and men by their own toil keep in
existence a reality which enslaves
them in ever greater degree.
Yet, as far as the role of experience is
concerned, there is a difference between
traditional and critical theory. The viewpoints
which the latter derives from historical analysis as the goals of human activity, especially the idea of a
reasonable organization of society
that will meet the needs of the whole community, are immanent in human work but are not correctly grasped by individuals or by the common mind. A
certain concern is also required if
these tendencies are to be perceived and expressed. According to Marx and Engels such a concern is necessarily generated in the proletariat. Because
of its situation in modern society the proletariat experiences the connection between work which puts ever more powerful
instruments into men's hands in their
struggle with nature, and the continuous renewal of an outmoded social organization. Unemployment, economic crises, militarization, terrorist regimes—in
a word, the
whole condition of the masses—are not due, for example, to limited technological
possibilities, as might have been the case in
earlier periods, but to the circumstances of production which are no
longer suitable to our time. The application of all intellectual and physical means for the mastery of nature is hindered because in the prevailing circumstances
these means are entrusted to special, mutually opposed interests.
Production is not geared to the life of the
whole community while heeding also
the claims of individuals; it is geared to the power-backed claims of
individuals while being concerned hardly at all with the life of the community. This is the inevitable result, in the present property system, of the principle that it
is enough for individuals to look out
for themselves.
But it must be
added that even the situation of the proletariat is, in this society, no guarantee of correct knowledge.
The proletariat may indeed have experience of
meaninglessness in the
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form of continuing and increasing wretchedness
and injustice in its own life. Yet this awareness is prevented
from becoming a social force by the differentiation of
social structure which is
still imposed on the proletariat from above and by the opposition between personal class interests which
is transcended only at very special moments. Even to the
proletariat the world superficially seems
quite different than it really is. Even an outlook which could grasp that no opposition really exists between the proletariat's own true interests and those of
society as a whole, and would
therefore derive its principles of action from the thoughts and feelings of the masses, would fall into slavish dependence on the status quo. The intellectual is
satisfied to proclaim with reverent
admiration the creative strength of the proletariat and finds satisfaction in adapting himself to it and in
canonizing it. He fails to see that such an evasion of theoretical effort (which the passivity of his own
thinking spares him) and of
temporary opposition to the masses (which active theoretical effort on his part might force upon him) only makes the masses blinder and weaker than they need be.
His own thinking should in fact be a
critical, promotive factor in the development
of the masses. When he wholly accepts the present psychological state of that
class which, objectively considered, embodies
the power to change society, he has the happy feeling of being linked with an immense force and enjoys a
professional optimism. When the
optimism is shattered in periods of crushing defeat, many intellectuals risk falling into a pessimism about
society and a nihilism which are just as ungrounded as their exaggerated optimism had been. They cannot bear
the thought that the kind of thinking
which is most topical, which has the deepest grasp of the historical
situation, and is most pregnant with the
future, must at certain times isolate its subject and throw him back upon himself.
If critical theory
consisted essentially in formulations of the feelings and ideas of one class at any given moment, it
would not be structurally different from the special
branches of science. It would be engaged in describing the psychological
contents typical of certain social groups; it would be
social psychology. The
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relation of being to consciousness is
different in different classes of society. If we take
seriously the ideas by which the bourgeoisie
explains its own order—free exchange, free competition, harmony
of interests, and so on—and if we follow them to their logical conclusion, they
manifest their inner contradiction and therewith their real
opposition to the bourgeois order. The simple description of
bourgeois self-awareness thus does not give us the truth about
this class of men. Similarly, a systematic presentation of the contents of proletarian
consciousness cannot provide a true picture
of proletarian existence and interests. It would yield only an application of traditional theory to a specific problem, and not the intellectual side
of the historical process of
proletarian emancipation. The same would be true if one were to limit oneself
to appraising and making known the ideas not of the proletariat in
general but of some more advanced sector of
the proletariat, for example a party or its leadership. The real task set here
would be the registering and classifying
of facts with the help of the most suitable conceptual apparatus, and the theoretician's ultimate goal
would be the prediction of future
socio-psychological phenomena. Thought and the formation of theory would be one
thing and its object, the proletariat,
another.
If, however, the theoretician and his
specific object are seen as forming a
dynamic unity with the oppressed class, so that his presentation of societal contradictions is not
merely an expression of the concrete
historical situation but also a force within it to stimulate change, then his real function emerges. The course of the conflict between the advanced
sectors of the class and the
individuals who speak out the truth concerning it, as well as of the conflict between the most advanced
sectors with their theoreticians and
the rest of the class, is to be understood
as a process of interactions in which awareness comes to flower along
with its liberating but also its aggressive forces which incite while also requiring discipline. The sharpness of the conflict shows in the ever present possibility of
tension between the theoretician and
the class which his thinking is to serve. The unity of the social forces which promise liberation is at the
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same time their distinction (in Hegel's
sense); it exists only as a conflict
which continually threatens the subjects caught up in it. This truth becomes
clearly evident in the person of the theoretician; he exercises an aggressive critique not only
against the conscious defenders of the status quo but
also against distracting, conformist, or Utopian
tendencies within his own household.
The traditional
type of theory, one side of which finds expression in formal logic, is in its present form part of the
production process with its division of labor. Since society must come to grips with nature in future ages as well, this
intellectual technology will not
become irrelevant but on the contrary is to be developed as fully as possible. But the kind of theory which is
an element in action leading to new social forms is not a cog in an already existent mechanism. Even if victory
or defeat provides a vague analogy
to the confirmation or failure of scientific hypotheses, the theoretician who
sets himself up in opposition to society as it is does not have the
consolidation that such hypotheses are part
of his professional work. He cannot sing for himself the hymn of praise which Poincare sang to the enrichment deriving even from hypotheses that must be
rejected.15 His profession
is the struggle of which his own thinking is a part and not something self-sufficient and separable
from the struggle. Of course, many
elements of theory in the usual sense enter into his work: the knowledge and prognosis of relatively isolated facts, scientific judgments, the elaboration of
problems which differ from those of
other theoreticians because of his specific interests but nonetheless manifest the same logical form.
Traditional theory may take a number of
things for granted: its positive role in a
functioning society, an admittedly indirect and obscure relation to the satisfaction of general needs, and participation
in the self-renewing life process. But all these exigencies about which science need not trouble itself because their fulfillment is rewarded and confirmed by
the social position of the
scientist, are called into question in critical thought. The goal at which the latter aims, namely the rational
state of so-
15. Poincare, op. cit., pp. 150-51.
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ciety, is forced upon him by present
distress. The theory which projects
such a solution to the distress does not labor in the service of an existing reality but only gives voice to
the mystery of that reality. However cogently absurdities
and errors may be uncovered at any given moment, however much every error may be shown to be taking its revenge, yet the
overall tendency of the critical
theoretical undertaking receives no sanction from so-called healthy human
understanding; it has no custom on its side, even when it promises success.
Theories, on the contrary, which
are confirmed or disproved in the building of machines, military organizations, even successful
motion pictures, look to a
clearly distinguishable consumer group, even when like theoretical physics they
are pursued independently of any application
or consist only in a joyous and virtuous playing with mathematical symbols; society proves its humaneness by
rewarding such activity.
But there are no
such examples of the form consumption will take in that future with which
critical thinking is concerned. Nonetheless the idea of a future society as a
community of free men, which is
possible through technical means already at hand, does
have a content, and to it there must be fidelity amid all change. In the form of an insight that the
dismemberment and irrationality of
society can now be eliminated and how this is to be accomplished, this idea is constantly being renewed amid prevailing
conditions. But the state of affairs upon which judgment is passed in this conception and the
tendencies inciting men to build a
rational society are not brought into existence outside thought by forces extrinsic to it, with thought then, as it were, accidentally recognizing its own reflection
in the product of these forces. Rather,
one and the same subject who wants a
new state of affairs, a better reality, to come to pass, also brings it forth. Out of the obscure harmony
between being and thought,
understanding and sense perception, human needs and their satisfaction in today's economy, a harmony
which seems an accident to the
bourgeois eye, there will emerge in the future age the relation between
rational intention and its realization. The
struggle for the future provides but a fragmentary re-
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flection of this relation, to the extent that
a will which aims at the
shaping of society as a whole is already consciously operative in the construction of the theory and
practice which will lead to it.
Despite all the discipline, justified by the need to win through, the community of those engaged in
the struggle experiences something
of the freedom and spontaneity which will mark the future. Where the unity of discipline and
freedom has disappeared, the movement becomes a matter of interest only to its
own bureaucracy, a play that already belongs to the repertory of modern history.
That the future
being striven for should be a vital reality even in the present proves nothing, however. The
conceptual systems of classificatory understanding, the
categories into which dead and
living things, social, psychological, and physical phenomena have all been absorbed together, the division
of objects and of judgments on them into the various pigeonholes of
the special areas of knowledge—all this makes up the apparatus
of thought as it has proved and refined itself in connection with the
real work process. This world of concepts makes up the consciousness of most men, and it has a basis to which its proponents can appeal. The concerns of critical
thought, too, are those of most men,
but they are not recognized to be such. The concepts which emerge under its influence are critical of the
present. The Marxist categories of class, exploitation, surplus value, profit, pauperization, and breakdown
are elements in a conceptual whole,
and the meaning of this whole is to be sought
not in the preservation of contemporary society but in its transformation into the right kind of society.
Consequently, although critical theory at no point proceeds arbitrarily and in chance fashion, it appears, to prevailing modes
of thought, to be subjective and speculative, one-sided and useless. Since it
runs counter to prevailing habits of thought, which contribute to the persistence of the past and carry on the business
of an outdated order of things (both past and outdated order guaranteeing a faction-ridden world), it appears to be biased and
unjust.
Above all, however,
critical theory has no material accom-
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plishments to show for itself. The change
which it seeks to bring about is
not effected gradually, so that success even if slow might be steady. The growth in numbers of more or less
clear-minded disciples, the influence of some among them on governments, the power position of parties which
have a positive attitude towards this theory or
at least do not outlaw it—all these are among the
vicissitudes encountered in the struggle for a higher stage of man's life in community and are not found at the beginnings of the struggle. Such successes as
these may even prove, later on, to
have been only apparent victories and really blunders. Again: fertilization in
agriculture, for example, or the application of a medical therapy may be far
removed from ideal reality and yet
accomplish something. Perhaps the theories underlying such technology may have to be refined, revised, or abolished in connection with specialized activity
and with discoveries in other
areas. Through such techniques, nonetheless, a certain amount of labor is saved in achieving results, and many an illness is healed or alleviated.18
But the first consequence of the
theory which urges a transformation of society as a whole is only an
intensification of the struggle with which the theory is connected.
Furthermore, although material improvements,
originating in the increased powers of resistance of
certain groups, are indirectly due to the
critical theory, the groups in question are not sectors of society whose steady spread would finally bring the new society to pass. Such ideas mistake the
fundamental difference between a
fragmented society in which material and ideological power operates to maintain privileges and an association of free men in which each has the same
possibility of self-development. Such
an association is not an abstract Utopia, for the possibility in question can
be shown to be real even at the present
stage of productive forces. But how many tendencies will actually lead to this
association, how many transitional phases have been reached, how
desirable and intrinsically val-
16. The same is true of insights in the areas
of political economy and financial
technology, and their use in economic policy.
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uabie individual preliminary stages may be,
and what their historical
importance is in relation to the idea—all this will be made clear only when the
idea is brought to realization.
One thing which this way of thinking has in
common with fantasy is that an image of the future which springs indeed from a
deep understanding of the present determines men's thoughts and actions even in
periods when the course of events seems to be leading far away from such a future and seems to
justify every reaction except belief in fulfillment.
It is not the arbitrariness
and supposed independence of fantasy that is the common bond here, but its obstinacy. Within the most
advanced group it is the
theoretician who must have this obstinacy. The theoretician of the ruling class, perhaps after difficult
beginnings, may reach a relatively
assured position, but, on the other hand, the theoretician is also at times an enemy and criminal, at
times a solitary Utopian; even after his death the question of what he really was is not decided. The historical
significance of his work is not self-evident; it rather depends on men speaking
and acting in such a way as to justify it. It is not a finished and fixed historical
creation.
The capacity for
such acts of thought as are required in everyday action, social or scientific, has been developed
in men by a realistic training over many centuries. Failure here leads to affliction, failure, and punishment. The
intellectual modality to which
we refer consists essentially in this, that the conditions for bringing about
an effect which has always appeared in the same circumstances before are known and in the appropriate
context are supplied. There is an object-lesson kind
of instruction through good and
bad experiences and through organized experiment.
The issue here is direct individual self-preservation, and in bourgeois society men have the opportunity of developing a
sense of this. Knowledge in this traditional sense, including every type of experience, is preserved in
critical theory and practice. 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
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pudding is in the eating, the eating here is
still in the future. Comparison
with similar historical events can be drawn only in a limited degree.
Constructive
thinking, then, plays a more important role than empirical verification in this theory as a whole, in
comparison with what goes on in the activity of common sense. This is one of the reasons why men who in particular
scientific areas or in other professional activity are able to do extremely
competent work, can show themselves quite limited and incompetent, despite good will, when it comes to questions concerning society as a whole. In all past periods when social change
was on the agenda, people who thought
"too much" were regarded as dangerous.
This brings us to the problem of the general relation of the intelligentsia to society.
The theoretician
whose business it is to hasten developments which will lead to a society without injustice can find
himself in opposition to views prevailing even among the
proletariat, as we said above. If
such a conflict were not possible, there would be no need of a theory; those who need it would come
upon it without help. The conflict does not
necessarily have anything to do with the class to
which the theoretician belongs; nor does it
depend on the kind of income he has. Engels was a businessman. In professional sociology, which derives its
concept of class not from a critique
of the economy but from its own observations,
the theoretician's social position is determined neither by the source of his income nor by the concrete content of his theory but by the formal element of
education. The possibility of a
wider vision, not the kind possessed by industrial magnates who know the world market and direct
whole states from behind the scenes,
but the kind possessed by university professors, middle-level civil servants,
doctors, lawyers, and so forth, is what constitutes the
"intelligentsia," that is, a special social or even suprasocial stratum.
It is the task of
the critical theoretician to reduce the tension between his own insight and oppressed humanity in whose service he thinks. But in the sociological
concept of which we
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speak detachment from all classes is an
essential mark of the intelligentsia,
a sort of sign of superiority of which it is proud.17 Such a neutral category corresponds to the
abstract self-awareness typical of the savant. To the bourgeois consumer under
liberalism knowledge meant knowledge that was
useful in some circumstances or
other, no matter what kind of knowledge might be in question; the sociology we speak of
approaches knowledge in the same way at the theoretical
level. Marx and Mises, Lenin and Liefmann, Jaures and
Jevons all come under the same sociological
heading, unless the politicians are left out of the list and put down as potential students of the political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers who are
the real men of knowledge. From them
the politician is to learn to use "such and such a means" when
he takes "such and such a stand"; he must learn whether the practical position he adopts can be implemented
with logical consistency.18 A division of labor is established between men who in social conflicts
affect the course of history and the
social theoreticians who assign them their standpoint.
Critical theory is
in contradiction to the formalistic concept of mind which underlies such an
idea of the intelligentsia. According
to this concept there is only one truth, and the positive attributes of honesty, internal consistency,
reasonableness, and striving for peace, freedom, and happiness may not be attributed in the same sense to any other
theory and practice. There
is likewise no theory of society, even that of the sociologists concerned with general laws, that does
not contain political motivations, and the truth of these must be decided not
in supposedly neutral reflection but in personal thought and action, in concrete historical activity. Now, it is
disconcerting that the intellectual
should represent himself in this way, as though a difficult labor of thought, which he alone could
accomplish,
17. The author is referring, here and in the
following paragraphs, to
Karl Mannheim's theory, in his sociology of knowledge, of the specific
condition and outlook of the intelligentsia in the bourgeois era.
Karl Mannheim's theory, in his sociology of knowledge, of the specific
condition and outlook of the intelligentsia in the bourgeois era.
18.
Max
Weber, "Science as a Vocation," in From Max Weber: Es
says in Sociology, tr. and ed. by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 151.
says in Sociology, tr. and ed. by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 151.
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were the prime requirement if men were
accurately to choose between revolutionary, liberal, and fascist ends and
means. The situation has not been like that for many decades. The avant-garde in the political struggle need prudence,
but not academic instruction on their so-called standpoint. Especially
at a time when the forces of freedom in
Europe are themselves disoriented and
seeking to regroup themselves anew, when everything depends on nuances of position within their own
movement, when indifference to
substantive content, created by defeat, despair, and corrupt bureaucracy, threatens to overwhelm all the spontaneity, experience, and knowledge of the masses
despite the heroic efforts of a few,
a conception of the intelligentsia which claims to transcend party lines and is therefore abstract represents a view of problems that only hides the
decisive questions. Mind is liberal.
It tolerates no external coercion, no revamping of its results to suit the will of one or other power. But on the other hand it is not cut loose from the life
of society; it does not hang
suspended over it. In so far as mind seeks autonomy or man's control over his own life no less than
over nature, it is able to recognize this same tendency as a force
operative in history. Considered in
isolation, the recognition of such a tendency seems neutral; but just as mind is unable to recognize it without having first been stimulated and become
concerned, neither can it make such
recognition a generally accepted fact without
a struggle. To that extent, mind is not liberal. Intellectual efforts which arise here and there without
any conscious connection with a
particular practical commitment but vary according to different academic or other tasks that promise success,
intellectual efforts which take now this, now that for their field of concentration, may be useful in the service of one or other historical tendency. But for all their
formal correctness (and what theoretical
structure, however radically faulted, cannot fulfill the requirements of formal
correctness?), they can also hinder
and lead astray the development of the mind. The abstract sociological concept
of an intelligentsia which is to
have missionary functions is, by its structure, an hypostatiza-tion of specialized science. Critical theory is
neither "deeply
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rooted" like totalitarian propaganda nor
"detached" like the liberalist
intelligentsia.
Our consideration
of the various functions of traditional and critical theory brings to light the difference in their
logical structure. The primary propositions of
traditional theory define universal
concepts under which all facts in the field in question are to be subsumed; for example, the concept
of a physical process in physics or an organic process in
biology. In between primary propositions and facts there is
the hierarchy of genera and species with
their relations of subordination. Facts are individual cases, examples, or embodiments of classes. There are no differences due to time between the unities in
the system. Electricity does not
exist prior to an electrical field, nor a field prior to electricity, any more than wolf as such exists before or after
particular wolves. As far as an individual knower is concerned there may be one or other temporal sequence
among such relationships, but no such
sequence exists in the objects themselves.
Furthermore,
physics has also ceased to regard more general characteristics
as causes or forces hidden in the concrete facts and to hypostatize these logical relationships; it is only sociology that is still unclear on this point. If new
classes are added to the system or
other changes are introduced, this is not usually regarded as proof that the determinations made
earlier are necessarily too rigid and must turn out to be inadequate,
for the relationship to the object or even
the object itself may change without
losing its identity. Changes are taken rather as an indication that our earlier knowledge was deficient
or as a substitution of some
aspects of an object for others, as a map, for example, may become dated because forests have been cut down, new cities built, or different borders
drawn. In discursive logic, or logic
of the understanding, the evolution of living beings is conceived in the same way. This person is now a child, then an adult; for such logic this can only mean
that there is an abiding stable
nucleus, "this person," who successively possesses the attributes of being a child and an adult. For
positivism, of course, there is
simply no identity: first there is a child, Jater
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there is an adult, and the two are simply
distinct complexes of facts. But this view cannot
come to grips with the fact that a person
changes and yet is identical with himself.
The critical theory
of society also begins with abstract determinations; in dealing with the present era it begins
with the characterization of an economy based on
exchange.19 The concepts
Marx uses, such as commodity, value, and money, can function as genera when,
for example, concrete social relations are judged to be relations of exchange
and when there is question
of the commodity character of goods. But the theory is not satisfied to relate concepts of reality by
way of hypotheses. The theory
begins with an outline of the mechanism by which bourgeois society, after dismantling feudal regulations,
the guild system, and vassalage, did not immediately fall apart under the pressure of its own anarchic principle but
managed to survive. The regulatory
effects of exchange are brought out on which bourgeois economy is founded. The conception of the
interaction of society and nature, which is already exercising its influence here, as well as the idea of a unified
period of society, of its
self-preservation, and so on, spring from a radical analysis, guided by concern for the future, of the
historical process. The relation of
the primary conceptual interconnections to the world of facts is not essentially a relation of classes to instances. It is because of its inner dynamism that the
exchange relationship, which the
theory outlines, dominates social reality, as, for example, the assimilation of food largely
dominates the organic life of plant
and brute beast.
In critical theory,
as in traditional theory, more specific elements must be introduced in order to move from
fundamental structure to concrete reality. But such an intercalation of more
detailed factors—for example the existence of large money reserves,
the diffusion of these in sectors of society that are still precapitalist, foreign
trade—is not accomplished by simple deduction
as in theory that has been simplified for specialized
19. On the logical structure of the critique
of political economy, cf. the
essay "Zum Problem der Wahrheit," in Horkheimer, Kritische Theorie, vol. I (Frankfurt, 1968), p. 265ff.
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use. Instead, every step rests on knowledge
of man and nature which is stored up
in the sciences and in historical experience. This is obvious, of course, for
the theory of industrial technology. But in other areas too
a detailed knowledge of how men react is
applied throughout the doctrinal developments to which we have been referring. For example, the
statement that under certain conditions the lowest strata of society
have the most children plays an important
role in explaining how the bourgeois
society built on exchange necessarily leads to capitalism with its army of industrial reserves and its
crises. To give the psychological reasons behind the observed fact about the
lower classes is left to traditional
science.
Thus the critical theory of society begins
with the idea of the simple
exchange of commodities and defines the idea with the help of relatively universal concepts. It then moves
further, using all knowledge available and taking
suitable material from the
research of others as well as from specialized research. Without denying its own principles as
established by the special discipline
of political economy, the theory shows how an exchange economy, given the condition of men (which, of
course, changes under the very influence of such an economy), must necessarily lead to a heightening of those
social tensions which in the
present historical era lead in turn to wars and revolutions.
The necessity just
mentioned, as well as the abstractness of the concepts, are both like and unlike the same phenomena
in traditional theory. In both types of theory
there is a strict deduction if
the claim of validity for general definitions is shown to include a claim that certain factual relations will occur. For
example, if you are dealing with electricity, such and such an event must occur
because such and such characteristics belong to
the very concept of electricity. To the extent that the critical theory of society deduces present conditions from
the concept of simple exchange, it includes this kind of necessity, although it
is relatively unimportant that the
hypothetical form of statement be used. That is, the stress is not on
the idea that wherever a society based on
simple exchange prevails, capitalism must develop—although this is true. The stress is rather on the fact
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that the existent capitalist society, which
has spread all over the world
from Europe and for which the theory is declared valid, derives from the basic relation of exchange.
Even the classifica-tory judgments of specialized science have a fundamentally hypothetical character, and existential
judgments are allowed, if at
all, only in certain areas, namely the descriptive and practical parts of the discipline.20 But
the critical theory of society is, in its
totality, the unfolding of a single existential judgment. To put it in broad terms, the theory says that the
basic form of the historically given
commodity economy on which modern history rests contains in itself the internal and external
tensions of the modern era; it generates these tensions
over and over again in an increasingly
heightened form; and after a period of progress, development of human powers, and emancipation for the individual, after an enormous extension of human
control over nature, it finally hinders further development and drives
humanity into a new barbarism.
The individual steps within the theory are,
at least in intention, as rigorous as the deductions in a
specialized scientific theory; each is an
element in the building up of that comprehensive existential judgment.
Particular parts of the theory can be
changed into general or specific hypothetical judgments and applied after the fashion of traditional theory;
for example, the idea that increasing
productivity usually devalues capital. In many areas of the theory there thus arise propositions the relation
of which to reality is difficult to determine. From the fact that the representation of a unified object is true as a whole, it is possible to conclude only under
special conditions the extent to which
isolated parts of the representation can validly be applied, in their isolation, to isolated parts of the
20. There are connections between the forms
of judgment and the historical periods. A brief indication will show what is
meant. The classificatory judgment is typical of
prebourgeois society: this is the way it is, and man can do nothing about it.
The hypothetical and disjunctive forms
belong especially to the bourgeois world: under certain circumstances this effect can take place; it is
either thus or so. Critical theory maintains:
it need not be so; man can change reality, and the necessary conditions for such change already exist.
227
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THEORY
object. The problem that arises as soon as
particular propositions of the critical theory are applied to unique or
recurring events in contemporary society has to do not with the truth of the theory but with how suitable the theory is
for traditional kinds of
intellectual operation with progressively extended goals. The special sciences, and especially
contemporary political economics,
are unable to derive practical profit from the fragmentary questions they
discuss. But this incapacity is due neither to these sciences nor to critical theory alone, but to
their specific role in relation to reality.
Even the critical theory, which stands in
opposition to other theories, derives its
statements about real relationships from basic universal concepts, as we have indicated, and
therefore presents the relationships as necessary. Thus both kinds of theoretical structure are alike when it comes to
logical necessity. But there is a
difference as soon as we turn from logical to real necessity, the necessity involved in factual sequences. The biologist's statement that internal processes cause
a plant to wither or that certain
processes in the human organism lead to its destruction leaves untouched the question whether any influences can alter the character of these processes
or change them totally. Even when an
illness is said to be curable, the fact
that the necessary curative measures are actually taken is regarded as purely extrinsic to the curability, a
matter of technology and therefore
nonessential as far as the theory as such is concerned. The necessity which rules society can be regarded as biological in the sense described, and the
unique character of critical theory
can therefore be called in question on the grounds that in biology as in other natural sciences
particular sequences of events can be
theoretically constructed just as they are in the critical theory of
society. The development of society, in this view,
would simply be a particular series of events, for the presentation of which conclusions from various
other areas of research are used, just
as a doctor in the course of an illness or a geologist dealing with the earth's prehistory has to apply various other disciplines. Society here would be
the individual
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AND CRITICAL THEORY
reality which is evaluated on the basis of
theories in the special sciences.
However many valid analogies there may be
between these different intellectual endeavors, there is nonetheless a decisive
difference when it comes to the relation of
subject and object and therefore to the necessity of the
event being judged. The object with which
the scientific specialist deals is not affected at all by his own theory. Subject and object are kept strictly apart. Even if it turns out that at a later point
in time the objective event is
influenced by human intervention, to science this is just another fact. The objective occurrence is
independent of the theory, and this independence is part of its necessity: the observer as such can effect no change in the
object. A consciously critical
attitude, however, is part of the development of society: the construing of the
course of history as the necessary product
of an economic mechanism simultaneously contains both a protest against this order of things, a protest generated by
the order itself, and the idea of self-determination for the human race, that is the idea of a state of
affairs in which man's actions no longer flow from a mechanism but from
his own decision. The judgment passed on the
necessity inherent in the previous course of events implies here a
struggle to change it from a blind to a
meaningful necessity. If we think of the object of the theory in separation from the theory, we falsify it and fall into quietism or conformism. Every part of
the theory presupposes the critique
of the existing order and the struggle against it along lines determined
by the theory itself.
The theoreticians
of knowledge who started with physics had reason, even if they were not wholly
right, to condemn the confusion
of cause and operation of forces and to substitute the idea of condition or function for the idea of
cause. For the kind of thinking
which simply registers facts there are always only series of phenomena, never forces and counterforces;
but this, of course, says something about this kind of
thinking, not about nature. If such a
method is applied to society, the result is statistics and descriptive sociology, and these can be
important for many purposes, even for critical theory.
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THEORY
For traditional science either everything is
necessary or nothing is necessary,
according as necessity means the independence of event from observer or the possibility of absolutely
certain prediction. But to the extent that the
subject does not totally isolate himself, even as thinker, from the social
struggles of which he is a part and to the extent that he
does not think of knowledge and action as distinct concepts, necessity acquires
another meaning for him. If he encounters
necessity which is not mastered by man,
it takes shape either as that realm of nature which despite the far-reaching conquests still to
come will never wholly vanish, or as the weakness
of the society of previous ages in carrying on the struggle with nature in a
consciously and purposefully organized way. Here
we do have forces and counterforces. Both elements in this concept of necessity—the power of nature and the weakness of society— are interconnected and are based on the
experienced effort of man to
emancipate himself from coercion by nature and from those forms of social life and of the juridical,
political, and cultural orders which
have become a straitjacket for him. The struggle on two fronts, against nature and against society's weakness, is part of the effective striving for a
future condition of things in which
whatever man wills is also necessary and in which the necessity of the object
becomes the necessity of a rationally
mastered event.
The application, even
the understanding, of these and other concepts
in the critical mode of thought, demand activity and effort, an exercise of will power, in the knowing
subject. The effort may be made, of course, to supply
for a deficient understanding of
these ideas and of how they are linked together, simply by greater attention to their logical
implications and the elaboration of apparently more exact
definitions, even of a "unified
language," but the effort cannot succeed. The issue is not simply one of misunderstanding but of a
real opposition of outlooks. The concept of necessity in the critical theory is itself a critical concept; it presupposes
freedom, even if a not yet existent
freedom. But the idea of freedom as a purely interior reality which is always there even when men are en-
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slaved is typical of the idealist mentality. The tendency immanent
in this not wholly false but surely distorted conception of freedom was most clearly expressed by the young
Fichte: "I am now fully
convinced that the human will is free and that the purpose of our existence is not to be happy but only to deserve happiness."21 Here we see
the real identity underlying fundamental metaphysical polarities and schools.
The claim that events are absolutely necessary means in the last
analysis the same thing as the claim to be
really free here and now: resignation
in practice.
The inability to
grasp in thought the unity of theory and practice and the limitation of the
concept of necessity to inevitable events are both due, from the viewpoint of
theory of knowledge, to the
Cartesian dualism of thought and being. That dualism is congenial both to nature and to bourgeois society in
so far as the latter resembles a natural mechanism. The idea of a theory which becomes a genuine force,
consisting in the self-awareness
of the subjects of a great historical revolution, is beyond the grasp of a mentality typified by such a
dualism. If scholars do not merely think about such a
dualism but really take it seriously,
they cannot act independently. In keeping with their own way of thinking, they can put into practice
only what the closed causal system of reality
determines them to do, or they
count only as individual units in a statistic for which the individual unit really has no significance.
As rational beings they are
helpless and isolated. The realization that such a state of affairs exists is indeed a step towards
changing it, but unfortunately the situation enters bourgeois awareness only
in a metaphysical, ahistorical shape. In the form
of a faith in the unchangeableness of
the social structure it dominates the present. Reflecting on themselves men see themselves only as
onlookers, passive participants in a mighty
process which may be foreseen but not
modified. Necessity for them refers not to events which man masters to his own purposes but only to events which he anticipates as probable. Where
the intercon-
21. Fichte, Briejwechsel,
ed. by H. Schulz, volume 1 (Leipzig, 1925), p. 127.
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CRITICAL THEORY
nection of willing and thinking, thought and action is admitted as
in many sectors of the most recent sociology, it is seen only as adding to that objective complexity which the
observer must take into account. The
thinker must relate all the theories which are proposed to the practical
attitudes and social strata which they reflect. But he removes himself from the
affair; he has no concern except—science.
The hostility to
theory as such which prevails in contemporary public life is really directed against the
transformative activity associated
with critical thinking. Opposition starts as soon as theorists fail to limit themselves to verification and
classification by means of
categories which are as neutral as possible, that is, categories which are indispensable to inherited ways
of life. Among the vast majority of the ruled there is the unconscious fear that theoretical thinking might show their
painfully won adaptation to reality
to be perverse and unnecessary. Those who profit from the status quo entertain a general suspicion of any intellectual
independence. The tendency to conceive theory as the opposite of a positive outlook is so strong that even the inoffensive traditional type of theory suffers from
it at times. Since the most advanced
form of thought at present is the critical theory of society and every consistent intellectual movement that cares about man converges upon it by its own
inner logic, theory in general falls
into disrepute. Every other kind of scientific statement which does not offer
a deposit of facts in the most
familiar categories and, if possible, in the most neutral form, the mathematical, is already accused of
being theoretical.
This positivist
attitude need not be simply hostile to progress. Although in the intensified class conflicts of recent
decades rulers have had to rely increasingly on the real apparatus of power, ideology is nonetheless still a fairly
important cohesive force for holding together a social
structure threatened with collapse. In the
determination to look at facts alone and to surrender every kind of illusion there still lurks, even today, something like a reaction against the alliance of
metaphysics and oppression.
It would be a
mistake, however, not to see the essential
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distinction between the empiricist
Enlightenment of the eighteenth
century and that of today. In the eighteenth century a new society had already
been developed within the framework of the old. The task now was to free an already existent bourgeois
economy from its feudal limitations and to
let it operate freely. Bourgeois scientific
thought, too, needed, fundamentally, only to shake off the old dogmatic chains
in order to progress along a path it had
already mapped out. Today, on the contrary, in the transition from the present form of society to a future one mankind
will for the first time be a conscious subject and actively determine its own way of life. There is still need of a conscious reconstruction of economic
relationships. Indiscriminate hostility to theory, therefore, is a hindrance
today. Unless there is continued theoretical effort, in the interest of
a rationally organized future society, to shed critical light on present-day society and to interpret it in the light of
traditional theories elaborated in the
special sciences, the ground is taken from under the hope of radically improving human existence. The demand therefore for a positive outlook and for
acceptance of a subordinate position
threatens, even in progressive sectors of society, to overwhelm any openness to
theory. The issue, however, is not
simply the theory of emancipation; it is the practice of it as well.
The individual
parts of a theory which attempts to deduce the complicated reality of liberal capitalism and ultimately
of the capitalism of the huge combines from the
model of a simple commodity economy
cannot be as indifferent to the time-element
as the steps in a deductive system of classification are. Within the hierarchic systems of organisms,
the digestive function, so important for men too, finds
its pure expression, as it were, in the class of the Aschelminthes. Similarly
there are historical forms of society which show, at least approximately, a simple commodity economy. As we indicated above,
the conceptual development is, if
not parallel, at least in verifiable relation
to the historical development. But the essential related-ness of theory to time does not reside in the
correspondence between individual
parts of the conceptual construction and
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successive periods of history; that is a
view on which Hegel's Phenomenology
oj Mind and Logic and Marx's Capital, examples of the same method, are in agreement.
It consists rather in the continuous
alteration of the theoretician's existential judgment on society, for this judgment is conditioned by
its conscious relation to the historical practice of society.
This kind of alteration has nothing to do
with the principle by which
modern metaphysics and philosophy of religion have rejected every consistently developed theoretical
structure: any specific
theoretical content must be constantly and "radically questioned," and the thinker must be
constantly beginning anew. Critical theory does not
have one doctrinal substance today, another tomorrow. The changes in it do not
mean a shift to a wholly new outlook, as
long as the age itself does not radically change. The stability of the theory is due to the fact that amid all change in society the basic economic
structure, the class relationship in
its simplest form, and therefore the idea of the supersression of these two
remain identical. The decisive substantive
elements in the theory are conditioned by these unchanging factors and they
themselves therefore cannot change until
there has been a historical transformation of society. On the other hand,
however, history does not stand still until such a point of transformation has been reached. The historical development of the conflicts in which the critical
theory is involved leads to a
reassignment of degrees of relative importance to individual elements of the theory, forces further
concretizations, and determines which results of specialized science are to be significant for critical theory and practice at
any given time.
In order to explain more fully what is meant,
we shall use the concept of the social class which
disposes of the means of production.
In the liberalist period economic predominance was in
great measure connected with legal ownership of the means of production. The large class of private property
owners exercised leadership in the
society, and the whole culture of the age bears the impress of this fact. Industry was still broken up into a large number of independent enterprises which
were small by modern standards. The
directors of factories, as was suitable for
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this stage of technological development, were
either one or more of the owners or their direct appointees. Once, however, the
development of technology in the last century
had led to a rapidly increasing concentration and centralization of capital, the legal owners were largely excluded from the
management of the huge combines which
absorbed their small factories, and
management became something quite distinct from ownership before the law.
Industrial magnates, the leaders of the economy,
came into being.
In many cases these managers were initially
the major owners of the concerns. Today, however, such ownership has become unimportant, and there are now some
powerful managers who dominate whole
sectors of industry while owning a steadily decreasing part of the businesses they direct. This
economic process brings with it a change in the way the
political and legal apparatus functions, as well as in
ideologies. Without the juridical definition of ownership being changed at all,
owners become increasingly powerless before the directors and their staffs. In a lawsuit which owners might bring
against managers in the course of a
difference of views, the managers' direct control of the means which these huge enterprises have at their disposal gives them such an advantage that a
victory of their opponents is for the most part hardly possible. The influence
of management, which may initially
be exercised only over lower judicial and administrative authorities,
finally extends to the higher ones and
ultimately to the State and its power apparatus.
Once the legal
owners are cut off from the real productive process
and lose their influence, their horizon narrows; they become increasingly unfitted for important social positions, and finally the share which they still have in
industry due to ownership and which
they have done nothing to augment comes to seem socially useless and morally dubious. These and other changes are accompanied by the rise of ideologies
centering on the great personality
and the distinction between productive and parasitic capitalists. The idea of a right with a fixed content and independent of society at large loses its
importance. The very same sector of
society which brutally maintains its private
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power to dispose of the means of production (and this power is at the heart of the prevailing social order)
sponsors political doctrines which
claim that unproductive property and parasitic incomes must disappear. The circle of really powerful men grows narrower, but the possibility increases of
deliberately constructing ideologies,
of establishing a double standard of truth
(knowledge for insiders, a cooked-up story for the people), and of cynicism about truth and thought
generally. The end result of the
process is a society dominated no longer by independent owners but by cliques of industrial and political leaders.
Such changes do not
leave the structure of the critical theory untouched.
It does not indeed fall victim to the illusion that property and profit no
longer play a key role, an illusion carefully
fostered in the social sciences. On the one hand, even earlier it had regarded juridical relations not as
the substance but as the surface of what was really going on in society. It
knows that the disposition of men and things remains in the hands of a particular social group which is in
competition with other economic
power groups, less so at home but all the more fiercely at the international level. Profit continues to come from the same social sources and must in the last
analysis be increased by the same
means as before. On the other hand, in the judgment of the critical theorist the loss of all rights
with a determined content, a loss conditioned by the concentration of
economic power and given its fullest form in
the authoritarian state, has brought
with it the disappearance not only of an ideology but also of a cultural factor which has a positive
value and not simply a negative one.
When the theory
takes into account these changes in the inner
structure of the entrepreneurial class, it is led to differentiate others of its concepts as well. The
dependence of culture on social
relationships must change as the latter change, even in details, if society indeed be a single whole.
Even in the liberalist period political and moral interpretations of
individuals could be derived from their
economic situation. Admiration for
nobility of character, fidelity to one's word, independence of
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judgment, and so forth, are traits of a
society of relatively independent economic subjects who enter into contractual
relationships with each other. But this cultural
dependence was in good measure psychologically mediated, and morality itself
acquired a kind of stability because of its function in the individual. (The truth that dependence on the
economy thoroughly pervaded even this
morality was brought home when in the recent
threat to the economic position of the liberalist bourgeoisie the attitude of freedom and independence began to
disintegrate.) Under the conditions of
monopolistic capitalism, however,
even such a relative individual independence is a thing of the past. The individual no longer has any ideas
of his own. The content of mass belief, in which no
one really believes, is an immediate product of the ruling economic and
political bureaucracies, and its disciples secretly
follow their own atomistic
and therefore untrue interests; they act as mere functions of the economic machine.
The concept of the dependence of the cultural
on the economic has thus changed. With the destruction
of the classically typical individual,
the concept has as it were become more materialistic, in the popular sense of the term, than
before. The explanation of social phenomena has become
simpler yet also more complicated. Simpler, because
economic factors more directly and
consciously determine men and because the solidity and relative capacity for resistance of the
cultural spheres are disappearing.
More complicated, because the economic dynamism which has been set in motion and in relation to which most individuals have been reduced to simple means,
quickly brings ever new visions and
portents. Even advanced sectors of society are discouraged and gripped
by the general sense of helplessness.
The permanency of truth, too, is connected
with the constellations of reality. In the eighteenth
century truth had on its side a bourgeoisie
that was already economically developed. But under the conditions of later capitalism and the impotence of the
workers before the authoritarian state's apparatus of oppression, truth has sought refuge among small
groups of ad-
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mirable men. But these have been decimated
by terrorism and have little time
for refining the theory. Charlatans profit by this situation and the general
intellectual level of the great masses is rapidly declining.
What has been said
is intended to show that the continuous change of social relationships, due immediately to
economic developments and finding its most direct expression in the formation of the ruling class, does not affect
only some areas of the culture. It
also affects the way in which the culture depends on
the economy and, thus, the key ideas in the whole conception. This influence of social development on the
structure of the theory is part of
the theory's doctrinal content. Thus new contents are not just mechanically added to already existent parts. Since the theory is a unified whole which
has its proper meaning only in
relation to the contemporary situation, the theory as a whole is caught
up in an evolution. The evolution does not change the theory's foundations, of
course, any more than recent changes
essentially alter the object which the theory reflects, namely contemporary
society. Yet even the apparently more remote concepts of the theory are
drawn into the evolution. The logical
difficulties which understanding meets in every thought that attempts to reflect a living totality are due chiefly to this fact.
If we take individual concepts and judgments
out of their context in the theory and compare them with concepts and judgments from an earlier version of the theory,
contradictions arise. This is true
whether we think of the historical developmental stages through which the theory passes or of the logical steps within the theory itself. Amid all the
abiding identity of the concepts of
enterprise and entrepreneur there is nonetheless distinction, according as the concepts are taken from the presentation of
the early form of bourgeois economy or from the presentation of developed capitalism, and according as they are taken from the nineteenth-century critique of
political economy which has the liberalist manufacturer in view or from the twentieth-century critique which envisages the
monopolist. The
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representation of the entrepreneur, like the entrepreneur himself, passes through an evolution.
The contradictions which arise when parts of
the theory are taken as independent entities are thus not due to errors or to a
neglect of clear definitions. They are due to
the fact that the theory has a
historically changing object which, however, remains identical amid all the changes. The theory is not
a storehouse of hypotheses on the course of
particular events in society.
It constructs a developing picture of society as a whole, an existential judgment with a historical
dimension. What the bourgeois
entrepreneur or even the bourgeois man as such was (the fact, for example, that his character showed not only
rationalist traits but also an element of
that irrationalism which presently
prevails in middle-class mass movements) depends on the original economic situation of the bourgeoisie.
The basic concepts of the theory capture this reality.
But those economic origins manifest themselves so clearly
only in the conflicts of the present day. The
reason for this is not that the bourgeois is understanding change at the present time but that in connection with present-day change the interests and
attention of the theoretician lead
him to accentuate new aspects of this object.
It may be of
systematic interest and not entirely useless to classify and juxtapose the various kinds of dependency,
commodity, class, entrepreneur, and so forth,
as they occur in the logical
and historical phases of the theory. But the sense of these concepts ultimately becomes clear only when
we grasp the whole conceptual structure
with its demands for adaptation to ever new situations. Consequently such systems of classes and
subclasses, of definitions and specifications
of concepts, which are extracted
from the critical theory do not have even the value of the conceptual inventories found in other specialized
science, for the latter are at least applied in the relatively uniform practice
of daily life. To transform the critical
theory of society into a sociology
is, on the whole, an undertaking beset with serious difficulties.
The question we
have been touching on, concerning the rela-
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tion between thought and time, has, it must
be admitted, a special difficulty
connected with it. The objection is urged that it is impossible to speak in any
strict sense of changes in a theory properly
so called. The claim that such changes occur presupposes rather a theory that only glosses over the
difficulty. No one can turn himself into a different
subject than what he is at this historical
moment. To speak of the constancy or change-ableness of truth is strictly meaningful only in a polemical context. That is, one would be opposing the idea
of an absolute, suprahistorical
subject or the possibility of exchanging subjects, as though a person could remove himself from his
present historical juncture and
truly insert himself into any other he wished.
How far this last
is in fact possible or impossible is not our concern here. In any event the
critical theory is indeed incompatible with the idealist belief that any
theory is independent of men and
even has a growth of its own. Documents have a history
but a theory does not have its vicissitudes. The claim, then, that certain elements have been added to it and that it must adapt itself to new situations in the future
without changing its essential
content is rather an integral part of the theory as it exists today and
seeks to affect practice. Those who have the
theory in their heads have it there in its totality and act according to that totality. The continuous progress
of a truth that is independent of
the thinking subject or a trust in the advance of science can refer in the proper and strict sense only to that function of knowledge which will continue to
be necessary even in a future
society, namely the mastering of nature. This knowledge, too, admittedly belongs to the existent social totality. Here, however, the presupposition of
claims that this knowledge lasts or
changes, namely the continuance of economic
production and reproduction in familiar forms, really has, in a certain way, the same meaning as the claim
that the subjects of knowledge are interchangeable. The fact that class society
is divided does not render illusory,
in this context, the equivalence of human subjects. Knowledge in this instance
is itself a thing which one generation
passes on to another; to the extent that
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men must live, they need it. In this
respect, too, then, the traditional
scientist can be reassured.
The idea of a
transformed society, however, does not have the advantage of widespread acceptance, as long as the idea has
not yet had its real possibility tested. To
strive for a state of affairs
in which there will be no exploitation or oppression, in which an all-embracing subject, namely
self-aware mankind, exists, and in
which it is possible to speak of a unified theoretical creation and a thinking that transcends individuals—to
strive for
all this is not yet to bring it to pass. The transmission of the
critical theory in its strictest possible form is, of course, a condition of
its historical success. But the transmission will not take place via solidly
established practice and fixed ways of acting but via concern for
social transformation. Such a concern will necessarily be aroused ever anew by prevailing injustice, but it must be shaped and guided by the theory
itself and in turn react upon the
theory.
The circle of
transmitters of this tradition is neither limited nor renewed by organic or
sociological laws. It is constituted and maintained not by
biological or testamentary inheritance, but
by a knowledge which brings its own obligations with it. And even this
knowledge guarantees only a contemporary, not a future community of transmitters. The theory may be stamped with the approval of every logical criterion, but
to the end of the age it will lack the seal of approval which victory
brings. Until then, too, the struggle will continue to grasp it aright and to apply it. A version of it which has the
propaganda apparatus and a majority on its side is not therefore the better
one. In the general historical
upheaval the truth may reside with numerically small groups of men. History
teaches us that such groups, hardly noticed
even by those opposed to the status quo, outlawed but imperturbable, may at the
decisive moment become the leaders because of their deeper insight.
Today, when the
whole weight of the existing state of affairs is pushing mankind towards the surrender of all culture
and relapse into darkest barbarism, the circle
of solidarity is narrow enough.
The opponents, the masters of this age of decline,
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possess indeed neither fidelity nor
solidarity. Such concepts, on the contrary, are elements of the right theory
and practice. Cut loose from such
theory and practice, these concepts change their meaning
as do all parts of a living whole. It is true, of course, that in a gang of thieves, for example, positive
traits of human community can make
their appearance, but this very possibility
points to a deficiency in the larger community within which the gang exists. In an unjust society
criminals are not necessarily inferior as human beings, whereas in a
fully just society they would be unhuman.
Only in a context can particular
judgments about what is human acquire their correct meaning.
There are no general criteria for judging the
critical theory as a whole, for it is always based on the recurrence of events
and thus on a self-reproducing totality. Nor is there a social class by whose
acceptance of the theory one could be guided. It is possible for the consciousness of every social
stratum today to be limited and corrupted by ideology,
however much, for its circumstances,
it may be bent on truth. For all its insight into the individual steps in social change and for all the
agreement of its elements with the most advanced
traditional theories, the critical
theory has no specific influence on its side, except concern for the abolition of social injustice.
This negative formulation, if we wish to express
it abstractly, is the materialist content
of the idealist concept of reason.
In a historical period
like the present true theory is more critical
than affirmative, just as the society that corresponds to it cannot be called "productive." The
future of humanity depends on the
existence today of the critical attitude, which of course contains
within it elements from traditional theories and from our declining culture
generally. Mankind has already been abandoned
by a science which in its imaginary self-sufficiency thinks of the shaping of practice, which it serves
and to which it belongs, simply as something
lying outside its borders and is content
with this separation of thought and action. Yet the characteristic mark of the thinker's activity is to
determine for itself what it is to
accomplish and serve, and this not in fragmentary
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fashion but totally. Its own nature,
therefore, turns it towards a changing of history and
the establishment of justice among men.
Behind the loud calls for "social spirit" and "national community," the opposition between individual
and society grows ever greater. The self-definition of science grows ever more abstract.
But conformism in thought and the insistence that thinking is a fixed vocation, a self-enclosed realm within society as a whole, betrays the very essence of thought.
Translated by Matthew J. O'Connell
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