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Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory

Richard Wyn Jones

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

1999

1. Promise: Toward a Critical Theory of Society

 

All social theories and political philosophies reflect, to a greater or lesser extent, the preoccupations of the historical epoch in which they were conceived and formulated. Intellectuals are not, to use Karl Mannheim’s expression, “free-floating.” Whatever they may desire to do—indeed, whatever they think they are doing—they cannot withdraw from the world and simply ponder and reflect dispassionately upon it. That said, thought cannot simply be reduced to its historical and social context; to view thought solely as a reflection of its context is to ignore the possibility of reflexivity and creativity, of human agency. William Connolly captures the complex relationship between thinkers, thoughts, and their contexts well.

Thought can be inspired, influenced, restrained by its circumstances, but not determined by them.... Thought has a moment of autonomy that makes it irreducible to the social and personal circumstances in which it arises, even if it cannot be understood well without taking its context of creation into account. Contexts inspire thought; great thinkers are inspired to reconstitute contexts. (Connolly 1988: 17)

The question for intellectuals, therefore, is not whether they can be perfectly detached and objective, but whether they can reflect upon their own relationship to the social world and attain a certain critical distance from it.

The founding fathers of critical theory were acutely aware that theoretical works of all kinds—including their own—are situated in a particular and mutable milieu. This is underlined by Max Horkheimer’s comments in the preface to the 1979 reissue of the original German version of Dialectic of Enlightenment, where he writes:

We [referring to both Theodor Adorno and himself] would not now maintain without qualification every statement in the book: that would be irreconcilable with a theory that holds that the core of truth is historical, rather than an unchanging constant to be set against the movement of history. The work was written when the end of the Nazi terror was within sight; nevertheless, in not a few places the reality of our times is formulated in a way no longer appropriate to contemporary experience. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979: ix)

All intellectual work is rooted in a particular social and historical context, and as that context is gradually transformed, some elements of the work will lose their resonance and relevance, whereas others may come to appear more important than was initially the case.

Given the importance of the interrelationship between ideas and their epoch, it is apposite that I should begin this discussion of critical theory by noting some of the contexts in which these ideas were developed. Indeed, the failure to do so would be particularly inappropriate given that Horkheimer and his colleagues were reacting quite self-consciously to a period of almost unparalleled turmoil. The social and institutional context within which critical theory was developed will be examined first. This will be followed by an exposition, analysis, and evaluation of what is undoubtedly the seminal text of early critical theory, Max Horkheimer’s programmatic essay “Traditional and Critical Theory.”

 

The Frankfurt School in Context

From the perspective of the radical left in central Europe, the interwar years can be characterized as a roller-coaster ride from wild optimism following the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in Russia, to bleak pessimism in the face of the seemingly inexorable rise of fascism, to an almost blank incomprehension in the wake of the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Nowhere was this reversal of fortunes more pronounced and more dramatic than in Germany.

From the days of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Germany had been the “great hope” of the international communist movement. Its working class was large, well organized, and, relatively speaking, militant. The German Social Democrat Party (SPD) was the mainstay of the Second International, and it was widely assumed on the left that the German proletariat would act as the catalyst for world revolution. Even when the SPD’s leadership distanced itself from the legacy of Marxism, the revolutionary left remained strong. The German Communist Party (KPD) was second only to the Bolsheviks in size and influence when the Third International was founded in March 1919.

But by the late 1920s, from the perspective of the nondogmatic revolutionary left, Germany no longer presented a major source of hope and inspiration. Rather, it was the prime exemplar of the growing weakness of left-wing political practice and the aridity of socialist theory. On the one hand, the SPD appeared hopelessly quiescent and reformist; on the other, in line with more general trends in the international communist movement, the KPD had become a sectarian body whose policies reflected Soviet concerns and interests rather than its own domestic realities (see Claudin 1975).

Superficially, these were not the most propitious of times for socialist theorists, particularly those working in Germany. For the pragmatist SPD, theory was regarded with suspicion; for the Stalinist KPD, theory had become merely a means for the post facto justification of (Soviet) policy. Furthermore, the working class—the proletariat that had provided both the subject and the addressee for Marxist-inspired socialist theory—was proving to be a receptive audience for Nazi propaganda. However it is remarkable that many—if not most—great theoretical works are the products of times of turmoil. Figures as disparate as Saint Augustine, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Carl von Clausewitz were all inspired by strife and upheaval. In contrast, periods of calm seem to foster a certain intellectual quiescence and lassitude: “Happiness writes in white ink.” So it should come as no surprise that it was precisely in this difficult, turbulent period that the members of the Frankfurt School began their attempt to revivify Marxian thought.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that the Frankfurt School was only one of several groups and individuals that were attempting at this time—in a wholly uncoordinated fashion—to revive and reorient Marxian theory. Indeed, compared with many of their contemporaries, the members of the Frankfurt School were attempting to do so in circumstances that were, relatively speaking, more favorable. Although Gramsci suffered appallingly under a prison regime personally overseen by Benito Mussolini, and Leon Trotsky and his comrades were under constant threat from Stalinist assassins, the members of the Frankfurt School were supported by the resources of their institutional home, the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research).

The Institut für Sozialforschung (IfS) was founded in 1923 after Felix Weil, the left-wing son of a wealthy German émigré grain merchant in Argentina, persuaded his father to endow a research institute (the two classic studies of the IfS are Wiggershaus 1994 and Jay 1973; Dubiel 1985 provides valuable insights into its modus operandi). Although affiliated with Frankfurt University, the IfS was almost completely autonomous. Not only was it financially independent, but it had its own facilities and its director enjoyed almost complete control over its affairs—a fact that was not only important in terms of protecting the institute’s independence but also, as we shall see, very significant in terms of the intellectual orientation of its work.

Under its first director, the eminent Austro-Marxist Carl Grünberg, the IfS became an important center for contemporary Marxist thought. However, even though Georg Lukács and Karl Korsch were among the contributors to the institute’s journal, on the whole the IfS’s Marxism was of a fairly orthodox variety. It was only after Grünberg’s retirement in 1929 and his replacement by Max Horkheimer that the institute became the focus for the novel, innovative, and distinctively unorthodox thought that later became associated with the Frankfurt School.

Horkheimer was born in 1895, the son of wealthy assimilated German Jews. Rejecting pressure to enter the family textile business, he instead pursued his academic predilections. His initial interest was in psychology, but he switched the main focus of his energies to philosophy. He also became increasingly attracted to Marxism, although his engagement with it was of a rather different nature from that of the previous generation of Marxist thinkers. For figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Georgy Plekhanov, and Horkheimer’s close contemporary Gramsci, theorizing was a nonacademic pursuit carried out more often than not in the context of concrete political struggles.

Under Horkheimer’s directorship, the IfS formed the vanguard of Marxism’s retreat from the streets and shop floors into academia. Although this development was no doubt occasioned—in the 1930s at least—by the rise of fascism, it was also accompanied by a significant shift in the focus of Marxian theory. For the previous generation of activist-theorists, it was the political economy of contemporary society that demanded attention and analysis. For Horkheimer’s IfS, as well as subsequent generations of Western Marxists, the focus of theoretical activity alighted almost exclusively on cultural, superstructural phenomena and philosophical issues (Anderson 1976).

Horkheimer used the power accorded him by the institute’s founding statutes to collect around him an outstanding group of young intellectuals who were specialists across a broad range of disciplines. Of these, Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, Erich Fromm, and, subsequently, Theodor Adorno formed the core group of Horkheimer’s IfS. Surrounding this inner circle was a wider group of equally able figures working within or in association with the institute. These included Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neumann, and Adorno’s close friend and collaborator, Walter Benjamin (Wiggershaus 1994 provides a biographical panorama of leading members of the IfS). One of the most noteworthy features of the group that Horkheimer gathered around him was its relative homogeneity in terms of background and intellectual outlook.

They were all sons of relatively wealthy families and, despite their radicalization and espousal of egalitarian ideals, maintained a bourgeois lifestyle. As one can imagine, their detractors, both Marxist and non-Marxist, eagerly seized upon this apparent contradiction. Perhaps the most famous denunciation came from a person whose early work had a profound influence on the development of critical theory, the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács. He wrote that the members of the Frankfurt School had taken up residence in the “Grand Hotel Abyss” from which they surveyed the barbarity around them fortified by “excellent meals and artistic entertainments” (Lukács 1971: 22). Against this, as Martin Jay dryly comments: “It seems unlikely that the rejuvenation of Marxist theory to which they heavily contributed would have been materially advanced by a decision to wear cloth caps” (Jay 1973: 36).

Lukács is nevertheless surely right to suggest that the founders of critical theory did distance themselves from the political struggles of ordinary people. Like Horkheimer, they all seem to have been drawn to Marxism intellectually as opposed to having come to it via participation in practical politics. Indeed apart from Marcuse, who was briefly active in the revolutionary Soldiers’ Council established in Berlin after World War I, none had any direct experience of the political practice. Certainly none were at any time closely associated with either the SPD or the KPD. This noninvolvement had its positive side in that the founders of critical theory were not drawn into the slavish justification of particular political programs that characterized the work of so many theorists affiliated with particular parties or movements—of which Lukács himself was a prime exemplar. Nevertheless, their detachment came at a price. Even such a vigorous defender of the Frankfurt School’s legacy as Jay is moved to speculate whether its notoriously obstruse theorizing would have been more concrete had those involved in its genesis had a closer connection to “real life” politics (Jay 1973: 36).

Another common feature of the group that formed the core of Horkheimer’s institute was that they were all Jewish, though as Wiggershaus notes, many “had largely been forced back into affiliation with Judaism by the Nazis” (Wiggershaus 1994: 4). Wiggershaus suggests that this common religious identity may have relevance to understanding why young men of such solidly bourgeois backgrounds aligned themselves so firmly with the left. To be Jewish was to be marginalized, and among some Jews at least, this generated solidarity with others marginalized by the prevailing order.

Yet another common characteristic of Horkheimer’s group was the catholic nature of its intellectual interests. Even in the inner core, there was a remarkable range of expertise. Marcuse, for example, studied with Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl (Kellner 1984). Adorno, quite apart from his detailed knowledge of European philosophical thought in general and aesthetic theory in particular, was a renowned musicologist who had studied with Alban Berg and was a member of Arnold Schönberg’s circle. Fromm is perhaps best known for his engagement with Freudian psychoanalysis but was also deeply interested in Judaic theology (Thomas 1984). In his time, Pollock was a well-known radical political economist.

This breadth of expertise was no coincidence. Rather, it was the result of a conscious attempt on the part of Horkheimer to gather together experts in the various fields of “bourgeois science” who were willing—because of their radical sensibilities—to cooperate in a research enterprise dedicated to integrating their various specializations within an interdisciplinary framework guided by a version of Marxian social theory. By integrating Marxism and the most up-to-date work in a myriad of academic disciplines, the aim was to generate a hybrid vigor or synergy through which Marxist thought could be rescued from its ossification and in which the artificial boundaries separating academic disciplines could be broken down and the work of scientists given new direction and purpose. This approach was initially described in Horkheimer’s inaugural lecture as “interdisciplinary materialism” but was later refined and renamed “critical theory” (Horkheimer 1993: 1–14; 1972: 188–253). Horkheimer’s own role in the program was central; it was he who provided the metatheoretical framework with which the specialists were to operate. Moreover, through his editorship of the institute’s journal, Horkheimer also had detailed input into the specialists’ individual efforts (Dubiel 1985: 119–188).

Horkheimer’s achievement in giving intellectual direction to the work of his coterie of collaborators is rendered all the more remarkable by the fact that much of his energies and organizational talents were engaged in ensuring that the IfS and its members were able to continue working—and living—despite the Nazis’ coming to power in Germany as part of the seemingly inexorable rise of fascism in Europe. Quick to realize that developments in Germany were likely to mean that the group of left-wing, Jewish intellectuals working in the institute would be exiled from their homeland, Horkheimer laid plans to ensure that when this occurred, they could continue to enjoy much of the financial and intellectual infrastructure that had been built up in Frankfurt. Thus, by the time police occupied the IfS building in March 1933, most of the institute’s members had already regrouped beyond the grasp of the Nazis. (The only tragic exception to this was Walter Benjamin, a loose affiliate of the IfS who took his own life in 1940 [see Broderson 1996]).

Following initial attempts to reestablish the institute in Geneva, it was soon decided that Europe would not provide the security and stability necessary for the successful development of interdisciplinary materialism. Thus, in 1934, the IfS moved to Columbia University in New York, where it remained until the U.S. entry into World War II.

During this period, the sense of isolation that had already been apparent in the pre-exile writings of the institute’s members became ever more palpable and poignant. Horkheimer, for example, wrote of how “truth has sought refuge in among small groups of admirable men. But these have been decimated by terrorism and have little time for refining the theory” (Horkheimer 1972: 237–238). This sense of alienation reflected both the displacement and longing that tend to afflict exiles in general and was also a specific reaction to the institute’s U.S. sanctuary.

It was almost inevitable that the institute’s members, as Jewish Marxists, would feel estranged in a country in which both Judaism and Marxism generated much hostility and prejudice—at both official and popular levels. Furthermore, the speculative and theoretical nature of much of their work sat uneasily in an intellectual culture that prized empiricism and pragmatism above all else. To compound matters, some of the mandarin sensibilities of the institute’s members—a disdain toward popular culture that has historically characterized the central European intelligentsia—were undoubtedly offended by that relentlessly commercial and populist energy that animates so much of U.S. culture (see, for example, the essays collected in Adorno 1994).

The isolation of the IfS was further reinforced by its decision to continue publishing the bulk of its work in German in an effort to resist the Nazis’ debasement of that language. The consequence of this wholly laudable stand was that its work was largely ignored in its new home and its intellectual and practical political possibilities left largely unexplored. Despite this, the institute’s period of isolation was, without doubt, enormously productive. It was in New York, following the publication of Horkheimer’s essay “Traditional and Critical Theory” in 1937, that the outlines of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of society were sketched out.

 

Traditional and Critical Theory

The publication of “Traditional and Critical Theory” (Horkheimer 1972: 188–252) was a significant event in the development of the Frankfurt School’s thought for a number of reasons. Not least of these was that it was the first time that the term “critical theory” had been adopted by a member of the institute to describe its thinking.

As I have already noted, the intellectual project that Horkheimer attempted to develop at the IfS had previously been known as “interdisciplinary materialism.” Although some may well regard the renaming as a mere cosmetic exercise undertaken by a cautious director eager to hide his institute’s Marxist roots by adopting an even vaguer label for its work, the members of the IfS were adamant, as its later historians have been, that the new label signified an intellectual development of real import. According to the members, it symbolized an increased self-awareness of the nature of the project on which they were engaged. Thus Adorno was to argue that “the Horkheimerian formulation ‘critical theory’... [was] not an attempt to make materialism acceptable, but to bring it to theoretical self-consciousness” (Therborn 1970: 71; see also Dubiel 1985: 61). The importance of the symbolic significance of this act of rebaptism is borne out by the fact that the essay in which it occurred did indeed provide the first relatively systematic exposition of the institute’s metatheoretical position. Although many of the ideas discussed in “Traditional and Critical Theory” are scattered throughout previous essays in the Zeitschrift, it was in this essay that the strands were woven together for the first time to form a coherent whole (Horkheimer’s other Zeitschrift essays are collected in Horkheimer 1972, 1993).

The main lines of these arguments will now be reconstructed. I will consider Horkheimer’s conception of theory before proceeding to a discussion of his notion of emancipation and his understanding of the social role of technology.

Theory

The essay’s opening sentence sets out its agenda: It is an attempt to answer the question “What is ‘Theory’?” (Horkheimer 1972: 188). Horkheimer proceeds by outlining the hegemonic, traditional understanding of the term. He does so through a discussion of a generalized, even idealized, model of scientific theory:

Theory for most researchers is the sum total of 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 reexamined. Either the scientist has failed to observe correctly or something is wrong with the principles of the theory. (Horkheimer 1972: 188)

Horkheimer associates this conception of theory with René Descartes’s understanding of scientific method in which deductively conceived and logically consistent assumptions are tested against empirically observable reality; those assumptions are proven correct to the extent that they are confirmed by experimental observation. But I must emphasize that Horkheimer is unconcerned about the sources of those assumptions—whether they be via deduction, induction, rationalism, phenomenology, or by some other route (Horkheimer 1972: 189–190). Rather, what he wants to highlight is how this traditional understanding of theory conceives of the relationship between thought and reality, between subject and object. This relationship is, of course, one in which a strict dividing line is drawn between thought/subject and reality/object.

Horkheimer’s main aim is to show that this understanding of theory, developed initially in the natural sciences, has since been applied in most attempts to understand the social world. Indeed, the understanding of theory developed by the natural sciences has become ubiquitous as it has been universalized to all fields of knowledge and embraced by the various contending schools of thought within those fields, even those that, superficially at least, differ on fundamental theoretical issues. Horkheimer illustrates his argument by referring to an example from the field of sociology. He seeks to demonstrate that despite their vehement disagreements, both the Spencerian empirical tradition in the “Anglo-Saxon world” and the more abstract “Germanic” tradition of Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber share the same understanding of theory (Horkheimer 1972: 190–191).

In the present context, however, Horkheimer’s critique is perhaps better demonstrated by applying it to one of the main theoretical debates in contemporary U.S. international relations. Kenneth Waltz may be viewed as a latter-day Teutonic deductivist. In his seminal study Theory of International Politics, he criticizes the inductive approach to theory building:

If we gather more and more data and establish more and more associations... we will not finally find that we know something. We will simply end up having more and more data and larger sets of correlations. Data never speak for themselves. (Waltz 1979: 4)

Waltz instead champions a conception of theory building in which the theorist has a central—almost heroic—role: “The longest process of painful trial and error will not lead to the construction of a theory unless at some point a brilliant intuition flashes, a creative idea emerges” (Waltz 1979: 9). His opponents in the inductivist camp—now suitably computer literate, of course—include, most prominently, Bruce Russett and Karl Deutsch (the latter being Waltz’s particular target in Theory of International Politics). Not for them the frivolous luxury of speculation but rather the solid but necessary task of data collection and collation. Only once this task is completed—or, at the very least, the sample size expanded to the point where results become significant—can theoretical knowledge be developed.

Following from Horkheimer’s analysis however, whatever the disputes in the pages of International Studies Quarterly and whatever the exchanges at academic conferences, the differences between both positions are more apparent than real. Both attempt to build theory on the same natural science model; both regard theory as a set of logically consistent propositions that explain a particular empirical phenomenon, be it a natural process or a historical event. Thus, both are “not so much polarised as settled at different points on a continuum of modes of enquiry” (Maclean 1981a: 51). Both have similar epistemological positions on the nature of the relationship between thought and reality, subject and object; both are variations on a theme—that of traditional theory.

Horkheimer’s assessment of traditional theory is carefully nuanced. On the one hand he is well aware of the many achievements of those disciplines that have been built on its foundations. Indeed, as becomes clear in “Traditional and Critical Theory,” he believes that the kind of factual, instrumental knowledge generated by traditional theory will be necessary in any developed society, present or future. However, Horkheimer does object strenuously to the way that this “conception of theory was absolutised, as though it were grounded in the inner nature of knowledge as such or justified in some other ahistorical way, and thus... became a reified, ideological category” (Horkheimer 1972: 194). This reification blinds traditional theorists to the ways in which their theories are produced, to the social role of their work, and indeed to themselves. Horkheimer lists a number of illusions that are shared by traditional theorists, illusions he believes arise from this lack of reflexivity.

Traditional theorists imagine that they work in isolation from brute societal pressures and that their theorizing, despite possibly having socially useful applications, is propelled by the immanent logic of the research itself—a logic enforced by the research materials themselves and the methodology employed, even if leavened, perhaps, by some insight or intuition on the part of the individual researcher. Traditional theorists would refute any suggestion that the way in which they work is determined in any way by extrascientific factors. However this is exactly the charge laid at their door by Horkheimer, who argues that not only the decisions about what to study but also the way in which the results are interpreted is very much a social process rather than a purely scientific one. The former point might well be conceded by more sophisticated traditional theorists given the ways in which governments and their agencies target research resources into certain key areas into which researchers then tend to congregate. However, the latter point is a deeply controversial one.

Horkheimer illustrates his argument by referring to radical theoretical changes, or what are now known as, to use Thomas Kuhn’s terminology, “paradigm shifts.” (Brunkhorst [1993: 75] notes similarities between Horkheimer’s arguments on theory change and those subsequently developed by Kuhn.) Horkheimer argues that the main impulse for major theory change is extrinsic to the theory itself and is related instead to “concrete historical circumstance.” After all, if immanent logical considerations “were the only real issue, one could always think up further hypotheses by which one could avoid changing the theory as a whole” (Horkheimer 1972: 196). Far from being the independent and detached figures of their self-image, traditional theorists are inescapably a part of society in general and subject to the pressures existent within it. But how are these societal pressures transmitted to the theorists? Horkheimer compares the traditional theorist with the individual in capitalist society:

The seeming self-sufficiency enjoyed by work processes whose course is supposedly determined by the very nature of the object [i.e., research in its traditional guise] corresponds to the seeming freedom of the economic subject in bourgeois society. The latter believe that they are acting according to personal determinations, whereas in fact even in their most complicated calculations they exemplify the working of an incalculable social mechanism. (Horkheimer 1972: 197)

Whether or not they are aware of it, agents cannot avoid being affected by the surrounding structures.

Yet one should not think that the influence is simply one way; Horkheimer was certainly no determinist. The interrelationship between society and scientists (or theorists) that he posits is subtle and complex. On the one hand, although Horkheimer argues that theorists are decisively shaped and influenced by society, he also argues that they are crucial “moments in the social process of production” within that society (Horkheimer 1972: 197). Although such fields as quantum physics or, indeed, international relations theory may appear to have little or nothing to do with the specific processes of production and manufacturing, they are in fact important parts of the social mechanism whereby the prevailing relations of production are maintained. Horkheimer notes that

even the emptiness of certain areas of university activity... have their social significance.... 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. (Horkheimer 1972: 206)

Thus, whatever the pretensions and protestations of traditional theorists about their scholarly detachment and objectivity, Horkheimer is convinced that theorists and their theories play a vital role in the production and reproduction of the prevailing structures.

But how can traditional theories play a role in the production and reproduction of the status quo? In some cases the links are obvious. Much traditionally based theoretical work is engaged in an attempt to gain knowledge of various processes—be they physical or social—that will allow those processes to be controlled, manipulated, and utilized. Even apparently highly abstract work in theoretical physics, econometrics, or psychology may well have a practical payoff. But what about even more esoteric theoretical work in fields that appear to be even further removed from practice? There are two points that seem to arise from Horkheimer’s discussion. First, just because links between theory and practice are not immediately apparent, they may still be extant—either in a very mediated form or across time. Second, traditional theories in all fields have the effect of normalizing and privileging one particular understanding of what constitutes knowledge. As we have seen, this form of knowledge entails a radical separation between subject and object and is ultimately concerned with the control and exploitation of the latter by the former. The privileging of this epistemology has the effect of undermining the truth-claims of those who wish to challenge the provenance of the prevailing order. It makes other ways of knowing—and other ways of being—illegitimate.

Thus, for Horkheimer it is clear that there is no theory of society “that does not contain political motivations,” even if those motivations are often unconscious, “and the truth of these must be decided not in supposedly neutral reflection but in personal thought and action, in concrete activity” (Horkheimer 1972: 222). If traditional theory is implicated in the “conservation and continuous renewal” of the existing order, it is beholden to those that produce it to reflect on the nature of this order. For Horkheimer at least, there is no doubt that the political and economic structures that traditional theory helps support are utterly objectionable. Although “Traditional and Critical Theory” does not contain the lengthy and impassioned condemnations of capitalism that exemplify much Marxist and Marxist-inspired writing, the reader is left in no doubt whatsoever as to Horkheimer’s position. He abhors an economic system that he regards as creating a “paralysing barrenness” in which “men by their own toil keep in existence a reality which enslaves them in ever greater degree” (Horkheimer 1972: 213).

Given the role of traditional theories in upholding a social order that he considers to be fundamentally unjust, Horkheimer suggests the adoption of an alternative, critical conception of theory. Critical theory is premised on the rejection of the prevailing order and aims at a root-and-branch reorganization of the way in which society is organized. As Horkheimer notes: “This theory is not concerned only with goals already posed by existent ways of life, but with men and all their potentialities” (Horkheimer 1972: 245). (His grounds for arguing for the existence of unfulfilled human potential will be considered later.) According to Horkheimer’s formulation, critical theory is a reversion to an earlier, pre-Cartesian conception of social theory, when the study of society was conceived as part of the realm of ethics and concerned with the pursuit of the good life. As Horkheimer acknowledges, critical theory’s goal is “man’s emancipation from slavery. In this it resembles Greek philosophy, not so much in the Hellenistic age of resignation as in the golden age of Plato and Aristotle” (Horkheimer 1972: 246). This reversion to an earlier conception of the role of theory, however, does not imply that critical theory completely rejects the legacy of traditional theory. Rather, traditional theory is viewed as a potentially important element in a “more just, more differentiated, more harmoniously organized” society (Horkheimer 1972: 205).

The problem is, of course, that as presently conceptualized and organized, traditional theory does not have the capability for bringing this “more differentiated, more harmoniously organized” society into existence. Indeed, it acts as a support mechanism for the status quo. This situation can change only if traditional theories are incorporated into a new critical framework. Such a framework involves two crucial revisions to traditional understandings of theory, the first epistemological and the second organizational.

Epistemologically, critical theory involves “a radical reconsideration, not of the scientist alone, but of the knowing individual as such” (Horkheimer 1972: 199). In contradistinction to the traditional view of reality as a given on which the theorist must focus, Horkheimer argues that the relationship between the subject and the object is far more complex and interdependent. He observes:

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 the 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 performed 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. (Horkheimer 1972: 200)

Indeed, Horkheimer argues that the degree of interaction has increased in the modern age: “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” (Horkheimer 1972: 201).

Awareness of the dialectical interdependence of the perceiving subject and the perceived object is crucial to the critical conception of theory. This realization implies that both the subject and the object—in this instance, the individual human being and society, respectively—are, in principle at least, susceptible to intentional, progressive change. (Given the current vogue for various forms of social constructivism, it is worthy to note that although Horkheimer argues that both subject and object are socially constituted, he does so within the context of a materialist framework. Thus, unlike many contemporary postmodernists—and old-fashioned idealists—Horkheimer does not dismiss biology and the natural world. Rather, his interest is in the nexus between the natural and the social.)

Thus critical theorists refuse to accept the present structures of society, both its concrete organizational forms and its more general cultural framework, as immutable givens. Of course, they are under no illusions as to the reality of these structures—their painstaking dissection and study is one of the main features of the critical theorist’s work. Nevertheless, this willingness to face up to reality simultaneously includes a commitment to its transformation and a belief that such a transformation is feasible. Following Marx, critical theorists seek to understand the world in order to change it.

The implications of this epistemological stance are far-reaching. As Horkheimer makes clear, critical theory rejects the traditional “separation of value and research, knowledge and action, and other polarities” (Horkheimer 1972: 208). According to critical theory, such dichotomies are epistemological fallacies created by the hegemonic, Cartesian model of theory: They are as philosophically unjustified as they are politically debilitating. Indeed, according to the critical conception of theory, the way in which traditional theorists have tended to compartmentalize their activities by dividing their scholarly work from other aspects of their lives—for example, political activity—is basically inhuman. For Horkheimer, truly rational thought must entail the struggle for a rational society.

In addition to this epistemological shift, critical theory entails major organizational changes to the process of theory building that characterizes traditional theory. Such a reorganization is necessary to counter the way in which traditionally based disciplines have become overspecialized.

By making a series of cetirus paribus assumptions, these disciplines have generated detailed understandings of particular processes. However, they fail to understand the place and the role of the processes that have been isolated in the social totality. The traditional disciplines generate knowledge that is reified and static; knowledge that ignores the whole in favor of a fetishization of the parts. As Wolfgang Bonß notes, there is an ambiguous dynamic within the traditional approach to research:

On the one hand, reified structures, independent of the subject, can be articulated in great detail; on the other hand, the fiction of a “presuppositionless” analysis of social reality leads to an uncritical reproduction of the dominant principles of utilization, exploitation, and administration. (Bonß 1993: 103–104)

The very process by which knowledge is generated through the traditional conception of science (such as increased differentiation and specialization) creates an ever greater blindness among theorists about the dynamics for change that exist within the totality.

A critical theory approach would, in contrast, overcome the narrowness and myopia of the specialized sciences by reintegrating their perspectives within a framework organized by progressive social theory. In his inaugural lecture as director of the IfS, Horkheimer outlined a vision of an interdisciplinary research project involving an “ongoing dialectical interpenetration” of philosophy and empirical research, aimed toward “philosophically oriented social inquiry” (Horkheimer 1993: 9). The model for such an approach was provided by Marx’s critique of political economy. In Capital, Marx integrated the central concepts of classical political economy into a theoretical framework that grasped the totality of economic and social relations (Marx 1976a). It was this ability to integrate study of the particular with consideration of the general that Horkheimer and his colleagues sought to emulate.

From the preceding argument it is clear that Horkheimer believed that traditional theories, if given a suitably radical epistemological overhaul and if thoroughly reorganized within a critical framework, could indeed be an element in the creation and maintenance of “a more just, more differentiated, more harmoniously organised” society (Horkheimer 1972: 205). But what was the basis for Horkheimer’s claim that such a society—even if desirable—was possible? And through which mechanisms did he envisage that such a society could be brought about? These questions will form the focus of the next section.

Emancipation

The first point to note is that the ultimate referent object in all of Horkheimer’s discussion of emancipation is individual human beings. He regards emancipation as the liberation of individual human beings from suffering and the promotion of their happiness. Horkheimer writes contemptuously of the tendency of traditional theorists to “concern themselves with ‘man as such’ [rather] than human beings in particular” (Schmidt 1993: 30). Critical theory is concerned with the corporeal, material existence and experiences of human beings. Accordingly, the emancipation of a particular class or group is not an end in itself but rather a means to an end. That end is to bring society “under the control of its elements, namely, the human beings who live in it” (Brunkhorst 1993: 80).

But what does this mean in terms of real—and potential—social processes and relationships? Without doubt, the main thrust of Horkheimer’s arguments is resolutely Marxist in character. He equates emancipation with the increased domination of nature: Human beings are freer when they are less subject to the vicissitudes of nature. Furthermore, the possibilities for a better life are already present in the existing forces of production. The problem is that their potential is squandered because of the way in which they are utilized for the benefit of capital rather than that of humanity. This view is clear in the following passage from “Traditional and Critical Theory”:

The idea of a reasonable organisation 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.... 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 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. (Horkheimer 1972: 213)

As long as the forces of production are utilized within a capitalist framework, their emancipatory potential will remain unfulfilled.

Quite clearly, the type of alternative society that Horkheimer regards as preferable to the prevailing order is based on some form of socialist planning, even if a number of comments suggest that members of the Frankfurt School had few illusions about Soviet-style planning (see Dubiel 1985: 15–20, 41–44, 73–76). Horkheimer regularly refers to the possibility of developing a “rational society,” “the right kind of society,” one that is “self-determined,” regulated according to “planful decision,” and inhabited by a new “self-aware mankind” (Horkheimer 1972: 229, 241).

The particular understanding of emancipation underlying the arguments presented in “Traditional and Critical Theory” play a vital role in critical theory. As Moishe Postone and Barbara Brick point out: “Social production, reason, and human emancipation are intertwined and provide the standpoint of a historical critique” (Postone and Brick 1993: 234). Rather than criticizing the prevailing order in terms of some blueprint for an ideal society, Horkheimer criticizes that order on the basis of the unfulfilled potential that already exists within it. This is a form of immanent critique. Immanent critique arises from critical theory’s rejection of the epistemological validity of both scientism’s strict differentiation between subject and object and idealist notions of some all-knowing suprahistorical subject. Postone and Brick provide a neat summary:

An immanent critique does not critically judge what “is” from a conceptual position outside of its object—such as a transcendental “ought”. Instead it must be able to locate that “ought”... as a possibility that is immanent to the unfolding of the existent society. (Postone and Brick 1993: 230)

The grounds for immanent critique must be sought within the object of that critique.

As will become apparent in the next chapter, the existence of immanent, unrealized, or unfulfilled possibilities within the reality of any given order is vital in order to allow this approach critical purchase on its object of study. Take, for example, an analysis of society. If critical theory cannot locate emancipatory potential immanently within the real world, then it must either succumb to a paralyzing pure negation or appeal to some extra-societal basis for critique—thus transposing itself into a metaphysics or even theology. But in 1937 at least, Horkheimer was still relatively sanguine about the existence of emancipatory possibilities within the prevailing order. He was also convinced, again in traditional Marxist fashion, that a class existed within society that had the potential to realize those possibilities: the proletariat. Horkheimer writes:

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 outmoded social organisation. (Horkheimer 1972: 213)

The proletariat experienced the disjuncture between humanity’s potential to control nature (that is, the emancipatory possibilities) provided by the ever more powerful forces of production at its disposal and the use to which that potential is actually put under capitalist relations of production

However, Horkheimer was less sanguine about the possibility of the proletariat actually exercising the power that, “objectively considered,” it enjoys in order to “change society” (Horkheimer 1972: 214). Two sets of reasons are advanced to explain this pessimism: The first sits full square within the Marxist tradition; the second heralds the genesis of the argument that, when fully developed in the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (see Chapter 2), will eventually entail a thorough revision of critical theory’s relationship to that tradition.

The main argument advanced in “Traditional and Critical Theory” to explain the proletariat’s quiescence is a familiar one. Horkheimer refers to the divisions within the working class between the skilled and unskilled and the employed and unemployed. He also notes the failure of the working class to recognize its real position and its real interests: “Even to the proletariat the world superficially seems quite different than it really is” (Horkheimer 1972: 214). The lessons he draws are that critical theorists must avoid “canonising” the proletariat or attaching themselves uncritically to “some more advanced sector of the proletariat, for example a party or its leadership” (Horkheimer 1972: 215). Rather, they must retain their independence and integrity and act as a “critical promotive factor in the development of the masses” and exercise “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” (Horkheimer 1972: 216).

According to Horkheimer, the aim of a critical theorist is to form “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” (Horkheimer 1972: 215). The result he hopes to secure is “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” (Horkheimer 1972: 215).

Apart perhaps from the implied criticism of contemporary Communist parties, this position—part explanation, part exhortation—was not an unfamiliar one in many intellectual, left-wing circles in the 1930s. However, later in “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Horkheimer begins to develop another, far bleaker line of argument. According to Horkheimer, the proletariat’s submission in the face of the prevailing order is not a “false consciousness,” which even if stubborn, is potentially erasable. Rather, he attributes the working class’s quiescence to a far more serious and intractable malaise. Modern capitalism, Horkheimer argues, has extinguished the individual’s potential for autonomous activity. In the age of monopoly capitalism,

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 disciplines secretly follow their own atomistic and therefore untrue interests: they act as mere functions of the economic machine. (Horkheimer 1972: 237)

Faced by what he perceives as the overwhelming power of the state’s bureaucratic apparatus and the mass media, Horkheimer seems to suggest that his hope—expressed, of course, in the same essay—that critical theory could act “as a promotive factor in the development of the masses” is destined to remain unfulfilled. However, at this stage at least, the deeply pessimistic implications of this line of argument are not pursued. Domination and submission are not yet regarded as the inevitable and inescapable results of society’s development. Rather, the overall thrust is that progressive change is possible, even if it is unlikely to occur in the short run. Although “truth has sought refuge in small groups of admirable men,” Horkheimer still maintains that this truth can, in principle, be articulated and communicated to a class within society that, “objectively speaking,” has the power to emancipate humanity and its “elements.” Thus emancipation remains a possibility, and critical theory remains both valid and necessary. Without it, “the ground is taken from under the hope of radically improving human existence” (Horkheimer 1972: 233).

Technology

Horkheimer’s attitude toward technology is implicit rather than explicit in “Traditional and Critical Theory.” It can be reconstructed from his standpoint on the possibility and possible contours of emancipation. This standpoint, outlined in the previous section, may well be open to charges of vagueness, although Horkheimer does comment:

In regard to the essential kind of change at which the critical theory aims, there can be no... concrete perception of it until it actually comes about. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the eating here is in the future. (Horkheimer 1972: 220–221)

Nevertheless, although Horkheimer makes no concrete suggestions about the type of institutions that would exist in a more emancipated society, it is clear that he conceives such a society as being characterized by the following: a further lessening of humankind’s vulnerability to the vagaries of nature; a planned, rational utilization of the forces of production; an increasing self-awareness among humankind of its place in the natural world (including, inter alia, a realization of the falsity of the subject/object dichotomy); and the susceptibility of human relations to conscious determination. It is through these developments that individual suffering may be alleviated and happiness pursued.

Much of this viewpoint is predicated on a benign view of technology. Technological developments—or development of the forces of production—are seen as creating ever greater possibilities for the domination of nature and, hence, emancipation. If this potential is not utilized, then, the argument goes, it can hardly be blamed on technology per se. Rather, it reflects a failing in the human organization of the forces of production—that is, failings in the relations of production. Should those relations of production be revised or revolutionized so that technology is deployed in a planned, rational manner, then human freedom will be greatly enhanced.

 

The Promise of a Critical Theory of Society

Horkheimer proposed that critical theory of society is based on the following elements.

Thus the promise of critical theory was the development of an epistemologically sophisticated understanding of the social totality, an understanding that could play a part in the realization of the progressive potential inherent within it. Horkheimer held to the belief that progressive social change was a possibility even during the rise of fascism in the 1930s. But gradually, in the shadow of Auschwitz, that hope was almost wholly extinguished. The next chapter will examine this transformation in outlook and the consequent failure of the critical theory of the 1940s to redeem its earlier promise.