Preface to the English Edition

T h is book was written between 1957 and i960 under

Horkheimer and Adorno as a doctoral dissertation in
philosophy and was published for the first time iii 1962.
Every page is. im pregnated with the influence o f critical
theory as developed by the Frankfurt School since the
early 1930s. C ritical theory* was o f course a specific inter
pretation o f M arx, formulated under unique conditions,
and was eventually itself bound to become the object o f
critical and many-sided debates. In the course o f these
debates I too found it necessary to clarify my position on a
number o f issues, and there is no doubt that today I should
adopt a somewhat different approach to my subject. How
ever, other urgent commitments make it impossible at present
to revise or extend the book as much as I would like to, and I
shall therefore sim ply indicate, however briefly, a few points
to which only a future revised edition and further study can
do proper justice.
It w ill help the English reader to understand this book i f
from the outset he bears in mind its polemical aspect. It was
one o f die first attempts to draw on the politico-econom ic
writings o f m iddle-period and mature M arx, in particular
Capital and the so-called Roheatw urP o f the years 1857-59
(later published as Grundrtssc der K ritik der politisckea
Okonomie), for a philosophical interpretation o f M arxs
life-work. In doing this, the book opposed the widespread
W estern European, often neo-Existendalist, tendency o f the
19505 to reduce M arxs thought to an unhistorical anthro
pology centred on the alienation problem atic o f the early
writings (in particular the P are M anuscripts o f 1844) and
sought to point out the philosophical content (or at least