187

The Poverty of Sociology:’Society’ as

Concept and Object in Sociological

Theory*
H. T. WILSON, York University, Toronto

I
The impact of the 1968 student protests in West Germany, and elsewhere, had a
pronounced effect on university academics, particularly those involved with
social and political theory and philosophy. A most unfortunate casualty of these
events was the late Theodor Adorno, in many ways clearly the best of the
so-called ‘Frankfurt School’ of critical theorists. Two of the best-known first-
generation members of this school, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, had
clarified early on what they understood to be the difference between traditional
and critical theory. The difference is worth noting in light of the difficulties
Adomo in particular faced when students at Frankfurt decided to convert what
he had described as a ’theoretical methodology’ into practice.’1
Adorno, like Horkheimer and Marcuse, drew a rigid distinction between what
he termed ’traditional’ and ’critical’ theory. Whereas traditional theory in the
cultural or historical disciplines endorsed science as either an immediate or a
’distant’ model applicable for or at least relevant to their pursuits, the critical
theory refused to renounce the critical component which Popper had argued was
the monopoly of science in the form of ’critical rationalism’. Popper’s distant
model status for science, which ordains a ’success’ rather than a ’truth’ orienta-
tion for the cultural and historical disciplines, is the doctrine which the critical
theory always knew it must address itself to.2 Popper had predicated the
inappositeness, indeed danger, of a scientistic approach in the cultural and
historical sciences precisely on the claim that the truth focus he had ordained for
science proper against instrumentalists in the philosophy of science could not be
* Hermann Strasser, The Normative Structure of Sociology. Conservative and Eman-
cipatory Themes in Social Thought, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1976,
pp. 275 (Toronto: General Publishing, $9.95). Also Zygmunt Bauman, Towards a
Critical Sociology. An Essay on Commonsense and Emancipation, London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1976, pp. 115 (direct edition) (Toronto: General Publishing,
$6.50).
1 On the European New Left and Adorno’s experience, Encounter, October 1975, pp.
13-24 at p. 24. On the distinction between traditional and critical theory, Max Hor-
kheimer, ’Traditional and Critical Theory’ and ’Postscript’, in Horkheimer, Critical
Theory, New York 1972, pp. 188-243 and 244-252; and Herbert Marcuse, ’Philosophy
and Critical Theory’ in Marcuse, Negations, Boston 1968, pp. 134-58.
2 See generally Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, London 1957. Also Popper,
Objective Knowledge, London 1972, p. 262; and Popper’s contribution to The
Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby, London
1976.

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permitted in any discipline where the self-policing role of critical rationalism was
’

not operative.’
When critical theorists like Horkheimer, Adomo and Marcuse asserted the
special needs of’theory’ in their own research and scholarly areas, they were
simply refusing to acknowledge the conception of theory given not only in
critical rationalism but in ’social technology’, with its success orientation, as
well. At the same time, the fact that theirs was not a ’positive’ dialectics must be
clear. If critical theorists upbraided even Marx and Engels for their acquiescence
to traditional theory, they also took aim at any concept of dialectics that en-
dorsed it solely on the grounds that dialectics would overcome the contradic-
tions that traditional theory had allegedly employed language to smooth over and
obscure. Indeed, Adomo went so far in his discussion in Negative Dialectics to
argue that:
The name of dialectics says no more, to begin with, than that objects do not go into their
concepts without leaving a remainder, that they come to contradict the traditional norm of
adequacy. Contradiction is not what Hegel’s absolute idealism was bound to transfigure it
into: it is not of the essence in a Heraclitean sense. It indicates the untruth of identity, the
fact that the concept does not exhaust the thing conceived.4

Adorno here speaks for all critical theorists in what must be acknowledged a
radical commitment to the preponderance of the object over concepts intended
to grasp and appropriate it. Traditional theorists treat theory as ‘legitimate’, it is
argued, only when it has been structurally decomposed into testable, falsifiable
hypotheses. This subordination of theory to the production of probabilistic
generalizations necessarily denudes theory of its truly critical component, since
it accedes to norms of rationality operative in the very totality (’society’) being
addressed. The ultimate reference of this claim that true theory must never
accede to a graspable, appropriable object serves to define the contours of
dialectical materialism, the commitment to contradiction as the reality of ad-
vanced industrial societies, though certainly not the ideal as Popper and others
have argued. To refuse the identity which language tempts us to claim between
concept and object is precisely what renders true dialectics materialistic, but still
dialectics. The real message of the negative dialectician bespeaks the ultimate
supremacy of practice: any truth relevant to collective life can really be known
only by being lived.
That Popper’s attack would surface in the form of an ’I told you so’ in the
aftermath of the student protest movement is of the greatest importance for
understanding subsequent intellectual developments, particularly the ’conver-
sion’ of Jurgen Habermas, by far the most prominent member of the Frankfurt
School’s second generation. Habermas’ turn is evident in his post-1968 interest
in the development of a critical sociology which would reconcile certain theoret-
ical commitments of the first generation with a posture distinctly less hostile to
interventionism and Popperian social technology generally. Habermas’ earlier
antipathy to Popper’s logic of the social sciences, revealed in his contribution to
the Positivismusstreit, had been reformulated in a way that now accepted in the
3 This point is discussed in Albrecht Wellmer, Critical Theory of Society, New York
1971, pp. 15-31.
4 Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, New York 1973, p. 5. On Marx’s ’latent
positivism’, Horkheimer, op. cit.; Marcuse, op. cit.; Wellmer, op. cit., pp. 67-119.
5 Theodor Adorno, ’Society’, in Robert Boyers, ed., The German Refugee Intellectuals,
New York 1972, pp. 144-53. I have attempted to open out Adorno’s reflections on
society in H. T. Wilson, The American Ideology, London 1977.

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main Popper’s assertion of a logical relation between theory and practice,

diverging from it only in his refusal to exempt science itself from critical reflec-
tion.b
Speaking to Frankfurt students in the Winter of 1968-69, near the end of the
’violent political actions’ there and elsewhere, Habermas put his case for a
revision of theoretical materialism in a concluding paragraph that deserves to be
quoted in its entirety.
Under other historical conditions, the juxtaposition of the categories &dquo;revolution&dquo; and
&dquo;reform&dquo; constituted a sharp line of demarcation. In industrially advanced societies it no
longer discriminates adequately between possible alternative strategies of change. The
only way I can see to bring about conscious structural change in a social system organized
in an authoritarian welfare state is radical reformism. What Marx called critical revolution-
ary activity must take this way today. This means that we must promote reforms for clear
and publicly discussed goals, even and especially if they have consequences that are
incompatible with the mode of production of the established system. The superiority of
one mode of production to another cannot become visible under given structural condi-
tions of military technology and strategy as long as economic growth, the production of
consumer goods, and the reduction of average labour time-in short technical progress
and private welfare-are the only criteria for comparing competing social systems. How-
ever, if we do not deem insignificant the goals, forms and contents of humane social and
communal life, then the superiority of a mode of production can only be measured, in
industrial societies, with regard to the scope it opens up for a democratization of
decision-making processes in all sectors of society.’7
While this statement may appear to constitute only a reaffirmation of critical
theory’s original commitment to ’updating’ Marx by reformulating his emphasis
on economy and mode of production so that the theory of class struggle could
now take account of the role of the state, political domination generally and
culture, more is at stake here. Indeed, it is the conception of the task of critical
theory itself that has been modified in line with Habermas’ post-1968 commit-
ment not only to giving preeminence to the political dimension, but doing so in a
context which absorbs what can only be called a one-dimensional concept of
social system through Luhmann (but originally from Parsons). Perhaps this only
serves to indicate the degree to which he and Offe have come to view capitalism
as a ’system’ capable of continuing resilience even in the face of what are clearly
serious difficulties. Yet even this must be subject to reconsideration in light of
his refusal to accept the relatively orthodox Marxian interpretation of what
‘state intervention’ means for the economies of advanced industrial societies.s
The upshot of Habermas’ conversion would then constitute an acquiescence
both to the ’reformism’ which he had attacked vociferously prior to 1968 and to a
new ’theoretic’ conceptualization formerly alien to critical theory, namely, the

6 Compare Wellmer, op. cit., pp. 9-65 to H. T. Wilson, ’Science, Critique and Criticism:
The "Open Society" Revisited’, in John O’Neill, ed., On Critical Theory, New York
1976, pp. 205-30; and to O’Neill, ’Scientism, Historicism and the Problem of Rational-
ity’, in John O’Neill, ed., Modes of Individualism and Collectivism, London 1974, pp.
3-26. Also see Norman Stockman, ’Habermas, Marcuse and the Aufhebung of Science
and Technology’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 8, 1978, 55-35; and Tronn Over-
end, ’Enquiry and Ideology: Habermas’ Trichotomous Conception of Science’,
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 8, 1977, 1-14. The original Popperian formulation
can be found in his Logic of Scientific Discovery, London 1959.
7 Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, London 1971, pp. 1-49, at pp. 48-49.
8 See Paul Mattick, Critique of Marcuse, London 1971.

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system concept and the ahistorical one-dimensionality given in Luhmann’s

much delayed formulation. Indeed, nothing is clearer from Legitimation Crisis9
than the degree to which Habermas, in taking his alleged opponents ’seriously’,
has thrown the baby out with the bath water in adopting not only their terminol-
ogy, but also the modes of thought central to their view of ’Society’. There is
time here only to note the ’lag’ (with its unavoidable consequences) attendant
upon this incorporation of Parsons (via Luhmann) between fifteen and twenty-
five years after the first formulation and its quintessential application to society
0
as a system, that is, a ’rational social organization’.’°
Unavoidable, then, in Habermas’ switch was the shift from negative dialectics
and the object’s preponderance to a more ‘positive’ attitude featuring grasp,
strategy and an explicit theoretical endorsement of ’piecemeal social engineer-
ing’, or ’social technology’. To be sure, a new faith in the possibility of a
contrived universal recognition premissed upon the demonstration of ’com-
municative competence’, even within the reality of an unfinished and exploita-
tive social reality, informs his post-1968 vision of social change through open
dialogue. Even the theoretical promise Marcuse discovered in Freud’s view of
civilization is one-dimensionalized in Habermas’ thoroughly undialectical trans-
figuration of therapy and the analyst-patient relationship in psychoanalysis.&dquo;
Having jettisoned the negative and the dialectics in negative dialectics, Haber-
mas in effect argues for intervention in the absence of the ’real’ objective
conditions which would make his endorsement of radical reformism unneces-
sary, even meaningless. At the same time, of course, his intervention might itself
possibly be construed as a part of these objective conditions, albeit as likely
those contributing to ’system longevity’ as anything else.12
The importance of this change in Habermas’ position is seen best in relation to
a revised view of the critical theory itself by one of its former adherents.

Following the student protests, Habermas’ problem was with both the impo-
tence and the danger of an historicist and holistic conception of theory not
dependent on standards of theoretical rectitude from the natural sciences, that
is, on requirements of legitimation based on the capacity of a theory to be
structurally decomposed into testable, falsifiable hypotheses. The idea that the
power of critical theory might lie precisely in its refusal to endorse, grasp and
indulge in the fiction of identity fails to impress Habermas any longer. The
distinct possibility, not to say promise, of reckless ’social effects’ from undisci-
plined theorizing of a negatively dialectical sort appears more plausible to the
9 Boston 1975. See James Miller’s extended review essay in Telos, No. 25, 1975, pp.
210-20.
10 I have in mind here not only Talcott Parsons, The Social System, New York 1951, but
also Paul Diesing’s, Reason in Society, Urbana, Illinois 1962. Compare to Jürgen
Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie?
Frankfurt 1971; Luhmann, ’Soziologie des Politischen Systems’, in Soziologische
Aufklarung, Opladen 1970; and Luhmann, Legitimation durch Verfahren, Neuwied
1969. For a critique of the Parsons-Diesing formulation, H. T. Wilson, The American
Ideology, London 1977, chapter 8, ’Civil Society and Solidarity’.
11 Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, Boston 1955; Habermas, ’Toward a Theory of Com-
municative Competence’, in H. P. Dreitzel, ed., Recent Sociology No. 2, New York
1970, pp. 115-48; Christopher Nichols, ’Science or Reflection: Habermas on Freud’,
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2, 1972, 261-70. Compare to Neil Jacoby, Social
Amnesia, Boston 1975.
12 See Habermas, ’Towards a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism’, Theory and
Society, 2, 1975, 287-300.

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 191

veteran of widespread disorder in the West German university system, only

recently returned to university teaching himself.&dquo;
This is not in any way to question the sincerity of Habermas’ motives or
’interests’, nor is it an attempt to obscure important differences between his
notion of radical reformism and the well-known Popperian doctrine formulated
in The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and its Enemies some thirty
years ago. It is, however, an attempt to suggest that these concerns have nothing
to do with the task of critical reflection, nothing whatsoever. In falling prey to the
empirical view of the totality as abstract, which is clearly evident in, among
other places, the Parsons-Luhmann systems formulation, Habermas has neces-
sarily acquiesced in the presumption of a logical relation between theory and
practice, thought and action, which has been demonstrated to be a central
characteristic of Popper’s critique of historicism and holism. ~4 Quite apart from
the dubiousness, by scientific standards, of such a claim is the degree to which it
constitutes a radical conception of the very traditional theory that Horkheimer
and Marcuse in particular were anxious to subject to critique.
A final point here also relates to the reverse side of Habermas’ explicit
endorsement of a version of gradualism which he has termed radical reformism:
the view of critical theory as a prominent species of a genus of thought
somehow ’responsible’ for the student insurrections, particularly their deleteri-
ous consequences. Referring once again to the ’objective conditions’ which
Habermas now appears to find increasingly irksome, 15 it is important to notice in
passing that no theoretical conception or commitment on its own can realisti-
cally be said to constitute the decisive spark igniting, or even sustaining, a
violent political and social movement. To argue that this is the case is to
acquiesce in the very thing that negative dialectics finds intolerable, namely, the
tacit presumption that the concept not only can, but actually has, absorbed its
object, when the point is clearly the relation, underscored by materialism,
between the social structure inspiring and sustaining the theory and the social
structure afterwards.

II
While in some sensesthe preceding might be construed as an unjustifiable
background of critical theory and the subsequent work of Jurgen
excursus, the
Habenras are almost indispensable to a proper comprehension of the concerns
of both Strasser and Bauman in the works under review. This is so because both
make it abundantly clear, albeit in different ways, that they are followers, or at
least supporters, of Habermas, even if they pledge their allegiance in written
works considerably different in objective, scope and method. While Strasser’s
book, at first glance a relatively introductory text in social theory, may not
presuppose considerable expertise on the part of students, it does demand a
highly sympathetic and helpful instructor. This will be seen to be particularly the
13 See Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, pp. 1-49 for discussion of the university
and the protest movement in West Germany between 1967 and 1969.
14 Herbert Marcuse, ’Karl Popper and the Problem of Historical Laws’, in Marcuse,
Studies in Critical Philosophy, Boston 1973, pp. 191-208; L. Himka, ’The Limits of
Historical Poverty’, Monthly Review, 1975-76, pp. 215-18; Wilson, ’Science, Critique
and Criticism’, op. cit.; and Wilson, The American Ideology, chapter 5, ’Social
Technology and the Open Society’.
15 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis; Habermas, ’Toward a Reconstruction of Historical
Materialism’, op. cit. See also Jeremy Shapiro, ’From Marcuse to Habermas’, Con-
tinuum, 8, 1970, 65-76.

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192

case once those interested in utilizing the book read the introductory chapter. In
one sense it is totally out of kilter with what might otherwise stand as the
legitimate academic and instructional concerns of the rest of the text. What
justifies this claim is the fact that the text in no significant way incorporates the
theoretical framework announced, but not developed, in chapter one. Titled
’Guiding Interests of Cognition and Vocabularies of Social Explanation’, it
imposes on the early history and subsequent development of sociology and
society a model derived in large part from the debate between Habermas and
Niklas Luhmann, one in which Luhmann appears to have lost the battle but won
the war. Strasser, referring to Luhmann, states:
In correspondence with the basic characteristics of self-substitutive systems, we conceive
of the major types of sociological theories as alternative systems of scientific knowledge
production. The respective alternatives, be they the social-technological and emancipat-
ory interests of cognition on the order and conflict models of society, are always developed
on the basis of the given scope of social reality and conception of the social order under
consideration. These normative and conceptual categories constitute the meaning com-
plexes of the sociological code. They actually control the processes of code duplication in a
direction that can be specified, for example into the meaning complex of positive analysis,
reality, results, authority, integration, socialization, consensus, equilibrium, social con-
straints, and so on,’6
This statement, appearing on page 13, should be sufficient to point out what
students and instructors are in for. Instructors would probably be well advised to
make only passing reference to the schema given in the introductory chapter,
reserving more detailed discussion for later on, when the work of Habermas and
German sociology generally (conspicuously absent from the text itself) can be
taken up along with Parsons, Gouldner and Coser. The ’theoretical’ structure
imposed, albeit half-heartedly, on the text in this first chapter is clearly revealed
in the passage just cited to be a version of the sociology of knowledge, but one
which presumes that students have well in hand the original formulations of
Scheler and Mannheim (who are also conspicuous by their absence in the text).
Even the version of sociology of knowledge particularly indebted to Durkheim is
ignored in the section in which he is discussed as ’the founder of Western
functionalism’. Indeed, the section on Durkheim as a whole comprises only nine
pages, although there are, to be sure, copious references to his ’influence’
throughout the text. 17
It is in this introductory chapter as well that the distinction found in the subtitle
and already alluded to between ’conservative’ and ’emancipatory’ themes in
social thought is first articulated. Sociology is referred to quite often as a
‘science’, as it is understood in the German sense of the word as knowledge
(Wissenschaft). The importance of the word ’themes’ in the subtitle becomes
apparent when one notices that the term ‘emancipatory’ is itself properly located
in the period and setting during which particular notions of ’society’ were
formulated. For example, Smith, Millar and Ferguson are clearly founding
fathers of the emancipatory theme in social thought; yet Strasser (and Bauman)
also apply the term to themselves and to critical theory, as Habermas does in the
contemporary context. Thus we find both the Scottish Enlightenment and
critical theory cited as instances of the emancipatory theme, even though the
first provided support for capitalism and the growth of civil society, while the

16 Strasser, The Normative Structure of Sociology, pp. 13-14.

17 Ibid., pp. 113-22.

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second, in a sense quite different from Habermas’ subsequent formulation,

subjected these developments to an unremitting critique.
At other times Strasser appears to be restating Friedrich’s earlier contrast
between prophetic and priestly modes, which is itself derived in large part from
Znaniecki’s work, where he states: ’Social emancipists are primarily concerned
with the materialization of theory, not with its confirmation’ .18 What is interest-
ing here is the degree to which the bifurcation itself gives credence to the
traditional conception of theory rather than the critical one. Apparently, ’con-
servatives’ like Comte figure in this Popperian division of academic labour as
individuals principally concerned to confirm rather than to produce theory,
something both Popper and Hayek would find difficult, if not impossible, to
reconcile with Comte’s and Spencer’s interest in social ’integration’ and con-
solidation, rather than the social ’progress’ concerns of the emancipists.&dquo; One
suspects that Strasser has confused the libertarian, or even utopian, impulses of
thinkers dissatisfied with the social reality in which they find themselves with
some scientifically pre-defined theoretical role or task which their overall posi-
tion within the two alternatives consigns them to.
Any conceptual framework which compels us to treat Comte (whatever we
think of his theories) as a confirmer rather than a producer of ’knowledge
systems’ because of his concern for societal integration would be muddled to the
extent that it had confused societal objectives (e.g. integration) with theoretical
form. While it is no doubt the case that there are clear relations between thinkers
committed to the concept of theory found in modem science, these thinkers
could readily be discovered in both emancipatory and conservative camps. A
related difficulty derives from Strasser’s commitment to treating Smith as an
emancipist, even though the section he devotes to discussing his work (pp.
45-52) is replete with references to his conservative interest in integration and
functional interdependence. The only possible way Smith’s emphasis on con-
formity in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) can be reconciled with an
interest in emancipation and progress is if we ’locate’ him in his own time. Even
then, however, one is hard-pressed to give anything but a conservative interpre-
tation to his ’impartial spectator’. To the extent that Smith’s The Wealth of
Nations (1776) is seen to depend for its view of human nature on his earlier study,
Strasser’s schema comes under considerable strain at the very outset.&dquo;
Strasser’s text looks at different social theories within the pre-established
taxonomy, with its emphasis on ’guiding interests’ stated, but never really
developed in or after chapter one. The key figures discussed as sociologists
(Durkheim, Simmel, Parsons, Coser, Gouldner) follow sections which give us
the background of modern social theory-therefore sociology’s origins-in the
Scottish Enlightenment (emancipatory theme) and in Comte (integrative theme).
Mention must be made of the ’paradigm for the analysis of sociological theory’,
for it indicates how complex a taxonomy the first chapter is out to establish.
Here we discover that, whereas St. Simon desired an ’oppositional’ sociology,
18 Ibid., p. 11. Robert Friedrichs, A Sociology of Sociology, New York 1970; Florian
Znaniecki, The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge, New York 1940.
19 See Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge, London 1972, p. 262; Frederick Hayek, The
Counterrevolution of Science, New York 1955. Also Wilson, The American Ideology,
Chapters 2 and 5, for an extended discussion of the consequences of Popper’s simul-
taneous indebtedness to Spencer and commitment to ’social technology’.
20 For the section on Smith, see Strasser, op. cit., pp. 45-52. Also, Sheldon Wolin,
Politics and Vision, Boston 1960, pp. 343-51, for the association of liberalism with
conformity and adjustment.

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Bonald and Maistre supported a view of sociology as a ’stabilizing’ force.

Bonald, Maistre and St. Simon are alleged to have been guided by a ’social-
emancipatory (progressive)’ interest of cognition which is past-oriented in the
first two cases and future-oriented in St. Simon’s, while Comte’s is (with
Spencer’s) a ’social-technological (conservative)’ interest. Bonald, Maistre and
St. Simon are covered under the subheading of ’transitional system theory’,
while Comte and Spencer are alleged to be ’structural-functionalists’ committed
to a ’positivistic organicism’.11
The organization of subsequent chapters is historical in the sense that, though
Marx and von Stein sit, we are told, on opposite sides of the chart in terms of
their respective dominant themes-progressive in the first case, conservative in
the second-they are treated together within a chapter titled ’The German
Alternative’. This format is followed throughout the book, probably for the
purpose of imparting a not often incorrect impression of contextual conflict and
difference as it may actually have occurred. The difficulty here is the near total
absence of real comparison within chapters and the author’s determination to
’cover’ what he believes constitutes the central figures in the development of
sociology as a discipline. This emphasis on figures tends to play down much of
the value his original framework or schema might well have provided. It is
confusing to be tossed, in the space of less than a page, from biographical
remarks straight into the author’s efforts to ’locate’ the individual under consid-
eration within the schema, as promised. It suggests that the instructor should
not use the text as a substitute for original source readings, but rather as a
supplement to them. Otherwise the author’s assumption about what students in
an introductory social theory (not sociology) class know will really cause dif-
ficulties.
It is only slightly more confusing to see St. Simon with Bonald and
Maistre on the opposite side of the chart from Comte, than it is to find Smith and
Ferguson on the same side (’the progressive’), but distinguished from one
another as a ’future-oriented transitional system theorist’ and a ’humanistic
rationalist’ espousing ’radical conflict theory’ respectively. Durkheim, to con-
clude this taxonomic foray, is placed with Parsons and Merton on the conserva-
tive side of the chart as an exponent of a form of structural-functionalism called
‘capitalistic (Western) functionalism’. It would appear from this classification
that as liberalism moves from its initial emancipatory role in the Scottish En-
lightenment to a more conservative posture once it becomes the ideology giving
legitimacy to the structure in maturing industrial and capitalistic societies,
Strasser places its proponents on different sides of the chart, even if the first
principles of their political theory remain essentially unchanged.22
Even if the author had ’integrated’ the introductory chapter and the text so
that the latter chapters unpacked the conceptual framework initially established
at the outset, one would be warranted in wondering whether such herculean
taxonomic efforts do not, beyond a certain point, yield what can only be called
diminishing returns and a ’falling rate of profit’. The clear disjunction between
the tacit knowledge assumed in chapter one and the remainder of the text
suggests an insuperable problem which is manifested in the nonportability in
practice of classificatory terms and labels of the sort formulated by Strasser. One
21 Strasser, op. cit., p. 20. Compare to Robert Nisbet, ’Conservatism and Sociology’,
, 1952, 167-75; and Albert Salomon, The Tyranny of
American Journal of Sociology, 58
Progress: Reflections on the Origins of Sociology, New York 1955.
22 Thus Bauman’s (and Habermas’) conviction that it is the original goals of the En-
lightenment which must be attended to. This is discussed further on.

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 195

is reminded here of the difficulty one always faces when a model or framework is
allowed to become more than the representation of a complex reality which
would keep it simple and elementary, thus utilizable beyond itself. Again, how-
ever, these are the problems of any such exercise in the sociology of knowledge
that is unanchored to reflexive concerns distinct from sociology’s ultimate
commitment to the notion of theoretical rectitude found in modem science.
Subordination to such frameworks presupposes a boundary definition of
sociology that defines those who are ‘sociologists’, along with a rank-ordering of
these individuals based upon their overall ’contributions’ to the discipline.
Illustrative of both the boundary and the rank-ordering is the fact that Max
Weber, though mentioned numerous times, particularly under the section on
Gouldner, gets no section to himself in the text and is not to be found anywhere in
the paradigm we just finished discussing.23 This in contrast to Marx, who is
treated unambiguously as a social theorist and fitted into the schema. Also
surprising is the absence of a chapter or section specifically devoted to the work
of Robert Merton. Though cited with Durkheim and Parsons as already noted,
and referred to numerous times (only six in the text itself, the rest in notes), he is
treated as a contributor to the discipline whose work can safely be discussed
along with that of other figures. Perhaps it was Strasser’s need to favour
distribution over merit, given his tasks, which occasionally leads him to prefer
covering less prominent to more prominent figures where coverage is seen to be
required.
Most significant for his own auspices (and those of Bauman as well), Strasser
places under ’radical socilogy’, itself a version of ’radical conflict theory’ sub-
sumed under the ’social-emancipatory (progressive)’ cognitive interest, not only
C. Wright Mills (cited but not discussed), I. L. Horowitz (cited but not discus-
sed) and ’Gouldner’ (no first name or initials needed here), but also the
’Frankfurt School’. What surprises most is the fact that, though a version of
this latter work is clearly central to Strasser’s (and Bauman’s own system of
thought and method of exposition, it is not itself discussed. Apart from students
and instructors needing to realize that this is the author’s own ‘guiding interest of
cognition’, and that it is discussed only in the introductory chapter as a basis for
interpreting other social theories treated in the text, there is the need to keep in
mind what the reviewer believes to be central differences between critical
theorists of the first generation and critical sociologists like Habermas and his
followers, who are members of the ’Frankfurt School’ only in the sense in which
this designation includes, but is not exhausted by, critical theory itself.

III
The significance of this propensity on Strasser’s part is only highlighted when we
turn to Bauman’s Towards a Critical Sociology. 24 Bauman is not writing a text
for general undergraduate distribution, but is concerned instead with making a
23 For efforts to speak to Weber’s version of sociology, see Alan Blum, Theorizing,
London 1974, pp. 218-41; H. T. Wilson, ’Reading Max Weber: The Limits of Sociol-
ogy’, Sociology, 10, 1976, 297-315; Wilson, ’The Sociology of Apocalypse’, Human
Context, 8, 1975, 474-94; and Wilson, ’Max Weber’s Pessimism’, International Jour-
nal of Contemporary Sociology, 8, 1971, 183-88. (Review essay.)
24 London 1976. Bauman’s book is done in a paperback direct edition format which, while
economical, provides a bit of a challenge to the determined reader. It is a deceptively
long book because, though only 112 pages in length, this new technique makes it
possible for the publisher to get 54 lines on each regular page.

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statement about the relationship between sociology, existentialism and

phenomenology, and critique. In one sense it is not too much to call it an
idiosyncratic version of Habermas’ post-1968 revision of critical theory for it is
indebted to existentialism and phenomenology on the one hand, and the poetic
Marxism of Benjamin and Bloch on the other: The term ’critical sociology’ in the
title points to the subtle but important difference cited at the outset between the
critical theory of Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse and the post-1968 work of
Habermas, Wellmer, Shapiro and Shroyer .21 At the same time Bauman, very
much on the order ofO’Neill,26 views phenomenology and particularly existen-
tialism as enterprises that provide an effective critique of sociology as the
’science of unfreedom’ . In line with this he speaks of the ‘Husseriian Revolu-
tion’, as well as the ’existential restoration’ in its cathartic effects on ’Durk-
sonian sociology’ or the relatively standardized disciplinary hybrid of Durk-
heim’s and Parson’s social theories.
His first chapter, titled ’The Science of Unfreedom’, comprehends the stan-
dard Durksonian hybrid under this guise whenever its object is the ’perpetuation
of everyday life’, rather than its transcendence. To be sure, this object belongs
uniquely to sociology. Bauman defines sociology as the science of ’second nature’
understood as a ’second reality’, where nature is defined in scientific terms as a
’negative’ knowledge-the knowledge of limit-and where science itself is
knowledge of unfreedom realized through its commitment to seeking out lawlike
behaviour in nature. 27 Sociology is the science of second nature because it
endeavours in its most positivistic variant to constitute society as a ’real’
nature, and thus bears the same relation to human beings that the physical
sciences allegedly bear to the rest of animate and inanimate nature. Bauman
suggests quite clearly (and correctly) how the founders of sociology effectively
made a fetish of Society by just this effort to treat its development as a natural,
rather than an historically specific, phenomenon.28
One problem with this analysis in chapter one relates to Bauman’s failure to
attend adequately to the other ’dominant theme’ in the development of sociology
which is also discussed by Strasser. Bauman too readily accedes to the view that
sociology was ’discovered’ by St. Simon and Comte and, thereafter, developed
by Durkheim and Parsons, thereby diminishing the importance of the point that
society for Smith, Millar and Ferguson was not just a sociological, but also a
capitalistic (e.g. political-economic) construction in the form of civil society . It is
because of this view of society that Strasser sees the Scottish Enlightenment as
emancipatory in situ for its propounders viewed civil society as an undeveloped
possibility promising liberation from mercantilist constraints on an ’open soci-
ety’ .~9 Such a view points to an important element of one-dimensionality that
25 In addition to the materials cited by Habermas, Wellmer and Shapiro, see Trent
Shroyer, ’Toward a Critical Theory for Advanced Industrial Societies’, in H. P.
Dreitzel, ed., Recent Sociology, No. 2, New York 1970, pp. 210-34; and Shroyer,
Critique of Domination, New York 1974. For a review essay of the latter book, H. T.
Wilson, ’The Meaning of Domination’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 5, 1975,
496-500.
26 John O’Neill, Sociology as a Skin Trade, London 1972; and O’Neill, ’The Responsibil-
ity of Reason and the Critique of Political Economy’, in Maurice Natanson, ed.,
Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, Evanston, Illinois 1973, pp. 279-309.
27 Bauman, op. cit., pp. 2-5.
28 Ibid., pp. 7-8. See J. K. Bluntschli, The Theory of the State, Oxford 1892, for the
identification of ’society’ with the ’unclassed middle’.
29 Strasser, op. cit., pp. 5, 11, 20, 44-63.

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links the allegedly conservative and integrationist auspices first of Bonald and
Maistre, and thereafter of St. Simon and Comte (disputed by Strasser as noted,
except with regard to Comte) to the progressive and emancipatory auspices of
the Scottish political economists. It suggests that far less emphasis ought to be
placed on the differences between these auspices and far more on their
similarities and points of agreement
Another difficulty appertains to Bauman’s ’coverage’ of types of ’scientific’
sociology. Critics of the so-called ‘unified science’ position of crude sociological
positivism are virtually ignored in Bauman’s haste to link existentialists and
phenomenologists with effective critique even while they go about the task of
correcting the positivist description of the present.&dquo; I have in mind particularly
Weber’s reconciliation of the methodenstreit and werturteilsstreit in a
generalizing (nomothetic) objective, but one coupled with an ’individualizing’
(idiographic) method, and its present formulation by Karl Popper and those who
support his critique of holism and historicism in favour of ’social technology’ and
’piecemeal social engineering’ . Popper, along with Weber and Hayek, attack the
crude positivism of the unified science position as a scientistic heresy, arguing
that commitment to a ’unity of method’ demands a radically different direction
for development in the social sciences because the subject is human being rather
than nonhuman being. This critique of crude sociological positivism, whatever
the problems and difficulties which can, I think, be legitimately advanced against
it, is at least as effective in its own right as the somewhat similar one that Bauman
discovers in existentialism and phenomenology.’2
By the time Bauman reaches Durkheim and Parsons he is well into his critique
of sociology as the science of unfreedom. His emphasis on the degree to which
the realization of Society is the only legitimate object of theory echoes Adorno’s
brilliant formulation,&dquo; and is revealed in the way he underscores how its grip
effectively shackles the theoretical imagination.
The great achievement of a sociology which developed as the science of unfreedom has
been the unity of its ontology, methodology, and cognitive function. The grip in which
sociology has successfully kept human imagination is strengthened by the fact that it is
’based on these objectifications of reality which we undertake daily’, that it ’merely
extends the everyday procedure of objectifying reality’, as Habermas has pertinently
observed.
Sociology, therefore, as the science of unfreedom, answers the call coming from the
perplexed individual searching his own experience for such meaning as can make it
acceptable. It placates that experience which is vexed and confused by the incompatibility
of individual freedom with the actuality of the life process not of the individual’s choice. It
saves the individual from the torments of indecision and the responsibility he is too weak to

bear, by sharply cutting down the range of acceptable options to the size of his ’real’
potential.34
Again this formulation’s critical function, while clear in some respects, misses
the moment that political economy might have given to it. It is the parallel
30 Discussed in Wolin, op. cit., pp. 352-434.
31 See Marcuse, ’The Concept of Essence’, Negations, pp. 43-87; Theodor Adorno,
Negative Dialectics, pp. 20-24, 49-51, 122-31, 166-70, 198-200.
32 Discussed in Wilson, The American Ideology, Chapter 5, ’Social Technology and the
Open Society’.
33 Theodor Adorno, ’Society’ in Robert Boyers, ed., The German Refugee Intellectuals
,
New York 1972, pp. 144-53.
34 Bauman, op. cit., pp. 34-35.

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relationship between political economy and early capitalist development and

sociology (e.g. the social and behavioural sciences) and mature capitalism which
is absent in this discussion of legitimation and intellectual rationalization.
Though Bauman never falls prey to the temptation, common to ’post-industrial’
thinkers like Bell, Drucker and Galbraith, to dismiss altogether any form of
critique founded in a commitment to the continuing reality and significance of
’capitalism’, Habermas and the supporters of his work after 1968 do tend to
underscore the formative ideological role of science in its relation to technology,
rather than its derivative function as a relatively recent ’factor of production’ .3S5
Equally to the point is the fact that much of Habermas’ analysis in his recently
published Legitimation Crisis endeavours to justify ’radical reformism’ because
capitalism is understood to be almost perpetually capable of overcoming, that is,
turning to its own advantage, what might be construed to constitute ’objective
conditions’ threatening its good health, even perhaps its continuance.36 What is
missing from this critique of sociology in its standard (and standardized) version
would then be a far greater emphasis on the ’momentousness’ of the social
sciences as systems of thought simultaneously ’correct’ for advanced industrial
societies because their proper task lies solely in the completion of civil society,
rather than in its transcendence, and untrue when put against Reason as the
analytic (rather than the problematic given the goal of completing society)
committed to the totality as concrete, rather than abstract.&dquo;
Against his own analysis of the function of Durksonian sociology Bauman’s
chapter ’The Critique of Sociology’ appears strangely transitional, although this
is perhaps true only in a biographical, not an analytical, sense. Bauman cites
Husserl’s lifelong attempt to restore commonsense reason to ontological foun-
dations more secure than those provided for it by modem science, in order to
show a central point of difference between the natural and the social sciences
regarding in particular the role of ‘subjectivity’, the active element of intentional-
ity and ’meaning’ in the individual’s ’construction’ of social reality, and the
consequent opportunity to avoid ’the vexing problems of intersubjective verifi-
cation’ .’8
Bauman makes it clear that though for him the central object of
phenomenological exploration is ’transcendental subjectivity’, this object is not
a ’reality object’, and therefore not amenable to testability. Indeed, Bauman
claims that: ’If anything, it precedes, majestically unperturbed and immutable,
all objectifiable action’, enroute to pointing to the extensive ’bracketing away’
activity as the key to comprehending a ‘majorweakness of [Husserl’s] system’.
What renders Husserlian phenomenology ultimately puerile as a critique of
sociology, argues Bauman, is precisely the reified assumptions about society as
a multitude of personalities that necessarily contradicts the very radical skepti-
cism on which phenomenology prides itself but which is by definition incapable
of generating ’others’ as anything more than the ’contents of experience’. To
35 Compare Habermas, ’Technology and Science as Ideology’ in Toward a Rational
Society, pp. 81-122 to Marcuse, ’Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max
Weber’, in Negations, pp. 201-26. Also see Wilson, ’Science, Critique and Criticism’,
op. cit.; Norman Stockman, ’Habermas, Marcuse and the Aufhebung of Science and
Technology’, op. cit.; Tronn Overend, ’Enquiry and Ideology: Habermas’ Trichotom-
ous Conception of Science’, op. cit.
36 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis; Shapiro, ’From Marcuse to Habermas’, op. cit.
37 Adorno, ’Society’, op. cit.; Karel Kosik, ’The Concrete Totality’, Telos, No. 4, Fall
1969, pp. 35-54.
38 Bauman, op. cit., p. 48.

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substantiate the existence of others ’like myself , an argument from being in

violation of radical skepticism would have to be invoked. After pointing out that
the current critique of sociology is only ’ostensibly under the auspices of
phenomenology’ Bauman turns to what he believes constitutes its real source,
namely, existentialist philosophy. 39
Bauman, in a statement that effectively summarizes the existential moment of
O‘Neill’s critique of sociology in Sociology as a Skin Trade, makes it plain to the
reader how significant this critique is for him.

Existentialist philosophy seems to offer... an outright and most radical critique of sociol-

ogy, while meeting sociology on its own ground, appropriating its language and its
problematics, and thus suggesting a meaningful-and eventually conclusive-argument. It
accepts ’society’ as a reality. But first, it insists on asking the pertinent question of how
society has become (or rather how is it becoming over and over again) a reality in the first
place. Second, it points out that the self is a highly instrumental and active (if only by
desisting action) factor in this becoming. Third, it opens the possibility of questioning and
challenging social reality, by defining it as an inauthentic existence: by so doing it offers a
wider cognitive horizon, within which the current ’here and now’ social reality can no
longer claim the privileged status of the sole fulcrum of valid knowledge-the sole pur-
veyor of ’facts’ .40

While there is little in this description on its own that one could not agree with,
the absence of any recognition of its role as a ’moment’ has the effect of straining
the notion of critique. Indeed, Bauman’s use of the term critique goes far beyond
the initial formulation advanced against traditional theory by Horkheimer and
Marcuse. It is clear, for instance, that Bauman employs it in discussing and
evaluating what are in fact traditional theories like phenomenology and existen-
tialism, whose ’non-critical criticism’ of positivism (in the form of Durksonian
social science) is precisely what the Marxian moment of O’Neill’s work en-
deavours to overcome.
The reason this is so must be clear: at stake in critique, in contrast to liberal social
criticism, is a commitment to a dialectical conception of the totality or whole as
concrete, rather than abstract. In this view reason ceases to be the problematic
(as noted) and becomes the analytic against which society itself is measured as
possibility. At the same time, to be sure, the concrete totality is comprehended
materialistically in the sense that it is not seen to either grasp or represent social
reality as such. The tension given in theorizing as a negative dialectics obliges it
simultaneously to recognize the object’s preponderance over concepts intended
to appropriate it, while at the same time, it nonetheless endeavours to turn
glimpse to grasp through speech. This means that negative dialectics is reducible
neither to method nor to system, in accordance with Neitzsche’s mistrust of all
systematizers: ’The will to a system is a lack of integrity’. Bauman’s conviction
that Alfred Schutz, in particular, was responsible for a ’devastating vivisection
of sociology’ is insufficiently reflexive, even given its willingness to recognize
the difference between a criticism under positivist auspices and a critique which
reaches the concept of Society itself as the hidden objeCt.41
Bauman’s final chapter, titled ’The Critique of Unfreedom’, intends to take
account of the limits of a critique of sociology that still takes Society as its object.
At the same time, Bauman, following Habermas in Knowledge and Human

39 Ibid., pp. 51-53.

40 Ibid., p. 56.
41 Ibid., p. 65.

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Interests ,42 wants to distend the Enlightenment from positivism on the question
of ’Reason’: whereas the latter is conservative and closed the former is hopeful
and open. Bauman even points to ’the stunning transmogrification of reason on
its way from the Enlightenment to its positivist heirs’ in order to make his point,
and certainly succeeds on this score. To this end, it is necessary for him to
underscore the claim of Habermas that the Enlightenment, in contrast to
positivism, comprehended Reason’s proper role as possibility and analytic,
rather than simply as actuality and artifice or instrument. The idea here is to
show how positivism, in the form of French sociological positivism, effectively
sundered Reason by reformulating it as rationality and making it the enemy,
rather than the potential tool of emancipation. Bauman, with Habermas, wants
to discover whether this revelation can help us determine ’whether Enlighten-
ment Reason still contains a message which can be retrieved to inform the task of
human emancipation in the age shaped-materially and spiritually-by scientific
civilization’ .43
It is precisely the alleged ’critical power’ of Enlightenment Reason that he is
concerned to vindicate, if possible. And it is here in this third and final chapter
that the emancipatory thrust of sociology (whose absence was noticed earlier)
comes to rest, instead of in an introductory chapter-and for obvious reasons.
Unlike Strasser Bauman does not bring it in because he wants the in situ
emancipatory thrust to be revived in its initial objectives in order to inform our
critical thinking today. Instead of viewing the Enlightenment as a philosophy
and world view underwriting the development of civil society in and through
capitalist industrialization, he and Habermas want to emphasize its value as a
watershed in critique trying to open out the closed collective life of its time.
Instead of comprehending its contribution as one moment in the development of
aconcept of reason.as rationality underpinning capitalist development, he wants
to exonerate it for its ’attitude’ toward the mercantile reality from which it
sought to extricate itself.4°
This explains in large part why Bauman needs to begin using the terms
’critical’ and ’emancipatory’ interchangeably in chapter three as modifiers for
the alternative sociology which he, following Habermas, wants to point the way
to. Emancipatory reason, he argues, is prepared to offer a critique of common-
sense assumptions in light of the degree to which they have been ’infiltrated’
with scientific perspectives favouring an emphasis on laws. In effect, it queries
the present equation of the ’nature’ from which science takes its point of
departure with the natural, rather than the eminently historical. Bauman makes a
major point when he correctly notes the similarities between commonsense and
technical-instrumental knowledge on the matter of their common standpoint.45
The question that cannot be avoided given Bauman’s determination to speak
to the need for a sociology that is at one and the same time critical and eman-

42 Boston 1968. See in particular ’Review Symposium on Knowledge and Human In-
terests’ in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2, No. 3, 1972, devoted to analysis of this
book, as well as Habermas’ ’Postscript’ in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 3, 1973,
157-89.
43 Bauman, op. cit., pp. 71-74 at p. 74.
44 Compare Bauman to Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of En-
lightenment, trans. John Cumming, New York 1972, particularly this introductory
statement reminiscent of Weber’s concluding remarks in The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism: ’In the most general sense of progressive throught, the En-
lightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their
sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.’
45 Bauman, op. cit., pp. 77-78.

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cipatory is how sociology can be sociology (e.g. technical-instrumental knowl-

edge that is the product of disciplined observation) and be either critical or
emancipatory as such. This is not a specious point, since the vindication of such
a discipline would have to lie in achieving the very heightened consciousness
which it must necessarily presuppose in order to get on with its appointed tasks.
Secondly, of course, is the disjunction between the critical and the emancipatory
in a society where this latter need admits to the absence of real ’objective
conditions’ making it likely or even possible. Habermas’ recent position on the
’tenacity’ of capitalism in Legitimation Crisis is relevant to our point here.
Bridging the gap is a real historical task, not simply an epistemological problem,
and the question is always whether and to what extent thought can lead society
toward ends it believes to be ‘rational’ . Like Habermas’ explicit endorsement of
a revised version of ’piecemeal social engineering’ since 1968, Bauman’s
commitment to grasping, intervening and directing through thought threatens
thought’s autonomy and its power at the same time that it gives it the appear-
ance of tremendous vitality.
From the standpoint of Habermas’ distinction between cognitive interests as
either technical-instrumental, hermeneutic or practical, we are warranted in
asking whether the recommended posture of ’radical reformism’ can possibly
escape subordination to the prevailing ’mediation’ between the practical and the
hermeneutic that today points to the domination of Society alone as the
technical-instrumental interest characterized by disciplined observation and
objectivity in the absence of the object.46 The fact that Bauman begins to use the
terms ’critical’ and ’emancipatory’ interchangeably near the end of the book
only draws attention to the question of the real need and its relationship to the
autonomy of thought as critique. The situation in West Germany may well call
for thought to fall back into society, thus for a transformation of critical theory
into a ’critical sociology’, but a different dilemma prevails in North America.
Here we have seen thought absorbed and ’integrated’ with a diabolical efficiency
that may well demonstrate the absence of objective conditions more than
anything else.&dquo; Indeed, Habermas’ discussion in Legitimation Crisis tends to
bear out his prognosis as one applicable in the main to West Germany and
perhaps to France and Italy as well.
This means that the dilemma of critical theory resides precisely in how it views
itself relative to these conditions. If it accepts them, then does it perceive its real
interests to lie in continued autonomy and a reflexivity compromised only by a
commitment to the empirical realm as becoming, or in an interventionist posture
that abjures theoretical materialism in favour of grasp, strategy and action?
Finally, to the extent that the notion of objective conditions found in the first
generation of critical theorists is denied, the real message of Marxian theory is
ignored in favour of a one-dimensional concept or system characterized by an
ahistorical presentism. It is, I submit, all too easy to over-react to student protest
and even violence, but to do so one must necessarily begin by endorsing the
Popperian argument instead of employing reflexivity to show its very limited
validity.&dquo;
One cannot help noticing, in this regard, how readily Bauman’s analysis in his
final chapter lapses into the habit of bifurcating theoretical possibility into the
46 Discussed in Everett Knight, The Objective Society, New York 1959; and Wilson, The
American Ideology. For a translator’s difficulties with the three ’interests’ see Shap-
iro’s remarks (as translator) introducing Habermas’ Toward a Rational Society, p. vii.
47 Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, Boston 1964.
48 Marcuse, ’Karl Popper and the Problem of Historical Laws’, op. cit.; Himka, op. cit.

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polar opposites of intervention and ’hope’, both little more than a way in which
intellectuals advertise their own resignation in the form of a consciousness of
their faltering autonomy, even their impotence.’9 It is Bauman’s belief (from
Habermas) that thought can bridge the gap between: (1) the real need for critique
in the absence of objective conditions in the advanced societies, and (2) emanci-
pation under the auspices of a redefined commitment to the goals of the En-
lightenment that reveals the true dilemma. First is the issue of the relation
between the Enlightenment and capitalist industrialization, that is, whether
capitalism fundamentally violated the real goals of Enlightenment thought in
practice. Strasser’s analysis of Smith, Millar and Ferguson as both Enlighten-
ment figures and political economists would argue against such an interpreta-
tion. Second is whether a critical sociology can really do anything more than
assist in the legitimation of society as ’second nature’, rather than constituting a
key element speaking to its possible transcendence. The relationship between
consciousness and the objective conditions of real class and power relations
would favour the first alternative.
Bauman’s concluding and in many ways central chapter can, therefore, speak
only euphemistically of a sociology simultaneously critical and emancipatory
that contemplates a bridging of the gap in the absence of objective conditions as
an alternative to speaking to possibility itself. The already noted bifurcation
between intervention and hope is only steps away from the distinction betweeen
facts and values, means and ends, that continues to underlie and fuel the
production of ’knowledge’ in the advanced societies today. Though Bauman is
correct to see the emancipation of mankind in the emancipation of Reason, his
Enlightenment auspices along with his refusal to deal with the technicalities of
intervention in pursuit of heightened consciousness only highlight the gap that
speaks to both reality and the real need.
In the final paragraphs of the book he makes plain the sort of‘compromise’
both he and Habermas want to effect:
In the absence of rules which can guide decisions taken on this threshold with anything

approaching alogarythmical exactitude, one has to settle for more lenient and equivocal
heuristic guidelines. These can go only in the direction of shared responsibility and the
creation of conditions where-one would hope-the guidance of human action by reason
will be unimpaired. This general direction has been selected on the assumption that given
real freedom to exercise theirjudgment and reflect on all aspects of their situation, men will
eventually make the right choice between alternative interpretations; or, to put it in a
somewhat more cautious form-the freer the conditions of judgment, the higher is the
probability that true interpretations are adopted and false rejected. Hence, at each stage of
the long process of verification of critical knowledge, proper care is to be taken in
eliminating intellectual and physical constraints upon judgment. At the level of theoretical
discourse, all information, and the procedure of testing it, must be open to general scrutiny
and all criticism carefully considered before the assumption of its validity. At the stage of
. enlightenment dialogue, all necessary effort must be made to lift all participants to the
status of full intellectual partners in communication, and to avoid interference of non-
intellectual means in the clash between competing interpretations. Finally, if a decision
has been taken to enter a third stage-that of struggle-on the assumption that the
communication with some group has been irreparably broken, all decisions must be made
again dependent upon the consent of all participants, preceded by thorough and uncurbed
scanning of alternative means of action. These heuristic guidelines are, in effect,

49 Theodor Adorno, ’The Sociology of Knowledge and Its Consciousness’, in Adorno,

Prisms, London 1967, pp. 37-49 at pp. 37-38.

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exemplifications of the general principle: the liberation of man can be promoted only in
conditions of liberty. The concept of critical knowledge serving the emancipatory interest
of man cannot but agree with the seminal principle and the intellectual ’spiritus movens’ of
the Enlightenment: that the emancipation of reason is a condition of all material emanci-
pation.
Those who seek knowledge of the kind whose veracity one can be fully certain of at the
moment one formulates it will obtain littlecomfort from such vague heuristic guidelines for
authentication as the self-reflection of critical knowledge can offer. But, then, the one
thing men can be certain of, more than of anything else, is that they have never, so far,
attained the kind of freedom they sought. And freedom means uncertainty as much as
certitude means resignation. But before he may be a thinker, a symbol-maker, a homo
faber-man has to be a he-who-hopes. [Emphasis mine.]So
Over a decade ago Jurgen Habermas, in words I have almost committed to
memory, challenged Talcott Parsons’
interpretation of Weber’s discussion of
’value-freedom and objectivity’ by remarking that he envied his American
colleagues their political traditions ’which permit such a generous and (in the
best sense of the word) liberal interpretation of Max Weber’. He went on to
assert, in a similar vein, that while such postures were attractive to Germans still
in search of ’alibis’, Weber’s political sociology ’has had a different history
here’. Habermas concluded by claiming that Weber’s ’sketch of Caesar-like
leader-democracy on the contemporary basis of a national-state imperialism’
showed the true character of value freedom and objectivity as a doctrine whose
effect was to strengthen ideology, rather than break its spell. 51
We would make a similar claim regarding the commitment of Habermas and
his compeers to radical reformism and to the development of a critical sociology
as a theoretical task, and might perhaps turn his critique of Weber against him in
order to speak to the issue of the autonomy of critical theory as a real need in a
North American society threatened with the annihilation of both theory and
practice in the name of disciplined observation and ’social technology’. Failing
the continued vitality of thought, we here may someday also be in need of alibis
ourselves. As was so often the case, Adorno put the matter most clearly and
forcefully when he said:
Thought is subjected to the subtlest censorship of the terminus ad quem: whenever it
appears critically, it has to indicate the positive steps desired. If such positive goals turn
out to be inaccessible to present thinking, why then thought itself ought to come across
resigned and tired, as though such obstruction were its own fault, and not the signature of
the thing itself. That is the point at which society can be recognized as a universal block,
both within men and outside them at the same time. Concrete and positive suggestions for
change merely strengthen this hindrance, either as ways of administering the unadminis-
tratable, or by calling down repression from the monstrous totality itself. The concept and
the theory of society are legitimate only when they do not allow themselves to be attracted
by either of these solutions, when they merely hold in negative fashion to the basic
possibility inherent in them: that of expressing the fact that such possibility is threatened
with suffocation. Such awareness, without any preconceptions as to where it might lead,
would be the first condition for an ultimate break in society’s omnipotence.s2

50 Bauman, op. cit., pp. 111-12.

51 In Max Weber and Sociology Today, ed. Otto Stammer, trans. Kathleen Morris (New
York, 1972), pp. 59-66 at p. 66.
52 Adorno, ’Society’, op. cit., p. 153.

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IV
Nothing more is needed to underscore the thought-provoking qualities of both
the Strasser and Bauman studies, and by implication, of the works of Jurgen
Habermas. That the reviewer found it impossible to forego critique himself
ought not be interpreted as anything but evidence of the compelling character of
the issues being discussed in the two works and the often stimulating way in
which each author goes about his task. The necessarily ongoing nature of this
controversy reflects the relevance to practice not only of those endeavours that
make relevance their stated objective, but those that abjure such efforts in the
name of Reason and speak to the priority of reflection in the process.

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