The Essential Srantfirt School Reader Edited by Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt Introduction by Paul Piccone BASIL BLACKWELL * OXFORD.© Urizen Books, New York 1978 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- copy, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. First published in the United Kingdom by Basil Blackwell, Oxford. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. 1. Frankfurt school of sociology I. Arato, Andrew Il. Gebhardt, Bike 301°.01 HM24 ISBN 0-631-19280-8 ISBN 0-631-19290-5 pbk Printed in United States of America.Contents Preface ix General Introduction Paul Piecone xi Part I Political Sociology and Critique of Politics Introduction by Andrew Arato 3 The End of Reason Max Horkheimer 26 Changes in the Structure of Political Compromise Otto Kirchheimer 49 State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations Friedrich Pollock 7 The Authoritarian State Max Horkheimer 95 Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda Theodor W. Adorno Ng Some Social Implications of Modem Technology Herbert Marcuse 138 Notes a 163Part II Esthetic Theory and Cultural Criticism Introduction by Andrew Arato Introductory note by Eike Gebhardt Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian The Author as Producer On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening Commitment Knut Hamsun Notes PastI A Critique of Methodology Introduction by Eike Gebhardt On the Problem of Truth A Note on Dialectic The Sociology of Knowledge and its Consciousness On Science and Phenomenology The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology Subject and Object Notes Biographical Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgements Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin Theodor W. Adomo Theodor W. Adorno Leo Lowenthal Max Horkheimer Herbert Marcuse Theodor W. Adorno Herbert Marcuse Erich Fromm Theodor W. Adorno 270 319 346 477 497 512 528 530 542 559Preface The critical theory of the Frankfurt School is no longer a stranger to an English-speaking audience. Several volumes of Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin have recently been published, not to speak of the already available works of Marcuse, Neumann, Kirchheimer, Low- enthal and Fromm. There is a significant semiofficial biography of the school by Martin Jay as well as a whole range of treatments both sympathetic and hostile in the recent books of Russell Jacoby, Wil- liam Leiss, Trent Schroyer, Susan Buck-Morss, George Lichtheim, Zoltan Tar, Perry Anderson, Philip Slater and Alasdair MacIntyre, and in the journals Telos, New German Critique and Social Re- search. In this context, the purpose of our anthology is threefold. (1) We want to concentrate on the social theories of the School, usually interpreted from the point of view of the somewhat later socio- philosophical synthesis, impressive but far less flexible, that correctly goes under the name of ‘‘critique of domination’’ and ‘‘critique of instrumental reason. (2) We want to correct some widespread miscon- ceptions about the political and intellectual purposes of the School, as well as refute the myth of a single, unified critical theory of society. At least eight authors are, therefore, represented in the volume. (3) We want both to introduce undergraduate students of sociology, political science, philosophy and intellectual history to critical theory, and to provide advanced students as well as working scholars with a number of hitherto untranslated or inaccessible texts. Almost no selection from an easily available source is therefore reproduced. These three criteria-have served as our guiding principles of selection. For rea- ixx ae ceeeea RrEEE sons of space, we had to restrict ourselves to the works of the first generation of critical theorists. In any volume subsequent to this Reader, the figure of Habermas would inevitably play a major role. In light of the essay character of all our selections, we sought to provide the reader with a range of introductory and explanatory materials: (1) A general introduction by Paul Piccone; (2) extensive introductions to each of the three parts of the anthology: ‘‘Political Sociology and Critique of Politics’’ by Andrew Arato; ‘‘Esthetic Theory and Cultural Criticism ** (first four sections by Arato, last section by Gebhardt); ‘A Critique of Methodology’? by Eike Gebhardt; (3) biographical notes; (4) a bibliography of works of the authors in English by Matthew Smosna; (5) prefatory notes to each selection by Gebhardt and Arato. Tt was our primary intention to locate our authors and their works intellectually and politically, and to supply as many of the missing links in their argumentation as possible. That is, we sought to recon- struct immanently three major dimensions of the Frankfurt School's theoretical spectrum: political sociology, cultural theory and critical methodology. Above all, we wanted to avoid judging them from a transcendent vantage point. Our conception of immanent critique derives from Adorno. Our interest lies in those internal tensions, differences, oppositions, problems and debates, in a word, in those “‘antinomies,’’ which drive the self-critique of critical theory forward as a forceful witness to the hope that theory is still capable of address- ing itself to radical and liberating needs. Andrew Arato Eike Gebhardt June 1977General Introduction “Critical theory,”’ the umbrella for a whole spectrum of posi- tions associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, has finally, after long delay, an opportunity to become an in- tegral part of English-speaking culture. Comprised of philosophers, literary critics, sociologists, psychologists, economists and political scientists—of whom Theodor W. Ador- no, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Otto Kirchheimer, Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann and Friedrich Pollock are the major figures—the Frankfurt School came into existence in the mid-1920s as an association of Left intellectuals that formed the privately funded Institute for Social Research. The concept of ‘‘critical theory” derives from the traditions of Kantian critical philosophy and of Marxian critique of ideology. Kant himself defined his late philosophy as critical, and entitled his three greatest works ‘“‘Critiques’’-—of pure theoreticat reason, of practical reason and of esthetic and teleological judgment. Critique, in the Kantian sense, is an analysis of the conditions of possibility and the limits of rational faculties undertaken by reason itself: assuming a self-reflective or ‘‘transcendental”’ posture, reason analyzes and criticizes itself in the process of its world-constituting “‘legislating activity’. For Kant, Newtonian physics and Euclidian geometry con- xistituted the crowning achievements of rational synthesis. He believed that the logical, categorical foundations of these sciences represented the conditions of the possibility of objective experience as such. Basing itself on this interpretation of Kant (there are of course others), one wing of fin de siécle Neo- Kantianism sought to broaden the Kantian meaning of critique by making history (cultural and social) the primary theme of transcendental or critical self-reflection. From Dilthey and Rickert to Simmel and Max Weber, the implicit and/or explicit project of philosophy became a ‘“‘critique of historical reason.’” To be sure, Kant left to prosterity several key essays on history which examine the limits and possibilities of progress, but, as is evident from his theme, he was deeply swayed by the eighteenth- century way of viewing these problems. The nineteenth century, however, became an age of the highest conceivable degree of historical experience, learning, research and reflection; and any new critical philosophy of history had to interpret the works of Ranke, Taine, Michelet, Burckhardt, Droysen, etc. The Hegelian critique of Kant—short of what the Neo-Kantians saw as Hegel’s speculative, ‘‘panlogical’’ excesses—also had to be in- tegrated. So in an age when natural science enjoyed its highest prestige, one group of primarily German (but also French and Italian) thinkers systematically attempted to replace nature by culture, science by history as the focus of philosophical concern, an attitude also typical of the early mentors of the Institute’s members: Hans Cornelius, Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, as well as of the single most important Marxian in- fluence on the Institute, Georg Lukacs. The second main source of critical theory was the Marxian tradition of ideology critique. This critique refers not just to the Simple discovery of systematically concealed interests behind theories, but also and even primarily to the explosive confronta- tion of the true and false dimensions of existing theories of reali- ty as exemplified by Marx’s mature critique of political economy. In fact, Marx too used the word critique in the titles or subtitles of at least eight finished and unfinished works. The Kantian idea of categorical self-reflection and the demonstration of the limits of the science criticized was surely incorporated in Marx’s concept, but so was Hegel’s objection that Kant assumed