Adorno, theory & praxis & the FBI

[Fred Welfare]

I never had the impression that the Frankfurt School was under
investigation.  Marcuse was a member of the OSS of the US.  Anyway, the
defining characteristic of Adorno, imho, is his introductory statement in
1963, in The Positivist Dispute.  Habermas defends him against Popper. 
Adorno claims that there is something seriously wrong with Western
civilization since WWII had actually occurred!  This statement in itself as
condemnatory of the sociological program was disputed by both Adorno and
his spokesman Hans Albert.  Habermas explained the dispute in the same
edition.  The argument against positivism is most aptly presented in this
text where critical theory as dialectical and hermeneutical is contrasted
with the power politics of positivists.


> [Original Message]
> From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org>
> To: <frankfurt-school@lists.village.virginia.edu>
> Cc: <marxistphilosophy@yahoogroups.com>
 > Date: 4/8/2003 12:02:02 AM
> Subject: Adorno, theory & praxis & the FBI
>
> One of the panels in the recent Socialist Scholars Conference in New York 
> was "Rethinking Adorno."  I shall have more to say about the panel later 
> on, but now I just want to focus on the second speaker Andrew Rubin 
> (Georgetown University), whose talk is of some relevance to the current, 
> rather fruitless discussion of Adorno.
> 
> Rubin began by reciting a familiar litany of criticisms of Adorno's 
> limitations, his disagreement with student activism (as pure actionism), 
> his political resignation, etc., and everybody's peeves with him: 
> feminists, Edward Said, Terry Eagleton, et al.  One wonders whether
Adorno 
> is relevant today.  He was insistent on maintaining his intellectual 
> independence.  Unfortunately, my notes are so sketchy here that I don't 
> have any proffered answer to the big question, but I did scribble
something 
> about the dialectical method ("not just resistance"), modern music, 
> negativity, Beethoven's last works in which he abandons the bourgeoisie
and 
> embraces a mature negativity in the face of mortality.
> 
> This is not very helpful, I know, but what matters here is the middle
part 
> of the talk, based on FBI files on Adorno obtained via the Freedom of 
> Information Act.  All members of the Institute for Social Research and 
> associates of Adorno such as Eisler were all spied on by the FBI, from
1935 
> on.  The FBI made a note of everything, from the car he drove, to the 
> contents of his correspondence they opened and read.  FBI surveillance 
> affected the work of Adorno and Horkheimer, inducing a rewrite of
DIALECTIC 
> OF ENLIGHTENMENT to conceal its Marxism.  The word "capitalism" for
example 
> was changed to "existing conditions".  Apparently, they were successful, 
> because the FBI could never pin them down as Marxists regardless of their 
> suspicions.  Government paranoia was also coupled with ignorance and 
> stupidity.  Hoover thought reference to Nietzsche in Adorno's 
> correspondence was some kind of secret code or language.
> 
> I have not attempted to verify Rubin's statements, and I would have to
read 
> DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT carefully to judge it accurately myself.  The 
> implication I see here is that the work might have become much more 
> abstract due to the marxophobia of American conditions.  Hence it seems
to 
> me there could have been no question of A & H being too soft on Marxism
if 
> they had harbored strong anti-Marxist sentiments; the pressure would have 
> been entirely in the opposite direction.  I couldn't tell you offhand how 
> seriously this work might have been compromised. However, I find the 
> quotations from this work recently adduced to be extremely noxious and 
> objectionable:
> 
> >Formal logic was the major school of unified science. It provided the 
> >Enlightenment thinkers with the schema of the calculability of the
world. 
> >The mythologizing equation of Ideas with numbers in Platos last writings 
> >expresses the longing of all demythologization: number became the canon
of 
> >the Enlightenment. (1995: 7)
> >
> >To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and 
> >ultimately to the one, becomes illusion; modern positivism writes it off 
> >as literature. Unity is the slogan from Parmenides to Russell. The 
> >destruction of gods and qualities alike is insisted upon. (1995: 7-8)
> >
> >Man imagines himself free from fear when there is no longer anything 
> >unknown. That determines the course of demythologization, of 
> >enlightenment, which compounds the animate with the inanimate just as
myth 
> >compounds the inanimate with the animate. Enlightenment is mythic fear 
> >turned radical. The pure immanence of positivism, its ultimate product,
is 
> >no more than a so to speak universal taboo. Nothing at all may remain 
> >outside, because the main idea of outsideness is the very source of
fear. 
> >(1995: 16)
> 
> Not only does such rubbish reduce real history to metaphysical 
> abstractions, it betrays an elementary ignorance of what logic, 
> mathematics, and science are all about, as well as the varied motives of 
> individual scientists.  This repeats the worst and most ignorant cliches 
> about science conflating it with "positivism", ignorant of its real 
> history.   Worse, it smacks of the fascist lebensphilosophie of
miscreants 
> like Heidegger whom Adorno himself detested.  It is all the old
right-wing, 
> Catholic, "reign of quantity" crapola all over again.  What is wrong with 
> the whole conception of "instrumental reason" is that it explains a 
> mythological construct in mythological terms.
> 
> Curiously, CRITICAL MODELS shows Adorno functioning on a much higher 
> plane.  In the face of the reactionary tendencies of the German
ideological 
> environment, Adorno takes great pains to defend the things he supposedly 
> hates--America, science, even positivism--against the illiberal, 
> obscurantist, irrationalist and reactionary tendencies of German 
> lebensphilosophie.  Note also that Adorno demonstrates a mature 
> understanding of the interplay between these two poles of bourgeois
philosophy:
> 
> http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/adornostill.html
> 
> Adorno was in Germany when he delivered these lectures.  Perhaps his 1949 
> obsession with positivism as villain has something to do with the
American 
> conditions in which he was immersed in the 1940s, which he reacted
against?
> 
> Finally, perhaps those interested in some intellectual substance as an 
> alternative to the self-indulgent drivel that populates the Frankfurt 
> School list may want to study up on the relationship between positivism
and 
> lebensphilosophie (or scientism and romanticism)  that forms the 
> philosophical dynamic of modern societies--capitalist and Stalinist.  To 
> that end I offer my study guide:
> 
> http://www.autodidactproject.org/guidlebn.html
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 



--- Fred Welfare
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