[FRA:] Dubiel, Helmut. Theory and Politics (1)
steve.devos at krokodile.co.uk
steve.devos at krokodile.co.uk
Tue Feb 28 19:46:09 GMT 2006
So have you changed your opinion of the book in the last two decades ?
Especially given the question at the end...
Doug Kellner wrote:
> Here's my review from mid-80s when the Dubiel book first came out=
> b:dubiel.rev
>
>
>
> Helmut Dubiel, Theory and Politics. Studies in the Development of
> Critical Theory, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England,
> 1985), xiii and 207 pages; translated by Benjamin Gregg.
>
>
>
> Benjamin Gregg's translation of Helmut Dubiel's 1978 book
> Wissenschaftsorganisation und politische Erfahrung: Studien zur fruhen
> Kritischen Theorie) makes accessible to English-speaking readers one
> of the most important books yet to appear on the theory and politics
> of the so-called Frankfurt school. Dubiel provides the best available
> historical and analytical account of the development of critical
> theory, of its method of interdisciplinary social research, and of how
> it organized and pursued its research projects during its years under
> Horkheimer's directorship in Weimar Germany and in exile in the United
> States during the era of fascism. In the first half of his book,
> Dubiel focuses on "political experience and the process of theory
> construction in the Frankfurt circle, 1930-1945." His study shows
> that, at least during this period, the Institute for Social Research
> was extremely interested in history, politics, and the relation of its
> work to its historical situation and revolutionary politics. The
> texts, correspondence, and other material cited provides a strong
> defense against criticisms that critical theory is primarily
> apolitical, uninterested in history and politics, idealistic, and
> hostile to science. Dubiel's research makes it clear that the critical
> theorists took different positions during varying historical periods
> toward their socio-historical situation, politics, science, and theory.
>
> Dubiel divides the work of the Institute for Social Research during
> the period under scrutiny into three distinct stages: 1) materialism,
> 1930-1937; 2) critical theory, 1937-1940; 3) the critique of
> instrumental reason, 1940-1945. He differentiates these stages
> according to the general theoretical position maintained, the
> political position and presentation of the theory-practice relation,
> and their specific historical experience and positions toward the
> working class movement, fascism, and the Soviet Union during the
> period under question. Dubiel thus contributes both to a better
> understanding of the genesis of critical theory and to its
> developments under specific politico-historical and theoretical
> exigencies. In characterizing the theory-praxis relation he
> distinguishes between the varying subjects and addressees of the
> theory and their differing conceptions of the relation between theory
> and practice in various historical contexts. In particular, he shows
> how critical theory began by addressing itself to a revolutionary
> proletariat as part of the revolutionary movement and ended by
> addressing primarily other radical intellectuals in political isolation.
>
> In characterizing the dominant theoretical position during each
> stage, Dubiel analyzes the specific "self-understanding within the
> tradition of historical and political theory," the relation to
> Marxism, the relation of philosophy to science, and the concept of
> utopia operative. This sort of careful, differentiated historical and
> theoretical analysis makes possible appreciation of the heterogeneity
> of critical theory during its "heroic," or "classical," period and the
> significant developments within critical theory that have been
> generally overlooked by most historians or followers of critical
> theory, especially within the English-speaking world. Theory and
> Politics thus provides an indispensible source for understanding both
> the history of critical theory and its fundamental theoretical
> position(s).
>
>
>
> Dubiel argues that the, first, "materialism" phase of critical theory
> is distinguished by commitment to a materialist social theory defined
> by the unity of philosophy and science (11-38) and rooted in the
> marxian critique of political economy. The distinctive contribution
> of this stage was development of a marxian social psychology and the
> major research project was a study of the social-psychological
> structure of employees in the Weimar Republic--which was recently
> published for the first time as @U(Arbeiter und Angestellte am
> Vorabend des Dritten Reiches) (Stuttgart: Deutsche-Verlags Anstalt,
> 1980) and was translated as The Working Class in Weimar Germany
> (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984)). Politically,
> there was "critical solidarity with the 'revolutionary wing of the
> working-class movement'" which characterized the political
> orientation of the group (17).
>
>
>
> Eschewing both the mechanistic metaphysical materialism already
> criticized by Marx in The Holy Family, as well as the current
> positivistic forms of materialism, Horkheimer and his colleagues
> defined the objects of materialist theory in terms of existing social
> struggles, problems, and experiences. Rejecting Hegel's identity
> theory (and thus the forms of epistemological realism held to by many
> positivistic materialists then and now), for the critical theorists
> there was a non-identity between concept and object; their concepts
> and theories thus provided but pictures of the socio-material world
> and not any absolute or indubitable knowledge. As Horkheimer wrote,
> "'Materialist theory...is not a metaphysics of history but a picture
> of the world that changes and develops in the context of practical
> efforts to improve it'" (33).
>
>
>
> The materialist theory of society developed by Horkheimer and his
> colleagues was closely related to Marxism at this stage: "'Materialism
> is characterized by its content: the economic theory of society'"
> (34). During this stage, the Institute saw its purpose as
> reformulating Marxian theory "under the historically changed
> conditions of capitalism and the labor movement" (34). This involved
> moving beyond crude marxian conceptions of the relation between base
> and superstructure and developing both a marxist social psychology and
> cultural theory to better analyze the mediations between the economic
> base and the realms of the superstructure.
>
>
>
> The Institute's social theory during this phase was a response both to
> inadequacies within classical Marxism and the dominant forms of
> bourgeois science. Orthodox Marxism had congealed into a dogmatic,
> reductionist, objectivistic metaphysical materialism, and bourgeois
> social science was characterized by a fragmentation of the sciences,
> each cut off from the other and pursuing its investigations isolated
> from other disciplines. To overcome this dual crisis of Marxism and
> bourgeois science, the Institute attempted to develop an
> "interdisciplinary materialism" that would be characterized by an
> integration of philosophy and science. Accordingly, during the 1930s
> the Institute developed criticisms of both the abstract, speculative
> and metaphysical philosophy dominant in Germany at the time and the
> various specialized sciences. Thus, the project of constructing an
> interdisciplinary "materialist superscience" was conceived in
> opposition to both the specialized bourgeois sciences and the
> socialist scientism of many orthodox social democrats like Kautsky or
> communists like Stalin. As Horkheimer stated at the time:
>
>
>
> "'Materialism requires the unification of philosophy and science. Of
> course, it recognizes technical differences between the more general
> research of philosophy and the more specialized research in the
> sciences, just as it recognizes differences in method between research
> and presentation but not between science and philosophy as such'" (36).
>
>
>
> And in his inaugural address after taking over as Director of
>
> the Institute, Horkheimer argued:
>
>
>
> "'What matters today... is to organize investigations on the basis of
> current philosophical problems that unite philosophers, sociologists,
> economists, historians, and psychologists in an ongoing research
> community that can do together what in other disciplines one
> individual alone does in the laboratory, what genuine scientists have
> always done: pursue those questions aimed at the view of the whole,
> using the most refined scientific methods; reformulate the questions
> in the course of work as demanded by the object; make more precise and
> develop new methods without losing sight of general considerations'"
> (36).
>
>
>
> During its "interdisciplinary materialism" stage, the Institute
> members saw themselves as part of the revolutionary labor movement,
> and supported efforts for a planned economy and the construction of
> socialism in the Soviet Union; they also saw fascism, in rather
> orthodox marxian terms, as the product of capitalism in crisis.
> Dubiel's study is especially valuable for the way that it assembles
> materials defining both the Institute's theoretical and political
> positions at different stages of development, and how its members
> conceived the relation between theory and politics at different
> junctues. Dubiel's assembled quotations are extremely well-chosen and
> illuminating and provide a useful compendium of Institute positions on
> both theory and politics. In particular, he shows that, contrary to
> some misimpressions, the Institute took rather systematic and
> well-defined positions toward the political issues and movements of
> the day--at least until the 1940s.
>
>
>
> During what Dubiel sees as the Insitute's second stage, they
> explicitly adopted the term "critical theory" to characterize their
> work. This stage (1937-1940) is marked by the defeat of the labor
> movement in Germany, the triumph of fascism, and increasing doubts
> about the Soviet Union as revelations of its trials, labor camps, and
> stalinist deformations became wide-spread. This historical situation
> required new reflections on the relation between politics and theory,
> the role of the radical intellectual, and the nature of socialism. In
> essays published during this stage both Horkheimer and Marcuse
> "expressly emphasize that a change in property relations implies
> merely a negative precondition for the building of a socialist
> society" (42). As Marcuse put it: "'Without freedom and happiness in
> the social relations of human beings, even the greatest increase in
> production, even the abolition of private property in the means of
> production, remains infected with the old injustices'" (42).
>
>
>
> At this time, the Institute adopted the term "critical theory" to
> define their theoretical position in part because conditions of exile
> in the United States forced them to adopt code words to describe their
> project to cover over their commitments to Marxism in an environment
> that was quite hostile to Marxism. The label stuck and many of its
> inner circle utilized it to define themselves to the present, and the
> Institute's theoretical labors as a whole are frequently subsumed
> under the blanket concept of "critical theory," though as Dubiel
> shows, this term was first coined in 1937 and henceforth was used to
> cover work in different contexts that was often quite different.
>
>
>
> Theory and Politics documents the conditions and texts whereby the
> Institute developed a radical, neo-Marxian social theory more
> appropriate to a situation when radical intellectuals are segregated,
> isolated, and marginalized. Dubiel derives the title of the first
> section of his study from this situation: "the integration of the
> proletariat and the loneliness of the intelligentsia." Critical
> theory represents a stage in the development of neo-marxist social
> theories during which radical intellectuals were separated from
> revolutionary socialist movements and fascism steadily gained power
> throughout the world. The Institute theorists were among the first to
> characterize this situation and to make explicit the problems for the
> marxian theory of revolution when the working class was defeated or
> integrated into capitalist societies. This, of course, remains one of
> the defining features of the trajectory of critical theory to this day
> and points to why the Institute felt it was necessary to update and
> revise both the marxian theory and critique of capitalism, as well as
> the marxian theory of revolution and the transition from capitalism to
> socialism.
>
>
>
> Thus, as Dubiel puts it, "By 1937, the subject and addressee of
> revolutionary theory are separated much more clearly in the Frankfurt
> Circle's political self-interpretation. Horkheimer maintains
> repeatedly that, for the sake of the adequacy of the theory, the
> critical intellectual must be able to endure marginalization from the
> addressee of his theoretical work" (53). During this period,
> Horkheimer and his colleagues radicalized and developed their
> critiques of what they called "traditional theory" and further
> developed their theoretical position. The political impasse evidently
> inspired more sustained theoretical labors. The critical theorists
> still advocated a synthesis of philosophy and the sciences (63) but
> seemed more open to various empirical sciences and more critical of
> classical marxism. During the 1930s and early 40s, the critical
> theorists continued their work in developing interdisciplinary social
> theory and intensified efforts to develop a theory of
> fascism--projects that I shall shortly return to as they are the
> subject of the second half of Dubiel's book.
>
>
>
> But probably the most significant development in the trajectory of the
> Institute's development was abandonment of the project of
> interdisciplinary social theory for production of the critique of
> instrumental reason which found classical expression in Adorno's and
> Horkheimer's @U(Dialectic of Enlightenment) (1947). Although Dubiel
> describes the continued demise of the labor movement, spread of
> fascism, and oppressive developments in the Soviet Union at this time,
> he does not adequately explicate the conditions which led to the
> rather dramatic departures from their earlier theoretical
> enterprises. While Dubiel notes the impact of WW II (76) on the
> development of critical theory, he does not analyze in any detail the
> breaking up of the Institute's interdisciplinary group; this happened
> in part because Horkheimer was forced to go to California on account
> of his health and because many of the Institute inner circle and other
> colleagues joined the U.S. government as part of their struggle
> against fascism. At this time, Adorno and Horkheimer took over the
> development of critical theory and this stage is particularly marked
> by the imprint of Adorno's particular ideas and style of writing--a
> point not adequately explicated by Dubiel who tends to present
> Horkheimer as the demiurge of critical theory.
>
>
>
> Adorno's and Horkheimer's work during this period is addressed to
> "critical intellectuals" and the pretense that they were writing for a
> temporarily defeated revolutionary movement is surrendered. Likewise,
> the attempt to integrate philosophy and the social sciences is
> replaced by more aggressive philosophical theorizing and speculation.
> Given that both Adorno and Horkheimer were trained as philosophers,
> and in the absence of the interdisciplinary research Institute, it is
> not surprising that critical theory would turn more philosophical and
> radicalize its critique of science. This development was also
> conditioned by the instrumentalization of science and technology in
> the Nazi and other war machines and by Adorno's and Horkheimer's
> growing aversion to the sort of scientific philosophy and positivistic
> science dominant in the United States. Consequently, the critique of
> instrumental reason and the "dialectic of enlightenment" replaced the
> earlier marxian emphasis on class struggle and materialist social
> analysis with a focus on the primacy of the relation between humans
> and nature, in which marxism, enlightenment rationality, science and
> technology, the culture industries, and the trends of development of
> both capitalist and socialist societies were interpreted under the
> rubric of the "dialectic of enlightenment." In this theory, projects
> like Marxism and science, intended to contribute to the domination of
> nature, turned into more powerful instruments for the domination of
> human beings.
>
>
>
> On a theoretical and political level, Dubiel provides a fine analysis
> of the changed political and theoretical position developed by Adorno
> and Horkheimer during this period (67-97). Again, he chooses key
> passages to express their political isolation, their pessimistic
> conclusion that henceforth political radicalism could only survive in
> select critical intellectuals, and their more apocalyptic and elusive
> style of writing. Dubiel makes clear, against some of the devotees of
> critical theory, that important discontinuities emerged within the
> trajectory of critical theory and that the most significant
> discontinuities emerged in the 1940s in the break between this stage
> and the two earlier stages of development.
>
>
>
> I would, however, take issue with some of Dubiel's conclusions stated
> in summary form after his historical, political, and theoretical
> analysis of the key stages of development within the Institute. He
> claims that "The labor movement's demise at the end of the Weimar
> Republic was the most significant experience undergone by the Circle"
> (99). This judgement is somewhat misleading, and I would argue
> instead that the experiences of fascism and emigration were the
> crucial determinants of key features of critical theory. The inner
> circle of the Institute was never particularly interested in the
> vicissitudes of the labor movement and, in any case, the triumph of
> fascism was the key factor in the demise (or rather defeat) of the
> labor movement at the end of Weimar. Moreover, none of the historians
> of the Frankfurt school, I believe, have adequately analyzed the
> impact and conditions of emigration on Institute work and positions.
> Critical theory bears typical marks of radical emigrant thought in
> that it is especially critical, impassioned, and contains novel
> insights into both the culture and society from which it fled and into
> the culture to which it has emigrated, along with corresponding
> blindspots in both directions. But it is also marked by increasing
> isolation from a revolutionary movement or political struggles to
> which it can relate. Thus, against Dubiel, I would argue that it was
> the rise and triumph of fascism and the subsequent situation of exile
> which increasingly influenced the style, mode of presentation, focus,
> and substance of critical theory which became more apocalyptic,
> dramatic, ultra-radical, increasingly cut off from practical
> politics, and individualistic.
>
>
>
> To be fair to Dubiel, it should be noted that his interest is not to
> provide a detailed historical analysis of the facts and factors behind
> the Institute's development of critical theory, but rather to provide
> analysis of the conditions, structure, and organization of the
> Institute's interdisciplinary program of social research. This
> project, mentioned in the Introduction, becomes the focus of the
> second part of his book (119). Here Dubiel provides often fascinating
> insights into how the Institute actually worked and interesting
> analyses of the general structure and organization of
> interdisciplinary social science. This section should therefore be of
> interest both to those interested in the history and modus operandi of
> the Institute for Social Research and to those interested in how
> interdisciplinary research might be organized.
>
>
>
> Dubiel admits that in his research into how the Institute actually
> organized its investigations and publication projects several members
> contested the key role which he and others ascribed to Max Horkheimer
> (a point also contested by Herbert Marcuse in an interview with Jurgen
> Habermas in @U(Telos) 38), and Dubiel admits that his interpretation
> of Horkheimer's role is "somewhat forced." However, I would suggest
> that the concept of the "dictatorship of the Director," which
> Horkheimer openly proclaimed and which Dubiel makes a defining
> characteristic of Institute work, is more problematic than Dubiel
> indicates. Whereas Horkheimer may or may not have played the key
> organizational and theoretical role in both the development and
> presentation of critical theory, I would think that if the utopia of
> the Institute for Social Research were reinvented that a more
> democratic and less "dictatorial" structure might be preferable.
>
>
>
> In fact, as with most German and American followers of critical
> theory, there are precious few critiques of Horkheimer or critical
> theory in Dubiel's book. During the last couple of pages, Dubiel
> remarks that Horkheimer had a rather "naive concept of the empirical"
> and did not adequately perceive how "theoretical initiatives in the
> specialized sciences no longer came--and for some time had not
> come--from philosophy but rather from the various disciplines
> themselves; and that philosophy which stood in close relationship to
> the specialized sciences, had disintegrated into a loose ensemble of
> 'hyphenated' philosophies" (186). But I would argue that the role of
> philosophy within social theory during the materialism and critical
> theory stages was neither obtrusive or excessive and that during these
> periods the Institute achieved a rather nice balance between
> theoretical construction and empirical research and that their
> training in and use of philosophy played a generally constructive role.
>
>
>
> The problem with the trajectory of critical theory, as I see it, is
> that with the breaking up of the interdisciplinary Institute during WW
> II, and with Adorno and Horkheimer's transformation of critical
> theory from an interdisciplinary theory of society to a philosophy of
> history, critical theory, at least temporarily, cut itself off from
> both the sciences and political struggle and developments.
> Consequently, the critical theory developed by Adorno and Horkheimer
> in the 1940s and 50s became more hermetic, literary and philosophical.
> But even this stage of critical theory contains many valuable texts
> and insights, and I would suggest that what Dubiel described as the
> first two stages of critical theory still provides models of an
> interdisciplinary social theory with practical intent that continues
> to be relevant today. The different sort of radical philosophical
> discourse developed by Adorno and Horkheimer during the 1940s--and
> more or less practiced by them in most of their later work despite
> attempts to resurrect the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt
> during the 1950s--has its own special virtues and attractions but
> seems to me quite different from the project of uniting philosophy and
> the sciences which characterized critical theory in the 1930s (and
> which also characterizes the last decade or so of Jurgen Habermas'
> attempts to reestablish critical theory as a viable contemporary
> social theory). Thus I believe that one of the contributions of
> Dubiel's book is that he shows that critical theory contains various
> projects, texts, and models which might be employed for varying
> purposes in diverse historical circumstances.
>
>
>
> Moreover, I believe that Dubiel's book is of more than historical
> interest in that it shows how interdisciplinary work might be
> organized and shows how fruitful syntheses between philosophy, social
> science, cultural critique, and radical politics might take place.
> One of the enduring legacies of critical theory is therefore
> illuminated by Dubiel's study: development of an interdisciplinary
> radical social theory with practical intent. Whether this project
> remains a nostalgic utopia of a bygone era or a viable model for
> future work is one of the major questions posed by Dubiel's
> interesting and challenging study.
>
>
>
> @
>
> Douglas Kellner
> Philosophy of Education Chair
> Social Sciences and Comparative Education
> University of California-Los Angeles
> Box 951521, 3022B Moore Hall
> Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521
>
> Fax 310 206 6293
> Phone 310 825 0977
> http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ralph Dumain" <rdumain at igc.org>
> To: <theory-frankfurt-school at srcf.ucam.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 9:56 AM
> Subject: [FRA:] Dubiel, Helmut. Theory and Politics (1)
>
>
>> Got this book yesterday--a fascinating approach to the program of the
>> Institute for Social Research:
>>
>> Dubiel, Helmut. Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of
>> Critical Theory, translated by Benjamin Gregg, with an introduction
>> by Martin Jay. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.
>>
>> Contents
>>
>> introduction by Martin Jay ix
>>
>> I. The Integration of the Proletariat and the Loneliness of the
>> Intelligentsia: Political Experience and the Process of Theory
>> Construction in the Frankfurt Circle, 1930-1945
>>
>> Methodological Procedure 3
>>
>> The First Phase: Materialism, 1930-1937 11
>> Historical and Political Experience 11
>> Theory of the Theory-Praxis Relation 23
>> Theoretical Position 31
>>
>> The Second Phase: Critical Theory, 1937-1940 39
>> Historical and Political Experience 39
>> Theory of the Theory-Praxis Relation 49
>> Theoretical Position 57
>>
>> The Third Phase: The Critique of Instrumental Reason, 1940-1945 69
>> Historical and Political Experience 69
>> Theory of the Theory-Praxis Relation 81
>> Theoretical Position 88
>>
>> Summary 99
>> Historical and Political Experience 99
>> Theory of the Theory-Praxis Relation 100
>> Theoretical Position 103
>>
>> Structural Change in Political and Historical Experience 109
>>
>> Notes to Part 1 113
>>
>>
>> II. Dialectical Presentation and Interdisciplinary Research: Theory
>> Construction and Research Organization in the Institute for Social
>> Research after 1930
>>
>> Introduction: On the Methodology of Interdisciplinary 119
>> Research
>>
>> The Program of the Institute for Social Research 129
>>
>> The Program in the Context of the History of Science 133
>> The Philosophical Critique of Science and the Neopositivist
>> Critique of Philosophy in the Weimar Republic 133
>> The Relation of Theory to Empirical Research in Contemporary
>> Sociology 136
>>
>> Theoretical and Historical Background 141
>>
>> The Theory of Dialectical Presentation and Research Organization 151
>>
>> The Cognitive Structure of the Organization of Research 155
>> The Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung 156
>>
>> Studies on Authority and the Family 164
>> Analysis of the Circle's Cognitive Structure 168
>>
>> The Social Structure of the Organization of Research 173
>> The Circle's Structure of Communication 173
>> Role Differentiation within the Circle 177
>> Conditions Determining the Institutional Framework 180
>>
>> Summary 183
>>
>> Notes to Part II 189
>>
>> Bibliography 191
>>
>> Index 205
>>
>> ------------------
>>
>> The methodological prelude includes a discussion of the conditions of
>> a group's--in this case the Frankfurt School's--endeavors in the way
>> of theoretical self-consciousness (reflection). Dubiel explains his
>> approach to the subject matter, e.g.:
>>
>> ---begin quote---
>> Our systematic representation of the early Frankfurt Circle is based
>> on the following structure of points in inquiry:
>>
>> Historical and political experience
>> The labor movement
>> The Soviet Union
>> Fascism
>>
>> Theory of the theory-praxis relation
>> Subject and addressee
>> Theory and praxis
>>
>> Theoretical Position
>> Self-understanding within the tradition of historical and
>> political theory
>> Relation to Marxism
>> Relation of philosophy to science
>> Utopia
>> ---end quote---
>>
>> Dubiel's review of the Frankfurt School's self-understanding involves
>> its assessment of contemporary conditions. For example, in the
>> first phase we see Horkheimer's critical assessment of the German
>> Communist Party (KPD) in relation to its Stalinization and hence
>> developments in the USSR, and an even more critical commentary on the
>> Social Democrats (SPD).
>>
>>
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