[FRA:] Adorno & Horkheimer: towards a new Manifesto?

[Ralph Dumain]

I can't find a record of having commented on this before:

Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer
TOWARDS A NEW MANIFESTO?
(March 1956)
/New Left Review/ #65, September-October 2010
http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2860

Adorno sees work as ideological; A & H struggle to figure out the 
valorization of work.

Adorno makes an interesting comment I don't understand:

    *Adorno:* But our task is to explain this by speculating on labour's
    ultimate origins, to infer it from the principle of society, so that
    it goes beyond Marx. Because exchange value seems to be absolute,
    the labour that has created it seems to be absolute too, and not the
    thing for whose sake it basically exists. In actuality the
    subjective aspect of use value conceals the objective utopia, while
    the objectivity of exchange value conceals subjectivism.

A curious statement by Horkheimer that eludes me:

    *Horkheimer:* It is not just a matter of ideology, but is also
    influenced by the fact that a shaft of light from the telos falls
    onto labour. Basically, people are too short-sighted. They
    misinterpret the light that falls on labour from ultimate goals.
    Instead, they take labour qua labour as the telos and hence see
    their personal work success as that purpose. That is the secret. If
    they did not do that, such a thing as solidarity would be possible.
    A shaft of light from the telos falls on the means to achieve it. It
    is just as if instead of worshipping their lover they worship the
    house in which she dwells. That, incidentally, is the source of all
    poetry.


Part 2 begins with the hopeless discrepancy between theory and practice. 
Adorno's expressions are bitter, but theoretically he eschews hopelessness:

    Our disagreement is about whether history can succeed or not. How
    are we to interpret the 'can'? On the one hand, the world contains
    opportunities enough for success. On the other hand, everything is
    bewitched, as if under a spell. If the spell could be broken,
    success would be a possibility. If people want to persuade us that
    the conditional nature of man sets limits to utopia, that is simply
    untrue. The possibility of a completely unshackled reality remains
    valid.

Whereas Horkheimer has thrown in the towel. The two do not agree, on 
labor among other things.

    *Adorno:* That's something you can find in Marx. On the one hand,
    Marx imagined liberation from work. On the other, social labour is
    seen in a very bright light. The two ideas are not properly
    articulated. Marx did not criticize the ideology of labour, because
    he needed the concept of labour in order to be able to settle
    accounts with the bourgeoisie.

The two bicker over freedom, self-determination, labor. Not sure if they 
disagree over sex.

Part 3: still struggling on the issue of free time. The draw a blank on 
Asia. The two disagree on a defense of the Western world. Horkheimer is 
much more pessimistic than Adorno:

    *Adorno:* My innermost feeling is that at the moment everything has
    shut down, but it could all change at a moment's notice. My own
    belief is as follows: this society is not moving towards a welfare
    state. It is gaining increasing control over its citizens but this
    control grows in tandem with the growth in its irrationality. And
    the combination of the two is constitutive. As long as this tension
    persists, you cannot arrive at the equilibrium that would be needed
    to put an end to all spontaneity. I cannot imagine a world
    intensified to the point of insanity without objective oppositional
    forces being unleashed.

Adorno thinks the American people will never tolerate Richard Nixon as 
Vice President.

Part 4: More disagreement. Question of human nature. I didn't quite get 
Marcuse's position that was mentioned. A curious remark:*
*

    *Adorno:* In Marx language plays no role, he is a positivist. Kant
    is not only ideology. His work contains at some level an appeal to
    the species, to mankind as opposed to the limitations of the
    particular. In his philosophy the idea of freedom is defined as the
    idea of mankind. There is also the implied statement that the
    question about whether humans are merely natural beings is
    essentially tied to the relation to nature that characterizes the
    isolated individual. He had already noticed that the concept of
    freedom does not lie in the isolated subject, but can be grasped
    only in relation to the constitution of mankind as a whole. Freedom
    truly consists only in the realization of humanity as such.

Part 5: the false abolition of work. The entire back-and-forth is 
quotable. Plus discussion of technology. Horkheimer unenthused about 
space travel. Question of mass culture and enjoying it even though it 
stinks.

Here's an interesting statement:*
*

    *Horkheimer:* People will say, well, this is just philosophers
    talking. Or else, you have to be like Heidegger and speak like an
    oracle. We have to solve the problem of theory and practice through
    our style. We have to make sure that people don't just say, 'My God,
    the things they say make everything sound very bad, but they don't
    really mean it like that, even when they shout and curse.' This is
    all connected with the fact that a party no longer exists.

Could have been written this morning.

    *Horkheimer:* [. . . .] The more eager one is to break the taboo,
    the more harmless it is. The more specific your aim, the more
    powerful the effect. Join the cdu, but make that possible also for
    deserters. One must be very down to earth, measured and considered
    so that the impression that something or other is not possible does
    not arise. We have to actualize the loss of the party by saying, in
    effect, that we are just as bad as before but that we are playing on
    the instrument the way it has to be played today.

How to handle the Social Democrats and avoid sounding like Mao?

Part 6: Political concreteness. Dissing Marcuse. Wariness about 
utopianism. What to think of the USA? Adorno prefers to write about 
music. How to get rid of bad TV programs?

Part 7: Critique of argument. Horkheimer ponders the nature of argument. 
Adorno says Heidegger regresses to pure irrationalism. Adorno references 
Kant. Adorno rejects the separation of theory and practice.

An interesting statement:

    *Adorno:* Philosophy exists in order to redeem what you see in the
    look of an animal. If you feel that an idea is supposed to serve a
    practical purpose, it slithers into the dialectic. If, on the other
    hand, your thought succeeds in doing the thing justice, then you
    cannot really also assert the opposite. The mark of authenticity of
    a thought is that it negates the immediate presence of one's own
    interests. True thought is thought that has no wish to insist on
    being in the right.

    *Adorno:* The mistrust of argument is at bottom what has inspired
    the Husserls and Heideggers. The diabolical aspect of it is that the
    abolition of argument means that their writing ends up in tautology
    and nonsense. Argument has the form of 'Yes, but . . . '

    *Adorno: *There is something bad about advocacy---arguing means
    applying the rules of thinking to the matters under discussion. You
    really mean to say that if you find yourself in the situation of
    having to explain why something is bad, you are already lost.
    Alternatively, you end up saying like Mephistopheles: 'Scorn reason,
    despise learning.' Then you will discover the primordial forces of
    being.

    *Horkheimer:* The USA is the country of argument.

I don't know what to make of this.

Part 8: The concept of practice. Among other things, there is a question 
of how they would put their theoretical knowledge to use. What about 
reformism and quietism? What to do in the face of no party or the CP? 
Adorno: theory as stand-in for happiness.

Part 9: no utopianism. Hegel, Marx, Romanticism, uselessness of abstract 
utopia . . . Horkheimer: is public polemic pointless? Adorno: "The 
pleasure of thinking is not to be recommended." There has to be the 
imminent prospect of practice. Suspicion of CP, mention of Trotsky. What 
kind of Manifesto to write?

This statement is a curious puzzle:

    *Adorno: *Contemplation had a point while it was still directed at
    an object in a theological sense. You always criticize theory on the
    grounds that a communist theory is really an absurdity, the pure
    observation of something that no longer exists. The concept of
    theory has undermined itself through the overall concept of
    enlightenment. There is something archaic about the concept of theory.

Also curious:

    *Horkheimer:* Marx would say that what we perceive are not ideas but
    products of human practice, in a twofold sense. Firstly, in the
    sense that our attention is still taken up by our needs, and
    secondly, because we regard as nominalistically insoluble something
    that we are as yet unable to produce with the methods of science.

    *Adorno:* The fact that human beings have broken out of nature is
    very remarkable. Not until today, under conditions of monopoly, has
    the world of animals been reinstated for the benefit of human
    beings, everything is closed off. The biological leap of the human
    species is being revoked once more.

Part 10: the antinomy of the political. How to deal with the pragmatists 
who say we're doing the best we can? Russian thinking is the worst, 
worse than bourgeois thought. One must keep up with the cutting edge of 
culture. Horkheimer not as hot on cultural criticism. How to communicate 
properly with our audience?

    *Adorno: *Theory is already practice. And practice presupposes
    theory. Today, everything is supposed to be practice and at the same
    time, there is no concept of practice. We do not live in a
    revolutionary situation, and actually things are worse than ever.
    The horror is that for the first time we live in a world in which we
    can no longer imagine a better one.

-------

Well, these problems are today's problems in certain essentials, though 
the socio-political, economic, and cultural configuration is quite 
different from what it was 55 years ago. I'm not sure how to connect 
this all up. There is though something to be learned from the 
frustrating situation in which H & A found themselves, an impasse, and 
we're facing an even bigger impasse today.