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Critical Theory

Critical theory is synonymously known as the Frankfurt School perspective in sociology. Essentially, it is a collective coinage for the works of a number of German social thinkers of the first half of the twentieth-century. All the thinkers have drawn their intellectual inspiration from the work of Karl Marx. As they belong to the same tradition of critiquing the society like Marx, they are being called as critical theorist. And the conglomerates of such theories are popularly known as constituting the Critical School. If Marx made a scathing criticism of the capitalist order — the social system that was emergent and a marker of his times — the thinkers of the new century responded to their specific historical setting. In the heyday of industrial capitation, Marx's attention was drawn to the economic structure of the society. Over the next fifty years and more — the point of emergence of Critical School — the capitalist system had undergone critical changes; dramatically more than the economic control measures ideology and culture emerged as far more effective device to dispossess people and ‘pauperize’ them from their species being. The centre of critical theory was at Frankfurt, Germany. As an autonomous research centre in 1923, the Institute of Social Research was founded in Frankfurt initially to study and explore the possibilities of classical Marxist texts and at the same time contest Semitism.

INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND

Technically, the starting point of critical theory was in 1923 with the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. The encyclopaedic work of Karl Marx formed the backdrop of such an independent initiative by a group of German scholars to refresh the tenets of Marxism. At a philosophical level it was an attempt to reinterpret and revise Marx's materialist conception of history. There were many such prolific theorists who worked with the same spirit. Georg Lukacs, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Mercuse were the leading figures, also known as neo-Marxist. Another towering figure of the neo-Marxist school was Jurgen Habermas who joined the institute late and is known for his use of critical Marxism to develop a very distinctive sociological theory on modernity and nationality. If critical theorists are to be understood as neo-Marxists, then there is another variant of neo-Marxists who featured in the French intellectual world. They are the structural Marxists who revitalized the Marxist theory in a different way. It simultaneously works against reductionism prevalent in orthodox Marxism as well as the idealist bent in Critical School approach. The main proponent of structural Marxism was Louis Althusser.

Originally the Frankfurt school was characterized by an orthodox approach towards Marxism. Overall, Marxism provided the theoretical inspiration behind the setting up of the institute. Carl Grunberg was the leading figure in the institute till 1929 and exposed a scientific Marxism. Max Horkheimer took charge of the institute in 1930 and was instrumental in initiating research beyond the dogmatic position in Marxism. Apparently, the failure of the revolutionary class movement across Europe and the rise of the fascist regimes formed the background for a fresh look at the basic tenets of Marxism. The Nazi capture of the institute forced the theoreticians of the institute to flee to Germany and the institute was relocated to Columbia University in the United States in 1934.

The period was marked by an overall critical approach towards all that were orthodox. The prevalent rise of anti-democratic forces and the decadence of soviet Marxism prodded the group of German theorists to immigrate to the United States to develop the idea of critical theory. They drew their insights by arguing that the young Marx was less a reductionist materialist. They traced the Hegelian strains in Marx's initial theorizations to establish their position against any world view which had a slightest inkling for positivist explanation. Many of the theorists were absorbed in the various Universities in the United States, while some returned to Germany much after the end of World War II. In the post-war scenario the Frankfurt school was reconstructed in Germany by 1953. Interestingly although Marxism provided the basic for the Critical School, the pioneers of the critical thinking tried to energize it with inputs from the more idealist sociologist Max Weber. One can actually trace the legacy of German idealism in the major works of the critical theories.

Quite obviously, it was George Hegel's philosophy which prompted the critical theorists to reinterpret Marx. A fresh interpretation of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Mind (1931) revealed to them that Hegel sought to show how philosophical critique spills over into social theory, that the concept of ‘negation’ in Hegel is intrinsically critical in content. The self examination and realization of the sources of domination is an act of consciousness in its striving to seek absolute knowledge. Not only from the illusory coercive forces that human beings need to be liberated, but also from the social forms through which the coercive illusions operate in order to realize human beings’ full capability of thought and action. From Hegel an image of human being as a subject was formed by the critical theorists. As a subject who is continuously creating, negating and recreating oneself as well as the objective world (Antonio 1983). Thus the Critical School is a product of the social and intellectual churning that marked the European history in the intervening years between the two world wars.

CULTURE INDUSTRY

A major focus of all critical theorists is to re-theorize the concept and role of culture. This follows from their criticism of traditional Marxian theory. The economic determination in Marx is questioned and the prime importance is given to the economic structure as a determinant for all other aspects of social life is abandoned. The popular arrangement of the two metaphors of base and superstructure; superstructure as constituting of the political–legal–cultural realm of a society whose base is the mode of production (economy) is thought to be mechanistic and simplistic. Instead the critical theorist point out at the overwhelming dominance of entertainment media like movies, radio etc. in advance capitalist societies over the basic economy. As a result culture has emerged as an industry by itself and not just a mere reflection of the economic base. The culture industry and all those who own and control it are significantly autonomous and independent of the economic structure and therefore are in a position to hegemonize people's mind and thought. In fact they are more effective under advanced capitalism to subjugate the mass. The role of culture is more powerful than that of economic forces.

Related to this pre-eminence of culture industry is the concept of mass culture, which holds that, the culture industry has given rise to a mass culture. The newspapers, magazines, entertainment package through various mass media disseminate a culture which engulfs the masses off guard. The mass is taken in by such dissemination which actually creates a singular conforming culture. The impact of such culture is much more pervasive than that of capitalist logic of production at the work level. Without realizing the role of such cultural dissemination in controlling and dominating them, people strive for more such mass culture. Thus, people are being controlled in a more complicated and deceiving way. Maintenance of capitalist order at an advance stage is actually the work of the culture industry, which makes them gullible consumers of the capitalist cultural codes and products without resistance. The critical theorists’ chief achievement was to demystify the culture industry and after the forms of the Marxist theory of society.

Apart from interrogating the culture of modern capitalism, the object of criticism for different critical theorists were the growing technology backed by modernity and the overdose of ‘scientism’ in social thinking, especially sociology. As such the dominance of rationality principle in social life and thinking was under severe scrutiny by the leading critical thinkers. The liberating notion of science, technology and rationality were critiqued by many of them and a grim picture for the future of the modern world is drawn to a large extent.

GEORG LUKACS (1885–1971)

Georg Lukacs is credited with his attempt to free Marxism from economic determinism. He accomplished this by pointing to the Hegelian roots of Marx's theory. Lukacs indicated that the works of Marx could be divided into a young Marx and a matured Marx. Instead of realizing Marx only through his later economic works, if one pays attention more to his The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), an early work, one can better appreciate Marxism. Lukacs did that and as a Hegelian Marxist tried to see the dialectic between the subjective and the objective realms of society.

The Frankfurt school at its formative years was to a large extent shaped by Lukacs. His major work is History and Class Consciousness (1923) where he comprehensively explained the subjective aspect of Marx's own understanding of commodity and reification — that, class consciousness is not an automatic formation out of material condition but much depends upon free-action of the proletariat itself. Thus, emancipation from the capitalist order is quite not an automatic consequence of material conditions alone.

It is not only that Lukacs tried to trace the Hegelian side of Marx but while acknowledging the fetish character of commodity as advanced by Marx, he infused it with Max Weber's understanding of rationality as all encompassing; that, with the coming of the modern society, the relation between people are dominated by rational calculations with money and market at the centre of exchanges. This is a result of the demise of human communication between individuals to secure social integration. In his History and class consciousness, Lukacs re-examined the central importance of commodity in a capitalist society. Through his treatment of the process of reification, Lukacs put the issue of ideology at the forefront of social theory. In fact, the insistence of the Critical School on the overwhelming role of ideology in modern society is largely due to Lukacs’ theory.

Commodity production is the defining character of capitalism. It actually involves the relationship between living human being as products of their creative labour. Under generalized commodity production commodities take the form of a thing and develops an objective form independent of the actual producers. Fetishism of commodities is a condition analysed by Marx as a condition caused when the producer assumes that the commodity produced has an objective reality of its own. They lose sight of the fact that they are the actual producers of these commodities. Thus, the producers fail to recognize their role as the creator of the value of the commodities. Instead such value is seen to be the products of the market. From such a fetish character of commodities as theorized by Marx, Lukacs developed his concept of reification: reification as pervasive in all spheres of social life and not just restricted to the economic realm only. All aspects of social life under capitalism is characterized by a reified existence — the social structures which are the actual result of people's relationships emerging with an objective reality as people themselves think that such structure have a logic of their own existence. As he put:

Man in capitalist society confronts a reality ‘made’ by himself (as a class) which appears to him to be a natural phenomenon alien to himself; he is wholly at the mercy of its ‘laws’; his activity is confined to the exploitation of the inexorable fulfillment of certain individual laws for his own (egoistic) interest. But even while ‘acting’ he remains, in the nature of the case, the object and the subject of event. (Lukacs 1922/1968: 135)

Lukacs’ concept of reification addressed the experiences of the European societies especially after World War I. It tried to address the crises of orthodox Marxist theories which failed to inspire socialist movement. Failed revolutionary movements in Hungary, Germany, Italy and Austria and the parallel the tendency of the Russian communist party to develop Marxism into a closed system of thought and practice called for a reinterpretation of the basic philosophical premise of Marx's theory of class consciousness.

In other words, against a deterministic version of Marxism, Lukacs looked for a more self reflexive version of Marxism. More than the politico-economic angle of the revolutionary struggle, an ideological plane of struggle was emphasized. Lukacs proposed instead a philosophy of praxis stressing the importance of subjectivity, culture and action. The philosophy of praxis stands opposed to orthodox Marxist positions for which the ‘economic laws’ and objective social conditions are of primary importance. Instead, it is interested to appreciate the unity of theory and practice — a more action-oriented approach — which puts human subjectivity at the centre of history-making (Kellner 1989).

Moving beyond the confines of the economic structures of society, Lukacs introduced a more subjectivist application of Marx by adopting Weberian sociology of rationality. This expanded the scope of commodity fetishism to include every other aspects of contemporary capitalist society.

We are concerned above all with the principle at work here: the principle of rationalization based on what is and can be calculated…. Rationalization in the sense of being able to predict with ever greater precision all the results to be achieved is only to be acquired by the exact breakdown of every complex into its elements and by the study of the special laws governing production. (Lukacs 1922/1968: 214)

Actually, one can observe that, Lukacs was instrumental in introducing totalizing categories in critical thinking to account for society, state, culture, economy and everyday life in one sweep. This laid the foundation of a critique of instrumental reason which figured prominently in the writings of subsequent critical theorists.

MAX HARKHEIMER AND THEODOR ADORNO

The publication of the co-authored Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Harkheimer and Theodor Adorno in 1947 was a watershed in the history of Critical School theories. On one hand the experience of exile by the critical thinkers, being forced to the flee to Germany due to Nazi assault, allowed them to see the trajectory of modernity and its discontents beyond the confines of particular social system. On the other hand, the socio-historical transformation of capitalism and its success in creating a consumer society prompted both Horkheimer and Adorno to engage in a critique of the very philosophy of enlightenment. Also, as a consequence of the above ‘new experience’, critical theory moved ahead of just critiquing modernity as dictated by techno-rationality. As such critical theories took a turn towards understanding human nature by an all encroaching techno-rational worldview, which is not just associated with the political economy of the capitalist system.

Short Biographies

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) was a German philosopher who controlled the Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt from 1930. He secured his doctorate for his work on the German idealist philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1922 from Frankfurt University. In 1925, he joined the Frankfurt school, the popular coinage for the Institute for Social Research, as a lecturer. In 1930 he became the director of the institute. He promoted multidisciplinary approach in the institute and given his background as a philosopher, he advocated a fusion of the reflective capacity of philosophy and the rigorous methodological procedures of sciences in social theory building exercise. After the Nazi occupation of the institute, Horkheimer along with other fellow theorists had to seek refuge in the United States and only returned after the end of the World War II. But he did not travel to Washington to work for the United States government. In his early scholarship he was a sympathetic supporter of the Russian Revolution but he was never an uncritical defender of soviet communism. The events of the failures of socialist movements in Europe, the turbulent year of the World War II, and the flourishing of the consumer society in the United States — all shaped up his subsequent thought processes and committed himself to theoretical work. He essentially strived to see critical theory as competent to infuse ideology with criticality necessary to examine the gap between ideas and reality; that concepts are interdependent and irreducible aspects of the total societal process (Held 1980).

Theodor Adorno (1903–69) was from a successful Jewish merchant family and was born in Frankfurt. Like his colleague Horkheimer, he also studied philosophy and wrote his thesis on Husserl's phenomenology. He secured his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt in 1924. In 1931 he became associated with the institute. Like Horkheimer he too relocated himself in the United States after a while. He collaborated extensively with Horkheimer to espouse the theoretical cause of the Critical School. However, he was more philosophical and research-oriented than Horkheimer.

During his stay in the United States as a theorist in exile, Adorno wrote Minima Moralia. It was written from 1944 through 1947, while he was in California. The text reveals that the starting point of his critical inquiries of social life was the embodied experiences of the ‘intellectual in emigration’. From the vantage point as a European refugee, Adorno could see the novel conditions of contemporary capitalism and how if differed from the earlier orthodox stage of capitalism. Such a novel reality demanded from Adorno to break away from orthodox way of understanding capitalism or the structure of society. Thus, he worked to develop a ‘critical social consciousness’ to show how philosophy embodies objective structures the same way art expresses social contradictions in a mediated from.

Critique of Science and Reason

Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) is the combined work of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, which carries the grand statement against the emancipatory project of European Enlightenment. It is a philosophical critique of culture at the same time subjecting the celebration of science and reason to fresh inquiry. The publication of Dialectic Enlightenment signalled a new direction in critical thinking. This shift from earlier theorization on the vacuity of politico–economic approach to a philosophical approach towards the grand schemes of science and reason was conditioned by the historical reality of weakening of socialist revolution across the world. The spread of fascist ideas, the events of World War II and the dispersion of the Institute's multidisciplinary group in the United States — all combined to influence both Horkheimer and Adorno, while in virtual exile, to engage in a theoretical probe into the trajectory of modern science and its relationship with human nature (Kellner 1989).

Distancing themselves from both Fascist tendencies and the project of communism (as exemplified by Bolshevik system of the Soviet), Horkheinmer and Adorno located the interlocking of the techno-scientific temper with the apparatus of rule in modern society. Their main contention was that science and reason have lost their liberating potential and have growingly become formalist and instrumental in character. Instead of being a weapon of critical inquiry into the travails of social life, they have become conformist and have determining role in the apparatus of domination. This is so, as science, scientific reason and technology are an integral part of the modern mode of production, which is oppressive not only economically but as such a dehumanizing enterprise. Dialectic of Enlightenment stands as a critique of modern science and more as a mistrust of the promise of the Enlightenment ideals.

The Enlightenment ideals were grounded in emancipatory principles to rescue human civilization from the hold of blind faiths and mysticism. The rational thought and strength of scientific reason was supposed to help human beings to take control of nature in turn. Thus, the element of domination was ingrained in the very ideals and the supposedly national thoughts and enlightened ideals actually contain mythical ideas and breed irrationality. This is the dialectic of enlightenment according to Horkheinmer and Adorno. The ideals of such Enlightenment are to be traced from the Baconian scientific temper which is based on a desire to dominate nature by valourizing a mode thought which relies on the criteria of utility, verifiability, efficiency and success.

According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the scientism of the Enlightenment principles is actually totalitarian in that it exclusively strips human life and thought from all kinds of subjectivity, feelings, aesthetics and quality. Instead it fosters a spirit of conformism by restricting human thought and knowledge to technical principle of calculation, efficiency and systematization. The social implication of such restricting ideals is to give rise to a mind set which foregoes liberty in favour of greater control and administration. An administrated society is therefore a logical outcome of the Enlightenment principles. The Enlightenment thought logically proceeded from the principles of dominating nature to becoming a tool of dominations of human beings. The totalizing principles of universal truth of science logically create a society without differences but of similitudes, i.e., a mass society. The techno-rational governed administered society is a mass society. Overall speaking, Horkeimer and Adorno theorized an image of modern society where the forces of science, technology and instrumental rationality dehumanizes species character of human beings. In defense of his argument Horkheimer wrote:

In a historical period like the present true theory is more critical than affirmative, just as the society that corresponds to it cannot be called “productive”. The future of humanity depends on the existence today of the critical attitude, which of course contain within it elements from traditional theories and from our declining culture generally. Mankind has already been abandoned by a science which in its imaginary self-sufficiency thinks if the shaping of practice, which it serves and to which it belong, simply as something lying outside its borders and is content with this separation of thought and action … the self-definition of science grows ever more abstract. But conformism in thought and the insistence that thinking is a fixed vocation, a self-enclosed realm culture within society as a whole, betrays the very essence of thought. (Horkheimer 1972: 243)

Adorno on Culture

The central role of culture and ideology in advance capitalist societies directed critical theories to cultural criticism. Theodor Adorno took a lead role and a deep interest in making a systematic inquiry into the nature and function of culture in contemporary societies. By contextualizing culture within social developments, Adorno, as well as other critical theorists, formulated a close association between social theory and cultural critique.

The juggernauts of science and rationality structure every aspects of social life. Cultural realm is not left aside from the encompassing rationalization and standardization techniques of instrumental rationality. Culture no longer remains the repository of beauty, truth and individuality; instead it becomes a zone of social life where individuals are homogenized and made to conform to the existing social order. Thereby, culture plays a deciding a role in promoting conformity, which is so essential for the functioning of an administered society. Adorno was instrumental in forwarding a critique of culture which made the Critical School best known for its concept of culture industry. But Adorno emphasized that while privileging culture as an important tool for creating mass society, one must not overlook culture as the source of social knowledge and as a potential form of social criticism. As Adorno is quoted by D. Kellner:

The task of [cultural] criticism must be not so much to search for the particular interest groups to which cultural phenomena are to be assigned, but rather to decipher the general social tendencies which are expressed in these phenomena and through which the most powerful interest realize themselves. Cultural criticism must become social physiognomy. The spontaneous elements, is socially mediated and filtered, is ‘consciousness’, the more it becomes ‘culture’. (Adorno 1967: 30)

Adorno's critique of culture was in tune with the Critical School's analysis of the spread of rationalization and reification into every sphere of human society. He wrote consistently from 1932 (on the social situation of music) on various forms of mass culture and popular music. The loss of aesthetic quality from mass culture was analysed by Adorno using mainly the concepts of fetishism, commoditization, rationalization and reification. As against the loss of aesthetics he promoted the idea that only genuine experience could provide the space for individual freedom as well as resistance. Hence, art was considered as an instrument for emancipation. Aesthetic experience could provide critical consciousness for an individual. Such necessary awareness was thought to be crucial as it explored the existing reality and reiterated the need for social transformation. However, the culture industry played a dubious role. Instead of its cardinal role of promoting individual creativity it created a mass society like capitalist mass production industry. It acted as an extension of ideology of domination. A mass deception was carried out as a result, which effectively manipulated the people in order to seek consent to the prevalent mode of economic and political domination. Adorno had been prolific to champion the cause of a cultural critic.

The position of the cultural critic, by virtue of its difference from the prevailing disorder, enables him to go beyond it theoretically, although often enough he merely falls behind. But he incorporates which he seeks to leave behind and which itself need the difference in order to fancy itself culture. Characteristic of culture's pretension to distinction, through which it exempts itself from evaluation against the material condition of life, is that it is insatiable… the cultural critic makes such distinction his privilege and forfeits his legitimation by collaborating with culture as its salaried and honoured nuisance. (Adorno 1967: 19)

In a way Adorno promoted a dialectical view of culture. His theoretical reflections on culture suggested both — either culture could be used as a device of manipulation and generating conforming, or it could be used as a force of opposition. Adorno strongly opposed the mechanically mediated works of mass culture as conformist, while he promoted those works of culture which resisted commoditization and mechanical reproduction. Such a criticism of culture by Adorno possibly remains as the most lasting legacy of the Critical School till date.

HERBERT MARCUSE (1898–1979)

The overall project of critical theory was to investigate the dialectics of the history of modernity. It will not be an overstatement to see the critical theory as an attempt to rediscover human freedom by sorting out the matrix of progressive and regressive forces bound up with the coming of modernity. Given the unfolding of capitalist system in advance stage it tried to update the Marxian theory with a multidisciplinary approach. The contribution of Herbert Marcuse to the Critical School embodies this very guiding spirit of the critical theory. He consistently examined, defended and reconstructed the Marxist enterprise. Unlike many of his colleagues from the Critical School, Marcuse stood by the emancipatory potential of socialism. He promoted the critical approach to society to see the emancipation of consciousness.

A Biographical Sketch

Coming from a prosperous Jewish family of Berlin Marcuse served the German army in World War II. Subsequently, he became a part of the revolutionary Soldiers Council in Berlin as a member of the Social Democratic Party. Soon he left the party and studied philosophy at the universities of Freiburg and Berlin. In 1923 he secured his doctorate on literature. He returned to Freiburg to study the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.

Like many of his compatriots, Marcuse too left Germany during the Nazi rule. He landed in the United States to join the Institute for Social Research, which was relocated from Frankfurt to New York, at Columbia University from 1934 to 1940. Marcuse was academically as well as politically active. He actively worked with the office of secret services to free Germany from the Nazis. He taught at Columbia and Harvard universities. Later, he joined Brandeis University as a Professor of political science. Marcuse was a prolific writer, academic and an orator, which made him the most conspicuous figure of the new left movement in the 1960s.

Best known for his most popular treatise One-dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse wrote several others thought provoking books. Some of them are Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1955) and Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (1968).

Critical Theory

Herbert Marcuse was not an orthodox Marxist even though he was deeply grounded on a theory which acknowledges a potential in humans which is yet to be realized. Thus, reworking the Marxist tenets, he could still work towards the defense of utopian objectives. Apart from Marx, Georg Hegel's dialectics heavily influenced Marcuse. He was instrumental, along with Georg Lukacs for a reinvention of Hegel in European thought in the early twentieth-century. Like Hegel, he placed great value on reason and was impressed with Hegel's objection to Kant's theory. He felt that if ‘things-in-themselves’ are beyond the capacity of reason, reason will remain a mere subjective principle without relevance to the objective structure of reality. Philosophy for Marcuse should have an objective referent; as a praxis it needs to combine both theory and practice (action). The role of reason in social criticism is stated by Marcuse most sharply:

Reason is the fundamental category of philosophical thought, the only one by means of which it has bound itself to human destiny. Philosophy wanted to discover the ultimate and most general grounds of being. Under the name of reason it conceived the idea of an authentic being in which all significant antitheses (of subject and object, essence and appearance, thought and being) were reconciled…. Reason represents the highest potentiality of man and of existence; the two belong together…. (Marcuse 1989: 58)

Unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, Marcuse was more inclined towards classical Marxism. As an astute student of German philosophy he found the sources of his critical theory primarily in Marx's early writing's like Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) although he shared the critique and transcendence of reification with Adorno. With Horkheimer he agreed on the unconcluded nature of the dialectic and the centrality of human practice in the constitution of knowledge. However, Marcuse was keen to engage himself in revisions of Marx's theory to develop his critical theory. As he consistently held that such a theory is imperative not only to comprehend the new stage of capitalism but also to transform it to realize full human potentiality. The uniqueness of Marcuse lies in his attempt to reconstruct the Marxist method of analysis. Thus, he did not hesitate to infuse the basic transformative content in Marx's method of study with ideas from Hegel and even with that of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical categories.

Critical theory of society is essentially linked with materialism … the theory of society is an economic, not philosophical system. There are two basic elements linking materialism to correct social theory: concern with human happiness, and the conviction that it can be attained only through a transformation of the material condition of existence. The actual course of the transformation and the fundamental measures to be taken in order to arrive at a rational organization of society are prescribed by analysis of economic and political condition in the given historical situation. (Marcuse 1989: 58–59)

For one thing, unlike most of the critical theorists Marcuse was not led to despair and hopelessness with respect to the possibility of a better future. It was quite in line that he emerged as the cult figure during the renewed period of radical movement in the 1960s among the young generation. Whereas most Marxists as well as critical theorists often failed to clearly theorize the link between individual consciousness and culture, Marcuse took recourse to Freudian categories for a critical interpretation of culture. To integrate the individual level of consciousness (the unconscious as well) the Freudian psycho-analytical categories proved to be useful for him. Thereby, he could analyse the process by which sexual and aggressive instincts are repressed and channelled into socially necessary labour, so necessary for the generation of surplus value under a dehumanized capitalist mode of production. The collective nature of the repressive organization of the instincts was analysed by him to account for human alienation. This critique of technology actually shows Marcuse's radical orientation to social theory.

Alienating Technology

The repressive character of modern industrial society has been a central focus in Marcuse's social theory. He was a critic of repression of whatever form, be it capitalist or the Soviet system and traced the source of it in the logic of technology driven modernity. Modern technology as an alienating instrument has been the target of his criticism — a theme that runs through all his works but best captured in his One-dimensional Man (1964).

Marcuse's attack on modern technology is intrinsically linked to the tradition of Critical School's critique of the culture industry. He adapted the Freudian notion of ‘repression’ to account for the rise of the mass media. He explained the catapultion of individuals to the overarching role of technology directed mass media by referring to the transformed nature of socialization in advance capitalism.

The repressive organization of the instincts seems to be collective, and the ego seems to be prematurely socialized by a whole system of extra-familial agents and agencies. As early as the pre-school level, gangs, radio, and rebellion; deviation from the pattern are punished not so much in the family as outside and against the family. The experts of the mass media transmit the required values; they offer the perfect training in efficiency, toughness, personality, dream, and romance. With this education, the family can longer compete. (Marcuse 1955: 97)

According to Marcuse, with the displacement of the family as the primary agent of socialization, mass media has assumed the role of the principle agent. Mass media has effectively controlled the mind and instinct to the extent of narcotizing individual initiatives and freedom. It is a sort of manipulation by the gigantic complex of entertainment and information imparting mass media which essentially numbs the individuals. Advanced industrial society is thereby essentially alienating and the defining character of such society is the total reliance on technology. Such techno-rational mass media create false needs amongst individuals who are in effect stripped of their authentic culture and oppositional thought. They all become ‘one-dimensional’ in thought and action. The repressive technology operates with a face of being pleasant and entertaining. It is a case of deceit and deception that makes individuals ‘happy’ and in the process they lose the most important human faculty of criticality.

Technology is not neutral in modern industrial society. It is an instrument of domination as long as it is an expression of formal rationality. It only gives an impression of being neutral and thereby becomes more effective in manipulating the mind of people, while at the same time repressing their creative instincts. However, Marcuse did not pronounce the abolishing of technology per se. He is critical of the way it is being used in modern industrial society. He wrote, ‘Technology, no matter how “pure”, sustains and streamlines the continuum of domination. This fatal link can be cut only by a revolution which makes technology and technique subservient to the needs and goals of free men’ (Marcuse 1969: 56).

By critiquing the concept of technological rationality, Marcuse showed his willingness to extend the scope of Marxian criticism of capitalist logic to include Weber's idea of rationalization. The ever increasing rationalization process in modern society is a process of growing regimentation of social life. Despite the seeming rationality of modem life, in essence it is irrational. Governed by the principle of formal rationality technology, mass media, popular culture — all are promoting a mode of thought and living which is alienating. The reification of the social structure is the result of such rationalization process. Against such an alienating experience Marcuse promoted an ideal world where people would be able to relate to the larger structures like technology in a meaningful way. In such a possibility people would be creative while fulfilling their needs and employ appropriate technology to realize their ability. Such a dialectic relationship between people and technology was envisioned by Marcuse.

JURGEN HABERMAS (1929–)

Jurgen Habermas represents the second generation of critical theorists after Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse. He is the most prolific commentator and theorist of the neo-Marxist tradition. Although he joined the Critical School and is considered as a part of it, over the years he expanded his scope of social inquiry by fusing Marxian theory with theories from phenomenological school of thought to develop a distractive theoretical tradition.

A Biographical Sketch and Influences

Jurgen Habermas was born in a small town in Germany, in 1929. He was a doctorate in philosophy. He earned his degree from Bonn in 1954. He associated himself with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt and worked with Theodor Adorno. In 1964 he took over Horkheimer's chair in philosophy at the Institute. Meanwhile he also secured his second doctorate at Mainz and taught for some time in Heidelberg. His most significant works are Communication and the Evolution of Society (1962), Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), The Theory of Communicative Action (1989), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1987).

Habermas acknowledges the transformative potential in Marx's writings but energized it with the contemporary theories of social interaction, phenomenology and theories of communication. While accepting the Weberian analysis of rationality as insightful he tries to improve upon it by dismissing the pessimistic view of future society ingrained in it. Self-emancipation of human beings is indicated by Habermas as the process by which subjective consciousness can be transformed. Heavily drawing upon phenomenological and interactionist theories he developed his famous theory of communicative action. By communicative action he described structure of action and structures of mutual understanding which result from intuitive knowledge of competent members of modern society. The liberating notion of communicative action stems from Habermas's conviction of combining critical thought with practical action. In fact, such a standpoint earned the displeasure of Horkheimer in the Frankfurt school.

Habermas's insistence on the coupling of thought with practice is rooted in his fascination for classical Greek and German philosophy. The classical thought emphasized the inseparability of facts and values (Held 1980).

Critique of Culture and Communicative Action

Like his predecessors in the Critical School, Habermas critiques the rise of cultural industries in contemporary capitalist societies. But he made a historical analysis to chart out the way the public sphere of free debate and opinion has shrunk over the years. In his analysis he has shown the transition from a form of liberal capitalism to a form of monopoly capitalism. Liberal capitalism allowed a democratic public sphere in which ‘public opinion’ was formed by debate and consensus. Such a public sphere was liberal to the extent that it allowed an educated and competent public to critically discuss socio-political issues unhindered. Whereas the transition from the liberal to the monopoly stage of capitalism altered the very character of their public sphere. The sphere has shrunk as no longer through open debates are public opinions formed. It is the mass media which has usurped this sphere and shapes public opinion. Instead of an active participation in culture, the public has become a passive consumer in a cultural industry (Kellner 1989).

How the emergent media has impacted upon culture negatively is brought out sharply by Habermas:

With the shift from writing to images and sounds, the electronic media — first film and radio, later television — present themselves as an apparatus that completely permeates and dominates the language of everyday communication. On the one hand, if transforms the authentic content of modern culture into the sterilized and ideologically effective stereotypes of a mass culture that merely replicates what exists: on the other hand, it uses up a culture cleansed of all subversive and transcending elements for an encompassing system of social controls, which is spread over individuals, in part reinforcing their weakened internal behavioral controls, in part replacing them. (Habermas 1987: 389–90)

As a counter to the situation of mass culture, Habermas talks about an ideal speech situation. It is a notion of free and open communication. An ideal speech situation is free from the distortion and manipulation which are regularly implemented by power holders. In contemporary world communication is largely distorted as power decides which argument would win. In such a scenario consensus is generated by power but not arrived at through the strength of evidence and argument. Habermas’ communicative action promotes an idea of consensus out of a contest between differing ideas and opinions which are freely expressed. Thus, truth is not simply a matter of what is given, but has to emerge out of such consensus.

For Habermas, a just society is one where people are free to assemble and communicate openly. The mode of communication and the understanding of language are the keys to comprehend knowledge. Extending Marx's conception of species-being to account for the changes that mark contemporary society, he added language to labour as a marker of such species-being. Rejecting a reductionist materialist position of orthodox Marxism, Habermas sees communication action as not simply a mirror reflection of the economic forces but places it as a constitutive force of history. The use of language as a significant aspect of human development is theorized by Habermas and consequently he sees the foundation for emancipation of individuals in undistorted communication.

We find a very precise understanding of Habermas’ communicative action in his words:

Under the functional aspect of mutual understanding, communicative action serves to transmit and renew cultural knowledge; under the aspect of coordinating action, it serves social integration and the establishment of solidarity; finally, under the aspect of socialization, communicative action serves the formation of personal identities. The symbolic structures of the lifeworld are reproduced by way of the continuation of valid knowledge, stabilization of group solidarity, and socialization of responsible actors. The process of reproduction connects up new situations with the exiting conditions of the lifeworld; it does this in the semantic dimension of meanings or contents (of the cultural tradition), as well as in the dimensions of social space (of socially integrated groups), and historical time (of successive generations). Corresponding to these processes of cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization are the structural components of the lifeworld: culture, society, person. (Habermas 1987: 137–38)

On Rationality

Unlike most of his predecessors of the Critical School of thinking, Habermas does not unequivocally condemn rationality of the modern would as dehumanizing in the absolute sense. He realizes that be it capitalist or socialist, all modern industrial societies have reduced the human world to a form of technocratic and economic efficiency only. But the rationality principle is more than a principle of strategic calculation of matching the ends with most efficient means. Rationality implies the capacity to think logically and analytically. It serves the human beings and is a crucial ingredient in understanding others in communicative situations. Instead of condemning contemporary forms of modernity, Habermas considers modernity as an unfinished project of human civilization. He extends the scope of critical theory beyond the concerns of its first generation scholars. Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse attempted to revise and reinterpret Marx's theory to account for the eventful social history of twentieth-century Western world. Overall there was a sense of despair with the emergence of advance capitalist system and its concomitant culture which scuttled every socialist aspiration. On the other hand, at the philosophical level, too, the French based post-modernist thinking promoted the demise of any foundational knowledge for society. A continuous dispersal of meaning created a decentred notion of knowledge and thought. Habermas, while working within the Critical School takes on such post-modernist attack on modernity, as the post-modernist attack on modern thinking at a general plan denied any comprehensive system of emancipatory thought. Habermas sees such attempts as rooted in counter Enlightenment ideologies. He posits modernity as a project which has emancipatory potential (Kellner 1989).

Habermas’ understanding of modernity holds clue to his attempt to see rationality beyond its contemporary application. Essentially he adopts Weber's interpretation of modernity as a process of differentiation of functional systems such as the state and the economy. The process of differentiation engulfs all other spheres of society, be it culture, religion, philosophy and so forth. Habermas contends that since the fifth century every new epoch of consciousness claimed itself to be modern. The term modernity therefore is problematic. As he says,

The word “modern” was first employed in the late fifth century in order to distinguish the present, new officially Christian, from the pagan and Roman past. With a different content in each case, the expression content in each case, the expression ‘modernity’ repeatedly articulates the consciousness of an era that refers back to the past of classical antiquity precisely in order to comprehend itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new. (Habermas 1997: 39)

Modernity then is a continuous process which distinguishes itself from the old by the fact that it opens itself to the future. At every moment of history, as long as it offers something ‘new’ it is modern — it is therefore characteristic of historical consciousness.

To analyse the advance modern societies Habermas uses the concepts of life-world and shows how it is being increasingly colonized (Ritzer 2007). Life-world as a concept refers to the everyday life of a society in phenomenological social theories. Alfred Schutz used it to refer to the inter-subjective relations that govern the world of everyday life. For Habermas the inter-subjective relations are characterized by interpersonal communication. Free and open communication means the rationalization of communication within the life-world, whereas, the process of rationalization of the society increasingly differentiates the structures of the society. The rationalization of the system (society) makes it more complex and it takes a different turn from the rationalization of the world. It thereby intrudes upon the life-world — the sphere of free interpersonal communication. Thus, rationalization in effect destroys the life-world by colonizing it.

The destructive character of rationalization of the system (those structure over above the everyday life of people) is seen by Habermas as a fallout of ‘technocratic consciousness’ that marks advance modern societies. Instrumental reason is the guiding spirit of such technocratic consciousness. The crisis of modernity is thus commented upon by Habermas:

The paradoxes of planning rationally can be explained by the fact that rational action orientations came into contradiction with themselves through unintended systemic effects. These crisis tendencies are worked through not only in the subsystem in which they arise, but also in the complementary action subsystem into which they can be shifted. (Habermas 1987: 385)

In Habermas’ theory, the criticism is more directed at the ever expanding structures of rationally organized administrative system. As capitalism grows, the system of such techno-rational administration spreads its reach to usurp even the private sphere. Such a process is complemented with the growth of scientism. Thus a critique of positivism is utmost necessary in Habermas's scheme. Knowledge is identified with science as positivism governs the mode of inquiry. Positivism thereby objectifies knowledge and has become the sustaining strength of technocratic consciousness. Habermas’ critique of modernity is linked to his dismissal of the positivist view to objectify knowledge. A world cannot be understood in terms of facts and laws. A successful critique of modernity (as given) then has to be a subject-centred philosophy.

SUMMARY

It is difficult to characterize critical theory by a particular methodology or theoretical proposition. Yet, it is a coherent approach to study social reality. The heart of critical theory is its criticality of inquiry by breaking away from established social theories. Essentially it examines the way in which modern industrial societies give an expression of ‘pleasant’ life while distorting the authentic life and culture. The central role of power and its diverse use in modern societies is a running subject-matter for all critical theorists. Culture has been the primary theme for analysis by almost all thinkers. It is simply because in advance capitalist societies more than the economic structures, the cultural and ideological apparatuses play a lead role in controlling human beings. The assault on the thought process by the ever growing rationality governed social structures is under severe criticism from the Critical School.

The critical theory started off with an orientation to review and revise Marx's writings in order to account for the ‘new’ social situations that Marx could not foresee in his time, for example, the rise of the middle-classes, the growth of mass media and an increasing conformity with the capitalist order. Later thinkers are more philosophical in their approach to direct their attention to the very project of rationality. Critical theory no doubt re-energizes Marxism and infuses a new reflexive criticality in social inquiry.

Key Words

• Bracketing
• Ethnomethodology
• Everyday-life World
• Habitual Knowledge
• Knowledge of Essences
• Psychologism
• Phenomenology
• Significant Other
• Sociology of Knowledge

Glossary

Bracketing: A term that stands for the act of suspending judgement about the natural world that precedes phenomenological analysis. It involves setting aside the question of the real existence of the contemplated object, as well as all other questions about its physical or objective nature.

Breaching Experiments: A method for revealing or exposing the common work that is performed by members of particular social groups in maintaining a clearly recognizable and shared social order.

Ethnomethodology: Coined by Harold Garfinkel, ethnomethodology is a study of the methods that individuals use in daily life to construct their reality, primarily through intimate exchanges of meanings in conversation.

Life-world: The world as immediately or directly experienced in the subjectivity of everyday life, as sharply distinguished from the objective ‘worlds’ of the sciences. It includes individual, social, perceptual and practical experiences.

Phenomenology: The philosophical position adapted by sociologists to promote an understanding of the relationship between states of individual consciousness and social life. As a sociological perspective, phenomenology seeks to reveal how human awareness is implicated in the production of social action, social situations and social worlds.

Discussion Points

• The influences on early phenomenology.
• Schutz's treatment of everyday-life world.
• Social construction of reality: Contribution of Berger and Luckmann.
• Garfinkel's insistence on ethnomethodology.