Critical Theory - Emergence of critical theory – Frankfurt School, Culture Industry - Horkheimer and Adorno Revival of Critical theory – Jurgen Habermas

1. CRITICAL THEORY & HABERMAS

2. FRANKFURT SCHOOL

3. FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND ITS
EMERGENCE
• Begins with the failed revolution-Germany October 1918-First
World War Failure
• Hard years for the Germans- feeling of lost, financial hardships,
paying repercussions to the countries they been defeated by
• Economic concerns along with the broader social tensions
• Failure of Marxian theory- stage theory (feudalism, Mercantilism,
Capitalism, Communism)
• “It is inevitable that capitalism will sow the seeds for its own
destruction”

4. • The exploitative nature become clear to the working class and they
would rise up to over throw capitalism
• Indeed in Russia, that had happened; the February and October
revolution, overthrown the Tsar and the establishment of Soviet Russia
• So, the leftist thinkers were sitting back and eating for Germany for
such a revolution, the birth place of Marx
• However, Germany experienced a revolution, days before the First
World War ended; led by the communist fractions of activists like Rosa
Luxunberg- abdication of Kaisar and introduction of new constitution
and after that Germany remained a fundamentally capitalist nation

5. • So, in 1923, Felix Weil started to investigate on this issue;
why was German revolution did not yield economic
reform
• Marxism informed studies
• 22nd June 1924- The Institute of Social Research opened
up at Frankfurt
• First Director (1923-1929)— Carl Grunberg; an economist
and historian; Proponent of scientific socialism

6. • When I speak here of Marx, I do not understand it in terms of
Party Politics, but rather in a purely scientific sense, that is an
integral system of economic, of a scientific world view and
clearly circumscribed method of research
• Informed by the theoretical economic approach of Marxist
‘Capital’; not assumed the role of the institute to give a new
version of ‘Communist Manifesto’; but engaging in a more
detached form of study; instead of looking for the failure
research behind Germany, as a wake up call for their analysis of
society, the institute produced the similar works that of Marx

7. • For example, ‘Economy and Society in China’; ‘The Law of
Accumulation and Collapse in the Capitalist System’; ‘Experiments in
Economic Planning in the Soviet Union, 1917-1927’
• 1930s- Carl Grunberg fell ill and resigned from the post of Director,
Max Horkheimer took charge
• Horkheimer- trained in Psychology and Philosophy; economic
analysis shifted to people, society, and culture
• He was highly skeptical about the notion that capitalism will
inevitably lead to socialism; he understood the reality as much more
complex; regarded the empirical study of Carl Grunberg as naive

8. • Essay ‘The impotence of German working Class”; argued that
capitalism instead of inspiring insurrection, it fairly integrated the
working class into its structure- for long term employment, voting
and acting to sustain capitalism, thus protecting their job from the
turmoil of the violent democratic revolution
• Other members of the institute, Erich Fromme, Herbert Marcuse,
Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin identified this as more holistic;
recognising the importance of social and cultural forces rather than
simply economic one
• Looked for the ways in which the working class were discouraged
from over throwing capitalism

9. • In 1936- critical theory; Horkheimer named this ways of societal analysis
as critical theory
• Aim of critical theory was to draw from diverse disciplines like Psychology,
Sociology, Philosophy, Economics, Political Science, Geography etc. to
foreground the ways in which capitalism encourages its conformity
• As Stephen Eric Bronner writes in “Critical Theory: A Very Short
Introduction”
• The Frankfurt school were concerned less with what Marx called the
economic base than the political an cultural super structure of the society

10. • They recognised the need to understand the working of capitalism not
only in terms of the economic aspects, but how it shapes the social and
cultural forms too and in turn how society and culture shape us
• They saw the overthrowing of capitalism increasingly unlikely, at least in
Germany
• Yet in 1933 Marxism became more worse when Adolf Hitler became the
Chancellor in Germany, as the left wing intellectuals working at Frankfurt
school were already under threat- because the majority were Jewish
• Horkheimer closed the Frankfurt School and it took 16 years for the
Frankfurt School to return to Germany

11. • Instead of the circumstances, the exile was highly productive; the
institute first moved to Geneva in 1935
• Eric Fromme- Columbia University in the City of New York, U.S
• 1940- Horkheimer moved to California with Adorno; Herbert
Marcuse moved to Washington
• Slide of the USSR into authoritarianism had a huge impact on the
work of the Frankfurt school
• Why people failed to embrace socialism, an ideology, many of the
Frankfurt School thinkers testing relationship with.

12. • Horkheimer and Adorno co-authored “Dialectic of
Enlightenment”- discussed why people had to embrace various
forms of totalitarianism?; its rise in the enlightenment; primacy of
human reason
• Now what could be less reasonable for fascism
• But they didn’t see totalitarianism as irrational instead
enlightenment sought to understand the world empirically-
quantification, universal laws, explaining how the world works
• Such an approach is more applicable to natural science subjects
like chemistry and physics, not to social sciences

13. • Totalitarianism is an application of extreme conception of
objectivism, uniformity and standardisation to the whole
of society- reducing individuals to mere numbers-just
like part of the machine
• Horkheimer and Adorno identified that the same kind of
logic permeate in all capitalist nations
• Another Co-authored work “Dialectic of Enlightenment”-
Coined the term ‘Culture Industry’ (The culture
industry:Enlightenment as mass deception)

14. • “Culture today is infecting everything with
sameness. Film, radio, and magazines form a
system. Each branch of cultures is unanimous with
itself and are unanimous together”
• They argued the sole goal of the culture industry
was to make money, thus they rely on creating
films, music, books which may reach as many
people as possible, in as much time as possible

15. • Creating a culture permeated by sameness, they referred to as
mass culture; which robs people of their imagination- over
ruling individuals
• Scholars in California started studies in authoritarianism more
clearly by drawing methodology from various disciplines
• 1950-The Authoritarian Personality- developed the “F Scale”- to
find out how liable an individual might be supporting a fascist
political order through asking a set of questions to individuals
by assigning on individuals from “democratic personality” to
“authoritarian personality”

16. • Frankfurt School scholars were never afraid of changing
their language for political reasons. They often avoided
using recognisably Marxist terminologies
• Two years before the publication of authoritarian
personality after the Second World War, Horkheimer has
decide to go back to Germany-original home-by that
time Germany became Federal Republic of Germany
• Now they established themselves in the forefront of
German Sociological thinking!

17. • The critical theory that Horkheimer had envisaged in 1936 and developed
along with Adorno in dialectic of enlightenment was a new established
body of work; how we can approach human society from the perspectives
of political science, culture and psychology etc
• A number of works produced from Frankfurt School
• 1951-‘Minima Moralia’- reflection from a damaged life which argued that
human life has now irreversibly damaged
• 1964- Herbert Marcuse-‘One Dimensional Man’- studies in the ideology in
advanced industrial society; critique of capitalist society and that of Soviet
Union; in both the systems, critical thinking is becoming a dying art!

18. • In the capitalist nations, people are becoming so
assimilated to the capitalist mode of production and
the bureaucracy needed to maintain it; that they failed
to be able to think on anything but one dimensional
manner, uncritical of the system around them
• There was pessimism in all their works
• Jurgen Habermas- shifted the perspective- optimism of
his works

19. JURGEN HABERMAS

20. JURGEN HABERMAS (1929-)
• German Philosopher and Sociologist in the tradition of
critical theory and pragmatism
• Aim was to develop a theoretical program for the
reconstruction of the historical materialism of Marx
• He differentiated between work and social interaction;
according to Marx, work means labour (purposive
rational action and social interaction is symbolic or
communicative action); Marx only focused on work and
not on social interaction or communicative action

21. • Habermas divided purposive rational action into
two:Instrumental action and strategic action
• Instrumental Action: A single actor rationally
calculating the best means to achieve a given goal
• Strategic Action: Two or more individuals
coordinating and rationally calculating in the
pursuit of a goal

22. THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE
ACTION
• In this communicative action, agents involved are
coordinated not through ego centric calculations
of success, but through acts of understanding and
they harmonise their plans on the basis of
common social situations
• e.g.. in a class room situation, the students are
expected to sit quiet and listen to the teacher

23. • He differentiated between purposive rational action
and communicative action
• According to him, the end of purposive rational action
is goal achievement but in communicative action the
end is mutual understanding
• Without communicative action society cannot exist
• The medium for communicative action is language and
non-verbal symbols

24. LIFE WORLD AND THE SYSTEM
• Adopted from phenomenological sociology (Schutz)
• Life world is a place where communicative action takes
place and actors reach intersubjective understanding and it
has a set of background assumptions and stocks of
knowledge
• Intersubjective- sharing the same lifeworld, same patterns
of interaction and social relationship in the society
• Lifeworld exists because there is socialisation/social stocks
of knowledge

25. • Habermas was concerned with the rationalisation of
lifeworld
• He feels that once life world is rationalised, it will lead to
the rationalisation within communicative action also; that
is interaction will be controlled by rationally motivated
mutual understanding (here there will be clear cut
calculations between means and end)
• In addition, life world is composed of culture, personality
and society

26. • Engaging in communicative action lead to the
reinforcement of culture, society and personality (eg.
we are taught the manners in the preliminary level
and when we again come in contact, it becomes
reinforced)
• Once our life world becomes highly rationalised, it
leads to the growing differentiation of culture,
personality and society (instance of an industrial
society)

27. • The life world operating in a society is called as the system process
and each of the components (culture, society, personality) has got
corresponding elements in the system. i.e., in the system we can
see cultural reproduction, social integration and personality
formation
• Manifestation of system- reproduction of culture; enculturation
process is taking place at the system level; Social integration- of
the elements of society interdependence and inter relations;
Personality has to be moulded according to the culture and society
• How these factors are helping the society to move on.

28. SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND
SYSTEM INTEGRATION
• According to him social integration is a term, which can be
used more aptly in the life world while system integration
can be used in the system
• Theorists focusing on the life world begin with
communicative actin and the ongoing reproduction of
society is seen as the result of actions undertaken by the
members of the life world to maintain the symbolic
structures, while system integration is concerned with
external control over individual decisions that are not
subjectively coordinated

29. • Social integration-happens within the lifeworld; as a result of
conscious effort from the part of actors to maintaining the
society. This conscious effort is facilitated by communicative
action
• System integration-but here, system integrations brought about
by deliberate means of social control. Not by individual effort
• Life world is the root, system lies upon life world
• Life world: conceptual level, system world: what actually
happens

30. • But what happened in the modern society is that there is a
fluctuating balance between lifeworld and the system; because
in the modern society, the system starts developing its own
structural characteristics and once these structural
characteristics become more rationalised and self sufficient,
they become highly distant from the lifeworld and they start
dominating the life world.
• This process is called “colonisation of the lifeworld”
• As a result of this, modern society is poorly integrated due to
colonisation

31. DE-LINGUISTIFIED MEDIA
• Life world- communicative action (media)
• System- delinguistified media
• Delinguistified media is used to repress the individual
where as the language in communicative action in life
world creates mutual understanding among the individuals
• Communicative action is necessary for the reproduction of
the life world; but currently communicative action is
replaced by delinguistified media since system dominates
over the life world

32. • Thus the importance of life world goes down while
importance of system goes up
• This often leads to the imbalance of social
structure
• so, Habermas says that individuals in the life world
can restore balance by making the communicative
actors react against or they remain uninhibited by
the delinguistified media

33. CONCEPTUALISATION OF
ACTION AND RATIONALITY
• In his book “Theory of Communicative Action”, he made a
detailed analysis of Weberian action and rationality.
According to him, there are 4 types of action
• TELEOLOGICAL ACTION: similar to Zweckrational action
given by Weber; there is a predetermined goal and
among the different means to achieve it, the actors select
the most appropriate one to achieve the goal. This kind of
action is rational but he disagreed with Weber and he said
that this rationality is too narrow when compared with
Weber’s concept

34. • NORMATIVELY REGULATED ACTION: it is oriented to common
values of a group. Here the action is based on the particular norms
of the group. Eg. social movements (weber talks about only one
actor)
• DRAMATURGICAL ACTION: it is an action where there is conscious
manipulation of oneself before an audience or public. This type of
action is ego centred
• COMMUNICATIVE ACTION: the use of verbal or non-verbal
symbols for the purpose of mutual understanding. For Habermas,
communicative action is the real rational action; because it has got
three forms of validity

35. • Statements are true in propositional content or
with reference to the external and objective world
• Statements are correct with respect to the existing
normative context or social world
• Statement are sincere and manifest the subjective
world of intention and experience of the actor
(because it is goal oriented)

36. DIFFERENT TYPES OF ACTIONS
TAKE PLACE IN DIFFERENT WORLDS
• The teleological action is operating in an objective
world
• Normative- social world
• Dramaturgical- subjective world
• Communicative- can simultaneously operate in the
objective, social and subjective world

37. • Hence communicative action is the most rational
action because it is based on objectivity (based on
norms, experience and intentions of the actor)
• These three factors are called as “validity claims”
for considering communicative action as the most
rational action

38. THE PUBLIC SPHERE
• In the book “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society” (1962)
• Public sphere: a concept emerged in the 18th century Europe
• “A virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any
identifiable space”
• Space where private people came together to form a public whose “public
reason” would work as a check on the State Power
• He felt that before 18th century, European culture has been dominated by a
representational culture and he identified the representational culture with that
of the feudal stage of development of Marxian theory and the public sphere is
compared to the capitalistic state of development. So it is a space outside the
control of the state where, individuals exchange views and knowledge

39. • He says that, within European culture, the growth of media
such as newspaper, journals, reading clubs etc marked the
replacement of representational culture with that of public
sphere
• One of the most important characteristics features of public
sphere is its critical nature
• After 19th century a variety of factors have contributed to the
decay of public sphere, including the highly commercialised
mass media, which turned the critical public in to a passive
consumer public

40. • Another important factor is the welfare state; it merged the
state and the society and the public sphere was squeezed out
• Third important factor is the rationalised modern administration,
i.e., bureaucracy
• Public sphere is once again is something which has deteriorated
the boundaries between the system and the life world
• However, Habermas has been severely criticised for not giving
importance to economics and culture, which Marx gave
importance to.

43. • Critical theory takes place on the level of some transcendental
understanding. It is the critique of society based on understanding of
facts- evaluate the statement.
• Adorno and Horkheimer were the first to use critical Marxist thought to
illuminate Western mass culture, which for years had been dismissed by
conservative culture critics with elitist moralising. Please discuss.
• Evaluate the statement, “critical theory is about the fundamental purpose
of knowledge and social theory, and that is its real value for sociology”.
• Evaluate the statement, Habermas has given a new form to the
demarcation between traditional and critical theory.
WRITING EXERCISE

44. • Jürgen Habermas - On the Logic of the Social
Sciences (Studies in Contemporary German Social
Thought) (1990)
• Philip Smith - 21st Century Sociology:Cultural
Theory-An Introduction, Wiley-Blackwell (2001)
• David Mclellan- Marxism After Marx-Palgrave
Macmillan (1998)
REFERENCES