9 Critical Theory: The Frankfurt School Contributions of Theodor Adorno

Shubhangi Vaidya

epgp books

 

1. Introduction

 

Theodor W. Adorno is one of the central figures of the Frankfurt school whose intellectual contributions span the fields of sociology, psychology, philosophy, aesthetics and social criticism. Adorno attempted to push the boundaries between disciplines and made many interconnections between them. The scope of his influence can be attributed to the interdisciplinary nature of his work and his intense engagement and radical critique of contemporary Western society especially his analysis and critique of the modern „culture industry‟. Born on September 11, 1903 in Frankfurt am Main to a wealthy Jewish German wine merchant father and an accomplished musician mother from Corsica, his background was steeped in music, art, philosophy and literature. He was extremely precocious and possessed a brilliant intellect. An accomplished musician, he was renowned as one of the foremost interpreters of the great German composer Schoenberg and „New Music‟ which posed an aesthetic challenge to contemporary art. He is also renowned for his musical compositions. Adorno studied philosophy with Hans Cornelius and completed his ‘Habilitation‟ on the aesthetics of Kierkegaard under the supervision of Paul Tillich in 1931. After working just two years as a University instructor, he was expelled by the Nazis along with other Professors of Jewish descent or those who espoused leftist political views. He left Germany in 1934 and spent the next few years in exile in America. His works of the period include „Dialectic of Enlightenment‟, „Philosophy of New Music‟, „The Authoritarian Personality‟ and „Minima Moralia‟ for which he earned much fame later and are regarded as his representative works. We shall discuss the major themes of these works soon in order to gain an insight into Adorno‟s critical social theory. As you have read in the earlier module on Horkheimer, he found an intellectual partner in Max Horkheimer, and together, the two of them put together the path breaking text „Dialectic of Enlightenment‟ published in 1947. Adorno‟s other major intellectual influence was the great scholar of culture and aesthetics, Walter Benjamin, whose tragic suicide while attempting to flee the Nazis left an indelible impact upon the Frankfurt School as a whole. Adorno took a long, critical look at society and culture in the mid-20th century, and found it to be a wasteland of despair and hopelessness. Be it the excesses of Anti-Semitism under the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, or Stalin‟s dictatorship in Russia or the mind-numbing banality of mass produced consumer culture in the United States, the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory of which he is regarded as a foremost theorist launched a searing critique on the very premises on which Western civilization is built. We shall begin the module by briefly examining some of the key texts for which he earned fame. We begin with the „Dialectic of Enlightenment‟ coauthored by Adorno and Horkheimer which has come to be regarded as the foundational text of the Frankfurt School.

 

2. ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ (DE) 

 

This work argues that Enlightenment values themselves are not automatically progressive and that their potentially liberating effects as seen in the flowering of human freedom can also enslave society. The all pervasive totality of capitalist social relations also finds expression in the realm of culture which becomes nothing more than a commodity that we willingly consume. The „culture industry‟ created by capitalism thus perpetuates a false consciousness about the world around us in order to benefit the ruling class. The excesses of class exploitation that Marx described are replaced by an insidious form of ideological control which operates through the market and consumption. They argued that the system of cultural production that is dominated by radio, film, newspapers etc are actually controlled by commercial imperatives, advertising and so on. Thus culture is reduced to a mere sub-set of the capitalist engine and robbed of its autonomy. The ever expanding capitalist economy fuelled by scientific research and the latest technology, blindly plunges on, unmindful of the destruction it causes to the external world and our internal natures. Modernity encourages us to fulfill and pursue our desires; human beings thus start treating other human beings as mere instruments or means to serve their own needs. Capitalism smashes all the old certainties and creates the „Other‟ or outsider group that we can blame for all our problems. This is how the hatred against the Jews was fuelled by the Nazis whose anti-Jewish propaganda incited the German middle classes who were fed stories about a Jewish conspiracy to use their financial clout to dominate the world and destroy traditional nationalist German values and life style. Freudian ideas are used to demonstrate that hatred of the „Other‟ in fact is rooted in jealousy of the sense of group identity and social cohesion of the „Other‟ community which is in contrast to the decline and „rot‟ of the host nation. Fascism succeeds not because it is repressive but because it encourages us to find scapegoats to pacify our own sense of guilt at our complicity. (see Peter Thompson‟s review of DE at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr08/frankfurt-school). The concluding section of DE is a number of notes and drafts which were later developed by Adorno in „Minima Moralia‟, about which we shall now read.

 

3. Minimia Moralia (MM) 

 

In his extensive analysis of the sociology of Adorno, Matthias Benzer (2011) points out that Adorno‟s sociological perspective primarily addressed the „exchange society‟. Society is an objective reality that shapes every aspect of the social world and is formed out of the social relations that exist between individuals. Capitalism is characterized by exchange relations between individuals, and through the process of social integration more and more areas of social life come to be incorporated into exchange society. Adorno gives importance to the analysis of social phenomena both from the standpoint of society as a whole as well as the social actors who can change society. Adorno made detailed and minute observations of everyday life and that was strongly colored by his position as an exile and outsider in the United States who found its consumerist mass culture quite dehumanizing and distasteful. MM, which is regarded as one of his best known works, is an exploration of everyday life distorted by the principle of capitalist exchange. The book reflects his philosophy of social science which was opposed to strictly positivist analysis and instead sought to uncover the contradictions in social life with a view to transform the system. The subtitle of MM is „Reflections on Damaged Life‟. Adorno started writing it in 1944 and completed it in 1949. It was intended to commemorate Horkheimer‟s 50th birthday. As you have read earlier, Horkheimer and Adorno were colleagues and collaborators. The book was eventually published in 1951. The book‟s title is based on Aristotle‟s „Magna Moralia‟, a work on ethics. Ethics aims at teaching values of the good life. However, Adorno maintains that in the mid 20th century, it is impossible to lead a decent and honest life because we live in an inhuman society. The book is made up of several short reflections and aphorisms which move from everyday experiences to more serious and disturbing insights into the workings of late industrial society viz. the „exchange society‟ that we have discussed earlier. The book begins with the aphorism „Life does not live‟. Acknowledging his own „damaged life‟ which suffered the trauma of Fascism and exile, Adorno also writes that “The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass”. In other words, it is through pain and loss that one can gain a deeper understanding into the processes that cause pain and damage. The themes touched upon in the book range from matters like giving presents, the decay of conversation, the desolation of the family, the impossibility of love, emigration, individualism, totalitarianism etc. It attempts to connect mundane everyday matters with large scale macro processes at the societal level, thus exemplifying sociology‟s „double character‟ (Benzer 2011). MM is one of Adorno‟s more accessible texts and lays the foundation for his critique of modern society from which he believes only a total break will yield to redemption and transformation.

 

4. The Authoritarian Personality (AP)

 

AP was the result of a collaborative research project between Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford, psychological researchers in the University of Berkeley, California. The study was undertaken during the years during and shortly after World War II and published in 1950. The book was part of a „Studies in  Prejudice‟ series sponsored by the American Jewish Committee‟s Department of Scientific Research and was motivated by the quest to understand the reasons behind„ authoriarian‟ personality types which it was believed was more predisposed to adopting anti-Semitism which found its most horrific expression in the Holocaust or the mass killing of Jews by Hitler and the Nazis. A central idea of the book is that authoritarianism is the result of a Freudian developmental model. Excessively harsh parenting, it was suggested, caused children to develop feelings of intense anger towards their parents. However, due to their fear of punishment they do not express their feelings to their parents and develop instead a sense of identification and idolize other „authority figures‟. In tune with the prevalent psychoanalytical understandings, the book also linked the existence of authoritarianism to suppressed homosexuality which resulted in suppressed hostility and fear of the father. Another important idea presented in the book is that authoritarianism predisposes individuals towards right-wing or fascist political regimes. Adorno‟s major contribution in the book was the „F-Scale‟, a methodological tool devised to define and measure personality traits associated with authoritarian personality types. The traits include conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intellectualism, superstition and stereotyping, power and toughness, destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity and exaggerated concerns over sex. As mentioned earlier the development of these traits was a result of childhood experiences of repression and harsh, punitive discipline. Authoritarian personalities it is believed are more receptive to right-wing governments which, the book concludes produce hostility towards religious, ethnic or racial minority communities. Extending his critique of capitalism in the social –psychological realm, Adorno argues that anti-Semitism is a result of the proliferation of these tendencies in society. AP proved to be an extremely controversial and at the same time acclaimed work which provoked debate and further research on the association between personality traits and political action. Its methodological premises, particularly the „F-scale‟ have come under attack by sociologists who argue that the research instruments presupposed the theory that they were supposed to validate.

 

5. Philosophy of New Music (PM) 

 

As we have mentioned earlier, Adorno was an accomplished musician and scholar of aesthetics. PM written in 1949 is not just musical criticism but a critique of the social system in which music is produced. Marx had described religion as the „opiate of the masses‟ which ideologically drugged and dulled them into accepting the excesses of capitalism. For Adorno, the „opiate‟ was not religion but culture. Mass produced culture served as little more than a drug that reified and perpetuated the dominance of capital. Culture was thus reduced to a mere product that could only produce more products of culture. The worker was thus enslaved into being a consumer and the sway of the „culture industry‟ became total and inescapable. Extending his analysis of the numbing and „dumbing‟ effects of popular music of the 1930s and 1940s (eg., jazz and „swing‟ music), Adorno examines the works of the composers Schoenberg and Stravinsky who are the prime representatives of a new genre in Western classical music termed „New Music‟. This new innovation grew out of the Expressionist movement at the turn of the century and is characterized by „atonality‟ and a reinvention of the musical scale. Adorno wrote favorably of Schoenberg‟s rejection of „traditional‟ music whose soothing, harmonious melodies merely „sugar-coated‟ or provided „consolation‟ in a social world where relations between human beings were increasingly commodified and dehumanized. Under the sway of late capitalism, music, like all art had degenerated into a decorative and frivolous consumer commodity. Atonal, „dissonant‟ New Music was more honest to life, it articulated the language of social suffering and resisted the lure of the consumerist capitalist society or what he termed the „totally administered world‟. In PM Adorno praises Schoenberg but criticizes the Russian composer Stravinsky who attempted to incorporate traditional folk motifs into his music. Adorno thought this to be a regressive step and one which supported the status quo rather than challenging it as he believed Schoenberg‟s music did. Adorno‟s conclusions provoked much debate and criticism, but what really is of interest to us is the manner in which his ideas on art and music are profoundly rooted in social and philosophical understandings and critique. This is what makes it very difficult to tease out his specifically „sociological‟ contributions as he dabbled in so many areas of reflection and criticism.

 

6. The Post War Period 

 

After the end of the World War II, Adorno returned to Frankfurt where he took up a position in the philosophy department and became an important and influential public intellectual. He became the Director of the Institute of Social Research in 1958 and continued to produce important writings up to the end of his life. Some of his important works in the 1950s and 1960s include „Prisms‟ (a collection of social and cultural studies), „Negative Dialectics‟, which was his magnum opus on metaphysics and epistemology (1966) and „Aesthetic Theory‟ (1970) another magnum opus which was published after his death in August 1969. It is not within the scope of this module to explicate and discuss the complex philosophical arguments embodied in these works. It was not just his publications but the vibrant and often controversial role as public intellectual and „voice of conscience‟ that Adorno played in post war Germany that is of great significance. His appearances on radio talk shows and public lectures and popular articles in newspapers and journals established him as an important voice in public life and politics who spoke out fearlessly, often to his own peril. Richard Wolin (2006) writes that Adorno specialized in telling the German people truths about themselves that they did not want to hear. Through his talks and popular writings he wanted to impress upon the German people the need to come to terms with the past- the horrors of Nazism- and work their way through it, much like a patient in therapy works his or her way through unpleasant and painful memories and incidents in order to make peace with them and move on with life, after learning from past mistakes. Adorno‟s 1959 radio address „What does it mean to work through the past?‟ squarely took on the growing anti-democratic tendencies that had begun to resurface in Germany and also, more importantly, the German society‟s reluctance to confront the horrors of the Fascist/Nazi era.

 

Using the psychoanalytical concepts that were a hallmark of the Frankfurt School, Adorno demonstrated how the inability of German society to address the darker aspects of their history leads to an inability to transcend it and advance ahead. The past thus lingers on as a trauma in the national consciousness. Adorno was criticized and mocked for his views and accused of working against his own society‟s interests. Not only was he criticized by the right-wing conservative sections, he also fell foul of the Left wing especially student protest movements. The teachings of the Frankfurt School and its critique of capitalism were seized by left-wing protestors to mount an attack on the authority of institutions state, society, family and church, and even though Adorno and Horkheimer dissociated themselves with the student unrest, the Frankfurt School was blamed by German conservatives for spreading anarchy and „cultural terrorism‟ (Ibid. 47). Other important pieces included „Education toward Maturity and Responsibility‟ and „Education after Auschwitz‟ (Auschwitz was the site of one of the most notorious and barbaric „concentration camps‟ set up by the Nazis where Jewish people were incarcerated, tortured and exterminated.) Adorno repeatedly drove home the point that only autonomous and responsible citizens could guard against a society slipping into totalitarianism. Education must therefore strive against the return of the sort of barbarism that created an Auschwitz. It is only through autonomy, self-reflection, self-determination and not cooperating with forces that go against these values that education can guard against the return of fascism (Ibid. 58). The climate of the late 1960s was a volatile one in the universities across the West; the war in Vietman, a growing climate of radicalization and protest all culminated in disruptions to academic life. Adorno left Frankfurt for Switzerland in the summer of 1969 for a brief respite and died of a heart attack just a month shy of his 66th birthday. In the following sections we shall attempt to examine Adorno‟s critical social theory and his sociological contributions.

 

7. Adorno’s Critical Social Theory 

 

Let us now try and uncover the critical social theory that underlies Adorno‟s work. We will follow the line of argument put forward by Lambert Zuidervaart (2011) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). The influence of Karl Marx‟s is to be seen in the Frankfurt School‟s critique of capitalism not just as an economic system but also an ideological one that sustains it. One of the most important concepts elaborated by Marx was „the fetishism of commodities‟. Commodities are treated as neutral objects or things, plucked out or disconnected from the social relations that produce them. According to Marx, bourgeois social scientists ignore the inherent inequality and exploitation present in the capitalist system. According to Marx, commodities relate to human needs, desires and practices and it only has „use value‟ because it satisfies a human need. It has „exchange value‟ because people wish to exchange it in return for something else. Like other commodities, its „value‟ can only be calculated by the expenditure of labor power and measured by the average labor time socially necessary to produce all sorts of commodities. Adorno attempts to take this Marxian notion further, and taking into account the number of important changes that have taken place in the capitalist structure since Marx‟s times. „This requires revisions on a number of topics: the dialectic between forces of production and relations of production; the relationship between state and economy; the sociology of classes and class consciousness; the nature and function of ideology; and the role of expert cultures, such as modern art and social theory, in criticizing capitalism and calling for the transformation of society as a whole‟ (SEP). In this context, the work of the Hungarian socialist George Lukacs has been cited; Lukacs argues that commodity exchange has become the central organizing principle of all sectors of society and thus commodity fetishism permeates all social institutions including law, administration, journalism etc., as well as the academic disciplines. He terms this process „reification‟ and expresses concern that human beings will ultimately be reduced to mere things obeying the laws of the marketplace (Zuidervaart 1991: 76). While Adorno initially shared this concern, he believed that what a critical social theory needs to address is why hunger, poverty and other forms of social suffering still exist in a world where scientific and technological developments have been so great. According to him, the root cause lies in the manner in which capitalist relations of production dominate society as a whole leading to concentrations of wealth and power. „Society has come to be organized around the production of exchange values, which, of course always already requires a silent appropriation of surplus value‟ (SEP).

 

Adorno analyses exchange society at three levels: the politico-economic; the social-psychological and cultural. Capitalist exploitation has a fundamentally economic character, and increasingly, the modern state has acquired dominant power. Be it the Nazi state in Germany or the Stalinist one in Russia or the market driven capitalist system in the USA, capitalism and state power combine in the contemporary world to exercise their stranglehold over society. At the social psychological level, Adorno attempts to demonstrate how capitalist exploitation and the pathology of authoritarianism and anti-Semitism are interrelated, as we have seen in AP. At the cultural level, Adorno‟s most important contribution is the analysis of the „culture industry‟ wherein art ceases to be autonomous and becomes a commodity whose marketability becomes the criterion for its existence.

 

Adorno‟s writings have often been viewed as exercises in cultural critique or ideological critique unconnected with sociological theory. However, Matthais Benzer (2011) seeks to provide a corrective by looking at his work in a holistic perspective and bringing out the sociological strands and themes that run through his work. Adorno‟s sociological contributions span the analysis of the discipline‟s theoretical, empirical, social-critical and textual dimensions, its relationship with other subjects, debates on „exchange society‟ and sociological studies of individual and social phenomena. As we have discussed earlier, the concept of society was at the core of Adorno‟s sociology. It is an objective reality which shapes every aspect of the social world as well as nature. It is a relational concept, shaped out of the social interactions between individuals that constitute it. The constituent social relations in society are marked by three key aspects; social estrangement, social dependence and social integration. Humans are „estranged‟ from each other and their society and are thus unable to recognize themselves in society. Society confronts them as a strange, autonomous object impenetrable to their understanding, standing as an overwhelming and irresistible reality to which the individual must succumb (Note the similarity of this view to Emile Durkheim‟s understanding of the „sui generis‟ nature of society and social facts as „things‟.) The world of commodities that the capitalist world has become is thus an „estranged‟ world. As a consequence, people live at the mercy of social institutions they neither understand nor are able to engage with nor intervene in their functioning. Social dependence is the dependency of all individuals on the totality that they themselves form. Social integration is a key idea in the sociology of Adorno. Capitalism, as we have discussed earlier is itself dominated by exchange relations and through the process of „social integration‟, more and more sectors of social life are drawn into exchange society. The social web is spun ever more tightly and more and more areas are „seized‟ by exchange society. Social integration allows the exchange principle to dominate all productive activities; production‟s primary end is the generation of profits. Work, leisure, entertainment are all geared to capitalist production; this all-pervading integration of the various sectors of contemporary capitalist society leads to a homogenization of social life where everything is expected to fit the demands and requirements of exchange society. Taking an example from the „culture industry‟ that we have discussed throughout this module, we see how the market has come to dominate the world of artistic creation. Art forms like film, music, painting, creative writing cannot survive in modern capitalist society without publishing houses, art markets, the entertainment industry etc. which are all governed by capitalist mass production, consumption and profit making. To take an example from our contemporary culture we can see how the release of films in India is accompanied by an entire marketing and advertising industry that fuels the engine of capitalism and robs the cultural form of  its  role  as  an  act  of  creation  independent  of  the  functioning  of  the  market.  

 

The  concept  of „standardization‟ explains how mass media are deployed in modern consumerist society to convince people to buy products and commodities. These products are cleverly projected in such a manner that the consumers feel that they were specially designed for them alone. Modern advertizing industry works on this fundamental strategy of making each consumer feel „special‟  and yet standardizing and mass producing commodities. Writing of the functions of popular music, Adorno describes it as a kind of „social cement‟ that keeps people subservient and obedient to the status quo of existing power relations (Laughey 2007: cf www.wikipedia.com entry on Theodor Adorno). Standardization not only refers to the product of the consumer industry but also to the consumers who are bombarded many times a day by media advertising, and virtually coerced into consuming the commodities they are exposed to. They become so conditioned and accustomed to this pressure that they are caught up in a situation where conformity is the norm and where they become characterized by the commodities they use and exchange amongst themselves (Ibid: 15).

 

With regard to the role of empirical research in Adorno‟s sociology, Benzer attempts to correct the notion that Adorno was opposed to empirical research. He was however opposed to the polarization of social philosophy and empirical social research. The empirical content that was present in his sociological analyses drew upon his own keen and insightful personal observations and experiences of daily life as we have noted in our discussion of the text MM. As we have seen earlier, his first hand experience of persecution and exile, the migrant experience in a different culture and society, his extensive travels and most importantly, his strong ideological positions shaped his writing and research. Even so, he had problems with method-driven sociological research which he felt tended to isolate itself from theory. We must remember that he was a product of Germany‟s non-empirical sociological tradition; his brand of sociology was thus a deeply personal one, based on his own insights and observations and informed by a social theory that was rooted in complex philosophical formulations and concepts. He engaged with authors like Popper and Mannheim on positivism and theory in social research in which he vehemently asserted the importance of theory. One example of Adorno‟s difficulty with the method-driven empirical sociology he encountered in the USA can be seen in his association with the American sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld‟s project on radio audiences and their tastes which was conducted in the mid 1930s when Adorno had fled Germany. The project was based on generating large amounts of data in order to arrive at conclusions on the audience‟s tastes and preferences in radio music with a view to devising ways to „improve‟ their tastes and profitably exposing them to classical music. Lazarsfeld found it very difficult to accept Adorno‟s lack of methodological rigor and style of presentation. Equally, Adorno found the very premise of quantifying „taste‟ problematic. Narrating a personal anecdote about his experiences with the social scientists who worked in the project, Adorno described how a young lady asked him whether he was an „introvert‟ or an „extrovert‟. He remarked that it was as though human beings had started thinking about each other in the style of multiple-choice questionnaires! This reduction of the complexity of human experience and distinctiveness into simplistic categories was not at all acceptable to him.

 

Thus, Adorno promoted a self-reflexive, critical sociology which did not surrender itself to empty empiricism but rather contextualized the complexity of human experience and inextricable intertwining of micro-level personal experience with macro-level socio-political processes which exercised their sway on all aspects of an individual‟s life.

 

8. Conclusion 

 

In the year 2003, the Adorno centennial was celebrated in Germany. Wolin (2006) writes about the enthusiastic revisiting of his thoughts, ideas and works, the Adorno „festivals‟, public exhibitions, all of which commemorated his life and work. Academic conferences in universities, collections of his works, publication of his unpublished correspondence sought to remember his legacy. His musical compositions were played in public concerts and released in Berlin Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS). Wolin remarks that it is truly remarkable that the „renegade Marxist philosopher‟ was embraced so warmly by his countrymen thirty-four years after his untimely death (Wolin 2006: 45). Perhaps the reason for Adorno‟s continued relevance to contemporary society was the fact that he held up a mirror for society to view is own capacity for inhumanity and self-destructiveness. Adorno maintained in his work „Negative Dialectics‟ that philosophy was still necessary because capitalism had not yet been overthrown. Zuidervaart (See entry to Theodor Adorno in SEP) writes that according to Adorno philosophy must engage with society, explore the relationship between theory and praxis, and seriously consider the prospects of how a more humane world can be realized. Philosophers must therefore find historically appropriate ways to speak about meaning and truth and suffering that neither deny nor affirm the existence of a world that transcends the one that we know. By speaking of a „utopia‟ beyond the world we know, we run the risk of cutting off the critique of contemporary society and the need to change it. By denying the possibility of transcendence we end up suppressing the suffering that calls out for change. He juxtaposes intense self-criticism with an equally ardent hope for change.

 

 

9. Summary 

 

A few important points learnt in this chapter are summarised as follows.

  • Theodor Adorno (1903- 1969) was a Jewish German whose works span the fields of sociology, psychology, philosophy, aesthetics and social criticism.
  • His works of the period include „Dialectic of Enlightenment‟, „Philosophy of New Music‟, „The Authoritarian Personality‟ and „Minima Moralia‟ for which he earned much fame later and are regarded as his representative work
  • Adorno took a long, critical look at society and culture in the mid-20th century, and found it to be a wasteland of despair and hopelessne Be it the excesses of anti-Semitism under the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, or Stalin‟s dictatorship in Russia or the mind-numbing banality of mass produced consumer culture in the United States, the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory of which he is regarded as a foremost theorist launched a searing critique on the very premises on which Western civilization is built.
  • Adorno initially shared this concern, he believed that what a critical social theory needs to address is why hunger, poverty and other forms of social suffering still exist in a world where scientific and technological developments have been so great. According to him, the root cause lies in the manner in which capitalist relations of production dominate society as a whole leading to concentrations of wealth and power.
  • Adorno analyses exchange society at three levels: the politico-economic; the social-psychological and cultural. Capitalism is characterized by exchange relations between individuals, and through the process of social integration more and more areas of social life come to be incorporated into exchange society.
  • Adorno‟s most important contribution is the analysis of the „culture industry‟ wherein art ceases to be autonomous and becomes a commodity whose marketability becomes the criterion for its existence. The „culture industry‟ created by capitalism thus perpetuates a false consciousness about the world around us in order to benefit the ruling class.
  • Adorno promoted a self-reflexive, critical sociology which did not surrender itself to empty empiricism but rather contextualized the complexity of human experience and inextricable intertwining of micro-level personal experience with macro-level socio-political processes which exercised their sway on all aspects of an individual‟s life.
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10.  References