Phil 2222: Philosophy of Art
A *brief* introduction to
Critical Theory
The Frankfurt School
Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Marcuse,
Neumann, Kirchheimer, Lowenthal and
Erich Fromm.
Jurgen Habermas
The actual school in Frankfurt disbanded in
the face of Nazism and moved to NY to
become The New School for Social
Research.
The Problem
Why was Marx so incredibly right about
capitalism, but so incredibly wrong about
communism?
Others: Lukacs, Korsch, Gramsci
– Lukacs forced to denounce his own views by
the Communists in the 30s
– Korsch was kicked out of the German
Communist Party for refusing to do the same
– Gramsci was ‘protected’ from these purges
because he was held in a fascist prison!
‘The good life at a great price’
That Porsche ad / the Saturn ad
47 Starbucks in Beijing
4 in Oman
17 in Paris!
22 in Instanbul (4 in Ankara)
The Problem
Why was Marx so incredibly right about
capitalism, but so incredibly wrong about
communism?
Solutions?
Broadly speaking, a psychological
explanation:
+ =
Influences:
Built on the research programs of Max
Weber & Lukacs:
+ =
Reification
Rationalization Commodity Fetishism
Why?
Weber’s central contention was this: that
capitalism is not just an economic system
– it is not simply explainable in terms of
the ‘impulse to acquire’.
It is something more: “a capitalistic
economic action is one which rests on the
expectation of profit by the utilization of
opportunities for exchange, that is one
(formally) peaceful chances of profit”
Capitalism, for Weber, is intimately
connected to the Protestant ethos –it
is more than an economic system, it
is, at least partially, a religion.
The Frankfurt school sought similar explanations of
peoples’ political and economic behavior – that
is, in terms of psychological states and
properties.
Adorno’s paper has three parts:
Attack on Benjamin
Use of Lukac’s ‘reification’ to indicate the logic
of the culture industry
his own theory of ‘regressive listening’, and the
impossibility of resurrecting listening in the
current system.
Lukacs:
Commodity Fetishism: turning
commodities into quasi-spiritual
meaning-carrying entities through
which we define our lives and find
meaning.
Weber’s 2nd contribution:
The ‘rationalization’ of beaurocracy:
treating something that depends on
human decision and is within human
control as if it is not.
(later)
Reification
‘Reification’: from Lukacs – a
synthesis of Marx’s commodity
fetishism with Weberian
rationalization. It occurs when
something is treated in theory or
practice as a marketable commodity
(I.e. its use-value becomes its
exchange-value)
Add to this Weber’s rationalization
Treating commodities as quasi-
spiritual entities, and thinking that
this is what they are objectively in
and of themselves.
(that is, failing to recognize that this
quasi-spiritual status is dependent
on the way we treat these objects,
not anything they are themselves).
So, how is all this supposed
to work?
• Background:
– Marx – Das Capital & Lukacs’
interepretation (commodity fetishism)
– Weber ‘rationlization’
– Lukacs and ‘reification’
– Then, Marcuse (in brief) and an
example of the Frankfurt school’s
reasoning: Adorno on Music.
Marx.
“A commodity is, in the first place, a thing
outside of us that by its properties
satisfies human wants of some sort or
another.”
But, in reality, commodities have properties
other than those that satisfy wants –
people collect them, venerate them, are
loyal to them, and preserve them.
Where do these mysterious properties come
from?
2 Key premises:
1. In all states of society, the labor
time that it costs to produce
subsistence is necessarily of
interest to all mankind.
2. From the moment that men in any
way work with or for oneanother,
their labor assumes a social form.
• Marx’s contention:
– Science the special status of
commodities is above and beyond
subsistence, the enigmatic character of
commodities comes from this social
form of production.
The equality of human labor is expressed in
objects by the equal value of the products
(If I take 2ce as long to produce a widget
than you take to produce a fidget, a
widget must cost 2ce as much as a
fidget).
Thus, the relations between producers take
on the form of relations between our
products.
Therefore, a commodity is mysterious
because:
In it the social character of labor appears
to be a property of the object itself. The
relations between the producers to the
sum total of their labor (that is, their
products) is presented back to them as
social relations between the products
they produce. Therefore:
“Products of labor become commodities –
social things whose qualities are at the
same time perceptible and imperceptible
The social relationship between
commodities is analogous to the
social relationship between ‘souls’
or ‘spirits’. They are productions of
the human mind, yet appear to be
independent beings endowed with
life and entering into relations with
one another and the human race in
general.
1. Articles of utility become commodities
only because they are products of the
labor of private individuals or groups…
2. Since producers do not come into social
contact with one another until they
exchange their products, the specific
social character of each producer’s
labor doesn’t show itself expect in the
act of exchange.
3. The labor of an individual is thus a part
of the labor of society only insofar as it
is related in exchange with other
products, and indirectly, then, to the
producers.
4. Thus the relations connecting the labor
of individuals are not direct social
relations between individuals, but are
material relations between persons and
social relations between things.
5. And it is only in being exchanged that
the products of labor acquire uniform
social status – or value – distinct from
their use-value.
6. And when products are produced solely
for the purpose of being exchanged,
then their exchange value must be taken
into account before production.
7. Therefore, the products of labor, to
the producer of those products,
have value only insofar as they are
desired by others, and since the
products of labor are merely
material expressions of the
producers’ labor, the producers’
labor has value only insofar as it is
desired by others (and, hence, the
basis of wage-labor).
Weber
The main question is “Why advanced
capitalism only in the west?”
‘advanced capitalism’ = “The rational
capitalistic organization of (formally)
free labor” – this includes the
separation of business from the
household and the rationalization of
bookkeeping.
1. Western capitalism is highly influenced
by the development of technological
possibilities.
2. And those technological possibilities
were encouraged by certain social-
culture mores (dissection, e.g.)
3. One of these social-culture mores of
central importance is the particular law
(i.e. the Magna Carta needed in Islam)
“Modern rational capitalism has need, not
only of technical means of production, but
of a calculable legal systems and of
administration in terms of formal rules”
(If there were individuals in the country to
whom the law did not apply – would you
risk your hard earned money in an
investment?)
4. When the rationalization of law comes
into conflict with religion, religion
usually wins (witness the development
of biology in Hindu and Buddhist
cultures, Islam in the modern world…)
5. So, there must have been something in
the protestant, Calvinistic tradition that
was amenable to the rationalization of
law. (we talked about that…)
It is one of the fundamental characteristics
of an individualistic capitalistic economy
that it is rationalized on the basis of
rigorous calculation, directed with
foresight and caution toward economic
success which is sought in sharp
contrast to the hand-to-mouth
existence of the peasant, and to the
privileged traditionalism of the guild
craftsman and of the adventures’
capitalism, oriented to the exploitation
of political opportunities and irrational
speculation.
The development of the spirit of
capitalism is best understood as part
of the development of rationalism as
a whole and could be deduced from
the fundamental position of
rationalism on the basic problems of
life (76)
6. So, capitalism is a feature of
rationalization of society (which is
intimately connected to religion).
1. It’s self-justifying
2. It’s self-verifying
3. It ‘takes on a life of it’s own’
4. And it’s seen to be outside of human control.
5. It’s intimately connected with religion
Lukacs
Central thesis: in developed
capitalistic societies, the fetishism of
commodities penetrates all spheres
of social life
The factory is the model of all social
relationships
The fate of the worker is the fate of all
humanity
1. The world of commodity exchange is
seen as the estrangement (alienation) of
human activity and the de-activation of
individuality
2. Reducing human labor to a commodity
abstracts it and makes it interchangable
with other laborers – thus undermining
individual choice, expression, thought,
etc.
3. The worker is ‘mutilated’ “reduced
to mere spectatorship, to mere
contemplation of his own estranged
activity and that of his fellows. He
is emasculated.”
Marcuse
Central question:
Why does the “comfortable, smooth
and reasonable unfreedom” prevail
in advanced industrialized society?
• “Comfortable”
• “Smooth”
• “Reasonable”
Marcuse – through extending the notion of
‘rationalization’ beyond the relationship
between people and their products to
people and what they consume, find this
same emasculation in all spheres of
human life.
If the market is the model for the family, family
relationships are rationalized (they just
happen)
If the market is the model for education,
students are passive recipients, unable to
choose or interact.
Etc…
“The facts directing man’s thoughts and
actions are not those of nature which
must be accepted in order to be mastered,
of those of society which must be
changed because they no longer
correspond to human needs and
potentialities. Rather are they those of
the machine process, which itself appears
as the embodiment of rationality and
expediency.”
In more detail: to the extent that
freedom from want is decreased, the
‘traditional’ freedoms of freedom of
thought, autonomy and opposing
political views are “being deprived
of their basic critical function” in
advanced societies that can satisfy
our every want.
How?
Reduce the discussion and promotion of
alternative political views to those
within the status quo.
How?
1. ‘non-conformity is socially useless’ and
2. It is of great economic and practical
disadvantage.
3. And, it threatens the smoothness of the
society as a whole.
(Co-opting)
How did this come about?
Again: subsistence.
Subsistence and liberty are not
necessarily amenable.
The ‘freedom’ to starve, e.g.
when faced with starvation, people prefer
security to liberty.
So, it should follow that:
Increasing the satisfaction of needs should
increase freedom and liberty
Once everyone’s basic needs are met,
society should be perfectly free and
perfectly ordered.
But that’s Marx’s theory.
And it didn’t work.
Technically:
The “end” of technological society: to
render individual autonomy possible
through the organization or an
apparatus (automation and
mechanization) of the satisfaction of
our basic needs.
“In actual fact, however, the contrary
trend operates: the apparatus
imposes its economic and political
requirements for defense and
expansion on labor time and free
time, on the material and intellectual
culture.”
Therefore, society tends to be
totalitarian-
not in the sense of a terroristic political
organization, but rather in the sense of
a “non-terroristic economic-technical
coordination which operates through
the manipulation of needs by vested
interests.”
Society therefore precludes any
opposition to the whole.
Note: this a bit strong – the premise that a system
manipulates needs and is therefore totalitarian,
he still hasn’t demonstrated that that society
precludes opposition. But, if we charitably give
him the notion of the co-opting of oppositional
ideals, we get the strong thesis. And the strong
thesis gives us:
Adorno (finally!)
The decline in musical taste is linked
to the discovery that music
represents both the immediate
manifestation of impluse (creativity)
and the locus for taming that impulse
(through structure / reason / logic)
NOTE: this is all in Plato, as we talked
about.
• In music, the pressure is ‘to obey’ – the
structure, the tradition, etc – to tame the
impulse to rebel and find a place within
the structure where people can act on or
explore that impulse safely.
• Art is not socially radical – it is the co-
opting of dangerous, radical ideas into a
safe, socially acceptable medium (-Dewey
+ Freud = Adorno)
Why?
• The concept of ‘taste’ in advanced
capitalism is outmoded
– What matters is recognition. One does not
like popular music, one is merely familiar with
popular music.
– Music is the compliment of the reduction of
people to silence
– It inhabits the ‘pockets of silence’ that
develop between people molded by anxiety,
work and undemanding docility
• Everywhere, music is the soundtrack
to our sad, emasculated lives. It
plays the role it did in silent films –
it is merely background filler.
– (Remember ‘High Fidelity’ – he
organized his record collection
biographically).
2nd Section
• Here, A. s attacking the position that
would state something like:
Ok, fine, popular music in advanced
capitalism is like a highway. But
classical music, well that’s different.
(or substitute any ‘serious’ music in
for ‘classical’)
“Their static separation, which certain
caretakers of culture have ardently
sought – the totalitarian radio was
assigned to the task, on the one hand, of
providing good entertainment and
diversion, and on the other, of fostering
the so-called cultural goods, as if there
could still be good entertainment and as if
the cultural goods were not, by their
administration, transformed into evils –
the neat parceling out of music’s social
field of force is illusionary.” (274)
The illusion of preference for ‘light’ music
(as opposed to ‘serious’ music) is based
merely on the passivity of the masses.
The consumption of light music contradict
the interests of those who consume it (it
is in your interest to think, light music
doesn’t make you think),
BUT the ‘serious’ music and light music
hang together in an ‘unresolved
contradition’ the light can’t introduce one
the serious, and the serious can’t ‘borrow’
from the light.
• The serious music then disappears (it is,
by definition, unpopular), and hence the
lower can no longer measure itself in
contrast to the serious.
• Between the standards of banal and
incomprehensible, there is no room for
individuality, no room for preference, no
option for exploration.
• ‘Preference’, therefore, is illusory – you
do not like popular music. You simply
have no other option.
Fetish
Musical ‘taste’, then, is nothing other than
fetish – as in the case of sexual fetish – it
is based on no more reason than a
random exposure, probably as a youth.
The fetish often takes an individual
(instrument, composer, conductor, voice,
etc.) as its object.
The moments of sensual pleasure are not in
relation to the music, but are ‘blind and
irrational’
“Where they react at all, it no longer
makes any difference whether it is
to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony
or to a bikini”
Music with all its ethereal and sublime
attributes, serves in America today
as an advertisement for commodities
which one must acquire in order to
be able to hear music
Remember Marx?
• Value = time you spent on something
• But, in the act of exchange, you’re
thing get valued, so you get valued
• You are alienated from your product,
and hence yourself, so…
• You are now measured by the value
you acquire – i.e. how much you
spend on something
The music fan is not worshipping the
three tenors, but rather the amount
they spent on the ticket to their
concert.
“The use value of a piece of music is
presumably the enjoyment one gets out of
listening to it (or something imposed on it
in a capitalist system – stress reliever,
etc.) – When that music is commodified,
the use value is replaced by the exchange
value. Furthermore, in collections, the
exchange value takes over the use value
– one collects rare records not to enjoy
them, but to have them – collecting for
the sake of collection” (259)
• The use value in music (buy things to use
them, in music: listening)
• is replaced by exchange value (how much
do others want this)
• which is then replaced by use value (how
much could I get for this)
• the use is no longer listening, but trading,
• and the value (which becomes my value)
is in the having, not in the using.
• This is commodity fetishism
“A commodity is therefore a mysterious
thing, simply because in it the social
character of men’s labor appears to them
as an objective character stamped upon
the product of that labour; because the
relation of the producers to the sum total
of their labour is presented to them as a
social relation, existing not between
themselves, but between the products of
their labour” (Marx, Das Capital,
something like the second page, Quoted
(but not cited) in Adorno, p 528)
The commodity is reified – we have
social relations with products, and
economic relations with people – but
we treat this institution as if it is
outside of human control, an
unassailable, unjustifiable
bureaucracy.
the “transfer of the use value of
consumption goods to their
exchange value contributes to a
general order in which eventually
every pleasure which emancipates
itself from exchange values takes on
subversive features” (529)
“The woman who has money with which to buy is
intoxicated by the act of buying. In American
conventional speech, having a good time means
being present at the enjoyment of others, which
in turn has as its only content being present.
The auto religion makes all men brothers in the
sacramental moment with the words: ‘this is a
Rolls Royce’, and in moments of intimacy, women
attach greater importance to their hairdressers
and cosmeticians than to the situation for the
sake of which the hairdressers and cosmeticians
are employed.” (p 529)
“The couple out driving who spend their
time identifying every passing car and
being happy if they recognize the
trademarks speeding by, the girl whose
satisfaction consists solely in the fact that
she and her boyfriend ‘look good’, the
expertise of the jazz enthusiast who
legitimizes himself by having knowledge
about what is in any case inescapable: all
this operates according to the same
command. Before the theological
caprices of commodities, the consumers
become temple slaves” (p 529)
Sadomasochism
• The prisoner loves his cell because
he knows nothing else.
• Millions of people bought David
Helfcott’s CD (and he played on the
oscars), but it sucks. – they just
don’t know anything else.
• Why do people love a system (or a
music industry) that treats them
badly? Why do so many wait
anxiously for the next crappy record
by Mariah Carey (e.g.)
• Because they get their identity from
that system – ‘I’m a Mac user’ ‘I’m a
VW owner’ ‘I’m a ska kid’ ‘I’m in on
it’
• And that identification is necessary
because of the stadardization of
consumer goods
“The commercial necessity of
connecting this identity leads to the
manipulation of taste and the official
culture’s pretense of individualism
which necessarily increases in
proportion to the liquidation of the
individual”
• Declare your individuality! Buy a
mass-produced product just like
thousands of your friends!
• (and remember: Music is a mass-
produced product)
Vulgarization
• Music is chopped up, institutionalized and
‘frozen’ in the definitive interpretation on
a recording device. Vulgarization occurs
when the music is not appreciated /
listened to as a whole work of art.
– The 2001 theme, Beethovens’ 5th, Wagner’s
Wedding march are all removed from the
complexity of their position in larger works of
art, digested, commodified, and sold to the
music consumer as individual works of art.
Arrangment
• Muzak
• Elevator music –
– Again, it is the process of removing art
from it’s complex context, creating a
canonical version, and commodifying
art.
The practice of Music
• Toscanini – “Perfect immaculate
performance in the latest style
preserves the work at the price of
its definitive reification.”
– Like the fascist, we sacrifice freedom,
love, and all that makes us human for
the order, predictability and regularity
of a standard, canonical interpretation.
The consciousness of mass
listeners
• Listeners listen according to a
formula
• The concepts of ‘liking’ and
‘disliking’ are irrelevant – the only
question is ‘does this fit with my
economic status?’, ‘is this the kind of
person I want to project to others?’
The regression of listening
• ‘regression’ is Freudian – regressing
to the infantile stage of listening.
– Listeners ‘lose along with their freedom
of choice and responsibility, the
capacity for conscious perception of
music… but they stubbornly reject the
possibility of such perception’ (532)
Vulgarization in pop
• Lyrics are overly important, to the detrimint of
other aspects of music
• This is extended to the melody itself
• The emphasis on exchange-value dimminishes
innovation and variation: regressive listeners are
like children who demand the same meal over
and over
• The music industry responds – by preparing the
same song over and over, by different ‘artists’
• Whenever someone wants to extricate
themselves, the music industry responds and
adapts and offers them a reified context in which
to exorcize their revolutions (Punk x2, Ska x3
(or 4?), ‘Lalapollusa’)