The politics of Critical Theory

Abstract

It has long been commonplace to point out that the Critical Theory of Horkheimer and Adorno has no politics. This is usually meant in three senses. The first is that Critical Theorists of this time explicitly refused to engage in party politics, voice opinions about current events, propose reform agendas, or indeed talk about political institutions in any specific way. The second sense in which early Critical Theory has no politics is that its critique focused more and more on a realm of culture and aesthetics detached from politics. For some this merely led to abstraction, while others thought it led to irrelevance. Finally, and most significantly, early Critical Theory has no politics because its diagnosis of the times is so pessimistic as to make any political action, or indeed any attempt to break out of the logic of instrumental reason, futile. Thus, to the question “What is to be done?” Horkheimer and Adorno appear to answer, “Alas, nothing.”