Marxist Aesthetics: The foundations within everyday life for an emancipated consciousness by Pauline Johnson

Author:Pauline Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

6 Adorno

In 1936 Adorno wrote to Benjamin criticising Brecht for addressing his work to: ‘the actual consciousness of the actual workers, who have absolutely no advantage over the bourgeois, except their interest in the revolution, but otherwise bear all the marks of the mutilation of the typical bourgeois character.’1

Together with the rest of the Frankfurt school, Adorno stresses that contemporary capitalist society is characterised by a radical disjunction between the objective interests of the proletariat and the actual consciousness of the class. The rise of the authoritarian state and the growth of the mass culture industry result, he argues, in the powerful ‘manipulation’ of people’s minds and in the gratification of ‘sham’ needs which bind the proletariat to the system.2

Adorno maintained that Brecht never came to terms with the problems which this situation creates for an orthodox interpretation of the status of Marxist theory. Since the immediate existence of the contemporary proletariat contains no revolutionary dynamic, Marxism can no longer be the theoretical aspect of the practical activity of the working class. For Adorno, the subversive character of Marxism in the contemporary situation rests with its ability to provide a critique of the prevailing consciousness which serves to perpetuate the system.

Kolakowski describes the central object of the ‘critical theory’ of the Frankfurt school as follows:

Critical theory is in favour of the liberation of the proletariat, but it also wishes to preserve its independence, and refuses to commit itself to the passive acceptance of the proletarian viewpoint; otherwise it would turn into a social psychology, a mere record of what the workers thought and felt at any given moment. Precisely because it is ‘critical’, theory must remain autonomous vis-à-vis every existing form of social consciousness. Theory conceives itself as an aspect of praxis devoted to creating a better society; it retains a militant character but is not simply activated by the existing struggle.3

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