Capitalism, Alienation and Critique

Critical theory and the future of humanity: A reply to Asger Sørensen

“…Sørensen in his book warns against that Critical Theory "distance(s) itself too far from the basic approach of the first generation, with all the philosophical and political radicalism this implies". 21 Most importantly, it should not give up on its practical commitment to the project of a liberation of society from injustice and alienation. Since capitalism is what produces injustice and alienation, Critical Theory must incessantly criticize and as far as possible itself be a factor in the overcoming of capitalism.…”

“…25 Even if the two authors, as Wiggershaus rightly points out, for opportunist reasons reduced the occurrence of Marxian terminology from the 1944 to the 1947 edition 26 , it is simply not true that they "systematically" and in every case changed their vocabulary. 27 The word "capitalism" not only still occurs throughout the book, it also almost without exception occurs in passages that leave no doubt that the purpose of the argumentation of the whole book is to criticize capitalism. In Adorno´s work after Dialectic, there is no attempt to tone down the commitment to the Marxian Critique of Political Economy, and in a lecture from 1968, he explicitly favours the term "late capitalism" at the expense of the more neutral "industrial society".…”

“…33 This was exactly the question to which Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectic wanted to provide an at least provisional answer. So, when Sørensen in Capitalism, Alienation and Critique maintains that "humanity needs to reconsider (…) how we organize our common interaction with ourselves, our fellow human beings and with nature, i. e. how we produce, how we consume and how this "we" is to be constituted" 34 , he is touching upon the focal point of the Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Critical Theory of both Horkheimer and Adorno after the 1940ies. This of course just makes it all the more puzzling that he does not want to enter into any real dialogue with them but instead chooses to follow the interpretation of them by "mainstream critical theory", that is by Habermas and Honneth and their successors.…”

“…As Sørensen points out in the introduction to his book, capitalism is upheld by "corrupting and holding down" human possibilities and "appealing to what is less human". 40 But what if, as both Horkheimer and Adorno from the late 1940ies and onwards seem to imply, what is threatened is the very awareness that things could be different, that human beings could so to say be more human than they are under the economic and societal conditions of capitalism? Although this awareness of course still exists as the insight of a marginal intellectual and political group, it has probably never been more remote from being a general public awareness than it is today.…”

“…Although widely unnoticed, the abovementioned strain of thought has been highly influential to the ecological and environmental movements in the late 20 th century. 44 Considering Sørensen´s ambition through philosophy -or critical theory -to contribute to solving the present crisis of society that he himself rightly acknowledges is also an ecological crisis 45 , it becomes hard to understand why he ignores exactly this aspect of the critical theories of Horkheimer and Adorno after the 1940ies, since the man-nature relation here seems to be much more in focus than in the further development of the theory by Habermas and Honneth. Also, the topic of a "liberation of nature" that occupies an important place in the work of the late Marcuse is not analyzed or discussed in any detail by Sørensen.…”