From Reification to Critical Theory -2

From Reification to Critical Theory - 2

In his analysis of dereification, however,

Lukacs showed the lingering presence of orthodox

Marxism. He regarded the deepening of crises

as lending a consciousness of the inevitable

demise of capitalism, that struggles would demystify

the totality. He added another component,

namely that manual workers may be reified

in their physical activity, but in their mental lives

they were left untouched to reflect upon the extreme

commodification. Between 1919 and 1922

Lukacs's ideas changed -from regarding the

proletariat as able to emancipate itself to viewing

prefigurative institutions such as worker councils

as necessary, and finally to embracing the Party

as a totalistic institution that would keep reification

at bay and bring true consciousness to the

working class. Compared to his brilliant analysis

of reification, Lukacs's treatment of dereification

is too ad hoc and superficial to count as a progressive

development of theory.

Critical theory would all but discount these

orthodox residues in Lukacs's writing. Thus, the

response of the Frankfurt School to the rise of

fascism, coming on the heels of a failed workers'

revolution, was to retain and develop Lukacs's

analysis of reification but often at the expense of

historical materialism (Arato and Breines, 1979;

Jay 1984). Pollock ([I9411 1978) developed theories

of organized and state capitalism which

demonstrated capitalism's durability. The turn to

philosophy traced how reason had become "unreason,"

how as the potential for emancipation

became greater, prospects for its realization receded;

and how remnants of resistance to capitalism

were being destroyed as the family, and

thus the human psyche itself, was invaded by

agencies of mass socialization (Horkheimer

[1936]1972, pp. 47-128; Horkheimer and Adorno

[I9441 1972). Turning orthodox Marxism on

its head, the Frankfurt School saw no emancipatory

aspects to the domination of nature. Unless

humans could develop a more balanced relationship

to nature the expansion of the forces of

production could only intensify human subjugation.

Amidst despair, there were flashes of utopianism

such as Marcuse's (1955, 1964, 1969)

great refusal, or his glimpses of emancipation in

art and philosophy. Certainly, critical theory

would lose any confidence in the revolutionary

agency of the working class which was irrevocably

tainted by capitalism. Lukacs's totality had

become totalitarian, trapping everyone in a onedimensional

society that had lost sight of any

vision or project for a different world. The

Frankfurt School abandoned the substantive

postulates of Marx's preface to embrace only his

most general critique of domination, an elaboration

of PI. In their hands adherence to P7 became

less a commitment to the inevitability of

communism and more a critique of the irrationality

of all hitherto existing history.