Critical theory and the historical transformations of capitalist modernity

Abstract

By analyzing the interrelated approaches formulated in the late 1930s and early 1940s by Friedrich Pollock, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno, this chapter demonstrates that, in spite of the richness of their attempts to formulate a critical theory more adequate than traditional Marxism to the transformations of the twentieth century, these thinkers retained some of its political–economic presuppositions and, as a result, reached a theoretical impasse: in attempting to deal with a new configuration of capitalism, their approach lost its reflexivity; it no longer could account for itself as a historical possibility. This chapter examines the complex relation of classical critical theory to traditional understandings of capitalism in order to clarify the trajectory of the former and also illuminate the limits of the latter. In so doing, it points to a fundamentally different analysis of capitalism, one that—if integrated with the rich concerns of the Frankfurt School—could serve as the point of departure for a critical theory that could both be reflexive and elucidate the nature and dynamic of our global social universe.