The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory
(Martin Jay (1996), The Dialectical Imagination)

The Frankfurt School approach - often associated with the abandonment of the idea of the proletariat as the agents of revolution (Marcuse).
'The clearest expression of this change was the Institut's replacement of class conflict, that foundation stone of any true Marxist theory, with a new motor of history.' (Jay, 1996: 256)
The idea of progress, human emancipation based on class struggle is rejected for more mixed, contradictory narratives of rise, fall, and recurrence. 

This is a convincing position given the dramatic changes in production (both in the West and existing socialism of the 1970s - what is elsewhere called post-fordism) and the compression of time and space through technological innovation that Harvey describes as follows: 
'capitalism is becoming ever more tightly organised through dispersal, geographical mobility, and flexible responses in labour markets, labour processes, and consumer markets, all accompanied by hefty doses of institutional, product and technological innovation' (Jay, 1996: xvi, in his 'Preface to the 1996 edition', quoting Harvey, (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity: an Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford). 

Over the last thirty years or so, Labour markets have become increasingly globalised with the migration of cheap foreign labour and the weakening of trade union movements. Added to this, international financial capital has become increasingly powerful in relation to the nation-state. In such a scenario and under the passifying influence of mass culture, the idea of the proletariat as agents of change seemed to represent misplaced optimism (added to this was the view that Marxists had fetishised labour). Equally, the argument for the possibility of a benevolent state also significantly weakened. An interest in the work of the Frankfurt School coincides with these developments - not so much in terms of economic theory but for its engagement with culture. 

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School stands in sharp contrast to orthodox postmodernist thinking. (see hybrid notes on funky business). For example, Martin Jay cites Habermas' view that modernism is an unfinished project, Lowenthal's warning against the concept of 'post-history', and Adorno's insistence of the separation of high and low culture (1996: xvii). Adorno and Horkheimer's essay 'The Culture Industry' best explains the worries of the integrative power and levelling tendencies of mass culture in this regard (1999: 120-167). The critical theorist responds to this. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment, a radical critique of 'instrumental, technological rationality', it is not that reason is given up altogether as is the (the anti-enlightenment tendency of postmodernism) but it is replaced by a cynical reason. Moreover, this brand of critical theory is important in re-engaging thinking about culture; but crucially about culture and aesthetics in connection to the political economy and ideological critique (what you might call the interaction between the substructure and superstructure that occurs at all times). Critical theory therefore rejects the derivative nature of culture (as simply responding to the economy). 

Central to this is the relationship of the individual agent to the system (individual to society), especially when the system (and subject) itself has become rather fluid and dissolved (or fractured). It is as if the Marxist notion of change has become stable, and digitisation has become the currency for this approach (ref. Jeremy Valentine talk). The system has become thoroughly flexible and distributed - networked, in other words. 

Central to the project is the inter-relationship of theory to practice, in the Marxist lexicon known as 'praxis' - aptly described for my purposes, as 'to designate a kind of self-creating action' (Jay, 1996: 4) - in other words, it is action informed by theory (ironically perhaps, the Frankfurt School might be criticised for its lack of engagement in practical political actions or praxis - however, they believed in the primacy of theory, even in the case of Marcuse, when he was writing positively about activist protest). 

Benjamin argued, taking a cue from Brecht that,
"Crude thoughts... should be part and parcel of dialectical thinking, because they are nothing but the referral of theory into practice... a thought must be crude to come into its own action".
quoted in Hannah Arendt, "introduction", to Illuminations, p.21.

The re-working of Marxism was still rooted in dialectical method, opposed to closed systems of thinking and remaining open-ended and unfinished. This approach, for members of the Frankfurt School, was characterised as critical theory (although the phrase has become much maligned in recent years as the theory strand of practice-orientated arts programmes in universities). Critical theory expressed a dialogue with other critiques, theories and systems - using a 'dialectical materialist' method (note: be careful about the distinction between historical materialism and dialectical materialism) and drawing heavily on a German philosophical tradition especially those 'Left Hegelians' that began to apply his thinking to social phenomena, most famously Marx. The FS project can be partly described as a recovery of these dialectical roots that had long been superceded by more positivist scientific approaches by the early twentieth century - that had arguably lost sight of itself. This part return to Hegel had a number of significant implications: chiefly, that consciousness and subjectivity were seen to be important (partly from the influence of psychoanalysis), and to identify its philosophical roots (Kant and Hegel) as well as reflect upon more recent philosophical traditions (especially Nietzsche, Weber, and Husserl perhaps); all serving to invigorate its critical and theoretical dexterity (Jay, 1996: 42-3). Added to that, critical theory had to take account of the current economic and social conditions; the ambiguities of soviet communism, and the monopolistic tendencies of capitalism, as well as the integration of the proletariat into the system and as a result a loss of confidence in whether it could continue to represent the revolutionary agent of change it was once believed to be. 

So if the Frankfurt School project can be partly described as 'Hegelianised Marxism', in its embrace of the dialectical method, and nature of reason and reliance on logic, it also remained skeptical of a number of its key principles, such as its claim to absolute truth (sometimes called Hegelian synthesis). Jay says: 
'a system that tolerated every other view as part of the "total truth" has evitably quietist implications. An all-embracing system like Hegel's might well serve as a theodicy justifying the status quo. In fact, to the extent that Marxism had been ossified into a system claiming the key to truth, it too had fallen victim to the same malady.' (1996: 46, refering to Horkheimer's views) 

Horkheimer argues truth is a distraction from a focus on social change. (ref. to Jeremy Valentine argument that change too, in turn, has become ossified). This example serves to emphasise the rejection of all absolutes, such as Hegel's absolute subject (or absolute spirit) but not an outright (absolutist) rejection that would lead to scientific positivism. The rejection of one for the other, or mere opposition (of the individual and society or of relativism versus determinism, for instance) would simply be anti-dialectical. Critical theory allowed a more measured dialectic position to emerge that was also sensitive to its ossification. A totalising over-emphasis on either the individual or the system, or materialism as opposed to idealism, merely reinforces the status quo and dead-end oppositions that lead nowhere. Dialectical method suits this purpose as it is not outside human influence, nor is it simply a model that is imposed on a chaotic reality. Rather, it lies in a 'perpetual state of suspended judgement' (Jay, 1996: 54) between consciousness and being, subject and object - in a 'force-field' of contradictions in any mediated totality - not with truth in mind but social change. 

In this sense, critical theory is thoroughly 'negative' in refusing to fix itself. Marcuse explains this through the relationship between ontology and history as follows: 
'The totality in which the Marxian theory moves is other than that of Hegel's philosophy, and the difference indicates the decisive difference between Hegel's and Marx's dialectics. For Hegel, the totality was the totality of reason, a closed ontological system, finally identical with the rational system of history.... Marx, on the other hand, detached dialectic from this ontological base. In his work, the negativity of reality becomes a historical condition which cannot be hypostatised as a metaphysical state of affairs.' (Marcuse quoted in Jay, 1996: 79; from Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, 1960, pp.313-4) 

Critical theory remains theory linked to action, to praxis. In fact, theory is a guide to action. Herein lies the role of the intellectual and researcher. The tension between the intellectual and the proletariat is 'necessary in order to combat the proletariat's conformist tendencies' (Jay, 1996: 84, quoting Horkheimer again) under present conditions of authority and the emergence of mass culture. In all this, the researcher is always part of the subject of study according to Horkheimer (Jay, 1996: 81) - in a phrase that sounds like the discovery in quantum mechanics that the person conducting the experiment alters the experiment through their very presence. To Horkheimer, this is no bad thing, as knowledge and interest are tied together and this should be made explicit. In this way, the aesthetic judgements in scientific experiments would be accounted for and theorised rather than simply seeing this as a lack of analytical integrity. 

--
Note on Engels: 
According to Marcuse, Engels had been wrong to assume he could apply dialectical thinking to nature as he would history. 'Natural being was different from historical being; mathematical, nondialectical physics was valid in its own sphere. "Nature," Marcuse wrote, "has a history, but is not history"' (Jay, 1996: 73).