468
DICK
HOWARD
T heory :s ho listic, syncretic outlook prevented it from develo ping a theory of
specifica ll y
po litical
authority. T o do so would have implied a fetishization of
po litics as something apart from the social totality." Yet, the other side of
Critica l
Theory's
fundamental stance is expressed in Ado rno's famo us apho–
ri sm : "The whole is the untrue." You can 't have it bo th ways!
Myth s two and three appear bla tantl y and unintention ally in J ay's his–
tory, which is a linear succession o f ideas and topics strung together loosely by
reference to a few ca tch-ideas. I miss a sense of excitement, a d ynamic of inter–
change and deba te, the tension tha t anyone who has ever chased a thought
feels in honing in on the ta rget. Examples: Any group of left-wing intellec–
tua ls tryi ng to steer a pa th between Marxi st dogma tism and grey reformism
has to be concerned with the evo lution of the Russian experiment. T hough
Pollock wrote his disserta tion on Ru ssia, and though the subject came up now
and agai n in the Institut's publica tions, it seems ma inly to have been carefully
avo ided. Yet how could it have been in those times? How, when members like
Grossmann and Wittfogel had sharp opinions on the subj ect, when the exile
community incl uded figures like Bloch, Brecht and Korsch , who had more
than a word to say on the ma tter? There was a lso the question o f Fascism.
Jay's descrip tio n shows the vita l and fundamenta l difference between the anal–
yses o f, e.g., Neumann , Kirchh eimer and Gurland and those o f Horkheimer
and Poll ock. Where the fo rmer stressed the economic ro le o f m onopoloy cap–
ita l, and posed the q uestion o f "politics in command, " the la tter were con–
ceTlled with the more forma l-and everyday- experience o f domination . T he
two are no t brought together, nor do they seem to have clashed frui tfully.
Sim ilarl y, the Institut p ublished Mi rra Komarovsky's
T he Unemp loyed Man
all d H is Fami ly
(1940) which concluded tha t the demise o f the family was a
pos iti ve fo rce- p recise ly th e opposite view o f Horkheimer. Aga in, one ge ts no
sense tha t a deba te occurred. Further, li ving in ano ther a nd newer form of
social dom ina tion , the New Dea l, and profoundly affected by their American
experience, as Jay shows, no analysis seems even to have been a ttempted. T he
term " New Deal" doesn 't even figure in J ay's index l
When they returned to th e newly crea ted Federa l Republic of Germany,
the pres tige of Horkheimer and Adorno loomed la rge. T heir writings seemed
to be a source o f radica liza tion for many who saw throug h the "economic
miracle." While Marcuse's
One-Dimensiona l Man
did no t crea te the Move–
ment in the U.S.A., the (:ritica l T heori sts back in Frankfurt
did
make an essen–
tia l contribution to its German counterpart. But, I would a rgue, they did so as
a kind of myth. T he theoretica l a nd p ractica l critique of the forms of domina–
tion in everyday life tha t began w ith the rejection of theSPO's Bad Godesberg
Program is a heritage of the In sti tut. A heritage tha t the fa thers rejected, and a
heritage which , paradoxica lly, as in Mallarme's
IgituT,
permits the children to
create the pa rents! J ay cites Adorno, who ca lled the po lice to disperse a student
