Notes on Adorno - “History and Freedom” - Lecture 6

Conflict and Survival

In this lecture Adorno recaps the first five lectures and discusses the legitimacy of the bourgeois philosopher’s idea that conflict is reality and that society survives because of its conflicts rather than in spite of them. He asks how mankind survives under these circumstances and whether or not we can imagine a history that does not involve conflict.

Recap of First Five Lectures

The ‘universal’ asserts itself as an ‘historical process’ and has a ‘logical structure’ (49). It has negative aspects for individuals and positive aspects for the species; it “[joins] mankind together in societies...in a totality” (49). The totality both expresses and threatens the destruction of everything beneath it while at the same time it acts as a “cohesive force to which society owes its survival” (49).

Marx’s Law of Value

Marx agrees with this positive view and it forms an element of his “optimistic view of history” (49). In Marx, it is expressed in “the law of value” (50).

“[T]he law of value is the ‘law’ which governs the exchange of goods of equal value in the capitalist system of production,” Adorno believed, as Marx did, that it was ‘a chief structural law governing society’.” (Footnote 279-80)

The ‘law of value’ is “the summation of all the social acts taking place through exchange. It is through this process that society maintains itself, and, according to Marx, continues to reproduce itself and expand despite all the catastrophes that may eventuate” (50).

Central Question

The central question Adorno asks is: How does man survive when “it appears as though society is riddled with conflicts and...is irrational through and through?”. [Remember that to be rational, there must be a benefit to man.]

“[T]he crucial contribution to a theory of history is to be found in the idea that mankind preserves itself not despite all the irrationalities and conflicts, but by virtue of them” (50). This ideas can be found in Hobbes, Kant (whom Adorno calls “the great bourgeois philosophers”) and Hegel (50).

Conflict at the Heart of Bourgeois Society

In a “bourgeois [capitalist] society all life is dominated by the principle of exchange and, at the same time by the necessity—which is imposed on the many individuals—of securing for oneself as large a portion as possible of the social product in the course of this struggle of all against all” and this was understood by Adam Smith and David Ricardo [two early economists], that it is “thanks to this antagonism,...this conflict of interests, the machinery of society does in fact succeed in maintaining itself” (50).

Value [Profit] as Source of Conflict

“Value” here is produced for the sake of profits, not human need. “The only reason why goods are produced is so that...those who control the means of production, should be able as a class to profit from them as much as possible. This of course is what sets up the principle of conflict” (50-1). In reality, a number of people in society are in control of production and confront those who are not so “the needs of human beings...is never more than a sideshow...no more than ideologies“ (51) [i.e. all the talk about aiding humanity is pure lip service]

The Theodicy of Conflict

[arguments in support of the idea that conflict is a necessary reality of life]

The Hegel’s, even the Marx’s and Engel’s, will assert that this [state of conflict] is reality and life could not go on without it—without “the reality of a class society that stands as the very principle of bourgeois society” the population would not grow (51).

“[I]t may be claimed that Hegel’s Logic amounts to the assertion that the world spirit or the absolute is the quintessence of all finite, ephemeral forms of conflict, of all negativities; the positive is the quintessence of all negativities....the moment this realistic element [conflict] is accepted it becomes an affirmation that simply reinforces the negative, destructive side of society....does it make any sense at all to conceive of a course of history that does not involve...conflict” (52)

The most powerful evidence is that nature threw man into a situation “where people had too little” making “conflict inevitable” (52). Marx and Engels argue “very emphatically that...social domination, was a function of the economy,..., of the life process itself....if history derives its antagonistic character from the economy...from the need for life to preserve itself, then...social conflict is...as legitimate as historical negativity is in Hegel’s metaphysical logic” (52-3).

Society has been thought to be structured on the religious or magical, on power relations or on economic forces and each was considered to be the source of conflict in society. Marx and Engel insisted on the economic structure as they thought a focus on power relations would not result in economic change (53-4). [Marx and Engels thought economic change, not a change in power relations, was necessary to create a new society]

The “elimination of conflict” for the purpose of creating an “achieved identity” [a “totality” under one concept] would not necessarily mean an “integrated society” since “[a] truly achieved identity would have to be the consciousness of non-identity” or “the utopia conceived by Holderlin” [who believed everyone could be united by one concept, for example, “beauty”. His ideas are represented in his book, Hyperion].

In Defence of the Non-conformist

The idea that we live in a utopia [that everything that happens is for the good of all] exists beside the belief that differences cannot be reconciled because for some, this is not utopia (56). Non-conformists can only react to conformists using the same “static, rigid categories of the universal” to describe their own positions, giving the impression they are “conformers,” not “non-conformists.” This makes it difficult to separate “the sheep from the goats” (57).

Art that refuses to take a “committed position” is not non-conformist but “the way they [the works?] conduct themselves with regard to existing reality” can make the non-conformist visible, for example, Samuel Beckett (57).

“[P]recisely because spirit is in general dependent on the course of the world...no isolated instance of spirit, no embodiment of spirit that sets out to oppose the course of the world, can be true or false in and of itself—or, rather, independently of its relation to that reality.” (58)

[This appears to be an argument that non-conformist behaviour is always a reaction to conformist behaviour and so cannot stand alone as truth or error; it can only be been seen in contrast to conformist behaviour. Similar to Kuhn’s idea that the truth of a theory can only be measured in terms of the paradigm it evolved under; theories created under different paradigms are not comparable. 

So, in answer to his question of whether or not we can “conceive of a course of history that does not involve...conflict” the answer would appear to be “No”. If conflict is ‘reality’ and history is the history of conflict, then a history without conflict cannot be real? Or only that we have no way of conceiving of a world without conflict other than by using the words that describe conflict? In another sense, the question asks if the ‘real’ world we live in, the world with its conflicts, is the only possible ‘real’ world? Hegel’s answer, and even Marx’s and Engel’s answer is “Yes”, the source of conflict might change (religious, political, economic) but not the reality of conflict.]