Chapter1: Introduction: Sociological Theory

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

The first generation of critical theorists, who are frequently referred to as the Frankfurt School because of their location in Germany and their explicit inter disciplinary effort to interpret the oppressive events of the twentieth century, confronted a real dilemma: how to reconcile Marx's emancipatory dream with the stark reality of modern society as conceptualized by Max Weber. Indeed, when the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research was founded in 1923, there seemed little reason to be optimistic about developing a theoretically informed program for freeing people from unnecessary domination. The defeat of the left-wing working-class~ movements, the rise of fascism in the aftermath of World War I, and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution into Stalinism had, by the I930s, made it clear that Marx's analysis needed drastic revision. Moreover, the expansion of the state, the spread of bureaucracy, and the emphasis on means/ends rationality through the application of science and technology all signaled that Weber's analysis had to be confronted.

The members of the Frankfurt School wanted to maintain Man's views on praxis--that is, a blending of theory and action or the use of theory to stimulate action, and vice versa. And they wanted theory to expose oppression in society and to propose less constrictive options. Yet, they were confronted with the spread of political and economic domination of the masses. Thus, modern critical theory in sociology was born in a time when there was little reason to be optimistic about realizing emancipatory goals.

Three members of the Frankfurt School are most central: Gyorgy Lukacs, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno. Lukacs' major work appeared in the 1920s, whereas Horkheimer and Adorno were active well into the 1960s. In many ways, Lukacs was the key link in the transition from Marx and Weber to modern critical theory because Horkheimer and Adorno were reacting to much of Lukacs' analysis and approach.

All these scholars are important because they directly influenced the intellectual development and subsequent work of Jurgen Habermas, the most prolific contemporary critical theorist, whose work is examined in the next.

THE CULTURAL TURN IN CRITICAL THEORY

Antonio Gramsci's Theory of Ideological Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian Marxist who, obviously, cannot be considered part of the Frankfurt School. Yet, he is a key figure in continuing what the Frankfurt School emphasized: Criticism acknowledging that the capitalist systems of the twentieth century's midpoint were generating prosperity and that the working classes in these systems did not seem particularly disposed to revolution. Gramsci completed the turning of Marx's ideas back into a more Hegelian mode. That is, rather than view ideas as reflections of the material structure of society, much greater prominence is given to cultural forces in determining material relations in society.

Marx believed that ideology and the "false consciousness" of workers were ideological obfuscations created and maintained by those who controlled the material (economic) "substructure" Marx had argued that those who control the means and modes of production also control the state that, in turn, generates ideologies justifying this control and power. In this way, the proletariat is kept, for a time until the hill contradictions of capitalism are manifest, from becoming a class "for themselves" ready to pursue revolutionary conflict with their oppressors, Gramsci simply turned this argument around: The "superstructure" of state and ideology drives the organization of society and the consciousness of the population.

Gramsci believed the ruling social class is hegemonic, controlling not only property and power, but ideology as well. Indeed, the ruling class holds onto its power and wealth by virtue of its ability to use ideologies to manipulate workers and all others. The state is no longer a crude tool of coercion, nor an intrusive and insensitive bureaucratic authority; it has become the propagator of culture and the civic education of the population, creating and controlling key institutional systems in more indirect, unobtrusive and, seemingly, inoffensive ways. Thus, the views of capitalists become the dominant views of all. with workers behaving in: the appropriateness of the market-driven systems of competition; the commodification of objects, signs, and symbols; the buying and selling of their labor; the use of law to enforce contracts favoring the interests of the wealthy; the encouragement of private charities, the sponsorship of clubs and voluntary organizations; the state's conceptions of a "good citizen"; the civics curriculum of the schools; and virtually all spheres of institutional activity that are penetrated by the ideology of the state, Culture and ideology are, in Albert Bergesen's words "no longer the thing to be explained but...now a thing that does the explaining?' A dominant material class rules, to be sure, but it does so by cultural symbols, and the real battle in capitalist societies is over whose symbols will prevail. Or, more accurately, can subordinates generate alternative ideologies to those controlled by the state?

This view of critical theory takes much of the mechanical menace out of Weber's "iron cage" metaphor because the state's control is now "soft" and "internal?' It has bars that bend flexibly around those whose perceptions of the world it seeks to control. The Marxian view of emancipation is still alive in Gramsci's theories because the goal of "theory" is to expose the full extent to which ideology has been effectively used to manipulate subordinates. Moreover, the recognition that systems of symbols become the base of society is a theme that resonated well with later postmodernists and structuralists who began to conceptualize modernity as the production of signs and symbols.

Louis Althusser's Structuralism

lnitially, Louis Althusser (1918-1990) seems more strictly orthodox in his Marxism than does Gramsci; yet he was also a French scholar in a long line of structuralists whose emphasis is on the logic of the deeper, underlying structure of surface empirical reality. Althusser remains close to Marx~ in tiffs sense: The underlying structure and logic of the economy is ultimately determinative. But, having said this, he then developed a theory of "The Ideological State Apparatus" which gave prominence to the state's use of ideology to sustain control within a society

For Althusser, economic, political, and ideological systems reveal their own structures, hidden beneath the surface and operating by their own logics. The economic might be the dominant system, circumscribing the operation of political and ideological structures, but these latter have a certain autonomy History is, in essence, a reshuffling of these deep structures, and the individual actor becomes merely a vessel through which the inherent properties of structures operate. Individual actions, perceptions, beliefs, emotions, convictions, and other states of consciousness are somehow "less real" than the underlying structure that cannot be directly observed. To analogize the structuralist theories from which Althusser drew inspiration, social control comes from individuals perceiving that they are hut words in a grammatical system generated by an even more fundamental structure. Each actor is at a surface place in the economic and political structures of a society, and their perceptions of these places also put them within an ideological or cultural sphere. But these places and spheres are only one level of reality; people also see themselves as part of a deeper set of structures that, in essence, defines who and what they are. Under these conditions, ideology has even more power because it is doing much more than blinding the subjects to some other reality, such as their objective class interests. Ideology is also defining actors' places in a reality beyond their direct control and a reality operating by its own logic of structure.

Thus, unlike Marx or Gramsci who believe ideology is a tool-an invidious and insidious one--used by those in power, Althusser sees the Ideological State Apparatus as more controlling because it is perceived not just as conventions, rules, mores, traditions, and beliefs, but instead as the essence of order and persons' place in tiffs order. The subject is thus trapped in the deeper logics of economic, political, and ideological systems that erode human capacities for praxis and agency.