Adorno reframed Lukács’s class-centered Hegelian Marxism into speculative self-recognition

Evidence

This is not to say that the Frankfurt School denied the continued existence of class struggle entirely. “Society remains class struggle, today just as in the period when that concept originated,” Adorno later wrote; “Society,” The Legacy of the German Refugee Intellectuals, Salmagundi to/11 (Fall, 1969.-Winter, 1970), p. 149. 1t was, however, no longer the focal point of their analysis. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1743 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In this variant of radical self-recognition, Adorno was supporting precisely the same Hegelian-Marxist position which Lukács had developed in History and Class Consciousnessbut he supported it independently of class considerations and as unashamed speculation. At the same time, Adorno left no doubt whatsoever, in some of his work in musical criticism during these years, that he was a supporter of the theory of class struggle and of the view that works of philosophy and art were attributable to specific classes. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 386 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Although Adorno still espouses the concept of class in ‘Reflections’ given that ‘its basis, the division of society into exploiters and exploited, not only continues unabated but is increasing in coercion and solidity’, he abandons the assumption of a proletarian class-consciousness, arguing that ‘the oppressed who today, as predicted by the [Marxian] theory, constitute the overwhelming majority of mankind are unable to experience themselves as a class’. For this reason, Adorno claims, ‘[m]embership in the same class by no means translates into equality of interests and action’, and ‘the idea that the oppressed, the workers of the world, might unite as a class and put an end to the horror seems doomed in the light of the present distribution of power and impotence’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 679 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adorno’s early encounter with Lukács seeded a lifelong theoretical rift — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 116; Adorno endorsed class-struggle theory while speculating independently of class categories — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 386; Adorno retained class analysis while abandoning proletarian class-consciousness as impossible — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 679 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno endorsed class-struggle theory while speculating independently of class categories #corroborates (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 386
• Adorno kept class struggle but demoted it from analytical focus #corroborates (0.82) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1743
• Adorno retained class analysis while abandoning proletarian class-consciousness as impossible #corroborates (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 679
• Adorno’s early encounter with Lukács seeded a lifelong theoretical rift #expands (0.78) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 116
• Adorno built his anti-systematic dialectics from an anti-identity insight concealed inside Hegel’s system. #expands (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 635
• Lukács’s historical philosophy shaped Adorno’s music aesthetics #exemplifies (0.74)
• Class analysis is central to Adorno’s Critical Theory #complicates (0.72) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1472