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Critical Theory Today: Revisiting the Classics By Douglas Kellner
Critical Theory Today: Revisiting the Classics
By Douglas Kellner
(http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html)
The critical theory of society of the Frankfurt School continues to excite interest and
controversy. The critical theorists have deeply influenced contemporary social theory,
philosophy, communications theory and research, cultural theory, and other disciplines for six
decades. The dream of a interdisciplinary social theory continues to animate the sociological
imagination. In recent decades there have been many different attempts to articulate the
connections between the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of contemporary
society in the spirit of critical theory.
Furthermore, the ideas, methods, and texts of the critical theorists have influenced the ways that
many of us continue to view the interplay of theory, culture, and society. The metaphors of the
critical theorists have provided global visions of contemporary societies, ranging from "the
totally administered society," "one-dimensional society," to "legitimation crisis." Terms like
"culture industries" describe the intersection of economics and culture that have informed many
critical studies of mass culture and communication. Studies of the consumer society have been
influenced by critical theory's analyses of needs, consumption, advertising, and consumer
capitalism. The critical theorists critiques of positivism have engendered forms of qualitative
social theory and their defenses of dialectical social theory have enlivened Hegelian and Marxian
analyses of the contemporary moment.
Critical theory has always produced its own theories and articulated and defended its positions
in polemics with contemporary theory. During the present moment, the critical theorists have
been among the most active critics of postmodern theory and the polemics between critical and
postmodern theory have inspired much critical discussion and new syntheses drawing on both
traditions. In this context, a return to the classics of critical theory should focus on the resources
that its tradition continues to offer contemporary social theory, as well as the limitations that
require going beyond the classical versions of critical theory. These concerns animate the
following introduction to this collection of unpublished classics of critical theory and recent re-
evaluations of its tradition published in this issue.
I. Critical theory has had its ups and downs. Critical theory from the 1930s through the 1960s
was arguably on the cutting edge of social theory.[1] The critical theorists were among the first
to analyze the new configurations of state and economy in the social formations of state
capitalism. They were among the first to see the importance of mass communications and culture
in the constitution of advanced capitalist societies. The critical theorists developed some of the
first critiques of the consumer society and saw the important role of needs, commodities, and
consumption in the contemporary organization of society. They saw science and technology as
forces and relations of production and as providing legitimating ideologies for contemporary
capitalist societies. Critical theory distinguished itself through its critique of positivism, noting
that the positivist sciences were instrumental in reproducing existing social relations and
obstructing social change. Critical theory, by contrast, nurtured a critical approach to social analysis that would detect existing social problems and promote social transformation.
Critical theorists also excelled in ideology critique and discerned the important role of ideology
in integrating individuals into the existing social order. They developed the first left critiques of
the mass society and provided early warnings concerning the decline of individuality and
freedom and threats to democracy in the brave new world of consumer capitalism. The critical
theorists analyzed the integration of the working class into advanced capitalist societies and
suggested the need for new agents of social change. They analyzed contemporary forms of
capitalist stabilization and social control, focusing on new modes of socialization that increased
conformity and diminished individual autonomy and democratic participation.
Thus critical theory introduced themes that dominated social theory from the 1930s through the
1960s. By the early 1970s, most of the now classical theorists of the first generation of critical
theory were dead, or were not producing important new ideas or approaches to social theory.
Herbert Marcuse, to be sure, had influenced a generation of 60s radicals and introduced critical
theory to the new generation of critical scholars and activists. J¸rgen Habermas, moreover, was
adding new motifs to critical theory and a new generation in Germany, the United States,
England, and elsewhere were producing new versions of critical theory and adding new content
and methods to the tradition. Translations and secondary literature on the classics mushroomed
and individuals throughout the world began studying and appropriating critical theory anew.
Yet as a social theory, by the 1980s, critical theory no longer seemed to be the cutting edge of
radical social theory. The new French postmodern theories inspired by Baudrillard, Foucault,
Lyotard, and others seemed to provide more vivid descriptions of the present configurations of
culture and society (see Best and Kellner, 1991). To be sure, Habermas and his colleagues
polemicized heartily against what they perceived as the irrationalism, cynicism, and nihilism of
postmodern theory (Habermas, 1987), but critical theory began to look old-fashioned and
somewhat obsolete in the new world of media, computers, fashion, cybernetics, post-avant garde
art, and new technologies of the postmodern scene. But Foucault is now dead and Baudrillard,
Lyotard, Derrida, and other postmodern theorists have yielded little in the way of substantive
social theory. Moreover, the limitations of postmodern theory are becoming evident. Their
avoidance of political economy seems peculiar during an era of frantic reorganization of the
capitalist system on both the national and international scale. The postmodern notion of the "end
of history," advanced by Baudrillard (1987) and U.S. State Department employee and neo-
Hegelian Francis Fukyama (1992) seems odd in an era marked by such momentous historical
events as the collapse of communism, the end of the Cold War, the Gulf war and Bush's fantasy
of a "new world order," European integration accompanied by national disintegrations
throughout the former communist world, and frequent historical surprises and novelties. The
postmodern emphasis on fragments and microtheory and prohibition against macrotheory is
perverse in the face of the new global restructuring and configurations just mentioned. The
postmodern theory of micropolitics has been put in question by the dramatic macropolitics that
have overthrown communism, by the Gulf war, and by nationalist explosions which are
producing turmoil throughout the former communist world.
Postmodern microtheory and politics also fail to illuminate the confusing clash between
premodern traditionalism, liberal democracy, and the intensification of media politics in highly unpredictable and novel conjunctures from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Postmodern
microtheories cannot adequately explain the dynamics of the 1992 U.S. Presidential election, in
which the Perot candidacy suggested the possibility of the end of the two-party system and the
inauguration of a highly unstable configuration of new politics, mass riots and rebellions, and a
crisis-ridden economy. Consequently, it is not clear that postmodern theory provides the
theoretical and political resources to deal with the burning issues of the contemporary era. As the
year 2000 approaches, we clearly need new social theories and politics. The times, they are a
changin' and historical events are not following the scenarios of any specific social theori