Just this last year, notes from a conversation between Adorno and Horkheimer on trying to rewrite the Communist Manifesto in 1956 were published.
http://www.amazon.com/Towards-New-Manifesto-Theodor-Adorno/dp/1844678199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344119108&sr=8-1&keywords=toward+a+new+manifesto
They are great and funny and fascinating and fragmentary. I thought the following bit highly relevant to the discussion we had on Thursday:
Horkheimer: People like advertisements. They do what the ads tell
them and they know that they are doing so. American magazines
and comics.
Adorno: If I had said to my father that mass culture is untrue, he
would have answered: but I enjoy it. Renunciation of utopia means
somehow or other deciding in favour of a thing even though I know
perfectly well that it is a swindle. That is the root of the trouble.
Horkheimer: Because the strength you need to do the right thing is
kept on a leash. If we formulate the issues just as we speak, it all
sounds too argumentative. People might say that our views are just
all talk, our own perceptions. To whom shall we say these things?
Adorno: We are not proposing any particular course of action. What
we want is for people who read what we write to feel the scales
falling from their eyes.
Horkheimer: People will say, well, this is just philosophers talking.
Or else, you have to be like Heidegger and speak like an oracle. We
have to solve the problem of theory and practice through our style.
We have to make sure that people don’t just say, ‘My God, the things
they say make everything sound very bad, but they don’t really mean
it like that, even when they shout and curse.’ This is all connected
with the fact that a party no longer exists.
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