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Theory of Needs

Marxism is premised on the possibility of a political economy structured to meet human needs, rather than generate private profit. Could a New Deal capitalism in principle be capable of satisfying them? Is it even possible to disentangle ‘real’ needs from socially constructed ones? Translation of two texts from a 1942 seminar on the question of need.

Towards a New Manifesto?

Record of 1956 conversations between the authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment, ranging across themes of work and time, utopianism and change, and the relation between radical theory and practice in the absence of a party.

Correspondence on the German Student Movement

“Prof. Dr. Theodor W. Adorno” read more

Messages in a Bottle

“Key people.—The self-important type who only thinks himself something when confirmed by the role he plays in collectives which are none, existing merely for the sake of collectivity; the delegate with the armband; the rapt speechmaker spicing his address with wholesome wit and prefacing his concluding remark . . .” read more

Bloch’s 'Traces': The Philosophy of Kitsch

“The title Traces mobilizes for the purposes of philosophical theory the primary experiences derived from reading Red Indian stories. A broken twig, a footprint on the ground, speak volumes to the eagle eye of the child who speculates about them, instead of resting content with what anyone can . . .” read more

Commitment

“Since Sartre’s essay What is Literature? there has been less theoretical debate about committed and autonomous literature. Nevertheless, the controversy over commitment remains urgent, so far as anything that merely concerns the life of the mind can be today, as opposed to sheer human survival. Sartre was moved . . .” read more

Letters to Walter Benjamin

“Hornberg, Black Forest, 2 August 1935” read more

Sociology and Psychology (Part II)

“Social developments thus affect even the most recent trends in psychology. Despite the ever-widening rift between society and psychology, society reaches repressively into all psychology in the form of censorship and superego. As part of the progressive integration of society, socially rational behaviour gets melted together with the . . .” read more

Sociology and Psychology (Part I)

“For more than 30 years, the tendency has been emerging among the masses of the advanced industrial countries to surrender themselves to the politics of disaster instead of pursuing their rational interests and, chief of all, that of their own survival. While they are promised benefits, the idea . . .” read more