This paper is a pre-published draft. The finalised version will be published in Critique in

September 2015.

The New Culture Industry?

Understanding the Methodology of Critical Theory through Facebook

James William Hoctor

Durham University

Abstract

When undertaking philosophical research one often wonders about current society, and

cannot help but notice the irrationalities of contemporary consumer capitalism. A

philosophical method which predicted much of the teleology of capitalism is Critical

Theory. For this reason, this paper explores the methodology of the early Frankfurt

School and demonstrates why it is their radical interpretation of instrumental reason

which sets it apart from other types of philosophy. However, it should be noted, the

purpose of the essay is not to justify Critical Theory. Any justification warranted by the

essay will be as a function of its applicability to a contemporary case. With this in mind,

the paper uses the work Dialectic of Enlightenment to render aspects of Facebook as a

contemporary capitalist phenomenon intelligible.

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Introduction

It seems many people are unaware that 50% of the world’s wealth resides with just 1 % of the

world’s population (Elliott and Pilkington, 2014). However, this would not come as a surprise

to Critical Theorists like Max Horkheimer or Theodor Adorno as they predicted that man,

through completely rational means, would subjugate himself to wholly irrational rule. This

paper sets out to understand Critical Theory (CT) by applying it to a contemporary

phenomenon. To do this I utilise the work Dialectic of Enlightenment by Adorno and

Horkheimer to render aspects of current capitalism intelligible. However, it is also important

to demonstrate what makes CT different from other philosophical methods. For this reason,

the paper begins by outlining the aims and methodology of the Frankfurt School, which at its

most general attempted to bridge the gap between theory and empirical research to create a

new approach in dealing with the problems created by capitalism. I then focus on the

Dialectic of Enlightenment which deliberates the rise and domination of ‘instrumental

reasoning’. Following this, I discuss the culture industry which according to Horkheimer and

Adorno is a tool that the ruling classes use to assimilate and pacify the masses. I then focus

on Facebook and the notion of ‘connectivity’, and demonstrate through CT that ‘connectivity’

has become reduced to a value driven commodity which is both consumed and produced by

the users (workers). This in turn contributes to a mass singular consciousness of conformity. I

then conclude by suggesting that perhaps this is part of the reason why a lot of people do not

seem to be overly concerned by the distribution of wealth in its current form.

The Methodology of Critical Theory

Horkheimer formulated CT against what he termed ‘Traditional Theory’,1 which broadly

speaking held that the only valid kind of knowledge could be attained through the natural

1“Traditional theory is a very wide term encompassing a whole range of different kinds of theory from

rationalist metaphysics, empiricism and natural science, through to formal systems of mathematics and logic”

(Finlayson,2007)

2

sciences and instrumental reason. In the ancient world of thinkers such as Aristotle, reason

was the pursuit of goals or ends worthy of search. Instrumental Reason, on the other hand,

“came to be conceived as essentially a subjective ability to find efficient means to arbitrarily

given ends; that is, to whatever ends the agent in question happens to have” (Geuss,1998).

The very notion that there could be intrinsically rational ends was abandoned. This

conception of instrumental reason would in turn give birth to the mechanisms of alienation

and reification. Critical Theorists understood alienation as that which is associated with the

psychological effects of exploitation and the division of labour; and reification with how

people are treated instrumentally, as things, through concepts that have been ripped from their

historical context (Bronner, 2011). Horkheimer attributed these “social pathologies” to the

reasoning of traditional philosophy for treating the ontology (the nature/character/mode of

their being in late western capitalism) of the contemporary subject as abstract, detached and

ahistorical. He believed the subject’s ontology should be understood in their relation to others

and the specific societies they exist in and as such should be treated as “definite individuals”.

For these reasons, Horkheimer wanted to challenge what he saw as the ‘positivist’ dogma of

‘Traditional Theory’ as he believed the root of society’s irrationalities could be found in its

unwavering belief in the natural sciences (Finlayson, 2007).

In countering this ‘positivist’ dogma, CT would combine various academic disciplines

that would sum up to an interdisciplinary dialectic materialist approach for critiquing socio-

economic and political phenomena in a given society. The methodological framework for this

approach was born out of the notion of solving what he saw as the historical and scientific

divide which had arisen between empirical research and theory (Horkheimer, 1972).

Following a Hegelian model of history, both branches of knowledge were to be bound into a

singular form of thought that would accommodate a philosophical understanding of reason

and an empirical enquiry of reality (Held, 1980). To accomplish this; “one needed a theory of

history which would be able to determine the powers of reason as they operated within the

historical process” (Honneth, 1998). In addition to providing what they thought was an

appropriate theoretical and practical model of social critique; they would, in the process,

revise problematic aspects of traditional Marxism. This approach would prove useful as it

allowed for the integration of Marxist Theory and the social sciences. As a result, it overcame

the theoretical purism that had been archaically sustained in historical materialism.

3

In early years of Horkheimer’s directorship, the school continued to embody the

orthodox Marxist understanding of history. This view holds that the development of the

forces of production is a fundamental process of social progress. As a result, as the

domination of nature passes through advancing technical periods, new stages in the relation

of production would become apparent (Horkheimer, 1932). Hence, the Frankfurt School

would not only engage this historical development “as a cognitive example of the work

process, as was the case in the empirical sciences, but also as a critical example of society’s

self-knowledge” (Honneth, 1998).

They would, however, abandon the notion that rationality found in the shifting forces

of production, corresponded with the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat. Crudely

put, they no longer believed that the working classes could see the injustices that existed

within the economic modes of production (Marx and Elster, 1986). This became apparent to

them via their observation of the assimilation of the proletariat into the social systems of late

capitalism. Hence, they saw the ineffectiveness of orthodox Marxist theory, as they believed

it had lost its critical purchase on socio-economic and political phenomena. For them, any

empirical analyses that were an inherent part of a theory of society would have to illuminate

the psychic and social processes that neuter and assimilate all potential social resistance. This

failure to identify the assimilation of potential social resistance was for them central to the

failure of orthodox Marxist thinking.

The notion of encompassing all of the social sciences and the subjects of their

research into a critical theory of society brought the Frankfurt School far beyond their

contemporaries in salvaging Marxism. Horkheimer set the aim for all members of the

institute to discover the source of the cognitive and social processes which inhibited the

revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat (Horkheimer 1932). Thus the focus of the

Frankfurt School through the 1930s was apparent. Each member’s individual work had to

investigate and illuminate the mechanisms of the social assimilation that had been

constructed by capitalism in its post-liberal stage.

However, according to David Held, “the optimism which (Horkheimer) had felt

during the pre-war years had faded away” (Held, 1980, pg.37). The continued rise in

totalitarianism throughout Europe would see the Frankfurt school abandon their faith in

Marxism as a dialectical foundation for any revolutionary activity, and as a sufficient mode of

theoretical analysis. With the growth of capitalism into monopolistic form; “the liberal

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heritage had (lost) its rational potential as the political sphere increasingly functionalized to

the market and its reified social relationships” (Bohman, 2015). Consequently, there was shift

in cultural and psychological suppositions of democratic change and opposition were

undermined by the objective conditions of reification.2 Society for them had become a

“wholly false totality”. As a consequence, CT would be remoulded by a shift from a positive

to a negative approach in its methodology –whereby they would use a “critique of reason and

progress so radical that it could not but cast general doubt on the potential for political

revolution within social relations, [and] replace the conception of progress founded on

production” (Honneth, 1998). The Dialectic of Enlightenment which was published in 1972

illuminates the philosophical consequences of this shift.

The Dialectic of Enlightenment

The Dialectic of Enlightenment was an investigation of “why mankind, instead of entering

into a truly human condition, is instead sinking into a new kind of barbarism” (Adorno and

Horkheimer, 1972pg.xi). A central claim of the work is that we can now observe the

“entwinement of myth and Enlightenment”. In other words, in tracing contemporary reason to

its historical origin they show how reason and freedom have become their opposites. This

view was in opposition to that of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which for them left reason

from being able to form substantive goals (Held, 1980). According to James Bohman “rather

than being liberating and progressive, reason has become dominating and controlling with the

spread of instrumental reason” (Bohman, 2015). The rise and domination of Instrumental

reasoning is a central issue for the Frankfurt school and it is for this purpose that it central to

the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Horkheimer and Adorno wanted to illuminate “how the

rational domination of nature comes increasingly to win the day, in spite of all deviations and

resistance, and integrates all human characteristics” (Adorno and Horkhimer,1972pg.ix).

Horkheimer and Adorno viewed the teleology of enlightenment as a progressive annihilation

of everything that recalled the primitive world. From them, capitalism was a manifestation of

instrumental reasoning and thus was central to this “progressive annihilation”.

2 The Critical Theorists specific understanding of reification came from George Lukacs. Reification is the “the

appearance of peoples productive activity as something strange and alien to them [...] (Reification) arises from

the productive process which reduces social relations themselves to thing-like relations-reduces, that is, the

worker and their product to commodities” (Held, 1980, pg.22).

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Hence, at the heart of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is a profound distrust of the

nature of capitalism and the type of society it produces. Marx believed that a capitalist

economy would not be sustained and would eventually fall to socialism. However, Adorno

and Horkheimer argued that a more logical conclusion for capitalism was a society in which

Humanity would, in a completely rational manner, subject itself to irrational rule (Bronner,

2011). This was because reason instead of being truly teleological had become arbitrary. They

contended that humanity had become entangled in a self-created course of domination

through its ever-improving technical mastery over nature. They trace their account back to

the:

turning points of Western civilisation-from the first chapters of Genesis and Olympian

religion, to the Reformation and bourgeois atheism and to the culture industry and the

authoritarian state[…] They see the enlightenment as subject throughout history to a

dialectic wherein it all to easily gives itself absolute status over and against its objects,

thereby constantly collapsing into new forms of the very conditions of primeval

repression which it earlier set out to overcome (Held,1980,pp. 149-151).

They draw on the work the empiricist Francis Bacon – a major Enlightenment philosopher

and advocate of the scientific method – to overcome myth and superstition. However,

Horkheimer and Adorno wanted to show what men learn from understanding nature is how to

use it to dominate it and other men and one’s own natural self (Adorno and Horkheimer,

1972). In this society the aim of the Enlightenment, which was to critically contradict what is

given, had been eliminated. This allowed for completely irrational objectives to be carried

out in the most rational procedures. It was this need to understand mankind’s irrational

rationalism, which led them to see the need to expand CT past economic modes of

production. To do this they believed they had to discover and expose the processes used to

create this rationalised social totality.

The Culture Industry

The once separate entities of market, culture and politics were ever integrating, now

interdependent on each other to keep this social totality operational. Culture was not a

product determined by the superstructure base, but actually contributed to the foundation of

it. Governed by instrumental reason the emergence of the mass media and the entertainment

industry for Adorno and Horkheimer were significant developments in what they examined as

the integration of the formerly reasonably independent sphere of culture into the market

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(Held, 1980). Adorno and Horkheimer coined the term ‘culture industry’ as a means to define

cultural forms that had become commodified as a result of contemporary capitalism.3 In other

words, things that traditionally were not (or even should not be) commodities, but were now

increasingly becoming so. They argue that the culture industry has transformed culture into a

means for ideological domination, as its role is central to the coercion of the masses to fall in

line for the ruling class. Adorno inspired by the concept of the sadomasochistic character held

that “the culture industry proved to be a symptom of a premature climax in the world-

historical process in which the subject, fixated on sovereignty over nature, was still putting a

good face on the mockery it had made of itself” (Wiggershaus and Robertson,1995, pg.337).

However, they argue that culture can play an opposite role and can be emancipatory in

nature; they coined the notion ‘autonomous art’. Autonomous art is an entity that is not

subordinated to the rationalising forces of heteronymous social forces. The mode of existence

obtained in the case of autonomous art, is therefore a moment of immanent critique against a

rationalised society (Adrono, 2013). Avant garde art can be an indicator of possible change

without being a determinate representation of some particular change. Through the

development of the modernist avant-garde, which resists easy conceptual assimilation, the

artwork is an entity which exists within society without being assimilated to that society. In

the experience of this artwork, people have the phenomenological experience that life could

be otherwise, and that by contrast, conceptual schemas are artificially contrived for

sufficiency to their referents (Adrono,2013).That this sufficiency breaks down in our

conceptual assimilations of artworks becomes itself an indicator of possible modes and

moments of resistance.

However, under contemporary capitalism, control of production and distribution of

cultural goods now belongs to the culture industry. In contrast to Avant garde art which was

created for the intrinsic value of the individual piece, the culture industry created cultural

forms which were mimetic and easy to reproduce. These cultural forms had now become a

means for the ideological domination and pacification of the masses (Witkin, 2004). They

enforced false notions of the good life and the better life that was simply out of reach, and

these contributed to the false whole. As a consequence, the culture industry shattered the

3 Commodfied: “To treat (something) inappropriately as if it can be acquired or marketed like other

commodities” (Collins English Dictionary, 2014).

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critical capacity of the autonomous individual. For them, this was rooted in instrumental

reasoning, as everything and everyone now had to be rationalised and standardised.

Essentially, it is their radical view of instrumental reasoning that separates CT from

other types of philosophy. They show how one becomes subjugated to irrational rule by

examining the contradiction which exists within a given phenomenon. This allowed them to

move past traditional Marxist notions of modes of economic production and show how

culture is manipulated to neuter and assimilate the revolutionary consciousness of the

proletariat. In the following, I apply their methodology to Facebook to render aspects of this

contemporary capitalist phenomenon intelligible.

Facebook

Through instrumental reasoning, Adorno predicted the increasing homogenisation and

pacification of society through ever increasing modes of techno-capitalism. This reification

destroys the critical capacity of the singular I of the Ego and creates mere pseudo-

individualism. On the other hand, Daniel Miller argues that Facebook and other forms of

social media have provided the individual with a platform to express their individuality

(Miller, 2010). One could argue that the Internet has proven itself to be a place of resistance,

where the homogenising effects of the culture industry can be countered. It is a place where

people can connect with one another and engage in critical discourse. Perhaps, somewhat like

‘autonomous art’ this ‘autonomous’ connectivity can indicate that life can be better and

simulate the revolutionary consciousness.

However, perhaps this argument is somewhat outdated, as one can observe the

infiltration of traditional places of resistance by instrumental reason through corporations

such as Google and Facebook. Philip Napoli writing in 1998 predicted the teleology of the

Internet. He argued that the internet was being rapidly “massified”, with new dominant

companies rising to the top and creating content and interfaces with the purpose “of

maximizing particular audiences - and the widespread consumption of mass appeal content”

(Napoli, 1998). The aim of this, according to Napoli, is to increase the total consumers and in

turn, these “people” become plain numbers (or reified). This correlates with Adorno and

Horkheimer’s observation that Corporations and Organisations tend to understand the needs

8

of the culture industry for mass production of cultural commodities in technical terms for the

purposes of maximising their output and reach.

One can observe the outcomes of this reification in the work of José van Dijck. She

argues that for the companies, the notion of being social online is not anymore about people

creating and maintaining connections. (Dijck,2013). Connectivity, she argues had instead

became a valuable resource “as engineers found ways to code information into algorithms

that helped brand a particular form online sociality and make it profitable in online markets”

(Dijck,2013,pg.4). Moreover, according to Dijck, coders have developed algorithms which

encourage addictive behaviours – this method ensures the continued use of the site. Adorno

argued that standardisation arises as those in chase of profit try to apply methods to formulate

tastes and expectations of the consumer so as to increase turnover. As the industry progresses

these formulae become more specific, thus a particularly targeted variety of commodities are

aimed exactly to align with peoples’ rigid expectations of the product itself. Hence, it seems

connectivity has now, much like the other cultural forms, as pointed out by Adrono and

Horkhiemer, been reduced to a value driven commodity.

Adorno frequently described capitalist culture as tied to a sadomasochistic

understanding of relation to commodity fetishism. The pathological heart of capitalism, for

Adorno, creates a masochistic mass culture which parallels the behaviour of the prisoner who

loves his cell because he has been left nothing else to love. This is because Capitalism has

robbed the individual of everything, while at the same time, makes false promises of what

they may gain if they continue to be part of the system. These promises are made through the

guise of the culture industry. Adorno and Horkheimer elucidate:

The escape from everyday drudgery which the whole culture industry promises may

be compared to the daughter’s abduction in the cartoon: the father holding the ladder

in the dark. The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same old drudgery.

Both escape and elopement are predesigned to lead back to the starting point. Pleasure

promotes the resignation which ought to help forget (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972,

pg.142).

For the consumer, Facebook seems to offer promises of elaborately developed and rich

individuality through the cultural goods and services (both amount to connectivity) it

supplies. Yet the indistinguishable and inherent commodification rigorously confines the

human consciousness. As a consequence of the constant personification of cultural roles over

which they have little control, consumers have little time for themselves and become mere

pseudo-individuals. In its infatuation with the allure of the object, the subject becomes

9

increasingly repressed form itself (Held, 1980, pg.155). In other words, in believing one can

create their own subjectivity through consuming the commodities provided by the culture

industry, the subject represses their actual subjectivity and replaces it with the illusion of

individuality provided by the object.

It is the aim of the Culture Industry to produce thought into a cohesive form. Adorno

highlights the ontological connection between the creation of the singular consciousness in

society, and the influence of instrumental reason and capitalism. In continually becoming

restricted cultural identities, the subject is but a passive consumer and not an active maker of

their own self. This is because the “promise” of individuality is not attuned to the needs of

contemporary capitalist culture.

The lack of critical capacity of the individual suggested by Adrono and Horkhiemer is

most salient in one of this connectivity’s most notable participatory utilities, which is the

opportunity for dynamic and informal ‘commenting’. Geert Lovink explains that “comments”

are seldom touched by mediators or by the person whose post is commented on. Persons can

remove comments that they don’t want to see and “like” comments which they find

approving and these comments in turn are easier to view as they will show up higher on the

list. Most importantly, Lovink elucidates that comments rarely lead to lively debate as much

of these comments can be derailing or spam, and do not deal directly with the post (Lovink,

2010). Instead much like Dijck, Lovink sees the comments function of a website as another

software function, which is fuelled by the chase for profit, was merely invented to drive users

to the webpage.

It also seems while connectivity has become a value driven commodity for its very

production goes hand in hand with its consumption. In other words, users (workers) are both

the producers and consumers of this product. Moreover, it seems the greatest achievement of

capitalism in the 21st century is to dress up free digital labour as a pleasure activity and

expression of individualism to make the user (worker) believe that digital labour does not

exist. According to Trebor Scholz; “labour markets have shifted to places where labour does

not look like labour at all” (Scholz, 2011, pg.242). This labour is hard to pin down as it does

not seem to resemble industrious forms. However, the fact is that even when we do the

smallest of things we are complicit in this “interactivity labour”. Scholz believes we do this

in three ways. They are as follows: garnering attention for advertisers; donating unpaid

services and volunteer work; and offering complexes of network data and digital traces to

10

researchers and marketers. Even “when we realise we are being used, that dawning awareness

is often quickly superseded by the experience of the pleasure itself” (Scholz, 2010, pg.243).

Conclusion

I believe Horkheimer and Adorno were correct when they suggested that a logical conclusion

for capitalism would see the masses subjugate themselves to irrational rule through rational

methods. This concern with instrumental reasoning makes CT important and distinct from

other philosophical methods. Through its dialectical method it can be utilised to extract and

make comprehensible the irrationalities of social media websites such as Facebook. The

coding behind social platforms for Horkheimer and Adorno, would just be a 21st century

manifestation of man’s domination of self through his own technical mastery. Capitalism has

evolved so much it seems it has become sophisticated enough to dupe the masses into

providing free labour which it papers over as a pleasure activity. It seems ‘connectivity’ has

now become the liquid gold of the virtual world. Social media platforms such as Facebook

offer new ways of communication, yet, it seems this contemporary incarnation of the culture

industry provides a promissory note which leads to false notions of self and individuality, and

ends up reducing connectivity to an exchange value-driven commodity. At the heart of this is

instrumental reasoning, which in its aim to standardise and rationalise everything, turns

people into mere numbers and creates a common experience for all. This results in an

ontology whereby the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat is repressed, and in its

place a mass singular consciousness of conformity is produced. Perhaps then, we can see why

society isn’t all that concerned with the fact that 1% of the world’s population is wealthier

than the other 99%. To conclude, when one places Facebook within the framework of first

generation Critical Theory, it becomes salient that this analysis still holds in rendering

elements of contemporary consumer capitalist society intelligible, and thus is an important

way of doing philosophy.

11

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