p The fact that socio-critical theory, based on "negative dialectics", analyses advanced capitalist society through the prism of its “one-dimensionality”, calls for total negation of that society and ignores the contradictions inherent in the objects of its analysis, does not mean, however, that it overlooks the problem of contradictions altogether. Negation itself, interpreted in the spirit of "negative dialectics" is approached by the advocates of this theory starting out from a one-sided interpretation of contradiction, which comes to the fore particularly clearly in the philosophical, sociological and musicological works of Theodor Adorno.  [84•** 

p Unlike Marcuse Adorno did not enjoy wide popularity among members of the New Left: for them he was too academic and took far less interest in the protest movement than did Marcuse or Sartre. Nevertheless the substance of his philosophy and its overall spirit has much in common with Marcuse’s work and this entitles both the radical Left and also their critics to rank the names of these two philosophers together.

p When it comes to theory Adorno is really more “left” and more “radical” than Marcuse and still further divorced from the real world; all this despite the fact that when claiming to criticise abstract systematising and the construction of general concepts he attempts to counter these with the discovery of the uniquely specific qualities of that which is individual.

p For a start Marcuse and Adorno have a good deal in common in that they both build up a system of "negative dialectics" starting out from Hegel and contesting the latter’s ideas so as eventually to reject Hegel’s view of negation as an element in the transition to a new synthesis.  [85•*  This lies at the root of their criticism of "logic of identity" and "omnipotence of reason" with which they link the dominance of positivist thinking which they reject. Adorno, like Marcuse, criticises Hegel’s elevation of the Absolute Idea, his "dictatorship of general concepts" and hierarchical interdependence of dialectical categories to the dialectic since he sees Hegel’s hierarchy of ideas to be nothing but a copy of the socio- political hierarchy, an ideal reconstruction of society based on the principle of domination and subordination. Adorno associates any self-contained hierarchy of concepts with a closed circle which impedes the individual’s break-through beyond the confines of the given world and his awareness of the imperfection of that world, and which, therefore, lays down the limits of social “repression”.

p Adorno counters Hegel’s thesis to the effect that "truth is whole" with the assertion that "the whole is untrue”.  [85•**  A complete, self-contained and integral system is something false, for the world itself, in so far as it is in a state of 86 movement and therefore at every given moment incomplete, provides, according to Adorno, no justification for trying to “systematise” it in such a way as to leave no loose ends.  [86•*  This applies still more, according to Adorno, in the case of "late-bourgeois society", where overall cohesion of the elements making up the state machine is obtained at the cost of the disintegration of traditional institutions and ties. This approach leads Adorno to conclude that the established and defined form of concepts should be taken apart and presented in the internal division of its opposites, but in division that is not sublated when synthesised but which is retained in the capacity of the permanent, non-transient state of an object. The logic of identity should in Adorno’s opinion be replaced by "the logic of disintegration", for only the latter is capable of adequately reproducing a picture of the social world, in which the whole becomes completely intangible for the subject, in so far as it is packaged into thousands of “pieces” to be absorbed by the individual without any kind of contact between him and the whole.

p Essentially both Adorno and Hegel, despite diametrically opposed evaluations of the whole, define it in the language of dialectics applied to the social world, not the process of that world’s development, but historically circumscribed states of bourgeois society, the “appearances” which confront the individual. The theses they put forward represent an absolutisation of one aspect of social development and do not characterise the process of social development as a whole complete with all its historical stages that succeed each other.

p Indeed in advanced capitalist society the individual is 87 confronted with a mosaic world ridden with contradictions that he apprehends as "organised chaos", a shattered mirror in whose pieces he can perceive only certain parts of his face, but never his face "as a whole", for the overall picture has been distorted beyond recognition.

p In these conditions Adorno’s rejection of the approach to the object in its integrity as “untrue”, expresses fairly accurately the consciousness of such an individual. But as soon as Adorno claims to achieve something more than reproduction of the structure of the “mosaic” consciousness, he finds himself on rather unsure ground.

However much an object might be subject to inner contradictions it represents a system which at each given moment is identical with itself and in this sense is integral. If the given phenomenon becomes an object of cognition then the question is not whether it should or should not be regarded as an integral system but how it should best be singled out and defined in an adequate system of concepts. Even if the world were quite mad, it cannot be approached outside an integral system—that is of course if we are eager to understand the essence of that madness.

p :

p Rejection of a systems approach inevitably leads to a “ factorial” approach from which it is but a short step to the construction of Utopias, that is arbitrary, illusory systems.

p Man always feels the need for an ideal reproduction in his mind of the world around him as an integral whole, within whose framework he might find his own place, lend his activity and existence meaning and purpose and glean confidence in the expediency and effectiveness of his activity. Moreover the more alienated and divided the world appears to him, the stronger is his spontaneous urge to reproduce that integrated whole. After deliberately rejecting the approach to the world as an integral whole and finding himself left with nothing but a collection of “factors” while at the same time feeling an inner compulsion to create an integrated concept of the world, the individual constructs his own arbitrary picture of the world which can easily lead him astray into a world of grotesque fantasy or Utopian illusions.

p While placing deliberate emphasis on the analytical and destructive aspect of thought, on the "logic of disintegration" that singles out and defines contradictions, Adorno holds at 88 the same time that any attempt to view a contradiction as soluble would imply a return to the "logic of identity", and hence to repression. Yet, according to Adorno, while it is impossible to view a contradiction as soluble, it is also wrong to envisage any definite alternative, or even to hope, for hoping is tantamount to deviating from or impeding any alternative.

p Of course Adorno sees such description of the division and contradictory nature of the existing world not merely as confirmation of the actual state of affairs but also as a means of stirring “dormant”, “integrated” consciousness. However the future should, according to Adorno’s logic, shine forth despite the present, and against the background of its “ darkness” as a result of the activities of individuals who strive forward precisely because they do not see even the tiniest gleam of light—Hope. The true struggle for the future begins when it becomes simply impossible to live in the present world and when the bare bright light of hope might only serve to cool man’s ardour and resolution to take up the struggle.  [88•* 

p Here it would seem that Adorno is still more “negative” and one-sided than Marcuse. The latter extols those who without hope follow the path of the Great Refusal, yet Marcuse does so because he can find no real basis for hope. 89 Negation in Marcuse’s view of things is a reaction to the concealed nature of contradiction: negation has to be introduced to the system from outside.

p Adorno, on the other hand, attaches importance to singling out and providing conceptual definition for contradiction, which is to provide the basis for negation. In doing so he absolutises and perpetuates contradiction, and hence negation as well: contradiction is expressed in permanent, absolute negation, but is not solved or sublated in the latter. Hence Adorno’s logical conclusion: "the whole is untrue". Here he is in total agreement with Marcuse who expresses the same idea in almost identical words. Zoltai aptly comments: "Adorno only recognises thesis and anti-thesis. For him affirmation and negation are poles with no connecting links which can only come into contact with each other when exaggerated to an extreme degree. This philosophical construction would have no truck with synthesis, with negation of negation.”  [89•* 

p Adorno rejects Hegel’s synthesis since he does not accept Hegel’s system. The advance of social development and social progress finding expression in Hegel’s idea of synthesis as the unity of “affirmation” and “negation” was not simply a speculative construct for the great German philosopher. Adorno, on the other hand, regards the modern world not so much as an embodiment of movement forward and progress, as a contradictory chaotic chain of elements not arranged in any integral system.  [89•**  Criticising Hegel for his absolutism Adorno is guilty of a similar if not greater degree of absolutism: while Hegel absolutises the whole, the system, Adorno does the same to fragmentation, chaos, forgetting that even madness (madness of a world in which everything can be bought or sold) has, as observed earlier, its own system.

p Adorno sees before him a world as seen by the alienated individual living within that world, namely a world split into “affirmation” and “negation” existing side by side with each other, contiguous yet not forming any synthesis, as something stable, or as the result of their interaction.  [90•* 

p In actual fact Adorno’s dialectics present not so much the actual state of the existing world as the state of “split” consciousness of the philosopher himself, serving to reproduce the visible chaos of the world before him beyond whose confines he can find no means of escape apart from morbid introspection.

p The elimination of connecting links between the poles of affirmation and negation as forms that express continuity in human history and in the development of culture means, essentially speaking, that development is interrupted: the world becomes frozen in its state of splintered fragmentation, in its fixed state of contradictoriness once and for all. The moment is transfixed as eternity, relativity as the absolute and catastrophe as the unchanging state that cannot be sublated in the realisation of an alternative, all the more so because an alternative cannot be clearly defined. In art, particularly in music which was the special object of Adorno’s sociological research, this fixed state of contradictions manifests itself in dissonance  [90•**  and in society in social dissonance, 91 in “disintegration” driving the individual to engage in permanent revolt.

p Adorno endeavours to persuade the individual to adopt a non-conformist approach to the world around him, a critical attitude to that world as something “inferior”. Yet the "negative dialectician" gives the individual no firm basis for such criticism and when advocating the other extreme he transforms the non-conformist into the rebel, for whom the means becomes an end in itself. In his philosophy which is directed towards an end (as something definitive, polar) Adorno comes forward as both nihilist and apocalyptic. Yet apocalyptical revolt is a revolt that knows no moderation, no limits, which sweeps aside everything in its path, and is of course very far removed from social revolution.

p Confirmation of this can be found in a conception, whose author admittedly has nothing in common with the Frankfurt school and never declared himself an advocate of " negative dialectics", but who nevertheless evolved ideas very close to "negative dialectics" in spirit,  [91•*  namely Maoist teaching with regard to contradictions which expresses the same spirit of nihilism as that which permeates Adorno’s " negative dialectics". Naturally it would be wrong to regard Mao Tse-tung as the ideologist of militant youth in the West, yet nevertheless in his statements just as in the works of Marcuse, Adorno, etc., we find philosophical justification of revolt.

p It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole system of Mao’s ideas centres round his teaching with regard to contradictions based on the absolutisation of struggle between opposites and the relativisation of their unity. In his work On the Question of the Correct Solution for Contradictions among the People he writes: "For each concrete thing (phenomenon) the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary, transient and therefore relative, while the struggle between opposites is absolute.”

p After superficial comparison it might appear that this is no more than a repetition of the well-known tenet expounded 92 in Lenin’s unfinished work "On the Question of Dialectics": "The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”  [92•* 

p However it is no coincidence that Lenin pointed out that the struggle of opposites is absolute "as development and motion are absolute". The absolute nature of struggle and the relative nature of the unity of opposites possess here the same inner significance as the absolute nature of movement and the relative nature of rest. Movement is impossible without rest, of necessity it incorporates moments of rest. Yet movement is absolute in the sense of constant, uninterrupted change of rest itself, the succession of different forms of rest and the negation of one form by another. The same applies to the unity and struggle of opposites. The struggle of opposites is absolute in the sense of constant negation of various forms of their unity, absolute in the sense of the constant nature of development, but by no means in the sense of the negation of the necessity of the moment of rest in movement and the moment of interconnection between opposites.

p In whatever way relations might take shape between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat at various stages of capitalist society’s development, the proletariat through its activity always negates the bourgeoisie as a class, and thus negates itself as a class oppressed by the bourgeoisie. This negation can take place only when there is constant interconnection, interaction and interpenetration between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. However this interconnection is constantly changing and each distinct form of this interconnection is partial, temporary, unstable reflecting the relative nature of the unity of opposites in general and the opposition of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in particular.

p The struggle of opposites can assume various forms. The sides to a contradiction, one of which is positive, i.e. attempting to preserve the existing contradiction, while the other is negative, i.e. attempting to destroy the given contradiction, are inclined to act in opposite directions. At certain stages 93 of development the direction of their action may coincide in some aspects or other, be “identical”, all the more so because the forces of affirmation and negation can over a certain time prove equal, which of course does not lead to a termination of the struggle of opposites, as Marcuse supposes, but merely lends their development a specific character. This “equilibrium” can be observed at certain stages of the revolutionary process, when the bourgeoisie exhausted by the class struggle already proves unable to hold on to power, while the proletariat is not yet able to seize it.

p According to Mao Tse-tung the whole contradictory process of development is made up of two alternating periods— periods of “rest” when moments of unity occur, and periods of “movement” when unity is lacking. Given this interpretation, the development of any process is the unending alternation of states of equilibrium and non-equilibrium, and moreover non-equilibrium, or "disruption of equilibrium", plays the leading role in this process and appears as the normal state.

p Critics of Mao Tse-tung’s philosophy correctly point out that his conception of the mechanical mutual conversion of opposites, as incidentally many other of his "brilliant discoveries" can be traced back over the centuries to traditional Chinese philosophy. Yet why does the conception of the cyclical mutual conversion of opposites appear so attractive to Mao Tse-tung?

In elaborating his theory of “non-equilibrium” Mao Tsetung attempts to provide a “theoretical” basis for the foreign and internal policies he has been pursuing, including the policy of splitting the international communist movement. The whole history of that movement is depicted as the monotonous swinging to and fro of a giant pendulum: unity— split, split—unity over and over again in the same order, while at the same time this swinging is regarded as the expression of the “dialectics” of the historical process. Relying on the theory of non-equilibrium the Maoists attempt to justify the idea of the necessity of implementing within the country a series of “cultural” revolutions with all the concomitant chaos, destruction and anarchy. It is no accident that the Hungweipings as they proclaimed anarchist, rebel slogans referred to the "thoughts of Mao Tse-tung". A group 94 of Hungweipings in an interview published in the magazine Hungchi declared that, "... thousands and thousands of tenets of Marxism can be summed up as follows: ’Revolt is a just cause’. This is the very heart of Mao Tse-tung’s thought___To turn away from revolt is simply to wallow in revisionism___We want to turn the old world upside down, shatter it to smithereens and create chaos, complete confusion. And the more confusion the better—-" This reference made by the Hungweipings to "Mao Tse-tung’s thoughts" was not merely a tribute to familiar ritual. It was a search for a source of “creative” inspiration for rebels wallowing in anarchy.