Lukács’ (1986a, 1986b) final book The Ontology of Social Being, Adorno’s (1963) book Hegel: Three Studies, and Adorno’s essay On Subject and Object (Adorno 1998, 245–258).
Williams (1969) reviewed Marcuse’s (1988/1968) book Negations. He finds Marcuse’s approach of trying to combine Freud and Marx confused and argues that these two approaches do not go together. But Williams found particular interest in Marcuse’s essay ‘The Afirmative Character of Culture’. He argues that this essay is very close to his own materialist understanding of culture because it questions ‘the separation of ideal and material life’ (Williams 1969, 165). Marcuse would show how this separation turns into an ideology he terms the afirmative culture. Williams’ interest in Marcuse is an indication that there are certain parallels between Williams and the Frankfurt School’s understandings of culture. Drawing on both of these traditions therefore promises to be a fruitful approach for a critical theory of communication and culture.
Williams was also aware of Horkheimer and Adorno’s work. In Marxism and Literature, Williams (1977, 98) stresses that Adorno is a representative of a position in Marxist theory that sees mediation as the key concept for relating the economy and culture. Williams commented that the notion of mediation other than the one of reflection ‘indicates an active process’, but ‘perpetuates a basic dualism’ (99). So his criticism was that it is not dialectical enough.
1.4.2. Habermas: Theory of Communicative Action
Habermas’ theory is one of the most influential communication theories of the twentieth century. For example, the Encyclopedia of Communication Theory lists the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action as a milestone in a chronology of the field and says that it has had ‘huge impact’ and ‘greatly influences critical communication theory’ (Littlejohn and Foss 2009, lxv). Jürgen Habermas built his approach on the classical Frankfurt School and at the same time worked out the concept of communicative rationality, by which he went beyond the classical tradition. Habermas (1984, 285–286) distinguishes between instrumental (non-social, success-oriented), strategic (social, success-oriented) and communicative action (social, oriented on understanding). Habermas (1987, 333) argues that ‘Horkheimer and Adorno failed to recognize the communicative rationality of the lifeworld’. For Habermas (1987, 375), critical theory questions the fact that steering media (money, power) attack ‘the communicative infrastructure of largely rationalized lifeworlds’. Habermas (1971, 53) conceives instrumental action and communicative action as the two fundamental aspects of social praxis. What Habermas wants to express is that the human being is both a labouring and a communicating being: ‘the reproduction of life is determined culturally by work and interaction’ (Habermas 1971, 196). Dallas Smythe expressed the same idea as foundation of a Marxist theory of media and communication: ‘there will be no general Marxist theory of communication until Marxism comes to comprehend man as a message system- and symbol-using animal as well as a working animal’ (Smythe 1994, 258).
Introduction: Critical Theory of Communication
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