Historical Materialism (2018) 1–11

brill.com/hima

Theodor W. Adorno on ‘Marx and the Basic

Concepts of Sociological Theory’
From a Seminar Transcript in the Summer Semester of 1962

Theodor W. Adorno

Abstract

The following is the transcript of a lecture taken in shorthand by Hans-Georg Backhaus.

The transcript was originally published as an appendix in Hans-Georg Backhaus,
Dialektik der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur marxschen Ökonomiekritik (Freiburg: ça
ira, 1997), a complete translation of which is forthcoming in the Historical Materialism
book series.

Keywords

Adorno – Marx – Critical Theory – New German Reading of Marx

On Popper’s ‘social nominalism’: In Popper, the concept of law is implicitly

identified with the regularity of repeated occurrences. In truth, the concept
of law is concerned with codifying a particular procedure/event [Ablauf] in its
structure.1 It is essential for positivism to hypostatise the division of labour in
the sciences, thereby also rejecting this concept of law – when Popper argues,
for instance, that historiography cannot verify the concept of law. Here, histo-
riography is being isolated. Marx is accused of ‘economism’.
There are intellectual [geistige] relations that take on a life of their own such
that, if they are offhandedly reduced to economic causes, one makes a mess
of Marx. Instead, what matters – and this is our task – is to account for the
conditions that result in the becoming-independent of conceptual relations.
The transition to independence itself is to be deduced from social dynamics.

1  Translators’ Note: The German original is included in brackets for technical and difficult-to-
translate terms and when words or phrases were added for clarification.

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Popper accuses Marx of ‘essentialism’. Marx would have sneered and com-
mended himself as a nominalist (to turn Hegel on his head). Nevertheless,
I would say that Popper is right insofar as, in Marx, structural concepts are au-
tonomous, without which social diversity cannot be thought, whereas Popper
is essentially hostile to theory. Once the element of the autonomy of the con-
cept is given up, the possibility of theory is denied. Then theory is replaced
with the demand that sociology, understood as a kind of agency [Agentur] of
society, provide well-ordered facts which are used in the respectively domi-
nant praxis.
From where does Popper take his demand for an open society? After all, this
is itself a general concept which appears like a shot. Here, a general concept
is introduced rather naively and without thought [unreflektiert]. ‘Humanity’
[Humanitär] is already a general concept with respect to individual human
beings [Menschen].
On the problem of social nominalism: Enlightenment recognises more and
more general concepts as fabricated by us. It wants to see through [durch-
schauen] the semblance of autonomy of that which is made by us. It is the
human being who produces everything that appears as autonomous-in-itself,
it is thesei and not physei. Popper accuses Marx and Hegel of antiquated con-
ceptual fetishism, but there is no consciousness [Bewusstsein] of any fact
which is not mediated by consciousness.
It is prohibited to speak of general concepts in the belief that external deter-
mination/heteronomy [Fremdbestimmtheit] is thereby overcome [aufgehoben].
The image of society is reduced to facts, which are said to be products of indi-
vidual human beings [Menschen] in order for them to be conceivable as facts.
At the same time, human beings [die Menschen] form associations which tran-
scend individual, concrete actions such that these facts, which supposedly are
primary, in actuality are themselves mediated. They are taken to present them-
selves to us immediately as if they were absolutely primary (what is most real),
even though they contain a totality which is immediate/unmediated. Popper
would not object to the empirical study of institutions. When I speak of essence
[Wesen], however, he [Popper] would denounce this as conceptual mythology.
When I speak of the structure of our society as a comprehensive totality, the
positivists would say: capitalist society does not exist, our society is pluralist. So I
ask: Is it really the case that the concept is something the knowing subject adds
to the material, or is there something like a concept in the object with which we
are dealing? I here raise the central problem. Our answer on this issue distin-
guishes our Frankfurt School from all other traditions of sociology. Exchange
itself is a process of abstraction. Whether human beings [die Menschen] know

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it or not, by entering into a relationship of exchange and reducing different

use-values to labour-value they actualise a real conceptual operation socially.
This is the objectivity of the concept in practice. It shows that conceptuality
lies not only in the minds of the philosophers but also in the reality of the
object itself such that, when we speak of essence [Wesen], we refer precisely
to that which society, without knowing it, already has in itself. If we stick to
the facts, then we ourselves encounter the concept. We are forced to recur
to the concept in the object itself instead of retroactively subsuming the
object under ordering concepts. When Popper speaks about alienation, ab-
straction, he comes close to this moment: that the relations between human
beings [are] of an abstract kind. The concept is not to be fetishised but in-
stead is embedded within a dialectic with facts. The conceptual structure is
itself a fact.
Natural science has objects that do not have consciousness. If it were not for
subjects who realise abstraction, that is, if subjects were not also thinking sub-
jects, objective conceptuality would not come into existence. Objects are not
immediately subjects, but there is something subjective within objects in the
sense of what is necessary for abstraction. The object is nothing self-sufficient
[nichts Autarkes]. However, one should not posit it as absolute because there is
the moment of second nature, which, towards us, tends to harden into some-
thing opaque. The superiority of the social is so strong that society appears as
if it really were first nature. Positivism is so blinded by society that it regards
second nature as first nature and identifies the data of society with the data of
natural science. In these questions, our school is in opposition to all sociologi-
cal traditions of the world.
When we say that a moment of conceptuality [Begrifflichkeit] lies in the
object, this should not be taken to mean that society is based on something
conceptual [auf etwas Begrifflichem]. One cannot arrive at relationships of
exchange without a moment of conceptuality. It is a process of abstraction,
which relates the same with the same to the same. Otherwise, irrationality
would reign in society. It is the moment of calculatory equation which has
founded the difference between bourgeois society and feudalism. Even if a
single human being [Mensch] had not had the idea of this absolute exchange,
there would objectively still be a process of abstraction in the objective reduc-
tion to the same, a process of abstraction which amounts to the objectivity
of the conceptual moment, regardless of whether human beings [Menschen]
reflect on it or not. On the contrary, the greater the power/violence [Gewalt]
of this conceptual moment, the less it is thought by human beings but lies
within the object itself. Therefore, the concept is the object itself and not the

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subjective unity of features [Merkmalseinheit] of the object comprehended

under it.
This kind of objectivity of the concept is something else entirely than the
kind of objectivity that is taught by mythological conceptual realism, instead
containing nominalism as a whole. The conceptuality in the relationship of
exchange is itself a kind of facticity. Yet there is something like a primacy
of the object over the concept, and likewise there is a primacy of the nom-
inalist over the realist motive. When we say that concept and fact are both
moments, this does not mean that both have the same dignity. There is the
predominance of the impenetrable over the other [Es gibt das Übergewicht des
Undurchdringlichen gegenüber dem Anderen]. This way, we do not get into a
kind of mythology.

Marx accuses Hegel of making the predicate, that is, the operations and func-
tions, the subject. Marx was a pure nominalist, according to his own under-
standing, but not according to his objective structure. Hegel says, to be sure,
that the concept of the state is historically prior to the concept of society.
Human beings would have first encountered society as the state. Then again,
the method [Weg] in The Philosophy of Right is to develop [the argument] that
society necessarily strives towards the state by force of its own dialectic, that is,
that the state is the product of society.
Marx was extremely anti-anthropological, anti-psychological. His real inter-
est is in the institutions which dehumanise human beings [den Menschen].
He does not provide an analysis of humanity [des Menschen]; this would be
superficial with regard to historical being.
Marx’s understanding of Hegel is very problematic. The mature Marx, how-
ever, resumed the objectivity of the concept, particularly in contrast to the
Left-Hegelians.
The human being [der Mensch] is that living being [Lebewesen] that repro-
duces itself. The human being becomes a human being through itself, through
social labour. Only through the phases of social labour does the human attain
to the concept of humanity [des Menschen], that is real, free humanity.
Marx imputes a concept of spirit to Hegel which is separate from the mate-
rial sphere of being. In Hegel, spirit is described as totality; the determinations
of labour [Arbeit] are by no means of a separate intellectual principle. Hegel
thinks of a contestation of humanity [des Menschen] with nature, but inter-
prets the total movement as a spiritual one. However, the moments in labour
[Arbeit] are equally material moments and not activities of an isolated spirit.
The slave [Knecht] is not an intellectual. The spiritual lies only in the general
relation which unfolds between master [Herr] and slave [Knecht]. Objectivity

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[Gegenständlichkeit] has, in a certain sense, a more conclusive meaning in

Hegel than in Marx because an unresolved remnant of the institutional vis-à-
vis a free society remains.

(Adorno: it is the core theoretical lecture of the seminar.) What does cri-
tique of political economy mean in Marx? (1.) Critique of the classical theory
of liberalism. (2.) Critique of the economy itself. That is, critique of the self-
understanding of liberalism (in particular in Volume 4, the Theories of
Surplus Value) as well as a [critique] of liberalism itself. Marx is concerned
with an immanent critique of liberalism. In the East, Marx serves the inter-
ests of power relations; this Marx belongs to the sphere of pulp literature.
In the West, the accusation is made that Marx’s theory is premised on sub-
jective-proletarian class consciousness. This is precisely what is not meant.
Liberal theory is confronted with its own claim with regard to the act of ex-
change. ‘You say that equivalents are exchanged, that there is a free and just
exchange, I take your word, now we shall see how this turns out!’ This is
immanent critique.

That the human [Mensch] becomes a commodity has been perceived by oth-
ers. Marx: ‘These petrified conditions must be made to dance by singing to
them their own melody.’ (‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right’) Not: to confront capitalist society with a different one, but: to ask if
society conforms to its own rules, if society functions according to laws which
it claims as its own. Now, Marx does not just say, no, this is wrong, but takes dia-
lectic seriously and coquets with its terminology. In an exchange, something
is the same and simultaneously not the same; it is and at the same time is not
above-board. The theory of liberalism conforms to its own concept and by con-
forming it also contradicts its own concept. The exchange-relation is, in reality,
preformed by class relations: that there is an unequal control of the means of
production: that is the heart of the theory.
This question is of almost no importance in today’s discussion of Marx.
Critique tests claims by confronting them with the object and by deducing
tendencies of development out of this contradiction. The late Marx would say
that this method is still too abstract.
The stages of development are developed as qualitatively different from
each other. As in Hegel. Nodal points of development. Rostow, by contrast, does
not recognise any qualitatively different fundamental structures. For him, two
different stages are a more-or-less [ein Mehr oder Weniger], there are no quali-
tative differences. Marx is not simply an economic historian; for him, historical
and systematic moments are mediated, the historical process itself is regarded

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as the logical, necessary transition from one structure to another. Marx differ-
entiates himself from static doctrines as well as from the mere historian [vom
bloßen Historiker] who only describes different stages. The concept is entirely
historicised. The process is formally idealist, it is the self-actualisation of the
concept, in the case of Marx the modes of production. Double rejection: with
regard to invariant idealism and descriptive positivism.
The commodity is characterised by its exchange-value. It is precisely not
need that constitutes the commodity. Commodity value is not derived from
need but from objective conditions of production of which need is an ele-
ment but only in the last instance, that is, mediated by the interest to get rid of
the stuff. It is characteristic of objective theory that it starts from institutions
rather than needs, from actual relations of power, relations of disposal/control
[Verfügungsverhältnissen]. ‘You always talk about explaining the economy out
of needs, but the mechanism/business keeping [Getriebe] does not primarily
serve the needs; rather these are satisfied at great cost and under the terrible
grinding of the system.’ Need is only dragged along and this is why the econo-
my must not start from needs – because the world does not turn according to
our needs. The latter are only an epiphenomenon.
What is decisive is the primacy of the apparatus of production over needs.
This must be maintained against the objection that the phenomena described
by Marx could be represented subjectively. Marx’s method consists of subse-
quently correcting abstractions by way of very extensive differentiations. Here,
I want to give notice of the problem of whether this is reconcilable with dialec-
tics or whether Marx may have violated the principles of dialectics.
What makes commodities exchangeable is the unity of socially necessary
abstract labour-time [Arbeitszeit]. Abstract labour, because through a reduc-
tion to unity one abstracts from use-values, from needs. When a businessman
calculates, he can recur neither to conditions under which a commodity came
about nor to whatever a commodity is good for, but focuses on labour-time,
profit, material. This is what a commodity is composed of, but this is what
makes it a kind of sum of something solid, thing-like [Dinglichem]. Through
abstract labour-time one abstracts from living opponents. On the face of it, this
abstraction makes what is exchanged a thing-in-itself. What is in fact a social
relation appears as if [erscheint als ob] it were the sum of objective qualities of
an object. The concept of commodity-fetishism is nothing but this necessary
process of abstraction. By performing the operation of abstraction, the com-
modity no longer appears as a social relation but it seems as if value were a
thing-in-itself.

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Exchange is still the key to society. It is characteristic of the commodity

economy [Warenwirtschaft] that what characterises exchange – i.e. that it is
a relation between human beings – disappears and presents itself as if it were
a quality of the things themselves that are to be exchanged. It is not the ex-
change that is fetishised, but the commodity. That which is a congealed social
relation [ein geronnenes gesellschaftliches Verhältnis] within commodities is
regarded as if it were a natural quality, a being-in-itself of things. The illusion
[der Schein] is not the exchange, because exchange really takes place. The illu-
sion in the process of exchange lies in the concept of surplus-value.
However, fetishised perceptions are not an illusion either, because insofar as
human beings in fact become dependent on those objectivities, which are ob-
scure to them, reification [Verdinglichung] is not only false consciousness, but
also simultaneously reality, insofar as commodities really are alienated [ent-
fremdet] from human beings. We really are dependent on the world of com-
modities [Warenwelt]. On the one hand, commodity fetishism is an illusion;
on the other, it is utmost/ultimate reality – and the superiority of the reified
commodity [der verdinglichten Ware] over humanity stands as testament to
this. That the categories of illusion are in truth also categories of reality, this
is dialectic.
Concepts like the fetish-character of commodities can only be understood
when one does not merely transform them into subjective categories. Here,
I do not mean the appeal to today’s human beings [Menschen], which ema-
nates from commodities in a store. It is not about the psychological fetishising
of individual commodities but about the objective structure of the commodity
economy [Warenwirtschaft]. In a society in which exchange-value is the domi-
nant principle, this fetishising is realised necessarily. What is essential is that
the commodity disappears as a social relation; all other reactions of reified
consciousness [des verdinglichten Bewusstseins] are secondary.
To be sure, the commodity is the archetype [Urform] of ideology; yet the
commodity itself is not simply false consciousness but results from the struc-
ture of political economy. This is the actual reason why consciousness is deter-
mined by being. What is decisive is that the objective structure of economic
form realises from within itself fetishisation. This is the objective process of
ideology – independent of the consciousness of individuals and their will.
The theory of ideology [Ideologielehre] has its seriousness [Ernst] only in the
fact that false consciousness itself appears as a necessary form of the objec-
tive process that holds society together. Socialisation itself takes place through
this ideology. Here, the issue of the problem of ideology becomes very serious.

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Even if we see through illusion, this does not change the fetish-character of
the commodity: every businessman who calculates has to act according to this
fetish. If he does not calculate in this way, he goes broke.
Money is also only a symbol of congealed labour [geronnene Arbeit] and
not a thing-in-itself, such that the processes in finance are not primary; rather,
financial relations have to be derived from political economy.
When exchange-value becomes independent, then I can strive for it as a
thing-in-itself. And this reification of exchange-value is what is meant by the
formula M–C–M’.
Crucial question: Where does surplus-value come from? The sphere of cir-
culation is secondary. Surplus-value is already contained in it. In the sphere
of circulation, entrepreneurs scramble for surplus-value, which is, however,
already produced.
Labour power [Arbeitskraft] is the source of surplus-value because it is at
the same time use-value and exchange-value. This is the crux of the matter.
The worker is free insofar as he can move from one branch to another.
Value itself is defined as social labour. For this reason, machines cannot pro-
duce value. What they do refers back to labour because machines themselves
are produced by human beings. Entrepreneurs strive for absolute surplus-
value – but not because they are bad people. Psychology is as alien to Marx as
it is to Hegel. Marx’s theory of ‘character mask’ contains the concept of role
[Rollenbegriff]. Only that it is here derived from objective conditions; the role is
imposed on the subject by the structure. Today – as in Parsons – there is no re-
flection on, but instead an absolutisation of the concept of role itself. The real
reason why I am sceptical of the concept of role is that it is not understood as
a necessary moment in a process, but that it is instead isolated and singled out.
Essence of dialectics: Capitalists are forced to try to accumulate surplus-
value. For this purpose, they are impelled to develop machines in order to
replace living with dead labour. If not, then they are in competition. Here, a
moment of the sphere of circulation impacts on the sphere of production.
However, because they are forced, capitalists create the conditions of produc-
tive forces that do not need the chains of capitalist economy. Second, they
thereby create a dynamic which turns against themselves; more and more la-
bour is set free, thereby creating the conditions of crisis and the continuously
increasing threat to the system itself. In order to maintain itself, the system
must produce precisely such moments through which it increasingly under-
mines [untergräbt] its own possibility. The purpose of spontaneity is to get this
process under control, which is otherwise headed for the destruction of the
whole, so as to transform [aufheben] the whole to a higher mode of produc-
tion. Whereas dialectic itself, insofar as it is blind, also creates the conditions

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for the other [ für das Andere]. If there is no moment of freedom, that is, if the
whole is left to itself, then it goes under.
Eternal uncertainty is one of the reasons for the backwards-oriented desire
for agrarian and artisanal [handwerklichen] relations. This is the authentic mo-
ment in it. The other, the transfiguration, is false: these relations cannot be
restored.

In order to understand the concept of surplus-value, two time-spans have to

be compared: the time which is necessary for the production of labour-power
and the time that the worker gives in labour. One must not start with the com-
modity produced by the worker, rather it is a matter of an exchange process:
the worker sells his labour-time [Arbeitszeit] for which he receives his equiva-
lent. But the time he gives and the time that is needed for the reproduction
of his labour-power are different. On the one hand, exchange takes place in
the form of equivalents: the worker gives his labour-time and receives what
is required for the reproduction of his labour-power in return. Here lies the
source of surplus-value without having to consider the commodity produced.
One exchanges the same for the same [Gleiches mit Gleichem] and simultane-
ously the same for the not-same [Gleiches mit Nicht-Gleichem]. Behind this lies
the entirety of class relations. Only because the worker has nothing else but his
labour-power does he accept these conditions. Behind this strange exchange
lies the question of class relations.
It would probably be flawed to say that subjective theory is unable to explain
the entire mechanism of the economy in terms of needs. It can certainly also
be done in terms of subjective categories – if one settles for outlining a formal-
istic scheme for economic processes. However, in doing so one abstracts from
the moment of social power and impotence [Macht und Ohnmacht]. It is not
as if it is only today that consumption is controlled. Today there is only a new
quality, which prevails in the regulation of consumption. But in this society the
consumption of subjects is not the key for the economy because the subjects’
own possibilities of consumption depend on (1.) the overall economic system
as a whole; one can consume only as much as social status permits; (2.) con-
sumption depends on the contemporary overall economic situation.
The actual controversy does not concern which of the two directions eco-
nomic processes can be represented more smoothly, but rather what theory
more adequately portrays the reality in which economic relationships of
human beings take place. An approach that does not account for the con-
sumer’s dependence on the overall system is inadequate to reality. One can
demonstrate that the change in the customs of consumption [Konsumsitten]
do not spring from the subject but that they are objective processes which have

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their roots in the structure of society. This is why Marx does not start with
consumption but with production – production understood as dominance
[Vorherrschaft] of the proprietors [der Verfügenden]. This approach is more in
line with reality.
The choice of coordinate system is not neutral with regard to the issue.
That system is better in which more of the real relations appear. If relations
are antagonistic (class system), then antagonisms must also be expressed in
theory.
Subjective economics is essentially an analysis of market processes in which
established market relations are already presupposed. Engels rightly invokes
the heritage of German philosophy: the question was concerned with consti-
tutive moments through which surplus-value comes about, with immanent
conditions through which the system comes about, while subjective doctrine
attempts to elegantly formalise already-established processes.
By contrast, Marx is not concerned with the description of market society
but instead enquires about the constituents of experience and provides a cri-
tique of these categories of economic activity. This approach, which proceeds
from the problem of constitution [vom Konstitutionsproblem], is deeper; it
enables more of reality to be expressed. The point is whether constituents of
totality can be seized. The question of constitution is already present in the os-
tensible discretion concerning where to cut through reality for the purpose of
abstraction. Subjective doctrine is essentially apology. The analysis of the ques-
tion of price is an epiphenomenon in contrast to the questions of constitution.
On critique: One cannot stop at the phenomena of alienation [Entfrem­
dungsphänomenen]; in principle, alienation is an idealist category. However,
alienation results from the commodity character of the economy [der
Ökonomie]. Nor can one speak in abstractions about power, for the question
of power asserts itself by virtue of the reproduction of the material life of
man. If it were only about questions of alienation and power, Marx would not
have anything to tell us; then all that would remain of Marx would be Left-
Hegelianism. But Marx wanted to criticise how power and alienation play out
in concrete society.
The concept of relative immiseration [Verelendung] is diabolically amus-
ing [urkomisch]. When no worker knows anymore that he is [pauperised] – as
Schelsky claims – where, then, lies the possibility to draw on the concept of
class?
The concept of technology [Technik] is not clear in Marx. This concept is
inherited from Saint-Simon without the latter having thought through his
position concerning relationships of production. These are, on the one hand,

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shackling; on the other, they are constantly changing and become productive
forces. This is the problematic nature of this concept.
We can see that the utmost difficulties are inherent in the system. Marx
is burdened with a whole string of questions. The bleakness of our situation
consists in the fact that these aspects are not developed further but instead
criticised from outside without confronting the theory with its own immanent
difficulties. On the one hand, the theory is defamed – in the West – on the
other hand, it is fetishised – in the East. In the East, the theory is placed under a
taboo; in the West it is considered a cardinal sin to concern oneself with it. The
future of thinking about society depends on whether we can solve these prob-
lems. The genius of Marx consisted precisely in the fact that, filled with disgust,
he tackled exactly that which he found disgusting: the economy [Ökonomie].
To the objection that socialism leads to massification, one must reply that
the latter will disappear only when individuals are no longer determined by
relations of exchange.

Translated by Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson* and Chris O’Kane**

*  Department of Philosophy, University of Memphis.

**  Department of Economics, John Jay, CUNY. The translators would like to thank Patrick
Murray and Jeanne Schuler for their comments.

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