ABSTRACT
Adorno and Habermas agree about the primacy of the capitalist economic system in Western nations today. Although the liberal democratic welfare state occupies a prominent place in both social theories because social welfare schemes have helped to pacify class conflict even as they foster dependency on state agencies and institutions, Adorno and Habermas contend that the welfare state remains subordinate to the economic engine of Western societies. They also share the view that action within both the economic and political spheres exhibits a distinct type of rationality that has increasingly made itself felt outside of these spheres. Adorno often uses the terms “identity-thinking” and “exchange principle” (Tauschprinzip) to designate this rationality, while Habermas variously refers to it as “functionalist rationality,” “cognitive-instrumental rationality” and, in a Weberian vein, “purposive rationality.” On a very general level, then, Adorno and Habermas view late capitalist societies as characterized by a “form of objectivity” (a term that Georg Lukács borrowed from Wilhelm Dilthey, which Habermas also adopts1), or by a specific type of rationality that not only shapes our interaction with the environment but determines our “inner and outer life.”2 They also maintain that the negative effects of this form of objectivity are currently felt throughout society.
