“Progress” is the title of an essay by Adorno written in the 1960s. It appears in the English language collection Critical Models The essay plays on a double meaning in the word “humanity” (Menschheit in German), meaning on the one hand “the human race” or “all humans”, and on the other hand “humane-ness,” which is not the same as ‘humanitarianism.’
The first must be seen at least in many of its deployments as ideological: as Schmitt notes and our era demonstrates, positing a universal human community is a highly effective move for placing a group outside the realm within in which humanity in the second sense extends. Enemies of humanity do not deserve humane treatment, but must be annihilated via total war. Univeral progress functions in a similar fashion (“enemies of progress”).
The second sense of humanity does not pretend to a universalized or objective point of view, but rather is ethical. Humaneness is an arrangement, a way to be socially. Adorno suggests a possible unity (though, of course, not identity) of the two - humanity as individualized, made up individual humans, would be a version of humanity that does not lend itself toward the inhumane so readily: “differentiation, individuation” rather than “a comprehensive generic concept. (151. Virno, who wrote his dissertation on Adorno, is close to this in his remarks about taking the many as point of departure rather than a destination, Badiou may be so as well.)
Adorno’s two sense of humanity connect to his assessment of progress. He neither embraces it nor rejects it entirely. As I (mis)read the point, progress is “progress according to” or “progress for” or “progress in,” rather than any type of progress-as-such or progress of all history or all humanity or reason as such. Such progress is advisably treated as an obfuscated progress according to/for/in” and its implied universal subject/community is more likely a universalized subject/community. It is also advisable to ask after what this subject/community is and what its interests are.
Adorno is not free of a certain objective progress, however, when he writes “thanks to the
present state of the technical forces of production no one on the planet need suffer deprivation anymore (144).” This implies that once deprivation was necessary, and neglects that needs, plenitude, deprivation are historically and politically defined rather than given in unalterable fashion (as is ‘technical’). That is to say, it is tremendously difficult to get out of a politically determined deprivation/nondeprivation and reach some apolitical ‘objective’ version thereof, and, for ever as for now, the simple fact of deprivation’s empirical existence is no evidence for its necessity.
Benjamin’s “On The Concept Of History” is, for Adorno “perhaps the most weighty critique of the idea of progress held by those who reckoned in a crudely political fashion as progressives.” He quotes Benjamin, “Progress as pictured in the minds of Social Democrats was, first of all, the progres of humanity itself.” Adorno takes this quote in boths senses of the term humanity, and this renders it deeply ambivalent. He writes that “there can not be anidea of progress without the idea of humanity” and that Benjamin’s point should be read as “more a reproach that the Social Democrats confused progress of skills and knowledge wit that of humanity, rather than that he wanted to eradicate progress from philosphical reflection (145).” I take this to mean there is no universal progress without universal humanity, but there can be no progress of any sort without some sort of standards of evaluation, such as the humaneness that Adorno endorses. The progress Adorno likes is the kind that would entail “the very establishment of humanity (145).”
Thus, while there is no progress of/for all - as envisioned by universal history, which presupposes “an already existing humanity” (an acceptable political/ethical humaneness that is actually instantiated and a community of all the human race, which is a forced unity and as such out of bounds for Adorno).
Adorno insists we keep a type of progress in mind, but that it not be ontologized (147). This progress would be that “which wrenches free” (148), “to step out of the magic spell (…) progress occurs where it ends.” (150) (This resonates unsurprisingly with Benjamin, but also with what little I’ve heard about Badiou and subtraction, and with Tronti.) This is progress with an “explosive tendency,” “the possibility of wrestling free [that ] is effectuated by the pressure of negativity (152).”
“The beneficial self-reflection of reason,” which includes the thought of and claim on progress or non-progress, “would be its transition to praxis: reason would see through itself as a moment of praxis and would recognize, instead of mistaking itself for the absolute, that it is a mode of behavior (153).” This is how I mean my point about universalized subjects above - certain ways of talking or writing are practices that may reflect or foster interests or interact with other social practices that do so. This is another point of resonance I find with Tronti, which is that one can find in Adorno a sort of partiality - nonuniversality, nonidentity perhaps, nontotal - like Tronti’s insistence on the non-univeral nature of working class collective action. And, as Tronti insists, the universal politics - the human community etc - expresses in obfuscated form another partiality, that of a certain higher sector. (This was one of Ranciere’s accusations against Althusser at the time of their break, Althusser represented the interests of a certain class or class sector.)
Adorno is emphatic that it is not the case that there is no progress or possibility for progress, but this must not be ontologized lest it succumb to “the schema that whatever human beings fail it is ontologically refused them” or was necessarily a task that could not have been succeeded at.
In a sense, this is a variant of Rorty’s remark about differences that make a difference (or similarities, for that matter). “[T]here is some progress and yet there is none (158).”
“Progress is not a conclusive category. It wants to cut short the triumph of radical evil, not triumph as such itself. A situation is conceivable in which the category would lose itse meaning, and yet which is not the situation of universal regression that allies itself with progress today. In this case, progress would transform itself into the resistance to the perpetual danger of relapse. Progress is this resistance at all stages, not the surrender to their steady ascent (160).” A la Benjamin’s image of revolution as pulling the brake on the train of history.
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Notes on “Free Time” - Labor power is a commodity, used during labor, Time outside this unfree time is still determined by this time in many ways, and often still “organized for the sake of profit” (though I find Adorno a much less sensitive reader of acts of resistance and (re)organization against value production), “the time free from labor is supposed to regenerate labor power (169)” so that the next day the worker can “summon up the energy for work that is demanded (…) bythe organization of society.” (There’s a similar reference in the Aesthetic Theory, about someone on a couch - veiled dis on psychoanalysis? I hope so - reproducing their labor power.) “Free time is the unmediated continuation of labor as its shadow (173).”
Our Ted’s rather a downer, isn’t he? “[P]eople dimly sense how difficult it would be for them to change the burden that weighs upon them. They prefer to let themselves be distracted by spurious, illusory activities, by institutionalized vicarious satisfactions rathr than to face the realization of just how much the possibilities for change are blocked today (173).” Activities like lecturing at university or writing books on Kierkegaard? Like this blog? Like getting off masochistically on attending really closely to how much the possibilities for change are blocked today?
Less of bad mood when he was finishing the piece, apparently: “The real interests of individuals are still strong enough to resist, up to a point, their total appropriation. (…)
[T]here is a chance here for political maturity that ultimately could do its part to help free time turn into freedom (175).”
[Note to self, take more Benjamin notes.]