"solidarity is sick" (Adorno)

[Doug Henwood]

The opening sentence of this aphorism came up on the Frankfurt School list,
and I thought the whole piece was relevant to recent ruminations on The
Party and such. I tacked on the following aphorism too, because it was
there, and because it too seemed kind of relevant. As much as I admire
Adorno, sometimes when I'm reading him I can't stop saying to myself,
"lighten up you old sourpuss."

Doug

----

[from T.W. Adorno, Minima Moralia (London, NLB, 1974)]

31

Cat out of the bag. - Even solidarity, the most honourable mode of conduct
of socialism, is sick. Solidarity was once intended to make the talk of
brotherhood real, by lifting it out of generality, where it was an
ideology, and reserving it for the particular, the Party, as the sole
representative in an antagonistic world of generality. It was manifested by
groups of people who together put their lives at stake, counting their own
concerns as less important in face of a tangible possibility, so that,
without being possessed by an abstract idea, but also without individual
hope, they were ready to sacrifice themselves for each other. The
prerequisites for this waiving of self-preservation were knowledge and
freedom of decision: if they are lacking, blind particular interest
immediately reasserts itself. In the course of time, however, solidarity
has turned into confidence that the Party has a thousand eyes, into
enrolment in workers' battalions - long since promoted into uniform - as
the stronger side, into swimming with the tide of history. Any temporary
security gained in this way is paid for by permanent fear, by toadying,
manoeuvring and ventriloquism: the strength that might have been used to
test the enemy's weakness is wasted in anticipating the whims of one's own
leaders, who inspire more inner trembling than the old enemy; for one knows
dimly that in the end the leaders on both sides will come to terms on the
backs of those yoked beneath them. A reflection of this is discernible
between individuals. Anyone who, by the stereotypes operative today, is
categorized in advance as progressive, without having signed the imaginary
declaration that seems to unite the true believers - who recognize each
other by something imponderable in gesture and language, a kind of bluffly
obedient resignation, as by a password - will repeatedly have the same
experience. The orthodox, but also the deviationists all too like them,
approach him expecting solidarity. They appeal explicitly and implicitly to
the progressive pact. But the moment he looks for the slightest proof of
the same solidarity from them, or mere sympathy for his own share of the
social product of suffering, they give him the cold shoulder, which in the
age of restored Pontiffs is all that remains of materialism and atheism.
These organization men want the honest intellectual to expose himself for
them, but as soon as they only remotely fear having to expose themselves,
they see him as the capitalist, and the same honesty on which they were
speculating, as ridiculous sentimentality and stupidity. Solidarity is
polarized into the desperate loyalty of those who have no way back, and
virtual blackmail practised on those who want nothing to do with gaolers,
nor to fall foul of thieves.


32

Savages are not more noble. - There is to be found in African students of
political economy, Siamese at Oxford, and more generally in diligent
arthistorians and musicologists of petty-bourgeois origins, a ready
inclination to combine with the assimilation of new material, an inordinate
respect for all that is established, accepted, acknowledged. An
uncompromising mind is the very opposite of primitivism, neophytism, or the
'non-capitalist world'. It presupposes experience, a historical memory, a
fastidious intellect and above all an ample measure of satiety. It has been
observed time and again how those recruited young and innocent to radical
groups have defected once they felt the force of tradition. One must have
tradition in oneself, to hate it properly. That snobs show more aptitude
than proletarians for avant-garde movements in art throws light on politics
too. Late-comers and newcomers have an alarming affinity to positivism,
from Carnap-worshippers in India to the stalwart defenders of the German
masters Matthias Grünewald and Heinrich Schütz. It would be poor psychology
to assume that exclusion arouses only hate and resentment; it arouses too a
possessive, intolerant kind of love, and those whom repressive culture has
held at a distance can easily enough become its most diehard defenders.
There is even an echo of this in the sententious language of the worker who
wants,- as a Socialist, to 'learn something', to partake of the so-called
heritage, and the philistinism of the Bebels ties less in their
incomprehension of culture than in the alacrity with which they accept it
at face value, identify with it and in so doing, of course, reverse its
meaning. Socialism is in general no more secure against this transformation
than against lapsing theoretically into positivism. It can happen easily
enough that in the Far East Marx is put in the place vacated by Driesch and
Rickert. There is some reason to fear that the involvement of non-Western
peoples in the conflicts of industrial society, long overdue in itself,
will be less to the benefit of the liberated peoples than to that of
rationally improved production and communications, and a modestly raised
standard of living. Instead of expecting miracles of the pre-capitalist
peoples, older nations should be on their guard against their
unimaginative, indolent taste for everything proven, and for the successes
of the West.