“晚期资本主义还是工业社会?”——阿多诺与达伦多夫关于当代社会本质的争论

阿多诺与达伦多夫在1968年关于当代社会性质的争论,是德国战后社会理论发展中的一个重要事件,对我们今天的理论探讨仍富有启发意义。达伦多夫认为,马克思之后的西方社会发生了一系列重大变化,并动摇了马克思资本主义理论的基础,因此西方社会已经不再是资本主义社会,进入了工业社会的后资本主义阶段。阿多诺首先从社会理论的方法入手,认为达伦多夫的非辩证理论忽略了社会的客观结构,固执于个别的和主观的要素,因此不能把握当代社会的本质。按照阿多诺的辩证的社会理论,当代社会仍然处于马克思诊断的有效范围之内,仍是资本主义社会。但由于生产力的发展,资本主义表现出了诸多新的特征,如技术向生产关系领域的渗透、需求被操控、阶级关系的国际化等等。

Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?:The controversy between Adorno and Dahrendorf about the essence of contemporary society

The controversy between Adorno and Dahrendorf about the essence of contemporary society in 1968 is an important event of the development of social theory in Germany after the second world-war and significant even for today’s theoretical discussion.To Dahrendorf,west society has changed greatly since Marx,thus Marxism lost its foundation;west society is not capitalist society any more,but the post-capitalism stage of industry society.Starting with the problem of method of social theory,Adorno held that Dahrendorf ignores the objective structure and persist falsely in subjective and individual moments,thus he can not grasp the essence of contemporary society.According to Adorno’s dialectical social theory,Marx’s "diagnose" of contemporary society(capitalist society) is still valid,whereas capitalism represents several new characters because of the development of product power,such as the infiltration of technology into the field of product relation,control of needs and internationalization of class relations.