Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts - that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man.

Functional communication is only the outer layer of the one- dimensional universe in which man is trained to target-to translate the negative into the positive so that he can continue to function, reduced but fit and reasonably well. The institutions of free speech and freedom of thought do not hamper the mental coordination with the established reality. What is taking place is a sweeping redefinition of thought itself, of its function and content. The coordination of the individual with his society reaches into those layers of the mind where the very concepts are elaborated which are designed to comprehend the established reality. These concepts are taken from the intellectual tradition and translated into operational terms-a translation which has the effect of reducing the tension between thought and reality by weakening the negative power of thought.

The present stage redefines the possibilities of man and nature in accordance with the new means available for their realization.

Dialectical thought understands the critical tension between "is" and "ought" first as an ontological condition, pertaining to the structure of Being itself. However, the recognition of this state of Being - its theory - intends from the beginning a concrete practice. Seen in the light of a truth which appears in them falsified or denied, the given facts themselves appear false and negative.

The people are led to find in the productive apparatus the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered. And in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent.

Now precisely because Galilean science is, in the formation of its concepts, the technic of a specific Lebenswelt, it does not and cannot transcend this Lebenswelt. It remains essentially within the basic experiential framework and within the universe of ends set by this reality.

The philosopher ... subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment - namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society.

Technical progress and more comfortable living permit the systematic inclusion of libidinal components into the realm of commodity production and exchange. But no matter how controlled the mobilization of instinctual energy may be (it sometimes amounts to a scientific management of libido), no matter how much it may serve as a prop for the status quo-it is also gratifying to the managed individuals, just as racing the outboard motor, pushing the power lawn mower, and speeding the automobile are fun.

Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order - for "rational" is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.

It is the sphere farthest removed from the concreteness of society which may show most clearly the extent of the conquest of thought by society.

Entertainment and learning are not opposites; entertainment may be the most effective mode of learning.

Thought is led, by the situation of its objects, to measure their truth in terms of another logic, another universe of discourse. And this logic projects another mode of existence: the realization of the truth in the words and deeds of man. And inasmuch as this project involves man as societal animal," the polis, the movement of thought has a political content. Thus, the Socratic discourse is political discourse inasmuch as it contradicts the established political institutions. The search for the correct definition, for the "concept" of virtue, justice, piety, and knowledge becomes a subversive undertaking, for the concept intends a new polis.

When the whole is at stake, there is no crime except that of rejecting the whole, or not defending it. ... Those who identify themselves with the whole, who are installed as the leaders and defenders of the whole can make mistakes, but they cannot do wrong-they are not guilty. They may become guilty again when this identification no longer holds, when they are gone.

It is the most advanced industrial society which feels most directly threatened by the rebellion, because it is here that the social necessity of repression and alienation, of servitude and heteronomy is most transparently unnecessary, and unproductive in terms of human progress. Therefore the cruelty and violence mobilized in the struggle against the threat, therefore the monotonous regularity with which the people are made familiar with, and accustomed to inhuman attitudes and behavior-to wholesale killing as patriotic act.

In the human reality, all existence that spends itself in procuring the prerequisites of existence is thus an "untrue" and unfree existence. Obviously this reflects the not at all ontological condition of a society based on the proposition that freedom is incompatible with the activity of procuring the necessities of life, that this activity is the "natural" function of a specific class, and that cognition of the truth and true existence imply freedom from the entire dimension of such activity. ... Society still is organized in such a way that procuring the necessities of life constitutes the full-time and life-long occupation of specific social classes, which are therefore unfree and prevented from a human existence. In this sense, the classical proposition according to which truth is incompatible with enslavement by socially necessary labor is still valid.

The range of socially permissible and desirable satisfaction is greatly enlarged, but through this satisfaction, the Pleasure Principle is reduced-deprived of the claims which are irreconcilable with the established society. Pleasure, thus adjusted, generates submission.

The society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with dependence on the "objective order of things" (on economic laws, the market etc.).

Operational analysis ... cannot raise the decisive question whether the consent itself was not the work of manipulation-a question for which the actual state of affairs provides ample justification. The analysis cannot raise it because it would transcend its terms toward transitive meaning-toward a concept of democracy which would reveal the democratic election as a rather limited democratic process. Precisely such a non-operational concept is the one rejected by the authors as "unrealistic" because it defines democracy on too articulate a level as the clear-cut control of representation by the electorate-popular control as popular sovereignty.

The avant-garde and the beatniks share in the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of good will.

Nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given, who does not relate the facts to the factors which have made them, who does not - in his mind - undo the facts. Abstractness is the very life of thought, the token of its authenticity.

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.

No, you cannot expect people to understand the higher reaches of philosophy. Culture should be taken out of the hands of the dollar chasers. We need a national subsidy for literature. It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art works have to be sold like soap.

For thought and speech are of a thinking and speaking subject, and if the life of the latter depends on the performance of a superimposed function, it depends on fulfilling the requirements of this function - thus it depends on those who control these requirements.

The Superego, in censoring the unconscious and in implanting conscience, also censors the censor.

To the degree to which they correspond to the given reality, thought and behavior express a false consciousness, responding to and contributing to the preservation of a false order of facts. And this false consciousness has become embodied in the prevailing technical apparatus which in turn reproduces it.

An autonomous electorate, free because it is free from indoctrination and manipulation, would indeed be on a "level of articulate opinion and ideology" which is not likely to be found. Therefore, the concept has to be rejected as "unrealistic"-has to be if one accepts the factually prevailing level of opinion and ideology as prescribing the valid criteria for sociological analysis. And-if indoctrination and manipulation have reached the stage where the prevailing level of opinion has become a level of falsehood, where the actual state of affairs is no longer recognized as that which it is, then an analysis which is methodologically committed to reject transitive concepts commits itself to a false consciousness. Its very empiricism is ideological.

The soul contains few secrets and longings which cannot be sensibly discussed, analyzed, and polled. Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. Logical and linguistic analysis demonstrate that the old metaphysical problems are illusory problems; the quest for the "meaning" of things can be reformulated as the quest for the meaning of words, and the established universe of discourse and behavior can provide perfectly adequate criteria for the answer.

At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.

Is this fight against history part of the fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal faculties and forces might develop-faculties and forces that might hinder the total coordination of the individual with the society? Remembrance of the Fast may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory. Remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, a mode of "mediation" which breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again.

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.

The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.

The happy consciousness is shaky enough-a thin surface over fear, frustration, and disgust.

The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.

Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation-this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name-the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the "faithless faith" in the reality whose victims they are.

In its relation to the reality of daily life, the high culture of the past was many things-opposition and adornment, outcry and resignation. But it was also the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave.

In [Aristotle's] formal logic, thought is organized in a manner very different from that of the Platonic dialogue. In this formal logic, thought is indifferent toward its objects. Whether they are mental or physical, whether they pertain to society or to nature, they become subject to the same general laws of organization, calculation, and conclusion - but they do so as fungible signs or symbols, in abstraction from their particular "substance." This general quality (quantitative quality) is the precondition of law and order - in logic as well as in society - the price of universal control.

Hegel's philosophy revolved about the universality of reason; it was a rational system with its every part (the subjective as well as the objective spheres) integrated into a comprehensive whole. Marx shows that capitalist society first put such a universality into practice.

Outside the academic establishment, the "far-reaching change in all our habits of thought" is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of "Worship together this week," "Why not try God," Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.

The operations of understanding thus divide the world into numberless polarities, and Hegel uses the expression 'isolated reflection' (isolierte Reflection) to characterize the manner in which understanding forms and connects its polar concepts. The rise and spread of this kind of thinking Hegel connects with the origin and prevalence of crucial relationships in human life. The antagonisms of 'isolated reflections' express real antagonisms. .... Isolation and opposition are not, however, the final state of affairs. The world must not remain a complex of fixed disparates. The unity that underlies the antagonisms must be grasped and realized by reason, which has the task of reconciling the opposites and 'sublimating' them in a true unity.

Hegel's philosophy was an integral part of the culture which authoritarianism had to overcome. It is therefore no accident that the National Socialist assault on Hegel begins with the repudiation of his political theory.

The fault with Hegel lies much deeper than in his glorification of the Prussian monarchy. He is guilty not so much of being servile as of betraying his highest philosophical ideas. His political doctrine surrenders society to nature, freedom to necessity, reason to caprice. And in so doing, it mirrors the destiny of the social order that falls, while in pursuit of its freedom, into a state of nature far below reason.

All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own.

Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

Sociology does not 'negate' philosophy, in the sense of taking over the hidden content of philosophy and carrying it into social theory and practice, but sets itself up as a realm apart from philosophy, with a province and truth of its own. Comte is rightly held to be the inaugurator of this separation between philosophy and sociology.

As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.

Being is continuous becoming.

The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.

The guiding question of Marx's analysis was, How does capitalist society supply its members with the necessary use-values? And the answer disclosed a process of blind necessity, chance, anarchy and frustration. The introduction of the category of use-value was the introduction of a forgotten factor, forgotten, that is, by the classical political economy which was occupied only with the phenomenon of exchange value. In the Marxian theory, this factor becomes an instrument that cuts through the mystifying reification of the commodity world.

Non-operational ideas are non-behavioral and subversive. The movement of thought is stopped at barriers which appear as the limits of Reason itself.

The notion contradicts reality when the latter has become self-contradictory. Hegel says that a prevailing social form can be successfully attacked by thought only if this form has come into open contradiction with its own 'truth,' in other words, if it can no longer fulfill the demands of its own contents.