CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

immediately related to the economic base; one gets the sense that he suggests they are
one-sidedly determined by the economic base, though the issue is precisely that Benjamin
does not thematize the relation between superstructural and economic elements, but
simply builds images of the phenomena and juxtaposes them with images of the
economic conditions. Adorno, as we have already seen (chapter 3) is critical of the
Marxian view of the relation between base and superstructure; he favors a more Hegelian
approach that sees every social element as mediated by, and itself meditating of, the
social totality, and not just determined by or immediately related to the economic base.
In his scathing critique of the first draft of Benjamin’s Baudelaire essay, written in
a letter to Benjamin dated November 10, 1938, Adorno says,
Lassen Sie hier so simpel und hegelisch mich ausdrücken wie nur möglich.
Täusche ich mich nicht sehr, so gebricht es dieser Dialektik an einem: der
Vermittlung. Es herrscht durchwegs eine Tendenz, die pragmatischen Inhalte
Baudelaires unmittelbar auf benachbarte Züge der Sozialgeschichte seiner Zeit
und zwar möglichst solche ökonomischer Art zu beziehen.
But, he adds sharply,
Der ist aber kein anderer, als daß ich es für methodisch unglücklich halte,
einzelne sinnfällige Züge aus dem Bereich des Überhaus »materialistisch« zu
wenden, indem man sie zu benachbarten Zügen des Unterbaus unvermittelt und
wohl gar kausal in Beziehung setzt. Die materialistische Determination
kultureller Charaktere ist möglich nur vermittelt durch den Gesamtprozeß. 402
402 Lonitz, Henri, ed. Theodor W. Adorno: Briefe und Briefwechsel, Vol. 1 (Frankfurt Suhrkamp,
1994), 366-7, italics in the original, underline mine. English translation in Lonitz, Henri, ed., trans.
Walker, Nicholas, Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin: The Complete Correspondence 1928-1940
(Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999), 282-3:
Let me express myself in as simple and Hegelian manner as possible. Unless I am very much
mistaken, your dialectic is lacking in one thing: mediation. You show a prevailing tendency to
relate the pragmatic contents of Baudelaire’s work directly and immediately to adjacent features in
the social history, and wherever possible, the economic features, of the time. … I regard it as
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