Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

people would need to come to regard the productsof capitalism differently before any substantialchange was possible. Nevertheless, for Popper, theFrankfurt School’s propaganda campaign betrayedthe worst features of historicism. Adorno presumedthat he already knew not merely that somethingwas wrong with capitalism, but exactly what waswrong with it. Thus, Adorno set himself the task ofconverting consumers to his own incorrigiblebeliefs, rather than testing his fallible knowledgeclaims against consumer response. Ironically,Adorno’s superior epistemic attitude only led himto an increasingly timid political stance. The 40-year failure of the Frankfurt propaganda campaignpointed to capitalism’s unanticipated strength,which in turn spurred Adorno to propagate anintensified – and arguably increasingly obscurantist– version of the original critique.In practice, this meant that Adorno and hiscolleagues left the political arena open to others,typically less enlightened folk who, unburdened bya sense of epistemic superiority, have been happy totry their luck in the ballot box and the marketplace.Beneficiaries have included Adolf Hitler andJ. Walter Thompson. (The juxtaposition of the Nazidictator and the Madison Avenue giant is deliberate,given the role of the Weimar media mogulAlfred Hugenberg in managing Hitler’s rise to151