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same time the socio-historical base of criticism. In the conclusion of his interesting analysis of Adorno’s thought, Willms thus interprets the theoretical basis of his dialectics: »It deals with totality, hence its importance. But the aggressiveness of the critical social theory is a rearguard battle. It is perhaps a strategical retreat: thought retreats to its point of departure, subjectivity, in order to make a last stand there. This is the theory of freedom, but only of a negative one«.³³

In his well known discussion on the methodology of social Sciences, Adorno said that sociology’s renunciation of the critical theory of so-ciety was a result of resignation. Men no longer dare think of totality because they would despair at their inability to change it.³⁴ Is this not, mutatis mutandis, applicable to the present condition of the critical theory, which is retreating either into the sphere of the allegedly transcendental qualities of science and technology, or into the society-versus-the-individual analysis through the idea of a universal oppres-sion of individuals, without making the necessary efforts to compre-hend the development of contemporary science or the society/indivi-dual relationship in different types of contemporary societies within the complex of both their internal socio-economical and class relation-ships and contradictions, and of international conditions, or to reveal by means of a comprehensive concrete-historical institutional analysis the various aspects and means of oppression. There is no doubt that the society/individual relationship is one of the key sociological prob-lems. Its critical examination is in the spirit of the Marxian thought to the effect that society as an abstraction must be prevented from being counterpoised against the individual. The aspect of oppression has always been highly important in the study of this relationship, and is even morę so today. But it must never by forgotten that in addition to the oPpressed there are also the oppressors, their well-paid, »reput-able« servants and lumpen-proletarian tools. The meaning of oppression and the society/individual relationship are altogether different in these various social situations, both for the maintenance and for the overthrow of the existing system. The same theoretical vagueness, in fact a theoretical obfuscation, arises from the abstract application of the imoprtant idea of alienation separated from the fundamental analysis of the social structure resulting from concrete historical conditions. Unfortunately, investigations into contemporary forms of social structure and organization have long been outside the main sphere of interest of the critical theory.³⁵ Harmful consequences have been mul-

³³    B. Willms, »Theorie, Kritik und Dialektik«, in the compendium Ober Theodor W. Adorno, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1968, p. 89.

³⁴    »Die Verzicht der Soziologie auf eine kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft is resignativ: man wagt das Ganze nicht mehr zu denken, weil man daran verzwei-feln muss, es zu verandern«. (Th. W. Adorno, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 262-263).

³⁵    Very characteristic in this respect is the book, Soziologische Exkurse. Despitc Horkheimer^łs and Adorno^ł$ reservations in the foreword, it is nevertheles$ the most thorough attempt at a comprehensive presentation of the category apparatus of the Frankfurt school. The book, however, has not developed the conceptions of social structure, social organization, classes, bureaucracy. As social forms of mediation between society and individuals, reference is madę only to social groups (among which the classes are hardly mentioned at all), the mass, the family and the local

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