Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory 385Precisely this was Adorno’s own practice, however. Thus in late au-
tumn 1959, he gave a lecture at a conference of the Coordinating Coun-
cil for Christian–Jewish Cooperation that was devoted to the question:
‘The Meaning of Working Through the Past’. The ideas put forward in
this talk were subsequently extended in his public lectures on ‘Fighting
Anti-Semitism Today’^75 and then, in 1966, ‘Education after Auschwitz’.
By this time, he stood in the spotlight of public affairs. This was a
moment when people were once again calling for the restoration of
sovereignty for the Federal Republic and when the democratic state
and the rule of law were having to prove that they could provide a
stable foundation for the new society. It was at this point that the Frank-
furt sociologist put his reputation on the line to warn against the danger
of the survival of National Socialism. ‘I consider the survival of Na-
tional Socialism within democracy to be potentially more menacing than
the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy.’^76
What had induced Adorno to sound the alarm about the imminent
threat of a relapse into authoritarian modes of reaction was an outbreak
of swastika daubing in Cologne during Christmas 1959. This had led
to a public debate about the stability or instability of West German
democracy.^77 What was striking was the muted nature of the protests
against these outrages,^78 while in the press it was the negative impact
on foreign opinion that was stressed. The self-image of the homeland
of the economic miracle had been tarnished.^79 Given this background,
Adorno asked provocatively whether democracy in Germany was any
more than a foreign import or a political formation imposed by the
victorious Western powers that was accepted in Germany only because
it seemed to work and had brought economic prosperity. This economic
prosperity supplied the secondary reason for accepting the demands
made by democracy, an arrangement that also represented compensa-
tion for the damage done to the collective narcissism of the nation. He
finally ventured to speculate whether parliamentary democracy might
not be regarded as a manifestation of power, a feature that would en-
dear it to a nation traditionally bound to authority. Adorno interpreted
this opportunistic attitude towards democracy as a sign that ‘democracy
has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience
it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process.
Democracy is perceived as one system among others, as though one
could choose from a menu between communism, democracy, fascism
and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves
as the expression of their political maturity. It is appraised according to
its success or setbacks, whereby special interests also play a role, rather
than as a union of the individual and the collective interests.’ The view
current at the time that democracy was a political formation that cit-
izens still had to learn was rejected by Adorno as the expression of false
consciousness. It was the view of ‘people who play up their own naivety
and political immaturity in a disingenuous manner’^80 so as not to have