A Theory Devoured by Thought 437After his extended period of recuperation in Switzerland and Italy,
Adorno wrote to Gershom Scholem with a particularly detailed account
of the content of Negative Dialectics, a book which, against his normal
practice, was addressed to professional colleagues.^145 He wrote to him
in March 1967: ‘In the immanent epistemological debate, once one has
escaped from the clutches of idealism, what I call the primacy of the
object... seems to me an attempt to do justice to the concept of mate-
rialism. The telling arguments that I believe I have advanced against
idealism present themselves as materialist. But the materialism involved
here is no conclusive, fixed thing, it is not a world-view. This path to
materialism is totally different from dogma, and it is this fact that seems
to me to guarantee an affinity with metaphysics, I might almost have
said, theology.’^146 Adorno went into greater detail about metaphysics
itself, the subject of part III of Negative Dialectics: ‘The wish to salvage
metaphysics is in fact central in Negative Dialectics.’^147 Scholem had
gained the same impression from his own reading of the book: ‘If you
would permit me to sum up my opinion in a few sentences, I would say
that I have never read a purer, more restrained defence of metaphysics.
Starting from a standpoint from which its defence must appear so hope-
less and quixotic ... you have undertaken a breakout whose energy and
resoluteness I find admirable. ... If one takes your materialist thesis
into account, the battle you have waged on behalf of metaphysics is
admirable.’^148 Adorno responded to this praise: ‘I am delighted that this
has come out so clearly and that you sympathize with it.’^149
Despite Scholem’s general approval of Negative Dialectics, he never-
theless questioned whether Adorno could rely on materialist theory
if Marx’s ideas on the historical subject had proved illusory. Scholem
put his finger on the crucial question when he asked whether critical
theory meant anything more than the attempt to retain Marx’s analysis
of capitalism while abandoning the theory of class struggle. He put
forward the cautious suggestion that ‘the thesis of mediation by the
totality of the social process. ..plays the part of a deus ex machina.’^150
Nor was Scholem won over by Adorno’s attempt to make use
of Sohn-Rethel’s assertion that a compelling link could be established
between the universal process of exchange and ‘the processes of
abstraction in consciousness’. ‘I do not wish to rule out a priori the
proposition that ideas and categories can have a social content. What
I cannot understand is the claim that there really is a method for strictly
inferring them.’^151 How did Adorno react to this criticism? Not only did
he accept the differences of opinion between himself and Scholem as
they emerged in this letter, he even admitted ‘that of course they lay in
their respective attitudes to materialism. I lack the naivety to deceive
myself about this and to adjust the weight of the arguments in your
letter in my favour.’^152
While Scholem advanced a number of weighty objections to Negative
Dialectics, Sohn-Rethel’s enthusiasm was boundless. ‘Your book has