462 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
inescapable, since he was outraged by some of the things that had come
to his ears. ‘When a student’s room was trashed because he preferred to
work rather than join in actions, on the wall was scrawled: “Whoever
occupies himself with theory without acting practically is a traitor to
socialism.” He is not the only one to have practice used against him
as an ideological pretext for exercising moral blackmail. The thinking
denigrated by actionists apparently demands of them too much effort:
it requires too much work, is too practical.’^67
Adorno’s starting-point was the assumption that ‘practice is the
source of energy of theory’, but no path leads from the latter to the
former. Theory is ‘not only a means of the totality but also a moment
of it; otherwise it could not resist to any degree the captivating spell
of that totality.’^68 If, on the other hand, the distinction between theory
and practice is negated and the idea of an indistinguishable unity is
promulgated, this leads to the primacy of practice. Mind then finds
itself committed to a concretism that is entirely in harmony with ‘the
technocratic-positivistic tendency it believes itself to be opposing’.^69
Adorno clarified the dangers of an unreflecting call for practice by
referring not only to this attack on the student who took an interest
in theory, but also to the discussions in political groups in which free
dialogue is submerged by the ‘privilege accorded to tactics over every-
thing else’. ‘Every argument, untroubled by the question of whether it is
sound, is geared to a purpose. Whatever the opponent says is hardly
perceived and then only so that formulaic clichés can be served up in
retort. No one wants to learn.’^70 Adorno also discerned this tendency
to authoritarian thinking in the mechanisms involved when ‘someone
demands to see your papers’. ‘More implicit and therefore all the more
powerful, is the commandment: you must sign. The individual must
yield to the collective; as recompense for his jumping into the melting
pot, he is promised the grace of being chosen, of belonging.’^71
Adorno was not opposed to people organizing themselves for polit-
ical purposes. He wished rather to draw attention to the Archimedean
point at which ‘a non-repressive practice might be possible, and one
might steer a path between the alternatives of spontaneity and organ-
ization.’ ‘This point, if it exists at all, can only be found through theory.’^72
With these reflections, Adorno sought to steer his way between a
practicism devoid of concepts and a conception of doctrinaire theory
uncoupled from practical action. His own sympathy for theory arose
from a political judgement that was based in turn on a sober ‘analysis
of the situation’. He made this clear in his controversy with Marcuse.
At issue was not any disagreement about how to conceptualize the
relation of theory and practice. It was rather their differing inter-
pretation of the political situation which led the two men to different
conclusions. ‘You believe’, Adorno says in a letter to Marcuse, ‘that
practice in an emphatic sense is not prohibited today; I see the matter
differently.’^73 Given the actual power relations, he was convinced that