Authoritarianism

A panel hosted by Platypus London on October 19, 2017 at Goldsmiths, University of London. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Jack Conrad HaPe Breitman Robert Liow Lyndon White Description Labour lost the election. But Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran of the 1980’s Labour left, seems to have saved the party. Corbyn’s tenure has raised old questions about the Left’s relationship to the Labour Party. [Read More]

A. The Place of the Study in today’s Research In order to bring into relief the purpose and scope of the study it seems appropriate to denote its relation to other current research into prejudice. We shall try to achieve this through an examination of the specific differences between our work and that of others. To be sure, these differences are partly due to extraneous and more or less accidental circumstances such as the set-up out of which the study grew, the composition of the senior staff who was particularly interested in the socio-psychological aspects of the project, and others. [Read More]

WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO CLAIM that a person, social group, or historical moment is authoritarian by varying degrees? In what way can the emergence of modern authoritarianism be accounted for and how would it be overcome? These were central questions in the landmark 1950 study The Authoritarian Personality (AP), coauthored by T.W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford.1 AP emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War, a time when finding answers to the rise of fascism was a desideratum for intellectuals and political figures. [Read More]

Immanent critique WHENEVER APPROACHING ANY PHENOMENON, Adorno’s procedure is one of immanent dialectical critique. The phenomenon is treated as not accidental or arbitrary but as a necessary form of appearance that points beyond itself, indicating conditions of possibility for change. It is a phenomenon of the necessity for change. The conditions of possibility for change indicated by the phenomenon in question are explored immanently, from within. The possibility for change is indicated by a phenomenon’s self-contradictions, which unfold from within itself, from its own movement, and develop from within its historical moment. [Read More]

WITH THE PRESENT FINANCIAL MELT-DOWN in the U.S. throwing the global economy into question, many on the “Left” are wondering again about the nature of capitalism. While many will be tempted to jump on the bandwagon of the “bailout” being floated by the Bush administration and the Congressional Democrats (including Obama), others will protest the “bailing out” of Wall Street. The rhetoric of “Wall Street vs. Main Street,” between “hardworking America” and the “financial fat cats,” however, belies a more fundamental truth: the two are indissolubly linked and are in fact two sides of the same coin of capitalism. [Read More]