文章 - 阿多诺：文化工业再思考

本来想发一篇中文译文，但读后发现错误太多。因此改发英文译文。中文译文还是附后。--人文与社会

英文原载：New German Critique, 6, Fall 1975, 12-19 (translated by Anson G. Rabinbach)
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/D ... dustry_reconsidered.shtml


1
The term culture industry was perhaps used for the first time in the book Dialectic of Enlightenment, which Horkheimer and I published in Amsterdam in 1947. In our drafts we spoke of "mass culture". We replaced that expression with "culture industry" in order to exclude from the outset the interpretation agreeable to its advocates: that it is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art. From the latter the culture industry must be distinguished in the extreme. The culture industry fuses the old and familiar into a new quality. In all its branches, products which are tailored for consumption by masses, and which to a great extent determine the nature of that consumption, are manufactured more or less according to plan. The individual branches are similar in structure or at least fit into each other, ordering themselves into a system almost without a gap. This is made possible by contemporary technical capabilities as well as by economic and administrative concentration.

2
The culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above. To the detriment of both it forces together the spheres of high and low art, separated for thousands of years. The seriousness of high art is destroyed in speculation about its efficacy; the seriousness of the lower perishes with the civilizational constraints imposed on the rebellious resistance inherent within it as long as social control was not yet total. Thus, although the culture industry undeniably speculates on the conscious and unconscious state of the millions towards which it is directed, the masses are not primary, but secondary, they are an object of calculation; an appendage of the machinery. The customer is not king, as the culture industry would have us believe, not its subject but its object. The very word mass-media, specially honed for the culture industry, already shifts the accent onto harmless terrain. Neither is it a question of primary concern for the masses, nor of the techniques of communication as such, but of the spirit which sufflates them, their master's voice. The culture industry misuses its concern for the masses in order to duplicate, reinforce and strengthen their mentality, which it presumes is given and unchangeable. How this mentality might be changed is excluded throughout. The masses are not the measure but the ideology of the culture industry, even though the culture industry itself could scarcely exist without adapting to the masses.

3
The cultural commodities of the industry are governed, as Brecht and Suhrkamp expressed it thirty years ago, by the principle of their realization as value, and not by their own specific content and harmonious formation. The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms. Ever since these cultural forms first began to earn a living for their creators as commodities in the market-place they had already possessed something of this quality. But then they sought after profit only indirectly, over and above their autonomous essence. New on the part of the culture industry is the direct and undisguised primacy of a precisely and thoroughly calculated efficacy in its most typical products. The autonomy of works of art, which of course rarely ever predominated in an entirely pure form, and was always permeated by a constellation of effects, is tendentially eliminated by the culture industry, with or without the conscious will of those in control. The latter include both those who carry out directives as well as those who hold the power. In economic terms they are or were in search of new opportunities for the realization of capital in the most economically developed countries. The old opportunities became increasingly more precarious as a result of the same concentration process which alone makes the culture industry possible as an omnipresent phenomenon.

4
Culture, in the true sense, did not simply accommodate itself to human beings; but it always simultaneously raised a protest against the petrified relations under which they lived, thereby honoring them. In so far as culture becomes wholly assimilated to and integrated in those petrified relations, human beings are once more debased. Cultural entities typical of the culture industry are no longer also commodities, they are commodities through and through. This quantitative shift is so great that it calls forth entirely new phenomena. Ultimately, the culture industry no longer even needs to directly pursue everywhere the profit interests from which it originated. These interests have become objectified in its ideology and have even made themselves independent of the compulsion to sell the cultural commodities which must be swallowed anyway. The culture industry turns into public relations, the manufacturing of "goodwill" per se, without regard for particular firms or saleable objects. Brought to bear is a general uncritical consensus, advertisements produced for the world, so that each product of the culture industry becomes its own advertisement.

5
Nevertheless, those characteristics which originally stamped the transformation of literature into a commodity are maintained in this process. More than anything in the world, the culture industry has its ontology, a scaffolding of rigidly conservative basic categories which can be gleaned, for example, from the commercial English novels of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What parades as progress in the culture industry, as the incessantly new which it offers up, remains the disguise for an eternal sameness; everywhere the changes mask a skeleton which has changed just as little as the profit motive itself since the time it first gained its predominance over culture.

6
Thus, the expression "industry" is not to be taken too literally. It refers to the standardization of the thing itself — such as that of the Western, familiar to every movie-goer — and to the rationalization of distribution techniques, but not strictly to the production process. Although in film, the central sector of the culture industry, the production process resembles technical modes of operation in the extensive division of labor, the employment of machines and the separation of the laborers from the means of production — expressed in the perennial conflict between artists active in the culture industry and those who control it — individual forms of production are nevertheless maintained. Each product affects an individual air; individuality itself serves to reinforce ideology, in so far as the illusion is conjured up that the completely reified and mediated is a sanctuary from immediacy and life. Now, as ever, the culture industry exists in the "service" of third persons, maintaining its affinity to the declining circulation process of capital, to the commerce from which it came into being. Its ideology above all makes use of the star system, borrowed from individualistic art and its commercial exploitation. The more dehumanized its methods of operation and content, the more diligently and successfully the culture industry propagates supposedly great personalities and operates with heart-throbs. It is industrial more in a sociological sense, in the incorporation of industrial forms of organization even when nothing is manufactured — as in the rationalization of office work — rather than in the sense of anything really and actually produced by technological rationality. Accordingly, the misinvestments of the culture industry are considerable, throwing those branches rendered obsolete by new techniques into crises, which seldom lead to changes for the better.

7
The concept of technique in the culture industry is only in name identical with technique in works of art. In the latter, technique is concerned with the internal organization of the object itself, with its inner logic. In contrast, the technique of the culture industry is, from the beginning, one of distribution and mechanical reproduction, and therefore always remains external to its object. The culture industry finds ideological support precisely in so far as it carefully shields itself from the full potential of the techniques contained in its products. It lives parasitically from the extra-artistic technique of the material production of goods, without regard for the obligation to the internal artistic whole implied by its functionality (Sachlichkeit), but also without concern for the laws of form demanded by aesthetic autonomy. The result for the physiognomy of the culture industry is essentially a mixture of streamlining, photographic hardness and precision on the one hand, and individualistic residues, sentimentality and an already rationally disposed and adapted romanticism on the other. Adopting Benjamin's designation of the traditional work of art by the concept of aura, the presence of that which is not present, the culture industry is defined by the fact that it does not strictly counterpose another principle to that of aura, but rather by the fact that it conserves the decaying aura as a foggy mist. By this means the culture industry betrays its own ideological abuses.

8
It has recently become customary among cultural officials as well as sociologists to warn against underestimating the culture industry while pointing to its great importance for the development of the consciousness of its consumers. It is to be taken seriously, without cultured snobbism. In actuality the culture industry is important as a moment of the spirit which dominates today. Whoever ignores its influence out of skepticism for what it stuffs into people would be naive. Yet there is a deceptive glitter about the admonition to take it seriously. Because of its social role, disturbing questions about its quality, about truth or untruth, and about the aesthetic niveau of the culture industry's emissions are repressed, or at least excluded from the so-called sociology of communications. The critic is accused of taking refuge in arrogant esoterica. It would be advisable first to indicate the double meaning of importance that slowly worms its way in unnoticed. Even if it touches the lives of innumerable people, the function of something is no guarantee of its particular quality. The blending of aesthetics with its residual communicative aspects leads art, as a social phenomenon, not to its rightful position in opposition to alleged artistic snobbism, but rather in a variety of ways to the defense of its baneful social consequences. The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation for reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic. On the contrary: such reflection becomes necessary precisely for this reason. To take the culture industry as seriously as its unquestioned role demands, means to take it seriously critically, and not to cower in the face of its monopolistic character.

9
Among those intellectuals anxious to reconcile themselves with the phenomenon and eager to find a common formula to express both their reservations against it and their respect for its power, a tone of ironic toleration prevails unless they have already created a new mythos of the twentieth century from the imposed regression. After all, those intellectuals maintain, everyone knows what pocket novels, films off the rack, family television shows rolled out into serials and hit parades, advice to the lovelorn and horoscope columns are all about. All of this, however, is harmless and, according to them, even democratic since it responds to a demand, albeit a stimulated one. It also bestows all kinds of blessings, they point out, for example, through the dissemination of information, advice and stress reducing patterns of behavior. Of course, as every sociological study measuring something as elementary as how politically informed the public is has proven, the information is meager or indifferent. Moreover, the advice to be gained from manifestations of the culture industry is vacuous, banal or worse, and the behavior patterns are shamelessly conformist.

10
The two-faced irony in the relationship of servile intellectuals to the culture industry is not restricted to them alone. It may also be supposed that the consciousness of the consumers themselves is split between the prescribed fun which is supplied to them by the culture industry and a not particularly well-hidden doubt about its blessings. The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all.

11
The most ambitious defense of the culture industry today celebrates its spirit, which might be safely called ideology, as an ordering factor. In a supposedly chaotic world it provides human beings with something like standards for orientation, and that alone seems worthy of approval. However, what its defenders imagine is preserved by the culture industry is in fact all the more thoroughly destroyed by it. The color film demolishes the genial old tavern to a greater extent than bombs ever could: the film exterminates its imago. No homeland can survive being processed by the films which celebrate it, and which thereby turn the unique character on which it thrives into an interchangeable sameness.

12
That which legitimately could be called culture attempted, as an expression of suffering and contradiction, to maintain a grasp on the idea of the good life. Culture cannot represent either that which merely exists or the conventional and no longer binding categories of order which the culture industry drapes over the idea of the good life as if existing reality were the good life, and as if those categories were its true measure. If the response of the culture industry's representatives is that it does not deliver art at all, this is itself the ideology with which they evade responsibility for that from which the business lives. No misdeed is ever righted by explaining it as such.

13
The appeal to order alone, without concrete specificity, is futile; the appeal to the dissemination of norms, without these ever proving themselves in reality or before consciousness, is equally futile. The idea of an objectively binding order, huckstered to people because it is so lacking for them, has no claims if it does not prove itself internally and in confrontation with human beings. But this is precisely what no product of the culture industry would engage in. The concepts of order which it hammers into human beings are always those of the status quo. They remain unquestioned, unanalyzed and undialectically presupposed, even if they no longer have any substance for those who accept them. In contrast to the Kantian, the categorical imperative of the culture industry no longer has anything in common with freedom. It proclaims: you shall conform, without instruction as to what; conform to that which exists anyway, and to that which everyone thinks anyway as a reflex of its power and omnipresence.

14
The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness. The order that springs from it is never confronted with what it claims to be or with the real interests of human beings. Order, however, is not good in itself. It would be so only as a good order. The fact that the culture industry is oblivious to this and extols order in abstracto, bears witness to the impotence and untruth of the messages it conveys. While it claims to lead the perplexed, it deludes them with false conflicts which they are to exchange for their own. It solves conflicts for them only in appearance, in a way that they can hardly be solved in their real lives. In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then in empty harmony, they are reconciled with the general, whose demands they had experienced at the outset as irreconcilable with their interests. For this purpose the culture industry has developed formulas which even reach into such non-conceptual areas as light musical entertainment. Here too one gets into a "jam", into rhythmic problems, which can be instantly disentangled by the triumph of the basic beat.

15
Even its defenders, however, would hardly contradict Plato openly who maintained that what is objectively and intrinsically untrue cannot also be subjectively good and true for human beings. The concoctions of the culture industry are neither guides for a blissful life, nor a new art of moral responsibility, but rather exhortations to toe the line, behind which stand the most powerful interests. The consensus which it propagates strengthens blind, opaque authority. If the culture industry is measured not by its own substance and logic, but by its efficacy, by its position in reality and its explicit pretensions; if the focus of serious concern is with the efficacy to which it always appeals, the potential of its effect becomes twice as weighty. This potential, however, lies in the promotion and exploitation of the ego-weakness to which the powerless members of contemporary society, with its concentration of power, are condemned. Their consciousness is further developed retrogressively. It is no coincidence that cynical American film producers are heard to say that their pictures must take into consideration the level of eleven-year-olds. In doing so they would very much like to make adults into eleven-year-olds.

16
It is true that thorough research has not, for the time being, produced an airtight case proving the regressive effects of particular products of the culture industry. No doubt an imaginatively designed experiment could achieve this more successfully than the powerful financial interests concerned would find comfortable. In any case, it can be assumed without hesitation that steady drops hollow the stone, especially since the system of the culture industry that surrounds the masses tolerates hardly any deviation and incessantly drills the same formulas on behavior. Only their deep unconscious mistrust, the last residue of the difference between art and empirical reality in the spiritual make-up of the masses explains why they have not, to a person, long since perceived and accepted the world as it is constructed for them by the culture industry. Even if its messages were as harmless as they are made out to be — on countless occasions they are obviously not harmless, like the movies which chime in with currently popular hate campaigns against intellectuals by portraying them with the usual stereotypes — the attitudes which the culture industry calls forth are anything but harmless. If an astrologer urges his readers to drive carefully on a particular day, that certainly hurts no one; they will, however, be harmed indeed by the stupefication which lies in the claim that advice which is valid every day and which is therefore idiotic, needs the approval of the stars.

17
Human dependence and servitude, the vanishing point of the culture industry, could scarcely be more faithfully described than by the American interviewee who was of the opinion that the dilemmas of the contemporary epoch would end if people would simply follow the lead of prominent personalities. In so far as the culture industry arouses a feeling of well-being that the world is precisely in that order suggested by the culture industry, the substitute gratification which it prepares for human beings cheats them out of the same happiness which it deceitfully projects. The total effect of the culture industry is one of anti-enlightenment, in which, as Horkheimer and I have noted, enlightenment, that is the progressive technical domination of nature, becomes mass deception and is turned into a means for fettering consciousness. It impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves. These, however, would be the precondition for a democratic society which needs adults who have come of age in order to sustain itself and develop. If the masses have been unjustly reviled from above as masses, the culture industry is not among the least responsible for making them into masses and then despising them, while obstructing the emancipation for which human beings are as ripe as the productive forces of the epoch permit.


阿多诺(T.W.Adorno)著 高丙中译

" 文化工业"（culture industry）这个术语可能是在《启蒙辩证法》这本书中首先使用的。霍克海默和我于1947年在荷兰的阿姆斯特丹出版了该书。在我们的草稿中，我们使用的是"大众文化"（mass culture）。大众文化的倡导者认为，它是这样一种文化，仿佛同时从大众本身产生出来似的，是流行艺术的当代形式。我们为了从一开始就避免与此一致的解释，就采用"文化工业"代替了它。我们必须最大限度地把它与文化工业区别开来。文化工业把古老的和熟习的熔铸成一种新的品质。在它的各个分支，特意为大众的消费而制作并因而在很大程度上决定了消费的性质的那些产品，或多或少是有计划地炮制的。各个分支在结构上是相似的，或者至少是互相适应的，以便使它们自己构成一个几乎没有鸿沟的系统。这成其为可能，既是由于当代技术的发展水平，也是由于经济的和行政的集中化。文化工业别有用心地自上而下整合它的消费者。它把分隔了数千年的高雅艺术与低俗艺术的领域强行聚合在一起，结果，双方都深受其害。高雅艺术的严肃性在它的效用被人投机利用时遭到了毁灭；低俗艺术的严肃性在文明的重压下消失殆尽--文明的重压加诸它富于造反精神的抵抗性，而这种抵抗性在社会控制尚未达到整体化的时期，一直都是它所固有的。因此，尽管文化工业无可否认地一直在投机利用它所诉诸的千百万的意识和无意识，但是，大众绝不是首要的，而是次要的：他们是算计的对象，是机器的附属物。顾客不是上帝，不是文化产品的主体，而是客体。文化工业使我们相信事情就是如此。大众媒介是特别为文化工业打磨出来的，它已经把着重点转到了无害的领域。它既不存在首先关心大众的问题，也不是一个传播技术的问题，而是使大众自我膨胀的精神的问题，是他们的主人的声音的问题。文化工业错误地把它对大众的关心用于复制、强化他们的精神，它假设这种精神是被给予的、不可改变的。这种精神如何被改变的问题完全被置之不理。大众不是文化工业的衡量尺度，而是文化工业的意识形态，尽管文化工业本身如果不适应大众就基本上不可能存在。

正如布莱希特和苏尔坎普（Suhrkamp）在30年前所说的，工业生产的文化商品是由它们实现价值的原则所主宰的，而不是由它们自身特殊的内容和和谐的形式所决定的。文化工业的全部实践就在于把赤裸裸的赢利动机投放到各种文化形式上。甚至自从这些文化形式一开始作为商品为它们的作者在市场上谋生存的时候起，它们就或多或少已经拥有了这种性质。但是，在那时，它们对利润的追求只是间接的，仍不失它们的自治本质。文化工业带来的新东西是在它的最典型的产品中直截了当地、毋庸乔装地把对于效用的精确的和彻底的算计放在首位。艺术作品的自治--甚至在完全纯粹的形式中也很少起主宰作用，并且总是被一系列对效益的考虑所渗透--在一场不可逆转的历史趋势中被文化工业剥夺了，而那些控制的人有的有明确的意志，有的没有意识到。这些人既包括那些拥有权力的人，也包括那些执行命令的人。用经济学的话来说，在经济上最发达的那些国家，他们在寻求或者曾经寻求实现资本的新机会。老机会变得越来越不稳定，这是使文化工业得以成为一种无所不在的现象的那同一种集中化过程的结果。在真实的意义上，文化过去一直没有完全使它自己适应人类；但是，它过去总是能够及时对人们生于其中的僵化关系提出抗议，并因而对他们表示尊敬。既然文化现在变得完全被这种僵化关系吸收了，并整合了，那么，人类又一次被贬低了。说到作为典型的文化工业产物的文化作品时，我们不再说它们也是商品，它们现在是彻头彻尾的商品。这一量的转化是如此之大，以致它引出了全新的现象。文化工业最终甚至不再需要直接处处追求利润--它曾经是从直接追求利润发展起来的。利润带来的这些利益已经在它的意识形态里对象化了，甚至已经使它们自身独立于售卖文化商品的冲动之外。文化工业转化成了公共关系，转化了"善"本身的制造，而不涉及特定的商社或可销售的货物。"使之具有"是一个普遍的、未受批判的共识，广告是为世界制作的，于是，文化工业的每一件产品都变成了它自己的广告。

然而，当初作为文学转化为商品的标志的那些特征在这一过程中仍然保存着。最根本的在于，文化工业有它自己的本体论。这一本体论是严格的保守主义的基本范畴的脚手架。举例来说，这些范畴可以从17世纪末和18世纪初的商业性英语小说中收集。在文化工业的发展中不断由文化工业提供的新东西，仍然是永远雷同的伪装；时时处处，推陈出新的外衣套在一个骨架上，而这个骨架就像追求利润的动机本身一样自从它第一次赢得了对于文化的统治权以来就没有什么改变。

因此，"工业"这个词不要太注重字面的理解。它是指事物本身的标准化--例如西方的、电影院常客了如指掌的那些东西的标准化，是指扩散技术的理性化，而不是严格地指那种生产过程。尽管在电影这一文化工业的中心部门中，生产过程等于是劳动高度分工条件下操作的技术方式，但是，机器的使用，劳动力与生产方式的分离（表现在活跃在文化工业中的艺术家与控制着文化工业的那些人之间永恒的冲突之中），生产的各种形式，都依旧保持着。每一件产品都假装具有个别的样子，而这种个别性本身是为强化意识形态服务的，既然幻想是魔法般召唤出来的，那么，那些完全具体化和媒介化了的东西是直接现实和生活的避难所。现在，文化工业一如既往地作为对第三者的服务而存在，它保持着与资本的下倾流动过程的密切联系，保持着与它得以存在的商业的密切联系。它的意识形态首先利用了明星制度，而这一制度是从个性主义的艺术及其商业开发中挪借过来的。它的操作方法和内容越是缺少人性，文化工业就越能努力地、成功地宣传想像中的巨大人格，并能让人心跳地运作。更多地是在社会学的意义上，在结合工业的多种组织形式的意义上，而不是在技术理性实际生产的东西的意义上，它是工业的（即使什么也不生产，例如办公室工作的理性化）。与此相应，文化工业的错误投资是相当可观的，它把那些被新技术转变为陈旧落后的分支投入到危机之中，而这些危机难以向好的方面转变。

文化工业的技术概念只是在字面上与艺术作品中的技术是相同的。在后者中，技术与对象本身的内在组织有关，与它的内在逻辑有关。与此相反，文化工业的技术从一开始就是扩散的技术，机械复制的技术，所以总是外在于它的对象。只是就文化工业小心翼翼地使它自己避免包含在它的产品中的技术的充分潜力的影响而论，它依靠意识形态的支撑。它寄生在外在于艺术的、对物品进行物资生产的技术上，无关乎包含在它的功能性中的对内在的艺术整体的职责，也无关乎对审美自治所要求的形式法则的考虑。文化工业的人相学结果实质上是两方面的混合物：一方面是流线型的、照相的硬度和精度，另一方面是个人主义的剩余物、多愁善感和已经理性地揭示并调整了的浪漫主义。如果采用本雅明通过灵韵（aura，一种不在场的在场）这个概念所表达的对于传统的艺术作品的看法，那么，文化工业被这一事实界定了：它并非从严格的意义上使用另一个原则反对灵韵的原则；它更是被这一事实界定了：它保持着已经消逝成一层薄薄的雾的灵韵。文化工业由此暴露了它自己的意识形态弊端。

在指出文化工业对于它的消费者的意识的发展具有极大重要性的同时，提出不要低估它的警告，这在文化官员和社会学家之中已经变成老生常谈了。它一定要受到严肃的对待，这不是一种文化的势力。实际上，文化工业作为在当今占统治地位的精神是重要的。任何人出于对它填充给人民的东西的怀疑态度而忽视它的影响，都是幼稚的。然而，关于要严肃对待它的警告包裹着一种虚假的光芒。由于它的社会角色，关于它的质量，关于它的真实性或非真实性，关于文化工业所表现的美学水准等困扰人的问题没有被突出出来，或者说至少被排除在所谓的传播社会学之外了。批评家被指责以自负的深奥为挡箭牌。首先指出缓慢地在不知不觉中形成的重要性的双重意义，这将是颇有教益的。即使它触击了无数人民的生活，某种东西的功能也不能保证它的特殊品质。美学与它残存的交流性的若干方面的混合，并不导致作为一种社会现象的艺术走向与所谓艺术家的势力相对的公正的位置，而是导致艺术以多种方式维护它的有害的社会后果。文化工业在大众的精神构造中的重要性，并非绝对不是由认为它自己注重实效的科学赋予的，这种赋予是对它的客观的合法性的反映，是对它的存在本质的反映。正相反，恰恰是由于这个原因，这种反映变得必不可少了。像它的无可质疑的角色所要求的那样严肃地对待文化工业，意味着批评性地严肃对待它，而不是在它的垄断性格面前当懦夫。

有这样一些知识分子，他们急于使他们自己与这种现象妥协，渴望找到一个共同的公式，既表达他们反对它的保守态度，也表达他们对它的实力的尊重。如果不是他们已经从强压下的衰退中创造了20世纪的新神话，一种具有讽刺意味的容忍的气氛就会在他们之中流行。毕竟，这些知识分子还能维持，每个人都知道什么样的袖珍小说、当红的电影、家庭电视节目成批地生产出来，并流行一时，给失恋者的建议和占星术栏目俯拾即是。然而，按照他们的说法，所有这些都是无害的，甚至是民主的，因为它们是对一种需要的回应，尽管这种需要是人为地刺激出来的。例如，他们指出，它也通过传播信息、咨询和对简化行为模式的强调，带来了各种希望。当然，正如每一项社会学的研究（它们就像公众被赋予政治信息那样衡量一件事情是不是基本的）已经证实的，信息是不充分的和无关痛痒的。而且，从文化工业的产物中获得的咨询是空洞的、陈腐的乃至更糟，而行为模式则是无所谓羞耻感的循规蹈矩。

卑屈的知识分子与文化工业的关系所具有的双面的讽刺并不只限于这些。也许还可以这样认为，消费者自己的意识被撕成了两半，一半是文化工业提供给他们的预计有疗效的愉快，一半是并未特别掩饰的对它提供的希望的怀疑。"这个世界需要被欺骗"这个短语已经变得比过去曾经预计的更加真实了。正如常言所说，人民不仅为诈骗所倾倒，而且，只要它保证给他们那种最虚无缥缈的满足，他们就会渴望对他们绝不是透明的一种欺骗。由于他们完全知道它被生产出来的目的，他们为了别人另有意图地给以他们的东西，以一种自我安慰的方式促使他们的眼睛视而不见，促使他们的声音表示赞成。如果不接纳它，一旦他们不再依附于实际上什么也不是的那种满足，他们就会觉得，他们的生活完全是不可忍受的。

现在对文化工业最雄心勃勃的维护是赞美它的精神，这种精神是决定秩序的一个因素，称之为意识形态是一点不为过。据说，在一个无秩序的世界里，它为人类提供了进取向上的某种标准，这本身似乎就值得肯定。然而，它的维护者所想像的它所保持的那些东西，实际上恰好是被它更加彻底地摧毁的东西。彩色电影对亲切的老客栈的摧毁，比炸弹可能做的有过之而无不及：这种电影消灭了它的意象。没有谁的祖国可以幸免于不被冲印在胶片上，这些胶片被用于赞美它，并因而把其独特的性格（这正是它成长的基础）转变成一种可以互相交换的雷同性。

可以合法地被称为文化的东西，作为苦难和矛盾的一种表达，试图紧紧抓住关于美好生活的理想。文化既不可能代表那些只是存在的东西，也不可能代表那些习以为常的、不再有束缚力的秩序范畴，文化工业利用这些遮蔽了关于美好生活的理想，仿佛既存的现实就是美好的生活，仿佛这些范畴就是美好生活的真实的衡量标准。如果文化工业的种种现象的社会反应就是这样完全不表现艺术，那么，它本身就是这样一种意识形态，它的产品借此逃避了社会责任。这样的解释从来没有改正过任何罪恶。


对秩序本身的诉求如果没有具体内容，是无用的；对规范的扩散的呼吁如果不借助那些曾经在现实中或意识面前证明过它们自己的东西，同样是无用的。关于客观上有束缚力的秩序的思想被兜售给人民，因为它对他们来说是如此缺乏。如果它不内在地面对人类证明它自己，它就没有任何根据提出要求。然而，这恰恰是文化工业的所有产品都不会卷入的情境。被强加于人类的秩序概念总是现状的概念。即使是在它们不再对那些接受它们的人具有任何实质的时候，它们也一如既往地是未加质疑的、未加分析的、未做辩证思考的。与康德的理论形成对照的是，文化工业的绝对规则不再与自由有任何共同之点。它宣示于众的是：你应该循规蹈矩，即使是在未被告知任何规矩的情况下；应该与任何已经存在的东西保持一致，像其他任何人那样思考--这是它的无所不在的实力的反映。文化工业的威力是如此之大，以致循规蹈矩已经取代了自觉地思考。由它所带来的秩序绝对不符合它所宣称的那个样子，也绝对不符合人类的真正利益。然而，秩序本身并非就是好的。只有好的秩序才是好的。事实上文化工业对此是健忘的，并且只会赞美理论上的秩序。这一事实见证了它所传递的信息的无用性和非真实性。当它宣称引导着陷入困惑的人们的时候，它是在用虚假的冲突蛊惑他们，他们不得不用他们自己的冲突交换这些虚假的冲突。它只是在表面上解决他们的冲突，其解决之道在他们的现实生活中几乎是不可能解决任何问题的。在文化工业的产品中，人类只是在他们可以不受伤害地获救的情况下才陷入麻烦，拯救他们的通常是一个充满善意的集体的代表；然后，在空洞的和谐中，他们得以与这个世界和谐相处，而实际上他们在事先已经亲身经历的东西与他们的利益是不可调和的。为着这个目的，文化工业已经发展出一套公式，它们现在甚至已经触及像轻音乐娱乐节目这样的非观念的领域。在这里，一个人也陷入困境，即陷入节奏上的问题，但是，随着基本节拍占上风，这些问题立刻就迎刃而解了。


柏拉图阐明，客观地、内在地不真实的东西也不可能在主观上对人类是好的和真实的。即使是文化工业的维护者们也很难公开与柏拉图的观点相左。文化工业的编造物既不是幸福生活的向导，也不是富有道德责任的新艺术，而毋宁说是准备起跑的命令，在起跑线后面站着的是最有威力的利益。它宣传的"一致同意"强化了盲目的、不透明的权威。如果文化工业不是由它自己的实质和逻辑来衡量，而是由它的效用、它在现实中的位置和它的露骨的自负来衡量；如果严正关注的焦点是它始终诉求的效用，那么，它的实际潜力就会是双倍的。然而，这种潜力蕴藏于对虚弱的自我的提升和开发。随着现代社会权力的集中，它的无能为力的成员被认定拥有虚弱的自我。他们的意识进一步遭受逆向发展。世上传言愤世疾俗的美国电影导演们说，他们的影片必须把11岁的智力水平考虑进去。在这样做的时候，他们极其容易把成年人变得像是11岁。


确确实实，暂时还没有彻底的研究提供论证严密的材料来证明文化工业的特定产品造成了人们的心智衰退的效果。毫无疑问，靠丰富的想像设计的试验能够比相关的强大的经济利益更有成效地达到这种结果。在任何情况下都可以毫不犹豫地相信水滴石穿，特别是因为环绕着大众的文化工业的体系几乎不能容忍任何分歧，并且持续不断地针对行为操练同样的公式。只有他们的无意识的深处不信任，大众的精神构成中艺术与经验现实之间的差异的最后一点残余物，解释了他们为什么长久以来没有把这个世界认识、接受成文化工业所建构的那个样子。即使它的信息像它们被制作出来时的本意那样是无害的，--在无数的例子中，它们显然不是无害的，如那些与当前流行的怨恨颇为一致的电影通过按照常见的偏见描写知识分子而掀起了一个反对他们的运动--但文化工业所唤起的态度也绝对不是无害的。一个占星家如果在某一天督促他的读者开车小心一点，这当然不会伤害任何人；然而，他们肯定会被麻木所害--这种麻木是由这样的公开声言所造成的：每天都有效并因而是痴人说梦的建议需要明星的赞同。



人类的依赖性和奴役状态，文化工业的尽头，不可能比一个被访谈的美国人描述得更诚实的了。他的观点是，如果人民都直截了当地追随杰出人物，当代的两难矛盾就会结束。既然文化工业激起富裕的感情，那么，这个世界恰恰是处在文化工业所倡导的秩序之中，它为人类准备的替代性满足欺骗了人们，人们甚至被排除在它用谎话编织的那种幸福之外。文化工业的总体效果之一是反启蒙，在这一效果中，正如霍克海默和我曾经指出的，作为不断进步的对自然的技术统治的启蒙，变成了大众欺骗，转变成束缚自觉意识的工具。它妨碍了自主的、独立的个人（他们自觉地为他们自己下判断，做决定）的发展。然而，这些都应该是一个民主的社会的前提条件，这种社会为了维持它自己并求得发展，需要成熟的人。如果大众被来自上面的声音不公正地骂作大众，那么，文化工业对此负有不可推卸的责任：在阻止人类达到他们所处的时代的生产力允许他们达到的解放程度的同时，使他们成为大众并进而轻视他们。



(本文英语题为"Culture Industry Reconsidered"，原载 New German Critique， 6, Fall 1975, pp.12-19.)