of classical political economy, proceeds from the assumption that social reality is an objective, law-governed, nature-like sphere. Neither the social relations nor the human activities which give rise to this appearance of a nature-like objectivity are taken into account. 'The materialist concept of a free, self-determining society' emphasized by Horkheimer 14 is possible only on the assumption that individuals are the constitutive subjects of their social world. Rather than 'losing themselves in the status quo', they can reappropriate this social reality and shape it in such a way as to make it correspond to human potentials. The 'idealist conviction that men have this possibility' 15 is demonstrated for Horkheimer by Marx's procedure of defetishizing critique. In this sense critique is not identical with its object domain -- political economy. By analysing the social constitution of this object domain and its historical transitoriness, it also brings to light the contradictory tendencies within it which point towards its transcendence. The critique of political economy aims at a mode of social existence freed from the domination of the economy.
3. The Marxian critique of capitalism exposes the internal contradictions and dysfunctionalities of the system in order to show how and why these give rise to oppositional demands and struggles which cannot be satisfied by the present. Critical theory diagnoses social crises such as to enable and encourage future social transformation. As Horkheimer formulates it: 'Of central importance here is not so much what remains unchanged as the historical movement of the period which is now approaching its end.' 16 He adds: 'The economy is the first cause of wretchedness, and critique, theoretical and practical, must address itself primarily to it.' 17 Yet 'historical change does not leave untouched the relations between the spheres of culture. . . . Isolated economic data will therefore not provide the standard by which the human community [Gemeinschaft] is to be judged'. 18

Although Horkheimer and Marcuse, the co-author of the epilogue to 'Traditional and Critical Theory', perceive 'the economy to be the first cause of wretchedness', they are well aware of the fact that an economic crises theory alone is no longer sufficient to analyse the contradictions of the period between the two world wars; second, as historical change has a cultural dimension, crisis phenomena will not be experienced merely as economic dysfunctionalities, but also as lived crises.

[. . .]

Cultural and psychological relations are already singled out as domains in which individuals live through the crises generated by the economy. Although caused by the economy, these phenomena are not economic in nature. As their early efforts to integrate Erich Fromm's psychoanalytic studies into the research programme of the Institute show,

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Publication Information: Book Title: Mapping Ideology. Contributors: Slavoj Žižek - editor. Publisher: Verso. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1994. Page Number: 70.