Obscenity Is A Moral Concept In The

The Neo-conservative Critics Of Leftist Critics Of Mass Culture Ridicule The Protest Against Bach As Background Music In The Kitchen, Against Plato And Hegel, Shelley And Baudelaire, Marx And Freud In The Drugstore. Instead, They Insist On Recognition Of The Fact That The Classics Have Left The Mausoleum And Come To Life Again, That People Are Just So Much More Educated. True, But Coming To Life As Classics, They Come To Life As Other Than Themselves; They Are Deprived Of Their Antagonistic Force, Of The Estrangement Which Was The Very Dimension Of Their Truth.

This Society Turns Everything It Touches Into A Potential Source Of Progress And Exploitation, Of Drudgery And Satisfaction, Of Freedom And Of Oppression.

Inasmuch As Art Preserves, With The Promise Of Happiness, The Memory Of The Goal That Failed, It Can Enter, As A 'regulative Idea,' The Desperate Struggle For Changing The World. Against All Fetishism Of The Productive Forces, Against The Continued Enslavement Of Individuals By The Objective Conditions (which Remain Those Of Domination), Art Represents The Ultimate Goal Of All Revolutions: The Freedom And Happiness Of The Individual.

The Music Of The Soul Is Also The Music Of Salesmanship. Exchange Value, Not Truth Value Counts. On It Centers The Rationality Of The Status Quo, And All Alien Rationality Is Bent To It.

Ideas, Aspirations, And Objectives That, By Their Content, Transcend The Established Universe Of Discourse And Action Are Either Repelled Or Reduced To Terms Of This Universe.