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For and Against Protest

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For and Against Protest Guest Article For and Against Protest Guest Article from Stefan Müller-Doohm In the flood of retrospectives of the for example in Hessen and Bavaria. stand how difficult it is to form a just ‘68 movement that in this anniversary In response to the global and do- and responsible opinion of even the year are competing for our attention mestic situation, youth culture and simplest fates, since all news that in the form of books, articles, docu- student protest movements bloomed reaches us is already manipulated. mentaries, films and discussion pa- and, fuelled by state sanctions, grad- But that cannot prevent me from ex- els featuring the ever same group ually developed radical tendencies. pressing my sympathy for the stu- of people who witnessed that period The protests also attracted more and dent whose fate, no matter what is of time, one aspect is often conspi- more public attention as the oppo- reported, stands in no relation to his cuous for its absence. During those sition groups became increasingly participation in a political demon- wild years it was not only happe- media-savvy. Direct actions, sit-ins, stration. [...] I bid you, in memory of nings and so-called “Sponti-Sprüche” and the like now reached the masses the our dead fellow Berlin student (old sayings and slogans that were thanks to broad newspaper and tele- Benno Ohnesorg, to please stand.” altered to be provocative) that were vision coverage. Although Adorno tried to take ac- fashionable with the students; the count of the political students’ need extra-parliamentary opposition Against the to discuss issues in his lectures and was driven by profoundly political seminars, he also clearly voiced his strategy of violence motives. The specific causes of out- concerns about the strategy of de- rage and civil unrest included the liberate violation of the law, violence escalation of the Vietnam war, which In the summer of 1967, a year be- against property and the provocation was backed diplomatically by the West fore the wave of protests in 1968, a of individuals. Adorno’s scepticism German government as a US ally; demonstration was held outside the regarding the political consequences the activities of the American secret Deutsche Oper in Berlin in protest of this actionism is expressed in a se- service, the CIA, in South America; the against the state visit of the Shah of ries of letters to Herbert Marcuse. In Six-Day War in the Middle East; and Persia. In clashes with the police, who one of his letters to the “holy animal” the military coup in Greece. Domestic violently pursued the fleeing demon- of the student movement he wrote factors had an even more provoca- strators, a student named Benno Oh- that some representatives of the pro- tive impact: there was the inflexible nesorg was shot from behind by a po- test movement tended “to synthesize education system, the ossified univer- lice officer. This event received cover- their form of praxis with a non-exis- sity structures riddled with authorita- age in a campaign pitted against the tent theory, revealing glimpses of a rian interdependencies, and crucial- students by Springer Media, which decisionism that harks back to the ly, the plans to impose emergency had not been involved until this point, horrors.” laws, as well as the power cartel of prompting Adorno to open a lecture It became clear that Jürgen Haber- the grand coalition of Christian and with the eyebrow-raising observa- mas shared Adorno’s opinion – ex- Social Democrats, and finally the fact tion: “The students have, to a certain pressed not only in letter form – at the that a far-right party had won seats extent, taken on the role of the Jews”. legendary congress “Hochschule in in a number of regional parliaments, Soon afterwards he stated: “I under- der Demokratie – Bedingungen und 38 EINBLICKE 2018/19 39 Guest Article Prof. Dr. Stefan Müller-Doohm Stefan Müller-Doohm studied sociology, political science and psychology in Frankfurt, Marburg and Gießen. He earned his PhD at the University of Giessen in 1972. Müller- Organisation des Widerstandes” (the of foresight and a vivid imagination.” “internal criticism of the methods of Doohm was appointed Professor of Sociology at Oldenburg University in 1974, and is university under democracy – the But Habermas also warned against the protest movement.” still active there as Professor Emeritus. He is Director of the Research Centre for the conditions and organisation of resist- actionism at any price and spoke out Adorno and Habermas played a cen- Sociology of Intellectuals, founder of the Adorno Research Centre and has published ance), which took place on 9 July in firmly against “converting the sublime tral role in the protest movement in a numerous books including two biographies on T.W. Adorno and J. Habermas which Hannover after the funeral of Benno violence of institutions into manifest number of ways. Firstly, there was their have been translated into several languages. Ohnesorg. In his speech “On the poli- violence through provocation.” When influence as academic instructors. As tical role of the students in the Federal Rudi Dutschke, by that time the lead- such they addressed the philosophical Republic of Germany” he described ing figure of the student movement, and socio-theoretical issues that lay the state-sanctioned police operation spoke out in favour of actions that entirely within the interest horizon of tions and analytical categories of the as a regulating factor for preserving teacher training was a shining exam- against the demonstrators in Berlin did not preclude violence, Habermas the non-dogmatic Left, which would time, wrapped up in a neo-Marxist order; secondly, the growing function ple whose flame has long since been as an act of terrorism in the sense of countered with a speech in which he otherwise hardly have encountered vocabulary which the New Left refe- of science as the primary productive extinguished – like other liberalising targeted intimidation. For him the accused Dutschke of adhering to a vol- discourse partners of this intellectual renced in its critiques levelled at the force; and finally, a depoliticisation achievements of that experimental student protest was a legitimate and untaristic ideology that he described as calibre at the universities. Secondly, very foundations of late-capitalism of the public aimed at preventing the ground-breaking period. desperately needed expression of ‘left-wing fascism’. Adorno and Habermas, as non-con- society and its crisis phenomena. manifestation of latent conflicts. Looking back, if we were to sum up democratic consciousness and polit- formist public intellectuals, served as There were four main thematic From the outset, a driving force be- the position occupied by Adorno and ical engagement. On the podium he Habermas role models, prepared to take the risk complexes which had a special signif- hind the protest movement was the Habermas in the period of time com- explained: “The task of the student of intervening politically on a regular icance for the socio-critical thinking core demand for universities to be monly referred to as ’68, it is clear that enters the fray opposition in the Federal Republic of basis, not least to campaign for the of the New Left. One was the discourse democratized, neatly summed up in on the one hand they showed solidar- Germany was and is to compensate demands of the protest movement to on the past and guilt, another was the the scathingly ironic statement: “un- ity with the ‘68 movement as a demo- for omissions: for the lack of theoret- A decade later Habermas admitted extend democracy as a way of life to traditional or revised concepts of the der the gowns is the musty odour of a cratising movement and, on a higher, ical perspectives; the lack of sensi- that with this remark about left-wing pre-political spheres such as the fami- critique of capitalism, then came the thousand years”. This catalyst for pro- theoretical level, delivered reasons for tivity with regard to deceptions and fascism he had reacted “a nuance too ly, the workplace, schools, the media critique of the cultural industry, or test, which is often overlooked today, radically reforming universities and denouncements; the lack of radical- much in the mould of the bourgeois in- and universities. Thirdly, Adorno and rather of the structural and functional was undoubtedly inspired by Adorno’s society alike. On the other hand, they ness in the interpretation and prac- tellectual” and that it had been “some- Habermas, each in their own way and shift in the public sphere, and finally, call to dismantle the authoritarian unreservedly criticised the nascent tice of the constitution of our social what out of place”, although it had not with their own particular emphases, the critique of the education system. structures and hierarchies within the extremism and violent tendencies ex- welfare state and democracy; the lack been intended as anything other than provided the diagnostic interpreta- It was Adorno in particular who, universities. pressed in the actionist practices of the shortly after re-emigrating to Germa- Habermas was no less critical than protest movement. Habermas was more ny, warned against the afterlife of Na- Adorno, but his objections focussed aggressive than Adorno in his intellec- zism under democracy and, as early more specifically on the “chronic af- tual interventions, and in his analyses as 1951, provoked the public by declar- fliction of university reform”, namely he clearly opposed the protest move- ing that it would be barbaric to write the specialisation of individual fields ment’s interpretation of the historical a poem after Auschwitz. In so doing of study that were increasingly sealing situation as a revolutionary situation. Adorno positioned himself as the pro- themselves off from one another, the In retrospect, one salient feature totypical taboo-breaker.
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