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tempt a clearer explanation of its meaning, sińce in the critical theory it had always been counterposed to relativism. Let us see why we must distinguish epistemological definitions of experience and criteria of objectivity both of empirical data and of theoretical propositions in that scientific school which departs from the assumption that society is based on a spontaneous consensus and approaches it statically and with a conservative practical interest, from the other school of thought which presupposes that society is an antagonistic totality in all of whose relationships there is compulsion, but in its contradictions there are forces of radical transformation, and which believes that the main role of the theory is to make these social forces conscious. To clarify this position, we must define the concept of being static. Being static does not and cannot mean being hostile to all changes. Various highly dynamie social changes must be taken into consideration. It is assum-ed that they do not lead to a change in the basie social relationships of the existing society. Being reduced to quantitative changes of qua-litatively immutable constants of the social system, or to that which in comparison with its essential features is inconsequential and acci-dental, dynamics turns into statics.⁷³ In the first instance scientific experience consists in a direct reflection of the existing reality and in an indirect examination of some of its structural relationships, which are not immediately evident from empirical experience. As the result of a static conception of society and conservative practical interests which lead cognition, experience duplicates a given social reality. All facts which are in accordance with the established form of society are regarded as normal and are therefore theoretically non-problematic. Phenomena which variously express social contradictions are inter-preted as departures from a normal situation, as pathology. Practical interest requires them either to be reintegrated in the normative-institutional framework of the system or, failing this, to be removed, by isolation or suppression. It is only indirectly, as they inerease ef-forts by the ruling forces of the system to remove disturbances and friction in the functioning of the system thus restoring its equilibrium, that negative phenomena may be considered to have a positive role. One of the most important prerequisites for a successful functioning and reproduction of the system is to instill its generał and particular needs and their ideological justification in the consciousness of indi-viduals through socialization, if possible to that extent that they should become their »second nature», making it impossible for them to real-ize, on the basis of a morę independent personal experience, their position within the system. With this aim in view the ruling forces of the system, using various methods of compulsion and taking ad-vantage of their superiority in having control over the means of wield-ing influence, are trying to implant in the consciousness of individuals and into the collective conceptions of all social groups their own interpretations of the naturę of the social system, of the opportunities

⁷³ This relationship betwecn statics and dynamics in Comte’s theory of the bour-geois society has been stressed by Adomo in his article »Ober Statik und Dynamik ais soziologischen Kategorien«, in the book M. Horkheimer, Th. W. Adomo, Socio-logica II, pp. 225-240.

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