title: Towards a New Manifesto
author: Theodor Adorno
description: Much of their interesting conversation about work, happiness, leisure, and society is germane to our time.<br /> <b>Steven Poole, <i>Guardian</i></b>
zlib_text: Theodor Adorno
  For more than 30 years,the tendency has been emerging among the masses of the
  advanced industrial countries to surrender themselves to the politics of disaster
  instead of pursuing their rational interests and, chief of all, that of their own
  survival. While they are promised benefits, the idea of personal happiness is at
  the same time emphatically replaced by threat and violence; inordinate sacrifices
  are imposed on them, their existence is directly endangered, and an appeal made
  to latent death-wishes. Much of this is so obvious to its victims that in endeav-
  ouring to understand its workings one finds it difficult to rest content with the
  decisive task of establishing the objective conditions of mass movements, and
  not to be tempted into believing that objective laws no longer obtain.
  Sociology and Psychology
  67
  
  The Failure of Social Psychology
  By itself the old explanation that all the media of public opinion are
  controlled by groups will not do. For the masses would