he takes a much keener interest in the concrete institutional structure of democratic society than either Horkheimer or Adorno.

Property and education were the two unspoken conditions of participation. In reality, the majority of poor and uneducated people, and almost all women, were excluded. Consequently, the idea of the public sphere remained merely Utopian, an inclusive and egalitarian vision of society worthy of pursuit, but never fully realized.

critical theory had to say something about what kinds of institutions are needed to protect individuals against the attractions of political extremism, on the one hand, and the depredations of a burgeoning capitalist economy, on the other.

for example, believes that economic laws exist naturally and independently of human beings, then workers are more likely to accept low wages in return for their labour, rather than to see this exchange as a structural injustice in need of reform.

A vicious spiral ensues in which instrumental rationality becomes exclusive and total.

It may make what is in fact a social and man-made institution, and hence an institution that is in principle alterable, appear to be fixed and natural.

Mündigkeit

Given the right political and social conditions, the ever-widening gap between the idea of the public sphere and social and political reality might be closed again.

As newspapers and magazines gradually acquired a mass circulation, so they become absorbed into giant capitalist corporations that operated in the private interests of a few powerful individuals.