Abstract
This article construes the social theory of Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. For this purpose, we reconstruct some elements of their historical analysis in two moments, the Nazi period and the Post-War period. Although their works have peculiarities, Adorno and Marcuse shared the same intention: to understand the dialectics between dynamical traits and invariable statics which characterizes bourgeois societies in different periods. We can follow the development of critical theory as the exam of the continuous characteristics of capitalist sociability at the same time as this transforms itself in the course of history. To conclude, we present a brief reflection on the actuality of critical theory to analyze contemporary social phenomena.
Critical theory; Herbert Marcuse; Theodor Adorno; Late capitalism