The article intends to reconsider the critique of Theodor Adorno's Social Theory formulated by Jürgen Habermas. In the first part of the text we analyze in detail the reasons Habermas enounces to leave behind the dialectical criticism of the process of social rationalization. In order to put forward our objections to Habermas' interpretation we reconstruct, in the second part, two essential thesis, which became displaced by the paradigm of communicative action, and which had served Adorno to elaborate his criticism of the prevailing modernization process. As a conclusion, we propose a different understanding of the roll played by communication in the constitution of contemporary societies, through an analysis - based upon Adorno - of the relationship between language and rationality.
Habermas; Adorno; Critical Theory; Rationality; Language