For Adorno, the possibilities to examine, criticise, transform and write about exchange society are shaped by the problems society creates for sociology. Social integration has proven a particularly extensive predicament. Socialisation affects even the minutest aspects of intellectual and material life. Empirical material, albeit sociologically indispensable, is untrustworthy because the social dimension it develops in integration is not immediately discernible. Only theoretical reflection can decipher the material, but faces immense obstacles when trying to unravel fully the dense web of the totally socialised society cocooning single phenomena. The socialisation of concepts and actions creates problems for social critique and praxis, and society's omnipresence and petrifaction generate quandaries for sociological writing. Adorno sounds thoroughly convinced that there is no longer anything that is not integrated in exchange society.

Surely, though, this would amount to one of those unambiguous verdicts on society Adorno sees as out of sociology's reach. Indeed, whereas earlier he was shown to state that society lets nothing escape, his sociology lectures confirm this only very nearly: ‘“Society” … constitutes a certain kind of intertwinement which, as it were [gewissermaßen], leaves nothing out’. Gewissermaßen – literally: to a certain degree – sends a signal muted by the official translation, from which the word has been deleted (IS 30). Adorno momentarily hesitates to assert to his students that his notion of total integration is as conclusive as it appears in many of his sociological writings.