In contemporary ‘Critical Theory’, Theodor is often seen as a ‘cultural critic’ or a ‘music theorist’, whereas Max is reduced to ‘having played the second fiddle’. This became especially clear during the ‘Adorno year’, 2003, when commentators in the (German) mainstream media wrote long articles about Adorno, which by and large ignored the relation of critical theory to Marxism. In distinction, this chapter elaborates the character of this relationship. It argues that at its foundation critical theory developed as a heterodox alternative to the positivist turn in Marxian thought.
This chapter is divided into seven sections. We first take a brief look at traditional Marxism, because this provides the historical background of critical theory – although this was a background Horkheimer referred to in a specifically critical way. Secondly we take a brief look at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in its ‘Grünberg era’. As a third point, the political views of the young Horkheimer are summarized which leads us to the fourth point – Horkheimer’s critique of (and alternative to) Marxist historical determinism as formulated in Dämmerung.1 In the fifth section the link between 1937 (‘Traditional and Critical Theory’) and 1867 (Capital) is examined. In the sixth section Horkheimer’s critique of a deterministic interpretation of history is taken up again, this time in the context of his 1940/42 essay ‘Authoritarian State’. Finally, we have to mention some of the post-World War II developments including the critical standpoint put forward by Adorno’s disciple Hans-Jürgen Krahl. The main aim of this final section is to show that critical theory was built, at least to a large extent, on Marx’s critique of political economy and a related political standpoint of emancipation. Therefore the points of critique towards traditional Marxism – especially concerning the deterministic and objectivistic view on historical development – must also be highlighted.
Marxism as a relatively coherent ‘scientific’ world-view developed in the period that began with Friedrich Engels’ work on his book Anti-Dühring (1876) and the 1891 Erfurt Program of the German SPD. Marxism, therefore, is something different from the theory of Marx, although the former was developed out of the latter in a rather complicated process.
While Marx’s own field of study was very comprehensive, ranging from the obvious political economy to history and from geology to mathematics, Marx himself had never formulated and elaborated a positive system of knowledge like the one that was put forward by his friend Engels in Anti-Dühring. The spectrum of topics dealt with in Anti-Dühring range from ‘philosophy of nature’ and the principles of dialectics to political economy and socialism. This approach paved the way for the transformation of Marx’s critical theory into a comprehensive and systematic world-view.
In the late 1870s and the 1880s – the period of the ‘Sozialistengesetz’ – this type of Marxism was successfully disseminated in the SPD, while proponents of positions close to Dühring, Lassalle or Anarchism were either pushed out of the party or relegated into the background. In Karl Kautsky’s theoretical contribution to the Erfurt Program of 1891 Marxism was codified as the official party ideology. However, this programmatic claim of Marxist ‘orthodoxy’ coexisted with the pragmatic and reform-oriented part written by Eduard Bernstein.
The deterministic and objectivistic tendencies in the historical outlook offered by traditional Marxism have been criticized many times. We will later see how Horkheimer formulated a convincing critique of this feature of traditional Marxism in Dämmerung. His critical viewpoints concerning this question will be presented in detail in fourth and fifth sections of this chapter. Another element of traditional Marxism that was criticized by Adorno and Horkheimer was the epistemological position of ‘Abbildtheorie’. Other problematic features of traditional Marxism consisted in the reading of Marx’s method of exposition in Capital as a ‘logico-historical’ progression, in the reformulation of Marx’s crisis theory as a theory of breakdown (although many traditional Marxists did not share this reformulation2), and in the construction of a theory of immiseration of the working-class and a growing class polarization. (It was exactly this construction that Bernstein protested against in the 1890s ‘Revisionismusstreit’.) However, the protagonists of ‘critical theory’ were not the first Marxist theorists that left aside the ‘dialectic of nature’. The same can be said of Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness.3
While it is true that the core member of the Frankfurt School paved the way for later productive developments in Marxist theory by critically questioning central elements of traditional Marxism, the relevancy of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s thought to a reinterpretation both of Marx’s critique of political economy and of the development of the capitalist mode of production should not be overstated. Perry Anderson’s 1976 book, Considerations on Western Marxism is flawed in many ways,4 but his critical assessment of Horkheimer and Adorno seems to point in the right direction: while Marx had moved from philosophy to politics and economic theory (or the critique thereof), Western Marxism developed exactly in the opposite direction. Horkheimer and Adorno played a considerable part in this theoretical reorientation towards philosophy, in turn reversed by some of their disciples like Backhaus and Reichelt who reoriented themselves towards a serious study of political economy and the Marxian critique of political economy.
In the context of these developments in Marxist theory and although Horkheimer and Adorno developed important criticisms of traditional Marxism, one considerable reservation has to be stated: they did not engage in the critique of political economy producing anything comparable to Hilferding’s Finanzkapital or Luxemburg’s Akkumulation des Kapitals. The critique of political economy that is at the very centre of Marx’s thought, did not figure prominently in their theoretical work. A systematic exploration of Marx’s critique as a critical social theory was only developed by some of their students, including Alfred Schmidt and especially Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt, from the late 1960s onwards.
The year 1923 was one of political turmoil in Germany. It was not only the year of the Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch, the failed coup that should have led to a ‘March on Berlin’ (inspired by Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’). The year had started with the Occupation of the Ruhrgebiet. French and Belgian troops occupied Germany’s industrial heartland, because Germany could not afford its Versailles Treaty reparation payments. Hyper-inflation reached its peak. The nationalist ‘Black Reichswehr’ attempted the Küstrin putsch. The communists joined the SPD-led governments of Thuringia and Saxony, before these governments fell because of President Ebert’s ‘Reichsexekution’. The Reichswehr invaded these states in central Germany. The communist uprising in Hamburg failed. One of the results of the KPD’s political disaster was the replacement of Brandler and Thalheimer as KPD-leaders in the following year, when the left faction of Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow took over the party’s leadership.
It was also an important year for Marxist theory in Germany. It was the year that Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness as well as Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy were published. Both texts can be read against the background of a radically critical attitude towards the way Marxism had been interpreted in the period of the Second International. An important event for the historical development of ‘Western Marxism’ is probably much less known in the English-speaking world: the ‘Marxist Work-Week’ [Marxistische Arbeitswoche] conference located in the Thuringian forest in spring 1923.
About 20 intellectuals (most of them quite young at that time) met to discuss Marxist theory and to prepare the foundation of a Marxist-oriented ‘think tank’ for social science. The meeting was initiated by Felix Weil who had planned to found and fund such an institute in the preceding year. Other notable participants were: Karl Korsch, who held a talk on Marxist methodology; two Hungarian Marxist philosophers, Georg Lukács and Bela Fogarasi; Korsch’s and Lukács’ Japanese disciple, Kazuo Fukumoto, who wrote texts on Marx’s methodology and became the political leader of the Japanese Communist party after the return to his home country; and Karl August Wittfogel and Franz Borkenau, who later worked for the Frankfurt Institute. Adorno and Horkheimer were not present during this meeting, but Friedrich Pollock was.
When the Institute – autonomous in its research, but affiliated to the University of Frankfurt – was founded in 1924, the Austro-Marxist economic historian Carl Grünberg (editor of the Grünberg-Archiv journal and previously the teacher of Otto Bauer and Rudolf Hilferding) became the first Director. However, the Frankfurt Institute was not the first academic institute with a strong Marxist orientation. The Ohara Institute in Osaka that employed many young researchers with sympathies for Marxism, had been founded in 1919. The Moscow Marx-Engels Institute dated from 1923. During the 1920s the Frankfurt and the Moscow institutes cooperated within the project of the publication of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). The first volume of this edition, containing early Marxian writings up to 1844, was published 1927/29. However, in historical retrospective, the late Horkheimer played down the role of the MEGA edition in the Institute’s history.5
Grünberg himself was an outspoken proponent of Marxism and socialism. According to him, the Institute’s main tasks should consist of: research on the workers’ movement, but also on counter-revolutionary political movements; questions concerning social policy; and the intensive study of social theory, including socialist thought. Bela Fogarasi’s letter to David Rjazanov, the Director of the Marx-Engels Institute, points to the way the Frankfurt Institute was perceived by the intellectuals of the left: ‘The institute is a material basis for Marxist research’.6 The Institute was inaugurated in June 1924.
The explicitly Marxist profile of the Institute’s research agenda was emphasized by the employment of the Polish economist Henryk Grossmann, who had emigrated from his home country to Frankfurt in 1925. Grossmann’s formulation of a Marxist theory of capitalist accumulation, crisis and breakdown was published as the first volume of the Institute’s book series.7 Grossmann remained a member of the Institute until 1948. Another notable Marxist-oriented researcher at the Institute was Friedrich Pollock, who had been a friend to Horkheimer since adolescence. Pollock had finished his PhD thesis on Marx’s theory of money in 1923.8 It is not easy to assess to what extent Adorno’s reading of Marx was influenced by Pollock and Grossmann. Adorno’s biographer Stefan Müller-Dohm argues that Adorno never had a close relation to Grossmann,9 whereas Hans-Georg Backhaus remembers Adorno referring to him as ‘my teacher’.10
In 1931, due to Grünberg’s serious illness, Horkheimer took over the position of Director. Georg Klauda critically stated that under Horkheimer the Institute basically turned away from Marxism.11 In my opinion, Klauda’s statement is an exaggeration. However, similar to Korsch, Horkheimer was aware that Marxism had entered a period of a critical, crisis-ridden condition. Apparently, around 1930 Horkheimer had planned to write a book with the title ‘Crisis of Marxism’.12 It should have been published as a volume of the Institute’s book series, but this project was never realized.
What about the young Horkheimer’s political views and his relation to Marx and Marxism? Considering that Alfred Schmidt is right to locate the decisive step within Horkheimer’s transition to Marxism in the period of his ‘Privatdozentur’,13 it should still be noted that Horkheimer’s interest in and contact with Marxist theory can be traced back to a much earlier period of his life.
It is well known that both Horkheimer and Pollock were located in Munich during the November revolution and the brief period of the Bavarian soviet republic (1919). They shared sympathies with the revolutionaries, but refrained from direct political involvement.14 Horkheimer’s early relation to Marx and Marxist theory was reconstructed by Hans-Joachim Blank, a disciple of Adorno and Horkheimer.15 According to this study, Horkheimer was a reader of revolutionary literature, like Bucharin’s political writings, economic and political texts of Luxemburg, and declarations by Liebknecht and others. Adorno, who had been in contact with Horkheimer since the early 1920s, called Horkheimer a ‘communist’ in a 1924 letter.16 At this time, Horkheimer devoted his energy to studying the materialist conception of history. In 1926 the Marx-Engels-Archiv journal published important extracts from the ‘German Ideology’. Horkheimer was eager to read and use this new material for his lectures and writings.17
In 1928/29 Horkheimer worked on an epistemological critique of Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism, pointing to the naïve shortcomings of the ‘reflexion theory’ [Abbildtheorie] of consciousness (GS 2, ca. 180) – a criticism that can also be found in the late Adorno’s Negative Dialectics. Besides this critical assessment of Lenin’s philosophical work, Horkheimer offered a lecture on Hegel and Marx during the 1928/29 semester. Horkheimer also kept himself informed about the contemporary developments in Marxist theory, from Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness to the Grossmann–Sternberg controversy on imperialism.18
Horkheimer’s essay collection Dämmerung,19 written between 1926 and 1931, suggests that Horkheimer had already occupied himself with the study of Capital, because he refers to the concept ‘reserve army’ and to Marx’s theory of the rising organic composition of capital in the course of capitalist accumulation. The essay on the impotence of the German working-class contains an interesting assessment both of social democracy and of the German Communist Party.
Horkheimer argues that the German working-class faces the problem of its political impotence because of its inner division between the employed and the unemployed. This social and economic division seems to be reflected on the political level. In this context Horkheimer points to the rivalry between the reformist SPD and the revolutionary KPD. Horkheimer states that the former party suffers from the erosion of revolutionary consciousness, whereas the latter one lacks ‘the knowledge to prepare the revolution on the practical and theoretical level’. However, ‘within both parties exists a part of those forces the future of mankind depends on’.20 Horkheimer’s relation to the two rival working-class parties reflects a combination of sympathy and criticism. However, it is significant that Horkheimer did not deal with the emergence of political alternatives to the SPD and KPD, represented either by the smaller left-winged socialist parties like Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands21 or KPD-Opposition,22 or by even smaller groups like the council-communist ‘Rote Kämpfer’.23
It should also be noted that Horkheimer used a pseudonym for Dämmerung. In 1938 Korsch wrote in a letter to the council communist Paul Mattick that Horkheimer ‘developed closer ties to my, to our political standpoint. But he is not ready at all to represent his views in public’.24 This statement could be related back to the cautious attitude Horkheimer had already developed by the 1920s and early 1930s.
One of the most outstanding essays in Dämmerung is titled ‘Skepsis and Morality’.25 As a background one should recall that historical determinism is a well-established feature of traditional Marxism. The Marxist orthodoxy of the SPD also left little room for the ethical component of Marxism. One of the most famous examples for this tendency is Hilferding’s sentence that, ‘like its theory, also the politics of Marxism is free from value-judgements’.26
Horkheimer’s ideas differ from these viewpoints. He describes socialism as a better form of society. Its elements of construction are present in capitalism and the tendencies of capitalist development. However, socialism does not automatically ‘follow’ from the economic laws of capitalism (laws which were, by the way, explained correctly by Marx, in Horkheimer’s view). According to Horkheimer, socialism is ‘desirable’, but because this social order does not ‘follow’ from Marxist theory, one has to ‘fight’ for it. Horkheimer stresses that – on the subjective level – the position of each person to socialism represents his/her degree of individual morality. When ‘it is said that Marx and Engels did not “prove” socialism, not pessimism but the commitment to practice which theory needs, will follow. Marx unveiled the law of the dominant inhuman order, and pointed to the levers that must be used to create a more human one’.27
Later on in the text, Horkheimer points out the perspective of revolutionary practice: ‘Should socialism be improbable, it will require an all the more desperate determination to make it come true. What stands in its way is not the technical difficulty of its implementation but the apparatus of domination of the ruling class’.28 For Horkheimer the idea of the ‘inevitable necessity’ of the development to socialism seems to be rather harmful:
The illusion that the advent of the socialist order is of the same order of necessity as natural events is hardly less of a danger to correct action than is skeptical disbelief. If Marx did not prove socialism, he did show that capitalism harbors developmental tendencies which make it possible. Those interested in it know at what point they must attack.29
Horkheimer’s own position can be explained as a practice-oriented alternative to the tendencies towards passivity within the ‘revolutionary attentism’ of the pre-1914 social-democracy.30 ‘The socialist order of society is not prevented by world history; it is historically possible. But it will not be realized by a logic that is immanent in history but by men trained in theory and determined to make things better. Otherwise, it will not be realized at all’.31
However, it should be noted that Horkheimer was not the only socialist in this time period who was very sceptical of the determinist view of history and the historical optimism attached to the notion of an inevitable ‘necessity’ of proletarian revolution. The left-wing socialist intellectual Walter Loewenheim (1896–1977) shared a similar kind of hesitation. The Dutch socialist Henriette Roland Holst (1869–1952) can also be named in this context as can the anarchist socialist Gustav Landauer (1870–1919), who might have made a strong impression on Horkheimer during the time of the Bavarian soviet republic.
Like Landauer and Holst, Horkheimer was an ethical socialist. This becomes obvious when he describes the contemporary social structure of the capitalist society and includes striking remarks about the suffering of the exploited.
At the top, the feuding tycoons of the various capitalist power constellations. Below them, the lesser magnates, the large landowners and the entire staff of important co-workers. Below that, and in various layers, the large numbers of professionals, smaller employees, political stooges, the military and the professors, the engineers and heads of office down to the typists. And even further down what is left of the independent, small existences, craftsmen, grocers, farmers e tutti quanti, then the proletarian, from the most highly paid, skilled workers down to the unskilled and the permanently unemployed, the poor, the aged and the sick.32
But Horkheimer is well aware of the specifically international character of capitalist society, especially in its ‘imperialist’ phase of development. In the layer below
we encounter the actual foundation of misery on which this structure rises, for up to now we have been talking only of the highly developed capitalist countries whose entire existence is based on the horrible exploitation apparatus at work in the partly or wholly colonial territories, i.e., in the far larger part of the world. Extended regions in the Balkans are torture chambers, the mass misery in India, China, Africa boggles the mind. Below the spaces where the coolies of the earth perish [krepieren] by the millions, the indescribable, unimaginable suffering of the animals, the animal hell in human society, would have to be depicted, the sweat, blood, despair of the animals.33
It might be more difficult to summarize Adorno’s political position and its development during the 1930s. However, there are indicators that suggest he was a vehement critic of the Soviet Union from a Marxist standpoint. In a text documenting a discussion between Horkheimer and Adorno, the latter one pointed out in 1939 that he regarded as a necessity ‘to achieve the better society by force in Russia’.34 The context of this quote suggests that Adorno thought about a socialist-proletarian revolution against the Stalinist regime. Earlier he had complained (in a letter to Horkheimer) about the ‘unspeakable trial against the Trotskyists’, referring to the first Moscow Trial.35 The music theorist Heinz-Klaus Metzger (1932–2009), who came in contact with Adorno only after the war, told me that he once asked Adorno about his opinion on the Soviet Union. Metzger remembered Adorno’s reply that one should read La Révolution trahie.
For Adorno, faithfulness to Marxism could not mean to preserve traditional Marxist theory. Faithfulness to Marxism must imply its radical development beyond the theoretical status quo: ‘Everybody says that Marxism is obsolete (erledigt). In contrast to this we say: no, it is not obsolete, but it is decisive to remain faithful to it. However, really being faithful to it entails the further development of the dialectical process (die Weiterbewegung des dialektischen Prozesses)’.36
What is critical theory? In my opinion, Kornelia Hafner points in the right direction when she describes ‘Critical Theory’ as a ‘Deckbegriff’, a concept that ‘covers’, encompasses and develops the theoretical succession from Kant to Hegel and from Hegel to Marx.37 ‘Critique’ in this context implies critique both of society [Gesellschaftskritik] and of consciousness [Erkenntniskritik], both rooted in Marx’s critique of political economy. It was Alfred Schmidt, a disciple of Horkheimer, who stressed the ‘double nature’ of Marx’s concept of critique which aims both at capitalist society and the forms of consciousness that spring from capitalist forms and relations.38 In this context, Marx’s critique of fetishism, reification and inversion [Verkehrung] is of central importance, an importance Adorno recognized.
Among Marx-scholars it is very common to refer to Marx’s main theoretical project as ‘critique of political economy’, but it must not be forgotten that during twentieth-century traditional Marxism this specifically ‘critical’ characteristic was often ignored – like in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Germany, where Marx’s project was sometimes superficially conceptualized as ‘Marxist political economy’ or even as the ‘political economy of the working-class’.39 In his letter to Lassalle on 22 February 1858, Marx himself pointed out: ‘The work I am presently concerned with is a Critique of Economic Categories or, if you like, a critical exposé of the system of the bourgeois economy. It is at once an exposé and, by the same token, a critique of the system’.40
‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, 1937 – including the postscript – is a text of programmatic character. According to Horkheimer, theory in the traditional sense (as inaugurated by Descartes) shapes the specialized sciences in contemporary academic life and aims at sustaining the reproduction of contemporary society. This is Horkheimer’s most basic definition. In contrast, critical theory conceives man as the producer of historical forms of life in their totality, and aims at emancipation of man out of enslaving relations/conditions [Verhältnisse].41 Interestingly, Horkheimer indicates that this critical theory was obviously not developed by himself, but had existed – as he wrote in 1937 – for 70 years.42 This means Horkheimer’s locates the beginning of critical theory in 1867, the year volume one of Capital was published. On the next page, Horkheimer refers directly to the critique of political economy and to the element he regards at its core: the reversal [Umschlag] of economic concepts into its opposite, considering that ‘just exchange’ develops into injustice, ‘free economy’ into dominance of monopoly, productive work into the stabilization of relations that erode productivity, the reproduction of life into the misery of peoples. Marx’s Capital focuses on the historical development of totality. Horkheimer concludes that theoretical and practical critique of the economy, not critique of cultural decay, is the most important element of critical theory.43
It is not difficult to identify the element of crucial importance in Horkheimer’s reading of Marx: the economy, at first connected to categories linked to freedom and equality, reverses [schägt um] in a sphere of relations shaped by exploitation and domination. There are striking examples of similar ideas in Marx, for instance in the Grundrisse, a text Horkheimer did not and could not know at this time. However, he probably knew this passage from Capital:
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. […] On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the ‘Free-trader Vulgaris’ with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but – a hiding.44
One can go even deeper into the question of Horkheimer’s reading of Marx’s critique of political economy by referring to a text written two years before ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’. The essay ‘On the Problem of Truth’ was published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung and allows us to have a look at Horkheimer’s concept of Marx’s dialectical presentation in Capital.45 Horkheimer claims that the specific nature of this dialectical presentation must correspond to the specific characteristics of its object. What Horkheimer, as a reader of Capital, has in mind is a stringent derivation within an interconnection of economic categories leading from the abstract concept of the commodity to value, to money, to capital and its historical tendencies. However, the idea of a ‘closed cognitive interconnection [of categories]’ [geschlossener gedanklicher Zusammenhang], in which ‘every thesis necessarily follows from the first premise’ [jede These notwendig aus der ersten Setzung],46 points to a rather one-sided interpretation of Marx’s dialectical presentation of economic categories. Horkheimer describes Marx’s method as an attempt to develop ‘the theory as a logical presentation of immanent critique’ [die Theorie in der geschlossenen Gestalt eines in sich notwendigen Gedankengangs]. According to Marx himself, this understanding is one-sided, at least if we take the term ‘geschlossen’ [closed] seriously. Marx was aware in his ‘Urtext’ from 1858 that ‘the dialectical presentation is right only when it knows its own limits’, which implies a break with the idea of a dialectical presentation of a context of logical immanence.47 Of course, the Horkheimer of 1935 did not know the ‘Urtext’, which should only be published a few years later together with the Grundrisse manuscript. What exactly this sentence from the ‘Urtext’ means for the dialectical presentation in Capital has been discussed numerous times by Marx-researchers.48
Thus it becomes obvious that Frankfurt School ‘critical theory’ owes its theoretical fundaments to Marx’s critique of political economy. However, Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s engagement with Marx’s works and manuscripts was limited in scope and intensity. During the 1930s Horkheimer participated in discussions on Marx’s critique of political economy. Questions were raised concerning Marx’s method, his theory of value, the theory of accumulation and crisis, and regarding the tendency of the profit rate to fall.49 However, these discussions also illuminate the limits of Horkheimer’s interpretation of Marx: neither did he comprehend the exact relation of the categories ‘value’ and ‘exchange-value’, nor was he able to refute Engels’ logico-historical interpretation of Marx’s method of presentation.50 Additionally, Korsch mentioned in a letter Horkheimer’s ‘illusionary’ project [Lebenslüge] to write a definite book about dialectics.51 Adorno’s occupation with the commodity form (including his discussion with Alfred Sohn-Rethel52) is well known. But Adorno’s understanding of Marx seemed to be limited, too – at least in the view of those readers of Marx who stressed the coherent interconnection of the critical analysis of economic categories within the three volumes of Capital. Hans Mayer complained in a letter to Horkheimer that he found a tendency in Adorno ‘to isolate the problem of commodity fetishism out of the whole (“ensemble”) of Capital, to make it absolute, and therefore to keep restricted to volume 1 instead of progression to the “total process”’.53 In the 1970s, Hans-Georg Backhaus stated that Adorno and Horkheimer had ‘reflected the foundation of critical theory within the labour theory of value only in a methodologically insufficient way’. Backhaus accused his teachers of having neglected Marx’s value-form analysis. Backhaus continues: ‘Despite the basic concepts of Marx’s theory of value are conceived by Adorno and Horkheimer as transcending value-theory as an economic subject, they invested surprisingly little effort and precision into the interpretation of those concepts that were fundamental to “Frankfurt” sociology and philosophy’.54 Even Dirk Braunstein, who attempts to (re-)construct ‘Adorno’s critique of political economy’, has to admit that Adorno ‘very often lagged behind [Marx’s] economic knowledge’.55
Let us continue with another element of Horkheimer’s 1937 essay, the relationship between the critical theorist and the proletariat.56 The social situation of the latter constitutes no guarantee for a ‘correct’ conscience. Horkheimer reflects the social differentiations within this multi-layered class. Personal and class interests may fall apart in many proletarians. The theoretical practice of the critical theorist ‘belongs’ to the development of the proletariat, Horkheimer continues; but the critical theorist should never give up a critical distance. So he ‘thinks for’ the oppressed [unterdrückte Menschhheit, für die er denkt]. However, his thought can, at times, be in contrast to the assumptions that dominate the proletarians’ views. The relationship between the critical theorist and the proletarian masses represents a complicated, mediated connection like a bond that sometimes is endangered to break. However, both types, the proletarians and the critical theorist, are needed in the socialist struggle for emancipation. The separating elements of this relation have nothing to do with the ‘class origin’ of the individual critical theorist, Horkheimer emphasizes. They reflect, instead, the complex social differentiation within the proletariat itself that can lead to the integration of considerable parts of the proletariat into the bourgeois social order. At this point one could remember Horkheimer’s earlier text ‘Die Ohnmacht der deutschen Arbeiterklasse’ (see above).
At the end of his essay57 Horkheimer makes another remarkable point. He constructs a community [Gemeinschaft] of critical theorists, striving for the radical transformation of society, tied together by ‘uniting recognition’ [verbindende Erkenntnis] and the bond of a ‘strictest possible reception of critical theory’ as the condition of the historical success of this transformation. Before the revolution [vor dem allgemeinen historischen Umschlag] truth can be in the hands of a small number of thinkers. But ‘history teaches’, Horkheimer continues, ‘that such ostracized yet obstinate groups, even neglected by the oppositional parts of society, can become the leading force [“zur Spitze werden”] in the decisive moment, due to their deeper insight’.58 It is likely that Horkheimer uses rather cryptic language to reaffirm the Bolshevik model of revolution, basing him on an ‘avant-gardist’ (or even ‘sophocratic’) theory of revolution. The party, however, seems to be substituted by the community of critical theorists.
In my opinion this conception of Horkheimer’s has to be viewed critically. As Adorno’s disciple Krahl (see below) would observe, neither Marx nor the Marxists have solved the problem of the conditions of constitution [Konstitutionsbedingungen] of revolutionary consciousness; they could not, therefore, convincingly formulate a mediation between the inner dynamic of the accumulation process of capital and the subjective preconditions for a revolutionary situation. Horkheimer, too, cannot provide an answer. Instead, he reformulates an avant-gardist conception of a hierarchical relation between conductors (the critical theorists) and the conducted (the proletariat).
In the year of publication of Horkheimer’s essay he was also involved in intensive discussions on economic theory and the developments of contemporary capitalism. Together with Grossmann, Gumperz and Wittfogel, Horkheimer debated questions of monopoly capital, imperialism, and methodological aspects of Capital.59 According to Horkheimer, monopoly capitalism should be understood as a concrete historical phenomenon, located on another level than the ‘core structure’ [Kernstruktur] of capitalism that was exposed by Marx in Capital. Unfortunately, Adorno did not participate in this debate. The discussion at the Institute on the most recent developments of capitalism (and of its relation to the state) was continued in the years to come, to a large extent inspired by Pollock.60 This was reflected, for example, by a text of Horkheimer that we will look at now.
Although it was already mentioned that Horkheimer did not produce anything comparable to Hilferding’s Finanzkapital, he indeed devoted serious study to the recent trends of capitalist development. In this context we can have a look at a rather short text written in the early 1940s, which is interesting insofar as it constitutes another critical assessment of determinist Marxism.
According to Horkheimer, the most recent phase of capitalism is shaped by the dominance of great trusts that gain independence from banks. The ‘dorado’ of bourgeois existence, the sphere of circulation, is losing importance. (This argument had already been made by Horkheimer in ‘The Jews and Europe’.) In its stead, Horkheimer contends that the state has become increasingly important as an economic agency. He regards this new period as a capitalist system that has successfully transcended the ‘market economy’. The modern and repressive ‘authoritarian state’ forms the decisive element of ‘state capitalism’. Surplus value is created by exploitation of workers under state control, but profit is still appropriated by the class of industrialists.
This ‘state capitalist’ form is different from the social formation Horkheimer calls ‘integral etatism’, though Horkheimer also sees some similarities. It is obvious that in this context he has the Soviet Union in mind. Private capitalism is abolished, but the immediate producers remain wage labourers, exploited proletarians. The factory regime has spread over society as a whole. This form of bureaucratic dominance is repressive but instable, because the existence of this bureaucracy forms an obstacle to economic productivity.
Horkheimer’s analysis of both ‘state capitalism’ and ‘state socialism’ (another term he uses for ‘integral etatism’) serves as the background for another critical commentary on the determinist conception of history. On this point, the text ‘Authoritarian State’ is a continuation not only of ‘The Jews and Europe’, but also of Dämmerung: a central aspect of traditional Marxism is criticized once again.61 Horkheimer calls the assumption that history develops according to a ‘fixed’ law a ‘metaphysical error’. This criticism is directed at the schematic ‘fatalism’ of both Hegel and Marx. The deterministic conception of history differs both from the revolutionary’s viewpoint and from the perspective of Critical Theory. From the standpoint of the revolutionary, social development is always ‘mature’ enough for significant change. The standpoint of critical theory must be the confrontation of history with the possibilities concretely visible in historical development.
The relation of the New Left, especially the West German New Left, to Adorno and Horkheimer has been discussed before.62 The critique should be interpreted against the background of strong similarities between critical theory and New Left Marxism. There is little doubt about the strong influence of critical theory on the understanding of Marxism among New Left theorists. This concerns, among other aspects, the critical attitude towards the ‘Diamat’ orthodoxy and towards an epistemologically questionable ‘Abbildtheorie’, which considers theory a mirror image of reality.
A dialogue between Horkheimer and Adorno from 1956 shows that the founders of critical theory had not given up discussing political questions after World War II.63 On the one hand, Adorno states that we ‘do not live in a revolutionary situation, and actually things are worse than ever. The horror is that for the first time we live in a world in which we can no longer imagine a better one’.64 On the other hand, Adorno still emphasizes that he always wanted to ‘develop a theory that remains faithful to Marx, Engels and Lenin’.65 Yet despite his plea for a socialist party ‘with a strictly Leninist manifesto’,66 Adorno was very well aware that theory should not be subordinated to a mere instrument of praxis. There were also several occasions in the decade to follow when Adorno tried to explore the complex relationship of theory and praxis.67 For Adorno, praxis will suffer if the autonomy of theory is denied.
However, the elements of political pessimism in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s thought were stronger than ever in the post-World War II period of capitalist restauration and restabilization. While Horkheimer polemicized against left radicalism [gegen den Linksradikalismus],68 Adorno begins his ‘Negative Dialectic’ with the statement that ‘the moment of realization of philosophy was missed’,69 implying that the Marxian idea of ‘realizing’ philosophy in the context of revolution70 is no longer a political possibility.
On the purely theoretical level, Horkheimer maintained a certain degree of ‘faithfulness’ towards Marx and his theory. In a 1968 interview he stated: ‘Today I still think that we cannot really understand society, how it exists without that theory, without Marx’s analysis’.71 Backhaus’ notes originating from Adorno’s 1962 lectures and Adorno’s 1965 discussion with Sohn-Rethel show that Marx’s theory of value was still of utmost importance for the late Adorno’s views on capitalist society.72 There can be no doubt about the strong impression of Adorno’s reading of Marx on the young generation of leftist theorists in Frankfurt. For example, Ernst Theodor Mohl remembers when, as a young social scientist, his view on Marx fundamentally changed after Adorno introduced him to the chapter ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof’.73
On the political level, however, and especially concerning questions of international politics, Horkheimer became more and more supportive of the bourgeois order. In 1967, Horkheimer put American war efforts, including the contemporary one in Vietnam, into the context of a ‘defence of human rights’.74 During the 1960s, the fear of a Chinese expansion became even irrational: Horkheimer talked about ‘the Chinese on their way to the Rhine’ and ‘the hell of Chinese global domination’;75 Adorno explained his terrible nightmare about ‘countless people […] a mixture of riff-raff and monstrosities’ with the dangerous possibility that a pro-Chinese wing of the Italian Communist Party might emerge.76
With the advent of the student revolt in 1967/68 a completely new situation emerged. Adorno was now criticized by New Left theorists either related or unrelated to critical theory, by some of his own disciples as well as by opposing intellectuals like the libertarian socialist Johannes Agnoli.77 Adorno’s relation to the student revolt could be described as rather ambivalent.78 Adorno did not surrender to the political pressure put on him by his students. Therefore, he did not participate in their political activism. However, his opinion towards the revolt was not hostile, either; at least not until the escalation of the conflict during the occupation of the Frankfurt Institute.79 Adorno simply would not and could not accept the verdict of ‘resignation’ that his ‘activist’ critics brought up in this situation. ‘We older representatives of what the name “Frankfurt School” has come to designate have recently and eagerly been accused of resignation’, Adorno complained shortly before his death in 1969. ‘Whoever only thinks, removes himself, is considered weak, cowardly, virtually a traitor’.80 According to Adorno, the misguided political ideal of a unity of theory and practice quickly turns into ‘a prohibition of thinking’.81 There can be no doubt, in my opinion, that Adorno was absolutely right to defend himself concerning this issue.
After Adorno’s death, the Frankfurt student leader and Marxist theorist Hans-Jürgen Krahl published his text ‘The Political Contradiction in Adorno’s Critical Theory’.82 Krahl was both a disciple and a critic of Adorno. Krahl reflects how much the student movement owes to Adorno and his historical role. The criteria of emancipation; the theory of mystification, reification and fetishism; the emancipatory core of Marx’s critique of political economy: all these aspects were taught by Adorno. However, Krahl criticizes Adorno both on a theoretical and on a practical/political level. Firstly, he charged that by theoretically abstracting from historical praxis, late critical theory was in danger of developing back into traditional theory and its forms of contemplation. Secondly, he argued that since Adorno was deeply shaped by the experience of fascism, both in his biography and in his thought, he was fearful of the danger of a fascist reassertion of monopoly capitalism and that this prevented him from supporting political practice directed against monopoly capitalism: the socialist attack from the left would trigger fascist terror as a response. At this point, Krahl continues, the political confrontation between Adorno and his students followed.
After Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s deaths a decisive bifurcation in Frankfurt School thought took place. Separated from and in opposition to Habermas’ theory,83 a Marxist wing continued to exist and tried to develop Marxist theory further as critical to social theory. In this context the work of Alfred Schmidt and Oskar Negt, and Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt is the most important.
The chapter argued that the founders of ‘Critical Theory’, especially the younger Horkheimer, were heavily influenced by Marx himself and by Marxism. Horkheimer explicitly criticized certain key aspects of ‘traditional Marxism’. His critique focuses on epistemological questions and especially the then-prevailing Marxist conception of historical development. Indeed, Horkheimer was of central importance for the later development of a critical theory reading of Marx’s critique of political economy, which elaborated central themes of Marx’s thought through his and Adorno’s reading of Marx.
1. Published in English as Dawn and Decline: Notes 1926–1931 and 1950–1969, New York 1978.
2. See Rudolf Walther, ‘Aber nach der Sündflut kommen wir und nur wir’: ‘Zusammenbruchstheorie’, Marxismus und politisches Defizit in der SPD, 1890–1914, Berlin/West 1981.
3. At a later point in his intellectual life, Lukács was critical of his ‘omission’ of Naturdialektik and ontology in History and Class Consciousness. Accordingly, in the early 1970s he said: ‘Grundlegender ontologischer Fehler des Ganzen ist der, dass ich eigentlich nur das gesellschaftliche Sein als Sein anerkenne und dass in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, da hierin die Dialektik der Natur verworfen wird, jene Universalität des Marxismus vollkommen fehlt, die aus der anorganischen Natur die organische ableitet und aus der organischen Natur über die Arbeit die Gesellschaft’. (Georg Lukács, Gelebtes Denken. Eine Autobiographie im Dialog, Frankfurt/M. 1980, p. 125).
4. See my Marx Worldwide, Leiden 2016.
5. See Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 18, Frankfurt/M. 1996, p. 571.
6. Bela Fogarasi, Letter to David Rjazanov, 20 February 1924, in: Rolf Hecker et al. (ed.), Erfolgreiche Kooperation: Das Frankfurter Institut für Sozialforschung und das Moskauer Marx-Engels-Institut (1924–1928), Hamburg 2000, 137–9, p. 137.
7. Henryk Grossmann, Das Akkumulations- und Zusammenbruchsgesetz des kapitalistischen Systems. Zugleich eine Krisentheorie, Leipzig 1929.
8. Friedrich Pollock, Zur Geldtheorie von Karl Marx (Reprint), Frankfurt/M. 1971.
9. Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno. Eine Biographie, Frankfurt/M. 2003, p. 392.
10. Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur marxschen Ökonomiekritik, Freiburg 1997, p. 30.
11. Georg Klauda, Von der Arbeiterbewegung zur Kritischen Theorie, in: Karl Reitter (ed.), Karl Marx: Philosoph der Befreiung oder Theoretiker des Kapitals?, Wien 2015, 86–118, p. 92.
12. Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule. Geschichte, theoretische Entwicklung, politische Bedeutung, München 1986, p. 50.
13. Alfred Schmidt, Einleitung: Die geistige Physi-ognomie Max Horkheimers, in: Max Horkheimer, Notizen 1950 bis 1969, und ‘Dämmerung’, Frankfurt/M. 1974, xix–lxx, p. xxi.
14. Zvi Rosen, Max Horkheimer, München 1995, p. 19f.
15. Hans-Joachim Blank, Zur Marx-Rezeption des frühen Horkheimer, in: Iring Fetscher, Alfred Schmidt (eds.), Emanzipation als Versöhnung. Zu Adornos Kritik der ‘Warentausch’-Gesellschaft und Perspektiven der Transformation, Frankfurt/M. 2002, 50–88.
16. Theodor W. Adorno and Leo Löwenthal, Brief vom 16. Juli 1924, in: Leo Löwenthal, Mitmachen wollte ich nie, Frankfurt/M. 1980, 247–8, p. 247.
17. Blank, Zur Marx-Rezeption des frühen Horkheimer, p. 65ff.
18. The Grossmann–Sternberg debate was a critical discussion between Henryk Grossmann and the left-wing socialist Fritz Sternberg on the topics of economic crisis and imperialism during the Weimar Republic. While Grossmann argued by referring to the concept of an over-accumulation ‘breakdown’ crisis and maintained that foreign-trade with pre-capitalist regions is not a necessary condition for capitalist accumulation in the developed countries, Sternberg’s position was much closer to Rosa Luxemburg’s theses according to which imperialist expansion was a necessity to overcoming the crisis-ridden character of capitalist accumulation that in her view was due to a lack of effective demand (a crisis of underconsumption) in the dominant capitalist economies.
19. Max Horkheimer, Notizen 1950 bis 1969, und ‘Dämmerung’, Frankfurt/M. 1974.
20. Ibid., p. 286.
21. Hanno Drechsler, Die Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SAPD). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung am Ende der Weimarer Republik, Meisenheim am Glan 1965.
22. Theodor Bergmann, ‘Gegen den Strom’. Die Geschichte der KPD(Opposition), Hamburg 2001.
23. Olaf Ihlau, Die Roten Kämpfer. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik und im ‘Dritten Reich’, Meisenheim am Glan 1969.
24. Karl Korsch, Brief an Paul Mattick vom 20. Oktober 1938, in: Jahrbuch Arbeiterbewegung 2, Frankfurt/M. 1974, p. 183.
25. Max Horkheimer, Dawn and Decline: Notes 1926–1931 and 1950–1969, New York 1978, p. 35f.
26. Rudolf Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital. Eine Studie über die jüngste Entwicklung des Kapitalismus, Berlin 1955, p. 7.
27. Horkheimer, Dawn and Decline, p. 36.
28. Ibid., p. 37.
29. Ibid.
30. ‘Revolutionary Attentism’ was a political and ideological position held by the ‘orthodox centre’ of the pre-1914 SPD. The term describes a passive position that claims to be revolutionary without actively initiating a revolutionary situation. This term was used and popularized by the German historian Dieter Groh, Negative Integration und revolutionärer Attentismus. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie am Vorabend des ersten Weltkriegs, Frankfurt/M. 1974.
31. Horkheimer, Dawn and Decline, p. 37.
32. Ibid., p. 66.
33. Ibid., p. 66f.
34. See Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt/M. 1985, vol. 12, p. 514.
35. See Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 15, Frankfurt/M. 1995, p. 669.
36. Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, p. 524.
37. Kornelia Hafner, ‘Daß der Bann sich löse’. Annäherungen an Adornos Marx-Rezeption, in: Diethard Behrens (ed.), Materialistische Theorie und Praxis. Zum Verhältnis von Kritischer Theorie und Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Freiburg 2005, 129–55, p. 138.
38. Alfred Schmidt, Zum Erkenntnisbegriff der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, in: Walter Euchner, Alfred Schmidt (eds.), Kritik der politischen Ökonomie heute. 100 Jahre Kapital, Frankfurt/M. 1968, 30–43.
39. The precise and insightful intellectual work of many MEGA-related Soviet and Eastern German Marx-researchers is a completely different story, of course.
40. Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW) 40, p. 270.
41. Max Horkheimer, Traditionelle und kritische Theorie, Frankfurt/M. 1992, pp. 261, 263.
42. Ibid., p. 263.
43. Ibid., p. 266.
44. MECW 35, p. 186.
45. Max Horkheimer, Zum Problem des Fortschritts, in: Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, Frankfurt/M. 1986, 277–325.
46. By ‘erste Setzung’ Horkheimer means the exchange of commodities at the beginning of Capital.
47. Karl Marx, ‘From the Preparatory Materials’, MECW 29, p. 505.
48. See, e.g., Dieter Riedel, Grenzen der dialektischen Darstellungsform, in: MEGA-Studien 1997/1, Amsterdam 1998, 3–40; Frieder Otto Wolf, Marx’s Konzept der ‘Grenzen der dialektischen Darstellung’, in: Jan Hoff, Alexis Petrioli, Ingo Stützle, Frieder Otto Wolf (eds.), Das Kapital neu lesen. Beiträge zur radikalen Philosophie, Münster 2006, 159–88; Dieter Wolf, Zum Übergang vom Geld ins Kapital in den Grundrissen, im Urtext und im Kapital. Warum ist die ‘dialektische Form der Darstellung nur richtig, wenn sie ihre Grenzen kennt’?, in: Rolf Hecker et al. (eds.), Geld – Kapital – Wert. Zum 150. Jahrestag der Niederschrift von Marx’s ökonomischen Manuskripten 1857/58 Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung. Neue Folge 2007), Hamburg 2007, 45–86; Helmut Reichelt, Grenzen der dialektischen Darstellungsform – oder Verabschiedung der Dialektik? Einige Anmerkungen zur These von Dieter Riedel, in: MEGA-Studien 2000/1, Berlin 2003, 100–26; Werner Bonefeld, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy, London 2014, chap. 4.
49. Erich Fromm, Julian Gumperz, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Friedrich Pollock, Die Marxsche Methode und ihre Anwendbarkeit auf die Analyse der gegenwärtigen Krise. Seminardiskussion 1936, in: Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, 398–416.
50. Ibid., p. 399f.
51. Karl Korsch, Brief an Paul Mattick vom 30. Oktober 1938, in: Jahrbuch Arbeiterbewegung 2, Frankfurt/M. 1974, p. 188. More on the ‘Logikbuch’-project: Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule, p. 202ff.
52. Dirk Braunstein, Adornos Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Bielefeld 2015, p. 79ff.
53. Hans Mayer and Max Horkheimer, Brief vom 23. April 1939, in: Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 16, p. 590.
54. Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform, p. 75f.
55. Dirk Braunstein, Adornos Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, p. 13.
56. Horkheimer, Traditionelle und kritische Theorie, Frankfurt/M. 1992, pp. 230ff., 238ff.
57. Ibid., p. 257f.
58. Ibid., p. 258.
59. See Henryk Grossmann, Julian Gumperz, Max Horkheimer, Karl August Wittfogel, Diskussionen aus einem Seminar über Monopolkapitalismus (1937), in: Horkheimer Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, 417–30.
60. See Eva-Maria Ziege, Antisemitismus und Gesellschaftstheorie. Die Frankfurter Schule im amerikanischen Exil, Frankfurt/M. 2009, p. 104ff.
61. ‘Authoritarian State’ was published in English in Telos, 15(3): 3–20, 1973. ‘The Jews and Europe’ is available in Douglas Kellner, Eric Broner (eds.), Critical Theory and Society. A Reader, London 1989, 77–94.
62. Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, Kritische Theorie und Neue Linke, in: Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, 1968. Vom Ereignis zum Mythos, Frankfurt/M. 2008, 223–47. My assessment of this relation differs from Gilcher-Holtey’s.
63. Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19.
64. Adorno, in: Adorno and Horkheimer, Towards a New Manifesto, London 1956, p. 40.
65. Ibid., p. 38.
66. Ibid., p. 35.
67. For instance: Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, Frankfurt/M. 1998, p. 146.
68. Horkheimer, Notizen 1950 bis 1969, und ‘Dämmerung’, p. 210.
69. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, Frankfurt/M. 1966, p. 13.
70. Marx: ‘Philosophy can not be realized without the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat can not abolish itself without the realization of philosophy’(Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung, MECW 1, p. 391).
71. Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 13, Frankfurt/M. 1986, p. 191.
72. Theodor W. Adorno über die Grundbegriffe der soziologischen Theorie. Aus einer Seminarmitschrift im Sommersemester 1962, in: Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform, 501–13; Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Notizen von einem Gespräch zwischen Th. W. Adorno und A. Sohn-Rethel am 16. 4. 1965, in: Sohn-Rethel, Geistige und körperliche Arbeit, Weinheim 1989, 221–6.
73. See Ernst Theodor Mohl, Ein Reisebericht, in: Berliner Verein zur Förderung der MEGA-Edition e. V. (ed.) In Memoriam Wolfgang Jahn. Der ganze Marx. Alles Verfasste veröffentlichen, erforschen und den ‘ungeschriebenen’ Marx rekonstruieren (Wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen, Heft 1), Hamburg 2002, 13–32, p. 18f.
74. Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 18, p. 646.
75. Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 14, p. 360f.
76. Theodor W. Adorno, Dream Notes, Cambridge 2007, p. 74.
77. See Johannes Agnoli, Die Schnelligkeit des realen Prozesses. Vorläufige Skizze eines Versuchs über Adornos historisches Ende (1969), in: Agnoli, 1968 und die Folgen, Freiburg/Br. 1998, 51–9.
78. This relation is examined in detail in Hanning Voigts, Entkorkte Flaschenpost. Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno und der Streit um die Neue Linke, Münster 2009.
79. See Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno, p. 705f.
80. Theodor W. Adorno, Resignation, in: Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10.2, Frankfurt/M. 1997, 794–9, p. 794.
81. Ibid., p. 795.
82. Hans-Jürgen Krahl, Der politische Widerspruch in der Kritischen Theorie Adornos, in: Detlev Claussen et al. (eds.), Keine Kritische Theorie ohne Amerika, Frankfurt/M. 1999, 77–81.
83. For a critique of the Habermas school as ‘usurper’ of critical theory: Michael Hintz, Paradoxale Wandlungsprozesse kritischer Gesellschaftstheorie – der Stachel Adorno, in: Jens Becker, Hans Brakemeier (eds.), Vereinigung freier Individuen. Kritik der Tauschgesellschaft und gesellschaftliches Gesamtsubjekt bei Theodor W. Adorno, Hamburg 2004, 34–59.