The reflections set forth in this book seek to relate the current impasse in philosophical thinking to the concrete dilemma of the human outlook for the future … Its aim is to inquire into the concept of rationality that underlies our contemporary industrial culture … The present potentialities of social achievement surpass the expectations of all philosophers and statesmen who have outlined in utopian programs the idea of a truly human society. Yet there is a universal feeling of fear and disillusionment. The hopes of mankind seem farther from fulfilment today than they were even in the groping epochs when they were first formulated by humanists (Horkheimer 1992: v).
Thus begins what is perhaps the most neglected text written by one of the leading exponents of the Frankfurt Institute, originally published in 1947, namely Max Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason. The book was published not long after the Dialectic of Enlightenment, which has basked in literary glory in academic circles since its publication, unlike the former. As Goerg Lohmann states the Dialectic of Enlightenment ‘overshadowed’ the Eclipse of Reason and as a consequence the latter ‘has fallen into the background of the history of critical theory’ (Lohmann 1993: 387).1 There’s no attempt on my part in this present chapter to dissect and interpret the Eclipse of Reason in any great detail, but rather to use it as a reminder that it exists and is worth exploring today for its relation to contemporary life, and further as a basis in which to assess the relationship between the two main themes of this current work; liberalism and culture.
Horkheimer’s principal aim in the Eclipse of Reason, stated clearly and succinctly, was to assess how ‘rationality’ is socially and culturally produced, and here we can begin to think in terms of how liberalism conditions thinking in terms of cultural production. There may well be contradictions, tensions and opposition to what was once commonly referred to, but now fallen out of favour, as the dominant ideology, but nevertheless rationality and social norms, the basis for intellectual cultural development, are in the first instance products of an ideology that dominate systems. We can never negate struggle and resistance to domination, but as Lawrence Grossberg rightly argued in relation to the radical space of popular culture ‘the interests of the ruling bloc come to define the leading positions of the people’ (Grossberg 1996: 162). As the quote above demonstrates Horkheimer was concerned with how liberalism and capitalism could be overcome, but the last two lines of the quotation forcefully demonstrate that liberation seemed far removed as liberal ideology became increasingly entrenched and accepted in Western cultures. This latter part of the quote is important because whilst it demonstrates Horkheimer’s now familiar ‘pessimism’ and doubting concerning the achievement of what he terms ‘a truly human society’ it doesn’t however fully capture Horkheimer’s complex thinking and intellectualizing concerning popular resistance, which often differed according to which period of writing one focuses on.
Remaining enthusiastic, hopeful or even decidedly perky about the future of humanity isn’t in itself a just and rational defence or ultimate refutation of the well-known pessimism espoused by the leading light of the Frankfurt School. It may however be preferable to remain hopeful whereby the glass remains half full rather than half empty, as we perhaps seek comfort about our very existence and its relevant meaning and purpose today and into the future. However, for Horkheimer, liberalism, and neo-liberalism for that matter, within a capitalist economic framework, imposed an oppressive but utterly convincing rationality upon the populace and added to this Horkheimer is largely characterized as an intellectual who had lost faith in the emancipative possibilities of humans to overthrow an oppressive post-liberal capitalism.
Whilst it is true that the more optimistic earlier period of Horkheimer’s life differed from the latter more pessimistic period, it’s clear nevertheless, that such pessimism wasn’t total or absolute and neither is pessimism always to be placed in context of a defeatist strategy; pessimism as a ‘negative value’ utilized against a dominating ideology for example, also contained the embryonic or nascent seeds of resistance, and this is one example of Horkheimer’s desire to combine elements of Marx with Schopenhauer, his primary economic and philosophical influences. Affirmative culture – that which does not seek to transcend but rather affirms – required a negative rather than positive (affirming) approach: in other words radical criticism and thinking against the status quo and social norms that effectively dominate is a requirement for change and critical theory expounded such ideals. It’s true that Horkheimer perceived critical theory in his later life as lacking the potential to emancipate humanity, as he controversially turned to theology as the intellectual framework for critical thinking and opposition to dominant and rampant market forces. But however controversial this may have been, the turn to theology doesn’t completely represent an abandonment of the emancipative potential to overthrow capitalism; it merely represented a shift in Horkheimer’s critical thinking and strategy.
Whilst it is true that aspects of Horkheimer’s work can be seen as pessimistic in the sense that the masses were susceptible to ‘mass manipulation’ as Horkheimer describes in the quotation detailed below, it is also true as we will see later that he held more optimistic views concerning resistance to power. In this sense there were two periods (early and later) where Horkheimer appears to become less optimistic about defeating political liberalism and its economic wing, capitalism. But once again, the turn to theology is in my view not a total abandonment of liberation, but rather a shift in a critical space in a shifting cultural landscape. To what degree this is acceptable or convincing on my part, is neither here nor there in terms of the argument set forth here; but more importantly what it represents is a more complex Horkheimer than what we have become to know under the historical auspices of the now conservative leaning media and cultural studies discipline particularly in the United Kingdom.
A one-sided and deeply limited account of Horkheimer – and others associated with the Institute of Social Research for that matter – has stereotyped him as an elitist and a writer that maintained ala Althusser that there was no escape from the dominant capitalist ideology, and although aspects of his writings led to a certain hopelessness, it’s also true that other aspects of his writing didn’t and thus despite the overall narrow academic interest in Horkheimer – mostly confined to the Dialectic of Enlightenment – much still lends itself to new interpretations of his works overall, including specifically the Eclipse of Reason and other academic writings discussed below. For the moment however here is one side of Horkheimer’s writing that is customary fare for many writers that perceive him as an elitist figure:
It seems that even as technical knowledge expands the horizon of man’s thought and activity, his autonomy as an individual, his ability to resist the growing apparatus of mass manipulation, his power of imagination, his independent judgment appear to be reduced. Advance in technical facilities for enlightenment is accompanied by a process of dehumanization (Horkheimer 1992: v–vi).
Horkheimer’ s view expressed here in the preface to his book the Eclipse of Reason written in 1947 was a clear and thorough critique of liberalism for producing the economic and political conditions for the annihilation of individual thought and far from being the theoretical and empirical means of which individualism may be accomplished, liberalism for Horkheimer was its eternal enemy and rather was the means to the suppression of true individualism not dominated or succumbing to external ideology. This viewpoint undoubtedly has repercussions for the way in which culture and thinking develops within advanced capitalist systems.2
Contained in this short extract is also a seed of thought that liberalism and its economic ally capitalism was fast becoming a fixed feature of the global landscape. By claiming that independent judgement was ‘reduced’ is not to state that all critical thought and opposition had been eradicated but the sense of hopelessness, which would eventually lead Horkheimer to seek refuge in theology over critical theory is certainly there. However, later in the Eclipse of Reason under the section ‘The Revolt of Nature’ Horkheimer with a nod to Freud also argues that domination of the masses also replicates itself as a repressive subjective psychic force, whereby individuals repress their true ‘inner nature’ resulting in having no ‘personality’ and as we’ll see later in this chapter despite this undeniable pessimistic outlook expressed above, Horkheimer also argued that if only certain conditions were recognized amongst oppressed people a better social order could come about, and in this way a high degree of ambiguity is contained within the writings of Max Horkheimer.
Two principle areas of concern here are with Horkheimer’s idea of critical theory and his position on human suffering, which was influenced by the equally pessimistic writings of the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. Without detailing too much at this juncture both critical theory and suffering in their sometimes different and respective ways, were means to which emancipation from oppression towards social justice could be achieved, but the first (critical theory) contains an inherent flaw and the second (suffering) and its social-collective recognition was inefficient in itself for Horkheimer as a basis for emancipation, much of which will hopefully become more clear as this work proceeds.
Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) is an intriguing figure to study for a number of reasons, some of which are relevant to an overall understanding of the chapters presented in this book in respect of the other writers associated with the Frankfurt School. Firstly, Horkheimer was the Director of the Social Research Institute in Frankfurt, and therefore his influence over research areas and the discussions/ positions advocated by other writers therein cannot be underestimated. Secondly, it’s intriguing to discover that despite the fact that Horkheimer published less than his associates, it’s noticeable through correspondence by letters that he nevertheless had an eternal presence on many subject areas. In other words, his fingerprints are almost everywhere. Thirdly, the concept that is popularly ascribed to Horkheimer is the notion of the ‘culture industry’, which is documented in the 1944 book The Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-written with Theodor Adorno. One further but important point arises from this. As Habermas argued in relation to the Dialectic ‘the authorship of individual chapters is by no means undivided … the [chapter on] culture industry belong[s] to Adorno’ (Habermas 1993: 57). Adorno certainly contributed a greater output overall regarding the theory of culture and greatly expanded on the ‘culture industry’, which in turn marginalized Horkheimer from the debate on culture to a large extent because what is largely unknown at least in popular literature is that Horkheimer had referred to the ‘cultural industries’ in 1941,3 previous to his collaboration with Adorno in 1944, and therefore can make claim to its foundational roots and also that Horkheimer produced some fairly complex and interesting comments on culture with respect to social reproduction as a single author. There are also to be found smatterings and ruminations on culture as theory and culture as an industry in his dense works the Eclipse of Reason.
Max Horkheimer became director of the Institute for Social Research in 1930 and became a leading figure in developing the intellectual framework for what would become critical theory. Philosophy for Horkheimer, alone was too restrictive for understanding the social processes underway, and critical theory under Horkheimer’s leadership would constitute a combination of academic disciplines with empirical research in order to clarify philosophical concerns. Horkheimer’s ‘Marxist turn’ in his early period allowed for an effective evaluation of the repressive character of capitalism. What would initially become a critical social theory would be premised on a Marxist concept of materialism to comprehend the inherent contradictions within capitalism. For Marx, and for Horkheimer, such contradictions would pave the way for social and political forces to overcome the exploitative character of capitalism. Critical theory would become the basis on which assessment of society would be made apparent and it differed from Marx in that this would become a materialism based on cross disciplinary approaches that would expose injustices and form the basis of understanding how resolutions would become real. Despite the new inventive approach by combining subject areas such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, political economy etc., with empirical research, the ‘revolutionary moment’ or potential remained firmly in place, and in essence all that differed was applying a Marxist approach to a period of development that had incurred new structural and ideological changes from Marx’s time:
To show the contradiction between the principle on which bourgeois society was founded and the actual reality of that society involves bringing out how justice was one-sidedly defined in terms of freedom and freedom in terms of negation, and substituting a positive conception of justice by offering a ground-plan for a reasonable society. When the concept of justice thus changes its meaning, we glimpse the historical origins of what was originally proclaimed as an eternal principle, and we understand that that concept was an idea proposed by definite individuals and conditioned by relationships within a class society. Today therefore, the struggle for a better order of things has been cut loose from its old supernatural justification. The theory appropriate to the struggle today is materialism (Horkheimer 2002: 22).
Max Horkheimer converted materialism into interdisciplinary materialism or what is commonly known as critical theory as a model to assess social conditions. It is a common mistake to perceive critical theory as a fixed concept and the reality is that there were different perspectives within the inner and outer circle of the Frankfurt School. Horkheimer, who so often plays second fiddle to the more productive Adorno, produced a notion of critical theory that differed from Adorno, with the former focusing on combining philosophy with the social sciences, and with the latter prioritizing aesthetics and cultural criticism. Moreover, and in relation to the above quote, Horkheimer further combined critical Marxist perspectives concerning materialism with the metaphysics espoused by Schopenhauer thus channelling the latter’s theory on pessimism into a new materialist understanding. But despite Horkheimer’s criticism of metaphysics he viewed Schopenhauer’s writings in more optimistic terms because Schopenhauer’s pessimism was rooted in material reality.
In other words, seeking the ‘better order of things’ wouldn’t arise from metaphysical or religious contemplation but rather out of the struggles in concrete reality of which human happiness was central: ‘But in addition it has always meant to materialists that man’s striving for happiness is to be recognized as a natural fact requiring no justification’ (Horkheimer 2002: 44). However, despite happiness being a reasonable and just goal Horkheimer sympathized far more with Schopenhauer’s idea of human suffering as the basis for action. Horkheimer’s view that happiness as a universal goal, was countered as inadequate as a basis for action because of its positive inclination; freedom could only be realized from the negative moment; out of human suffering and critical thinking.
In that Horkheimer was influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer’s pessimism is indisputable, however, it is not true that such pessimistic positions were absolute. In fact, one could argue that even Schopenhauer pursued more optimistic rather than pessimistic positions within his more general philosophical thinking. True pessimists would see no value existing in life at all, and even Schopenhauer saw value in artistic endeavour for example or even pursuing philanthropic goals. Horkheimer’s argument concerning suffering and the pursuit of happiness are at one and the same time both pessimistic (suffering) and optimistic (happiness). Linking a radical conception of materialism with Schopenhauerian pessimism allowed for ‘hope’ of a better social order but only in so far as suffering serves as a basis for revolutionary drive and as McCole et al., (1993: 5) state:
What they shared in common (materialism and Schopenhauerian pessimism), to Horkheimer’s way of thinking, was a relentless critique of any transfiguration of suffering – this was one of the keys to his affinity for materialism – and an attempt to ground human solidarity on a shared experience of suffering and creaturely finitude.
Such solidarity and in the first instance recognition of suffering amongst people (social suffering) was central to Horkheimer’s view of revolutionary motivation towards change. Striving for and achieving happiness is attainable but for Horkheimer it is only possible by a rejection of economic drives: Here Horkheimer credits his co-Frankfurt School writer Erich Fromm: ‘The extent to which a naïve, economically oriented psychology can interpret this striving as a desire for satisfaction of gross material needs has been expounded in detail in the works of Erich Fromm’ thus providing a Freudian inflection into pursuing happiness as a core drive of the human condition but one based on social solidarity not individual illusions and with reference to materialism the struggles for social goals is based on ‘solidarity with suffering men’ and thus rejects the ‘illusions of idealist metaphysics’ with its emphasis on achieving ‘individual reward in eternity and, with it, an important selfish motive operative in other men’ (Horkheimer 2002: 44). Furthermore, Horkheimer writes that ‘materialist convictions’ are based on ‘selfless dedication to the causes of humanity’ and: ‘Therefore materialism today says more accurately that all men strive for happiness, not for pleasure, and also that men keep their eyes not so much on pleasure as on what brings them pleasure’ (Horkheimer 2002: 44).
Today we live in a world dominated by global capitalist practice whereby the forces of production dominate and shape the social relations of production and thinking which rarely, effectively challenge capitalist orthodoxy and mostly is subsumed into its rationale. Even when ‘thinking’ may become critical and turn theory into practice (praxis) it firstly has to confront the various mythologies that underpin capitalist material and cultural production. Such critique is confronted with the inherent and undemocratic unequal distribution of wealth within the same parameters of more seemingly democratic moments, such as the mythology of individuality and the rights of human beings as universal principles. Capitalism like no other economic system in history has been effective in absorbing criticism and repelling alternatives to its often highly contradictions that it contains. As a system of liberalized thought it also legitimizes and rationalizes its essential function by claiming that it allows for criticism, whereby civil society persists as a functioning structure and apparatus for free thought outside state institutions. The fact that much of this is myth is of no consequence; the fact that it succeeds in selling illusions is its raisen d’etre and its effective point of realization.
For some anarchist writers, liberalism creates a cultural landscape that allows for patterns of liberation. For instance when Néstor García Canclini (2001) claimed that ‘consumption is good for thinking’ it was an expression that separated consumption as a social practice from absorbing commercial practices and ideologies. Despite the fact that consumption is firmly located within capitalist rationale and profit motives, García Canclini, nevertheless has claimed that the process and actuality of the consumption moment is broadly good because it forces us to think about a whole range of related issues, of which exploitation is one amongst others. Canclini had Horkheimer and Adorno in mind when ‘consumption is good for thinking’ was first announced and it was a rebuke to the more pessimistic tones forwarded by the two leading lights of the Frankfurt School.
There is however a curious Marxist perspective underpinning Canclini’s idea where societies go through various and perhaps inevitable historical stages in order to rationalize thought in terms of offering a critique of the exploitative excesses of capitalism and then formulating alternatives to it. For García Canclini and Jésus Martín-Barbero (1993) for that matter, such cultural processes were effectively underway particularly in Latin America where ‘hybrid cultures’ were being forged thus protecting the ‘people’ against a ‘one dimensional’ system and dominant ideology and in the process this forging of cultural matrixes, or what Martín-Barbero called ‘Mestizaje’ a popular cultural moment would effectively mean that despite a ‘dominating’ (not dominant) economic system controlled mostly by elites, the cultural matrix would ensure that in some contexts certain cultural narratives would be the product of the people, meaning that complete subjugation to a dominant system trying to enforce its rationale was ineffective for understanding the social reproduction of society.
This would mean that the political revolutions which occurred in 1989 for instance, which further witnessed the collapse of Stalinist regimes in the USSR, Eastern and Central Europe contained many contradictory moments; some of which were highly oppressive; some serving as moments of liberation. Even though we may not apply the hybrid culture theory in its entirety we can nevertheless forward the idea that ‘consumption is good for thinking’ because it means nothing if it isn’t universal. This moment of economic, political and cultural expansion was furthered by Chinese reforms now fully embracing a capitalist mode of production along with other systems such as India and Brazil for example; mass consumption must accordingly breed mass thinking, which for the two Latin American thinkers, is in itself good.
Max Horkheimer would have interpreted the revolutions in 1989 in a totally different way. Horkheimer who saw the USSR as the epitome of state capitalism surely would have read its declining moment as a transition into neo-liberal capitalism where the myth of the market replaced state authority which always overrode the market in turn. In Horkheimer’s essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ (2002) he argued that even though state capitalism would not be vulnerable to the same crises that plagued Western systems, he nevertheless, recognized and indeed predicted its eventual and inevitable downfall. The transition as it occurred meant that mass cultural production opened up and developed a different rationality, but twenty-two years on García Canclini’s idea that somehow consuming practices somehow set us free seems redundant, if ever they were anything other, but on the other hand does it mean that Horkheimer’s pessimism was correct?
Horkheimer’s earlier period was characterized by a more upbeat assessment of how liberalism could be transcended, however in his later period, Horkheimer became far more downbeat about the chances of neo-liberal capitalism being challenged from below. Weber’s ‘iron cage’ was slowly and surely taking root from which there seemed little or even no escape. Since his death in 1973, the USSR collapsed in 1989 and today Russia combines a large state apparatus that co-ordinates control of a market economy based on capitalist ideals. Further to this large swathes of what was once part of the USSR now belong to the European Union. Then there is China’s adoption of a state controlled market, India’s greater intervention into the world market along with the further consolidation of other regions including large parts of Latin America, all provide some sympathy with Horkheimer’s view that capitalism was fast becoming an immovable force. These are important issues because Horkheimer’s writing on culture and technological development (some call it ‘progress’) can be effectively applied in a larger, perhaps more global context.
The collapse of the USSR is significant giving way to Fukuyama’s claim that the end of history had finally arrived whereby the idea of Liberalism was now victorious. And perhaps there is something interesting here to note, even ironic depending on one’s viewpoint. Fukuyama had claimed that the end of history had arrived because of the collapse of communism. He attempted to turn Marx ‘on his head’ by supporting the principle of the materialist conception of history, or otherwise more commonly known as historical materialism but dismissing Marx’s belief that rather than communism being the ultimate aim of human development, it was capitalism which would be the final termination point; hence the end of history:
What we have called the ‘logic of modern natural science is in effect an economic interpretation of historical change, but one which (unlike its Marxist variant) leads to capitalism rather than socialism as its final result’ (Fukuyama 1992: xv).
Citing Hegel, Fukuyama claimed that it was man’s (sic) pursuit of the ‘struggle for recognition’ (Fukuyama 1992: xvi) that had primarily broken the back of the collective-state bully that had existed under Stalinist regimes. ‘Man …’ argued Fukuyama ‘… wants to be recognised. In particular he wants to be recognised as a human being’ (Fukuyama 1992: xvi). In his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History Hegel had claimed that there was a particular struggle being fought for within civil society and this is what Hegel termed ‘personality’, which formed the basis of ‘recognition’, which in turn formed the basis of Fukuyama’s end of history thesis and his claim of a universally victorious liberal idea:
Today … we have trouble imagining a world that is radically better than our own, or a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist. Within that framework many things could be improved … But we cannot picture to ourselves a world that is essentially different from the present one, and at the same time better (Fukuyama 1992: 46).
There is a curious link here between the context of which Fukuyama uses the Hegelian term ‘recognition’ and Horkheimer’s emphasis on ‘suffering’ and ‘happiness’ which Fukuyama’s quote illustrates. However, there are differences and similarities between Horkheimer and Fukuyama, and for that matter Schopenhauer, much of which Horkheimer utilized along with a materialist conception of history. For instance, Schopenhauer would have despaired at Fukuyama’s ‘optimistic’ appraisal of the victory of liberal democracy. In The World as Will and Representation (vol. 1) (1969) for instance Schopenhauer wrote passionately against the best of all possible outcomes scenario arguing it was code for what currently exists and Horkheimer would have dismissed it for many obvious reasons (dominance of mass culture being one) but two others would have been the negation and oblivion of suffering both as a concept but more importantly as the source of solidarity and resistance, and once again as the mortar of which happiness would come to fruition. However, and here is the contradiction in Horkheimer’s thinking there is a curious ‘similar position’ between critical theory and Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ theory, which in my view represents a tension between critical theory and the more optimistic account of happiness as a consequence of the social recognition and compassion towards suffering and its overcoming. Critical theory defined and developed by Horkheimer was limited in scope and had amongst many others two counter-positions worth mentioning here. One, it viewed or if you prefer ‘exposed’ capitalism for limiting or eliminating contradiction which is necessary for its overthrow and two critical theory viewed labour in narrowly defined terms whereby labour was not the basis for examining relations between people but merely was the basis of its external relationship with control over nature. What this meant was that labour as a means of production was governed by material forces which exploited nature for capital and profit. Together this lead critical theory into an inevitable dead end of which an intellectual and epistemological crisis emerged for Horkheimer characterized as a pessimistic view of history; the ‘scream’ was real and it formed within Horkheimer as an existential angst over a crisis of negated possibilities. It’s always intrigued me why for instance Francis Fukuyama seemed naively unaware of Horkheimer’s position, for if he had, he could have ruthlessly exploited it for his own purposes for critical theory posed as such is in simple terms a nod to the ‘end of history’ of which there seems no apparent escape.
Despite the limitations of critical theory in resolving the central concerns of capitalism and the peculiar connection between Horkheimer and Fukuyama concerning the end of history, they differed greatly over their respective views concerning liberalism:
Of the different types of regimes that have emerged in the course of human history … the form of government that has survived intact to the end of the twentieth century has been liberal democracy. What is emerging victorious … is not so much liberal practice, as the liberal idea (Fukuyama 1992: 45).
Fukuyama was not only influenced by Hegel’s theory of ‘recognition’ as well as Marx’s theory of historical materialism, which he used differently but was also influenced by modernization theory. Liberalism therefore is accordingly, natural to humankind, and hence evolutionary and also progressive because it reflects the conquering of traditional systems and superstition. Liberalism is indicative of human nature because it allows people to pursue a state of individuality because all humans pursue ‘recognition’; in other words liberalism is inevitable and although the economic rationale of capitalism is inherently unequal, it is for Fukuyama the only viable economic system that serves as the basis for guaranteeing individual freedom mainly through political interventions.
Horkheimer viewed liberalism differently and certainly viewed the cultural institutions within liberalism as highly manipulative. Unlike Fukuyama, Horkheimer viewed liberalism not so much as natural and progressive, but rather the cultural institutions were but merely means for maintaining liberalism’s hegemony or dominance as a social system and were the opposite of natural and progressive. If liberalism was truly ‘victorious’ to use Fukuyama’s term, it was only victorious for Horkheimer in the sense that liberalism’s ideology was able to produce a state of ‘false consciousness’ of which the media is a key part and thus altering the cultural sphere in terms of thinking and action. False consciousness is not used here in the sense that people are affected, deluded and mentally unable to resist power, but rather it is used with reference to the Marxist writer György Lukács, maintaining that false consciousness limits the cultural horizons (where ‘independent judgement appear[s] to be reduced’ detailed in the quote above, Horkheimer 1992: vi) or alternative systems of thought to that which govern capitalism, but not so dominant that it cannot be overcome. In this way, to a very large extent Fukuyama’s views ironically become true for how can we imagine ‘a world that is radically better than our own, or a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist’ as he stated above (Fukuyama 1992: 46).
In the Eclipse of Reason Horkheimer states that ‘The principle of liberalism has led to conformity through the levelling principle of commerce and exchange which held liberalistic society together’ (Horkheimer 1992: 139), and using Weberian language arguing that the atomized or to use another term the alienated individual, a product of bourgeois economy, in turn becomes a ‘social type’ (Horkheimer 1992: 139). But Horkheimer also attends to and critiques the myth that liberalism effectively produces the individual as a distinct form with distinct characteristics, needs, requirements and cultural identity in relation to others and thus echoes Adorno’s writings concerning ‘standardization’: ‘All the monads, isolated though they were by moats of self-interest, nevertheless tended to become more and more alike through the pursuit of this very self-interest’ (Horkheimer 1992: 139). It is the self-interest of individuals that eventually transfers into cultural spheres of influence as a collective-unified and identical form that manifests as mass culture at both productive and consumption levels producing sameness at both ends, despite claims of entrepreneurs (cultural or otherwise) that difference sets them apart from the masses of consumption.
In principle there couldn’t be a greater refutation of the position forwarded by Fukuyama of which many disciples prescribe to today. This extract is important to bear in mind as we proceed for it informs us of Horkheimer’s position with respect to the tri-partite relationship of economy, psychology and culture. ‘Commerce’ serves multiple purposes and it defines ‘reason’ and in turn it forms consciousness or that which becomes naturalized, legitimized and rationalized all of which are what Eagleton (1990) termed as ideology. Under the chapter titled ‘Rise and decline of the individual’ Horkheimer ruminates on the idea and subsequent self-understanding of individuality arguing that one must have ‘awareness’ and be ‘conscious’ of it which includes recognizing one’s own ‘identity’ (Horkheimer 1992: 128) Horkheimer further states that this condition is weaker in children than it is in adults whereby learning to become ‘I’ is a process of socialization. Mass culture or the culture industry based on commercial imperatives, creates the false framework that becomes known as ‘reason’ and it essentially permeates the lives of people as a psychological process. Besides critical theory and the social recognition of suffering, one institution that was able to resist power was for Horkheimer the family. In ‘Art and Mass Culture’ (1941) however, Horkheimer argued that mass culture was now able to penetrate the lives of children that escape the familial mores and thus become the main influencing factor for conditioning the self or the ‘I’ as a social process. This psychological process was profound for many reasons. One, it dismantles the familiar family structure and all the consequences that it may bring and two it secures capitalism through the process of mass culture. It could be argued that the technological advances today, mobile phones, social networking sites etc., effectively replace the family as the influential body, replaced by the lure of the product (including celebrity) and distant others through networking thus affecting consciousness.
Whilst it is difficult to gauge the total effects of social networking, it’s reasonable to suggest that Horkheimer’s view on mass culture would be of interest because of the emphasis Horkheimer placed on education as an effective means to at least think of alternatives, and it’s true that despite what some teenagers for instance may think, family or parental views, which almost always differ from the pressures of commercial life are exactly that; alternative and thought-provoking. The idea that even this process can be surpassed has psychological impacts in terms of how identity and reason is formed in relation to commodities. Moreover, recent research into social media suggests perhaps that something more profound in human behaviour is currently underway that in my view relates to both Horkheimer’s argument concerning mass culture and his views on human suffering. For instance in an article titled ‘Social media make us less human, warns US expert …’ (The Observer, January 23 2011) US sociologist Sherry Turkle in her book Alone Together has argued that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook isolate users from reality rather than connecting them to it and states: ‘A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological’. In an age where civil unrests or revolutions have occurred in many Arab countries using social networking sites as organizational points, we must be careful in how we assess social media, for Leo Lowenthal, a close associate of Horkheimer would I believe see such technology as a form of liberation in this context, and perhaps that is how we should perceive Turkle’s claim in a predominantly (US) context where commercialization is so omnipresent it has fashioned culture in that way.
With Adorno, Horkheimer in the Dialectic of Enlightenment states: ‘And so the culture industry, the most rigid of all styles, proves to be the goal of liberalism, which is reproached for its lack of style’ further stating that the culture industry’s ‘categories and contents derive from liberalism’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1992: 131). Moreover, ‘the system of the culture industry comes from the more liberal nations … Its progress, to be sure, has its origins in the general laws of capital (Adorno and Horkheimer 1992: 132).
The two theorists commonly associated with the concept of culture and cultural theory at the Frankfurt Institute were Theodor Adorno and Leo Lowenthal, and it’s oft forgotten or perhaps more reasonable to suggest, ignored that Horkheimer worked on developing a concept of culture prior to the publication of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. The manner in which reason, liberalism, critical theory and suffering coalesce within a conceptual framework of culture is perhaps a matter of interpretation, however, Horkheimer’s thinking on culture, cultural action and cultural institutions was an attempt to understand the place culture occupied and its role in either sustaining or radically changing social reproduction. By way of comparison it perhaps is worth mentioning that Stuart Hall’s writing on popular culture is instructive because it allows us to think of the radical possibilities inherent within the struggles that occur within popular cultural movements. For instance in ‘Notes on Deconstructing “The Popular”’ Hall deliberates on the various meanings or interpretations of popular culture and argues that ‘struggle and resistance’ and ‘reform’ are central components for our understanding of cultural forces, and he also argues that ‘transformations’ are essential elements stating ‘“transformations” are at the heart of the study of popular culture’ further stating that popular culture ‘is the ground on which transformations are worked’ (Hall 2005: 64). The comparison with Horkheimer is instructive in the sense that Hall separates off ‘popular culture’ from the broader term ‘culture’ and here is what Hall says:
In the study of popular culture, we should always start here: with the double-stake in popular culture, the double movement of containment and resistance, which is inevitably inside it (Hall 2005: 65).
What we can begin to understand according to Hall is that ‘transformations’ occur as a result of the dialectical movement and struggle between ‘containment’ and ‘resistance’. Resistance here is an opposition to authority or the establishment’s efforts to control or subdue the population and to secure a future based on popular interests. Popular culture therefore is an area of contention and struggle against ‘a culture of the powerful’ (Hall 2005: 71) and ‘the arena of consent and resistance’ (Hall 2005: 71) and in the very last three lines of Hall’s work he states that popular culture is ‘where socialism might be constituted’ or perhaps it might not?
Horkheimer’s concept of culture would suggest the latter as the conservative and reactionary cultural forces dominate critical cultural forces, or what Hall would call ‘popular culture’. For Horkheimer resistance wasn’t so much futile but greatly muted because as he argued in ‘Authority and Family’ that ‘relatively stable institutions’ (Horkheimer 2002: 54) are embedded in life to such a degree that they become normalized, but equally cultural spaces allowed for critique, suggesting that Horkheimer had not settled totally one way or the other concerning domination-resistance.
In Axel Honneth’s work ‘Sociological Deficit of Critical Theory’ Honneth explains that Horkheimer developed two concepts of culture, where the first is closely aligned with Hall’s meaning of popular culture and the second isn’t and as Honneth explains this first concept of culture ‘denotes a field of social action’ (Honneth 1993: 206) and this constitutes social reproduction. The development of a concept of culture was important for Horkheimer because he sought to avoid economic determinism whereby the economic base of any given system determines social thinking and action. Horkheimer recognized the importance of the economic base but argued that this competed with the psychology of human drives and as Honneth explains Horkheimer introduced a ‘third dimension of social reproduction between economy and labour and “individual instincts” which was culture’ (Honneth 1993: 205). This first concept is referred to as ‘action-theoretic’ (Honneth 1993: 208) hence its close alignment with Hall. However, this later transforms into ‘institution-theoretic concept’ (Honneth 1993: 208) as detailed in ‘Authority and Family’ which as Honneth argues is a ‘view of history that limits the development of civilization’ and is one where ‘the institutions of culture are stabilizing factors reaching through individual instincts’ (Honneth 1993: 209) and normalizing relations of production – it is the piercing tentacles of affirmative culture.
This complex but interesting view of culture helps us therefore to understand the importance of the culture industry and why ‘resistance’ to use Hall’s term is dwarfed by establishment norms. Horkheimer’s interest in the cultural industries was linked to his overall concern with the concept of culture in relation to social reproduction and human development:
To understand why a society functions in a certain way, why it is stable or dissolves, demands therefore a knowledge of the contemporary psychic makeup of men in various social groups. This in turn requires a knowledge of how their character has been formed in interaction with all the shaping cultural forces of the time (Horkheimer 2002: 54).
In the same passage Horkheimer dismisses the notion that the economic base is all determining and isolated from other spheres, rather the ‘economic process’ develops other ‘spheres of social life’. As Rumpf articulates Horkheimer’s work ‘Authority and the Family’ originally published in 1936 ‘introduced a social-psychological perspective that was supposed to capture the intrapsychic dynamics of the dominated’ going on to state: ‘The internalisation of what had once been the external compulsion of material conditions becomes the starting point for determining the relation of culture and society’ (Rumpf 1993: 320) and on page 59 of ‘Authority and the Family’ Horkheimer indeed speaks in terms of cultural institutions having a ‘definite, even relative autonomy’.
Horkheimer refers to this process as the ‘whole culture’ which is ‘caught up in the dynamism of history’ whereby various ‘cultural forces … form, in their interconnection, dynamic influences on the maintenance or breakdown of a particular society’ and like Raymond Williams’ notion of cultural materialism, Horkheimer states: ‘Culture at each moment in time is a sum-total of forces at work amid the change of cultures’. The materialist view of culture Horkheimer argues ‘that cultural arrangements and processes …’ and influences are either ‘conservative or disruptive forces factors in the dynamism of society’ (Horkheimer 2002: 54).
Culture, as an alignment and tension of cultural forces, was for Horkheimer the principle, determining factor of historical movement. Unlike idealism, a materialist approach perceived history as ‘interaction between nature and society … [and] … already existent and emerging cultures’ (Horkheimer 2002: 51). In other words as Stuart Hall would later argue culture was a ‘battleground of ideas’.
the materialist view is not dominated by fatalism, as the idealist theory is. In materialism, individuals and social groups, working and struggling, of course, with such capabilities as previous historical development affords them, have an effect, in turn, on current economic relationships (Horkheimer 2002: 51).
The limited approach to Horkheimer’s individual works overall are nowhere more felt than in his writings on culture. This of course spreads to his collaborative work with Adorno, but even Adorno’s solo writings become associated and synonymous with the Frankfurt School that dominates discussions. Such approaches tend to simplify what are extremely complex works by Horkheimer and devalue his contribution on culture. Far from Horkheimer assuming a banality of thinking on behalf of the masses in completion, the opposite was true stating that workers today ‘are intellectually better trained, better informed, and much less naïve’ (Horkheimer 1992: 150) as opposed to pre-industrial and traditional times. Moreover, the idea that elites in society are perceived as free-individuals that somehow rise above the apparent world of banality and mass culture is equally ludicrous. Horkheimer does however state that: ‘Social power is today more than ever mediated by power over things’ (Horkheimer 1992: 129) and that this is controlled by elites who command the heights of the economy and politics. However, this state of control over things, doesn’t translate into individual freedom despite the fact that elites have control over their material lives, but rather it perhaps ironically becomes a form of social and cultural entrapment: ‘The more intense an individual’s concern with power over things, the more things will dominate him’ (Horkheimer 1992: 129). Horkheimer states, thus leading to a decline of individuality and thus transforming the individual into ‘an automation of formalized reason’ (Horkheimer 1992: 130). Thus Horkheimer claims that: ‘Every instrumentality of mass culture serves to reinforce the social pressures upon individuality …’ (Horkheimer 1992: 158): no exceptions. In relation to productivity Horkheimer claimed ‘it must be observed that economic significance today is measured in terms of usefulness with respect to the structure of power, not with respect to all’ (Horkheimer 1992: 154).
Frank Zappa once sung in relation to ‘usefulness’ stating that certain sections of society are ‘plastic people’; a reference pitted against the ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ and raged against conformity arguing astutely for the radical individual to stand firm and resist standardization. Another Zappa track ‘Slime’ (from New York Live) is also based on the idea that the media is fully influential in shaping consciousness: ‘Your mind is totally controlled’ and Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy sung of ‘Television, a drug of a nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation’. Horkheimer may certainly have had sympathies for these views with some points aligned to Zappa in his essay ‘Art and Mass Culture’:
Individuality, the true factor in artistic creation and judgment, consists not in idiosyncrasies and crotchets, but in the power to withstand the plastic surgery of the prevailing economic system which carves all men to one pattern. Human beings are free to recognize themselves in works of art in so far as they have not succumbed to the general levelling (Horkheimer 2002: 273) (my italics).
‘Art is knowledge, no less than science is’ (Horkheimer 2002: 273): art being one of the last staging posts for resistance. Robert Hughes attempted to dispel that idea not long ago writing in The Guardian (30 June 2004) in a piece titled ‘That’s showbusiness’ Hughes commented on how modern art has vacuously turned into celebrity culture motivated by nothing more than profit and status and emptied of critique:
The art world is now so swollen with currency and the vanity of inflated reputation that it is taking on some of the less creditable aspects of showbiz. Hollywood doesn’t want critics, it wants PR folk and profile-writers. Showbiz controls journalism by controlling access. The art world hopes to do the same, though on a more piddly level. No other domain of culture would try this one on.
Is mass culture and celebrity complete, infecting what Horkheimer saw as a point of resistance? If so in many ways it would vindicate what both he and Adorno agreed on in the Dialectic of Enlightenment concerning the culture industry. Under the last section in that book ‘Notes and Drafts’ it states: ‘The cult of celebrities (film stars) has a built in social mechanism to level down everyone who stands out in any way’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1992: 236).
Hughes even reminded us that Damien Hirst refused an interview because Hirst is ‘very fragile to criticism’. Not all art was perceived as containing radical-negative moments according to Horkheimer, but certain forms of modern art did so as he explained in his essay ‘Art and Mass Culture’ such as Picasso or even literary works such as James Joyce’s Ulysses. To what extent these areas of cultural resistance are viable, for they were truly small in number, is a matter of serious debate.
The point made by Hughes above had been noted however by both Horkheimer and Adorno as the incessant pressures of the business world bore oppressively down upon artistic creativity: ‘In the market itself the tribute of a quality for which no use had been found was turned into purchasing power’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1992: 133), further arguing that ‘what completely fettered the artist was the pressure (and accompanying drastic threats), always to fit into business life as an aesthetic expert’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1992: 133). At this point in history these statements were directed at ‘inferior’ art and once again for Horkheimer modernist works such as Picasso having absolution from critique: ‘Instead of exposing itself to this failure in which the style of the great work of art has always achieved self-negation, the inferior work has always relied on its similarity with others-on surrogate identity’ going on to speak of ‘aesthetic barbarity’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1992: 131). Culture itself comes under the ‘sphere of administration’ and Hughes reminds us of this completed project.
Jay (1993) in his work ‘Mass Culture and Aesthetic Redemption’ asked the following question: ‘Can Horkheimer’s modernist alternative, which was shared by most other members of the Frankfurt School, be said to have fared even better’ further stating in relation to Horkheimer: ‘Even the most intransigently non-communicative modernist art, he came to realize, was not immune to being integrated into affirmative culture by the market place’ (Jay 1993: 380).
Mass culture governed by liberalism and its form of rationality and reason is destructive in the sense that it disables individuals from sharing solidarity in suffering in any collective sense because mass culture attempts to create a heightened sense of individuality. The fact that this is an illusion, what Horkheimer and Adorno referred to as pseudo individuality is neither here nor there, the point for Horkheimer at least is that generally speaking mass culture within a liberal context has been successful in creating such an illusion – becoming reason – and thus negates suffering as a basis for social change. There are echoes here of Marx’s concepts of ‘class-in-itself’ turning to a ‘class-for-itself’ whereby the working class recognize that capitalism exploits their labour which results in revolutionary consciousness. Equally, Horkheimer’s emphasis, with a nod to Schopenhauer, on recognizing suffering as a social condition and action occurring from that is in someway an attempt at resolving Marx’s theory of alienation.
Marx had argued that humans were alienated from their true sense of being, as social beings, whereby capitalism turned them into isolated individuals. Alienation would need to be overcome if capitalism was to be overturned, and so it is that for Horkheimer suffering becomes the point in terms of its ‘negative value’ of which action could occur. The problem it seems that confronted Horkheimer was that both critical theory and suffering had, to different degrees, been effectively overcome by the illusion and persuasion of mass culture. Critical theory becomes redundant because as pointed out earlier labour is merely perceived in terms of a relationship between production and nature and no longer as relations between people, i.e., alienated labour, and if solidarity cannot be achieved through the communal act of social suffering then what else is there but a retreat into a thorough form of pessimism, which seems ironic seeing that Horkheimer it would appear wanted to avoid Schopenhauer’s ultimate aim by infusing such pessimism with the less ‘fatalistic’ material conception of history.
Adorno, T., and M. Horkheimer, 1992. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso.
Fukuyama, F., 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Hamish Hamilton.
García Canclini, N., 2001. Consumers and Citizens: Globalisation and Multicultural Conflicts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Grossberg, L., 1996. ‘History, Politics and Postmodernism. Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies’, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogue in Cultural Studies, D. Morley and K-H. Chen (eds). London: Routledge.
Habermas, J., 1993. ‘Remarks on the Development of Horkheimer’s Work’, in On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, S. Benhabib, W. Bonβ and J. McCole (eds). London: MIT Press.
Hall, S., 2005. ‘Notes on Deconstructing “The Popular”’, in Popular Culture: a reader, R. Guins and O. Cruz (eds). London: Sage.
Honneth, A., 1993. ‘Max Horkheimer and the Sociological Deficit of Critical Theory’, in On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, S. Benhabib, W. Bonβ and J. McCole (eds). London: MIT Press.
Horkheimer, M., 1992. The Eclipse of Reason. New York: Continuum.
Horkheimer, M., 2002. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Continuum.
Jay, M., 1993. ‘Mass Culture and Aesthetic Redemption: The Debate between Max Horkheimer and Siegfried Kracauer’, in On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, S. Benhabib, W. Bonβ and J. McCole (eds). MIT Press: London.
Martín-Barbero, J., 1993. Communication, Culture and Hegemony: from media to mediations. Sage: London.
McCole, J., S. Benhabib and W. Bonβ, 1993. ‘Introduction – Max Horkheimer: Between Philosophy and Social Science’, in On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, S. Benhabib, W. Bonβ and J. McCole (eds). London: MIT Press.
Schopenhauer, A., 1969. The World as Will and Representation (vol. 1). Translated by E.F.J. Payne. New York: Dover Publications.
1 Lohmann’s chapter titled ‘The Failure of Self-Realization: An Interpretation of Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason’ is as the author states an attempt ‘to retrieve the text from this marginal position without, however, putting it into competition with Dialectic of Enlightenment’ (Lohmann 1993: 387).
2 As we’ll see later and by means of a comparison to highlight Horkheimer’s position, Francis Fukuyama in his book The End of History perceived liberalism in a more favourable and indeed oppositional light to that of Horkheimer.
3 Introducing the phrase that was to become so central in his collaborative project with Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, he scornfully wrote: ‘What today is called popular entertainment is actually demands evoked, manipulated and by implication deteriorated by the cultural industries’ (Jay 1993: 373). The text this is taken from is ‘Art and Mass Culture’ (1941) reprinted in Critical Theory/ Selected Essays (Horkheimer 2002).