the radical recuperation of Marxism
the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory along with French theory has been one of the hottest commodities of the global theory industry.
today they serve as the source of so many trend-setting and globalized forms of theoretical critique that dominates the world market of ideas.
the Frankfurt School’s political orientation has, therefore, had a foundational effect on Western intelligentsia and is situated at the very core of “western” or “cultural” Marxism.
so it is important to recontextualize the Frankfurt School’s work in relationship to the international class struggle, and in particular, in the words of Cold War CIA agent Thomas Braden, in the redefinition of “the Left as the Compatible Left, meaning non-Communist Left,” notably through the use of foundation money and the CIA-front groups such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which published Adorno in their journals and hosted Horkheimer in their conferences.
within this context, while offering some significant critiques of consumer society and the culture industry, they were ultimately playing the role of radical recuperators: by cultivating an appearance of radicality, they recuperated the very activity of critique within a pro-western anti-communist ideology.
not unlike other members of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia in Europe, which form the basis of western Marxism, they were disgusted “by the savage barbarians in the East, who dared to take up the weapon of Marxist theory à la Lenin and use it to act on the principle that they could rule themselves.”
from the relative comforts of their professorial citadels in the west, financially supported by capitalist foundations and imperialist states, they defended the superiority of the Euro-American (Atlanticist) world that promoted them against the leveling project “of the Bolshevized barbarians in the uncivilized periphery.”
i offer a couple highlights involving Adorno and Horkheimer to sketch an image which will nonetheless have plenty of details to easily fill up the sketch.
when Horkheimer took over the directorship of the Institute for Social Research in 1930, his stewardship was characterized by speculative concerns with culture and authority, rather than rigorous historical materialist analyses of capitalism, class struggle, and imperialism. he refused political engagement, and had taken a very specific position regarding the institute to engage with direct political issues. this refusal intensified when the Institute moved to the US in the 1930s.
the Institute adapted itself to the local bourgeois order censoring its past and present work to suit local academic and corporate susceptibilities: Horkheimer literally had words like “Marxism” and “revolution” and “Communism” expunged from its publications in order to avoid offending its US sponsors. furthermore, any type of political activity was forbidden. Horkheimer instead put his energy into securing corporate and state funding for the Institute, which he did successfully, and he even hired a public relations firm to promote its work in the US.
amongst the elements that are operating behind in support of the Frankfurt School, it is important to recognize that they decided after their sojourn in the US to move back not to East Germany but to West Germany, and in order to do that, they entered into one of the epicenters of the global class war against Communism, and received ample funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in particular, in order to be at the forefront of this cultural war against actually existing Socialism.
Horkheimer continued his censorship of the Institute’s work, refusing to publish two articles by Jurgen Habermas because they were critical of liberal democracy and spoke of revolution, daring to suggest an emancipation from “the shackles of bourgeois society.” in his private correspondence, Horkheimer candidly submitted to an apparently sympathetic Adorno that “it is simply not possible to have admissions of this sort in the research report of an institute that exists on the public funds of this shackling society.“
this appears to be a forthright admission that the economic base of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory was the driving force behind its ideology, or at least its public discourse. it is important to recall in this regard that 5/8 members of the Horkheimer circle (Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leo Löwenthal, and Friedrich Pollock) had been employed by the US government and national security state, which had a vested interested in the continuing loyalty of the Frankfurt School because a number of its members were working on sensitive government projects.
Adorno, after all, was brought to the US originally to work on Paul Lazarsfeld’s office of radio research project which received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and worked very closely with the US national security state. in fact, 75% of its annual budget was made up of government money. it is important to note that the Rockefeller foundation also funded Horkheimer’s first return to Germany in 1948, and that the Rockefeller are one of the biggest gangsters of US capital, who use their foundation as a tax shelter that allows them to mobilize a portion of their stolen wealth in the corruption of intellectual activity and culture.
so with all of these ties to the US capitalist ruling class in western states, it should not come as a surprise that the US government supported the Frankfurt School’s move back to West Germany with a very significant grant that amounts to over $1 million dollars in 2022 dollars (accounting for the brazy inflation).
the Institute also received support from private donors, the Society of Social Research, the City of Frankfurt, and even signed a research contract with a management corporation that had been a founding member of the anti-Bolshevik league and financed the n*zi party. one of the elements of the research that they did for this n*zi collaborating company was a sociological study of workers opinions with the implicit implication that such a study would “help management stall or prevent socialist organizing.”
Shepard Stone most clearly identified the role that the Frankfurt School played for the corporatocracy in the US national security state. Stone was a director of international affairs for the Ford Foundation where he oversaw their close work with the CIA on numerous cultural and intellectual project, and he sent a personal note to the State Department in the 1940s to encourage them to extend Adorno’s passport, where he said “the Institute is helping to train German leaders who will know something of democratic techniques. i believe it is important for our overall democratic objectives in Germany that such men as professor Adorno have an opportunity to work in that country.” the Institute was doing the kind of ideological work that the US state and capitalist ruling class wanted and did support.
meeting and even surpassing the dictates of ideological conformity of the shackling society that funded the Institute, Horkheimer openly expressed his fulsome support for the US anti-Communist puppet government in West Germany, whose intelligence services had been stocked with former n*zis, as well as its imperial project in Vietnam. Horkheimer is on record as claiming, “in America, when it is necessary to conduct a war and now listen to me, it is not so much a question of the defense of the homeland but it is essentially a matter of the defense of the Constitution, the defense of the rights of Man.”
Adorno occasionally shirked in the political shadows, but in 1956 he supported, along with Horkheimer, the imperialist invasion of Egypt by isr*el/britain/france, which aimed at seizing the Suez Canal and overthrowing Nasser. they referred to Nasser as “a fascist chieftain who conspires with Moscow,” and exclaimed, “no one even ventures to point out that these Arab robber states have been on the lookout for years for an opportunity to fall upon isr*el and slaughter the Jews who have found refuge there.”
so according to this pseudo-dialectical inversion, it is the Arab robber states, not the settler colony working with poor imperialist countries that is fascist.
Adorno and Horkheimer published one of the most over political texts in 1956. the same year, rather than supporting the global movement for anti-colonial liberation and the building of a socialist world, they celebrate with only a few minor exceptions the superiority of the western world, while repeatedly disparaging the Soviet Union and China, invoking stock racist descriptions of “the barbarians in the East” whom they described as “fascists who have chosen slavery.”
Adorno even chastises Germans who “mistakenly think that the Russians stand for Socialism,” reminding them that “the Russians are actually fascists; the industrialists and bankers already know this undoubtedly [due to the threat imposed by Communism to their property interests.]”
Gabriel Rockhill1 believes Horkheimer averred in a world historical conclusion that provoked no rebuttal on the part of his collaborator, that “Europe and the US are the best civilizations that history has produced up to now, as far as prosperity and justice are concerned. the key point now is to ensure the preservation of these gains.” Adorno and Horkheimer also supported quite resolutely the “totalitarian equivalence between Fascism and Communism; if this equivalence manifest itself socialist state-building projects, anti-colonial movements or even new western left mobilizations, in all three cases, those who think they are breaking out of the shackling society of bourgeois society, they are only making things worse.”
Our philosophy, as a dialectical critique of the overall social tendency of the age stands in the sharpest opposition to the politics and doctrine that emanates from the Soviet Union. we are unable to see anything in the practice of military dictatorships disguised as people’s democracies other than a new form of repression.2
Adorno doubled down on this and also added China as a reference point and said that he would have to go back on everything he’s ever thought if he were to support anything that he sees in China, and hence by extension, in these eastern Marxist movements that were changing the world, not merely interpreting it.
the goal of this brief analysis is not simply to demonstrate that Adorno and Horkheimer were on the wrong side of history defending capitalist countries and their imperialist endeavors over and against the socialist world. it is rather to situate their work within the political economy of ideas by elucidating the relationship between their research and the intellectual apparatus that structured it e.g. the material system of production, circulation, and reception that forms an important part of the superstructure. as i have highlighted above, they were funded and supported by the capitalist ruling class and imperialist states, including and especially the CIA, which provided them with comfortable lifestyles and promoted their research as the most radical work on offer, precisely because they rejected as beyond the pale, actually existing Socialism and the entire tradition of revolutionary Socialism.
far from being Marxists in the anti-revisionist sense, Adorno and Horkheimer in particular, but the Institute for Social Research in general, were radical recuperators within the capitalist intellectual apparatus.
This is a baller essay my dude