How the fathers of Critical Theory found their way to America

ADAM KIRSCH - August 18, 2009

It would be hard to overstate the importance of the Frankfurt School in recent American thought. Philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists like Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer—to name just the best-known members of the group—helped to develop a subtle and powerful way of thinking about the problems of modern society. Critical Theory, as it is usually capitalized, adapted the revolutionary impulse of Marxism to 20th century conditions, in which mass culture and totalitarianism seemed to shut off any real possibility of social transformation. Especially appealing to academics is the way Critical Theory makes the analysis of culture feel like a revolutionary act in and of itself. Reading Adorno on modern music, or Benjamin on literature, it is momentarily possible to believe that criticism is a weapon of liberation, rather than simply a hermetic exercise for intellectuals.

No wonder that after the 1960s, as Thomas Wheatland writes in his impressive new study The Frankfurt School in Exile, “ambitious young sympathizers with the New Left” in the academy turned en masse to the Frankfurt School, a scholarly subject that they could explore “without having to disguise or hide their intellectual and political orientations.” It is strange that it took until the 1960s for the Frankfurters to make a major impact on America, however, since from 1934 to 1949 they were actually living in the United States. The Institute for Social Research—the institutional home of the Frankfurt School thinkers—had to uproot itself from Germany in 1933, following Hitler’s rise to power. After a brief period in Geneva, it relocated to Morningside Heights, where it formed an uneasy partnership with Columbia University.

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Jay Dyer - October 19, 2008

As Zeitgeist creator Peter Joseph and Alex Jones were debating on air last week, all I could think was, “Man, this sounds just like everything I learned in my ‘Marxism and Critical Theory’ class two years ago.”  That course was taught by a fellow who studied under intellectuals from the Frankfurt School, which claimed Marxist-olic Succession (lol). The school, originally called The Institute for Social Research, was founded by an extremely wealthy fellow, Felix Weil who, just like Engles, oddly supported Marxism (Engles was a rich stock owner).  Those decently read in the conspiracy genre know that communism is itself a creation of wealthy capitalists by design.  And, contrary to common assumptions, Marx didn’t think capitalism was even ‘wrong’: in fact, he saw it as a progressive step of Western culture out of feudalism which would be succeded by statism and dictatorship, which would then likely culminate in the no-state utopia where every man could awaken every day to fish, paint and re-connect with “nature.”

What was most interesting in Peter Joseph’s attempted defense was although he continually qualified his arguments, he stressed that he wasn’t a Marxist, socialist or a communist.  Now, I know that communitarianism is somewhat of an outgrowth of both capitalism and communism, but it certainly swings more in the direction of communism.  However, the gospel I heard from Joseph didn’t sound different from Marx at all.

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