"This book is the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Max Horkheimer during the early and middle phases of his life (1895-1941). Drawing on unexamined new sources, John Abromeit describes the critical details of Horkheimer's intellectual development. This study recovers and reconstructs the model of early Critical Theory that guided the work of the Institute for Social Research in the 1930s. Horkheimer is remembered primarily as the co-author of Dialectic of Enlightenment, which he wrote with Theodor W. Adorno in the early 1940s. But few people realize that Horkheimer and Adorno did not begin working together seriously until the late 1930s or that the model of Critical Theory developed by Horkheimer and Erich Fromm in the late 1920s and early 1930s differs in crucial ways from Dialectic of Enlightenment. Abromeit highlights the ways in which Horkheimer's early Critical Theory remains relevant to contemporary theoretical discussions in a wide variety of fields"--
STATE CAPITALISM IS THE AUTHORITARIAN SYSTEM THAT, BY 1940, ABOLISHED THE MARKET ECONOMY & REPLACED IT WITH CENTRALIZED PLANNING. AUTHORITARIAN RULE IN FASCIST STATES IS BASED ON THE PRINCIPLE OF SYSTEMATICALLY FURTHERING THE DIFFERENCES AMONG THE RACES & RANKS. INTEGRAL STATISM, OR STATE SOCIALISM, CAN EXIST WITHOUT RACISM, UNLIKE FASCISM. YET STATE SOCIALISM IS NOT A RETREAT BUT AN ADVANCE OF POWER THAT EXTENDS FACTORY REGIMENTATION TO THE ENTIRE SOCIETY. THE PRODUCERS, TO WHOM ALL CAPITAL LEGALLY BELONGS, REMAIN WAGE WORKERS UNDER BUREAUCRATIC MANAGEMENT. THE PARTY & TRADE UNION BUREAUCRACIES WERE SUBSTITUTED FOR THE EARLIER STATE APPARATUS, & THE YEARLY PLANS OF THE FUNCTIONARIES REPLACED THE PROFIT PRINCIPLE. THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT NEGATIVELY RESEMBLED THE SITUATION IT WAS ATTACKING, & BY SEEKING TO EXTEND ITSELF UNDER DOMINATION RAN THE RISK OF REPRODUCING AUTHORITARIANISM. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FREEDOM UNDER STATE SOCIALISM WAS CONSIDERED A MECHANISTIC, NATURAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE CONQUEST OF POWER, BUT PEOPLE WERE TREATED AS OBJECTS. THE AUTHORITARIAN STATE IS REPRESSIVE IN ALL ITS FORMS. THE EXORBITANT NEEDS OF THE POWER APPARATUS & THE DRIVE TO DESTROY INITIATIVE & ASSURE OBEDIENCE PRODUCES IMMEASUREABLE WASTE ECONOMICALLY. THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM ARE THE IRRATIONALITIES THAT LIE WITHIN SYSTEMS THAT HAVE ELIMINATED CRISES & YET FAIL TO ACHIEVE HARMONY. SINCE THE ENEMIES OF THE AUTHORITARIAN STATE CAN NO LONGER CONCEIVE OF FREEDOM, THE OUTLOOK FOR LIBERATION IS BLEAK. THE FORM OF ORGANIZATION THAT IS AN AUTHENTIC ALTERNATIVE IS THE REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS' COUNCIL. THE ONLY JUSTIFICATION FOR VIOLENCE THAT REMAINS IS THE NECESSITY OF PUTTING AN END TO VIOLENCE ITSELF. IN POSTSCRIPT TO HORKHEIMER'S "AUTHORITARIAN STATE," RUSSELL JACOBY REEMPHASIZES THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HORKHEIMER ARTICLE TO THE US LEFT. POLITICAL ACTIVITISTS MUST REMEMBER THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST--THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC CAPITULATION TO A POSITIVIST SCHEME OF PROGRESS. ALTHOUGH THE STUDENT MOVEMENT IN THE US HAS DECLINED, HORKHEIMER'S CONCERNS NEED TO BE EXPLORED: THE NATURE OF FASCISM, IMPLEMENTING WORKERS' COUNCILS, & THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTURAL. A. KARMEN.
Die "Dialektik der Aufklärung" präsentiert sich als eine Gruppe von fünf Essays, an die Aufzeichnungen und Entwürfe Max Horkheimers aus den Jahren vor Beginn der eigentlichen gemeinsamen Arbeit mit Theodor W. Adorno angehängt sind. Der theoretisch grundlegende Titelaufsatz wird ergänzt durch zwei philologisch-geschichtsphilosophische Exkurse zu Homers Odyssee als einem der frühesten Zeugnisse bürgerlich-abendländischer Zivilisation sowie zu Kant und Nietzsche als unerbittlichen Vollendern der Aufklärung. Danach folgen zwei Gegenwartsdiagnosen: eine Abhandlung über die Kulturindustrie, in welche US-amerikanische Erfahrungen einflossen, und eine Abhandlung über Antisemitismus, die den theoretischen Teil eines empirisch-praktisch angelegten Antisemitismus-Projekts bildete. Verbunden sind die fünf Abhandlungen zum einen durch das Leitmotiv einer Dialektik der Aufklärung und zum anderen durch einige Theoreme, die das Blickfeld erweitern. Das zu Recht und nachhaltig Faszinierende an dem kulturkritischem Schlüsselwerk ist nach Ansicht des Autors die Aktualisierung eines alten Topos: Dass eine befriedete Menschheit nur als eine mit der Natur versöhnte vorstellbar ist. Die "Dialektik der Aufklärung" hat auf paradigmatische Weise Elemente traditioneller konservativer Zivilisationskritik mit progressiver Gesellschaftskritik kombiniert und eine linke Gegenposition zu einem technokratisch gewordenen Konservatismus entworfen. (ICI2)
(Originally published in the Zeitschrift fur sozialforschung [1933, 2, 2, 162-195]). An examination of the relationship between materialism, as developed by Karl Marx, & morality, as developed by Immanuel Kant, in recent philosophical discourse. Attention is given specifically to the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, & Sigmund Freud. Materialism sees morality in terms not of transcendant authority but of the lives of concrete individuals affected by it. In the present age, moral sentiments take two main forms: compassion & politics. While neither is obligatory, both are productive forces historically related to bourgeois morality. These forms do not emerge, however, from free subjects, but from subjects historically conditioned by particular life circumstances. W. H. Stoddard
