The Frankfurt School
and “Critical Theory”
Index to the biographies and writings of members of the “Frankfurt School”, or Institute for Social Research, set up by a group of Marxist intellectuals in Germany in 1923, affiliated to the University of Frankfurt and independently of the Communist Party, which has been influential in the development of Marxist theory ever since.
The founding of the Institut marked the beginning of a current of “Marxism” divorced from the organised working class and Communist Parties, which over the decades merged with bourgeois ideology in academia.
The Institut für Sozialforschung (Institut) was the creation of Felix Weil, who was able to use money from his father’s grain business to finance the Institut. Weil was a young Marxist who had written his PhD on the practical problems of implementing socialism and was published by Karl Korsch.
With the hope of bringing different trends of Marxism together, Weil organised a week-long symposium (the Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche) in 1922 attended by Georg Lukacs, Karl Korsch, Karl August Wittfogel, Friedrich Pollock and others. The event was so successful that Weil set about erecting a building and funding salaries for a permanent institute. Weil negotiated with the Ministry of Education that the Director of the Institut would be a full professor from the state system, so that the Institut would have the status of a University.
Weil himself was an orthodox Marxist, who saw Marxism as scientific; the role of the Institut would be social and historical research mainly on the workers’ movement. Indeed, in its early years, the Institut did fairly orthodox historical research. However, one of Weil’s central objectives was also cross-disciplinary research, something which the German University system made impossible.
Although Georg Lukacs and Karl Korsch both attended the Arbeitswoche which had included a study of Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy, both were too committed to political activity and Party membership to join the Institut, although Korsch participated in publishing ventures for a number of years.
The way Lukacs was obliged to repudiate his History and Class Consciousness, published in 1923 and probably a major inspiration for the work of the Frankfurt School, was an indicator for others that independence from the Communist Party was necessary for genuine theoretical work.
Friedrich Pollock was one of those who had been involved with the Institut from the beginning, and took over the role of Director on the death of Carl Grünberg. Pollock was content to concern himself with administrative matters, but he was also a life-long friend and associate of Max Horkheimer, who is probably the figure most identified as the leading representative of the Frankfurt School.
Max Horkheimer [Archive] later himself became Director of the Institut, and it was Horkheimer who guided the Institut into its innovative exploration of cultural aspects of the development of capitalism.
See Horkheimer’s opening address on becoming Director.
Karl August Wittfogel was a participant from the beginning, but was a Party member and had a more orthodox, “scientific” view of Marxism. It is Wittfogel who established the classic Marxist analysis of “Asiatic Despotism.”
Richard Sorge worked at the Instiut, but as it turned out was only there in his role as a Soviet spy.
David Ryazanov [Archive] was assigned to Germany to compile the writings of Marx and Engels and publish the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, and worked closely with the Institut.
In 1931/32 a number of psychoanalysts from the Frankfurt Institute of Psychoanalysis and others who were acquainted with members of the Institut began to work systematically with the Institut. These included Franz Borkenau, Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Karl Landauer and Heinrich Meng.
In joining what was predominantly a “Hegelian-materialist” current of Marxists, these psychologists gave the development of Marxist theory an entirely new direction, which has left its imprint on social theory ever since.
Erich Fromm [Archive] dealt with psychological aspects of social control, delusion and conformity and became one of the founders of “socialist humanism”.
Wilhelm Reich developed his own doctrine of sexual liberalism as an antidote to political conformism and social psychosis.
Other young German Communist intellectuals who were associated with the Institut, but after the Nazi takeover, wound up in the United States, were Kurt Lewin and Adolph Löwe.
They all went on to make significant contributions to social theory, though only distantly related to their initial Communist inspirations. Kurt Lewin for instance contributed to the emergence of group-dynamics and social action theory as specialised disciplines. Adolph Lowe made important contributions to the development of political economy.
Raymond Aron was a French journalist and sociologist.
Leo Lowenthal [Archive] was one of the early workers at the Institut whose principal interest was in the sociology of literature.
Later he was joined by the Hegelian philosopher Herbert Marcuse [Archive] who was probably the only member of the Institut who achieved wide influence among political activists, in the 1960s.
When Hitler came to power, the Institut was closed down, and by various routes, most of the participants in the Institut regrouped themselves in New York, with a new Institute affiliated to Columbia University. They continued to publish in German, even though very few people would have been reading their work in that language. However, after the War, the Institut returned to Frankfurt.
Perhaps two of the most famous figures who were in the central core of the Institut were Theodor Adorno [Archive] and Walter Benjamin, both renowned for their studies of literature and mass culture which would become so influential from the 1960s on.
After the Institut re-established itself in Germany after the War, the main figure of the younger generation was Jürgen Habermas [Archive] who continued to develop the “critical theory” in the Hegelian tradition of Adorno and Marcuse. Habermas was instrumental in the 1960s in developing the theory of “networks,” but in later years Habermas has focussed on communicative ethics in the tradition of Immanuel Kant, and departed not only from the Marxist, but even the Hegelian tradition.
Currently Axel Honneth represents the third generation, continuing the work of Jürgen Habermas, but with a partial return to Hegel, still quite remote from any reading of Karl Marx.
After the isolation and Stalinisation of the Soviet Union, and the consequent decline of the Communist Parties in the “West,” the possibilities for the fruitful development of Marxism as a revolutionary-critical theory in close connection with the practical-critical activity of the workers movement, became extremely restricted.
The current generation of Critical Theorists, unlike previous generations, is led by women, such as Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib and Agnes Heller: 
The intellectuals who founded the Frankfurt Institut deliberatively cut out a space for the development of Marxist theory, inside the “academy” and independently of all kinds of political party.
The result was a process in which Marxism merged with bourgeois ideology. A parallel process took place in post-World War Two France, also involving a merging with Freudian ideas. One of the results was undoubtedly an enrichment of bourgeois ideology. In this connection Paul Mattick’s Marcuse: One Dimensional Man In Class Society (1972) is worth reading. But also, despite everything, the Frankfurt School makes an important critique of orthodox Marxism, and their work should be taken seriously.
Two Jews both involved in porn!
IRA ISAACS, facing porn charges for promoting BESTIALITY, comes before a JEWISH JUDGE, ALEX KOZINSKI, who himself has the FILTHIEST PORN ON HIS COMPUTER!
Naturally the Jewish judge didn’t feel like sentencing his dirty-minded Jewish defendant on bestiality charges! So the trial dragged on forever…
Can you believe it?
* * *
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An adult film producer is expected to be sentenced after he was convicted of violating federal obscenity laws by selling movies depicting bestiality and extreme fetishes.
Ira Isaacs could face a sentence ranging from probation to 20 years in prison.
The Wednesday sentencing caps a five-year legal saga that led to two mistrials. A 2008 trial was halted after the Los Angeles Times reported Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, had sexually explicit material on a personal website.
Kozinski, who presided over the trial, recused himself and was admonished by a special committee of his colleagues.
Isaacs was indicted as part of an effort by a Bush administration task force to crack down on smut in the U.S.
http://news.yahoo.com/porn-producer-sentenced-obscenity-case-093015034.html
@ Ruth Bernstein
Hey Ruth, here’s your chance!
Harvard professor looks for ‘adventurous woman’ who agrees to give birth to cloned Neanderthal.
http://rt.com/usa/news/birth-neanderthal-church-cloning-455/
Ruth, if I am you, I will take it and run with it. If you get lucky, you will go in infamy and people will remember you forever. Instead of Lion-hater widow, you will be referred to as Surrogate Mother Ruth. You will attain the same status as Mother Teresa.
Laughing too hard to say much other than… laughing! Thank you. Just funny.
soooo “Jewish”…
http://www.jyrilina.com/index.php?page=english
more on the biological determinism of the Talmudic DNA
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43083011/Eustace-Mullins-The-Curse-of-Canaan
more than 100% of Jews don’t have to be…
@Anthony Clifton , the day after your comment :
http://www.totalfascism.com/gordon-duff-of-veterans-today-caught-openly-manufacturing-fake-news-libeling/#comment-1069
Small jew of Veterans Today-Duff, does as if he makes soap of big jew ADL Foxman. Duff says, Foxman is funding ratfacedjews.com and dozens of other similar anti jew sites, but Mike Delaney of eyeopener 911 missing links
IS REAL owner of ratfacejew. Anyway, good soap by full DNA jews.
CIA O
Or by full ideological jews in case zionide Koestlers 13th tribe is still valid.
CIA O
Jews really love Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They even wrote a prayer for Dr. King which was recited in several synagogues. The said prayer goes as follows:
“Heavenly God, who desires us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with You, we thank You for inspiring us with the life and example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
http://rehmat1.com/2013/01/22/dr-king-jr-jews-zionism-and-israel/
not a single goy to be found among this pack of self-styled “intellectuals” bent on laying their parasitical larvae all over the world in order to infect it with terminal talmuditis.
I think you may be wrong there. I hear that Habermas, one of the most influential among them, was a gentile. All the rest were Jews.
i guess then that habermas is a thoroughly traitorous “righteous” goy, a happy noahide like richard warman here in canada, arthur topham’s nemesis.
Habermas was one of the latecomers to the Frankfurt School. I believe they were called “the Third Wave.” All the rest were Commie Jews to a man, trying to “update” Marx and destroy the fabric of Western civilization.
These guy were offering society arsenic packaged as a medical nostrum.
To misquote Virgil: Timeo Judeaos et dona ferentes. = “I fear the Jews even (or especially) when they bring gifts.”
“All the rest were Commie Jews to a man”
Hard to argue with that. Much less comment..
But I will
Wow!
More really good English!
Gotta love it!
Unlike some.. that’s for sure.
http://pragmaticwitness.com/2013/01/23/my-hard-learned-lesson-jews-cannot-be-trusted-period/
(…)
CIA O
THIS IS NOTHING MORE THAN SECRET ZIONIST PROPAGANDA!
Among the leading fighters that have opposed the Zionist state have been COMMUNIST!
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)
Lebanese Communist Party (LCP)
Syrian Communist Party [Now two parties, and both are part of the ruling National Progressive Front of Syria {since 1972}] (SCP)
Jordanian Communist Party (JCP)
-Several Communist have been assassinated by the Israelis:
Comrades Abu Ali Mustafa (2001), Ghassan Kanafani (1972), Wadie Haddad (1978), Khalid Nazzal (1986), Ayman Bihdari (2002), George Hawi (2005) and many others.
The USSR was among the first nation which had recognised the State of Palestine [in fact, before Iran and Syria had done]!
Lenin himself opposed the Zionist ideology (JUST SEARCH MARXISTS.ORG)
Hitler personally supported Zionism!
Can Kataeb member Mark Glenn Talk about this!
None of you Fascists will discuss this because you are loved by the Zionists. Anti-semites are very helpful for Zionist propaganda.
Need some input…..
1.None of those groups with the exception of PFLP conducted armed resistance against the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
2. USSR was ruled by Jewish communists for over seven decades. The first president of communist regime in Moscow was Jewish – so were Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin with all three Jewish wives.
3. Israel’s first president, Dr. Chaim Weizmann was Russian Jew and former president of Russian Socialist Party.
4. Syria never recognized Israel. The only two Muslim countries which recognized Israel, were – Iran (1948) and Turkey (1949).
5. The American and Canadian Communist parties were established by Jew. The Jewish female communists are founders of feminist groups in America and Canada.
6. Dr. Habash was an Arab nationalist like Egyptian president Gamal Nassar. Both believed that Arab nationalism would liberate Palestine. The Zionist leaders loved the idea because they knew that without the support of Muslim Ummah, the Arab puppet regimes would never pose a serious threat to Israel. They were proven right. The only people waging armed resistance to Jewish army – are Islamists like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizballah. Dr. Habash, like Martin Luther King, died in on the 26th of January, 2008 in Amman Jordan without achieving a single dime for his people.
THIS IS NOTHING MORE THAN SECRET ZIONIST PROPAGANDA!
…
Among the leading fighters that have opposed the Zionist state have been COMMUNIST!
…
None of you Fascists will discuss this because you are loved by the Zionists. Anti-semites are very helpful for Zionist propaganda.
well anti-fascist, then discuss this idol of yours.
you want to call me a nazi in pejorative sense, go ahead because i wear it with pride.
i never tire of this quote by robbie burns:
Here’s freedom to him who would speak,
Here’s freedom to him who would write;
For there’s none ever feared that the truth should be heard,
Save him whom the truth would indict!
you would say that i have this unhealthy fixation with truth, wouldn’t you commie boy.
besides marxism is a one-world-religion or new-world-order by another name, so how come you care all of a sudden so much about palestinians and arabs, as if they are your ideological brothers.
Long live Socialism, URA!!!!!!!!!!!
Long live Marxist-Leninsm, URA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Long live the legacy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, URA!!!!!!!!!
Long live the legacy of Comrade Joseph Stalin, URA!!!!!!!!!!!!
The concept of degenerate actually comes from a leading Zionist activist (MAX NORDAU), just read Entartung- 1892 by him. It just shows that you NAZIS have gotten influence from the Zionists!
THE far-right supported the ZIONIST MOVEMENT during it’s pre-Israel years. Just search:
The Haavara agreement (8/25/1933) [was supported to 1942] between Nazis-Zionists
Lehi alliance with NAZIS (1/11/1941) [for the NAZIS to fight with Lehi in Palestine]
Abba Ahimeir support for the NAZI invasion of the USSR (6/22/1941)
Revisionist Zionists alliance with FASCISTS (1934 maritime training in Civitivechia)
Mark Glenn is a Kataeb supporter and idolizer of the FASCISTS Guardians of the Cedars!
This is a fine example of “investigative journalism,” a form of reporting which I had thought extict. Readers of this piece might be interested in Toshiyori’s article on “gun control” in America, which also involved a degree of investigation. See Vol. XV, Leaf 58 at http://www.organubl.wordpress.com/ Thank you so much.
I have been talking about this scum for years. There is a lot contained in the following article. I just toss in a few quotes and mention there is an excellent video on this foul institution. It is essential that people learn about the effects of these scuzzbuckets on our world. All Jewish, and many of them poisoned our society by infiltration into our educational systems. And look where we are today with the effects of their liberalism and furthering of sexual perversions in what was once decent society with ethics and boundaries.
THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL: CONSPIRACY TO CORRUPT
http://snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.ca/2009/05/frankfurt-school-conspiracy-to-corrupt_23.html
‘Revolution and Eros’ ~ sexual instinct used as an instrument of destruction.
One of the main ideas of the Frankfurt School was to exploit Freud’s idea of ‘pansexualism’ ~ the search for pleasure, the exploitation of the differences between the sexes, the overthrowing of traditional relationships between men and women.
‘We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.’
‘The next step in personal evolution is a transcendence of both masculinity and femininity to general humanness.’
‘Political correctness’, which has been destroying our family bonds, our religious radition and our entire culture ~ sprang from the Frankfurt School.
@ Noor
Thanks for the astute comment, Noor. Yes, I am well acquainted with the Timothy Matthews article, “Conspiracy to Corrupt”, to which you give a link. I read this great article on a Christian site many years ago and have given links to it in several of my articles. I reread it a few months ago on your site, beautifully illustrated with pictures of your own choice.
I wrote an edited and abridged version of this article about 4-5 months ago but it remains unpublished in my editing facility as a draft. I am not sure if I should publish it or not . . . as I have taken the liberty of inserting my own comments within the text and generally “sexing” it up with pictures and captions.
In a sense, it is a travesty of the original article because of my unfortunate tendency to exaggerate and lay it on thick with a trowel.
If I hear from any of my readers that they wish to read this jazzed-up version of “Conspiracy to Corrupt” with a new, more sensational title, I will probably pluck up the courage and publish it. Otherwise not.
started to read the matthews article, quite informative.
having a spot of trouble with this caption:
Their task, therefore, was as swiftly as possible, to undermine the Judaeo-Christian legacy.
um, no.
strike judaean off, because it is essentially a legacy of antichrist, antisocial and antihuman to the core.
judean subversion of gentile societies did not start with frankfurt school or bolshevism, they were just the most advanced prototypes of the ancient program that the protocols of the elders of zion delineated so well.
judaism posits the self-chosen tribe as a kind of cumulative god, comprised of jew-particles, whose entire purpose is to seed evil in gentile society (“nations”) and promote its metastasis to terminal stage, making it easy pickings for eternal debasement and enslavement.
how does christianity, the teaching of christ, the foremost victim of judean cannibalism link with judaism?
they are antithetical in every respect.
like calling a fish with bloodsucking lamprey attached to it a trout-lamprey.
Well, I agree with you entirely that the word “Judeo-Christian” is an oxymoron that we have been conned into accepting by the mainstream media which is owned by Jews. This is just the kind of double-barreled word that has managed to lure the Christian Zionists into the Judean net.
I myself am a Christian who, like the mystic Simone Wiel, a Jewish convert to Christianity, is of the opinion that Christians should use the New Testament as a religious text and leave the the Old Testament and the Talmud to the Jews.
However, we are in a small minority and have no chance of being taken seriously.
This is partly because the Catholic Church, to which both you and I nominally belong, relies more heavily on the Old Testament.
The Divine Offices, which are celebrated every day in Latin all over the world, wherever Catholic monks and nuns sing the liturgy, are based entirely on the Book of Psalms — said to have been written by King David, an ancestor of Jesus.
In the Middle Ages, this entire book (consisting of 150 psalms) was sung from cover to cover each week in the churches at matins, lauds, tierce, sext, nones, vespers and compline — the seven Divine Offices of the day.
* * *
Timothy Matthews’ use of the word “Judeo-Christrian” is unfortunate. He uses the word carelessly, without thinking, as most people do nowadays. His article was originally published on a Roman Catholic site. If I am not mistaken, it has since been deleted — probably because it was an attack on the Frankfurt School, which was seen as an indirect attack on Jews.
http://catholicinsight.com/online/features/article_882.shtml
As you know, the Catholic hierarchy does it best to suck up to the Jews nowadays and even the Vatican has been reduced to taking its orders from Tel Aviv.
moreover, i sympathize with those who deride christianity as a noahide stalking horse for talmud.
it is beyond insulting that jews were able to pervert the word of jesus, who was/is their greatest, most hated enemy precisely because he saw what they stood for with such clarity and harness the idiot christians to willingly pull their chariot through the triumphal arch of talmud into permanent captivity.
indeed, if i were to conclude that there was no hope for salvation of vatican, that it was thoroughly converted to a kabbala brothel, i would readily join ranks with any pagan group willing to take up arms in the cause of freedom from vampire breed.
The Old Testament comes in handy when you have run out of cigarette papers. Read it and make of it what you will, but know that is has no connection to Christianity. Proverbs and Ecclesiates are cool, but they are universal wisdom.
“Judeo-Christian”? F off. It’s a big Jewish trick. Jesus the Nazarene being morphed into Jesus of Nazereth (a town that never existed in his time) is a good example of the remodelling of Christianity.
The New Testament and the Gnostic gospels and other associated scriptures that got left on the cutting room floor is all you need.
I’m going to watch the video on the Frankfurt School but I thought first I would display my ignorance. I own a book on this subject, The Frankfurt School by Rolf Wiggershaus. I also own books by the members of the Frankfurt School because this was the intellectual climate of my university years. I should understand but I never have–not clearly, not fully. So it is another hall of mirrors for me with many twists, turns, and then back out into daylight no less informed. It reminds me of “credit default swaps.” I remember asking myself in the Fall of 2008 what a “credit default swap” was, and finally someone came up with a cartoon of a credit default swap. Then I realized that the people who were buying and selling these so called financial products didn’t really know what they were, and probably there are a lot of Americans who lost money in the 2008 crisis who don’t know either. To understand really makes you one of the elite.
What is so hard to understand about the Frankfurt School, and critical theory? Is it that the words don’t have any concrete realities to back them up, words that are both intoxicating and empty at the same time. Words are suppose to have meanings and yet words from the Frankfurt School don’t for me. So, we have the personalities, the buildings, the geography of Frankfurt and New York and Los Angeles. The split between New York and Los Angeles…again, vacuous and vague. Maybe what is so confusing is that these people lured in people with their high European culture but this was the culture they wanted to destroy and actually did….For example, to take a description from the book on the Frankfurt School: Adorno moves into his apartment in Los Angeles (which he no doubt despised) and there was room for his books and his grand piano. His apartment symbolizes something. It’s a statement of some kind. Does it say I don’t belong here in this despised place but in some loftier region. Nietzche was a great hero to them because he dared to shout from the rooftops that there was no reason not to murder. Again, this symbolizes that values are meaningless. So let us murder you Adorno, Marcuse, and will that matter? Is it that so called “critical theory” is pure intellectual ornament from beginning to end, all posturing and fakery?
The video on youtube: The History of Political Correctness gives a good summary of the school. Also, I read the article that Noor recommended, The Frankfurt School Conspiracy to Corrupt. We might be doomed. It is an almost impossibe snare to escape. For example, one of the aspects of the school is this rigid intolerance to diverse opinions. How often have any of us kept our mouths shut to avoid losing valued friends and relatives? It is almost impossible to speak freely in some circles. Do I have to move to Texas to express an opinion, or Oklahoma? Political correctness is like some kind of lethal fungus that causes brain fog in its victims. Our children are also captured if they choose to go to a so called “good” university. But probably the regular state schools are just as bad. God help us!
Thanks be there are still plenty of apple and other trees to sit under and read and ponder and even snooze a little. Next door to the woods and creeks and ponds.
A lot of people a lot smarter than us made good use of nature + learnin’ = sanity.
Pretty sure it’s good for the whole human family.
Hard to deny, much less stop any person anywhere who really wants to read and listen and learn and pray and hum and maybe even laugh a little .. from doing exactly these things.