The Frankfurt School: From a Failed Revolution to Critical Theory | Tom Nicholas

Summary

The video script explores the Frankfurt School, a group of scholars influential in sociology and culture, known for their critical theory. It traces the school's origins from the aftermath of WWI, through the rise of fascism, into exile and eventual return to Germany. The script delves into the school's evolution from Marxist roots to a broader social science perspective, examining how societal structures, including the 'culture industry,' foster conformity and stifle individuality. The summary also touches on the school's impact on academic thought and its controversial reception by critics, particularly from the political right.

Takeaways

• 🏫 The Frankfurt School, officially the Institute for Social Research, had a profound impact on the study of society and culture, with scholars like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse influencing various academic disciplines.
• 🔍 The Frankfurt School is often criticized by political conservatives for allegedly undermining Western culture, with figures like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Melanie Phillips criticizing their work.
• 📚 The School's narrative is remarkable, starting with the failure of a revolution, involving global conflict, exile, collaboration with the CIA, and meetings with the Pope.
• 🧐 Initially, the Frankfurt School focused on Marxist theory and the economic aspects of society, but under Max Horkheimer's directorship, it shifted towards a more holistic approach, incorporating social and cultural studies.
• 🌐 Horkheimer introduced the concept of 'critical theory,' which aimed to analyze society from diverse academic perspectives, focusing on how capitalism encourages conformity and suppresses individuality.
• 📉 The Frankfurt School's early optimism about the inevitable overthrow of capitalism faded over time, replaced by a more pessimistic view of society's ability to resist authoritarianism and conformity.
• 🌍 The School's work was influenced by the rise of fascism and the authoritarianism of the USSR, leading to a focus on understanding why people embraced totalitarian ideologies.
• 📖 Key texts like 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' and 'The Authoritarian Personality' explored the roots of totalitarianism and the psychological traits that predispose individuals to support fascist regimes.
• 📚 The School's later years saw the publication of influential works like 'One-Dimensional Man,' which critiqued advanced industrial societies for stifling critical thought and promoting conformity.
• 🔊 Jurgen Habermas, who joined the School later, introduced the concept of the 'public sphere' and became a prominent public intellectual, engaging in debates about the role of religion in society.
• 🌟 The Frankfurt School's legacy is its diverse and wide-ranging influence across fields like sociology, philosophy, and political science, emphasizing the importance of critical analysis of societal forces that shape individuality and conformity.

Q & A

What is the Frankfurt School known for?

The Frankfurt School is known for its influential study of society and culture, with scholars like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse having a significant impact on various academic disciplines.

Why has the Frankfurt School been criticized by figures on the political right?

The Frankfurt School has been criticized by political right figures such as Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Melanie Phillips, who often portray the school as a group aiming to undermine Western culture.

What was the historical context for the establishment of the Institute for Social Research?

The Institute for Social Research was established in the context of post-World War I Germany, marked by defeat, economic hardship, and social tension, which set the stage for intellectual exploration of societal issues.

What was the initial focus of the Institute for Social Research?

Initially, the Institute focused on Marxist theory and economic analysis, aiming to understand why the German Revolution of 1918-19 did not lead to significant economic reform or the establishment of socialism.

How did Max Horkheimer's leadership influence the direction of the Frankfurt School?

Max Horkheimer's leadership led to a shift in the Frankfurt School's focus from economics to social sciences, emphasizing the study of society, culture, and the ways in which capitalism shapes and is shaped by these forces.

What is 'critical theory' and how does it relate to the Frankfurt School?

Critical theory, introduced by Max Horkheimer, is a mode of societal analysis that draws on diverse academic fields to understand how capitalism encourages conformity and shapes social and cultural forces, which in turn shape individuals.

What impact did the rise of fascism and the authoritarian shift in the USSR have on the Frankfurt School's work?

The rise of fascism and the authoritarian shift in the USSR led the Frankfurt School to explore not only why people might fail to embrace socialism but also why they embraced totalitarian ideologies, as examined in 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' by Horkheimer and Adorno.

What is the 'authoritarian personality' as studied by Theodor Adorno and others?

The 'authoritarian personality' refers to a set of traits that predispose individuals to support fascist political programs, as identified through the F scale in the book 'The Authoritarian Personality', which aimed to understand the psychological underpinnings of authoritarianism.

How did the Frankfurt School's perspective evolve after World War II?

After World War II, the Frankfurt School continued to develop its critical theory, focusing on how advanced industrial societies could feature totalitarian aspects and how mass culture could lead to conformity and a loss of individuality.

What role did Herbert Marcuse play in the student protests of May 1968?

Herbert Marcuse's writings, particularly 'One-Dimensional Man' and 'Repressive Tolerance', influenced the student protesters of May 1968 by providing a critique of capitalist society and highlighting the potential for totalitarian aspects within it.

How did Jurgen Habermas contribute to the Frankfurt School's legacy?

Jurgen Habermas contributed significantly to the Frankfurt School's legacy by introducing concepts like the public sphere and continuing to be an influential public intellectual, engaging in debates on the role of religion in society, for example.

Outlines

00:00

📚 The Frankfurt School's Influence and Misconceptions

The Frankfurt School, officially known as the Institute for Social Research, has had a significant impact on the study of society and culture, with scholars like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse shaping academic discourse. Despite their academic contributions, they have also been criticized by political right figures, who accuse the School of undermining Western culture. This video aims to provide an accurate overview of the Frankfurt School, its origins, evolution, and the remarkable true story that includes revolution, global conflict, and unlikely alliances.

05:01

🌟 The Frankfurt School's Beginnings and Shift in Focus

The Frankfurt School was established in 1924 by Felix Weil as a response to the failed German Revolution, with the initial goal of promoting Marxist theory. The Institute's early work focused on economic studies, but under Max Horkheimer's direction, it shifted towards a more interdisciplinary approach, integrating social sciences to understand societal structures. Horkheimer's skepticism of the inevitable socialist revolution led to the development of 'critical theory,' which analyzed how capitalism fosters conformity and discourages individuality and dissent.

10:04

🌍 Exile and the Frankfurt School's Productive Period

The rise of Hitler forced the Frankfurt School into exile, where they continued their work, significantly influenced by the rise of fascism and the authoritarian shift in the USSR. In the United States, they explored the roots of totalitarianism in the Enlightenment, critiquing the 'culture industry' for promoting uniformity and stifling individual thought. Their work during this period, including the seminal 'Dialectic of Enlightenment,' examined the dark potential of reason and rationality when applied to society.

15:05

📈 The Authoritarian Personality and Post-War法兰克福 School

Post-World War II, the Frankfurt School returned to Germany, with their critical theory becoming influential in various academic fields. The 'Authoritarian Personality' research, conducted by Theodor Adorno and others, developed an F scale to measure individuals' susceptibility to fascist ideologies. The School's work increasingly focused on the decline of critical thinking in advanced industrial societies, with Herbert Marcuse's 'One-Dimensional Man' critiquing both capitalist and Soviet systems for suppressing dissent.

20:06

🔮 Divisions and the Future of the Frankfurt School

Internal divisions within the Frankfurt School emerged, particularly between the pessimistic views of Horkheimer and Adorno and the more hopeful perspective of Jurgen Habermas. The School's early radicalism waned, and its members were more criticized for pessimism than for being revolutionary. The May 1968 student protests, influenced by Marcuse's ideas, revealed a generational gap in the School's approach to social change, with Horkheimer and Adorno expressing skepticism about the potential for meaningful revolution.

25:07

🌐 The Legacy and Impact of the Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School's work has had a profound impact on critical analysis of society, moving beyond economic determinism to consider the role of social and cultural forces in maintaining capitalism. Despite its radical origins, the School's revolutionary spirit faded, with its members more noted for pessimism than for insurgence. The School's diverse and interdisciplinary approach has allowed it to influence various fields, with a key theme being the potential of society to foster conformity and suppress individuality.

Keywords

💡Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School refers to a group of scholars associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Founded in 1923, it is known for its critical theories on society and culture. In the video, it is discussed how the Frankfurt School's work has significantly influenced various disciplines and how its reputation has been both academically respected and politically criticized.

💡Critical Theory

Critical Theory is an approach within the Frankfurt School that seeks to examine and critique society by drawing on multiple disciplines. It is defined by its focus on understanding the conditions that prevent progress toward social equality and how these conditions are perpetuated. The video explains that Max Horkheimer introduced this concept, emphasizing the need to study not just the economy but also social and cultural forces.

💡Max Horkheimer

Max Horkheimer was a key figure in the Frankfurt School, known for his role in developing critical theory. He served as the director of the Institute for Social Research and shifted the focus from economics to a broader social science perspective. The script mentions his skepticism about the inevitability of a socialist revolution and his contributions to understanding the complexities of societal structures.

💡Theodor Adorno

Theodor Adorno was a prominent member of the Frankfurt School, known for his work on cultural criticism and the concept of the 'culture industry.' In the video, Adorno's collaboration with Horkheimer on 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' is highlighted, which critiques the Enlightenment's impact on leading to totalitarianism through the application of reason in social control.

💡Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse was another influential scholar within the Frankfurt School, recognized for his work on the 'one-dimensional man.' The video describes how Marcuse's ideas were particularly influential during the student protests of the 1960s.

Highlights

The Frankfurt School, including scholars like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, has had a profound influence on the study of society and culture.

Critics on the political right, such as Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, have portrayed the Frankfurt School as a group undermining Western culture.

The Frankfurt School's actual history is remarkable, involving a failed revolution, global conflict, and collaboration with the CIA.

Initially, the School was grounded in Marxist theory, focusing on the inevitable transition from capitalism to communism.

The failure of the German Revolution led to the establishment of the Institute for Social Research with an endowment from Felix Weil.

Max Horkheimer introduced a shift in the School's focus from economics to social sciences and the study of people, society, and culture.

Horkheimer's critical theory aimed to combine methods from various disciplines to understand how capitalism encourages conformity.

The Frankfurt School's work in exile, particularly in the United States, was highly productive and influenced by the rise of fascism and the authoritarianism of the USSR.

The 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' by Horkheimer and Adorno linked the rise of totalitarianism to the Enlightenment's extreme application of reason and rationality.

The School criticized the 'culture industry' for creating a mass culture that stifles individuality and imagination.

The 'Authoritarian Personality' study aimed to identify individuals likely to support fascist political programs through an F scale.

Jurgen Habermas, a later member of the School, introduced the concept of the public sphere and has been a prominent public intellectual.

The Frankfurt School's critical analysis has had a wide-ranging influence across sociology, philosophy, political science, and more.

The School's work is characterized by a focus on the potential of contemporary society to foster conformity and erode individuality.

Despite radical origins, the Frankfurt School's revolutionary zeal faded over time, with many members becoming known for their pessimism.

The School's embrace of diverse ideas from different academic subjects has allowed it to have a significant impact on various fields.

The Frankfurt School's critical theory asks us to be vigilant against societal tendencies that discourage individuality and empathy.

Transcripts

the Frankfurt School has something of a

reputation many of the scholars who

worked for what was and still is

officially called the Institute for

Social Research such as Max Horkheimer

Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse er

have had a huge influence on the study

of society and culture and secured their

places on undergraduate reading lists

across numerous subjects it's necessary

to note at the top of this video however

that some of the frankfurt schools nota

riot see outside of academia in the

contemporary moment at least is due to

the vitriol that has been leveled at

them by their detractors figures on the

political right from ben shapiro to

jordan peterson to the times journalist

melanie phillips regularly invoked the

frankfurt school as a kind of

intellectual group of supervillains

hell-bent on undermining Western culture

in today's video my goal is to shed a

bit of light on what the Frankfurt

School was and is I'm not gonna be

directly tackling any of the conspiracy

theory stuff yet it's worthwhile saying

that unlike when one usually unpick so

fanciful tale but usually concludes with

finding a somewhat boring reality

underneath the real story of the

frankfurt school is quite remarkable it

begins with a failed revolution moves

through a global conflict involves

exiled collaboration with the CIA and

meetings with the Pope and it is very

much the story of the Frankfurt School

which I'll be focusing on today well

we'll touch on a number of different

aspects of the school's work and get a

sense of how their interests changed

over time my hope is that this overview

might serve as an introduction to some

more in-depth videos on individual

scholars and texts of course if that's

something you would like to see me cover

then do let me know down in the comments

below and if you'd like to see those

future videos then subscribing and

hitting that notification bell will mean

you'll get a little buzz when they're

released finally if you like what to do

here and would like to support me to

make more videos like this then I would

be super grateful if you would check out

my patreon page at patreon.com forward

slash Tom Nicholas with that out of the

way however let's crack on with the

frankfurt school what the theory

[Applause]

[Music]

before we come on to discussing the

Frankfurt School itself it's worth

grounding ourselves in little bits of

historical context our scene then is

Germany and by October 1918 it was

evident that for Germany the first world

war was going to end in defeat having

already suffered through four hard years

of conflict the German people now not

only had to contend with the

demoralizing feeling of having lost the

war but also with the likelihood of

financial hardship in order to pay

reparations to the countries they had

been defeated by these economic concerns

along with a broader social tension

between the nobility who had led the war

effort and the working class who had

done the actual fighting meant that

things were tense now if you were a

Marxist intellectual at the time and one

thing the Frankfurt schools detractors

do get right is that they were initially

at least Marxists you would have been on

the edge of your seats for most Marxist

at the time signed up to what sometimes

called the stage theory of history which

argued that human society pads developed

and would develop through a series of

stages feudalism had given way to

something called mercantilism which had

given way to capitalism which would in

turn give way to communism it was

considered inevitable the capitalism

would sow the seeds of its own

destruction and that as soon as it's

exploitative nature became clear to the

working class they would rise up to

overthrow it and many felt that the

conditions in Germany in 1918 were ripe

for such a revolution indeed in Russia

the year prior exactly that had happened

the February and October revolutions had

led to the overthrowing of the Tsar and

the establishment of Soviet rule in its

place there was thus a sense among

left-wing academics that all they had to

do was sit back and wait for Germany the

birthplace of Karl Marx himself to do

the same and Germany did experience a

revolution days before the end of the

first world war a sailors revolt led to

uprisings in cities across the country

ultimately however the communist faction

of the revolution led by Rosa Luxemburg

and Karl Liebknecht

were outmaneuvered by the less radical

social democratic party while the

revolution did lead to the abdication of

the Kaiser and the introduction of a new

constitution then after the dust had

settled Germany remained a fundamentally

capitalist nation it was with this

supposed failure of the German people to

throw off the yoke of capitalism in mind

that in May 1923

Felix vile the son of a wealthy grain

merchant with a keen interest in Marxism

organized the erster Marxist assure our

bites Fokker or first Marxist workweek

one of the key goals of the week was to

consider why it was the Germany's

revolution had not yielded great

economic reform certainly the perfidious

nosov the Social Democratic Party had

played a role but on being cheated in

this way why didn't the people who had

risen up in great number in support of a

socialist revolution rise up again the

initial plan was for this to be the

first in a number of similar conferences

for left-wing German intellectuals those

gathered however felt that something

more permanent was needed Felix vile

dust turned to his wealthy father Herman

and convinced him to provide an

endowment to establish and maintain a

permanent Institute for Marxist inform

study on the 22nd of June 1924 then the

Institute for Social Research opened its

doors in Frankfurt and main located at

17:00 Victoria Ali vial appointed as the

Institute's first director Karl

Gruenberg an economic and social

historian in his opening address at the

Institute Gruenberg described himself as

a proponent of scientific socialism

stressing that when I speak here of

Marxism I do not understand it in terms

of party politics but rather in a purely

scientific sense that is as an integral

system of economics of a scientific

worldview and a clearly circumscribed

method of research what is clear from

this is the Greenberg did not see the

role of the Institute as being to write

a new version of the

Communist Manifesto but to instead

engage in a more detached form of study

informed by the theoretical economic

approach of Marx's capital although

initially seeing the failure of the

German Revolution as a wake-up call to

reconsider their analysis of society

however the work produced by the

Institute during this period was pretty

similar to that which had gone on before

studies published by scholars working at

the Institute for Social Research during

its first few years boasted such

tantalizing titles as economy and

society in China the law of accumulation

and collapse in the capitalist system

and experiments in economic planning in

the Soviet Union 1917 to 1927 throughout

the stage theory of history remained

very much intact

Robin in questioning the notion that a

socialist revolution was inevitable the

Institute seemed merely to have come to

the conclusion that the time hadn't

quite been right all of this was to

change in 1930 however when grünberg

fell ill and resigned his post as

director the position was soon filled by

Max Horkheimer who's not an economist

nor a historian but instead had trained

in psychology and philosophy this

evidently gave Horkheimer a somewhat

different perspective on society and his

tenure as director saw the introduction

of a new set of theoretical influences

to the Institute in particular it led to

a shift away from economics and an

embrace of the social sciences instead

or in other words it led to a shift away

from the study of the economy and

towards the study of people society and

culture

see Horkheimer was highly skeptical of

the notion that capitalism would

inevitably lead to a socialist

revolution he saw the kind of empirical

study which Gruenberg had encouraged to

the Institute to be somewhat naive such

an approach he argued assumed that

people engage with the economy and

society more broadly entirely logical it

assumed that as soon as people

recognized that they were being

exploited they would instantly cast off

the system that was exploiting them the

Horkheimer however

nice that the reality was somewhat more

complex three years earlier for instance

he'd written an essay titled the

impotence of the German working class

which argued that capitalism rather than

inspiring insurrection had fairly

successfully integrated the working

class into its structure in particular

he noted that a wedge had successfully

been driven between those who were in

long-term employment and those who are

more sporadically or entirely unemployed

which led to the form a group of them

voting and acting to sustain capitalism

and thus protects their jobs robbing the

risk them in the turmoil have either

violent or democratic revolution who

climb his approach and that's the other

scholars who he brought to work at the

Institute such as Theodor Adorno Erich

Fromm and Herbert mark who's a was thus

far more holistic it encompassed the

study of social and cultural forces as

well as simply economic ones and rogdon

theorizing the manner in which the

working class would overthrow capitalism

it primarily sought to shed light on the

various ways in which they were

discouraged from doing so in a 1936

paper Horkheimer would christen this

mode of societal analysis critical

theory the goal of critical theory was

and is to draw upon diverse fields from

economics to sociology to political

science to psychology and geography say

to foreground the ways in which

capitalism encourages conformity as

Steven Erich Branagh has written then

the Frankfurt School were concerned less

with what Marx called the economic base

than the political and cultural

superstructure of society they

recognized the understanding how

capitalism works required more than just

an understanding of its economic aspects

but also how it shapes social and

cultural forces to and in turn how

society and culture shape us and is

perhaps already evident the Horkheimer

and coast view of the world was somewhat

bleak the optimism of the early

institute for

Social Research have been replaced with

a view of the world or at least Germany

the saw the overthrow of capitalism is

becoming increasingly unlikely yet in

1933 matters became even worse when

adult Hitler was made Chancellor of

Germany as left-wing intellectuals those

working at and associated with the

Frankfurt School would have already been

under threat on top of this however the

majority of its number were also Jewish

but the swastika flag raised over

Frankfurt Town Hall then Horkheimer made

the decision to close the Institute

premises on Victoria alley and to lead

the Frankfurt School into exile it would

be sixteen years before the Frankfurt

School would return to Germany yet in

spite of the circumstances the years in

exile were highly productive the

Institute first moved to Geneva before

in 1935 Erich Fromm on a visit to the

United States persuaded Columbia

University in New York to provide the

group with a new home

the Franklin school set up base at 428

West 117 Street in Morningside Heights

but in truth they spent little time in

New York in 1940 Horkheimer moved to

California with Theodor Adorno following

not far behind Herbert Marcuse er

instead moved to Washington where he

worked for the Office of Strategic

Services the forerunner to the CIA both

the rise of fascism in Europe and the

slide of the USSR into authoritarianism

would have a huge impact on the work of

the Frankfurt School far from simply

studying why people might fail to

embrace socialism an ideology which many

of the frankfurt school thinkers had an

increasingly testing relationship with

the schools work now also had to take

into account why people had come to

embrace various forms of totalitarianism

this is the central concern of one of

the Frankfurt schools key texts a book

written collaboratively by Max

Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno called

dialectic of enlightenment in dialectic

of enlightenment Horkheimer and Adorno

locate the origin of the rise

totalitarianism in the Enlightenment and

this at first might seem strange the

Enlightenment an intellectual movement

which took place mostly during the 18th

century argued for the supremacy of

human reason above all else and what

could be less reasonable than fascism

well Horkheimer and Adorno did not see

totalitarianism as irrational instead

they saw it as reason and rationality

taken to its ultimate extreme see

enlightenment thinking saw to understand

the world empirically it sought to do

away with mysticism and mere belief in

favor of quantification and the

discovery of universal laws which

explained how the world works and this

is well and good when applied to physics

and chemistry yet when we apply this

same way of thinking to people it has a

somewhat darker potential Horkheimer and

Adorno saw totalitarianism as the

application of an extreme conception of

Objectivism uniformity and

standardization to the whole of society

with the consequence of the reduction of

individuals to mere numbers solely parts

of a machine Horkheimer and Adorno did

not only see these traits as being

present in Nazi Germany and Soviet

Russia however they argued that the same

kind of thinking had also come to

permeate the capitalist nations perhaps

inspired by their surroundings in Los

Angeles they wrote acerbic Lee of what

they called the culture industry they

wrote that culture today is infecting

everything with sameness film radio and

magazines form a system each branch of

culture is unanimous with itself and all

are unanimous together Horkheimer and

Adorno argued that the sole goal of the

culture industry was to make money and

thus that it come to rely on creating

films music books and whatever else

which pleased as many people as possible

as much of the time as possible after

creating a culture permeated by

stainless

they argued that what they referred to

as mass culture robbed people of their

imagination and their potential for

individuality dialectic of enlightenment

is a somewhat dense philosophical text

earlier however I stated the Frankfort

schools desire to combine methods from

multiple academic disciplines in their

studies later then Adorno along with a

number of other scholars at the

University of California Berkeley set

about studying authoritarianism from a

more clearly sociological and

psychological standpoint the results of

their studies were published in a 1950

book called the authoritarian

personality which most famously derived

an F scale which sought to identify how

liable an individual might be to

supporting a fascist political program

through asking a set of questions to an

individual it claimed to be able to

place them on a spectrum from democratic

personality to authoritarian personality

though his findings would later come to

be challenged the authoritarian

personality came to be highly

influential it is interesting to note

here however the use of the term

democratic in Adorno a tailed spectrum

for the research carried out at Berkeley

was heavily informed by similar research

that the Frankfurt School had undertaken

before leaving Germany in those earlier

studies the spectrum had referred to an

authoritarian personality and a

revolutionary personality it was not as

if much have been changed around the

definition of the latter personality

either the term revolutionary had mainly

been swapped out for democratic there

are a number of ways of reading this

change firstly the Frankfurt School had

never been afraid of altering their

language for reasons of political

expediency they had often avoided using

recognizably Marxist terminology in

describing their work in order not to

put off less radically minded readers

funders or other stakeholders many on

the Left however increasingly began to

wonder whether the Frankfurt School had

lost its radical

a year before the publication of the

authoritarian personality in 1950 with

the Second World War having ended in the

defeat and dissolution of Nazi Germany

Horkheimer made the decision to move the

Frankfurt School back to its original

home now part of the newly established

Federal Republic of Germany or

colloquially West Germany the Frankfurt

School now found themselves at the

forefront of German sociological

thinking the critical theory that

Horkheimer had envisaged in 1936 and

developed along with Adorno and

dialectic of enlightenment was now an

established body of work which have

begun to have a real influence on how

scholars in multiple fields approached

the study of human society politics and

culture the following years saw the

publication of a number of further works

by Frankfurt School scholars in 1951

Theodor Adorno published minimum moralia

reflections from a damaged life which

argued that human life was now

irrevocably damaged and that however

hard one tried the inhumanity of

contemporary society made living a good

honest life as centuries of philosophers

had sought to define EDS was now

impossible

in 1964 Herbert Marcuse er published a

book called one dimensional man studies

in the ideology of advanced industrial

society which came to some not

dissimilar conclusions a critique of

both capitalist society and that of the

Soviet Union the book argued that under

both systems critical thinking was

becoming a dying art in the capitalist

nations mark heussner argued people have

become so assimilated into the

capitalist mode of production and the

bureaucracy needed to maintain it that

they failed to be able to thinking

anything but a one-dimensional manner

uncritical of the system around them the

pessimism which had begun with

Horkheimer declaration of the impotence

of the German working class have been

exacerbated by the Frankfurt schools

wartime experience had thus seemingly

come to permeate its work the only voice

resistant

this pessimism within the Frankfurt

School was that of Jurgen Haber maps who

had joined the school to study under

Horkheimer and Adorno in 1956 but who

increasingly was at odds with his

mentors though he would later return to

become the director of the Institute for

Social Research he in fact transferred

his PhD away from it to the University

of Marburg in order to escape what he

saw as the frankfurt schools unbearable

defeatism the divisions within the

frankfurt school over whether any hope

remained for socialist revolution would

come to a head in May 1968 when as I've

discussed in my video on key de Bourgh's

society of the spectacle civil unrest

broke out in France students and workers

took to the streets in a defiantly

anti-capitalist uprising it's worth

stressing these protests had a huge

impact Frances economy was brought to a

complete standstill the president

Charles de Gaulle was evacuated to

Germany and the government genuinely

feared the outbreak of full-scale

revolution though less pronounced than

in France students in other nations also

went out onto the streets in support of

various causes what United all of them

was in opposition to the authoritarian

form of capitalism which had come to

dominate the advanced capitalist Nations

indeed their critique of contemporary

society shed much with that of

Horkheimer and Adorno in dialectic of

enlightenment nevertheless it was

Herbert Marcuse II who had the clearest

influence on the striking students of

may 1968 his essay repressive tolerance

published in 1965 and a belief or

grounded the manner in which capitalist

society could feature totalitarian

aspects and they spoke fairly directly

to the protesters grievances more than

this however where Horkheimer and Adorno

remains skeptical of the likelihood that

any meaningful change would come out of

the so-called inventor

mark user was quite glad that some of

his more pessimistic pronouncements in

one dimensional man seemed to have been

proven wrong and the critical thinking

and action were alive and well

Horkheimer and Adorno refusal to find

any hope in the strikes and protests did

not go unnoticed either activists began

to disrupt Adorno's lectures with the

one-time Marxist shift in ideological

position perhaps being exemplified by

his decision to call the police this

only made matters worse and later a

group of students invaded his lecture

theatre once again writing on the

blackboard if a door no is left in peace

capitalism will never cease Adorno was

eventually forced to cancel the rest of

his lectures which were to be some of

his last before his death in 1969

Horkheimer who died just a few years

later in 1973 with mark Uzi passing away

in 1978 in 1983 Jurgen Habermas became

director of the Institute for Social

Research and his own work has been

almost as influential of that as his

forebears given his early work in which

he introduced the concept of the public

sphere to the world it is no surprise

that he's been a truly public

intellectual perhaps most notable given

the fact that many of the Frankfurt

School conspiracy theories revolve

around some form of plot to undermine

Western values in 2004 Haber mass took

part in a debate with pope benedict xvi

and the Catholic Academy of Bavaria in

which he argued for the positive role

that religion can play in holding

society together though I would very

much like to discuss the work of Haber

Mass in a future video however it is

very much the period between Horkheimer

x' installation as director of the

institute of social research and his an

Adorno's death that most people are

referring to when they speak of the

Frankfurt School as such I'll take the

opportunity to draw this video to a bit

of a close the impacts that the

Frankfurt School had

on how we critically analysed the world

around us is undeniable

with regard to left-wing thought in the

broadly Marxist tradition they were a

key factor in discouraging a purely

economic analysis which sure

capitalism's collapse as inevitable and

the development of a more holistic study

of capitalism cognizant of the influence

of social and cultural forces in its

maintenance though the school may have

had radical origins however in truth

this revolutionary zeal faded over time

towards the ends of their lives many of

its most prominent members were more

likely to be chided for their deeply

ingrained pessimism than they were to be

held up as examples of dangerous

insurgents indeed far from presenting us

with a unified doctrine of thought the

work of the Frankfurt School is PI a

diverse both in the aspects of society

that it focuses on and the methods that

it uses in its analysis it is partly

this diversity and embrace of ideas from

an array of different academic subjects

that has allowed it to have such a

wide-ranging influence across fields

including sociology philosophy political

science and many more if we were to pick

out one key theme from the work of the

Frankfurt School however it would be the

potential that contemporary society has

to foster conformity and to a road

individuality the critical theory that

Horkheimer Adorno maku czar and others

developed asked us to be watchful for

these tendencies and work to find ways

of engaging with the world which enable

individuality and empathy to flourish

thank you very much for watching this

video if you have a friend you think

might be interested in the life and

ideas of the Frankfurt School and then

please do send it on to the fan that'd

be great I thank you as always - ash -

Jai frisée Cartwright - Michael B Brown

- army of me and - syndra Nielsen all

for being signed up to the top tier of

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the perks and stuff at patreon.com

forward slash Tom

Nicholas with that out of the way

however thanks so much for watching once

again and have a great week