Frankfurt School: In our time

[Kaka Tim]

Well the argument is that the F-School was a response to the German proletariat's unexpected and unwelcome nationalism in WW1, the failures of the post-war communist risings in Munich and Berlin, and the capture of the proles by fascism.

Disillusioned away from classical Marxism by above events, the F-School gave up on the proles as the identical subject/object of history, and they began to search for a surrogate revolutionary vanguard. They found it first in African-Americans, then in women, now in sexual minorities. So ideas like "cultural revolution" and "identity politics"--which no-one can deny are strongly influential on today's Western Left--originate with the F-School's revision of classical Marxism.

but they didnt create or inspire those movements - they there theorists. They analsyed culture - they helped shape our understadning of it - they didnt directly influence its form or direction - (and certainly not thorugh subverting the cultural insituitions) - that was done by forces way way bigger. People like Brecht, Dada and the situationists have had a far bigger and clearer impact - and even then their direct impact on actual material social change (as opposed to on culture) is very much incidental. (see also every piece of agit-prop art ever since) .

 

[phildwyer]

but they didnt create or inspire those movements - they there theorists. They analsyed culture - they helped shape our understadning of it - they didnt directly influence its form or direction - (and certainly not thorugh subverting the cultural insituitions) - that was done by forces way way bigger. People like Brecht, Dada and the situationists have had a far bigger and clearer impact - and even then their direct impact on actual material social change (as opposed to on culture) is very much incidental. (see also every piece of agit-prop art ever since) .

Situationism inspired the Sex Pistols, who were rather more than "incidental." Yes, the people you mention were far more explicitly concerned with praxis than Adorno or Horkheimer (Marcuse was different, and had a very direct impact on the US student revolutionaries of the 1960s). But still, I think it would be unwise to under-estimate the practical effect of ideas picked up in youth. Essays like "The Culture Industry" have influenced everybody, even people who've never heard of it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well the argument is that the F-School was a response to the German proletariat's unexpected and unwelcome nationalism in WW1, the failures of the post-war communist risings in Munich and Berlin, and the capture of the proles by fascism.

Disillusioned away from classical Marxism by above events, the F-School gave up on the proles as the identical subject/object of history, and they began to search for a surrogate revolutionary vanguard. They found it first in African-Americans, then in women, now in sexual minorities. So ideas like "cultural revolution" and "identity politics"--which no-one can deny are strongly influential on today's Western Left--originate with the F-School's revision of classical Marxism.

This is just a moan about 'wokeness', isn't it? African-Americans of the 1930s who coined that word 'woke' didn't need intellectuals recently arrived from Europe, with their obscure, abstract texts based wholly around a European tradition, to teach them about oppression.

One of the problems with all of this is that it denies agency to those involved in struggles against oppression. And that flies flat in the face of history. The civil rights movements of post-war USA were organised and led by, gasp, Black People. What did Malcolm X care about the F-School? Martin Luther King was more influenced by original Marxism than any recent revisions.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Situationism inspired the Sex Pistols, who were rather more than "incidental." Yes, the people you mention were far more explicitly concerned with praxis than Adorno or Horkheimer (Marcuse was different, and had a very direct impact on the US student revolutionaries of the 1960s). But still, I think it would be unwise to under-estimate the practical effect of ideas picked up in youth. Essays like "The Culture Industry" have influenced everybody, even people who've never heard of it.

'yes - thats why I mentioned the situationists - and i was talking about direct impact on social change as "incidental" - not cultural impact. Possibly some cultural movers and shakers may have read some frankfurt school - and then may have incorporated it into their work but youd be hard pushed to indientify any significent cultrual impact from frankfurt school - esp as they were pretty much totally wrong about the whole nature of popular culture. Im pretty sure that the 99% of mods and rockers on brighton beach or the black people facing down the state cops in alabmana or the women flour bombing ms world or any other act of post war socail/cultural disruption/agitation were blissfully unware of "the culture industry" . Culture - and history - is made by people - not proffesors.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yep, absolutely. Even the idiots who moan about wokeness or cultural marxism are mostly unaware of the Frankfurt School. You think Suella Braverman has the first idea about Adorno? Of course she doesn't.

Dwyer is writing from a US perspective - more so than he realises probably - and in the US, there have been some developments in University cultures whereby certain debates are stifled. I do think there is something in the idea that such 'culture wars' are at best a distraction from the real political battles that should be going on to tackle the tyranny of the ever-richer rich. Each year, the gap between rich and poor widens in most countries around the world. Whoever might have the upper hand in any particular 'culture war', the real war is being dominated decisively by one side.

But winning university debates ≠ real world change. And obscure theorists who write mostly incomprehensible prose don't change the world. You can compare and contrast with Marx. Capital is not exactly an easy read, but its terms are explained clearly and grounded in real-world examples. It isn't in any way nebulous.

 

[Kaka Tim]

What inspires people to action? From going on strike, to rioting, to demonstrating, or voting or boycotting or even just calling out someone's bigotry on social media? You'd think lived experience of oppression is right up there, also inspiration from the actions and words of other activists, insurectionists and campaigners, and further encouragement may come from books, songs, films, posters, graffiti and your friends, family and workmates. I think you would have to go a very very long way down that list before you get to "I was inspired by the academic writings on culture by the frankfurt school"

 

[lazythursday]

Fuck me as a member of a sexual minority I had no idea I was the revolutionary vanguard now. It seems a big responsibility. And not sure anyone's told the majority of my comrades who seem as depoliticised and fatalistic as everyone else.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'd go as far as to say that theorists like Adorno are commentating on what happens and theorising about it without having any measurable effect on it at all at the macro scale. The history of the world would have turned out more or less exactly as it did if he'd never been born.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Fuck me as a member of a sexual minority I had no idea I was the revolutionary vanguard now. It seems a big responsibility. And not sure anyone's told the majority of my comrades who seem as depoliticised and fatalistic as everyone else.

Obviously, thats becasue you haven't read "The Culture Industry" by Adorno and Horkhiemer. If you had youd be out there hoying bricks at the nearest policecar right now.

 

[lazythursday]

Obviously, thats becasue you haven't read "The Culture Industry" by Adorno and Horkhiemer. If you had youd be out there hoying bricks at the nearest policecar right now.

I've dabbled in critical theory and I work at an academic institution so have the feeling I'm right on the frontline of this destruction of the West thing. But perhaps I missed a crucial meeting.

 

[hitmouse]

Think you could also make quite a strong case that the neoliberal phase post 1970s further undermined 'traditional' values through marketisation of everything, weakening of family ties through collapse of tradtional industry, etc etc - and that would also likely be a much more robust evidence-based case than blaming a gang of dastardly professors.

I feel like one of them cultural Marxist types wrote something about that. Something like "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first conditionof existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind", or something along those lines.

 

[hitmouse]

So ideas like "cultural revolution" and "identity politics"--which no-one can deny are strongly influential on today's Western Left--originate with the F-School's revision of classical Marxism.

"Cultural revolution" comes from the F-School? Have you managed to get Mao mixed up with Marcuse?

 

[PTK]

"Adorno or Death" is the chant of the Cultural Marxists as they deconstruct bourgeois hegemony on the Barricades of Discourse in the Ideological State Apparatuses of Late Capitalism.

 

[PTK]

"Cultural revolution" comes from the F-School? Have you managed to get Mao mixed up with Marcuse?

Can you prove that Mao never visited Frankfurt?

 

[phildwyer]

But winning university debates ≠ real world change. And obscure theorists who write mostly incomprehensible prose don't change the world. You can compare and contrast with Marx. Capital is not exactly an easy read, but its terms are explained clearly and grounded in real-world examples. It isn't in any way nebulous.

In reality, Capital is an incredibly complex, technical work of economics, totally impenetrable to the untrained.

So obviously obscure theorists writing incomprehensible prose can and do change the world. And Marx is just one example, it's happened many times. Underestimate the graybeards at your peril.

 

[phildwyer]

"Cultural revolution" comes from the F-School? Have you managed to get Mao mixed up with Marcuse?

F-school precedes Mao.

 

[phildwyer]

"Adorno or Death" is the chant of the Cultural Marxists as they deconstruct bourgeois hegemony on the Barricades of Discourse in the Ideological State Apparatuses of Late Capitalism.

That was May '68, do keep up.

 

[hitmouse]

F-school precedes Mao.

I mean, Mao was born in 1893 and was a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, so not really. It is admittedly the case that the Frankfurt School's writings precede the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but I really don't think that it happened because Mao had been reading Marcuse or Horkheimer.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In reality, Capital is an incredibly complex, technical work of economics, totally impenetrable to the untrained.

No it's not.

It is the training!

 

[Kaka Tim]

In reality, Capital is an incredibly complex, technical work of economics, totally impenetrable to the untrained.

So obviously obscure theorists writing incomprehensible prose can and do change the world. And Marx is just one example, it's happened many times. Underestimate the graybeards at your peril.

intelectuals can influence the ideas of people engaged in revolutioanry struggle - but marx was not the only revolutionary theorist and communist/socialist ideas predated his writings - and those idea themselves emerged out of actual stuggles and campaigns (from winstantly and the levellers to the french revolution to the chartists to the revolutionaries of the 1840s). If anything the quais-religous wieght given to marx and dogmatic attempts to impliment his ideas has hobbled the practical advancement of socialism. You would still have had a russian revolution without marx - maybe it would actually have turned out better than it did (low bar and all dat)

 

[phildwyer]

intelectuals can influence the ideas of people engaged in revolutioanry struggle - but marx was not the only revolutionary theorist and communist/socialist ideas predated his writings - and those idea themselves emerged out of actual stuggles and campaigns (from winstantly and the levellers to the french revolution to the chartists to the revolutionaries of the 1840s). If anything the quais-religous wieght given to marx and dogmatic attempts to impliment his ideas has hobbled the practical advancement of socialism. You would still have had a russian revolution without marx - maybe it would actually have turned out better than it did (low bar and all dat)

You can't have a revolution without a revolutionary ideology, and that means revolutionary theorists. If it hadn't been Marx it would have been Bakunin.

 

[Kaka Tim]

You can't have a revolution without a revolutionary ideology, and that means revolutionary theorists. If it hadn't been Marx it would have been Bakunin.

yes you can and you do - - revolutions are sparked by material, poltical and social conditions. People dont read an essay or academic tome and suddenly decide to take to the streets - anger and resentment bubbles away unitl a paritcaulr outrage or event catalyses a mass revolt. Most of the people dont have a 12 point plan or ideolgoical casue spurring them on - they want to bring down the government becasue they the see the government as the reason their lives are shit. If the anger spreads and cant be contained (especially if the armed forces are unwilling or unable to contain it) you get a revolution. In the chaos and flux that ensues certian ideas (and ideolouges - i.e. the jacobins or the bolsheviks or - to take a recent example - the muslim brotherhood in egypt) - come to fore and take hold (or not) - its a chaotic, dynamic process.

 

[JimW]

No it's not.

It is the training!

It's also famously a critique of political economy not a work of economics.

 

[Rimbaud]

Well the argument is that the F-School was a response to the German proletariat's unexpected and unwelcome nationalism in WW1, the failures of the post-war communist risings in Munich and Berlin, and the capture of the proles by fascism.

You miss out that the context was also the failure of the Soviet Union to produce an alternative... critique of Stalinism and indeed of Marxism itself was an important part of Frankfurt School theory, a point conveniently ignored by the conspiracy theorists.

 

[Rimbaud]

Yep, absolutely. Even the idiots who moan about wokeness or cultural marxism are mostly unaware of the Frankfurt School. You think Suella Braverman has the first idea about Adorno? Of course she doesn't.

I have barely the first idea about Adorno and I've read some of his work. He isn't exactly known for accessibility.

While Frankfurt School cultural theorists are often referenced by humanities students, I don't think they are really understood by the vast majority, nevermind being complicit in a vast Communist century long conspiracy to undermine western culture and replace it with Communism because you shoehorned in a Walter Benjamin quote in your essay about gender representation in Batman or something.

 

[Rimbaud]

I mean, Mao was born in 1893 and was a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, so not really. It is admittedly the case that the Frankfurt School's writings precede the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but I really don't think that it happened because Mao had been reading Marcuse or Horkheimer.

Mao had barely even read Marx. The Chinese Communist Party were more influenced by Stalin's "History of the Bolsheviks" than by Marxist theory itself, which had little relevance to agrarian China in the early 1900s. It was the Soviet Union's rapid industrialisation under a planned economy and Lenin's theory of imperialism which had resonance with Chinese intellectuals.

 

[phildwyer]

the conspiracy theorists.

Would you dispute that the Frankfurt School conspired to subvert capitalism by undermining its hegemonic culture?

 

[Rimbaud]

Would you dispute that the Frankfurt School conspired to subvert capitalism by undermining its hegemonic culture?

I question whether they even defined capitalism as the enemy per se. They weren't fully unified as a group but at least some of them considered liberal capitalism to have more emancipatory potential than Soviet Communism.

A major theme of them seems to be challenging classical Marxist definitions of proletarian revolution and looking for alternative forms of emancipation and expanded forms of domination to include patriarchal, bureaucratic, technocratic and ethnic beyond traditional Marxist class analysis. There is a much stronger case that they represented an abandonment of socialist revolution.

 

[phildwyer]

I question whether they even defined capitalism as the enemy per se. They weren't fully unified as a group but at least some of them considered liberal capitalism to have more emancipatory potential than Soviet Communism.

True enough, and one has to wonder about the price of admission they paid when they entered the USA. Certain editions of Horkheimer's essays contain a Preface when he explicitly says the USA is preferable to the SU, in the context of slagging off the '60s student radicals, it was presumably inserted at the behest of the CIA. The Authoritarian Personality has Deep State fingerprints all over it too imho.

 

[Rimbaud]

True enough, and one has to wonder about the price of admission they paid when they entered the USA. Certain editions of Horkheimer's essays contain a Preface when he explicitly says the USA is preferable to the SU, in the context of slagging off the '60s student radicals, it was presumably inserted at the behest of the CIA. The Authoritarian Personality has Deep State fingerprints all over it too imho.

So you believe that "Cultural Marxism" is a conspiracy to undermine capitalism created by "the deep state" which you have previously defined as the CIA, FBI, NSA etc?

You are well beyond the bounds of coherence. The Frankfurt School were German left leaning academics trying to come to terms with how the promise of modernity led not to socialism but the holocaust and the gulag. That really is it.