The Frankfurt School was a centre for the study of Marxist philosophy in the 20s and 30s. Its members tried to apply Marxism to 20th century conditions, writing on a vast number of topics, from philosophy, to literature and psychology. Many of its best thinkers fled German fascism and moved to the U.S., where they tried to understand how capitalist society affects our consciousness.

Recently, blog readers made some fascinating remarks about the Frankfurt School, in my review of Erich Fromm a couple of weeks ago. The discussion ended with a claim that Marxism is elitist. Marxists understand society, workers don't - otherwise they'd revolt.

Ya gotta revolt, baybee - Geary Healey in pre-cult days

I've blogged about whether Marxism is an elitist form of organizing before. But it's worth addressing what this argument means for Marxists more generally. It implies the problem is not primarily politics or activism, but consciousness. We need to change people's minds before they'll revolt.

The half-eaten Frankfurter

I think this argument is implicit in some of the Frankfurt School's work. They lived through fascism, the destruction of the German workers' movement by the Nazis. So they took the failure of the communist movement as their starting point. They found its cause in people's consciousness: the effects of the media, pop culture and psychology.

I think this approach conceals a blindspot. A Marxist understanding of history begins with class struggle. The USSR, Stalin, the rise of the Nazis - all these things didn't just 'happen'. They were the outcome of real history, real battles which had huge effects on people's consciousness. I don't see any of this history in the Frankfurt School; instead, they appear to take the 'consciousness of defeat' as a starting point.

Their insights are not wrong, but partial. It's like looking at history with a telescope rather than a wide-angle lens. As Ernest Mandel argues in The Place of Marxism in History,

what can be decisive for individuals taken in isolation, is quite likely to be neutralized when a large number of individuals act together, if only as a result of the laws of probability (of the largest number). Divergent passions and divergent arguments cancel each other out as factors determining such actions."

History is not about individuals, but what individuals do together: politics.

But I love the working class!

If I was arguing underhandedly - which lord knows I'd never stoop to - I might ask, where were the Frankfurters during the Moscow show trials? Did they support the Left Opposition? How did Breton, Rivera and Kahlo manage to maintain links with Trotsky and revolutionary socialism, while the Frankfurters ignored them? Not all intellectuals retreated - but only the academics made a virtue of their retreat. Stefan Steinberg suggests that

like many left-wing German intellectuals exiled by fascism, the reaction on the part of members of the Frankfurt School was to keep quiet about the crimes of Stalinism in the thirties. Adorno, for example, advocated silence. Fearing accusations of being "apologists for imperialist war" Adorno advised: "at the moment the most loyal position is to keep quiet." In another letter to Horkheimer, he pleads that the group should "keep discipline and publish nothing which could lead to Russia being harmed."

To be fair, Marcuse was the doyen of libertarian socialism a few decades later. But he didn't pioneer the critique of the USSR: people like Emma Goldmann and Victor Serge anticipated it from Bolshevism's earliest days. I'd argue this reflects the Frankfurters' isolation from class struggle. As Rob says in the comment box, Marcuse "saw the passivity of the working class at home... [and] made this configuration of forces into a permanent condition." Once you believe working people are passive, coopted, etc., it's a quick step to blaming them for their problems - and suggesting they need a jolt to wake up.

"You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
"Excelleehhhnt!"

Tomorrow: Electro-shock Marxism