Collection: From “State Capitalism” to Rackets (1940-1943).
Critical collaborations: Horkheimer, Pollock, Adorno, Neumann, Kirchheimer, Marcuse.
Contents.
Intro Note: Critical Collaborations.
Remarks on Pollock’s “State Capitalism” (Summer/Fall 1941).
A. Horkheimer-Pollock.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Enthusiasm for a “New Order.”
Letter—Horkheimer, re: A Hegelian Encouragement.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Remarks on Pollock’s “State-Capitalism.”
B. Horkheimer-Adorno.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: “Weltgeschichte ist in der Tat das Weltgericht.”
Letter—Adorno, re: Remarks on Pollock’s “State-Capitalism.”
Letter—Adorno, re: “Optimism is false, even for others…”
Ad. Horkheimer, re: Ideal Constructions and Real Tendencies.
Ad. Horkheimer, re: a “rather unpleasant concession” (to democratic state capitalism).
Letter—Adorno, re: Notes on Horkheimer’s ‘Preface.’
C. Horkheimer-Neumann.
Letter—Neumann, re: “… a farewell to Marxism.”
Letter—Neumann, re: Horkheimer’s New Preface.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: The “Ideal-typical” Method and Pollock’s Psychologism.
Ad. Neumann-Horkheimer: Follow-up on the “Ideal-typical” method.
Appendix I—Collaboration with Neumann.
The Concept of Bureaucratization (1941).
Letters on Pre-History (1942).
Appendix II—Collaboration with Kirchheimer.
Kirchheimer: Remarks on Horkheimer’s “Authoritarian State” (1940).
Kirchheimer: Memo on Protective Custody (1941).
Exchange re: ‘End of Reason’ and ‘Authoritarian State’ (June 1942).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Freud Beyond Psychology (Oct. 1942).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: ‘Human Anatomy is the Key to that of the Monkey’ (Jan. 1943).
Appendix III—Comments on “Sociology of Class Relations” (Summer-Fall 1943).
Marcuse’s Comments.
Neumann’s Comments.
Kirchheimer’s Comments.
Appendix IV—Horkheimer’s Critique of Adolph Lowe’s “Reconsideration of the Law of Supply and Demand” (1942)
Letter—Horkheimer, re: The Critique of Political Economy contra Scientific Pluralism.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Marx contra Apologetic Liberal Doxa.
Intro Note: Critical Collaborations.
The most remarkable thing about the infamous 1941 ‘controversy’ among the theorists of the Institute for Social Research (ISR) over Pollock’s theory of state capitalism is probably that there never really was one.1 Instead, as James Schmidt argues in “‘Racket,’ ‘Monopoly,’ and the Dialectic of Enlightenment” (2016), the correspondence between Adorno, Horkheimer, and Neumann in the late summer and early fall of that year is a record of Horkheimer’s largely successful efforts in damage control. Horkheimer placated Adorno and Neumann, both of whom sharply criticized Pollock’s 1941 writings on ‘State capitalism’—in two essays, “State Capitalism” and “New Order,” published in issues Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, of Vol. IX (1941/42) of the ISR’s Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (SPSS)2—by writing a ‘Preface’3 to the journal in which he defended the motive of Pollock’s thought but distanced the Institute from an explicit endorsement of Pollock’s thesis.4 As I’ve argued in a previous post, Schmidt doesn’t go far enough. What Horkheimer’s correspondence shows isn’t just his unwillingness to defend Pollock’s thesis, but a fundamental aversion not only to Pollock’s execution of a shared theory, but to Pollock’s theoretical approach as a whole: his style, method, presuppositions, and conclusions. Indeed, as Schmidt notes, notwithstanding his selective appropriation of ‘Pollockian’ language, Horkheimer avoids the phrase “state capitalism” entirely, and even seems to use the ‘Preface’ as an introduction to the “racket-theory” Horkheimer was just beginning to develop in close collaboration with Adorno.5 Instead of a ‘controversy’ over the merits of Pollock’s theoretical conception, Horkheimer and Adorno’s correspondence in the summer of 1941 revolves largely around the question of just how extensive the revisions—particularly to Pollock’s contributions—would need to be in order to bring the prospective second and third issues into closer alignment with their shared theoretical and editorial vision.6
The letters translated below—the majority published in Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften, Band 17 (1996)—provide further evidence the two hypotheses implied above: (1) the non-controversy over Pollock’s ‘state capitalism’ thesis and (2) Horkheimer-Adorno’s selective appropriation of Pollockian language on different theoretical grounds.
To the second hypothesis: Adorno goes so far as to claim in his letter to Horkheimer of 6/8/1941 that Pollock’s essay is “clearly” a “simplified and de-dialecticized” derivative of Horkheimer’s “Authoritarian State.” Though only published in 1942, in the ISR’s limited-print mimeograph memorial issue for Walter Benjamin, Walter Benjamin. Zum Gedächtnis, the essay, originally titled “State Capitalism,”7 was written in 1940 as one of the earliest fruits of Horkheimer’s collaboration with Adorno.8 (Adorno and Horkheimer would continue to level complementary criticisms of Pollock’s procedure of assuming away economic crises through the ISR’s 1942 ‘Seminar on Needs.’) Otto Kirchheimer also provided extensive feedback on Horkheimer’s “Authoritarian State” in an internal ISR presentation of the work in May of 1940, which I’ve translated below (Appendix II).
In addition to the fact that Horkheimer’s initial enthusiasm for Pollock’s essay is anticipatory (4/30 and 5/30/1941) and seems to end with his misgivings about Pollock’s draft (7/1/1941), Adorno’s inversion of the received wisdom that Horkheimer’s “Authoritarian State” was a derivative of Pollock’s state capitalism thesis suggests the following: that Horkheimer and Adorno developed a theory of state capitalism on distinct theoretical grounds, even if Pollock was an important part of their theoretical discussions on the topic. This seems to be confirmed, first, by Horkheimer’s attempt to defend Pollock’s essay (7/30/1941) to Neumann on the basis of “the Engelsian view” Horkheimer himself holds—albeit a very heterodox one, stemming from his critical engagement with Engels’ theory of the state;9 second, by Neumann’s response (8/28/1941) that “Pollock’s theory seems to me to have nothing whatsoever to do with that of Engels and Bukharin,” a view he evidently attributes to Horkheimer in contradistinction to Pollock (Kirchheimer also attributes a heterodox Engelsian view to Horkheimer in his 1940 “Remarks on Horkheimer’s ‘Authoritarian State’”). Moreover, as J.E. Morain and I argued in our “Introducing Racket Theory” (2025), Horkheimer’s “On The Ideology of Politics Today” fragment (ca. 1942) “contains a particularly pointed criticism of Friedrich Pollock’s theory of state capitalism, one which has prompted previous interpreters to attempt—unsuccessfully, in our view—to direct the criticism away from Pollock himself.”10 Altogether, these materials not only pose a challenge to the traditional narrative of the ‘controversy’ but also indicate the need for a more careful reconstruction of the concept of state capitalism in Horkheimer and Adorno’s works from the late 1930s and early 1940s.
To the first hypothesis: not only was Neumann gratified by the fact that Horkheimer’s new ‘Preface’ echoed certain formulations in the manuscript for Behemoth (1942),11 but was also pleased to discover similar “lines of thought” to those in his previous letter (7/23/1941), his harshest critique of Pollock. Horkheimer’s reply is an apologetic on Pollock’s behalf (8/2/1941), defending the latter’s work despite—even, more interestingly, because of—the truth in Neumann’s critique of Pollock’s ideal-typical method and ‘psychologism.’ The fact that Neumann’s critique of Pollock repeatedly appeals to a theoretical perspective he claims to share with Horkheimer and ‘the Institute’ itself is also significant, particularly in the context of other comments Neumann makes to that effect in another ISR ‘debate’ in 1941.12 Furthermore, as is evident from ‘The Concept of Bureaucratization’ (Appendix I), Neumann resumes consulting Horkheimer on theoretical-scientific questions in the immediate aftermath of the alleged ‘controversy.’
Rather than documenting the internal division of the Institute into warring ‘camps’ between which further theoretical collaboration became impossible, with Horkheimer, Adorno, Pollock, and Löwenthal on the one side and Neumann, Kirchheimer, and Gurland on the other, the materials translated here—both the letters and the memoranda—are another indication of the collective’s continued interest in collaboration despite the forced, ongoing, and effective dissolution of the ISR through 1941/42.13 In particular, the third appendix, “Comments on Horkheimer’s ‘Sociology of Class Relations’ (Fall 1943),” is a testament to the endurance of this interest to and beyond the bitter end.
This post should be considered a supplement to the CTWG’s ongoing dossier on the Frankfurt School’s “Racketology,” and particularly to the introductory essay co-authored with J.E. Morain, “Introducing Racket Theory”:
This collection is incomplete. There is at least one more memo Kirchheimer writes during his most intensive period of collaboration with Horkheimer (1939-1941), and which I’ve only just located in the digitized portion of Horkheimer’s Nachlass. I haven’t had a chance to translate it, or several letters from the Adorno-Horkheimer correspondence during internal discussions of the limits of Pollock’s “State Capitalism” and “New Order” essays. Even so, I hope the materials collected here will offer readers the same kind of encounter I had with them—that is, an encounter with a rather different ‘Frankfurt School’ of the early 1940s than the one we’ve been led to expect.
Remarks on Pollock’s “State Capitalism” (Summer/Fall 1941).
A. Horkheimer-Pollock.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Enthusiasm for a “New Order.”
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Pollock, 4/30/1941.]14
While I was working, I spoke with a large number of people from the middle and working classes. Aside from some of the skilled workers and mechanics in the Las Vegas area, which, truth be told, has some fairly peculiar people, everyone was fundamentally inclined to admire Hitler and to hate England. England has ruled half the world for long enough. The slogan “Against Hitler” holds little sway with the masses. They have the suspicion that the old social relations cannot simply be maintained any longer. And England is connected with everything that is backwards: the Kings, the Rajahs, the de Gaulles and the Francos! England ought to have opposed Hitler in the name of justice and freedom. But it is precisely the contradiction between such an obligation [...] and the social relations which constitute the empire that completely hamstrings English politics and even warfare, making it uncertain and weak. Now, it’s all supposed to come down to America. Here, however, the contradictions are no less stark. Today, there is only enthusiasm for a “new order.” But it would be just as difficult to really oppose Hitler on this. The masses have an inkling that state capitalism is the more timely form of domination. Their commitment to it, conscious or unconscious, is not one of love, but rather hatred—hatred of injustice in its now-outdated form, injustice which now threatens to arise once more precisely because it is already out of date, as the hatred of a dying king just when the young usurper begins to reach for his crown. The masses feel that the decline of private capitalism is a judgment which has been passed on it—albeit according to its own principles, which they recognize with due cynicism. Isn’t it a fitting symbol that the opposition to the local anti-Hitlerism is being led by a national hero who is crowned with the laurels of progress in technology and “communication”? Surely, a symbol of the impossibility of fighting against your own future.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: A Hegelian Encouragement.
[From: Horkheimer to Pollock, 5/30/1941.]15
As far as general conditions are concerned, I feel, unfortunately, vindicated in every respect. We listened to the “fireside chat” in the car in front of our house with Minna Sterler and the Reichenbachs. It was “utterly depressing.”16 It reflected compromises, intrigues, tactics, the machinations of cabinets and secret politics—weakness, weakness, weakness. The ultimate grounds are, naturally, the relations you articulate in your essay: the fact that the world spirit has transcended this organizational stage of social existence. The consequence of this backwardness is the pressure which bears down upon the great spiritual forces of individuals and nations in themselves. All of this is horrific; on the reverse side, however, it is encouraging, for the humanity that comes after us will have to overcome the lot of it. Here out West, one still feels—through all the ‘business-culture’ and ‘smartness’—something like human substance. Perhaps we will one day be crushed beneath such forces; at any rate, we are closer to that than to Wall Street and the “intelligentsia” which corresponds to it. Of course, by ‘encouraging,’ I mean this in the Hegelian sense: the same development which is destroying us is the result of the untenability, untruth of what is passing away. Though this may lead only to new untenable forms, it nevertheless reveals that nothing of it can be left in mere contradiction. I have never felt so clearly as I have in these last six weeks that we only cling to the surface of things as long as we view events, the world, from the perspective of our own, endangered fate. This is still too inadequate, just as political concepts are still too inadequate. Liberal ideology, with its fundamental category of the individual, is still too abstract. The individual is just as much society, people, past, and historical substance. And it is up to us to show that this substance—even in fascism—is at odds with itself, falls beneath itself, in contradiction to itself. The essay you are writing will be a first step in this direction, for it will begin by returning to the “concept” from the pure negation into which all [emigrants] tend to be dragged by their emigration.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Remarks on Pollock’s “State-Capitalism.”
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Pollock, 7/1/1941.]17
Enclosed here, I’m sending State-Capitalism with my comments, which, naturally, are only an expression of the critical, not the positive, side. As for the positive, I see this above all in the great clarity it imparts to complex events. It brings things, as old Husserl was wont to say, “within grasp” [“in Griff”]. The thesis is striking: economic development exhibits a tendency towards state capitalism—everywhere. The totalitarian form is only one of its possible forms. We outline its essence, its core structure, and ask ourselves whether it can, on a fundamental level, lead capitalism beyond the difficulties which arose in its private phase. In such analysis, we discover state capitalism as the more economically efficacious and timely form. Just by naming these problems, and by merit of the resoluteness with which their technical solvability is demonstrated, the essay performs a crucial, demystifying function. I consider it a significant step in the direction of the much-needed new manifesto. Naturally, my comments could only be the fruit of a relatively rushed reading; some will simply turn out to be misunderstands. Most urge more concise formulations, less frequent repetitions, others aim at [guarding against] possible misunderstanding of an excessive sympathy for state capitalism [on the part of the author], and only a few express factual doubts. To formulate a more general wish, it would be for the intertwining and ambiguity of the relevant phenomena, the transition of concepts into others, etc. to be made more apparent—in short, that everything would appear somewhat less rigidly administrative. And then, the question of style—particularly at the conclusion, where there are too many phrases such as “this and that must happen” and the like, which conceal factual uncertainty. —All of this, however, means only that with more time and quiet, a much more concise, sharp, and charged form might emerge from this [draft]. Do you believe this can happen (here), or is there too little time? I would like to do my part.
B. Horkheimer-Adorno.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: “Weltgeschichte ist in der Tat das Weltgericht.”
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adorno, 6/4/1941.]18
The world situation has probably never been bleaker. It is a painful consolation that there is reason to be found in the course and events of the war. Reason turns to reveal its negative side, as Hegel would put it. The old falls apart, as the Bible would. In these last few months, I have kept my eyes open. It is only on the surface that conformity with the old ideology still rules here. There is a secret, smoldering hostility towards the veiled hierarchy, and an identification with the open one. People take all the talk about unprejudicedness, about more purposive organization and cooperation, much more seriously than is good for them. They go right along with the latest developments. And out of their deep suspicion of power in general, they side with the strongest. World history is indeed world justice, an enormous courtroom in which the injustice of violence past steps forward only to meet its master in that of the present.19 Though the latter is never justified in the course of the trial, the former is nevertheless refuted. To the extent that the prospect of any happier course of social development, or even of our own lives, grows dimmer, I become more adept at seeing into the depths. —And yet to that same extent, I feel our separation all the more painful, even reckless—for it is much too difficult for anyone to bear alone.
Letter—Adorno, re: Remarks on Pollock’s “State-Capitalism.”
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 6/8/1941.]20
[...] In this connection, I must speak with you, under the utmost discretion and in the hope that you will not misinterpret me, about a truly serious concern. It is about Fritz’s essay. He gave me approximately 35 pages of it, and, at his request, I offered a few critical suggestions. However, these only pertained to details and questions of presentation, and it was absolutely impossible for me to register my reservations in their actual weight. It was impossible for me firstly because as a non-economist I do not have the authority necessary to represent such reservations, and secondly because any critique which would express my view of things is not one I could accept the psychological responsibility for. The best summary of my impression of the essay is that it represents a reversal of Kafka. Kafka presented the hierarchy of bureaucratic offices as hell. Here, hell is transformed into a hierarchy of bureaucratic offices. In addition to this, the whole affair is formulated in such a thesis-like manner, and “from above” in the Husserlian sense, that it is completely devoid of any urgency whatsoever, even apart from the undialectical assumption that in a non-antagonistic economy is possible within an antagonistic society. However I look at it, I see a truly aporetic situation before us. If the essay appears in this version or a similar one, it will only succeed in damaging the reputation of the Institute, above all that of Fritz, and unleash the ferocious, triumphant howling of all the Löwen [viz., “Lions” as a play on Adolph Löwe], Neumänner [viz., “New Men” as a play on Franz Neumann], e tutti quanti. If it doesn’t appear, however, it would be a serious blow to the State Capitalism issue, for we need not even discuss what we would have to look forward to from a Neumannian, Lynd-inspired article on the possibility of democratic state capitalism. My “Spengler” is only workable as a philosophical cross-connection [Querverbindung] with the problem of state capitalism, but on its own is far too modest to bear the full weight of this claim for the issue as a whole. I hesitated for quite a while before coming to you with this concern, but I can see absolutely no other option, particularly since, as you undoubtedly understand, my own scope of action in this affair is extremely restricted, though Fritz, and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough, sends me each new finished section in the most touching way. But the problem at stake—the problem of his theoretical production at the same moment he himself considers it most promising—is of such a deep-seated nature, in both human and factual terms, that it would strike me as not only imprudent but even seriously inappropriate were I to consider speaking about the issue undisguisedly. Still, I did not want to raise the problem without, at the very least, mentioning what I take to be the only way out. Namely: that you rewrite the essay yourself using motifs from your own “State Capitalism” essay [viz., “Authoritarian State”] […].21 I imagine this would even be quite plausible. As it stands, the motifs in Fritz’s essay clearly stem from yours and are, in a sense, only simplified and de-dialecticized [entdialektisiert] to the point of turning into their opposites. If one could convince Fritz that there was a possibility of publishing your theory in connection with his work, or perhaps of merging the two in some way, I am fairly confident that he would be willing to go along with this, and that you would thereby be able to turn the matter into what we have in mind. Under the circumstances, you could even sign the essay together, which would undoubtedly be very gratifying to Fritz. I do not know whether you have the time or the desire to do so, and I can well imagine that the prospect doesn’t exactly thrill you. I believe, however, that this is the only way to proceed with what is otherwise a nearly insoluble matter. The argument that it would be a shame and, moreover, uneconomical to simply allow your essay on state capitalism to fall by the wayside instead of being included in such an issue will most likely be very persuasive. (Hugh, Ich habe gesprochen.)22
You write: “World history is indeed world justice, an enormous courtroom in which the injustice of violence past steps forward only to meet its master in that of the present. Though the latter is never justified in the course of the trial, the former is nevertheless refuted.” To this I would reply with a few sentences from the neuen Musikauffsatz [viz., Adorno’s early draft of the Philosophy of New Music (1949)]:
The idea of domination may itself be modeled on the experience of domination; arising from nature as the superior power of existence over man. Whatever there is, is the stronger. Yet man himself has wings, so to speak, to destroy it.23 His powerlessness is reflected in the idea of fate. Through this, man has, in turn, learned to be the stronger and to dominate nature, and therein fate has reproduced itself. For there is only ever as much domination as there is destruction. Once the superior power of nature as fate makes itself manifest [in this idea], fate returns as domination over nature. Step by step, it unfolds by compulsion; by compulsion, because each step is prescribed by the ancient, superior power of nature. Fate is domination brought to pure abstraction, and it inevitably threatens the dominator and the dominated with destruction all the same.24
As you can see, my own thoughts at present revolve around the same matters as yours.
Of us there is little to report. During our weekend excursion, I suffered quite a sunburn on my head, the effects of which are not only noticeable upon my skin but also, even more unpleasantly, through almost unbroken headaches. —I have just translated the Rickertkritik into English25 and I’ve written a review of the third Volume of Newman’s work,26 which is incidentally rather interesting. Particularly from the point of view that Wagner, a virtual Nazi, already occupies quite clearly the dual position against feudalism (as a progressive) and against liberalism (as a monopolist). And then there is Cosima, a truly monstrous figure, from whom, moreover, the most deadly form of anti-Semitism stems. The only remotely decent person in the entire narrative—the representative of reason, so to speak—is King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who was naturally declared insane.
Letter—Adorno, re: “Optimism is false, even for others…”
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 7/2/1941.]27
Where the English issue is concerned, I’ve preoccupied myself with the essays as much as possible and I have, aside from the others, already discussed Kirchheimer’s essay with him at length. To Fritz, I suggested that the last part of his essay, on democratic state capitalism, be dressed in the form of questions and the formulation of problems for “future research.” To me, this seems the only possibility of deploying the protective countermeasure without which one might be exposed to their own friends for appearing to defend theses they simply cannot defend. What do you think? In fact, I consider the central problem of this work the question of whether the tendency it elaborates towards a crisis-free, top–down economy actually expresses the objective tendency of reality or whether the ideal purity of its construction is, in principle, ruled out from applying to the future as much as it is, given the antagonistic state of affairs in the present, in the present itself. I feel myself utterly incapable of answering this question. My instinct is to say something like the following: what is correct in its conception is its pessimism, i.e., the conception that the chances for the perpetuation of domination in its immediate, political form are far greater than the chances of getting out of it. Optimism is false, even for others: what perpetuates itself seems to me not so much a relatively stable and, in a certain sense, even rational state of affairs as much as an unrelenting succession of catastrophes, chaos, and horror for a long period to come with no end in sight; and with it, however, the chance to finally break out of this too, which seems all too meager from the Egyptian vista. I cannot believe, however, that this condition of chaos can simply be dismissed as “political power struggles.” In Germany’s world-conquest, such chaos is already becoming manifest even now, and no less clearly than the “New Order” rises into view. Moreover, the collapse of Russia seems to be happening so rapidly that even the hope for a “moment of respite” is increasingly unlikely to be realized. Rather, the subjugation of Russia will in all likelihood only reinforce the chaotic aspect of the ‘New Order.’
Among the few truly encouraging figures making their appearance here is Langerhans. Even aside from his resilience, which one really cannot admire enough, he has a spiritual-intellectual élan that strikes me as more important than any “theoretical maturity” that he, one could almost say, fortunately lacks. What actually impresses me about him is that, for him, the question of no longer “playing along” in our sense is not posed from afar or in the sense of “development,” but rather that every word of his is directed towards the most immediate possibility that might break out here and now. In so many things, he agrees with us without explicit knowledge of our standpoint, such as the outdatedness of “politics” in the old sense, of the mass party, and, on the other hand, the possibility of renouncing the apparatus of domination today precisely through the greater clarity to be had about the manner in which administration and labor function for it. There is some consolation in the fact that a man whose life has been so close to the heart of what’s happening today has, in essence, had such similar experiences as those we’ve had in the distance of our theory. […]
In connection with our work, it has become increasingly clear to me that we must examine the question of the labor movement’s position towards “culture” in the whole dialectic involved therein. I’m considering re-reading [Franz] Mehring’s work28 as a whole and making notes on it to that end, and I would like to know whether or not you also think this sensible.
Ad. Horkheimer, re: Ideal Constructions and Real Tendencies.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adorno, 7/11/1941.]29
Please forgive the shortness of my reply to your lovely lines of the 2nd. I have spent the last week studying up on natural science rather intensively.30 Not at the level of advanced mathematics, but as much as can be understood without it—which is still quite a lot. In connection with my work on science, I found this kind of study necessary and, in any case, it would be good if one of us were to stay up to date on these things in the future. Fritz arrived yesterday, and we must revise his essay over the next few days to the extent this is possible in such a short period of time. Thus, time is all too scarce. Your suggestion that ‘democratic state capitalism’ be treated solely in the manner of posing questions is, once more, word for word the same suggestion I put down in writing as my first reaction. Further, I am in complete agreement with your remark that the relationship between the [ideal-typical] construction and the real tendency must be the primary focus.
Ad. Horkheimer, re: a “rather unpleasant concession” (to democratic state capitalism).
[Horkheimer to Gretel and Theodor Adorno, 8/4/1941.]31
I’m curious as to your reaction to my ‘Preface’ to Fritz’s essay. The sentences which refer to local conditions contain a not entirely unintentional inconsistency. The extent to which the “conditions, under which a real accord among men permeates the whole,”32 is identical with the present is unclear. I find this concession rather unpleasant, and I’ve already written to New York that I agree with the deletion of the passage with “The opening article…” on page 5 through the conclusion. But then the sentence “However the present war may end, men will have to choose between a new world era of consummate democracies or the hell of a totalitarian world order” would have to be added after “... to get rid of it.” …
Letter—Adorno, re: Notes on Horkheimer’s ‘Preface.’
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 8/18/1941.]33
Dear Max, today I finally received your ‘Preface.’ I found it outstanding. It contains a number of formulations of essential motifs, which, in the course of reformulating and re-reformulating for the English draft, have acquired a real forcefulness of their own and, one might almost say, elegance. At the same time, I find the ‘Preface’ is entirely successful in the tactical task of preempting the misunderstanding that Fritz’s essay actually contains a recognition of the possibility of any non-antagonistic form of state capitalism, and without you having to make any concessions whatsoever to the official Marxist optimism. If I mention a few stray thoughts here, it is really only out of due diligence and not because I have any serious critique. It is clear that you’ve already taken all of my considerations into account. If I list them here anyway, it is only because, given the right circumstances, the coincidence [of my considerations and yours] may confirm something for you.
I feel that the first paragraph is somewhat contemplative and, taken on its own, contains something essentially well-known. It is only in the second paragraph that one is able to notice, by contrast, how much care has been taken to ensure that each of the formulations is tailored in contrast to the present phase. I would only ask whether the tempo of the whole could not be increased by opening the essay immediately with the second section, and introducing the counter-theses about liberalism one after the other. —By the way, is “rules of exchange” an unambiguous [translation] for Tauschgesetze? Couldn’t [“rules of exchange”] be misunderstood as Gesetze der Währung (laws regulating currency)?
The essay makes an implicit tripartition between competitive capitalism, monopoly capitalism, and fascism. Monopolism is, however, addressed only very briefly in the second section. Wouldn’t it be more advisable if the essay said something more explicit about the relation between monopolism and fascism? To me, it seems a differentiation would be all the more appropriate since Kirchheimer’s essay equates the two far too crudely. This could be done in a very Hegelian manner—fascism could be defined as monopolism which has come into its own. Having reached its totality, monopolism turns over into the new quality of fascism. The omnipotence of the monopolies transforms both economy and society because it is identical with the elimination of the very market the monopolies once dominated.
At the beginning of the third paragraph: the proposition that “society has fallen to the mercy of more individual interests” could be discussed further. Isn’t it really a matter of the direct enforcement of ruling class interests? The leaders are neither individuals in the deeper sense of the term, nor can their interests be equated with the old profit motive without further ado. I would suggest a formulation like: society has fallen to the mercy of the heirs of the old profit motive, those few leaders who alone can still afford to be individuals at all and who, therefore, are not individuals at all. But, on the other hand, you are naturally right to foreground the egoistic interests of the “happy few” as strongly as possible, and perhaps it is better not to broach the dialectic of individuality at all here. ([Insert:] I oppose the proposed change to this passage—Giraffe Gazelle [viz., Gretel Adorno].) —At the end of the paragraph (“the unity of fascist leaders”), it could perhaps be suggested that their ‘Will to Power’ is itself fear.
In the following paragraph, I suggest substituting “Erzatzproduktion” in the otherwise rather lovely sentence with another concept, such as “Wehrpsychologie.” Reason: in his essay, Gurland attempts to demonstrate how “Ersatzproduktion” liberates the forces of production. I have a vague feeling that the same features in fascism which are connected with scarcity are the features we should least reproach. As for the last sentence of the section, I would only note that fascism, perhaps, not only increases alienation, but its contrary as well. One might at least offer a hint of this.
For tactical reasons, I would suggest omitting the reference to Marx (location 54 in the second section). Those in-the-know know it anyway, the others need not notice, and it should annoy Grossmann.
I have a few reservations about the passage about America. Evidently, it was supposed to somehow concretize the problem of democratic state capitalism. However, my skepticism is so insistent that I do not know whether it won’t achieve the opposite, and the passage might make the whole thing seem like a disguised attack on the Roosevelt administration. My instinct would be to delete the conclusion to the paragraph, “For more than eight years… .” For the sentence closing the paragraph, I would, for stylistic and tactical reasons, say something more like “might be workable” (without the not) rather than “might not be workable.”
The sole serious reservation concerns the first sentence of the following paragraph (“The transition, …”). I consider the conclusion of this sentence, particularly the expression “will shake the very foundations of society,” to be actually and in earnest dangerous. Suggestion: after “should permeate the whole,” follow directly with “cannot be achieved without protracted… .” I have also received the proof of Fritz’s essay, so if I have anything else to add I will write to him about it separately. “Art and Communication” is not there yet.34
C. Horkheimer-Neumann.
Letter—Neumann, re: “… a farewell to Marxism.”
[Excerpt from: Neumann to Horkheimer, 7/23/1941.]35
Many thanks for your letter. Today, I would just like to say something about Pollock’s essay. Pollock believes my judgment of his essay is so unfavorable because I can’t stand him. How exactly he arrived at such a notion, I don’t know. I’ve given him no reason to assume this, but it seems to be something of an idée fixe for him. Regarding the matter itself: my opposition to the essay should be no surprise to Pollock nor to you. From the first to the last page, it contradicts the theory of the Institute and is, in actuality, merely a new formulation of Mannheim’s sociology, above all Mannheim’s latest book, Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbruchs. This is most obvious on page 34, where Pollock formulates the problem that the control of the controllers is decisive for whether state capitalism opens the way to a better society. As you will no doubt notice, this formulation is identical with Mannheim’s: who plans the plan. There are similar coincidences in the analysis of the significance of the freedom of the consumers. Thus, I would propose making Pollock an honorary citizen of Mannheim, but—from what I’ve ascertained, and to my satisfaction—Mannheim is gradually being bombed to smithereens by the English.36
Lacking the theoretical education necessary to criticize the theoretical and methodological foundations of the essay, I would nevertheless like to highlight one point: the use of the concepts ‘model’ and ‘ideal type.’ I have already attempted to raise my objections to Pollock in person, but perhaps I didn’t formulate them well enough. First, on page 1, it is claimed to be doubtful whether state capitalism does or even could exist. Naturally, this is an impossible position. For if Pollock himself were in doubt about whether it could exist at all, then the whole essay must have a slightly comical ring to it. More serious, however, is the methodological problem which lies in the following: ideal types are abstractions from actuality, obtained by omission of the insignificant elements and emphasis of the significant ones in a given, determinate reality. This also means that ideal types only have validity in the context of a given, determinate reality, but cannot transcend this reality. Pollock’s ideal type, however, implies a leap from one actuality (that of capitalism) into another, one which is no longer capitalism. This leap is illegitimate given its own presuppositions. The theoretical task would therefore consist not in showing which consequences arise from the assumption that the state has completely subjugated the economy, but rather under what present-day conditions such a state-capitalist conception arises at all. I don’t know whether I’ve expressed myself clearly enough.
I am happy to concede to Pollock that his system is self-contained. But as to how not-capitalism is supposed to arise from capitalism, the demonstration completely eludes me. In my view, this kind of demonstration could only be conducted on the basis of a material-rich analysis of, for example, Germany, whereby this analysis would also necessarily involve a theory of the transition from monopoly to state capitalism. No such theory is present, and the material contradicts every one of Pollock’s theses. For a year now, I’ve done nothing but study the economic processes in Germany and, thus far, have not found the slightest indication that Germany is even remotely close to a state-capitalist condition.
Now, the details:
1) Page 4, No. 4 of the new (M.v. Mendelssohn) transcript, to which the following will refer:
The paragraph is childish in formulation and contains two severe theoretical errors. In this section, an idealized democratic Volk is opposed to a very realistic analysis of domination in totalitarian states (under No. 3). The second sentence of the paragraph also asserts that the bureaucracy laid the foundations for the transformation of the democratic into a totalitarian system, an assertion which elevates a single element into the basis of the system as a whole.
2) Page 8.
A claim is made that the “planning principles spread” without specifying where.
3) Page 10.
It is claimed that Mandeville’s theory may perhaps have been adequate in the competitive economy, but is doubtlessly false under state capitalism. My view is the exact contrary, that Mandevilleian theory is the basis of the National Socialist social system. Further, I claim that it is the conscious policy of National Socialism.
4) Page 11.
Note 1: The remark about the Göring-Works is, in my view, factually false. The Göring-Works are in my conception the attempt of the party to economically support its political domination. I attempted to provide proof for this in my book, and concluded therein that the Nazis themselves were manifestly and extremely convinced of the life-force of capitalism.
[5)]37 Page 15.
The claim that there exists investment planning in Germany is incorrect. In 1938, for example, 5 billion marks were accumulated by companies and individual firms by means of self-financing, against a 2 billion increase in savings deposits, and 1.2 billion in distributed dividends. German periodicals add that self-financing must have been considerably higher in 1939 and 1940. Pollock would need to demonstrate that and at which point it becomes necessary for the state to eliminate self-financing entirely. Just as incorrect—that price controls and taxation have the properties Pollock attributes to them, at least in the case of Germany.
Page 17.
If I had enough time, I could demonstrate that the decisive motive which impels capitalists in Germany to expand and modernize is profit and the fear of economic collapse. Pollock would benefit from examining one of the Preiskommissar’s decrees. The decrees are thoroughly based on the idea that only the productive have a right to exist, and all others should perish. Price control is precisely that which makes it possible to identify the most productive among the producers.
6) Page 19.
In Germany, in any case, the so-called production-plan is not based on an arbitrary decision. On this point too, the task of theory would be to demonstrate how it can happen that, by abandoning capitalist laws, distribution is sovereignly organized. Such a demonstration has not been carried out.
7) Page 22.
On occasion, Pollock reverts to the linguistic usage of capitalism. Since there are no commodities in his [state capitalist] system (indeed, there is no longer production for the market), then labor-power can no longer be a commodity either.
8) Page 32, No. 6.
Pollock poses the question of whether state capitalism would dare raise the standard of living “if economic conditions permit.” This sentence is unintelligible to me; if the system has only natural and political boundaries, why would there be any economic ones?
This paragraph also contains a claim that, unfortunately, does not agree with the facts: namely, that whereas democratic state capitalism can raise the standard of living, the totalitarian kind cannot. But even now, the actual situation looks somewhat different. According to Nathan’s report38 on the development of the living standards of the German working class under fascism, the exact contrary thesis would be more justified. For, under democracy, particular capitalist interests can assert themselves much more easily than they could in a totalitarian state. In a totalitarian state, Herr Krupp can easily make such concessions to the working class, since he is, in the end, master of the house; were democracy still functional, he would probably refuse to make this kind of concession for fear that, as a consequence of the functioning of the democratic mechanism, the workers would not stop there, but demand more and more. In American democracy, hardliners like Bethlehem and Republic Steel are clearly resistant to concessions to the working class because they know all too well—that one concession leads to another. Were America fascist, the two firms would surely have no reservations about giving the workers what they have, thus far, refused them under democratic conditions.
No. 6 on pages 32-33 is, in fact, the core of the essay. It contains the consolation prize [Trostpille] for anti-fascists. What I have to say about the theory contained therein, I have already spoken to Pollock about at length. The third line on page 33 also contains a rather unfortunate formulation, which, probably without Pollock having intended it to, is an insult to all revolutionaries. There, it’s claimed that the labor aristocracy has been able to turn the despair of the masses into a means of advancing its own goals.39 But this is simply a question of formulation, which must be changed.
9) Page 34.
It is comical to see someone swing back and forth from one extreme to the other. Right up to the outbreak of this war, Pollock advocated the same thesis we did—that the international solidarity of the capitalists would make a war impossible. Now, he advocates the thesis that war between state-capitalist systems is unavoidable, and that the threat of war can only be warded off once state capitalism has subjugated the world as a whole. On the presuppositions of Pollock’s theory, I consider this thesis untenable. If the world actually is divided into state-capitalist blocs, then economics would be done for, not only domestically but also on the world market, i.e., international relationships would be exclusively political. But if that were true, and if the elites in each state-capitalist formation live in constant fear of the exploited, then why shouldn’t the elites reach an understanding with one another?
In sum, I would say that the essay clearly constitutes a farewell to Marxism.40 The essay only continues beyond this as a document of complete hopelessness. State capitalism, as Pollock has conceived it, might very well endure for a millennium. The exploiters of today might become the saviors of tomorrow. Even Pollock’s friend Löwe, after I posed the question to him in this manner, was compelled to concede this possibility. Why shouldn’t the ruling class, as long as it confronts no real economic difficulties and only natural boundaries remain, raise the standard of living for the masses and, when the discontent grows too great, absorb all of the discontented into the ranks of the ruling class? Why shouldn’t it employ all of its productivity to produce consumer goods? Is there actually some purely psychological law according to which the better human beings live the more necessarily they demand the abolition of a political system of domination? Pollock has made answering this question extraordinarily easy. Even now, I consider psychological, sociological, morphological, and historical-philosophical Kreislauftheorien as an attempt to avoid having to concede the actuality of capitalist antagonisms. I would be grateful if you would respond to the problems I have raised here. Of course, you can show Pollock my letter. I’ve already said all of this to him. Perhaps my written formulations will be more successful than my verbal ones have been.
Letter—Neumann, re: Horkheimer’s New Preface.
[Excerpt from: Neumann to Horkheimer, 7/30/1941.]41
I have read your prefatory remark to the new issue with greatest interest, even excitement. I find the formulations excellent, and I am in complete agreement with the first 4 and 3/4th pages. In many respects, I discovered similar formulations to those in my book [viz., Behemoth], and my letter to you about Pollock’s essay expresses, in part, similar lines of thought. To repeat myself: I consider the formulations on these pages to be complete as it is and I do not wish to change anything. There is only one rather insignificant suggestion I have for page 2. You speak of “bourgeois political theory.” I would replace the word “bourgeois” with “modern,” since the former is too provocative. In any event, in my book I formulated the thought that it is only the leadership of National Socialism that does not truly believe in its ideology, but is rather entirely convinced of the truth of Marxism. However, I have reservations about pages 5-7. You reinterpret Pollock’s essay in such a way that it becomes completely harmless, and thus completely in contradiction to your own interpretation. Whoever reads both Pollock’s essay and your prefatory remark would have to conclude that one of you has misunderstood the other gravely. I know very well why you undertook this reinterpretation. You wished to avoid distancing yourself from Pollock. But to me it still seems better to allow the oppositions to emerge into the open honestly than to conceal them, and thereby give the uninitiated reader the impression that the two directors of the Institute are talking past one another.42 Of course, I cannot agree with the positive assessment of American democracy, but I will happily drop my objection out of consideration for the political situation. One last time, I would only repeat that I would not change anything crucial in your prefatory remark.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: The “Ideal-typical” Method and Pollock’s Psychologism.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Neumann, 8/2/1941.]43
I thank you for your letter of July 23rd. My desire to comment on the problems you have raised has, I believe, been partially satisfied by the ‘Preface,’ which you’ve most likely received by now, that I wrote even before receiving your remarks. I share the greater part of the views you have put forward on the matter itself. On some, I cannot take any position, on account of my lack of familiarity with specific relationships—such as, for example, the remarks you’ve made about the Göring-Works, self-financing, and the motives of investment.
However much I may object to Pollock’s method myself, I still consider your critique of it misguided. To my mind, ideal types are supposed to perform precisely the function they do in this essay. True, they are acquired through the abstraction and intensification of determinate elements from out of actuality; these [abstractions] are, however, opposed to actuality as well. Thus, they form utopias—whether beautiful or ugly—against which actuality is measured. Even if you are correct in saying the system Pollock has sketched would no longer be capitalism, which I would rather not discuss right now, he still has the right, in the spirit of the ideal-typical method, to compare social formations of the present with his [ideal-typical] constructions. Such a procedure can be important for the assessment of historical processes, even if one were to disregard the question of the [qualitative] leap. Indeed, Pollock could even argue, in the spirit of Weber, that his own constructions (or constructions like his) form the conscious or unconscious presupposition of every discussion of this question at present.
As for your demand for “demonstration,” for how non-capitalism might arise from capitalism—this I do not understand. I still hew to the conviction that nothing of the sort can be accomplished on the basis of analysis, however materially well-founded, but only through practice. Since I unreservedly trust your study of economic processes in Germany, I must believe you when you say that Germany is nowhere near a state-capitalistic state of affairs. On the other hand, I am incapable of freeing myself from the Engelsian view that society is driving exactly to this. Therefore, I must assume that this period nevertheless threatens us with such a significant possibility that the value of Pollock’s construction seems to me justified to a great extent, despite all of its shortcomings, as a foundation for the discussion of contemporary problems. I can only agree with everything you have put forward to underscore the profound identity of the fascist condition with that of its predecessors. However, your swing at Pollock for his remark on Mandeville appears less apt to me.44 As Mandeville’s theory concerns the foundations of capitalism as a whole, it is valid for the social and political tendencies of National Socialism as well. Of course, since the most famous aspects of Mandeville’s Fable refer to conditions which obtained under a relatively autonomous functioning of the market system internal to states, one might very well think it applies primarily to liberalism.
The question of whether state capitalism could risk raising living standards whenever economic conditions permit is poorly formulated. Naturally, what was meant by this is the problem of what extent the ruling class in state capitalism would have to abolish its own position through making material concessions it would be able to offer on the basis of advancements in technology. I myself consider this problem unrealistic, because I cannot imagine world-fascism in general in a system in which all borders have vanished. Rather, it constitutes the form of domination in a phase of acute international struggles. I believe, however, that this fundamental theoretical opposition is so substantial that it is in no way unimportant to present the other side as well. If I’m not mistaken, you yourself have taken a step in Pollock’s direction with the view that the ruling class can offer the workers more under state capitalism than it ever could before—the theoretical implications of which I cannot overlook at present.
In opposition to Pollock, you harbor doubts about the existence of a purely psychological law that human beings who live better off must by necessity demand the abolition of a political system of domination. You say, further, that Pollock makes answering this question so extraordinarily easy. It’s no secret that I myself don’t believe in this psychological law or any others like it in the slightest. The abolition of a political system of domination results from the specific tendency towards its collapse that governs such a social form. The presentation of this tendency, on the grounds of in-depth analyses, is identical with the theory of the historical epoch in question. (I’m bracketing the circumstances in which political systems of domination might change even when no collapse has occurred.) In any event, revolutions arise from the social totality and not from ‘the psychological factor’ or any other factor considered in isolation.
Nevertheless, there are two serious reservations that can be raised here against your accusation of psychologism. One is logical: the tendency towards collapse, which is derived from the so-called core structure of society, is unique or singular. There is as yet no justified inductive conclusion that in the future this-or-that better shape of society must emerge in one way and not another just because revolutions have thus far mediated the transition from lower to higher degrees of general freedom. Any conclusion of this sort is sociologism, and it can easily be trumped by counterrevolutionaries, who are now, as ever, the better sociologists. If, however, the prognosis of a future revolution can only be expected on the grounds of a singular law which governs the [social] totality, then the question necessarily arises: to what extent does subjectivity, without which something like the ‘element of freedom’ cannot be thought, actually surrender to objective pressures? Any theory that skips over this difference between subjectivity and objectivity would be simultaneously idealistic and mechanistic, and its foundation a kind of identity-philosophy. I have no doubt you are well aware of this, but this is precisely why you should be able to understand Pollock’s difficulty on this point.
For behind his psychologism lies concealed a difficulty for theory itself on the level of principle. This situation is even more evident in my second reservation against the all-too-rash dispatching of ‘psychologism.’ Where Pollock infers revolution on the basis of a better life for the proletariat, another who came before him inferred the same revolution on the basis of a worse life for the proletariat. I must confess that the latter way of thinking still seems to me, on balance, to be the more plausible of the two, but I am well aware that my judgment on this matter is grounded on rather uncertain experiences. Both sides have solid reasons they may refer to, and I do not know to what extent Pollock’s open psychologism is or is not conditioned by the concealed psychologism of the counter-thesis. If judgments of probability are permissible at all on this question—to my mind, this is not only questionable but politically dubious as well—they could only be negative; for as a matter of principle, social revolution happens not on the side of probability but against it. Under given social relations, what can be “prognosticated” with any degree of logical tidiness is domination and domination alone, never its overcoming.
Pollock’s essay calls up a whole series of more general and more particular objections. That we would formulate these and argue each of them through was likely the most important motive for writing it. In light of the rather complicated relationship which prevails at present between theory and political group-formations, however, the pathos with which you oppose the Mannheimite and renegade Pollock strikes me as no less theoretically far-fetched as what I personally dislike about his essay. The relation between theory and practice is itself historical, and I would respond to your repeated accusation that some of what Pollock says has a comical ring to it in kind. You know very well that, despite all of the theoretical difficulties Pollock endeavors to overcome, he still holds fast to the theory of the Institute as few others do, and this statement of the matter concerns not only his past work but also contains a crucial prognosis of my own.
Your rather cutting scientific and personal statements, with which you open your “rejection” of Pollock’s essay, are on occasion less incisive than they may have seemed. For instance, when you suggest that Pollock’s work is “in actuality” only a reformulation of Mannheim’s book (which he has not in fact read), and then justify this with nothing more than the fact he brings out the connection between the old Latin problem of education and educator,45 a rather ancient intellectual problem that Fichte also applied to society in some of his writings that are not entirely unknown to us, and the problem of planned economy. I can only hope for your sake as well as ours, and our associates who you’ve accused of the same “farewell” Pollock is supposed to have so “clearly” made, that none of us will “swing… from one extreme to the other” any more than Pollock has to date, or will in the future. I am grateful for your letter, for I consider every open confrontation between us theoretically important and fruitful. My main concern is that you, even if you are not completely alone in doing so, refrain from judging Pollock’s works in the style of Anti-Dühring—and of course, this is not merely a theoretical concern, but also quite personal. The circle of those with whom I myself have any contact shrinks with every passing day. I ask you please not to allow the manifold problems which might presently endanger the relationships which comprise a circle like ours obscure what we share in common—and when I speak of such commonality, I include Pollock no less than I do myself.
I eagerly await to hear your impression of my prefatory remarks to Pollock’s essay. The weak point is, naturally, the conclusion, which refers only to local conditions. It contains a stylistic lack of clarity I have been unable to remedy for a number of reasons, but which, I believe, will nevertheless be understood by the readers of our journal. I would be particularly grateful to know whether you consider this conclusion acceptable.
P.S. Your notes from July 30th have just now arrived, by which I feel very gratified. I agree—the word “bourgeois” ought to be replaced by the word “modern.” With respect to the English stylization (which we worked on with Marcuse and David) we had the same reservations you expressed, but we deferred to Löwenthal’s perspicacity on the matter. Marcuse is writing about the other problems in the ‘Preface.’
Ad. Neumann-Horkheimer: Follow-up on the “Ideal-typical” method.
[Neumann to Horkheimer, 8/28/1941.]46
I received your letter dated August 2nd and would have sent my reply long ago if only I had found the time. However, I have only just finished the writing for my book today and did not wish to interrupt the work. I would only repeat that Pollock’s theory seems to me to have nothing whatsoever to do with that of Engels and Bukharin. I could elaborate on this in detail, and plan to do so in the next few days. Your remarks on the significance of the “ideal type” are unconvincing to me, all the more so since I consider this concept extremely problematic in theoretical terms. We will have to discuss all of these problems in detail on another occasion.
[Horkheimer to Neumann, 8/30/1941.]
Where the “ideal type” is concerned, I am entirely in agreement with your view that its application is extremely problematic. My remarks were only meant to show that Pollock’s usage does not contradict the original spirit of this method. This does not, however, say anything whatsoever about its legitimacy…
Appendix I—Collaboration with Neumann.
The Concept of Bureaucratization (1941).
Letter—Neumann, re: ‘A scientific question.’
[Neumann to Horkheimer, 5/8/1941.]47
Dear Herr Horkheimer,
A scientific question: In my book, I have defined the process of bureaucratization as follows:
Bureaucratization, as a process operating in public as well as in private life means that increasingly human relations cease to be direct ones, but become mediated by third persons who, as public or private servants, more or less securely seated in power, authoritatively prescribe the behavior of man.48
The definition is consciously sociological. Do you think it’s correct? I would be grateful for your advice.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: The Concept of Bureaucratization.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Neumann, 8/13/1941.]49
I find it very difficult to make any comment on your definition of bureaucratization without knowing the context in which it arises; the aspect it takes on in your book, the mediation through which it is brought into relation with concrete processes. Sociological propositions have the peculiar quality of being neither true nor false in themselves, and I expect you use your definition in an entirely rational manner. That you essentially confer a mediating function on bureaucracy—I consider this correct. This contains a barb against all theories which conceive of bureaucracy as a class. With the disintegration of previous mediations—above all of circulation, the thingly character of which, due to its anonymity and universality, left the private sphere of individuals open—the relations of production are once again exclusively maintained by functionaries. That they possess the quality of persons should not mislead us into viewing their social role as any less reified than that of earlier media, e.g., money and contract. To the contrary: the command is more alienated, irrational, and isolated relative to the essential goals of society than the contract. That the mechanisms by means of which the law of value asserts itself within states have been transplanted from the spheres of transactions between many individuals into the minds of [particular] individuals has in no way dispelled the blindness of the whole process.
Whatever plays out in their heads or in conference rooms, in any case in the shadows, is an objective process which has less to do with rational will-formation and spontaneity the more it gives rise to the illusory semblance [Schein] of reason and the property of planning. Just as the seeming ideologylessness of the present in truth means the complete collapse into ideology, so under the seemingly human guidance of social processes society is in truth most deeply dependent on thingly-natural powers.50 The double character of bureaucracy is mirrored in your definition; in the one case, you say that its role is “to mediate human relations,” and in the other, “to authoritatively prescribe the behavior of man.” Because the latter turn of phrase corresponds precisely to the surface phenomenon, it is easier to misunderstand than the first. I would even strengthen the conscious contradiction between the concept of “servants” and of “authoritative prescription” by saying “endowed with power” or the like instead of “seated in power.”
The difficulty naturally lies in “authoritatively prescribe,” for in the prescriptions of the bureaucracy there is no less desperate necessity and heteronomy than there is in the obedience of the ruled, and the ruled are no more determined to their obedience than the bureaucrats are to their authority. In an authentically bureaucratic society, both command and obedience can easily be derived from the condition of the forces of production. In present-day Germany, bureaucracy can be explained on the basis of the disproportion between social organization and the forces of production; in the last instance, this is due to the fact that the ruling class, though still in possession of authority, is one no longer. Bureaucracy is accordingly only the expression of this disproportion, the alienated power of the class condemned by history. Of course, it also has a positive function. This stems from the transfer of competition exclusively over to the international scene. If one views the present-day conflicts as the beginning of a phase of competition in which the interior of individual power-groups corresponds to the individual factory enterprise in liberalism, then the German bureaucracy derives its historical justification for existence from its role as the management of an enterprise under the conditions of present-day economic struggle.
But this positive assessment of bureaucracy must in turn be qualified by the consideration that each phase of the historical development has a different relationship to the forces that are at work within it. The superiority of manufacturing firms over their competition signifies something completely different in view of social development as a whole than the superiority of one national power-group over other states under fascism. The bureaucracy of fascism can be described with precision by its lack of rootedness in an adequate order of classes. I don’t know whether or to what extent your book develops such aspects in proximity to or in distant connection with your definition. In my view, however, a general definition, however formal it may be, must be capable of withstanding confrontation with concrete historical problems. So far as your proposition emphasizes the mediating role of bureaucracy, it seems to meet this demand. However, “authoritatively prescribe the behavior of man” still sounds too subjectivist to me. If you tell me the specific passages in which this definition appears, I would be happy to try coming up with something more determinate for you.
On Neumann’s Behemoth (1942).
Draft—Horkheimer (and Adorno), re: Answer to Behemoth.
[Unsent draft (with handwritten corrections from Adorno) of: Horkheimer to Neumann, 6/2/1942.]51
The fact that I cannot discuss your book in full length with you is actually the first issue which brings to my mind the negative aspects of my being so far away from our ‘home base.’ I regret it more than I can tell you—I have the strong feeling that a full-flung discussion (perhaps in the framework of a seminar) could be immensely fruitful. Let me today follow our old custom and not so much dwell on the merits of the book which are so self-evident that it would be almost an offense to stress them, but rather on some points where I feel inclined towards some ‘Abweichung.’ First: the analysis of the Weimar Republic contains certain passages which might create the impression that those in power made certain ‘mistakes’ or ‘errors’ which account at least partly for the rise of National Socialism. I should think that this is an aspect which we should avoid, particularly with an eye to the German fate after the present war. Our conviction that fascism is the outcome of the basic social trends in Germany excludes the possibility that it should be due to any more or less administrative or technical shortcomings. This is important because we must under no circumstances give the Weimar heroes credit for having been willing to do things better, whereas they actually were tools of the disaster to come, both consciously and unconsciously.
I suppose the optimistic idea of a breakdown of ‘split personality,’ as promoted by the mechanism of National Socialism does not quite reflect what you really think. As a matter of fact the split of the ego which, as you know, is one of the main theses of the article on the “End of Reason,” has a long pre-history. What happens today is only the consummation of a trend which permeates the whole modern era. It has made itself felt not only within the old juxtaposition of theological and scientific truth, but much more drastically within the division of labor and leisure, of private morals and business principles, of private and public life, and in innumerable other aspects of the existing order. What fascism does with respect to the personality is only to manipulate consciously and skillfully a break which itself is based on the most fundamental mechanisms of this society. The unity of the personality, as soon as it goes beyond the sphere of logical formalism, always has been an ideology—the gulf between logic and psychology expresses this most clearly. The Nazis, it is true, have destroyed this ideology in order to reproduce arbitrarily the split of the personality which is produced by this society anyway. I cannot see any reason why this attempt of the Nazis should collapse from within, for any intrinsic reasons. It will not break because of ‘inner inconsistencies’ but only by the action of those who resist. I think that you agree with this.
The last complex where my opinion differs from yours is that of ideology. This refers to two aspects. On the one hand I have the feeling that you overrate the actual impact of the ‘ideological precursors’ of Nazism upon public opinion in Germany and perhaps even on the Nazis themselves. The latter knew Chamberlain,52 of course, but that was about all. That Adolf Wagner,53 List,54 Lagarde,55 Langbehn56 e tutti quanti should have exercised a great influence upon the consciousness of the German population is pretty unlikely. They were sectarian authors, read and known only among the chauvinistic avant-garde and later dug up when the gangsters, as all gangsters do, felt the necessity of boasting with some worthy ancestors. The revival of all these writers in Germany has something highly artificial and as far as I see has actually never quite succeeded.
On the other hand, one could regard these writers, notwithstanding the question of their actual influence, as symptomatic for the spirit of rising ‘social imperialism’ in Germany. This, however, would necessitate, according to my feeling, a much closer scrutiny of the writings produced by the German right wing. The only point where I feel a real shortcoming of your book rather than a difference of opinion is the treatment of these ideologies. [Richard] Wagner for instance has not reworked Gobineau whom he met pretty late in his life—he swallowed his doctrine wholesale. Luther certainly was not the first real anti-Semite though he certainly was one of the worst. The anti-Semitic section of the German middle class was by no means small. I have a hunch that they always were a majority.
I also take exception to the sentences on Nietzsche p. 128. When Nietzsche attacked Parsifal he was right. The Christianism of Parsifal is a fake—Wagner actually meant a Nazi blood community, a racial racket and the slogan “Erlösung dem Erlöser” indicates clearly the desire of redeeming Christ by some kind of Nordic religion. Kundry and Klingsor are certainly treated much more sadistically than Christianity is in Zarathustra. Incidentally, the free youth movement was not the same as the Bündische Jugend,57 but these groups where [sic] archenemies. Speaking about such minor details: the Seventh Ring is not a poem but a volume of George and the term Third Reich occurs to the best of my knowledge never with George.58 Finally I fail to see how the roots of the Reich ideology can be traced back to Heidegger. Heidegger is certainly awful but his existentialism is on the one hand so solipsistic and on the other so ‘ontological’—that is to say, so strictly aloof from the empirical reality—that it is pretty difficult to connect a very special Nazi ideology, such as the ‘Reich,’ with his teachings, apart from the biographical fact that Mr. Steding happened to study with him.59
This hodge-podge of theoretical and factual remarks may indicate you the line which my criticism of the ideological section of your book would take. I think that the factual and the theoretical elements are deeply involved in this matter.
If your appointment in Washington is made effective I hope it will still give you a sufficient margin of time in order to allow you to cooperate with our work by occasional advice and criticism. I wish to emphasize that the news of your probable appointment, though it is favorable for both the Institute budget and your security, is depressing to me in so far as it implies a disruption of our joint efforts on the field of that social theory which is synonymous to us with truth itself, I trust however that you will continue to feel as one of our group after this appointment.60
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Split Personality-Society.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Neumann, 6/2/1942.]61
I suppose the optimistic idea of the breakdown of the “split personality” as promoted by the mechanisms of National Socialism does not quite reflect what you really think. As a matter of fact the split of the ego which, as you know, is one of the main theses of the article on the “End of Reason,” has a long prehistory. What happens today is only the consummation of a trend which permeates the whole modern era. It has made itself felt not only within the old juxtaposition of theological and scientific truth, but much more drastically within the division of labor and leisure, of private morals and business principles, of private and public life, and in innumerable other aspects of the existing order. What Fascism does with respect to the personality is only to manipulate consciously and skillfully a break which itself is based on the most fundamental mechanisms of this society. The unity of the personality, as soon as it goes beyond the sphere of logical formalism, always has been an ideology—the gulf between logic and psychology expresses that most clearly. The Nazis, it is true, have destroyed this ideology in order to reproduce arbitrarily the split of the personality which is produced by this society anyway. I cannot see any reason why this attempt of the Nazis should collapse from within, for any intrinsic reasons. It will not break because of “inner inconsistencies” but only by the action of those who resist, I think that you agree with this.
Letter—Neumann, re: Behemoth and “Egoism.”
[Excerpt from: Neumann to Horkheimer, 6/18/1942.]62
Of course, I agree with your view that the development of a ‘split’ personality is inherent in the condition of modern society and this psychological antagonism can, by itself, never lead to the collapse of the system. This is why—among other reasons—I have always rejected Pollock’s view. That is why my book closes with the statement that the regime can only be overthrown by conscious political action. That is why I based my view in the final chapter of my book [viz., Behemoth] on your “Egoism” article.
Letters on Pre-History (1942).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Labor in Ethnology and Mythology.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Neumann, 6/18/1942.]63
I shall not be able to interrupt my studies during the next few weeks because they refer to certain topics which, up to now, have been completely alien to me. I am referring to the origins of the concept of labor as they appear in ethnology and mythology. The reason why I think that this concept, as well as some others which are connected with it, should be given particular attention in our book, lies in the fact that these concepts as they are used today still consist of many archaic implications. As long as we won’t be able to derive these elements from economic and historical life, their rational interpretation will be justly considered insufficient and theology, or her worse substitutions, will remain master in the field. Economic theory of history very often has contented itself to derive the contents of basic ideological concepts from 19th century economy and to assert that similar interpretations could be given for the ideas of earlier centuries. Most of its followers overlooked the fact that modern concepts still contain very essential and persistent elements of the past which have to be explained—not only coordinated to a vague social standpoint. This also seems to be one of the causes why some of them are so defenseless against modern positivism and semantics. The latter goes a shorter way: instead of deriving those elements from historical reality and thereby sublating them, it simply declares them as animistic remnants and therefore meaningless. You yourself have felt the necessity for a closer study of the basic ideological concepts of society as is proven by such passages in your book as those on pages 92 to 97. By the way, does there exist an up to date treatise where one could study the transition of the concept of vengeance and expiation into punishment and law? I have gone through a lot of ethnological material but so far was unable to trace a characteristic form of this process as recognized by modern scholarship. Comprehensive theories such as Frazer’s and Levy-Bruhl’s are generally considered completely obsolete.
Letter—Neumann, re: Labor, Property, Punishment.
[Excerpt from: Neumann to Horkheimer, 6/29/1942.]64
It is my belief, too, that all our basic concepts need restudy, redefinition and full integration into a comprehensive theory of society. How questionable they all are, may be seen from the very simple problem of the relation between liberalism and democracy. Without showing the operation of these two notions in the most diverse historical situations they remain contradictory or they are meaningless. I envy you the leisure that you have even to think about these problems and I wish I could be there to discuss the problem with you. The concept of labor. I know very little about it. In fact, my sole knowledge derives from Marcuse’s article in the Archiv [viz., “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology” (1941)] and from his book. I have never found an adequate discussion. I have once tried to tackle the problem via a study of the Roman law concept of labor—the famous dispute between the Sabinious and another school (Proculious). There the problem was: does property accrue to him who transforms a piece of nature by his work or to him who owns the piece of nature? I could not continue my work. I got then stuck with the concept of labor among the natural lawyers and Locke. Nearly all of them have discussed the problem—but merely from the point of view of justifying property. I do not believe these discussions to have much value. I shall think about the problem and look up various sources in order to find out whether there is any serious discussion. Punishment. The literature would fill a complete library. You are, of course, familiar with the psychoanalytic literature, as with Theodor Reik’s Geständnis Zwang. I find them but little illuminating. There is a little German book by Hans von Hentig, Die Strafe, Stuttgart 1922 which attempts to do exactly what you are interested in, not very successfully. There is a superficial American book that summarizes all theories quite successfully, namely Harry Elmer Barnes, The Story of Punishment, Boston 1920. And there is the standard book by Sebald Rudolf Steinmetz, Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, 2 vols. Groningen 1928 which I have never read. Diamond, the American anthropologist, has a book on law generally with discussions of the origins of punishment. It is definitely a good book. That is about all I know. I have never been deeply interested in the theory and history of punishment.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Critique of the Concept of Labor.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Neumann, 7/8/1942.]65
Thank you very much for the prompt cooperation you gave me with your letter of June 29th. Of course, the problem of the origins of labor is much more important than the one of the origin of punishment. The reason for my being interested in the latter lies in the fact that punishment seems to be intimately connected with primitive labor, at least as far as it is continuous and organized. You are certainly right in saying that labor has primarily been studied with respect to the concept of property but, from a philosophical point of view, its relation to punishment is much more interesting. The concept of labor, as it has been carried through the ages, has to be clearly differentiated from the physical effort necessary to reproduce society. The ethnological as well as most of the sociological theories generally completely overlook this difference. The interplay between these concepts, however, seems to be one of the fundamental problems in history. If you could think of some literature pertaining to the early stages, I would be most grateful. Thank you for the list of books on the history of punishment. I shall try to get Diamond and perhaps Steinmetz from the library.
Appendix II—Collaboration with Kirchheimer.
Kirchheimer: Remarks on Horkheimer’s “Authoritarian State” (1940).
One of the central theses of Horkheimer’s essay is that the revolution is only meaningful if it does not merely serve the purpose of replacing the power-apparatus of state capitalism with a new one. This does not mean overlooking Engels’ statement that the revolution is the most authoritarian thing there is, but agreeing with Engels at the same time that the seizure of the means of production is the last autonomous act of the state. To this end, the mass-parties of the present are put on trial and the individual person, who everywhere exists behind malevolent character masks, is called upon to actualize freedom. The rejection of mass-parties does not entail the rejection of any political organization proper, but only those which betray the human will to freedom and which will continue to for all eternity. An undisguised optimism about human nature runs throughout the whole presentation, and though its depravity in the preceding period of history is indeed taken into consideration, [human nature] is to be led back to its true vocation, freedom, through the call of thinking. The possibility of actualizing freedom grows as a result of the fact that, in state capitalism, and even more so in integral statism—which is viewed as the threshold to something better—, all economic problems are transformed into technical ones, thereby depriving the ruling class strata of the rational basis for their preeminent position.
The argument that the victorious revolution transforms economic-political problems into purely technical ones was advanced by Lenin in State and Revolution, drawing on the example of the postal service as an apparatus with the highest degree of technical perfection. Yet, that Lenin chooses this example in particular shows that there are essential distinctions between bureaucracies of domination and bureaucracies of service in each form of society. In the case of the postal service, it is a question of choosing the most appropriate means and methods to fulfill the goals prescribed by the demands of social intercourse. The problem of determining which method is right and which is wrong is a technical one, generated by comparison of expense and the objectively established level of required performance. The management of production as a whole, however, raises questions about the priority of values, which lead to very different results according to the answers that are given—these distinctions may be of the utmost importance for the objects of administration. Even the complicated schemes to be worked out in order for the will of the consumers to govern the sphere of production in a socialist society cannot be set into motion without a considerable measure of bureaucratic management.
Whether the will to freedom, which an optimistic conception of history mobilizes for the transformation of all bureaucracies of domination into bureaucracies of service, can really obstruct the process of consolidation so feared by Horkheimer from arising within the necessary bureaucracy in production and distribution—this may appear questionable. But the fact that a subsistence economy diminishes the necessity of political domination for the purpose of maintaining economic supremacy works in the very same direction as the called-upon desire for freedom in the individual. If the admissibility of critique has the sole consequence that the criticized party is overruled and the plan of production is changed, but without this act entailing the total loss of an administrator’s economic status, then this administrator will be much more inclined to submit to the decision of the majority instead of taking on the risk of a political coup. In other words, if administrative power is no longer used by necessity for achievement of economic supremacy, the peaceful transfer of power, upon which the technical primacy of as-yet-unrealized democracy rests, will be actualized as well. History has more than sufficiently demonstrated that the political group, after it has become a legally recognized mass-party, is no longer capable of continuing on in its revolutionary efficacy. On the other hand, it is a necessity that every revolutionary group transform into a mass-party at the very moment in time it seizes power—that is, if the group does not wish to fall back into the same process of bureaucratic hardening in its extreme terroristic form, the struggle against which is one of the primary concerns behind Horkheimer’s remarks.
In addition to this, the seizure of power is not universal and, in actuality, represents a continuous process of revolution, war, and counterrevolution—such that every revolutionary group is confronted by all of those questions that have always been and will always be posed again by the simultaneity of antagonistic state and social system in reality. The objection that the revolutionary armies of the French and the Russians solved the problem of this simultaneity ignores the fact that the very success of these armies—and even more so the securing of their early victories—already presupposed a political organization that was essentially more than just a technical bureau or community of believers. One might argue the extent to which the transformation of these self-standing organizations into departments of a bureaucratic apparatus of command sprang from technical-administrative necessity at a given moment, or the extent to which the needs of an upper class, hardened again after a successful coup, were the decisive factor [in this transformation]. In both cases, the ‘hardening’ still fulfilled an historical function, a function which Horkheimer himself says created the conditions for transition. If the will to freedom grows ever weaker in the last phase of the process of concentration, and the consciousness of freedom is virtually lost in the era of technization and mechanization, then transcending the spell of state capitalism may harbor a double hope: that a socialistic subsistence economy will no longer need the maintenance of political power as the presupposition of economic prosperity, and that a reawakening of the will to freedom will lead human beings to revise the hierarchy of goods worth striving for, so that the minimum of socially necessary organization becomes the guarantor of human freedom and not its predestined enemy.
—Otto Kirchheimer (New York) May, 1940.66
Kirchheimer: Memo on Protective Custody (1941).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: History of the Concept of “Protective Custody.”
[Horkheimer to Kirchheimer, 10/6/1941.]67
For complicated reasons I will not get into here for the sake of brevity, I am interested in the history of the concept of “protective custody” [“Schutzhaft”]. Can you tell me something about the origin and use of this concept? I am not only interested in the practice itself, but also in the history of the German word and its synonyms in other languages. If there is no literature on this, I would be grateful for a few keywords. …68
Memo. Protective Custody (Schutzhaft), Internment, Confino, Arrestations Administrative.
[Kirchheimer to Horkheimer, 10/15/1941.]69
The constitutional system of the modern era recognizes protective custody in a twofold form. Firstly, it is a mixture of a eudaemonistic idea of policing with the police-state principle of maintaining peace and order among the subjects, as expressed most characteristically in the delimitation of police duties in §10 II 17 of the Prussian General Law: (1793) “It is the office of the police to take the necessary measures to maintain public peace, security and order and to avert dangers threatening the public or its individual members.”
From this a system of preventive justice could be developed with the aim of preventing impending violations of the law by means of adequate security measures, as developed in particular by Robert von Mohl in his System der Präventiv-justiz oder Rechtspolizei (1st ed. 1834, Tübingen). In later times, the effort was made to delineate the presuppositions and boundaries of preventative arrest as precisely as possible. Mention should be made here of the Prussian law of February 12th, 1850, Gesetzessammlung (p. 45), which empowers the authorities to take persons into police custody if the protection of these persons themselves or the maintenance of public security, morality and peace makes this measure urgently necessary. [Legal] literature probably discussed protective custody for the first time in connection with this law, but true protective custody was limited to 24 hours. The culminating point of this formalization is the Prussian Police Administration Act of June 1st, 1831, section 15, which permits imprisonment for one’s own protection for the elimination of disturbances which have already occurred, to avert imminent danger, for a single day, in the event that averting the disturbance would otherwise be impossible.
However, in cases of emergency, exceptions have been made to the strict limitation of preventive detention [Präventiv-detention], which is common to all countries. In particular, the regulation of prostitution has seldom adhered to such limits and, under various pretexts, regulation with considerable restrictions to freedom has been achieved in these areas. Dupin, general prosecutor before the Court of Cassation, wrote in 1859:
“La prostitution est un etat qui soumet les creatures qui l’exercent au pouvoir discretionnaire delegue par la loi a la police — un etat qui a ses conditions et ses regles comme tous les autres, comme l’etat militaire, toutes reserves faites sur la comparaison. Appliquer aux filles publiques des règlements spéciaux des mesures de police, auxquelles les astreint leur genre de vie, ce n’est pas plus commettre un attentat à la liberté individuelle qu’on ne le fait dans l'armée lorsqu’on applique aux militaires les règles de discipline en vertu desquelles ils peuvent être privés discrétionnairement et sans formalités de leur liberté… Lorsque les employés des douanes et ceux de l’octroi fouillent les voyageurs et mettent la main sur eux, ils portent en quelque manière atteinte à leur liberté et à leur personne et cependant de telles mesures sont légales parce qu'elles sont la conséquence forcée des choses… C’est exagérer le principe de la liberté individuelle que d’entraver l'exercice légitime des autres garanties sociales. En d’autres termes au dessous des peines proprement dites appliquées par les tribunaux de répression, il peut y avoir dans la matiere dont il s’agit, une série de mesures, comme l'incarcération et la visite des filles publiques qui ne constituent que des moyens de police et qui peuvent résulter légalement de l'exercice du pouvoir discrétionnaire abandonné à l’administration, pouvoir que la police exerce librement sous les garanties constitutionnelles”. (La Liberte Individuelle de la Femme Majeure, par Marcel Lehman, Paris 1909, p. 98).
This situation has not changed to this day, as the following excerpt from the NY Post of August 17, 1941 proves: “Police Chief Wilson from Augusta, Ga., said that under a registration plan instituted last March a prostitute reports to police when she comes to town. She is kept in jail for thirty days and allowed to remain here only if eligible for a physicians certificate showing she is disease free.”
While these exceptions to the principally constitutional character of the court’s jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants were restricted to certain subject-areas and narrow sectors of persons, the actual development of protective custody came about through such legislation of exception. The prototype for all subsequent legislation here is [7 and 8 Will 3 c 11 (1696)] entitled “an act for empowering his majesty to apprehend and detain such persons as he shall find cause to suspect as conspiring against his royal person and government.” This act served as the godfather for the famous regulation (14b) [of the defense of the realm act of 1914 as well as] regulation (18b) of the [defense regulation for 1939 which allows the Secretary of State] “to intern any person whom he has reasonable cause to believe to be of hostile origin or associations or to have been recently concerned in acts prejudicial to the public safety or the defense of the realm, or in the preparations or instigation of such acts.” The majority vote in the famous decision King v Halliday ex parte [X] of the House of Lords in 1917 (AC 260) attempted to work out the distinction between “punitive and precautionary methods,” but Blackstone’s commentaries I, 136 had already pointed out that “confinements of persons in any form” are to be regarded as “imprisonment.” And fascist legislation openly admitted the purely fictitious character of the distinction between arrest on the grounds of suspicion and arrest on the grounds of demonstrable guilt by declaring that appending protective custody to a criminal sentence is permissible in principle. In Germany, protective custody was introduced as an official legal institution by law December 4th, 1916 (Reichsgesetzblatt 1916 p. 306): The executive power may only impose custody or restriction of period of residence on a German citizen on the grounds of war or a state of siege if this is necessary to avert a threat for the security of the Reich. The rise of German fascism then introduced protective custody as a general legal institution, no longer bound to temporal limits, for the purpose of securing the construction of the new state against its enemies.
Exchange re: ‘End of Reason’ and ‘Authoritarian State’ (June/July 1942).
Letter—Kirchheimer, re: Anthropology of the Gruppenmensch.
[Excerpt from: Kirchheimer to Horkheimer, 6/24/1942.]70
I thank you for the copy of the Benjamin memorial booklet [Walter Benjamin. Zum Gedächtnis. (1942)]. The concerns that captivated Benjamin in his last few months seem especially close to the core of your remarks in both essays (it is appropriate seeing both of the essays together, in the language and spirit they were intended): the reduction of the individual in monopolistic society. The critique of the social-democratic concept of progress and the critique of the mass-party hit on a central point. It’s crucial that in your first essay [viz., “The End of Reason”], you expressly point out the continuity of development and, accordingly, assign National Socialism its correct position in history. Even the best attempts to consider National Socialism in isolation have foundered here. Further, it seems to me that no other work to date has so thoroughly pursued the central significance of the loss of “mediation.” (How many people have even been able to conceive this phenomenon?) Though I believe I do see the fact you have in mind when you write: “Fascism shatters this fundamental principle of bourgeois anthropology. It pushes that which is already falling, the individual: by teaching him to fear something worse than death. Fear reaches farther than the unity of his consciousness.”71 —I would like you to elaborate some more on your interpretation here.
If it really is true that the Christian and bourgeois representation of death is bound to the individual, then, conversely, the “Gruppenmensch” must be characterized to a great extent by the abolition of the fear of death. There have been cultures in which the fear of death receded behind group values that might be realized through it. But National Socialism, in your apposite characterization (abandonment of the God who has forsaken them, as well as the general reintroduction of bodily pain), does not seem to belong among these cultures. For here, the emphasis seems to lie precisely on the self-preservation of the individual, and human existence seems to be reduced to this. In a fully “grouped” existence, sanctions of this kind (bodily pain) would be null and void, because the threshold of self-preservation is missing. Isn’t it possible to draw the inverse conclusion—that nothing remains of the individual except for self-preservation and the fear of death, which are assiduously cultivated and harvested by the “pseudo-groups” as their arena dominationis? But I won’t detain you any longer. I still haven’t abandoned my plan to write a constitutional theory of monopolism, and I’ll have to think more about your “Authoritarian State” in the process, but in the meantime I would like to thank both you and Pollock for giving me the chance to “think further,” and I would also like to request a few pages in the Jahrbuch (if needed…).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Determination of the New Horror.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Kirchheimer, 7/6/1942.]72
Many thanks for your kind lines from June 24th. I was gratified to know you found something useful in the essays. Fundamentally, it is impossible to completely detach thoughts from their original, linguistic form; thought is only independent of any determinate linguistic form insofar as it is related to that which is radically reified. I take your reservations about the all-too-close connection between the individual and bourgeois fear of death very seriously. To address this would require a much deeper analysis than that given in this essay. Evidently, the fear of death has, among the young fascist generation, neither disappeared nor even been abolished; indeed, as indicated in the essay on “Reason” as well as “Authoritarian State,”73 there exists a horror that presents a new quality relative to the bourgeois fear, and has a crucial part in the dissolution of the individual. I believe, though, that the determination of this horror—and of self-preservation under fascism—as the sheer residue of bourgeois character does not do justice to the matter at hand.
My work at present is taking a course which aligns exactly with your wish for a careful elaboration of these dialectical structures. It has led me (along with Adorno and Marcuse) to fundamental philosophical questions, the articulation of which, from our standpoint, forms the presupposition for the reformulation of the theory, which is what it all comes down to in the end. The doctrine of the bourgeois individual forms a constitutive part of this as well. The themes with which we are presently engaged (i.e., in the next few months; later on, we will proceed to more concrete topics), are nothing short of the theory of language and the enlightenment. There is something almost comical about the fact that people with capacities as limited as ours are supposed to undertake an enterprise that seems to demand gifts both infinitely greater and different from our own. However, since those with said gifts were either murdered in the concentration camps or, at the very least, prevented from working in peace, we would use the time which remains to us to work on this principle, even if it is more than questionable as to whether we will ever be capable of offering anything remotely adequate with regard to the intention. It is infinitely difficult, and you can well believe me when I say we will in any case not come up wanting where the utmost exertion is concerned. I take it that it will be another half year or more before you see the first results. I will always regret that nothing came of the plan we once discussed at Angelino’s. If you were here with us, we might at least discuss the crucial questions with one another every now and then. It is very possible I will travel to New York for some weeks in the next year or so, but I will only do so if it is unconditionally required for the interests of the Institute. Otherwise, I will fight tooth and nail against taking any time away from the work here. (Not meant to be public.)
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Freud Beyond Psychology (Oct. 1942).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 10/31/1942.]74
You certainly know what you should say about our relation to psychoanalysis as well as I do. Concerning our policy, I think you should be simply positive. We really are deeply indebted to Freud and his first collaborators. His thought is one of the Bildungsmächte without which our own philosophy would not be what it is. I have anew realized his grandeur during the last weeks. You will remember that many people say his original method was particularly adequate to Viennese sophisticated middle classes. This is, of course, totally untrue as a generality, but there is a grain of truth in it which does not do any harm to Freud’s work. The greater a work, the more it is rooted in the concrete historical situation. But if you take a close look at this connection between liberalistic Vienna and Freud’s original method, you become aware of how great a thinker he was. With the decline of middle-class family life, his theory reached that new stage as expressed in Jenseits des Lustprinzips and the following writings. That turn of his philosophy proves that he, in his particular work, realized the changes pointed out in the [section] of the article on ‘Reason’ devoted to the decline of the family and the individual. Psychology without libido is in a way no psychology and Freud was great enough to get away from psychology in its own framework. Psychology in its proper sense is always psychology of the individual. Where this is needed, we have to refer orthodoxically to Freud’s earlier writings. The set of concepts connected with Todestrieb are anthropological categories (in the German sense of the word). Even where we do not agree with Freud’s interpretation and use of them, we find their objective intention is deeply right and that they betray Freud’s great flair for the situation. His development has led him to conclusions not so far from those of the other great thinker of the same period, Bergson. Freud objectively absented himself from psychoanalysis, whereas Fromm and Horney get back to a commonsense psychology and even psychologize culture and society.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: ‘Human Anatomy is the Key to that of the Monkey’ (Jan. 1943).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Felix Weil, 1/13/1943.]75
It is a fact that most of the people who have been held in a concentration camp bear the traces of hell in their souls. We might say that some of the character traits, which now have developed into symptoms of madness, may have been recognizable even before the person had that terrible experience, but at that time they did not have that sinister aspect. Once a certain psychological quality has become clearly visible, we always can trace its roots back to the past, but we easily forget that it would not have struck us as something unusual if it were not for the new form which it has taken in the meantime. You will remember the observation that human anatomy is the key to that of the monkey? The meaning of that truth is that once we know man, we can discover his beginnings in earlier forms of life. Once Fascism had developed in European society, we now are able to find its hallmarks in earlier stages of human history, but it would be an error to say that, because of those traces, the development was a necessary one.
Appendix III—Comments on “Sociology of Class Relations” (Summer-Fall 1943).
Marcuse’s Comments.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Anthropology, or the Theory of Man in Antagonistic Society.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Marcuse, 7/17/1943.]76
Since we have decided that here in Los Angeles the psychological part should be treated I have studied the literature under this respect. I don’t have to tell you that I don’t believe in psychology as a means to solve a problem of such seriousness. I did not change [one] bit my scepticism towards that discipline. Also, the term psychology as [I] use it in the project stands for anthropology and anthropology for the theory of man as he has developed under the conditions of antagonistic society. It is my intention to study the presence of the scheme of domination in the so-called psychological life, the instincts as well as the thoughts of men. The tendencies in people which make them susceptible to propaganda for terror are themselves the result of terror, physical and spiritual, actual and potential oppression. If we could succeed in describing the patterns, according to which domination operates even in the remotest domains of the mind, we would have done a worthwhile job. But to achieve this one must study a great deal of the silly psychological literature and if you could see my notes, even those which I have sent to Pollock on the progress of our studies here you would probably think I have gone crazy myself. But I can assure you that I am not losing my mind over all those psychological and anthropological hypotheses which must be examined if one wants to arrive at a theory on the level of present-day knowledge.
Letter—Marcuse, re: Evidence and Counter-Evidence for ‘Social Pessimism.’
[Excerpt from: Marcuse to Horkheimer, 9/24/1943.]77
I should like to go through your paper On the Sociology of Class Relations sentence for sentence, but I feel that this can be done only in personal discussion. I am waiting for this discussion, but since I am afraid I have to wait too long, I want to comment at least on some major points of your paper: As the paper is organized, the emphasis of the racket conception is placed on labor. In view of this fact, you must be especially careful to avoid the impression that you take the “transformation of the class struggle into class adaptation” as a fait accompli and as the whole story. Although you say at several places that the labor racket comprises only the vast bureaucracy or the trade unions, and that underneath this stratum the victims of the unabated class struggle continue to live their miserable existence, the full weight of your argument falls upon the role and function of this top stratum. However, I think you will agree with me that the coordination of the working class as a whole with the apparatus of monopolistic society has not been successful, not in this country, certainly not in Germany and France, probably not in Great Britain. And the class struggle has not only been transformed into a means of class adaptation, but also in national and international war all over the earth. Here too, the monopolistic merger of economic and political factors asserts itself. If you would a little further develop this “counterevidence against social pessimism,” it would also become clearer why the workers “become a more and more disquieting factor by their very assimilation.” I would furthermore suggest that you indicate how the coordination of so large a part of the working class with the ruling groups has come about. I think we are able to give an economic-political explanation (supporting the analysis in terms of “mass culture”), and it seems to me that the old established concept of the “labor aristocracy” could be retained and reinterpreted. (Economic and political origin of the labor aristocracy: monopolistic and technological rationalization; increased efficiency and increased dependency.) On page 30, you say that today the misery of the losing competitor and of the vanquished opponent can no longer be ascribed to objective anonymous processes, as it could under the market system. Here I must make a question mark. It seems to me that today more than ever before the triumph of the more efficient and more powerful enterprise can be attributed and is being attributed to objective anonymous processes, namely, to the iron laws of technological rationality, laws of which the monopolistic racketeers appear only as the obedient executors. You can easily imagine how happy I was to read a paper which talks a language which I understand and which deals with the problems which are the problems. Congratulation[s]. Let me just pick out a few passages that I consider especially good and far-reaching; your analysis of the “pragmatic totalities” of present day society, the interpretation of the role of the party and of the locus of theory, the development of the concept of mimesis, the social content of technocracy.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: ‘Social Pessimism.’
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Marcuse, 10/11/1943.]78
When I go over my paper again I shall try to incorporate all the points which you and Neumann have made. Therefore you would do me a great favor by expanding in a few more lines on the economic and political relation between the labor aristocracy and the rest of the workers. I have asked Neumann a similar question. Since both of you certainly follow the international developments pertaining to that problem much closer than I, you could help me a lot by pointing to the phenomena which you deem most important. (I shall be grateful for a few lines further down ohne drum und dran.) I have not the slightest inclination to advocate an attitude of social pessimism. On the other hand, however, you will agree with me that theory is critical. That means, among other things, that it concentrates on those social and political conditions which have to be overcome. The confidence that the possibility of such overcoming exists is a presupposition, so to speak, an a priori of theory as a whole as well as of each particular sentence.
Letter—Marcuse, re: Labor Aristocracy, Labor, Capital.
[Excerpt from: Marcuse to Horkheimer, 10/25/1943.]79
You ask me to expand on the problem of the labor aristocracy and its relation to the rest of the workers. I am thinking and even writing quite a lot about it, but I am far from clear. You know that Marx explained the rise of the labor aristocracy by the surplus profit which, under certain definite conditions, becomes available to the most “productively” working capitalist enterprises. It seems to me that this is still today the key to the problem. The vast growth in the size of the labor aristocracy apparently corresponds to the growth in the basis for surplus profits. At the present stage of the development, not only a few particularly favored enterprises, but almost all the large monopolistic concerns work under the conditions which make for surplus profit. On the other hand, the harmony of interests between the union bureaucracy and the large monopolistic combines is well known; you find some very good remarks on it already in Hilferding's Finanzkapital. All this would make the hundreds and thousands of employees of the monopolistic key enterprises the true “mass basis” of the “collaborationist” labor groups. The relation between the aristocracy and the rest of labor is not entirely that between active leadership and passive followers. The trend towards collaboration is fed from below as well as from above. The material benefits derived from the union policy is a very strong and very real tie. But what is the economic source out of which these benefits are being paid? Again the surplus profit? I don't know. In any case, I think we know how the relation is in Nazi Germany. It is one of definite hostility towards the stratum of subleaders, foremen, trustees, etc. whom the Nazis have cleverly trained as a politically reliable and materially privileged “elite.” This is why I said that the fascist Gleichschaltung of labor has certainly not been successful. However, the opposition is not yet a political one, that is to say, not that of the class struggle. It is a spontaneous, localized protest against harsh working conditions, speed up methods, long hours, bad food, etc. In this country, the identity of the immediate interests between the union leadership and the organized workers is so great that the former may almost be characterized as the true representative of the latter. Moreover, in some striking cases, the collaborationist attitude of the workers seems to be even stronger than that of the unions. Take the famous Jack and Heintz factory in Cleveland (good article on it in the New Republic of Oct. 25), which is praised (also by the Communist Party) as paragon of the true relationships between workers and management. It is perhaps the most outstanding example of voluntary coordination of labor, and it shows how smoothly fascism can progress in a democratic environment.
Neumann’s Comments.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Neumann’s Marginal Notes on SCR.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Neumann, 10/11/1943.]80
I want to tell you that by writing the marginal notes to my paper on Class Relations you have rendered me a great service.
Neumann, 9/30/1942:
The paper stresses the labor racket at the expense of others. The inferior position of the labor racket, its relative smallness is thus fully brought out. Yet this is necessary because the paper gives the impression of utter hopelessness. I know that you are not hopeless in spite of the profound scepticism which we all share. The paper is an excellent contribution to the theory of class relations. It should be published.
Although there are two or three of them to which I cannot agree because they betray a divergence of our views on objective matters, all of them are most valuable to me. Sometimes during the next few weeks I shall go over my paper again and carefully consider each of your remarks. In the meantime, however, you could do me a great favor. Would it be possible for you to substantiate, if only in a few lines, your basic argument that the labor racket does not operate within the mass of the working class.
Neumann, 9/30/1942:
I should like to repeat
a) The labor racket operates only
within the leadership,
within the labor aristocracy.
It does not seem to be valid for the man of the working class.
b) The capitalistic racket, however, comprises almost the whole clan! This [is] of great importance, theoretically as well as politically. It determines at once where the future lies. The very fact that the economy is exploitative makes it impossible to let the masses of the workers participate in the racket.
c) The labor racket—as defined above—is dispensable in a capitalistic society if the ruling class disposes of the means of physical coercion!
Since my paper clearly maintains that the relation of the labor racket to the masses is a specific form of the appropriation of surplus value (taken from the workers after or even before they have received their wages), I don't think that it is the general antagonism between the racket and the masses to which you want to give a greater emphasis. If you think of the differences between the various categories of workers, do you mean that the unions of the labor aristocracy play another role towards their members than other unions, or do you mean that the labor aristocracy forms a racket with regard to the rest of the working class? Another item on which a few more [points of data] data would help me a lot is the renaissance “an Haupt und Gliedern” in Europe. You are pointing there to the positive function of the actual cynicism as it is gaining a hold over the masses.
Neumann, 9/30/1942:
The disappearance of ideologies (die Entzauberung) is very well described. But apparently only in its negative aspects! The fading of theory which has not been able to keep up with developments is also an eminently healthy sign. It is a very ambivalent process. Cynism [sic] may lead to Fascism + the acceptance of power wherever it resides. But it is also a precondition for a renaissance ‘an Haupt und Gliedern.’
I remember that you made this point in one of our meetings during my last visit to New York. Since I could not agree with you at that time, I thought a lot about it and I admit that up to now I have not been able to understand you in this matter. Naturally, in so far as cynicism is not only the abstract negation of the true but also of the untrue, it contains itself an element of truth. Similar assertions can be made of any social or philosophical structure which ever was able to gain a certain historical importance. But the formal acknowledgment of certain elements of truth without which no historical structure, be it an ideological or a political one, can supersede the former one, would lead us into historical relativism if we were not able to show very concretely why such elements are true and progressive. In our case, for instance, it would not do to indicate that the European masses are fed up with their former party leaders who were failures and with the lofty phrases and declamations of the liberalistic era, but we would have to discover specific signs proving that in such a negative attitude at least some of the positive political elements as they were betrayed by those leaders and phrases are contained in a more adequate form. Since your remark on the renaissance seems to indicate that you are aware of such signs, I would be most grateful if you could denote them in a few lines.
Kirchheimer’s Comments.
Letter—Kirchheimer, re: Labor as Pragmatic Totality and Monopolism.
[Excerpt from: Kirchheimer to Horkheimer, 9/20/1943.]81
As you can imagine, I took the greatest interest in it, since it has taken a common concern of ours a good deal further: the analysis of present-day group-relations and the clarification of the “Racket”-concept. Rather than get into individual points here about what could still be made more precise before publication, I would just raise one problem that struck me while reading: my question concerns the replacement of the primitive-revolutionary worker under the leadership of the class-elite by the worker with a radically reified structure of consciousness, the concept of “labor as a pragmatic totality.” If this replacement were actually successful, then “the refractory worker” (p. 26), the “overwhelming wrath and fury” (p. 20), would only be a remnant of a bygone period; the business (Geschäft)—as you so cheerfully call it—of the “Humanisation of domination by dehumanization through the creating of intermediary spheres” would actually have been successful as well. In this case, the “powerful facts as the only ones to be respected” (p. 16) would only appear as general data, and which would be senseless in relation to class society. Yet, as you yourself have shown in a number of passages, this process of replacement seems to run into problems: “more people have real insight into the economic situation.”
Monopolism brings the potestas directa back into focus with great urgency—particularly with regard to the sphere of worker’s associations—independent thinking must be pursued with utmost urgency (under a process of radical reification, this is either absent or may simply be overlooked); in other words, the substitution of the process of production as generally binding social goal, as the foundation for the legitimation of society, has not been successful. You point out that “the difference of the actual situation from other chapters of history should not be exaggerated” (p. 22), and indeed since the end of the system of competition, relations of domination have become much more comparable with those of earlier times, but there is still one vital difference. By understanding our society with the concept of the racket, this means that from the outset we cannot attribute any real significance to its ideological system of justification, whereas we cannot advance a single step in the investigation of pre-capitalist social relations without also and continually detecting the reciprocal conditionality between the system of justification and economic practice.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Rackets and Materialist Anthropology.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Kirchheimer, 11/5/1943.]82
It was highly instructive for me that the few people to whom I showed the manuscript all expressed the same concern: the integration of the worker has, in truth, not really succeeded. Certainly, I too see the phenomena that contradict the idea of adaptation, but do not believe they express the same thing as the revolutionary impulses of the past did. Since the theory has died, they cannot oppose themselves to the principle of domination over human beings, something only the theory can reveal. Given that signs of rebelliousness are persistently equated with those of revolution—and this is not entirely unjustified—, it seems to me necessary to highlight the separation. The economic antagonism has not been overcome and, obviously, this is expressed in human relationships. But the nuances in the manner in which this is expressed can make all the difference.
In fact, it is a step forward that today the system of justification, ideology, no longer plays the same role as it once did. Ideology has become more transparent, more transient. None endures. On the other hand, the consequences of ideology are no less bloody than before. Indeed, it seems that since people have had to force themselves to believe in the unbelievable, they are even quicker to lash out in its name. In Nazi Germany there were no ideological transformations which, no matter how quickly they happened to succeed one another, did not lead to the persecution of heretics, and things are not so dissimilar in other countries. This pertains to ideology in the intellectual sense. But the truly decisive factor is that with the evaporation of its content in terms of consciousness, ideology has eaten its way deeper into the human substance. Today it lies, probably more than it ever has before, in the very make-up of human beings, in their capacities and incapacities, their inclinations and interests. It has, so to speak, been drawn from the sphere of psychology into the anthropological fundament. This is precisely why a materialistic anthropology is needed. This desideratum is all the more important today, as we are confronted by with both a credulous belief in facts and a hostility to theory greater than thinking has ever faced before.
Appendix IV—Horkheimer’s Critique of Adolph Lowe’s “Reconsideration of the Law of Supply and Demand” (1942).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: The Critique of Political Economy contra Scientific Pluralism.
[Excerpt: Horkheimer to Friedrich Pollock, 2/10/1943.]83
It would be of no use if I were to comment on the different points of your reports. I study them with the deepest interest. Up to now (I have not yet received the one concerning Carroll) I cannot find them particularly depressing. Of course, it depends on what one expects. The opinions which were uttered at the occasion were quite on the level of what could be expected at such an hour and place. The people, of course, are neither intellectuals nor theorists but they are experts in their fields, particularly so your host. Here, I would like to expand on the topic of expertness in contrast to theory, as dealt with at earlier occasions, e.g., in the study on “Traditional and Critical Theory.” I would have to add many considerations, for instance, some on the formalism of Expertness in modern politics with regard to the economics and social contents, on the interconnection between facts and concepts, and on other philosophical problems. The discussion of all these things in writing would lead much too far and I hope for our next meeting. [...]
According to your wish I have read Lowe’s article [“A Reconsideration of the Law of Supply and Demand” (1942)] very thoroughly.84 Without saying a word of my own impression I have also given it to Teddie, who has always maintained that in spite of all the differences of opinion, Lowe is one of the most intelligent and able men of his school of thought. You may be assured that as a consequence of what you said about that study and Lowe’s paper as read by him in the seminar, I was more than favorably prejudiced when I looked into it. However, I must say that I have seldom read a poorer piece of work from a man who pretends to be an experienced scholar in the very field to which the paper refers. It is difficult for me not to use expressions which even in a letter among ourselves would be too strong and disrespectful. My reluctance to be too severe with that so-called study is also strengthened by the fact that Lowe has up to now been a loyal colleague to you. The mentality, however, which appears in that article, is such that I would not be astonished about anything that might arise in your relations with the author. Compared with the effort to cover up the definite absence of any worthwhile idea with a pseudoscientific language, [even] Grossman’s last concoction offers an example of worthwhile problems and honest scholarship.85 I don’t speak of, say, Kirchheimer’s article which, despite its shortcomings, is a real contribution to the understanding of present day society,86 nor of your own drafts which you prepared here, and which are serious attempts to differentiating our theoretical knowledge.
I am really at a loss with regard to entering into details and I think it would be a much better procedure if you would substantiate the explanations of the article which seem worthwhile to you. In your memorandum (#10) you say that Lowe showed “that the essentials for the functioning of the economic system have completely vanished under contemporary conditions.” This statement is somewhat abstract. I should say that in view of all the discussions in modern economy, which started long before Keynes’ books on that regard, any meaning that you could give to that appreciation could not make Lowe’s article less obsolete. As far as I can see, his presentation boils down to the discovery which he has proclaimed in his chef d’œuvre “Economics and Sociology,”87 (namely) that, in order to understand economic developments, one cannot stick to formal economic theory alone, but has to take psychological and social data into consideration. This is what the critique of political economy, which established dialectical relations between the totality of the social sciences, has become among these academic groups, a kind of dealing between the different rackets which confirm one another that they are indispensable. Lowe does not want to hurt anybody. The idea that “a chain of interlocking but entirely spontaneous actions is necessary for any economic decision to materialize in a free market system” is, of course, a confession in favor of the principles of the psychological school, which, by the way, used to be not quite as simplistic. It is only one of the milder examples of his style that he calls the achievement of these professors “the marginalist revolution”. Since, on the other hand, the classical school has some influential representatives, such as Frank Knight,88 in this country, he acknowledges the “objective pattern” with which the so-called entirely spontaneous actions have to conform. The fact that these patterns are said to be changing ones, makes Lowe’s standpoint adaptable to any kind of system.
In this connection it would be interesting to develop Lowe’s idea of “exogenous stabilizers”, a truly welcome concept for the most contradictory economic system. Among the abundant examples of a style which, out of sheer fear to say anything that might stir up some criticism, and apart from distorting the truth, has become unvoluntarily [sic.] comical, I mention only a single beauty. In order to prove his point concerning the spontaneous or psychological actions, he says: “In spite of falling wages workers have in many cases increased the supply of labor.” That is the way Lowe expresses the symptoms of economic depression. He then gives some other social phenomena which in fact refer also to the business cycle and to economic crisis, and then concludes: “... these occurrences certainly represent the adequate means of maximizing money income.” Adding, of course, a fact note referring to some colleague in good standing. Don’t you see that all this is unspeakably stupid—stupidity as a result of smartness. It’s of no use to discuss the philosophical excursions which occur particularly in the beginning. The poor ambition to show that he is up to date in methodology induces him to commit such silly inconsistencies as to repudiate “any sort” of causality and even statistical probability, and to use the concept of “conditions” in a positive sense two sentences later. I know, of course, that he simply wanted to say that it is impossible to forecast any specific course of economic development, and that economy only tries to serve the administration by telling: if you do A, B will happen, and if you do X, Y will happen—without anticipating whether the administration will do A or X.
But this adaptation of the idea of science as a mere employee leads to sheer nonsense if it is adapted to the period of the free market system which is included in the context in which that sentence occurs. The abdication of science as an independent intellectual means, in the last instance as the theory of history, tilts over into absolute confusion. —From the philosophical point of view, the footnotes, most revealing in different respects, are particularly exhilarating. In order to show his scientific education, he does not only quote Aristotle, but that old book by Planck, whom we quoted in our doctor dissertations as the only modern physicist whom we were able to read.89 The sweet apostrophe: “I hope I have convinced Professor Max Wertheimer...” is a treat.90 One could easily write thirty pages about the psychological and sociological background of that little mendacious indiscretion which is destined to let other people look into the controversies of the scientific giants of his own mill. The “Boltzmann principle” gives a terribly scholarly shade even to Messrs. Ascoli and Lehman.91
You will estimate the whole value of this document, if you meditate upon the following sentence: “Unfortunately, if our previous reasoning was correct, this pre-stabilized harmony between individual and collective economic rationality, that is, between the profit incentive and the imperatives of the law of supply and demand, is a fiction.” The contention against harmony, which is here introduced with a clause “if our previous reasoning was correct” is just the thesis to which a book, which in the meantime has made world history, was devoted.92 The author of that book needed four volumes in order to express it, and I think that scholars who take up this problem today, ought at least to remember some of the theories developed by their little predecessor, instead of naively introducing the main idea of the book with “if our previous reasoning was correct”. —Enclosed you will find the copy of my letter to Lowe which refers to that sentence in a more or less malicious way. I am keeping the letter back until you agree to its mailing by letter or wire. I think Lowe will not feel the hidden attack but might be a little offended by the language. It is also possible that he is quite happy with my lines.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Marx contra Apologetic Liberal Doxa.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adolph Lowe, 2/17/1943.]93
There is only one question which I would like to ask you now: Did I understand correctly what you meant by saying: “... if our previous reasoning was correct, this pre-stabilized harmony between individual and collective economic rationality... is a fiction”? It appears to me that this idea which seems to be the core of your statement, is a modern formulation of the critic [viz., Marx] of the apologetic liberal doctrines as they still prevail in this country. In this case your “psychologism,” which I have some difficulty to appreciate, would have the function to deprive liberalism of the weapon to think of itself as of the “natural” economic system and to show up the identity of the meta-economic structure of both the present day collective and the old free market system. This, of course, would make for a new issue in the current debates.
For the strongest formulation of the ‘controversy’ interpretation, see: Willem van Reijen and Jan Bransen, “The Disappearance of Class History in ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment.’ Commentary on the Textual Variants (1947 and 1944)” [1987]:
Since the early 1940s scholars at the Institute for Social Research had devoted themselves with special intensity to analyzing the causes and consequences of fascist rule, with the aim of carrying out extensive research projects. In the course of this work two opposed views emerged. On one side, Horkheimer, Adorno, Pollock, and Löwenthal developed the thesis that National Socialism, as compared to traditional capitalism, represented a new order. While they regarded fascist state capitalism as the most recent outcome of capitalist logic, they believed that this outcome manifested a new quality: the dominance of politics over economics. In his essay entitled “Is National Socialism a New Order?” Pollock, on whose specialist knowledge of economics the other advocates of this view relied, answered this question in the affirmative. On the other side, Neumann, Kirchheimer, and Gurland supported the thesis that the National Socialist economic order was a continuous development of capitalism, so that one could not speak of a new order. This controversy over the primacy of politics or economics in post-liberal capitalism, as authors such as Dubiel and Söllner or Brick and Postone show, impinged deeply on the theoretical self-understanding of the members of the Institute for Social Research.
In: Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. [1947] Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Translated by Edmund Jephcott (SUP, 2002 [1987]), 248.
For a more recent defense of the ‘Pollockian reading’ of Horkheimer and Adorno’s 1940s critical theory, see:
Manfred Gangl, “The controversy over Friedrich Pollock’s state capitalism.” In: History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 29(2) (2016), 32-41.
Friedrich Pollock, “State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations.” In: SPSS, Vol. IX, No. 2 (1941), 200-225.
Friedrich Pollock, “Is National Socialism a New Order?” In: SPSS, Vol. IX, No. 3 (1941/42), 440-455.
See—James Schmidt, “Racket,” “Monopoly,” and the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1/12/2016): “Adorno’s prediction that Pollock’s article would draw fire from Neumann proved correct. Two weeks later Neumann sent Horkheimer a blistering evaluation (much of which would later reappear in Behemoth, his 1942 study of the Nazi state) arguing that the article “contradicts from the first to the last page” the theory the Institute had been developing since its arrival in the United States and that it represented nothing less than “a farewell to Marxism” that “documents a complete hopelessness.” Horkheimer succeeded in placating Neumann and (presumably) Adorno by crafting a Preface to the volume of the Zeitschrift in which Pollock’s essay appeared (an issue that also included contributions from A.R.L. Gurland, Otto Kirchheimer, Horkheimer, and Adorno) by characterizing the articles as offering different perspectives on “problems implied in the transition from liberalism to authoritarianism in continental Europe.” In summarizing what was at stake in this transition, Horkheimer emphasized the political implications of the replacement of independent entrepreneurs by monopolies, a development that he saw as leading to a triumph of ruling elites and “cliques” whose cynical shuffling of ideologies translated “into open action what modern political theory from Machiavelli and Hobbes to Pareto has professed.” In the course of this discussion, Horkheimer managed to avoid (even when discussing Pollock’s article) the use of the term “state capitalism” at all. Neumann was pleased enough by the result to send Horkheimer a letter that praised him for having rendered Pollock’s contribution “completely harmless” by offering a “reinterpretation” of the article that wound up undermining its central argument.”
Schmidt (2016): “In framing his introduction to the issue in this way, it is conceivable that Horkheimer was merely attempting to play down the differences that separated Pollock (and, perhaps, Horkheimer himself) from other members of the Institute. But it is worth nothing that the Preface’s emphasis in on the role of “elites” and “cliques” was a faithful reflection of what Horkheimer himself seems to have regarded as the defining characteristic of monopoly capitalism. For the aspects of Pollock’s argument Horkheimer chose to emphasize were precisely the parts that meshed with the account of the transformation of the relationship between the individual and society that he had been elaborating ever since his 1936 article “Egoism and Freedom Movements.” He would take up this theme once again in “The End of Reason,” the lead article in what proved to be the journal’s final issue. Though published under Horkheimer’s name, it had been edited and revised by Adorno, and was, in effect, the first product of their California collaboration. The “racket theory” played a central role in it.”
As J.E. Morain and I note in our genealogy of the concept of the racket in the early 1940s, “Introducing Racket Theory: On the History and Themes of the Frankfurt School’s Racket Theory” (6/24/2025):
The final issue of Studies opens with Horkheimer’s essay “The End of Reason,” which was written in close collaboration with Adorno. In the Horkheimer Archive, amidst the drafts for “End of Reason,” there are a number of excerpts, with unique handwritten corrections and notes for revision, from one section of the essay in particular under the title “Racket Theorie.” [Typescript “Racket -Theorie’. Auszug aus ‘Vernunft und Selbsterhaltung,” MHA Na 1 638, [337]–[351]]
The passage corresponding to the excerpt in the published version of “The End of Reason” [1942]:
The totalitarian order marks the leap from the indirect to direct forms of domination, while still maintaining a system of private enterprise. The National Socialists do not stand outside the pattern of economic trends. The gangster theory of National Socialism must be taken even more seriously than it is by those who believe that a normal state of affairs could be restored as soon as the fester has been removed. Government in Germany was not usurped by gangsters who forced an entry from without; rather, social domination led to gangster rule by virtue of its own economic principle. During the era of free industrial economy when none of the many decentralized enterprises was so powerful that it did not need to compact with the others, self-preservation was restricted by standards of humanitas. Monopolism has again abolished these restrictions and led social domination back to its true nature which had continued to operate only where the humane form of domination had left some loopholes to inhumanity, in the petty rackets and rings of the big cities. They knew of no other law than the discipline they inevitably had to have in order to plunder their clients. Procurers, condottieri, manorial lords and guilds have always protected and at the same time exploited their clients. Protection is the archetype of domination. After the interlude of liberalism economic tendencies in Europe progressed toward a new and total protectionism. Only the great combines survived competition. They were strong enough to destroy the separation of powers and the network of guarantees and rights. The monopolies and their government constituted an impenetrable jungle for the masses. The magnitude and diversity of the tasks of the prevailing cliques, the all-embracing character of which still distinguishes them from racketeering, turns into comprehensive planning on the one hand and on the other into an attack on mankind as such. This is the inevitable result of the economic development itself. The same sociological mechanisms apply to the monopoly and to the city racket. The latter had previously shared the spoils with other rackets of the same branch, but the growth of communication and the progressing centralization of the police made it impossible to continue with small bribes and the procurement of new henchmen and guns. The racket was forced to mechanize its business and to undertake the costly task of affiliating it to large political organizations. Such investments are profitable only if the spoils do not have to be divided. In the racket, cartelization asserts itself. The rackets in the cities and in the entire country are driven to unification unless the police succeed in eradicating them in time. A study of such border phenomena as racketeering may offer useful parallels for understanding certain developmental tendencies in modern society. As soon as the concentrated power of large property has reached a certain point, the struggle continues on a broader scale and develops, under the pressure of giant investments necessitated by the progress of technology, into the struggle for world conquest interrupted only by periods of precarious compromise. From this point on, the differences of goals and ideals within the power hierarchy recede before the differences in the degree of docility. The élites must see to it, even against their own will, that in the social order everything is rigidly coordinated. Under totalitarian conditions of society, reliability decides upon the allocation of all positions of trust, whether a manager of a provincial factory is to be appointed or the head of a puppet government. Side by side with efficiency, human qualities of a kind again win respect, particularly a resolution to go along with the powerful at any cost. For the trustees are mere delegates. He who is worthy of his task is not to show any traces of that which the self-criticism of reason has destroyed. He must embody the self-preservation of a whole that has become identical with the liquidation of humanity. At the beginning of the history of modern rackets stand the Inquisitioners, at its end the Fascist leaders. Their henchmen, living their lives face to face with catastrophe, have to react correctly until they fall victim to the rational principle that none may abide too long.
In: “The End of Reason.” SPSS, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1941), 374-375.
Horkheimer to Adorno, 7/20/1941: “Fritz has been reworking his essay and other manuscripts for the Zeitschrift continuously and hasn’t had one good day’s rest. Have you seen my comments on his ‘State Capitalism’? Unfortunately, in so short a time only the details can be changed. I am writing a prefatory remark and would ask you to inform me what you think about the question of its publication after your inspection. Really, the same applies to the rest of the issue as well, about which you’ve so far said nothing. My feeling is that it should be left as is, but I await your report. I’m increasingly of the conviction that, for the sake of more pressing matters, the Zeitschrift should be abandoned in this shape entirely, or just officially handed on to someone else for a change. It should be replaced by a Zeitschrift more adequate to our intentions. But perhaps this one could undergo a decisive restructuring too.” In: BW, Bd. II (2004), 167-168. Author’s translation.
For the materials in the digitized portion of the Max Horkheimer Nachlass, see the drafts of “Staatkapitalismus” in: Max-Horkheimer-Archiv [MHA] Na [636], S. [1]-[292].
Cf. Adorno to his Parents, 5/8/1940: “Yesterday Max and I finished work, once and for all, on our second joint child, the essay on George and Hofmannsthal, and it is already going off to the typesetter today. The new issue [*] will consist of our collaborative efforts: the piece on state capitalism, the George essay and the English project on anti-Semitism that we wrote last year. It is our private issue, so to speak, and will be identified as such in an introductory note. Working on it was a wonderful experience, but together with everything else it made incredible demands on us, and now we all want to take a little breather.” In: Theodor W. Adorno, Letters to his Parents. 1939-1951. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, translated by Wieland Hoban (Polity, 2006), 46-47.
[* Ed. Fn.:] “This could not be published because of the German invasion of France, as the publisher (Felix Alcan in Paris) who produced the journal in German and the printing company (Presses Universitaires de France) had already been unable to edit and print the manuscripts they had for the third 1939 issue and the first 1940 issue under the conditions of the occupation.” In: Ibid., 49.
Cf. Ruschig, Ulrich. "Zum Begriff der Technik bei Horkheimer und Adorno" Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie, vol. 3, no. 1, 2016, pp. 182-208. [Link]
E.g., Gunzelin Schmid Noerr’s “Editor’s Afterword,” to the English translation of the critical edition of Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Tr. by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford University Press, 2002 [1987]), 235-235. In a footnote, Noerr writes that “Zur Ideologie der Politik heute (Fragment),” […] reads like a critique of a positivistically abbreviated reading of Pollock’s theory of state capitalism.” Ibid., 280 (fn 71). According to Noerr, this ‘positivistic’ approach to the theory of state capitalism would entail “the positivist substitution of historical, political, or psychological laws for economic ones.” Ibid., 234. However, Horkheimer accuses Pollock of making exactly this kind of substitution—and specifically of psychologism—in a letter to Franz Neumann dated August 2 1941. MHGS, Bd. 17, 117-118.
Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1942). [Link]
See the “Editorial note.” and “ISR Internal Seminar: Debate about methods of the social sciences, particularly the conception of method for the social sciences which the Institute represents. (1/17/1941),” in:
See: “Thwarted Plans for Publication” in: “Introducing Racket Theory. On the History and Themes of the Frankfurt School’s Racket Theory,” by James Crane and J.E. Morain (6/24/2025). On the CTWG blog.
Horkheimer to Pollock, 4/30/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 29. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer to Pollock, 5/30/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 48-49. Author’s translation.
“fireside chat” and “utterly depressing”: English in original.
Horkheimer to Pollock, 7/1/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 90-91. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer to Adorno, 6/4/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 58. [Fn. No. 7] Author’s translation.
“Die Welgeschichte ist das Weltgericht”—originally a line from Friedrich Schiller’s Resignation (1786). See: Michael Rosen, “Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.” In: Internationales Jahrbuch des deutschen Idealismus, ed. F. Rush (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 256-272. [link]
Referenced by Hegel in §340 of Elements of the Philosophy of Right:
Since states function as particular entities in their mutual relations, the broadest view of these relations will encompass the ceaseless turmoil not just of external contingency, but also of passions, interests, ends, talents and virtues, violence [Gewalt], wrongdoing, and vices in their inner particularity. In this turmoil, the ethical whole itself — the independence of the state — is exposed to contingency. The principles of the spirits of nations [Volksgeister] are in general of a limited nature because of that particularity in which they have their objective actuality and self-consciousness as existent individuals, and their deeds and destinies in their mutual relations are the manifest [erscheinende] dialectic of the finitude of these spirits. It is through this dialectic that the universal spirit, the spirit of the world, produces itself in its freedom from all limits, and it is this spirit which exercises its right — which is the highest right of all — over finite spirits in world history as the world’s court of judgement [Weltgericht].
In: G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, edited by Allen W. Wood and translated by H.B. Nisbett (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 371.
Adorno to Horkheimer, 6/8/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 53-59. Author’s translation.
the ellipsis: “and with David’s cooperation.” ‘David’ could not be identified.
“Howgh, Ich habe gesprochen.” A phrase made popular by Karl May’s character, Winnetou, see: [link]
has wings: [hat Schwingen]. Poetic usage—as in Friedrich Schiller’s “Longing”/”Die Sehnsucht”: “Had I wings to climb this scene / My spirit would scale the air.” (English); “Hätt' ich Schwingen, hätt' ich Flügel, / Nach den Hügeln zög' ich hin.” (German)
Thanks to Felix Struck (@gatostruck.bsky.social) for the help with this one!
Translated from the final version of the text, published in 1949: “The concept of fate may itself be modeled on the experience of domination, arising from the superiority of nature over mankind. What is, is stronger. In coming to grief on this, men have themselves learned to be stronger and to dominate nature, and in precisely this process fate has reproduced itself. It inevitably develops tit for tat—inevitably, because every step man takes is enjoined on him by the ancient superiority of nature. Fate is domination taken to the point of pure abstraction; the measure of destruction equals the degree of domination; fate is the calamity.” In: Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music. Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 54.
T.W. Adorno, [Review] “Rickert, Heinrich, Unmittelbarkeit und Sinndeutung: Aufsätze zur Ausgestaltung des Systems der Philosophie. J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Tübingen 1939. (xviii and 185 pp.; RM 8.00).” In: Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (SPSS), Vol. 9, No. 3 (1941/42), 479-482.
T.W. Adorno, [Review] “Newman, Ernest, The Life of Richard Wagner, 1959-1866. Alfred A. Knopf. New York 1941. (xxxvi and 569 pp.; $5.00).” In: Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (SPSS), Vol. 9, No. 3 (1941/42), 523-525.
Adorno to Horkheimer, 7/2/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 95-99. Author’s translation.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Geschichte der Sozialdemokratie, 4 Bde. 1897/98, 1919.
Horkheimer to Adorno, 7/11/1941. In: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer. Briefwechsel 1927-1969. Band II: 1938-1944. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz (Suhrkamp, 2004), 165-166. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer’s planned essay “Science and Man”; never completed. Cf. Horkheimer to Paul and Hannah Tillich, 7/19/1941. (see: Author’s translation of an excerpt, titled: “The Human Psychology of Animal Psychology (1941).”)
Horkheimer to Gretel and Theodor Adorno, 8/4/1941. In: BW, Bd. II (2004), 178. Author’s translation.
Reference to possible revisions made to pages 4 and 5 of the “Preface.” Notwithstanding Horkheimer’s reservations about Pollock’s sympathy for ‘democratic state capitalism,’ which echo Neumann’s and Adorno’s, the paragraph would run with the ‘unpleasant concession’ intact:
The transition from the old society, however, to conditions under which a real accord among men—and not merely, understandings among functionaries—should permeate the whole, will not be achieved without protracted and increasingly bitter struggles. The unprecedented governmental power necessarily associated with state capitalism is now in the hands of a democratic and humanitarian administration. It will be the goal of fascist groups within and without to wrest it away, and it is not too much to expect that the coming years will be marked by such attempts. However the present war may end, men will have to choose between a new world era of consummate democracy or the hell of an authoritarian world order.
In: SPSS, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1941), 199.
Adorno to Horkheimer, 8/18/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 132-134. Author’s translation.
Reference to a draft of Horkheimer’s essay “Art and Mass Culture.” In: SPSS, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1941), 305-325.
Neumann to Horkheimer, 7/23/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 103-109. Author’s translation.
Reference to the RAF bombardment of Mannheim, Germany on the 16th and 17th of December, 1940. [link]
Correcting for “4),” which is repeated in the reproduction of the letter in the MHGS.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Could not be identified.
In full: [Es wird dort behauptet, daß die Arbeiteraristokratie in der Lage gewesen ist, die Verzweiflung der Massen in ein Mittel zur Förderung der eigenen Ziele zu verwandeln.]
a farewell to Marxism: [Abschied an den Marxismus]
Neumann to Horkheimer, 7/30/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 109-110. Author’s translation.
uninitiated: [Uneingeweihten]
Horkheimer to Neumann, 8/2/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 115-121. Author’s translation.
For Horkheimer’s analysis of Mandeville in his 1927 lectures on the radical—especially French—Enlightenment, see:
the old Latin problem of education and educator: [das alte lateinische Problem der Erziehung und Erzieher]
Excerpts—[Neumann to Horkheimer, 8/28/1941.] and [Horkheimer to Neumann, 8/30/1941.]—from MHGS Ed. Fn., No. 3. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 121. Author’s translation.
Neumann to Horkheimer, 5/8/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 124-125.
English in original.
Horkheimer to Neumann, 8/13/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 126-128. Author’s translation.
ideologylessness: [Ideologielosigkeit]; thingly-natural powers: [dinglichnatürlichen Mächten]
Horkheimer to Franz Neumann, 6/2/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 294-297. [MHGS Ed. Fn. 1]
Despite the force of expression in the middle-section of the assessment of the “split personality” in National Socialism, as well as in modern societies in general, the letter is at the same time an example of those letters whose significance can be determined retrospectively more by what they do not contain than what they do. This becomes clearer in light of its difference from [Horkheimer’s] much more extensive draft, which shows that the letter was originally meant to be something like a reaction to Neumann’s Behemoth [...]. In the final text of the letter, there is nothing left to suggest this. The draft of the letter, which includes handwritten corrections from Adorno, reads as follows: […]
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855- 1927), philosophical author, enthusiastic disciple (and son-in-law) of Richard Wagner’s, influenced National Socialist racial doctrine.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] A. Wagner—Political economist, professor in Berlin from 1870 on, conservative representative in the Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus or Herrenhaus, academic socialist, state-socialist in orientation.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Friedrich List (1789-1846), political economist, professor in Tübingen from 1817, came into conflict with the Württemberg government and was forced to resign his professorship in 1820; subsequently made a living as a political-economic author in the USA, Germany, and France.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Paul Anton de Lagarde (real name: Bötticher, 1827-1891), Orientalist and philosopher of culture, professor in Göttingen from 1869, was well-known for espousing a corporatist-conservative and national orientation in his culture-critical and political writings.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Julius Langbehn (1851-1907), author, raised an irrationalist protest against rationalistic naturalism (Rembrandt als Erzieher, 1890).
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Bündische Jugend: a national group of the German youth movement after the First World War.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Seventh Ring, poetry collection by Stefan George (1907).
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Christoph Steding; in his posthumous writing, Das Reich und die Krankheit der europäischen Kultur (Hamburg, 1939), explained the political-imperialist significance of the concept of the “Third Reich.” In the German version [of Behemoth], Neumann quotes from a review by Günther Anders in the ZfS (VIII, 1939, S. 464ff.): “Aus den Überresten dessen, was bei Heidegger noch ein wirklicher tranzendentaler Solipsismus war, konstruiert sein Schüler einen nationalen Solipsismus.”
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Horkheimer’s assessment of Neumann’s Behemoth was also outlined in a letter to Pollock, dated 5/13/1942: “We shall talk about his book when you are here. I think you know that I have very strong doubts about various of its aspects. The way how he attacks you with very cheap arguments without mentioning however your name is only one of them.” (MHA: VI 32.253) Pollock answers in a letter of 5/18/1942: “I agree with you that his book has many undesirable aspects and that its success is only partly deserved. But I am anyway very happy that things work out as I expected them to do [...],” in reference to Neumann’s appointment as a Germany-expert in Washington. (MHA: VI 32.233)
Horkheimer to Neumann, 6/2/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 292. English in original.
Neumann to Horkheimer, 6/18/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 297. English in original. [MHGS Ed. Fn. 4]
Horkheimer to Neumann, 6/18/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 298-99. English in original.
Neumann to Horkheimer, 6/29/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 305-306. English in original.
Horkheimer to Neumann, 7/8/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 310. English in original.
In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 302-304. Author’s translation. [Fn. 5:] “MH’s essay, “Autoritärer Staat,” which was already written in 1940, was the stimulus for intra-institute discussions. The following remarks made by Kirchheimer in this context have been preserved…” [MHA: IX 13.4.]
Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Kirchheimer, 11/8/1941:“Thank you for your lines of October 15th and the details about protective custody, which are exactly what I need. I hope that the short collaboration on the occasion of your visit here, which was so enjoyable and instructive for me, will not be the last. Is the plan for you to take up permanent residence here still in place, or have more positive prospects opened up for you? Perhaps our current efforts in that direction will have at least some success. Please keep me informed of your affairs.” In: Ibid., S. 332.
Kirchheimer to Horkheimer, 6/24/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 301-302. Author’s translation.
Max Horkheimer, “The End of Reason.” In: ZfS, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1941/42), 384.
Kirchheimer is referencing the German version from the following year: Max Horkheimer, “Vernunft und Selbsterhaltung.” In: Walter Benjamin. Zum Gedächtnis. (1942), 52.
Horkheimer to Kirchheimer, 7/6/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 308-310. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer: “Thus the perfect weapons that the bureaucracy has at its disposal could not ward off change forever if it did not have something besides its immediate power. The individual has constituted himself historically in fear. There is a further stage of fear beyond the fear of death, from which point it again dissolves. The completion of centralization in society and state pushes its driving forces to decentralize. It continues the paralysis to which the age of heavy industry has already pushed the human being through his increasing dispensability, through his separation from productive labor, and through continuous worry about the wretched social welfare.” In: “The Authoritarian State” [1942], Translation by Peoples’ Translation Service in Berkeley and Elliott Eisenberg. Telos, Spring 1973, No. 15 (1973), 18.
Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 10/31/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 366-367. English in original.
Horkheimer to Felix Weil, 1/13/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 397. English in original.
Horkheimer to Marcuse, 7/17/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 463-464. English in original.
Marcuse to Horkheimer, 9/24/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 476-477. English in original.
Horkheimer to Marcuse, 10/11/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 484-485. English in original.
Marcuse to Horkheimer, 10/25/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 490-492. English in original.
Horkheimer to Neumann, 10/11/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 479-80. English in original.
Kirchheimer to Horkheimer, 9/20/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 474-475. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer to Kirchheimer, 11/5/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 495-497. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer to Pollock, 2/10/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 421-424. English in original.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Adolph Lowe, “A Reconsideration of the Law of Supply and Demand”, in: Social Research IX, Nov. 1942, No. 4, pp. 431ff.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Likely the essay “Marx, classical economics and the problem of dynamics”; cf. letter from Löwenthal dated November 26, 1941, fn. 2.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Otto Kirchheimer, “The Legal Order of National Socialism”, in: ZfS IX, 1941/42, pp. 456ff.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Lowe, Economics and Sociology: A Plea for cooperation in the Social Sciences, London 1935.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Frank Hyneman Knight (1885-1972), economist, 1922 professor in Iowa City, 1927-46 in Chicago; see also the institute’s seminar discussion on Knight on 10 June 1936 in the context of the discussion ‘The Marxian method and its applicability to the analysis of the current crisis’ in: MHGS Bd. 12, p. 411ff.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Max Planck, The Causal Concept in Physics, Leipzig 1932. In his dissertation On the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment (1922, in: MHGS, Bd. 2, p. 61f. and 70), Max Horkheimer quoted Planck: Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics, Leipzig 1910, and Physical Overviews, Leipzig 1922.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), psychologist, professor in Frankfurt am Main until 1918 and 1929-1933, and, like Lowe himself, professor at the New School for Social Research, New York, since 1933.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] In a footnote to his essay (I.c., p.445) Lowe writes that the theory of harmony in laissez faire economics cannot be justified on the grounds of the Boltzmann principle. (This postulate—after the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906)—maintains a connection between the thermodynamic variable state of a system and a statistical concept of thermodynamic probability. [Max] Planck gives this an exact mathematical formulation.) Lowe refers to Wertheimer’s essay ‘On the Concept of Democracy,’ in: Political and Economic Democracy, edited by Max Ascoli and Fritz Lehmann, New York 1937.
[MHGS, Bd. 17. Ed. Note:] Karl Marx, Das Kapital.
Horkheimer to Adolph Lowe, 2/17/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 431. English in original.