Collection: The Idea of an Institute for Social Research. Reports 1938-1944.

Between the Self-Conception & Self-Presentation of Critical Theory.

George Grosz, Manhattan, 1946. (Detail)

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Editorial note. The most substantial part of the below collection consists in transcriptions of the English typed manuscripts for two ISR ‘Reports,’ neither of which (to my knowledge) has been published in English—(I.) the unpublished (for ‘tactical’ reasons, cf. Gumperz-Horkheimer exchange below) draft of 1938 on the ISR’s “Idea, Activity, and Program” and (V.) “Ten Years on Morningside Heights” of 1944, written when the ISR was already effectively dissolved in all but name (since 1941—see this note). Alongside these transcriptions, I’ve included: transcriptions of the course proposals drafted by Horkheimer, revised by the individual members of the ISR, and submitted to Columbia in a last-ditch (and failed) effort to secure teaching positions for the group as a whole in fall 1941 (IV.);¹ a translation of Adorno’s unpublished 1941 ‘advertisement’ for the ISR, “A Place for Research” (III.), presumably written in the earliest phase of what the remaining members of the ISR core who survived the dispersal in 41-43 (Horkheimer, Adorno, Löwenthal, Pollock, Weil) would come to call ‘artful begging’ for new sources of funding, an activity that would increasingly monopolize their time between 1940—1946. If the “perspectival distortions” which have overdetermined the reception of early critical theory begin with the under-examined difference between the ISR’s ‘esoteric’ self-conception and ‘exoteric’ self-presentation, the following texts are documents of their efforts to maintain scientific autonomy for the development of a Marxian critical theory of society under increasingly heteronomous conditions of intellectual production hostile to that project.

The clearest example is undoubtedly the intra-ISR ‘Debate’ on social-scientific method (II.), previously translated by Kettler and Wheatland (2012).² Past interpreters of the internal seminar—Kettler and Wheatland, as well as the editors of the Gesammelte Schriften—have typically read it under the constraints of the narrative of the “long farewell.” They assume a pre-established disharmony between the ‘camps’ supposed to have emerged in the ISR prior to its dissolution, and which are supposed to account for its dissolution: with Neumann representing both the ‘orthodox Marxist’ and ‘empirical-scientific’ side and Horkheimer-Adorno representing the ‘unorthodox’ (if not ‘post-Marxist’) and ‘philosophical’ side. What we see in the discussion minutes is the exact opposite: the ‘debate’ is not about the priority of empirical research or theory, something the participants emphatically agree about, nor about the status of ‘Marxism,’ as they all commiserate about the resistance of Americans to the theory of class struggle in particular. Neumann’s opening caution shapes every contribution to the discussion that follows: “What is crucial is to formulate the explanation so that it is not Marxist.” In response to Horkheimer’s excursus on how their ‘method’ requires the refusal of any strict divorce of ‘theory’ from ‘facts,’ and how this is precisely what distinguishes them from American sociologists, Neumann is unequivocal: “This completely agrees with my views on the matter.” Rather, the ‘debate’ turns on two disagreements: (1) a disagreement about whether—and, if so, which—American social scientists already share their approach (Lynd, Veblen, Shotwell, etc), consciously or unconsciously; (2) a disagreement about how, exactly, they should present their shared methodological approach in order to create the conditions for a shared ‘understanding’ with American social scientists who might otherwise dismiss them as elitist, theory-burdened Europeans who lack the humility for pluralistic, empiricist approaches and as Marxists incapable of ‘value-free’ scientific inquiry. There is a tendency in the reception of early critical theory that seeks to recover unjustly neglected figures from its ‘periphery,’ like Neumann and Kirchheimer, by opposing their scientific modesty and lack of theoretical pretensions to the overvalued figures at its ‘center,’ like Adorno and Horkheimer.³ As much as such recoveries forget the figures of the so-called ‘center’ as scientists, they forget the figures of the so-called ‘periphery’ as theorists—who are thereby forgotten twice over.

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Table of contents.

I. An Institute for Social Research: Idea, Activity, and Program (1938).⁴

• Letter—Julian Gumperz, re: “Idea, Activity, Program.”

• Letter—Horkheimer’s Reply.

II. 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)⁵

III. Adorno: A Place for Research (1941).⁶

IV. ISR Course Announcements (October 1941).⁷

• The Social Psychology of Mass Movements. (Horkheimer)

  [Untitled Draft.]

• Modern Utopias and their Social Background. (Horkheimer)

• Sociology of Popular Music. (Adorno)

• Sociology of Art. (Adorno)

• Social and Intellectual Foundation of Modern European Democracy. (Marcuse)

• The Development of Social Thought in the Modern Era. (Marcuse)

  [Draft] Social Thought from the Renaissance to the Present Day. (Marcuse)

• History of Modern Political Thought. (Neumann)

• Sociology of Legal Institutions. (Neumann)

• Sociology of Modern Popular Literature. (Löwenthal)

  [Draft.] Mass Culture. (Löwenthal)

• Social Trends in European Literature Since the Renaissance. (Löwenthal)

• Sociology of Political Institutions. (Kirchheimer)

• Development of Criminological Thought. (Kirchheimer)

• Two Early Drafts for Course Announcements.

  The Role of Ideas in Modern Society.

  European Culture in the Twentieth Century.

V. Ten Years on Morningside Heights: A Report on the Institute’s History, 1934 to 1944.⁸

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George Grosz, Manhattan, 1946. (Detail)

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I. An Institute for Social Research: Idea, Activity, and Program (1938)

I. The Basic Idea.

The center for the study of society has been the university. Special institutes exist for the various branches of social life, economics, finance, demography, and so forth, study that is supposed to be useful for government or industry. The presupposition is that the accumulation and organization of social facts produce results which will be of service to society as a whole. That the administrator, the jurist, and the businessman will benefit from investigations in the social sciences just as the engineer, the chemist, and the doctor apply the knowledge drawn from the natural sciences.

Training and research in the social sciences are strongly conditioned by the idea of this utility. The future industrialists, bankers, and public officials receive one part of their professional training in universities. They acquire not merely specialized knowledge about business and government but also an education in the methods and more general concepts which are necessary for directing roles in society. The professor may have nothing more in mind than the increase and extension of science, but the problems which are presented to him and the knowledge which he must disseminate are largely determined by the interests of his pupils and, beyond that, by the society which awaits benefits from his books.

The situation was not always so. Throughout western history, in antiquity, in the Middle Ages, and in the first centuries of the modern era, the theory of society was closely bound up with philosophy. We need only point to Condorcet and Adam Smith. The theory of society remained a task of the philosophers long after the natural sciences had become independent disciplines. This personal union expresses a real relationship. Philosophy deals with the meaning and destiny of human life, with the conditions of human happiness, with justice and injustice, with freedom and slavery. While the study of human society retained its ties with philosophy, the structure of these sciences was not determined primarily by technical and vocational needs but equally by those interests which are the interests of all humanity.

We do not imply that Plato or Thomas More or Spinoza or Hegel described the relationships of their day incorrectly, or that they were deluded by wishful thinking; their knowledge is no less valid than the knowledge of modern science. Nor do we imply that arbitrary concepts were drawn into their investigations from above, in the way in which some modern sociological systems seek to force their abstract distinctions and definitions upon empirical social science. The content of concepts like justice and freedom is not to be construed a priori but is determined within the context of the tendencies and interests which operate in all human history and without which neither individual nor social activity is comprehensible. Since the perception and organization of phenomena in the decisive philosophical systems of the past were directed less by the needs of daily life, which are external to the process of thought, than by ideas which those thinkers recognized as the highest goal of mankind, their theories were never lost in matters of subordinate importance. The interest in man and his potentiality permeated them and gave them substance. For that reason their writings took a critical and progressive position to the given reality.

There can be no doubt that the process of specialization in the social sciences in universities and institutes as a consequence of modern developments cannot be stopped. That would mean a backward step. The question is justified, however, whether in the future theoretical studies of social problems should still be restricted to those institutions which, because of the very conditions of their existence, are more or less directly bound up with professional needs. The founders of the International Institute of Social Research answered this question in the negative, although they fully recognized the necessity and value of social studies conducted under such conditions.

The effort of the Institute to free theory from the requirements of individual spheres of social activity does not mean the destruction of the interrelationship between science and human praxis, any more than the orientations to the demands of special activities [ensures] their actuality. Quite the contrary. In times like ours it is particularly doubtful whether the fulfillment of so-called practical needs, the prevailing principles of selection, and public success are determined by rational forces. In attempting to solve the problems which are placed before it by the actual needs of industry and government, the study of the social sciences as it is usually conducted today is faced with specific interests and can fulfill most important functions. But that does not prevent this steadily growing work from being distracted from more general human interests to an undesirable extent. The tendency to arrive at concrete results which can at least be verified and retained as a secure possession if they cannot be applied has not always been helpful in the social sciences. This tendency has not prevented us from filling libraries with volumes that contain results which are of little social relevance.

The International Institute for Social Research has set itself the task of investigating society from points of view which are not required by any practical demands or academic custom, but which have been recognized as essential on the basis of certain theoretical considerations. This is not the place for a detailed analysis of these considerations. The significant point is that society is not examined merely as a complex of “objects,” as in the sociology of Durkheim, but as a historical process with immanent tendencies and counter-tendencies. These tendencies can be grasped only if one consciously and actively participates in them through one’s work and one’s interest. The most important of these tendencies is the creation of conditions in which the infinite potentialities of men will no longer be restricted but will be given full freedom to develop for the benefit of the whole of society. Such a development of man is founded in the very nature of human labor and it finds expression in the humanistic, critical, and progressive movements in politics and in all cultural spheres. The history of our era is dominated by the conflict between this tendency and traditional institutions. The revolutions and counter-revolutions are its crucial historical moments and it has once again reached a critical stage in the last few decades.

The outstanding theorists of society have identified themselves in their own time with the same fundamental tendency toward the establishment of a rational totality of human relationships. They have always construed society under this aspect and their theories have exercised a progressive historical function for that reason. Auguste Comte, the founder of modern sociology, already noted that modern specialized science had fallen away from every great historical idea and he expressed his opposition in the most bitter terms. By examining social processes abstracted from general human interests, one does indeed avoid the danger of “subjectivity.” One acquires a pseudo-objectivity, a pseudo-security, and a mass of so-called results. One can present many facts for every assertion. But the science of society breaks down into a series of disciplines and auxiliary disciplines, general and special investigations without a unifying tie. The theoretical basis becomes increasingly problematic. Serving specific functions in the individual branches of practical life, science loses the ability to serve as a guiding force in the organization of human life in a broader sense.

We can clarify the distinction between the theory of society which is held by the Institute and a certain school of social science by giving one example. Max Weber and Max Scheler founded Wissenssoziologie in Germany and it has become a popular school of thought in the western countries. Roughly speaking, the central point of their doctrine is that specific cultural patterns, such as protestantism, rationalism, liberalism, or conservatism, must be analyzed by determining the social groups to which they correspond. The result is the correlation of political, artistic, and religious phenomena to social units with which they are supposed to arise and decline. Since every literary and artistic work, every political and religious idea can be correlated with a specific mode of thinking, and every mode of thinking with a specific social group, this doctrine opened up an endless field for sociological investigation. The fear on the part of sociologists—lest their science not be recognized as a valid empirical discipline, the desire to place it on a level with the natural sciences—fosters this whole approach.

We of the Institute agree that such correlation can be established. Many of the ideas and conceptions of the present belong to specific social groups and will disappear with them. In some cases it is even sufficient to reveal this connection in order to destroy the validity of the given concept for the intelligent man. We cannot accept the conclusion, however, that this search for relationships is a happy discovery which should be pursued with no precise, guiding idea. In order to really perceive the operation of concepts which are bound up with characteristic groups, it is necessary to determine their role in the actual dynamics of history. The investigator must have his own viewpoint and must be conscious of his own interests. If one investigates Germany in the last decades, for example, one will find various notions which belong to the landowners, manufacturers, peasants, or workers. One can trace these ideas back for centuries and correlate them with the history of the appropriate groups without the least concern for their connection with present developments, for the degree to which the modes of existence of these groups and their ideas have made the present dictatorship inevitable or at least possible, or for the psychological tendencies and attitudes with which the liberation movement must be concerned.

Wissenssoziologie might reply that such problems are not its concern but the concern of the historian or statesman, that it merely provides the material just as the physicist provides the material for the engineer and the chemist for the manufacturer. This argument involves a grave error. The needs satisfied by the physicist and chemist make themselves known in precise form through the economy, although the disorder of our present economy affects this relationship so that the development of natural science is obstructed and tends to become one-sided. The need for liberation from the social forms which stand in the way of human progress, for the overthrow of dictatorships where it exists, and for its prevention where tendencies in that direction appear, does not make itself known in any precise form.

The presence of a mass sentiment against such a condition cannot be questioned. It is evidenced by the death-defying opposition in the face of the terror of the authoritarian regimes. The need for theory in those circles is not expressed in a circumscribed demand for specific data and calculations which they would know how to use properly. It is rather the task of the sociologist to assist the progressive forces to find their proper expression. He must take over the naive and inchoate desire of mankind for free development and for a rational organization of society and formulate it in a way which is appropriate for the given historical situation. He must make it the leading idea of his analysis. It is not enough merely to discover and classify the facts within a sphere which was once delimited. The sociologist must see to it that his theory corresponds with the historically decisive problems. Otherwise, it would still be possible to write very learned and penetrating monographs, but it would be a delusion to think that they actually increase knowledge. Knowledge is to be distinguished from a mass of individual cognitions by the fact that knowledge organizes the latter into a pattern that corresponds to the needs of mankind.

When applied to our example of the various groups in German society, this conception of knowledge requires that the exact definition and characterization of the groups as well as the analysis of ideas be made in connection with the problem of the causes and future overthrow of fascism. The material and psychological composition, the complex of interests, the hopes and aspirations of the social groups which have made the rise and duration of the authoritarian regime possible, must be understood against the background of the general economic development. We must investigate the extent to which we are dealing with characteristics that are superficial ideologies and the extent to which they are deeply rooted traits bound up with the real existence of respective groups. The latter are all the more important because they are relatively unaffected by national distinctions. The differences between the cultures of pre-war Germany and Italy were many and sharp, but fascism is bound up with human complexes which existed in both countries, in fact, in all countries where the present form of economy and society prevails. It is of the highest practical value to know these complexes and to analyze them scientifically. That cannot be done by free correlation out of an allegedly disinterested, chemically pure intellectual experience without a leading idea. Such an analysis requires a theoretical approach guided by a concrete practical interest in human freedom. The problem can neither be perceived nor solved without the aim of destroying fascism and of setting up a more rational society in which fascism will no longer be possible because its basis will have disappeared.

The demand that science must stick to the facts, that the concepts be clear and the methods rigid, is self-understood. That is only one aspect of science, however. There is a further requirement that the facts be investigated in a manner which will further human ends, that the proper subject matter be chosen and analyzed in a manner appropriate to the decisive problems of human existence. Bad science is not only that which produces already known or false results, but also science which produces new and correct results that are meaningless for the tasks of the period. It is true, of course, that some scientific activities are meaningless at first and become essential only later, just as some theories can only be proven true after a long time. This circumstance does not destroy the obligation to always keep the essential in mind.

The decisive problem for present-day society is to save mankind and its culture from the dictatorship of industrial and military bureaucracies, to create social forms in which man will really be free and will be able to develop his potentialities happily. There can be no doubt about the deep contradiction which exists between human forces, methods and means of production, material and cultural goods on the one hand and the destiny of most men on the other. An awareness of this contradiction dominates the history of Europe and America in the last decades. There have been many attempts to formulate the problem, technocracy for instance. Everyone is cognizant of the fact that its solution is the task of our time. Man seeks to create universal happiness and wealth by his labor, but in large part, he creates misery and poverty. He desires the development of all individuals and whole peoples, but countless men and even nations fall into poverty and decay. He seeks peace and justice and the world stands under the threat of war and barbarism. This contradiction is no inevitable cross which man must bear like a natural phenomenon. Man has created and renewed these relationships, and man can improve them and ultimately overcome them.

This fundamental problem of human existence cannot be solved without systematic thought. It is merely one of the many problems in the academic disciplines but it must unite all the branches of science which deal with man and society, and their whole conceptual material must be directed to it. The very formulation of the problem immediately faces a sharp and bitter opposition because of its threat to the existing order.

II. The Activity of the Institute.

The members of the International Institute of Social Research believe that the development of a comprehensive theory of society in the sense in which we have sketched it is one of the most important tasks of science today. They do not seek a solution ex vacuo, however, but wish to continue the great western tradition which has been perverted and even destroyed in Europe because of its critical effects. We refer above all to the English and French Enlightenment and to classical German Idealism down to Marx. In order to keep the elements of these traditions alive, it is not sufficient to merely repeat them and apply them to the present scene mechanically. It requires a positive advance through an evaluation of the most advanced knowledge in every sphere. The concepts must be enriched by new experiences and must be adjusted to the changed historical situation. The extent to which an indifferent, static retention of conceptual structures can change their content is revealed by the way the Enlightenment lives on in France, sunk to the level of mere phraseology, or by the use of Marxist terminology in various schools of thought during and after the war. Since ideas tend to become rigid and lose their content, it is the task of scientific thought to preserve their progressive elements by proper theoretical application. Otherwise they run the danger of being perverted by political and other charlatans, a state of affairs which actually characterizes the present cultural situation.

Although the members of the Institute belong to a common philosophical tradition and recognize a common scientific task, they represent various disciplines. They have not decided a priori that social research must be consciously related to the present historical situation but have discovered it from their own teaching and research in various universities and institutions. Philosophy, economics, sociology, history, psychology, and law are all represented in the New York group. [The cooperation of these scholars does not lead them away from their own spheres of specialty in order that they may engage in vague speculations about society or construct new systems and recipes for the salvation of the world.]⁹ On the contrary, each one continues to work with the material which he is best qualified to handle. But he seeks to coordinate his formulation of the problems and his methodology with the work of his colleagues. Since the various studies are intended to be contributions to the same broad problem, the categories and methodology are adapted to this problem and brought into harmony with each other. The psychologist, for example, continues his research in his own field of investigation of the characteristic personality types is oriented to economic, sociological, and juristic determinants. It is impossible to develop a psychology of the modern white-collar worker, for instance, without a precise knowledge of the changes in his technical and economic function in rationalized, large-scale industry, without reference to the professional organizations [to which he belongs] and their legal position, or without an analysis of the family and the cultural level [of development] in the various countries [in question].

Such investigations are being conducted in many places, of course. The problems have become so complicated, however, that it is most difficult to overcome the disadvantages created by increasing specialization of knowledge. The task has been made easier for the small group at the Institute because its members have a converging interest despite the great variety in their specialized training. Their scientific activity offers proof of this fact, especially in the basic articles which have appeared in the Institute’s periodical, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, and the books which it has published. We present a few examples, including those larger articles in the Zeitschrift (40 to 50 pages) which customarily appear as independent brochures in this country.

The philosophical studies are devoted in part to methodological problems. The members of the Institute believe that the essential in the theory of man and society can be distinguished from the non-essential by dialectical thinking as it has developed in the long history of European philosophy. The following articles may be mentioned:

• Max Horkheimer, “On the Problem of Truth.” In: ZfS, Vol. 4 No. 3 (1935), 231-364.

• Herbert Marcuse, “The Concept of Essence.” In: ZfS, Vol. 5 No. 1 (1936), 1-39.

• Max Horkheimer, “Remarks on Philosophical Anthropology.” In: ZfS, Vol. 4 No. 1 (1935), 1-25.

• Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory.” In: ZfS, Vol. 6 No. 2 (1937), 295-345.

• Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, “Philosophy and Critical Theory.” In: ZfS, Vol. 6 No. 3 (1937), 625-647.

• Max Horkheimer, “On the Problem of Prediction in the Social Sciences.” In: ZfS, Vol. 2 No. 3 (1933), 407-412.

Other philosophical studies discuss the characteristic intellectual trends of the present day. The prevalent relativism and positivism, as well as their opposite, metaphysics, rationalism, and irrationalism, are analyzed from their common social roots and in their philosophical limitations. Our group has learned from its experience in Germany that the intellectual instability of relativism robs man, and especially the scientist, of his weapons against romantic metaphysics. Rational thinking cannot be limited to analyses and mechanistic methods nor must it fall into metaphysics, which has triumphed in Europe just because thinking has been impoverished by rationalism. The attempt is made to develop philosophical bases for a critical theory of society in which the contradiction between those modes of thought will be sublated.

• Max Horkheimer, “Materialism and Metaphysics.” In: ZfS, Vol. 2 No. 1 (1933), 1-33.

• Max Horkheimer, “The Rationalism Debate in Contemporary Philosophy.” In: ZfS, Vol. 3 No. 1 (1934), 1-53.

• Max Horkheimer, “The Latest Attack on Metaphysics.” In: ZfS, Vol. 6 No. 1 (1937), 4-53.

The economic studies are devoted to current economic problems, though not from the standpoint of the isolated specialist. Their aim is to make the results of individual researches fruitful for the analysis of the whole present-day development. Particular attention is given to those processes which have led to the dominance of large industry, to the development of cartels and monopolies. The structural transformation of the economy, above all the retardation in the tempo of accumulation and the rise and growth of a permanent army of the unemployed, has stamped social life with so many new elements that it becomes correct to speak of a new period in [modern]¹⁰ society. The intensified crises and the sharpening contradictions between various groups in society in this period have stimulated efforts to achieve some sort of planned economy on the basis of the concentration in industry and administration. The current methods of planned economy have not created more rational conditions, however—at least not in Europe—, but have brought about a more [rigid rule over]¹¹ the masses. The technical demands of large industry have led to a separation between management and ownership in the means of production. On this basis, there has developed in some of the liberal as well as in fascist and communist states a bureaucratic stratum in the state and industry which stands against the people, conceived as a mass to be organized.

• Friedrich Pollock, “Die gegenwärtige Lage des Kapitalismus und die Aussichten einer planwirtschaftlichen Neuordnung.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 1/2 (1932), 8-27.

• Kurt Baumann, “Autarkie und Planwirtschaft.” In: ZfS, Vol. 2 No. 1 (1933), 79-103.

• Friedrich Pollock, “Bemerkungen zur Wirtschaftskrise.” In: ZfS, Vol. 2 No. 3 (1933), 321-354.

• Kurt Mandelbaum and Gerhard Meyer, “Zur Theorie der Planwirtschaft.” [Preface by Max Horkheimer] In: ZfS, Vol. 3 No. 2 (1934), 228-262.

• Gerhard Meyer, “Krisenpolitik und Planwirtschaft.” In: ZfS, Vol. 4 No. 3 (1935), 398-436.

• Erich Baumann, “Keynes' Revision der liberalistischen Nationalökonomie.” In: ZfS, Vol. 5 No. 3 (1936), 384-403.

The sociological studies include several in which European and American developments are compared with those in other societies. A few relate to the ancient and medieval worlds, but the investigations into present-day [non-industrial]¹² social patterns are more important. In this field, the Institute has devoted special attention to China where the state has been dominated for several centuries by a bureaucratic social stratum that acquires increasing theoretical significance in light of developments taking place in Europe, especially in Germany and in Russia. It becomes clear that the simplified historical division into ancient slave economy, feudalism, and capitalism, which has become traditional in the philosophy of history, must receive more essential differentiation as a result of the theoretical studies in Chinese history. This fact has important implications for the evaluation and prognosis of contemporary tendencies in Europe.

• Leo Löwenthal, “Zugtier und Sklaverei. Zum Buch Lefebvre des Noettes’ : ,,L’attelage. Le cheval de selle à travers les âges“.” In: ZfS, Vol. 2 No. 2 (1933), 198-212.

• K.A. Wittfogel, “The Foundations and Stages of Chinese Economic History.”

• K.A. Wittfogel, “Die Theorie der orientalischen Gesellschaft.” In: ZfS, Vol. 7 No. 1/2 (1938), 90-122.

• K.A. Wittfogel, “Bericht über eine grössere Untersuchung der sozialökonomischen Struktur Chinas.” In: ZfS, Vol. 7 No. 1/2 (1938), 123-132.

Other sociological studies are devoted to the development of [modern]¹³ society as it unfolds in various cultural spheres: politics, art, science, and so forth. Under certain conditions, the analysis of a single work of art can lead more deeply into the inner structure of society than the most elaborate questionnaire with a giant apparatus for investigation and with tremendous statistical results. Furthermore, nineteenth century artists and writers have often made more significant contributions to a knowledge and critique of their time than official sociologists and psychologists. Just as Knut Hamsun contains the elements of authoritarian ideologies, the writings of de Maupassant and Ibsen reflect a tendency to freedom and happiness which points beyond the existing social relationships. Social theory and [activity]¹⁴ have more to learn from them than from Spencer or Comte.

• Julian Gumperz, “Zur Soziologie des amerikanischen Parteiensystems.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 3 (1932), 278-310.

• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In: ZfS, Vol. 5 No. 1 (1936), 40-68.

• Leo Löwenthal, “On Sociology of Literature.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 1/2 (1932), 85-102.

• Leo Löwenthal, “Das Individuum in der individualistischen Gesellschaft. Bemerkungen über Ibsen.” In: ZfS, Vol. 5 No. 3 (1936), 321-363.

• Leo Löwenthal, “The Reception of Dostoevsky in Pre-World War I Germany.” In: ZfS, Vol. 3 No. 3 (1934), 343-382.

• Leo Löwenthal, “Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: An Apologia of the Upper Middle Class.” In: ZfS, Vol. 2 No. 1 (1933), 34-62.

• Leo Löwenthal, “Knut Hamsun: On the Pre-history of Authoritarian Ideology.” In: ZfS, Vol. 6 No. 2 (1937), 295-345.

• Theodor W. Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 1/2 (1932), 103-124.

• Hektor Rottweiler (Theodor W. Adorno), “On Jazz.” In: ZfS, Vol. 5 No. 2 (1936), 235-259.

• Franz Borkenau, “The Sociology of the Mechanistic World-Picture.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 3 (1932), 311-355.

• Walter Benjamin, “Problems in the Sociology of Language.” In: ZfS, Vol. 4 No. 2 (1935), 248-268.

The historical studies at the Institute are chiefly devoted to the historical derivation of contemporary relationships. The rise of the bourgeois mode of thinking was made the subject of an independent investigation. It was shown that present-day conditions and problems, though they represent a new period in modern society, were nevertheless founded in the very essence of the bourgeois world and can be adequately comprehended only on the basis of the development of that world. The authoritarian state, too, is not an entirely new phenomenon in the [modern]¹⁵ era, for the regression to authoritarian forms, mediated through liberalism, had its prehistory in absolutism. Liberty has always been limited by the requirements of the protection of property. Control over the giant means of production in the twentieth century demands a different authoritarian apparatus against the masses than the absolutism of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, but compulsion from above is not a contradiction to the spirit of the existing system. Both the absolutist and the authoritarian periods, together with liberalism, are phases of the same necessary development of one economic system. The transition from liberalism to the authoritarian state is not a complete break, as often alleged. This is indicated among other things by the fact that the same figures who formerly dominated industry, and even science as well, still hold that position in Germany and Italy and have even pronounced fascism the correct pattern of liberalism. Mass movements, nation, the struggle for freedom, and leader are categories which are deeply bound up with the position of man in the economic process and his isolation in our epoch. The origin of its modern meaning requires historical analysis.

• Max Horkheimer, “Montaigne and the function of Skepticism.” In: ZfS, Vol. 7 No. 1/2 (1938), 1-54.

• Henryk Grossmann, “The Social Foundations of the Mechanistic Philosophy and Manufacture.” In: ZfS, Vol. 4 No. 2 (1935), 161-231.

• Max Horkheimer, “Egoism and Freedom Movements: On the Anthropology of the Bourgeois Era.” In: ZfS, Vol. 5 No. 2 (1936), 161-234.

• Herbert Marcuse, “On the Affirmative Character of Culture.” In: ZfS, Vol. 6 No. 1 (1937), 54-94.

We have already spoken about psychology. Ever since its establishment, the Institute has sought to develop a social psychology which does not play around with a mere enumeration of eternal social drives and instincts or with the establishment of vague analogies between the neurotic personality and the allegedly neurotic society. Instead it attempts to comprehend genetically the characteristic personality structures of the various groups in present-day society. The character type which is typical of fascism and which is the necessary condition for the existence of fascism as a mass movement, the dependent character which is submissive to those above and brutal to those below, is usually conceived as a national peculiarity of Germany or Italy or some other country. This view is completely false. Such [personality characteristics]¹⁶ do not arise from national or racial qualities, or from the late adoption of parliamentary government, or from the lost war, but from the dependence and instability of the great mass of individuals under prevailing social conditions. Those characteristics are are linked with the forms of the struggle for existence and with the position of broad social strata, and it is difficult to conceive of a country in which fascist organizations could not tie on to the authoritarian instincts under given conditions such as lasting economic crisis and a strong, threatening labor movement which is [nonetheless] not yet ripe for the fulfillment of its ideals. Various psychological methods, including psychoanalysis, have been employed in studying the mechanisms of this character type.

• Erich Fromm, “The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology: Notes on Psychoanalysis and Historical Materialism.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 1/2 (1932), 28-54).

• Max Horkheimer, “History and Psychology.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 1/2 (1932), 125-144.

• Erich Fromm, “Psychoanalytic Characterology and its Relevance for Social Psychology.” In: ZfS, Vol. 1 No. 3 (1932), 253-277.

• Erich Fromm, “The Theory of Mother Right and its Relevance for Social Psychology.“ In: ZfS, Vol. 3 No. 2 (1934), 196-227.

• Erich Fromm, “Zum Gefühl der Ohnmacht.” In: ZfS, Vol. 6 No. 1 (1937), 95-118.

The investigation of legal problems centers [on] the juristic changes which occur in the transition from the liberal to the authoritarian phase. The key point here, too, is the thought that one essential function of law remains the same in the authoritarian states as in earlier stages of our era. We are referring to protection of the free disposition of the means of production, today in large scale industry as the concern of the actual management, the administrative bureaucracy, rather than of the legal owner. Law had certain progressive, rational qualities in the liberal period which it has lost in the authoritarian state. Law was general, that is to say, it was not directed against specific persons or groups but against specific acts, and it was not retroactive. No one could be punished if the given act was not forbidden at the time it was committed. The judge had to apply the law and not the individual measures of the regime. All these progressive institutions bound up with the protection of property were destroyed in the shift to the authoritarian state. The trends through which this change in jurisprudence was prepared were oriented to a general natural law or to the special discretion of the judge which must be limited by given law. This process of de-rationalizing the law is not unique in the authoritarian state. We need only point to the absolutist doctrines and to the trials during the French Revolution. Characteristic trends in this direction are evident in present-day English jurisprudence as well.

• Herbert Marcuse, “The struggle against liberalism in the totalitarian view of the state.” In: ZfS Vol. 3 No. 2 (1934), 161-195.

• Franz Neumann, “The Change in the Function of Law in Modern Society.” In: ZfS Vol. 6 No. 3 (1937), 542-596.

This sketch of some of the works published by the Institute, especially in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, aims to show the inner connection of all its scientific work. German has been retained as the basic language of the Zeitschrift. Although it is difficult to circulate the periodical in Germany, it remains an anchor for not a few intellectuals who are in secret opposition to the regime. Scientists and [Politiker]¹⁷ find copies in German seminars and libraries, or abroad when they have the opportunity to travel. Furthermore, there [are] a number of progressive spirits throughout the world, Germans and non-Germans, who have the same tradition as the members of the Institute. They are interested in historical problems of our day both theoretically and practically and they are accustomed to retain their ties with this tradition chiefly through German publications. That is not only true of smaller countries like Switzerland, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Balkan States, but even for China and Japan. The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung is the only independent organ in the German language which covers the entire field of the humanities and the social sciences.

In its publications the Institute is less interested in reporting results of new empirical investigations or in presenting a mass of statistical data than in making its contribution to the preservation of independent, honest, and realistic thinking, the kind of thinking which the authoritarian regimes seek to destroy. A new generation must be trained to apply the most advanced scientific methods and experiences to the burning problems of its time, a generation which will lose its naivete in social questions, which will resist all delusions about the present, and which will have a clear and sharp will to freedom. The Zeitschrift hopes to contribute to this task not only by its leading articles but also by its large review section in which all the relevant literature is discussed. Special review articles have appeared in certain fields, such as unemployment, economic planning, war economy, the social sciences in Germany and Russia, and so forth. The development of a progressive consciousness must combat the tendency, growing out of the present depressed position of the advanced European forces, to evaluate writings about significant political problems not according to their relevance and depth but according to the importance and intent of the author or according to the strength of the party or group from which they stem. An important sector of the once-progressive group of European intellectuals must now depend upon material assistance from political parties and various special groups. Because of the necessity for rapid assimilation and similar considerations, many emigre intellectuals can no longer write freely and independently on social problems, and, ultimately, many cannot even think [independently]. Truth in cultural and social problems has been completely suppressed in the authoritarian countries. [It does not follow from the fact that] it does not face strong opposition [in other countries]. Helvétius once wrote that the truth hurts no one except him who reveals it. This maxim has not lost its validity today. The pressure is great on any progressive thinker, and even greater when he is a guest and cannot shield his untraditional ideas behind a famous name. The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung has a particularly important role to play in this respect because it is independent.

Whereas the Zeitschrift provides a sort of running account of the studies of the Institute, the results of more systematic work have appeared in book form. The books are naturally devoted to more or less the same subjects as the articles, as a few titles will indicate.

• Henryk Grossmann, The Law of the Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System. Being also a Theory of Crises. 1929.

• Friedrich Pollock, Die planwirtschaftlichen Versuche in der Sowjetunion 1919-1927. 1929.

• K.A. Wittfogel, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chinas. 1931.

• Max Horkheimer (ed.), Studien über Autorität und Familie. 1936.

The [last], a volume of nearly one-thousand pages, represents a collective investigation conducted by the Institute into a most significant but neglected problem of authoritarianism. The family is one of the media through which the economic forces affect men and through which the preconditions for fascism were created in Europe. Under fascism the family is simultaneously weakened and artificially [revived]. A detailed investigation of its history in the [modern]¹⁸ period provides one key to the understanding of social and cultural relationships within and without the fascist states. This book is the product of a combination of various methods and disciplines, oriented to a common theoretical position. The Institute was able to obtain the cooperation and assistance of many scholars exiled from various authoritarian countries. Through such commissions the Institute has been in a position to aid not a few progressive European students in the present period of emigration, and literally to save some of them from destruction.

A whole series of books in both German and English are now in various stages of completion. Two German manuscripts are ready for publication. One is an extensive analysis of the phenomenology of Husserl, the last great European epistemologist, in whose work all the moments of the decline of idealism and of the self-destruction of independent liberal thought are apparent.¹⁹ The other manuscript deals with Luther’s relation to the peasant revolts, a contribution to the study of the leader in bourgeois society.²⁰ The English publications are designed to document the increasingly close ties of the Institute with American institutions and methods.

• Otto Kirchheimer, Punishment and Social Structure.²¹

• Paul Lazarsfeld and Mira Komarowsky, The Unemployed Man and His Family.²²

• Erich Fromm and Ernst Schachtel, German Workers 1927-1931.²³

• Three volumes of collected articles on social philosophy, epistemology, and the sociology of literature.²⁴

For financial reasons, only the first of these manuscripts has been sent to the printer so far.

Our desire to proceed with our theoretical work as rapidly as possible has necessitated setting severe limits to our teaching activity in America. We thought it most essential to act as a sort of center for all those people, now scattered throughout the world, who are interested in our [common] work. Nevertheless, we were happy to accept the invitation to give one regular course in the extension division of Columbia University. This course dealt with the genesis of the authoritarian state in the history of bourgeois society, analyzed from economic, psychological, sociological, and philosophical viewpoints. The Institute has also organized internal seminars in which a few scholars have been invited to participate with us in our theoretical discussions. It is the aim of the Institute—and its realization has already begun—to choose its assistants from among the best American and European graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, to train them so that they might develop as independent workers in our tradition.

III. The Program.

The program for the immediate future is apparent from the sketch which we have given of the Institute’s scientific activity. The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung will be made more extensive if possible. The following books will be completed within the next two years, some in English and some in German.

1. A Dialectical Logic.²⁵ This book will not deal with formal epistemology, but with the material content of logical categories. Scientific-political literature devoted to social problems makes use of categories about which there are wide differences of opinion as soon as one seeks a precise definition. This is true of categories like causality, tendency, progress, law, necessity, freedom, class, culture, value, ideology, dialectic, and so forth. Because such concepts remain vague and equivocal, they are used in philosophy and sociology with seeming precision, although they are actually defined most abstractly or given no meaning at all. Logical empiricism, one contemporary and highly influential school of philosophy, declares these concepts to be completely meaningless. It is true that many of the terms have been gravely misused, often in the sense of a limited and dogmatic metaphysics. The present fashion of discarding them, however, can only intensify our intellectual confusion and helplessness. These concepts have a true meaning, though not one which can be defined with the same words for all times. One cannot treat concepts with definitions in the way in which the Egyptians treated corpses with embalming fluid so that they might last for millennia. Such a desire for certainty cannot be satisfied in the intellectual field. The content of the basic categories of the philosophy of history can be defined only in their precise connection with the historical processes of today. They can be preserved only when one does not embalm them, when one keeps them alive by constantly relating them to changing reality. The meaning of freedom, value, or culture, can be arrived at only when one takes a critical position to the prevailing social conditions, when one reveals the extent to which freedom exists today, and the extent to which coercion, insecurity, anxiety, and impotence exist despite the assertions of the dominant ideology. The definition of philosophical concepts is simultaneously the depiction of human society in its historically given form of organization. The projected book thus conceives a logic in Hegel’s sense, not as an enumeration of abstract forms of thought but as a definition of the major material categories of the most progressive consciousness.

2. Text and Source Book for the History of Philosophy.²⁶ Traditional histories of philosophy differ from each other according to the emphases of the individual authors, whether they consider epistemological, metaphysical, or ethical doctrines to be more decisive. Past systems and schools are classified from such standpoints. The book which we have projected will approach philosophical theories from social problems and their solutions. Despite the enormous differences, every society in past historical eras has been divided into classes, and the general problems of philosophy are closely bound up with the problems resulting from such a social division. Precise analysis reveals that even in the most abstract theories of knowledge, reason, matter, or man, difficulties and tendencies are to be discovered which can only be comprehended from the struggle of mankind for liberation from restricting social forms. This textbook, therefore, will not be limited to strictly social philosophical problems but will also deal with the problems of so-called pure philosophy. Such an approach will bring to the fore philosophers who are hardly mentioned, if at all, in the traditional histories of philosophy. We might point to the heretical gnostics who virtually disappear behind the early church fathers, the radical Averroists who are hidden behind the Thomists, Adrian Koerbagh, a contemporary of Spinoza, or the pre-revolutionary French thinker, the Abbé Meslier. Success and renown originate in uncontrollable and often hidden forces, not only in society itself but also in the memory of man. This is true of entire philosophical doctrines and of specific aspects. There are many sections within famous metaphysical and idealist systems which are virtually unknown, or are deliberately misinterpreted, because of their critical and materialist tendencies.

3. The Nature of the Economic Crisis. One of the most significant causes of the ever-sharper crises of the present economic system is the gigantic accumulation of capital accompanied by decreasing possibilities of investment and by a declining rate of profit. The rate of acceleration of productive capital is decreasing from decade to decade. It appears that the capitalist mode of production has reached a point where it is able to make productive use of a smaller and smaller number of human powers. One might say that it is tending toward a static condition, in which the productive apparatus will no longer develop but will merely be reproduced over and over again. This book will show that such a static economy will not be free from crises. The accumulation of fixed capital, particularly in heavy goods industries, is itself a most significant crisis factor because the replacement of used up capital is not continuous but takes place at intervals. Unemployment, the necessity for export to comparatively underdeveloped spheres, in short, the whole imperialist situation leading to fascism will receive a complete reexamination.

4. Various sociological works have been planned and are now in various stages of completion: a critical discussion of contemporary sociology, a book on the decay of the reception of music. A series of publications on the history and sociology of China is in preparation. In collaboration with the Institute of Pacific Relations, we were able to send one of our members [Karl August Wittfogel] to China where he spent almost three years collecting material of unusual value for the theoretical work of the Institute. Since his return he has begun the organization and evaluation of this material. The following publications have been planned.

   • Family and Society in China. This book will discuss the various historical stages in the development of the Chinese family—stages which can still be observed in more or less pure form in various parts of China. The character of the change from the Asiatic to the European-American type [of family] is developed on the basis of the cultural differences between the urban and rural population and between the inhabitants of China and the Chinese in Hawaii and the Western part of the United States. The questionnaires which were given to Chinese families in various parts of China and Hawaii were constructed on the same principles as the European and American questionnaires of the Institute. This should lead to fruitful comparative studies.

   • China: The Development of Its Society. Planned in three volumes, this work will be a development of the fundamental concepts briefly discussed in the article [Theory of Oriental Society]. It departs from traditional studies in this field by giving special attention to the interrelationship among the cultural spheres, economy, politics, religion, and philosophy. The various epochs of Chinese history are discussed in terms of the rise and fall of the specifically Asiatic form of society. The work receives added value from the fact that it provides new material for various fundamental problems in the philosophy of history, above all, the problem of historical periodization. This problem has usually been discussed from material in European history. A study of Chinese society can therefore be very significant not only for an evaluation of the past but also for an understanding of present and future tendencies. Today we see several European states moving in a direction which shows pronounced similarities to the old bureaucratic civilization of China.

   • Source Material for the History of China. The material which has been collected in China will be published both in the original and in English translation. The chronicles which constitute the bulk of this collection have previously been available only to the highly specialized scholars familiar with the old classical Chinese language, and even they could not make full use of them because this enormous collection had never been properly organized. The publication will require from eight to ten volumes. The project can be carried through only if special funds are made available.

5. Man in the Authoritarian State. This psychological study²⁷ begins with an analysis of the psychological mechanisms to which the authoritarian propaganda makes its appeal. With the victory of fascism in Italy and Germany many foreign observers were perplexed by the fact that a large part of the population voluntarily submitted to this system, that they allowed liberal institutions to be destroyed and approved of the terrorization of innocent sections of the people. The fundamental reason lies in the fact that the psychological drives which have developed in the modern era are quite compatible with fascist tendencies. The sado-masochistic character can be found in broad strata of our society, not as a mere sexual perversion or as an internal human quality, as is customarily assumed, but as a psychological structure which has come to dominate certain social strata as a result of the prevailing conditions of existence. Men of this type combine a drive for unconditional submission to a higher power with wild aggressive instincts. The analysis of the sado-masochistic character is followed by a discussion of the mass culture of fascism in which it finds its expression. Special attention will be devoted to representative documents, above all Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Hitler’s personality as revealed in this book, and the reasons why it corresponds so precisely to the spirit of broad social strata, have not yet received satisfactory psychological analysis because of the individualistic concept of society and the assumption of eternal instincts which prevail in modern psychology.

6. The Theory of Fascism. This book will begin with an analysis of that phase of modern society in which the tendencies toward fascism first make their appearance. As we have already seen, it is characterized by contradictions within the national economy and by increasing contradictions in the world market, by the existence of a permanent army of the unemployed, and by growing working class organization. In such times the employers support fascist movements directed against working-class organizations, especially when one section of industry feels itself strong enough to rule over the other sections and over the whole national economy. Where, in a period of severe economic crisis, a highly organized, militant working class failed to seize power and establish a socialist society, the fascist organizations took power with the passive or active assistance from the state apparatus. Special attention is devoted to the reasons why the German working class, the most highly developed of all, was impotent in the decisive historical moment. An important section of the book will compare German and Italian ideologies and institutions. It will be shown that the differences between them are merely superficial. The ideology of fascism begins as an attack on democratic and liberal doctrines. This attack, which sometimes involves the acceptance of Marxist arguments in the form of slogans, is not entirely without foundation. The fascist attempts at a planned economy also constitute a historically necessary process, though in a caricatured and reactionary form. Fascist planned economy does not lead to peace and universal happiness but to the entrenchment of a bureaucracy and to imperialist war.

The various books which we have just sketched represent the work of the members of the New York branch of the Institute. We have also supported other works which will be written in Europe by various younger scholars working in close collaboration with us. One large book [by Andries Sternheim]²⁸ will be devoted to an historical and sociological analysis of the problem of leisure time in both the authoritarian and democratic states, including the activity of trade unions, educational institutions, athletic associations, fascist organizations, and so forth. Another work [Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project]²⁹ will analyze nineteenth century bourgeois society in the form of a detailed study of the city of Paris, the typical metropolis of that period. Economy, architecture, living conditions, art, and literature will be discussed in their close interrelationship. Many years have already been spent by the author on this book.

The next few years will not be devoted merely to writing. We think that it is increasingly important that we extend our teaching activity. The Institute’s course at Columbia will be continued and we have planned a series of public lectures. The members of the Institute feel it to be their duty to help spread the knowledge of progressive cultural phenomena. In modern music and painting, for example, one can discover tendencies towards a more rational constitution of human society, toward independence and freedom. The Institute will therefore sponsor lectures on modern music and art by various artists and writers. Our seminars will be continued on a more intensive scale than before. Their function is to enhance the understanding of theorists without whom a progressive solution to modern social problems is not possible. Above all, we shall deal with Hegel, Marx, and Freud.

The essence of the work of the Institute rests in the fact that students of ability and character participate directly. It is high time that they be trained so that they are not more naive about social problems than other scientists are in their own fields.

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Letter—Julian Gumperz, re: “Idea, Activity, Program.”

[Julian Gumperz to Horkheimer, 7/25/1938.]³⁰

Dr. Max Horkheimer:

I want to discuss in this letter the exposition of the Institute's work and program, which has been in my possession for some weeks now, and on which I have spent considerable time and effort.

First let me report what has been done up to the present writing. The English translation of the German manuscript was received the end of June. In appraising the translation, I felt the need of comparing it with the original German manuscript, which I have done, sentence by sentence. In many instances I found that the English translation tended to tone down the precision and integrity of thought of the German original. Whether the translator did this intentionally, because he felt that some of your formulations were too near the danger point, or whether he exhibits an unconscious bias, I am not prepared to say. In any case, I have drawn up a separate list of the main and larger differences in formulation, and I have also inserted into the text such smaller corrections as concerned essential points.

In spite of what I considered to be necessary corrections, for conveying the meaning and content of the original, I think that on the whole the translator has grasped the flow of ideas as they came to him from the German manuscript, and has for the most part found a presentable English dress for the German thought. The present English translation is, as far as the English of it is concerned, a commendable and readable document. I think the translator has shown a good command of English style requirements, and it will be necessary only to smooth out certain formulations and to disconnect and connect certain sentences in order to clarify the meaning, and to arrive at a document that is unimpeachable in its use of English.

I have further elaborated certain points that concern the presentation of ideas in the German, as well as in the English document, changes, cuts, substitutions, amplifications, and illustrations, that would contribute to the success of the message, to my mind. But, before conveying all these details to you, I feel that I would want to discuss in all seriousness, with you, the advisability of circulating a document of this nature above the signature of the Institute.

The Institute will live by its work, but it might die by its declarations of faith and the web of words through which it presents its work to a distant and outside world. Scientific work, of whatever description, is in need of a flag that unites its outlying provinces with its center through a binding loyalty. The Institute has as its driving force, as you have so forcibly shown, the common loyalty to a common flag.

The question, however, is whether it is wise to run up this flag for all the world to see. I am seriously inclined to doubt this wisdom. I am more and more inclined to regard the period in which we live, and the years to come, as a time that will challenge all the resources, moral, intellectual, and financial, that the Institute can muster.

I think the world is not any more a battlefield between “Ormuzd and Ahriman.” Darkness is casting its shadows on the world, enshrouding more and more all that is left of the forces of good. Possibly I am inclined to become over-pessimistic, but it seems to me that at least for the years immediately ahead of us, and that concern us because they define our lifetime, the values that emerged as the culmination of a long and bitter process of history are in danger of complete disintegration, and that there is very little hope for their resurrection in the hearts of men as they live today on this planet.

As I see it, one of the real contributions that an institution like our Institute, because of its special position and history, can make, is an attempt to contribute to the sustenance of the life of such values, and to fan the flame of these ideas, even if it burns low or only glows for a long time to come. The world is disjointed. If we could contribute to and assist, even to an infinitesimal degree, the work of those forces that will set a disordered world in order, by such bold announcement and candor as is exhibited in this document, I would not feel my present urge for caution. I do not believe, however, that in the present situation in which we find ourselves, movement still moves. It is the center, the core of existence, that begins to matter now, not the periphery, and although it might be a long time, and it might also be entirely futile, it is the only hope that I see now, that this core and this substance will again some day penetrate to the periphery, where there is action and movement. The Institute should become a path to the cloister that is to be built around this core, and I do not think road posts ought to be erected to direct the destroyers to their goal.

I am not trying to sound an alarm gong, and give voice to the opinion that danger is imminent. But from all reliable signs that have come to my attention and observation in recent months, I have convinced myself that danger is drawing closer. If there shall be war within the next few years, totalitarianism will engulf us all, and the whole world. If there is no war, but the armament race continues, state control, regimentation, contraction of the sphere of individual liberty, will grow more and more, on the basis of a lowered standard of existence for the masses of the population of the world. If a halt is called to the competitive struggle for better and bigger armaments, a world depression will ensue, the social consequences of which might bring about disastrous results.

A document such as the one I am working on now, presenting the essence of the Institute's existence as an authorized statement, might do irreparable harm by getting into the wrong hands at the wrong time. It would not have to be right now, but it might happen at a very inopportune moment three or four years hence, and the consequences might endanger the work that was considered essential at that very moment. I do not believe it necessary at the present writing to elaborate the areas and points of danger contained in this document. If you want me to, I will point them out in a later communication.

At the same time, however, I feel a sense of damage and loss at seeing this superb presentation of the Institute's work and program silenced in the drawers of a file. It should reach the right ears in the right way, without getting the Institute into the danger zone. Sincere friends of the Institute and its work should be called together for a meeting at which you could read this document and give them, after the delivery of the lecture, an abstract in mimeographed form, that could not be misconstrued and utilized to the detriment of the Institute by people who had not heard the lecture and who were interested in the document not because of their interest in the Institute's work but because of their interest in the destruction of that work.

In addition, the printed pamphlet should be rewritten, brought up to date, and re-formulated, so that it may be presentable to a wider audience and at the same time differentiate for them, in the light of your document, the Institute and its work from other social research institutions.

Sincerely yours,

—J.G.

Letter—Horkheimer’s Reply.

[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Julian Gumperz, 7/31/1938.]³¹

I cannot now reply in detail to your letter of the 25th. For the moment, it is not urgent, because your practical conclusion that my draft can be used only as a basis for a lecture delivered to a carefully selective audience is exactly in agreement with my original intent. We will discuss everything in detail and organize the meeting with such a select group together. Today, I would just like to thank you for the deep solidarity to which your letter attests. I share in full your concern for the immediate, and also, probably, future, development of historical peoples; that you express these thoughts in concern for the fate of the Institute, in an effort to protect it for as long as possible, is particularly gratifying to me.

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George Grosz, Manhattan, 1946. (Detail)

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II. 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)

Theodor W. Adorno, Henryk Grossmann, Julian Gumperz, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Felix Weil, H. Weil, Alfred Seidenmann.

Horkheimer: Today, even the empiricists say that one cannot make any more progress through pure empiricism alone. One must draw on theoretical points of view. On the other hand, there are people who dispense with empiricism entirely. Now, the foundations here wish to see projects which might serve as prototypes for a different kind of methodology than that which has been applied in this country up to the present. They expect from us a short explanation of how we conceive the method of the social sciences.

Neumann: What is crucial is to formulate the explanation so that it is not Marxist.

Horkheimer: There is a widespread conception that goes like this: “We poor Americans may indeed be industrious, and know a great deal of facts, and have good methods, but we have no great theoretical thoughts. You Europeans arrive with your noses in the air and act as if you know everything; what we expect from you are theoretical viewpoints and their application to empirical investigations. For example: your idea of class struggle. Show us through empirical investigation that class struggle does in fact have a decisive significance for the interpretation of present social events. This investigation should involve more than the mere collection of materials.’ I (H.) believe this point of view contains an error about the method.

Neumann: The general consensus is: one must have a working hypothesis, but how one is supposed to find it, no one knows; this is a question of preference and attitude.

Horkheimer: You are completely right—this is not our method. What is our method, then? I don’t deny that we confront the material with determinate ideas. This doesn’t distinguish us from most Americans, though there are many Americans who have no ideas of method in general, but only a research program [Untersuchungsprogramm].

Gumperz: This makes matters too easy for us. For leaders in the field, this is not the case.

Horkheimer: In psychological terms, probably not, but in theory, no such ideas are to be found. There is a well-established contempt towards the necessity of the content of the hypothesis, which is considered to fall outside of the field of investigation.

F. Weil: Don’t Americans reject hypotheses and demand an “unbiased” approach to investigaton?

Adorno: As Gumperz said, I believe that the avant-garde discuss hypotheses but the normal American “research men” are supposed to approach the matter “unbiased,” rejecting the hypothesis.

Neumann: This is no longer the dominant trend.

Adorno: In the field of the social sciences, this is certainly still the case. Another trend with which American social science has become especially preoccupied is what they call “content analysis”: one is supposed to begin by analyzing the stimuli which influence the subject. I do not believe this theoretical approach gets us much farther.

Neumann brings up Thorsten Veblen: the great interest in him contradicts Adorno’s thesis.

Adorno: Veblen is considered a heretic.

Gumperz: Nowadays he isn’t. Veblen has become something of an academic God in the course of his lifetime, if in a rather modified and domesticated form, whereas he was previously unable to teach.

Horkheimer: So far as I understand it, “theory” in this case and others like it is such that one first has a hypothesis and then attempts to order the facts on this basis, and then finally takes into account the instances which contradict this hypothesis and reconfigures the hypothesis accordingly.

Neumann: This is a widespread trend. [Robert] Lynd’s Knowledge For What [1939] has already declared war against it. The thesis is: nothing is to be gained from the hypothesis, this is a positivistic method. Instead, one must develop a value-system from out of tendencies within American society.

Gumperz: … this is nothing but a repetition of Veblen’s theory.

Pollock: [Wesley C.] Mitchell has spoken strongly against it.

Gumperz: —but has absolutely spoken in favor of it in his essays and so on.

Horkheimer: How do matters actually look?

Neumann refers to an essay by Max Lerner for an example: “contemporary problems” are configured in a way that enables the structure to come to expression.

Grossmann: We still have yet to fulfill the task of formulating our method.

Gumperz: This cannot be done without the confrontation with other methods.

H. Weil: Each scientist has the longing to arrive at knowledge [Erkenntnis], and on the other hand is bound to the findings of his research. There can be no research without the desire to know.

Horkheimer: Whatever we work out as our method, it will also be contained in the method of American researchers. One cannot make a strict divorce between them. What matters is whether we arrive at a better, more exact determination of our method than others who have also thought about method. To state things rather crudely, I would attempt to draw the following distinction between our approach to an investigation and that of others, particularly those whose approach we find to be alien to our own. It simply would not occur to us to establish a hypothesis because we are already confronted with a completely determinate formulation of the question [Fragestellung]—the question is: is bureaucracy in fact a new form of domination? We do not then say: ‘bureaucracy is the [new] form of domination’ and proceed from there. Rather, we return to the determinate representations we already have about society and ask ourselves: can one even say that something like bureaucracy actually performs domination? Or: is bureaucracy a class? And then we would probably have the tendency to say that what bureaucracy is has to be understood in the first place on the basis of the restructuring process of the ruling class over the last fifty years or so, and that what ‘ruling class’ means is bound up with the conception of economic relations we already have. New facts enter into our investigation in a totally different way. Rather than seeking to collect a series of new facts, we would ask ourselves: what becomes of the concept of bureaucracy when it is filled with the historical content of the last fifty years or so, when it is confronted with the historical experiences of the last fifty years or so? We are capable of doing so because we have a determinate theory, one which unites us. Americans have no similar reserve of theory from which they can draw. This accounts for their perplexity whenever the problem of formulating a theme arises. The problem of method only arises whenever there is no available reservoir of knowledge [Erkenntnis] to speak of (problem of conflict). If we have a determinate representation of what society is and what its tendencies are, no problem would arise if the question were posed: can bureaucratic domination happen in America? —It seems to me, then, that the first thing we can say is that both investigations and the methods applied to them essentially depend upon the extent to which there is already a developed theory of society available.

Neumann: This completely agrees with my views on the matter. The difficulty now is the difficulty of reaching an understanding. The objection will follow: what is it about the theory on which your work is grounded that is correct? This makes it very difficult to arrive at an understanding with an American who does not accept the theory.

Marcuse: The formulation of the question [Fragestellung] lies before us, in a way, in light of a determinate experience. This experience is certainly not the experience that positivists would refer to. So what is this experience we refer to? What have we already learned through such experience prior to the formulation of the question?

Grossmann: We have a theory of class society which is built upon profit. When we take this as our point of departure, the problematic is clear to us. To what extent this is true, we cannot answer. We can either answer with Marx, or we can state that this is confirmed on the grounds of historical experience, e.g., in class struggle.

Horkheimer: Whenever you arrive with proof [Beweis] in hand, you get caught in a circle. The proof always contains elements which are just as questionable. As soon as you bring up decisive experiences, the other will have nothing more to do with it. Bourgeois society could almost be determined by the fact that human beings have nothing but the most impoverished impressions in common. It all comes down to whether you can arrive at an understanding, and when such an understanding has been reached no more ‘proof’ is asked of you. Wherever structured experience is spoken of, this understanding is cut off.

Adorno: This results in the following situation: true, though we cannot escape the circle of fact and hypothesis, and cannot become involved in the formulation of the question [Fragestellung] at all, our theory can, however, under certain circumstances, contribute to our understanding of the determination of the horizon of the questions [Fragehorizont] within which questions of provability [Beweisbarkeit] are given. This makes us capable of saying something about the sense in which people consider whatever is graspable by proofs [Beweisen] the last and ultimate word on the matter. We cannot, by virtue of critical theory, take such proof upon ourselves, we can however unravel the postulates of positivism from here. We cannot allow ourselves to get involved in the opposition of hypothesis and fact.

Horkheimer: Why is proof demanded? What is the fear? It is this: if we no longer had the forcible separation [Auseinanderreißen] of fact and hypothesis, then humanity [Humanität] would go out the window. Humanity is at stake because in science one must be justified; because one may not take anything for granted just because it has been spoken aloud. In society today, where there is no truth, we must guard ourselves against dropping such criteria.

Adorno: Since we don’t concede this divorce [viz., between fact and hypothesis], we need have no fear of fact. As dialecticians, we can come to an understanding with the positivists in one specific point. What we have to do is not somehow approach reality with manufactured hypotheses, systems, and verify them. Instead, I would take up the concepts which lie before me anew, analyze them, and thereby discover that however well the concept is defined, it has not been thought through to the end, because there is a historical presupposition which underlies it. First, I would examine whichever concepts arise for me with precision, until the point these concepts are thrown into flux. What is new to this is that we know what we want out of such a critique. There is, however, a distinction: whether I begin to think in the sense of a hypothesis or a manufactured system, or whether I am able to mobilize the force of theory instead. Theory is a center of forces.

Neumann: That is all very convincing, but, for Americans, a “vicious circle.”

Marcuse: We are supposed to say something about how our method looks, but so far we have only criticized others rather than considering our own.

H. Weil: If we want to teach people the utility of our theory from a new vantage point, then it is still best to present our method as simply as possible, as if anyone could do it. Science is, like it or not, a thing which only thrives on a large scale, and if we are to play along, then we can only do so to the extent we are in a situation to present our method to others so they might understand it. Part of this is that certain concepts are withheld for reasons of communication.

Neumann: What matters is not whether we can work out our own method, but the question: How do I say this to my kid? Until now, we have been content to say that we seek to integrate all social sciences. This is not sufficient. The question is whether our method can be presented in such a way that contests the hypothesis-fact problem. We distinguish ourselves from sociology in that we consider all phenomena as historical phenomena, while the Americans do not. We must insist that we do not practice sociological work, but social-scientific work, and explain ourselves accordingly. The distinction is tremendous, and this is what we must show.

Horkheimer: If we treat the problem in this way, as Neumann wishes, what comes of it will not be entirely fair: we will end up saying something we do not really consider decisive. Others have a right to become somewhat acquainted with how our spirit differs from their own. (We do not understand history as [James Thomas] Shotwell does; we do not practice ‘sociology’ [Soziologie] but the social sciences [Sozialwissenschaften].) This moment in particular is difficult to elaborate, but it would be good to succeed in conveying that in our view the truth cannot be social-scientifically broken down.

Gumperz: —that truth is not verifiable.

Horkheimer: Whenever one begins from verifiability, they might as well concede that the concern with verifiability is in many cases a concern that really castrates science. For then I will have already broken it down into individual sciences, then each of these sciences into their individual elements, and for this one must already have certain thoughts and representations.

Neumann: The Americans say too that insights are not untrue just because there is no possibility of verifying them.

Marcuse: First, we must go farther still and ask: how do those experiences to which we refer appear to us.

Adorno: The desideratum—how to make this distinction—already belongs to the theory as a whole. With this, you can—even when lies are involved, provided you stick to dialectics—undertake such reflections if you reduce such statements to the whole.

Horkheimer: The characteristic of science is communicability. At present, it seems as if that which is most communicable is that which is most false. The demand for intelligibility is best fulfilled by Hitler.

The central point of the discussion is: as has been said—one feels a certain mistrust in the social sciences of the present. Can anyone remedy this? I wouldn’t even broach the question of verifiability—it is entirely secondary.

What makes fascism bad in fact is probably that the experience of most human beings is so poorly structured, that truth and intelligible communication have been confused with one another, and that immediate accessibility has been confused with truth. Communication has become confused with content in a form which no longer demands that anyone think for themselves.

Seidenmann: The individual moments [of the theory] must be established. The task would consist in showing which moments are contained in and true for our theory, and that without such truth theory in general would not be possible. It must then be shown why history, for example, is necessary for theory, the theory to be established here.

Neumann: Taking an anti-pluralist position seems to me to be of the utmost importance.

Horkheimer: The distinction between sociology or the social sciences from what we do lies in that the American social sciences, at the very least, investigate repeatable events and in are in a certain way natural sciences. For instance, they are supposed to provide answers to questions which constitute problems for this society, problems which are then supposed to be solved by interventions, such as administration, on the grounds of research projects conducted by the social sciences.

Problem of bureaucracy: one establishes the tendencies of bureaucracy and subsequently shows how it is possible to contain bureaucracy in this country.

Marcuse: The experience we have regards actuality in light of these experiences. Our theory is essentially a Theorie der Veränderung.

Horkheimer: The distinction should be worked out.

F. Weil: We must still say something about our conception of history and the like.

Marcuse: The Theorie der Ordnung would have to opposed by a Theorie der Veränderung.

Neumann: Ordnung and Veränderung are not opposites.

Marcuse: The concept “social change”³² is a pure order-concept.

Neumann: One cannot translate “Theorie der Veränderung” with “theory of change.”³³

Horkheimer: In the concept of Veränderung there are two things we must keep separate from one another: (1) Veränderung in the sense of “change” and (2) ‘dynamism,’ Veränderung without end.

Adorno: Method is actually content-laden, complete knowing [Erkenntnis].

Horkheimer: What the American wants is for us to work on a smaller theme in a way that renders our whole attitude apparent to him. I believe something very positive can be seen in this. Investigations of restricted object-domains in which it is demonstrable. In dealing with a domain like this, one aspect is illuminated without my having to deal with the whole world.

Adorno: What distinguishes us from science is that it registers countless facts and codifies them too, and forever has them at its disposal; but despite all of this it still forgets those facts it has already come to possess. Science can always incorporate earlier results into new investigations, but the manner in which it thinks is indifferent to the facts it knew before. For us, however, there is a continuity with everything that once was.

Horkheimer: We ought to present in several decisive moments what it is we call theory. Each individual investigation should have a kind of key-like character [Schlüsselcharakter] for the total situation. Anyone who reads that will see: a demand has been raised which is not fulfilled in the average social sciences.

Pollock: Something must be said about the question of ‘value-free’ science. By this, it is understood that each investigation in any field whatever, so long as it applies certain methods, is equally justified. On this a position must be taken. For us, this question is settled, but here they are still in the middle of it.

Adorno: When we present our standpoint, we must differentiate what is true about it. At this point, one must say we reject so-called ‘value-free’ science as much as so-called ‘value-oriented’ science.

Horkheimer: We cannot express the crucial moment: that we truly, fundamentally take science so seriously that the decision of our lives and any reorientation of our lives depends upon it. That the theory is connected with praxis, that, as our knowledge transforms, so too does our attitude towards practice. For us, today, science is still serious, practically and politically. The opposition between American and European science is that for us, science is philosophy. One can either act on religious belief, on purely subjective, disconnected value-positings, or on theory and knowledge. This is also what makes people so uncomfortable.

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George Grosz, Manhattan, 1946. (Detail)

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III. Adorno: A Place for Research (1941).

The Institute of Social Research ties together a group of scholars who belong to the most diverse fields but who agree on their decisive theoretical interests. Their concern is the formation of a theory of present-day society that offers insight into its central laws of motion, without, however, sacrificing the slightest bit of the concreteness of its object for the sake of an abstract concept. This theoretical tendency cannot and will not deny its origin in Hegelian philosophy. In fact, one of the most essential points of orientation for the Institute is inheriting the Hegelian legacy in a manner so original that it does not ossify into [a mere] academic possession—however little the Institute is bound to the identity-philosophical presuppositions of the Hegelian method. If no thought today is legitimate that does not arise from the demands of the materials themselves, then, conversely, no accumulation of facts is legitimate that is not guided by thinking and capable of generating [thought] from itself. The question of the fact, which once served to emancipate thinking, threatens more and more to degenerate into a ban on thinking [ein Denkverbot] itself. This is what the Institute seeks to resist. It represents the right and obligation of non-conformist thinking—thinking independent of any commanding or regulating authority, prepared to follow its consequences beyond the merely existing and verifiable. The facade of present-day actuality serves to obscure what is essential so thoroughly, as if to permanently black-out the entirety of culture. Therefore, only those who do not defer to the seamless surface but explain its seamlessness by what lies beneath it can say something about what is essential. That which exists can only be comprehended by concern for the possible and the better.

The thoughts which guide the Institute’s work have been formulated in a large number of essays by Max Horkheimer, including the debate with positivism, “The Latest Attack on Metaphysics”, and the programmatic analyses in “Traditional and Critical Theory.” In addition to these philosophical studies, there are several specifically historical studies of the genesis of bourgeois society and the development of human traits which have become manifest in the authoritarian states of today (e.g., “Egoism and Freedom Movements”). The investigations of the Institute encompass problems in social philosophy (phenomenology, Hegel), economy (questions of economic planning, crisis theory), social psychology, the sociology of law, and political sociology. A comprehensive critical presentation of the social bases of the collapse of the Weimar Republic and a collective study on anti-Semitism are in preparation. Already in Germany, the Institute paid particular attention to issues in the Far East. One of its members, in cooperation with the Institute for Pacific Relations, is engaged in extensive investigations into the history, economy, and social structure of China, which is particularly relevant in light of the increasing significance of bureaucracies in totalitarian countries: China presents the purest model of a bureaucratically fixed social order.

The Institute endeavors to present phenomena of culture in their full social meaning, and to derive the presentation of this meaning from the phenomena themselves without simply ‘assigning’ them to social trends. In addition to the philosophical investigations, there are the art-theoretical investigations. These investigations refer partly to the literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries (Baudelaire, Ibsen, Hamsun), partly to musical problems (Wagner, jazz). The music-sociological studies of the Institute, which are devoted to the social significance of today’s mass music, are being conducted with reference to social-psychological questions—namely, the deep-rooted changes in the ‘masses’ of the present. These are being conducted in close cooperation with the Office of Radio Research at Columbia University and are based entirely on American material. The Institute’s original organ of publication was the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which appeared in German from 1932-1939. It may still have fulfilled its function even when its distribution was prohibited in Germany: to make a number of readers conscious of the fact that political powerlessness does not necessarily entail the sacrifice of the intellect. The last issue of the Zeitschrift conveyed a vision of the kind which, though it had been editorially completed, could no longer be published after the collapse of France—the institute maintained a branch at the Ecole Normale Supérieure until the occupation of Paris. It contained a fundamental analysis of the authoritarian state, a no less fundamental essay on the critique of political economy, and a social interpretation of German literary neo-romantics (George and Hofmannsthal).

Since 1940, the publication of the Zeitschrift in German has been suspended. It now appears in English under the title Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. The Institute’s most recent book publications, which relate to the penal system, the labor market, and the effect of unemployment on the family, are also published in English. The last of these belongs to an area of interest to which the institute has devoted its attention for several years: the question of the binding agents which hold together the social system. The most important event in these efforts was the large anthology Autorität und Familie (1936), which establishes the first model of its kind for the cooperation across various subject areas that the Institute has striven for. A few words about the history of the Institute. It began with a foundation by Hermann Weil and was officially established in 1925. At the University of Frankfurt, it provided service for teaching and research purposes to the university. The first director was Kurt Gerlach. After his sudden passing, Karl Grünberg took over the directorship, and, in 1930, was succeeded by Max Horkheimer, who held a professorship in Sozialphilosophie at the University of Frankfurt at the same time. In 1933, the Institute was shuttered by the National Socialists. Since 1934, it has been part of Columbia University in New York. In addition to their own research activities, members of the Institute teach at Columbia. Finally, it should be mentioned that, since 1933, the Institute’s funds have enabled a number of intellectuals in Europe and America to continue their work that would otherwise have been interrupted. In this sense too, the Institute has conceived of its independence as an obligation.

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IV. ISR Course Announcements (October 1941).

The Social Psychology of Mass Movements. (Horkheimer)

This course intends to examine the interaction of social and psychological factors in the phenomenon of mass movements. A critical survey will be given of those doctrines which aim at explaining society mainly by psychological factors. Examples will be taken from 18th century rationalism, the writings of Gabriel Tarde and the various schools of psychoanalysis. Problems such as the relation of animal and human nature, the persistence and changeability of human traits, attempts at classifying human drives and instincts will be discussed.

The main part of this course will be devoted to mass psychology and the analysis of actual mass behavior. Current doctrines of mass psychology (Le Bon, Pareto, Freud, Mosca) will be surveyed with special attention to the concept of “charisma” and to rational and irrational leadership. Consideration will also be given to certain approaches to folk psychology (Wundt, Lévy-Bruhl, McDougall). The theories will be tested by an analysis of historical mass movements. Typical reactions of the masses in certain periods will be examined, such as the peasant wars during the Reformation, the French religious wars, the English and French Revolutions, Fascism and National Socialism. Different socio-psychological types, such as the demagogue, party boss, “martyr,” follower will be analyzed. The socio-psychological problem of the minority and of the outsider will be included.

The results of this analysis lead to the question to what extent psychological factors can be explained by social factors. Psychological phenomena such as submissiveness, repentance, resentment, thriftiness, courage, romantic love, ambition, acquisitiveness will be dealt with in terms of their social implications. The extent to which the exigencies of civilization lead to the repression of primitive drives will be studied. The effect of direct and indirect coercion on human character and the role of social taboos will form part of this study.

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[Untitled Draft.]

1. [To what extent] is society to be explained by psychological factors?

A survey will be made of doctrines dealing with man as a social being, particularly eighteenth century rationalism, the writings of Gabriel Tarde, and the various schools of psychoanalysis. The following major issues will be discussed: animal and human nature; evolution and mutation in human nature; heredity; classification of human drives and instincts.

2. [To what extent] are psychological factors to be explained by society?

Psychological phenomena such as shame, repentance, resentment, parsimoniousness, courage, romantic love, ambition, acquisitiveness will be dealt with in terms of their sociological implications. Study will be made of the extent to which the exigencies of civilization lead to repression of the primitive drives. The effect of direct and indirect coercion on human character and the role of social taboos will form part of this study. The functioning of propaganda and public opinion will be analyzed in different epochs and countries, especially under modern democracy and fascism.

3. The interaction of psychological and sociological factors.

Current doctrines of mass psychology (Le Bon, Pareto, Freud, Reich) will be surveyed with special attention to charisma, rational and irrational leadership, and the reactions of the masses in different periods. Consideration will also be given to certain approaches to folk psychology (Wundt, Levy-Bruhl, McDougall). Different socio-psychological types will be examined, such as the aristocrat of the ancient regime, the gentleman of the Victorian era, the American pioneer, the German Junker, etc., followed by the psychological problems of minorities and of the outsider in modern psychology.

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Modern Utopias and their Social Background. (Horkheimer)

This course will divide Utopias (1) into those which envisage the establishment of a perfect society in this world and those which project their goal into a transcendental beyond and (2) into those which are forward-looking and backward-looking.³⁴ The religious and political creeds will be analyzed with regard to their Utopian elements; the various methods (evolutionary, revolutionary, or socialist) advanced for implementing Utopian ideas will be analyzed.

1. Utopias in the age of Reformation. Under this head, we propose to examine the economic and social changes in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the sufferings caused by them, and the different attitudes of protestantism and catholicism to the new economy: the Peasant War and the Utopian ideas of Thomas Münzer; Thomas More’s life and work, Thomas Campanella and the social scene in Italy (analysis of his monastic Utopia, Civitas Solis). As a contrast to these Utopias which opposed the contemporary social trend, Bacon’s scientific Utopia, Nova Atlantis, will be examined.

2. Utopias during the English Civil War. The two chief Utopian works of this period clearly express the opposition between communism and society based on property: James Harrington’s Oceania and its relation to the American and French revolutions; Winstanley’s The Law of Freedom as a communist Utopia.

3. Utopias of the Eighteenth Century. This section begins with a survey of the social structure of France and the role of the intellectual in French society of the eighteenth century. It will consider the opposition to economic liberalism (Abbé Meslier and Linguet); Rousseau’s ambivalent attitude; Morelly’s Code de la Nature and Sade’s Tamoë. Further topics to be discussed under this hand are: Fourier and the middle class Utopia; Utopia versus the industrial revolution; the pattern of French family life and the quest for security; and the idea of justice held by the French farmer and small business man.³⁵

4. Recent Utopias. The first theme to be discussed here is that of technological progress as a means of satisfying all social needs. Edward Bellamy’s and H.G. Well’s Utopian writings will be analyzed; then, as examples of an opposite mentality, Nietzsche’s and Aldous Huxley’s anti-Utopias.

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Sociology of Popular Music. (Adorno)

This course will be devoted to the sociological structure and the social impact of music written for popular consumption.

1. The history of the division of music into two separate spheres: serious and popular, will be investigated and the social causes of this division will be analyzed.

2. The character of popular music as contrasted with serious music will be discussed.

3. The impact of social and technological developments on popular music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will be described. Various types, such as the Vienna Waltz, the Paris and the Vienna Light Opera, the Anglo-Saxon Music-Hall Music, the ragtime and jazz will be sociologically treated.

4. The cultural implications of the technical characteristics of popular music (e.g., standardization, pseudo-individualization, syncopation) will be dealt with.

5. The mechanisms by which popular music today is enforced [in] the American scene will be described. Here not only “plugging” but also the practice of arrangements, musical baby talk, glamorization etc. will be dealt with.

6. An attempt will be made to discover the societal effect of popular music on the basis of a textual analysis. Particular stress will be laid on the factor of recognition, on the function of popular music as both a release and a social cement, its prestige value and its function in promoting submissiveness of taste. Social phenomena, such as popular music “fads”, the jitterbug type and the technically minded jazz expert will be characterized.

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Sociology of Art. (Adorno)

As an introduction to this lecture, a survey of selected sociological theories of art from the era of Enlightenment to our time will be given. Aims and methods of art sociology will be discussed form the point of view of a sociology of culture. [Sociological theories of art such as those of Vico, Spencer, Beucher, Guyau, Ruskin, Croce, Spengler, Dewey, Valery, and Calloe will be examined.]³⁶

1. The interaction of art and society. The following issues will be discussed under this head: [the connection of art with sex, war, religion in different periods;]³⁷ the extent to which the social position of artists as a group and as individuals influence their works; the relation between artistic and technological progress; art as an expression of social values and aspirations.

2. The social origin of the modern aesthetic sense. A study will be made of the effect of the modern division of labor and of the dichotomy between private and public life upon man’s attitude to the beautiful; the role of the family; sociology of the museum, the exhibit, the collector, the connoisseur, the audience, and the fan.

3. Art as a critical force. This section will deal with the relation of art and science to truth and will discuss the problem of the artist as an “outsider.” Certain artistic productions will be studied in their role of social criticism[ – for example, Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop, Flaubert’s Madam Bovary, and Kafka’s Trial].³⁸ Changes in popular taste and the reasons for such change will be surveyed.

4. Art and leisure. Topics to be discussed under this hand are: the difference between the freely spent leisure time of the nineteenth century and the manipulated entertainments of modern mass culture; esoteric and popular art; the nineteenth century theater as contrasted with today’s movie; the “avant-garde”; art as a means of propaganda; the fate of art in the authoritarian states.

5. Social implications of modern music. In this section, modern musical works will be investigated for their social content. The changes in the mode of performance of musical works will be analyzed and the sociology of the concert, the conductor, the virtuoso, the influence of radio on music and the reactions of the listener will be discussed.

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Social and Intellectual Foundation of Modern European Democracy. (Marcuse)

The course will discuss the social and intellectual background of the principal forms of democracy in the modern era, as exemplified by the Italian and Dutch City Republics, the democratic movements during the English and French Revolution, England after the Reform Bill, and Germany in the Weimar Republic. An attempt will be made to analyze the principles of social organization operative in those states and the patterns of social behavior favorable or unfavorable to democracy. Special consideration will be given to the critical situations in which these democracies fought or succumbed to anti-democratic forces, to the social groups and interests which stood behind these forces, and to the doctrines which they opposed to the prevailing democratic philosophies (for example, the use of religious fanaticism, paganism and atheism, the advocating of “national awakenings” and hatred against aliens). The various groups which supported democratic tendencies in different historical periods and the forms in which their democracies developed will be analyzed sociologically: artisans, traders and burghers; the self-sufficient city and the nation state. The development of democratic philosophy will be outlined: the meaning and limits of liberty and equality, the principle of self-interest and the pursuit of happiness, the idea of discovering the truth through free discussion, the inalienable rights of man. The course will conclude with a survey of the attempts to establish an integral democracy (the Levellers, Babeuf and the agrarian socialists, the Paris Commune).

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The Development of Social Thought in the Modern Era. (Marcuse)

The main types and tendencies of social thought will be discussed in their relation to the fundamental changes in the social structure. The course will begin by showing how the destruction of the feudal system and the new stratification of society in the XVIth century engendered a new pattern of social thought, promoting new standards of social behavior which combined rigid individualism in the private and economic sphere with unconditional social absolutism and authoritarianism. The development of these standards will be followed in the social teachings of Lutheranism, Calvinism, Bodin, Hobbes, and Spinoza. The radical opposition to individualistic society will be studied through an analysis of the social philosophy of the Peasant- and Anabaptist movement. The course will further show how the strengthened middle classes fought and eventually shattered the absolutistic order. The basic concepts of liberalist philosophy will be elaborated as they appear in the works of Hutcheson, Shaftesbury, Adam Smith, David Hume, and others (social integration through the pursuit of self-interest, the emancipation of the economic subject, the quest for security of property, the separation of the state from society). Special consideration will be given to the social doctrines of the Enlightenment (Helvétius, Holbach, Condorcet, Linguet, Mably) and their influence on the American and French Revolution. It will be shown how, after the French Revolution, the growth of industrial society led, on the one side, to the theories of controlled progress and technological planning (Saint-Simon, Comte), and, on the other side, to the socialist critique of liberalism (the Saint-Simon school, Fourier, Proudhon).

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[Draft] Social Thought from the Renaissance to the Present Day. (Marcuse)

The main types and tendencies of social thought will be discussed in their relation to the fundamental changes in the social structure. Emphasis will be placed upon those conceptions which anticipated the crisis of European liberalism and prepared the ground for present-day social values and philosophies. For example:

1. Radical criticism and positivism in the British and French Enlightenment

2. The idea of a totalitarian democracy: Rousseau

3. The doctrines of dictatorship and authoritarianism in the French revolution and the counter-revolution: Robespierre, Saint Just; Burke, Bonald, De Maistre

4. Controlled progress and planning in industrial society: Saint-Simon, Comte

5. The socialist opposition: Fourier, Proudhon, Marx

6. The struggle against value judgments in social science: Durkheim, Tarde, Max Weber

7. The doctrine of the avant-garde (Sorel) and of the elite (Pareto)

8. Fascist and National Socialist social philosophy: Panunció, Gentile, Mussolini; Moeller van den Bruck, Carl Schmitt, Hitler

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History of Modern Political Thought. (Neumann)

The French religious wars of the 16th century will serve as the point of departure. The main theories to be discussed are:

1. The rule of law and the rights of man: the tradition of natural law [Junius Brutus, Hotman, Althusius, Hooker, Grotius, Locke, Montesquieu, Holbach, Helvetius, Condorcet];³⁹ the monarchists; the French and English constitutionalists; the Federalists; the idealists [Kant]; the utilitarians [Constant, Bentham, Rotteck, Mill, Mazzini, Spencer].

2. The evolution of state sovereignty: Machiavelli, the Reformation [Luther, Calvin], English and French absolutists [Boudan, Bousset, Hobbes], Hegel, [Spinoza,] modern doctrines [Stahl, Austin, Brooks, Adams].

3. The sovereignty of the people: the heritage of Roman law; the revival of Frankish and Germanic conceptions [Rousseau]; Marsilius of Padua; the Jesuit doctrines; the English, French, and American revolutions [Milton, the Levellers, Roger, Williams, Rousseau, Taylor, Jefferson, Robespierre, Linguet, the early Fichte]; the modern pluralists.

4. The revolutionary doctrines: the regicide theories (Boucher); religious communism (Winstanley); the socialists; revolutionary syndicalism; marxism.

5. Counter-revolutionary doctrines: the “arcana” theories [F.J. Horn]; the French doctrines (from de Maistre and Bonald to Barrés); the German theories from Haller to Hitler; the Spanish doctrine (Donoso Cortes); the English theory from Filmer to Carlyle; the Italians (Gentile, [Pareto, Mosca, Panuzio].).

The doctrines will be studied with regard to: the historical situation in which they arose; the actual influence of the doctrines had in molding the political and legal institutions of a country; their dissemination among the various strata of the people; their adaptation by each succeeding generation to its own needs; the extent to which their contents transcend the pragmatic needs of a given historical situation and embody truth.

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Sociology of Legal Institutions. (Neumann)

This course will discuss the structure and operation of modern legal systems. It will draw upon American, English, French and German law. The part played by the legal institutions in organizing cooperation, competition and domination will be analyzed. The main methodological principle will be the distinction between norm, behavior, and social substructure. The discussion will center around the following problems:

1. The formal devices of ordering behavior: the rule of law – as a general norm and as an individual measure; equity; the contract and the administrative act.

2. The agencies mediating between the state and the individual: property; family (family and inheritance law); associations; bureaucracy. This will be the major preoccupation of the course. The change in the function of property and its impact upon family law, the law of associations and the various types of bureaucracy will be discussed in detail.

3. The law making powers: the state; the autonomous law of associations; the judge made law; the custom and the law; morality and law.

The discussion of the legal doctrines (natural law and historical schools; mechanism and idealism; rationalism and utilitarianism; sociological and realistic, psychological and biological theories) will be part of the discussion of the institutions.

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Sociology of Modern Popular Literature. (Löwenthal)

This course aims at describing the transformation of liberal book culture into the modern phenomenon of large scale literary production and reading. The problem will be treated as a characteristic example of present-day collectivism. An introductory survey will discuss those writers who prophesied the coming of the era of mass culture, and critically analyzed it. (The French and Spanish counter-revolutionaries, Kierkegaard, Carlyle, Nietzsche, Spengler, Ortega y Gassét, etc.).

Both the contents of the literary material and the public response to it will be discussed. The course intends to show the antagonisms between certain patterns of standardization and the individualistic philosophy underlying our civilization. Special attention will be given to:

1. Biographies: It will be analyzed for what social and socio-psychological reasons the popular biography has more and more replaced the novel as “high-class” reading.

2. Magazines: Selected American and European popular magazines will be studied with regard to the editorial structure and the contents of fiction, serials, articles and pictures.

3. The modern best-seller: Some of the most successful American and European best-sellers of the postwar period will be studied with a view of discovering what changes in the literary and emotional tastes of the broad middle class strata can be inferred from them and to what extent they mirror political and economic trends during the last two decades. The discussion will include the popular reprints of famous literature of the past.

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[Draft.] Mass Culture. (Löwenthal)

This course will deal with features which distinguish the prevailing type of culture from preceding types. The mechanisms will be studied by which culture has been standardized and regulated to a degree unknown in earlier cultural patterns. Manifestations of standardized thinking and behavior will be analyzed in the representative newspapers, magazines, broadcasts, in the amusement industry, and in popular literature and music. This will be combined with a study of the bestseller and of the role of biography in books, the theater, and the movie. An attempt will be made to discern different forms of standardization, and the question will be raised of which social groups and interests promote and which are particularly responsive to those forms. The part played by contemporary relativism and skepticism will be examined, as well as the opposition to standardization (new trends in education, neo-Thomism, the youth movement).

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Social Trends in European Literature Since the Renaissance. (Löwenthal)

This course will give a cross-section of the various literary movements in order to discuss underlying social trends. It does not aim at a history of literature but will treat the novel and the drama since the times of Cervantes as material of sociological analysis. Works from divergent literary schools may appear under the same heading. The following social categories will primarily determine the analysis:

1. The emancipation of the individual from medieval authoritarianism: Cervantes⁴⁰

2. The defenders of feudalism vs. the absolutist state: Calderon, Lope de Vega

3. The defenders of absolutism: Cornielle, Racine

4. The glorification of the individual: Shakespeare, “Sturm und Drang”

5. The emergence of the burghers: Oliver Goldsmith, Richardson, Diderot, Beaumarchais, Lessing

6. The rationalization of middle class life: Goethe and the educational novel of the 19th century

7. Individualistic and social critiques of modern society: Romanticism, Flaubert, Meredith, Strindberg, Dickens, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Zola

8. Authoritarian attitudes toward modern society: Maurice Barrés, Stefan George, Knut Hamsun

The analysis of the works will be supplemented by a study of their impact on the educational and political setting.

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Sociology of Political Institutions. (Kirchheimer)

The actual relation between the individual and the state and the changes of that relation from the subject matter of the course. The impact of these changes on political parties, legislative assemblies, and administrative bodies will be studied.

Special attention will be devoted to the problem of those agencies which mediate between the individual and the state such as the trade unions, the business organizations, the mass party, and other forms of voluntary organizations. Mediation will be studied (1) in its impact upon the status of the individual (the extent to which the individual retains his actual freedom); (2) the structure of the state; (3) and the structure of the voluntary organizations (the extent to which they become de facto state organs).

This will lead to an attempt to sociologically interpret modern constitutional changes, especially the transformation of the legislature, the establishment of public bureaucracies, the status of a permanent army within the political framework. The current terms of “impartiality,” “neutrality,” “efficiency” will be historically and sociologically developed so as to find out whether they express the pattern of our political institutions.

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Development of Criminological Thought. (Kirchheimer)

The course will give a survey of the developments and ideologies in the field of criminology and criminal policy. The theories prevalent in this field from the beginning of modern times until the present will be discussed in the light of general trends of social thought and history. Attention will be specially focused on changes in the forms of punishment in relation to social change in general. The biological theories [on] dominant motives in the criminal policy of fascism will be inquired into. The discussion of the failure or success of these methods will lead to a discussion of criminal statistics regarded as a method of comparing criminality figures and of measuring the comparative weight of the different causal factors. The special problem of criminal policy in wartime will be considered. Recent changes in the treatment of juvenile delinquency as well as of recidivism in various countries will be related to differences in social policies. The problem of rehabilitation will lead to a final discussion of the functions and aims of criminal policy in a given order of society.

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Two Early Drafts for Course Announcements.

The Role of Ideas in Modern Society.

How do changes in the prevailing social values and ideas originate, and how do they influence the material and adaptive culture of a period? The problem will be studied through analysis of certain decisive stages of modern society.

1. Religious reform and the shaping of the modern individual. The effect of the reforms on the various social strata, their professional ethics, their work and their leisure.

2. Radical religion and rationalism in the English Civil War.

3. The intellectual background of the American and French revolution (Puritanism, Enlightenment, and economic liberalism).

4. The function of idealist and materialist philosophy in the rise of continental nationalism since the Wars of Liberation.

Special consideration will be given [to] the question of how certain philosophies fostered valuations which led to discriminatory treatment of national, religious, or racial minorities and to a defamation of certain professional groups. The reaction of the government and the social organism to these tendencies will also form part of this study (for example, the legislation against landed property and against aliens during the French revolution; the social and political role of anti-Semitism and militarism in Prussia; the propaganda against intellectuals and commercial and financial capital).

The social function of ideas will be illustrated through a study of charisma and leadership: early leader types (Rienzo and Savanarola – the significance of symbols and myths, mass meetings); leaders in periods of social change and social reconstruction.

European Culture in the Twentieth Century.

The transition from European liberalism to totalitarianism will be studied as marking the transformation of an entire system of culture. Starting from an analysis of the economic and political situation prior to the first World War, the course will deal with the impact of technological and scientific innovations (industrial rationalization, the rise of chemical and electrical industry) on the social set-up; the decline of the parliamentary system; the growth of mass parties (Weltanschauung parties). Emphasis will be laid on the new means for shaping and controlling public opinion in America and in Europe. Examination will then be made of how far these tendencies were reflected in and promoted by intellectual culture: by literature and the fine arts (realism, symbolism, expressionism); by philosophy (Nietzsche, Bergson, Spengler, phenomenology); by social science (Pareto, Max Weber); by psychology (Freud, Klages, Jung).

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George Grosz, Manhattan, 1946. (Detail)

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V. Ten Years on Morningside Heights: A Report on the Institute’s History, 1934 to 1944.

INTRODUCTION.

The history of the Institute of Social Research reflects to a certain degree the development of the social sciences during the last two decades.

The Institute was established in 1923 on the campus of the University of Frankfurt-am-Main, the youngest of German universities and, for a time, the citadel of progressive thought in the German university system.

Since 1933 the University of Frankfurt has become part of the Nazi regimented system of learning. From what news seeps through, it must be assumed that today the Institute’s building on campus has shared the fate of the rest of the university—it is gutted and in ruins.

And yet, the Institute still exists, it still endeavors—under different skies—to carry on the mission originally assigned to it more than twenty years ago: to inquire into the character of modern society; to investigate the problems of changes in social structure; and to develop new conceptual and methodological tools appropriate for this task. It has consistently tried to fulfill its mission first in Frankfurt, later in other European countries, and now in the United States.

The Institute owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to the admirable solidarity of French, Swiss, English, and American scholars. After the Institute had been forced out of Germany, it found temporary asylum in Switzerland, France, and England before settling in a new home in New York City under the auspices of Columbia University.

In the United States, protected from the ravages of war and assured of civil liberties, the Institute found the conditions essential for its survival. Here the Institute has again been in a position to pursue its work in a spirit of free and untrammeled inquiry.

December, 1944

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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTE.

The Institut für Sozialforschung was conceived in the fall of 1919 by Felix J. Weil, then a young scholar at the University of Frankfurt. In 1923 it was inaugurated as an institution affiliated with the university, but autonomous in its scientific work and in the administration of its endowment, which was contributed mainly by the late Dr. h.c. Hermann Weil.[*]⁴¹

Dr. Carl Grünberg, who had been professor of economic history at the University of Vienna, became its first director and at the same time professor at the University of Frankfurt. Upon his retirement in 1931, he was succeeded by the present director of the Institute, Max Horkheimer, then professor of social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt.

Under Dr. Grünberg the Institute concentrated on studies of economic history and the development of the labor movement, assembling a unique library of 60,000 volumes and a collection of letters, pamphlets, newspapers and posters on the history of the labor movement in Europe. The Institute possessed one of the most complete collections on the history and antecedents of the Nazi movement.

Under the direction of Dr. Horkheimer, the emphasis of the Institute’s work was shifted to social theory.

Under both orientations, however, the main task of the Institute was research in the widest sense of the word. Most senior members of the Institute also gave regular courses and seminars at the University, and leading scholars from other universities were invited to lecture and conduct seminars under Institute auspices.

The Institute served as host to the Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute so as to make available to social sciences the findings of modern depth psychology.

In the spring of 1933, the Nazi government closed the Institute because of “tendencies hostile to the state,” and seized the building and the library. Thus terminated the first decade of its existence. Yet, the work was carried on.

In 1931, when the clouds had already begun to gather, it was decided to prepare for any eventuality: most of the Institute’s endowment was transferred to Geneva, Switzerland, where it was managed by the Société Internationale de Recherches Sociales. At the same time, upon the invitation of the late Albert Thomas, the director of the International Labor Office, a branch of the Institute was established in Geneva. Subsequently, upon the invitation of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (University of Paris), a branch was also established in Paris, and the London Institute of Sociology gave hospitality to another branch in London.

Finally, in 1934, Columbia University generously assigned to the Institute the building at 429 West 117th Street, on the campus.

What was first a New York branch soon became the center of the Institute’s activities. Our small group of scholars gathered at the new headquarters, facing the task of carrying on the program of research, while at the same time trying to maintain ties with European social science, and to adjust itself to a new cultural and linguistic environment. During this transitional period as well as later, the Institute’s work was greatly facilitated by an advisory committee of American scientists whose names appear below:

Eugene N. Anderson, George Washington University; Charles A. Beard, Johns Hopkins; Edwin Borchard, Yale University; Morris R. Cohen, City College; Alfred E. Cohn, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; William Dieterle, Hollywood; Stephen Duggan, Institute for International Education; Henry Pratt Fairchild, New York University; Sidney B. Fay, Harvard University; Lloyd K. Garrison, University of Wisconsin; Calvin B. Hoover, Duke University; Philip C. Jessup, Columbia University; Lewis L. Lorwin, Washington, D.C.; Robert S. Lynd, Columbia University; Charles H. McIlwan, Harvard University; Robert M. MacIver, Columbia University; Charles M. Merriam, University of Chicago; Wesley C. Mitchell, Columbia University; William A. Neilson, New York; Howard W. Odum, University of North Carolina; Frederick M. Padelford, University of Washington; Max Radin, University of California; Lindsay Rogers, Columbia University; George H. Sabine, Cornell University; Thorsten Sellin, University of Pennsylvania; James T. Shotwell, Columbia University; John Whyte, Brooklyn College; Louis Wirth, University of Chicago; Howard Woolston, University of Washington.

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PART I: TEN YEARS ON MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS.

1. The First Five Years in New York; 1934 to 1939

During the first five years in New York, the greater part of the Institute’s work continued to be directed to empirical and theoretical research. Since 1936, its activities also included lectures in the Extension Division of Columbia University on Authoritarian Doctrines and Modern European Institutions. Other seminars and lectures were organized by the Institute itself with the participation of outside scholars.

The results of the Institute’s inquiries were published in two forms:

Our periodical Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, edited by the Institute and published by Librarie Felix Alcan, Paris (17 issues; 1934-1939; 2972 pp.), contained primarily the work of the Institute’s staff, although there were contributions by other scholars as well. Most articles were considerably longer than was usual in scientific journals and many of them were for all practical purposes monographs. Much space was given to the reviewing of important publications in the field of the social sciences, irrespective of the language in which they appeared. The principal language of the Zeitschrift remained German since it was felt at the time that contributions would lose much in the course of translation. In every instance, however, short abstracts were printed in French and English. This policy of printing articles in the author’s language was also followed with respect to contributions by French, English, and American scholars.

The Zeitschrift was the only remaining independent periodical in the field of social science published in German, and as such it became an indispensable tool for all German-speaking scholars living outside of Germany. It alone still embodied a specific philosophical-scientific German tradition which had been driven underground in the country of its origin. This justified our decision to make German the main language of the journal.

A comprehensive volume of 947 pages, Autorität und Familie, published in 1936 by Librarie Felix Alcan, Paris, constituted the report on a research project undertaken by the Institute’s staff with the aid of outside scholars. Theoretical and empirical approaches were combined to arrive at a well-rounded consideration of the problem. The study laid the groundwork for our later investigations into the aspects of authoritarian institutions.

Another major project was carried on during that period: the examination of material—gathered during the years immediately preceding the Nazi’s rise to power—regarding the general patter of life and the political, cultural, and religious views of 700 German manual and white-collar workers. The evaluation will be completed as soon as conditions allow a final sociological study of the growth and nature of Fascism in Germany. It promises to add important insights to our knowledge of the nature of Fascist psychology.

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During the first five years, the European branches served a double purpose: through them the Institute remained in close contact with intellectual life across the Atlantic, and through them the Institute made it possible for a considerable number of refugee scholars to continue their studies.

Many of these scholars had been unable to find new opportunities in the universities of their countries of refuge. To them the branches of our Institute provided much-needed assistance, both spiritual and material. Several of the staff members of the New York Institute visited the European branches regularly, delivering lectures and organizing research projects.

In Geneva, with the assistance of members of the International Labor Office, a comparative study of the organization and psychology of leisure-time was undertaken—a survey originally intended for a publication similar in form to Autorität und Familie.

The Institute also initiated an inquiry in several European countries into the effects of unemployment upon the structure and psychology of unemployed workers’ families.

Mention should also be made of the field work conducted in China which the Institute initiated during this period in collaboration with the Institute of Pacific Relations.

In addition to these enterprises, grants were made for various projects, and fellowships were given to competent students to enable them to continue their academic training, thus launching studies which might otherwise never have been undertaken. Some of these scholars later made significant contributions to the scientific life of their adopted country.[*]⁴² Among the recipients of the Institute’s grants and fellowships were 116 holders of doctor’s degrees and 14 persons with post-graduate training. During the ten-year period almost $200,000 was spent for these purposes.

2. The Second Five Years: 1940 to 1944

The outbreak of the European war deeply affected the work of the Institute: many of our studies had to be discontinued; new tasks presented themselves. A general overhauling of the Institute’s organization became necessary.

After the beginning of the hostilities we were advised by our French publisher, Librarie Felix Alcan, Paris, that he had obtained the consent of the French government for the continued publication of our periodical in France. In the spring of 1940 copy for most of the next volume of the Zeitschrift was in the hands of the printer. But France fell before the Nazi onslaught and the publication of the journal in Paris had to be given up. A few months later we were notified that the Nazis had looted our offices in the Ecole Normale Supérieure.

We secured an American visa for our colleague, Walter Benjamin, but the Vichy government refused him an exit permit and he died at the Spanish border where he had tried in vain to escape to freedom.

We succeeded, however, in helping some others of our European collaborators to escape to the Western Hemisphere, thanks to the untiring efforts of American rescue organizations. Yet, in many cases all our efforts were of no avail; the fate of many of our European friends is still unknown to us.

Faced with the almost complete losses of our contacts in Europe, we decided, in the summer of 1940, to transform our Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung into Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, written entirely in English and published by the Institute.

With America’s entry into the world conflict, our staff’s duties took on such proportions that we had to discontinue the publication of the periodical for the duration. Three of our collaborators have left the Institute and are now in government service; two others have been giving part-time service to government agencies.[*]⁴³

Several other developments brought about by the war should also be mentioned:

In 1941, when it appeared possible that Switzerland might be drawn into the conflict, we decided to transfer our endowment—which in the meantime had been supplemented by new donations from the estate of Dr. Hermann Weil—to the United States. These funds are now controlled by Kurt Gerlach Memorial Foundation, Hermann Weil Memorial Foundation, and Social Studies Association, Inc.

In 1942, the Committee on Instruction of the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia University took the initiative in discussing informally the question of the Institute’s closer affiliation with the University. It was agreed, however, to leave the question pending until after the war emergency.

In June, 1944, we left the building on 117th Street where the University had housed us since we came to Morningside Heights. The building was needed for the extension of the U.S. Navy’s courses in military government and administration. Our offices are now temporarily located partly in the Low Memorial Library, partly on Morningside Drive.

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The program of the Institute during the period under review consisted of a number of research projects which will be discussed in Part II. Several new studies were undertaken as a means of bringing our endeavors in line with the war effort and of helping toward a solution of postwar economic and social problems.

In the educational field, the Institute’s courses in the Extension Division of the University have continued and lectures and seminars are being conducted as occasion arises. Although necessarily hampered by the temporary suspension of the Institute’s periodical, the publication of studies was continued. For the present, several of our current studies, though still in manuscript form, serve as a source material for consultation, articles, and further studies.

Two substantial grants from outside sources have enabled us to conduct a thorough investigation into the function of anti-Semitism in present society: anti-Semitism as a political weapon and the development of anti-Semitism under the influence of Nazi propaganda and the Nazi example.

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A bibliography of all significant contributions by the Institute is given in the Appendix at the end of this report. In the following section (3) we list only the books published or sponsored by the Institute during the last ten years.

3. Publications 1934 to 1944 (in chronological order)

Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung

Studies in Philosophy and Social Science

• Paris: Librarie Felix Alcan, 1934-1939

• New York: Institute for Social Research, 1940-1942

• 7 volumes, 3681 pp.

Franz Borkenau, Der Übergang vom Feudalen zum Bürgerlichen Weltbild. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie der Manufakturperiode.

• Paris: Librarie Felix Alcan, 1934, xii and 559 pp.

Autorität und Familie (ed. Max Horkheimer)[*]⁴⁴

• Paris: Librarie Felix Alcan, 1936, 947 pp.

Hilde Rigaudias-Weiss. Les Enquêtes Ouvrières en France entre 1830 et 1848.

• Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1936, xi and 262 pp.

Mirra Komarovsky, The Unemployed Man and His Family.

• With an Introduction by Paul F. Lazarsfeld

• New York: Dryden Press, 1940, xii and 163 pp.

Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution. Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory.

• New York: Oxford University Press, 1941, xii and 431 pp.

Franz L. Neumann, Behemoth. The Structure and Practice of National Socialism.

• New York: Oxford University Press, 1942, xvii and 532 pp.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin zum Gedächtnis.

• New York: Institute for Social Research, 1942, 168 pp.

A.R.L. Gurland, Otto Kirchheimer, Franz L. Neumann, The Fate of Small Businesses in Nazi Germany.

• Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943, viii and 152 pp.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophische Fragmente.

• New York: Institute for Social Research, 1944, ix and 319 pp.

Felix José Weil, Argentine Riddle.

• New York: The John Day Company (in cooperation with the Latin American Economic Institute), 1944, xiii and 297 pp.

The following manuscripts are in press or ready for the printer:

Karl August Wittfogel (with Feng Chia-sheng), History of Chinese Society

• Volume Liao (907-1125 A.D.)

• Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (in press abt. 800 pp.)

Olga Lang, Chinese Family and Society.

• New Haven; Yale University Press (in press, abt. 600 pp.)

Max Horkheimer, Society and Reason.

• Five Public Lectures delivered in the Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1944. Manuscript, 158 pp.

Karl W. Kapp, Social Costs and Social Returns. A Critical Analysis of the Social Efficiency of Capitalism with an Appeal for a Re-Orientation of Economic Science.

• Manuscript, 400 pp.

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PART II: OUTLINE OF RESEARCH ACTIVITIES—1934 TO 1944.

From its inception, the Institute has held that overspecialization is an ever-present danger to the social sciences. We therefore have found it necessary to work at an integration and mutual fructification of their various branches. Every specialized fraction of study was treated as a small contribution to the integrated study of man. The results of particular projects have thus always been a part of a “Work in Progress,” directed in its entirety along well-established lines.

It has been a standard practice of the Institute, since the Frankfurt days, to meet regularly for discussion of the various problems arising out of separate branches of investigation. Every contribution by any member of the staff, has, prior to publication, had the advantage of frequent discussion and criticism by members representing different disciplines. Thus the Institute has constantly been a collective entity and not merely a more or less artificial and haphazard gathering of scientists working in related fields.

1. Philosophical Studies

The Institute’s staff holds a common belief in the intimate relationship of knowledge and values, or, better, of science and the aims which it must serve. In modern society, science is just another branch in the division of labor. In the same way that an automobile factory puts out trucks and passenger cars, and a farm produces grain and cattle, universities are supposed to provide new methods and techniques for industry and administration. The aims of production or administration are determined by economic needs or political agreements on which the scientific branch of the division of labor does not have any direct rational influence. The ends and aims of society are considered independent of reason and therefore irrational. In democracies they are determined by the free will of the majority or by the trends of the economic system; in dictatorships they are set by autocratic command of the ruler or through the struggles of cliques.

One might argue that the aims of society and individual life have hitherto been determined by religion rather than science. However this may be, religion in modern society shares the same fate as the secular branches of thought. It has become another specialized field in the division of labor whose influence upon the life of the average citizen is carefully limited. Occupying but a part of the child’s education, it has become a mechanical element in the machinery of social control. The same thing could be said of the other departments of culture. Art, for instance, is today not so much an expression of ideals to be realized in human existence as an instrument to promote aims determined by completely external forces. Art is supposed to facilitate adjustment, provide recreation and propagate the values of governmental systems. Art is used to hammer such values into the people’s heads and the people in turn demand that art serve these values in ever-increasing measure.

The Institute has tried to maintain the claim of theoretical thought to a place in determining and defining the aims society must pursue. Rational thought, it is true, functions in production or administration and thereby plays a necessary role in the permanent changes of society. But this is not enough. Thought should organize its own work toward the end of a more enlightened orientation of all human activities, including the operations of science, the determination of its problems, the organization of its studies and the [implementation] of its relationship to other branches of civilization.

This implies that any research project, whether or not it contributes to the functioning of social life in its present forms, may have a bearing upon our ultimate beliefs and should be conducted with this eventuality in mind. Each study, while conforming to the highest scientific standards, should at the same time have a philosophical orientation. It should be intended as a contribution to the ultimate motives of social activity. In this sense philosophy is not separated from science by a definite line of demarcation. Science itself becomes philosophy while philosophy itself consists of more than scientific studies. It is this concept of science as philosophy, and of philosophy as science, that in our opinion has characterized the great humanistic schools of thought in Europe since the Renaissance.

In its studies the Institute has preserved something of this attitude. In its specifically philosophical monographs it has tried to explain this state of mind to American science and to bring it to bear on present-day issues. Most of the articles listed under the heading of philosophy are devoted to the discussion of this conception of Humanism.

Essays such as “Traditional and Critical Theory” contain detailed criticism of positivist concepts of thought and outline a kind of thinking in which philosophy and science form an integrated whole. “The End of Reason” tries to show that positivism itself must be understood in the light of the great economic and social tendencies now threatening Western civilization and the very concept of the individual. Logical, moral and artistic problems are discussed in a critical spirit that aims to preserve the motifs of humanistic thought amidst the very decay of humanistic culture.

2. Sociological Interpretation of Literature, Music and the Arts since the Nineteenth Century.

In these studies we have attempted to continue the German Geistesgeschichte by giving it a more concrete sociological content and by relating it to the basic changes and conflicts of our society.

In studies like those on Baudelaire and Ibsen we have tried to analyze the social role of literature and art in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. These and similar studies have as their objective to determine the extent to which great works of literature express the antagonism between the ideals which society has instilled in its members and the social practice which is meant to fulfill them: The social function of art and literature was a critical one, accusingly pointing out the conflict between the individual and society and between private and social existence. Art was a serious affair, it was the expression of violated and unheard human rights.

We have paid particular attention to the expression of basic social changes in the content as well as in the formal problems of great art. We interpret it as a kind of code language for processes taking place within society which must be deciphered by means of critical analysis. We regard art largely as the expression of the essence of social processes which are often hidden by a veneer of phenomena such as may be easily described with facts and figures. We, therefore, regard the analysis of such works as an essential supplement to research in the orthodox sense.

Our studies on the industrialization of art examine the transition of objects of culture from the point where they are a monopoly of the middle and upper strata to the point where they are mass-produced by large-scale industry and designed for mass consumption. We have tried to analyze the origins and the probable consequences of this process.

The organized enterprises of the amusement industry, above all the movies, the radio and the magazines, have taken up that place in public regard which during the “liberal” era was largely given to the figures and the work of great creative writers and artists. Their world and morals—the content as well as the form of their creation—gave voice to tensions arising from the hardships and frustrations imposed by society upon the individual. Present-day culture, reaching the public through mass production and industrialized control, tends toward conformism and contains within itself a ready-made formula of truce between society and the individual.

In the subjection of the masses to these monopoly controls, new forms of social life are emerging in which the individual may find himself gradually transformed and culturally devitalized. The opposition of individual to society, the conflict between private and social existence which gave seriousness to the pursuit of art, has become obsolescent. Entertainments which have taken over the heritage of art act today rather as a popular tonic like swimming or football. Critique in art and theory is replaced by considerations of efficiency. The final decision on cultural production no longer rests with the creative artist or his informed public but rather with the amusement industries,—with business corporations. Popularity consists in reconciling the public to what the amusement industries want it to like.

In the course of its investigations in the fields of radio, music, movies, popular magazines, etc., the Institute has tried to analyze the substance and validity of the so-called aesthetic productions of modern industrialized art. It has come to the conclusion that the claim of those who hold these productions to be genuinely artistic and therefore to partake of the search for truth, is pure pretense. These analyses, while of necessity predominantly critical in character, do not, however, overlook the positive functions (though, from the standpoint of creative and socially critical art, disfigured and mutilated) which modern industrialized art still exercises for the needs of the individual.

3. Research on Authoritarian Systems and Trends.

(a) General

In its studies of authoritarian society, the Institute has focused its efforts on an understanding of all those factors—both psychological and sociological—from which authoritarianism draws its strength. Not only the freedom of the individual but the very concept of the individual as we have known him in Western civilization is attacked at its very roots by modern authoritarianism.

Why did this new enslavement not meet with more resistance? Why could it muster such enormous strength? These are crucial questions which must be elucidated.

In preparatory studies we investigated various aspects of “authority” as functioning in human society, especially in the family. We tried to approach the problem of “authority”—which might well be called the central problem of our times—from the different viewpoints of philosophy, psychology and history, thus arriving at the following tentative conclusions:

A definite consciousness of and general belief in authority have been characteristic of modern society from the beginning. Contrary to general belief that the growth of the sense of authority we witness today—particularly but by no means exclusively in the totalitarian states—signifies a sharp break with the past course of modern history, we hold it to be rather of one piece with this past and its logical continuation. The love of freedom and reason so characteristic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries embodied from the outset a contradiction. Psychological studies confirm that leanings of the personality toward acceptance of authority is a characteristic trait of modern society.

Particular attention has been given to the fate of the individual in modern mass society, his atomization and frustration on the one hand, and the readiness of reason to surrender to methods of mass domination on the other.

(b) National Socialism

The study of the Nazi variety of authoritarianism quite naturally claimed much of the Institute’s attention. Our studies on the Nazi system, its structure and dynamics, were undertaken because it seems to us that Nazism embodies what are at this time the most nearly perfect features of an authoritarian system in action. The problems concerning Nazism have towered high on our agenda, for what is to be studied here is above all the particularly virulent expression of tendencies and drives which can be observed all over the modern world. If Nazism were only the manifestation of the “German national character”, its study and understanding would be of relatively minor importance.

National Socialism is to all intents and purposes a new social order, essentially different from all other forms of Western society. It has replaced the free exchange of goods and services in an environment of individual freedom by a closely-knit social structure based on command and obedience in a leader-follower relationship. While many of the traditional institutions such as the family, private property, the profit motive, the courts of law, and so on, are still formally in existence, they have undergone basic changes which have altered their meaning and function within society. Parental authority is no longer a “natural right”; it is largely replaced by the state. Property may still give a title to income but all investment is government-directed; profits—while still serving as stimuli toward utmost performance—no longer guide economic activities. Legal institutions have lost all independence and have become mere tools in the hands of the rulers.

This new type of domination is founded on the principle of atomization and differentiation of society, all traditional social bonds having been dissolved. While party leadership, industrial entrepreneurs, military hierarchy, and civil servants have formed an uneasy alliance and thus hold the strings of power, the rural and urban middle classes as well as labor have been excluded from any active participation in political life.

This apparatus, having at its disposal powerful weapons of propaganda and bribery, can shift at will from pseudo-legality to outright terror. All autonomous associations are either smashed or transformed into government-controlled instrumentalities. The individual is deprived of all means of organized resistance and is reduced to the status of a monad, helplessly exposed to the combined onslaught of propaganda, corruption, and terror.

Though we have studied all the different phases of National Socialism, often in minute detail, we have always done so with the objective of integrating our findings into our general plan of work.

(c) Economic Studies

The main emphasis of our economic research has been placed on a study of those processes which in all highly developed countries have contributed to a concentration of economic power. We have recognized from the very beginning that it is essential to uncover those trends in the economic field which have facilitated and partly conditioned authoritarian tendencies in other domains.

Earlier studies of the processes of concentration of economic power in Europe (especially in Germany) have led to discussions on the changing role of the market and on the increased intrusion of elements of centralized control and planning into an allegedly free economy.

The conclusion of our studies is that we are headed toward some sort of governmentally controlled economy in all industrialized countries. It seems furthermore that there are no inherent economic forces that will necessarily prevent the efficient functioning of a planned economy under governmental operation. Government control might furnish the practicable means for eliminating anarchy of the market and unemployment of both capital and labor.

Economic problems in the old sense seem no longer to exist when the coordination of all economic activities is effected by a conscious plan instead of the “natural laws” of the market economy. Thus the choice is no longer between central control or free market, but “who shall control what” becomes the central question. The accent is shifted from the economic to the political sphere.

We therefore envision fewer possibilities for functioning economic systems after the war than is generally held to be the case, particularly for Europe. Our studies are substantially in agreement with those modern economists who see as the only alternative to a European “consumers’ economy” the preparation for a third world war.

(d) Legal and Political Institutions

The Institute engaged in a number of studies on the changed structure and function of legal institutions under totalitarian regimes. Several of these studies were devoted to the changing function of punishment and special consideration was given to the problems of juvenile delinquency. Others have inquired into the changes which legal procedures in their theory and practice have undergone in Germany.

The relation between social change and traditional political institutions offered another fruitful field of research, with particular reference to parliamentary institutions, the civil service, and the forms and transformations of group compromises with their accompanying shifts in power relationships.

(e) Special Types of Authoritarian Systems

As far back as 1924, we encouraged our colleague, Karl A. Wittfogel, to concentrate upon the study of Oriental society in general and Chinese society in particular. His experience enabled us to include at least one Oriental society in our study of authoritarian systems.

Dr. Wittfogel’s findings confirm the hypothesis that a key to an understanding of Oriental society may be found in the fact that Oriental agriculture requires large-scale water control, the operation of which calls for a centralized, authoritarian government. This key concept has been used to explain a wide range of developments in Chinese history.

During the years 1935 to 1937, Dr. Wittfogel and his staff gathered a huge amount of textual material in China. This material, concerning the country’s institutional history during 2,100 years, became the starting point for a History of Chinese Society. Since 1939, this monumental study, financed mainly by the Rockefeller Foundation, has been conducted by the Chinese History Project at Columbia University under the joint auspices of the Institute of Pacific Relations and our Institute.

Under Dr. Wittfogel’s direction, a group of qualified Chinese and Western scholars is engaged in translating, annotating, and analyzing basic texts on China’s economic, social, administrative and military history. One volume of the study—devoted to a period of foreign conquest in China—has been completed; work on three other periods is in progress.

While in China, Dr. Wittfogel and Miss Olga Lang engaged in a study of the modern Chinese family. The result of this study, based not only on questionnaires, case studies, and personal observations, but also on analysis of Chinese literary documents, will be published in a book by Miss Lang under the title Chinese Family and Society. The Carnegie Corporation and the Institute of Pacific Relations share with us the sponsorship of this publication which should be an interesting companion piece to our earlier studies on authority and family in Western society.

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Due to the special background of our colleague, Felix José Weil, a native of Argentina, we were able to extend our study of various authoritarian societies to look at this semi-colonial country. Dr. Weil’s findings have been published in his book Argentine Riddle.

The study emphasizes that the present Argentine regime presents similarities to as well as fundamental differences from European fascist movements. Unlike National Socialism, this authoritarian regime did not ride to power on the wave of a hopeless depression with millions of unemployed. A totalitarian mass organization never existed in Argentina. While the regime ruthlessly suppressed labor unions and opposition parties, it did not adopt the leadership principle, the one-party system, or racial anti-Semitism. The regime proves to be the last desperate effort of the landed interests to stave off the effects of growing industrialization of the country. The social function of authoritarianism in Argentina is to protect the existing rule of the landed oligarchy against political transformations stemming from the country’s rapidly changing economic structure.

4. Social Function of Prejudice.

Studies concerning prejudice have been the central part of our activities during the war years.

In 1939, the Institute had already elaborated a project for conducting a basic historical survey of the problem of anti-Semitism. After the outbreak of the war we decided to set this project temporarily aside and to center our work about those aspects of anti-Semitism which have a more direct bearing on the present American scene, since we felt that research in this field would serve an especially useful function in the immediate future.

We welcomed greatly the opportunity which presented itself to initiate a special research project in collaboration with the American Jewish Committee, since we say an opportunity thus to combine more or less theoretical inquiries with attempts to convert them into practical application in the fight against the most virulent and socially dangerous form of prejudice: anti-Semitism.

Under the co-directorship of Robert M. MacIver and Dr. F. Pollock, a series of studies was launched (1) on the nature of anti-Semitism and (2) anti-Semitism at work.

Conversion of anti-Semitic prejudice into militant political anti-Semitism can as yet be most effectively analyzed in terms of European experience, though increasing evidence has unfortunately become available in this country in recent years. The Institute has therefore given preference to American material in its study of the anti-Semitic attitude, while political anti-Semitism was mainly, but by no means exclusively, studied on the basis of European experience.

We are aware that many scholars have been working in this field and that important findings have been made, yet the nature and the roots of prejudice are still imperfectly known. New scientific instruments have to be devised to arrive at more complete and satisfactory results.

In 1944, we particularly investigated the susceptibility of American Labor to anti-democratic and especially anti-Semitic propaganda. Substantial field work has been conducted in five areas (Greater New York - Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco). Among the new methods applied were the so-called “participant interviews”, i.e., interviews carried out by rank-and-file workers who had previously been instructed by the Institute’s field workers. The substantial cost of this experiment has been shared by the Jewish Labor Committee. The material collected is now in the process of evaluation.

We are convinced that the inquiry into the social function of prejudice conducted in recent years, while fitted into the framework of our general investigation of cultural and societal trends, is also a contribution toward the building of a healthy postwar society in America.

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It might appear that the studies of such diverse subjects as the sociological roots of art and the function of prejudice in modern society are in no way connected and interrelated. Yet we hope that the preceding pages have indicated that whether studying European society or Oriental culture, art or economics, we have been conducting one and the same basic inquiry. Our subject matter has ever been the same. We are concerned with uncovering the roots of modern culture, with analyzing the role of the modern individual in a world of rapid change. When we investigate prejudice just as when we investigate the industrialization and commercialization of art, our object is to safeguard and expand those values which aim at the growth and full development of the individual, and to combat all those forces which tend to imprison it in the fetters of authoritarian manipulation.

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COLLABORATORS OF THE INSTITUTE (December, 1944)⁴⁵

Members.

Theodor W. Adorno, Ph.D

Max Horkheimer, Ph.D

Leo Lowenthal, Ph.D

Frederick Pollock, Sc. Pol. D.

Felix J. Weil, Sc. Pol. D.

Karl A. Wittfogel, Ph.D

Research Associates.

A.R.L. Gurland, Ph.D

K. Wilhelm Kapp, Sc. Pol. D.

Paul W. Massing, Sc. Pol. D.

Josef Soudek, Sc. Pol. D.

Research Assistants.

Margaret Davis

Lore Kapp

Virginia W. Wicks

Consultants.

Herta Herzog, Ph.D

In Government Service.

Otto Kirchheimer, J.D

Herbert Marcuse, Ph.D

Franz L. Neumann, J.D., Ph.D

Collaboration with Other Academic Groups:

Berkeley Public Opinion Study

R. Nevitt Sanford, Ph.D

Else F. Brunswick, Ph.D

Daniel Levinson, Ph.D

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Goerge Grosz. Blue Sky (Manhattan Skyline). 1946

1. Adorno to Horkheimer, 10/7/1941: “I have spent the last few days working on the list of lectures. I would like to thank you in particular for the loving way in which you have worked out the outline of the sociology of art that was intended for me. Since your social-psychological lectures had to be refocused on the psychology of mass movements, since they would otherwise have overlapped with Kleinberg’s announcement, I have reformulated this outline somewhat, hopefully in keeping with their original meaning.” In: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer. Briefwechsel 1927-1969: Band II: 1938-1944. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004), 260-262. Author’s translation.

2. The previous English translation: “Debate about methods in the social sciences, especially the conception of social science method for which the Institute stands.” Translated from the German by David Kettler and Thomas Wheatland. Thesis Eleven; 111(1) (2012), 123–129; DOI: 10.1177/0725513612453426.

3. Cf. Axel Honneth, “Kritische theorie. Vom zentrum zur peripherie einer denktradition.” In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Vol. 41 No. 1 (1989), 1-32.

4. Transcription of: “Über das Institut für Sozialforschung 1938.” Sourced from: MHA Na [656], S. [1] 1 — [38] 38. Typed manuscript, first English translation, with handwritten corrections [by Julian Gumperz].

The German draft has been published in Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften under the title “[Idee, Aktivität und Programm des Instituts für Sozialforschung] (1938),” in: in MHGS, Bd. 12 (1985), 131-164.

5. “Debate über Methoden der Sozialwissenschaften, besonders die Auffassung der Methode der Sozialwissenschaften, welche das Institut vertritt. Theodor W. Adorno, Henryk Grossman, Julian Gumperz, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Franz L. Neumann, Friedrich Pollock, Felix Weil, H. Weil, Alfred Seidenmann.” In: Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften. Band 12: Nachgelassene Schriften 1931–1949. Edited by Gunzelin Schmidt Noerr (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985), 542-552.

6. Adorno. “Eine Stätte der Forschung (1941),” Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 20.2, (Suhrkamp-Verlag, 1997). Author’s translation.

7. “Vorlesungsankündigungen der Institutsmitglieder.” Sourced from: MHA Na [651].

8. “Ten Years on Morningside Hights. A Report on the Institute's History 1934 to 1944 (December 1944).” Sourced from: MHA Na [656], S. [4]-[41].

9. Alternate formulation: “The collective work of these scholars does not mean that they have abandoned their own fields of investigation in order to engage in vague speculations…”

10. Crossed out: “bourgeois”

11. Crossed out: “severe disciplining of”

12. Crossed out: “non-bourgeois”

13. Crossed out: “bourgeois”

14. Crossed out: “praxis”

15. Crossed out: “bourgeois”

16. Crossed out: “character traits”

17. Crossed out: “statesmen”

18. Crossed out: “bourgeois”

19. Theodor W. Adorno, Against Epistemology. A Metacritique. Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antinomies. Translated by Willis Domingo. (Blackwell, 1982 [1956]) [link]

20. Author could not be determined. The editors of MHGS, Bd. 12 (1985) suggest Herbert Marcuse may have proposed this project or worked on the manuscript. Evident ties to Horkheimer’s “Egoism”-essay of 1936.

21. Otto Kirchheimer and Georg Rusche, Punishment and Social Structure [1939], with a new introduction by Dario Melossi (Routledge, 2003). [link]

22. Mirra Komarovsky, The unemployed man and his family—the effect of unemployment upon the status of the man in fifty-nine families. With an introduction by Paul Lazarsfeld. (New York : Octagon Books, 1971 [c1940]). [link]

23. At the time of this draft, Horkheimer still planned on the publication of Erich Fromm and Hilde Weiss’s study on worker attitudes in the Weimar Republic, which wouldn’t be published until 1980 under the direction of Wolfgang Bonß.

Erich Fromm (& Hilde Weiss), The working class in Weimar Germany: a psychological and sociological study. Translated by Barbara Weinberger, edited with an introduction by Wolfgang Bonß. (Berg Publishers, 1984 [1980])

24. Apparently referring to tentative plans for an English translation of collected essays from the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. No such collection was published, though through the mid-1940s several English translators—most notably Norbert Guterman—were contracted by the ISR for the project and even began translating select essays.

25. Planned text by Max Horkheimer (since ~1934), with a rotating cast of possible co-authors and collaborators (from Herbert Marcuse to Karl Korsch) until, in fall 1939, Horkheimer began a series of Diskussionsprotokolle with Theodor W. Adorno on the problems of dialectical philosophy that would culminate in Dialectic of Enlightenment.

26. Planned text by Herbert Marcuse (since 1936), with the collaboration of Max Horkheimer. Never executed.

27. The editors of MHGS, Bd. 12 (1985) connect this abstract to the ISR’s Studies in Prejudice series (1949-1950) and Erich Fromm’s work following his break with the ISR in 1938.

28. For more on Andries Sternheim’s study of leisure-time, see: Nicolaas Peter Barr, “The Actuality of Critical Theory in the Netherlands, 1931-1994.” (Dissertation, 2012) [link]

29. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (prepared on the basis of the German volume edited by Rolf Tiedemann) (Harvard University Press, 2002) [link]

30. In: MHGS, Bd. 16 (1995), 449-453. English in original.

31. In: MHGS, Bd. 16 (1995), 455. Author’s translation.

32. English in original.

33. English in original.

34. [Earlier draft ‘b)’:] “The utopias of history, both secret and open, will be distinguished according to whether they aim at this or a transcendental world and according to whether they are forward or backward looking.”

35. [Earlier draft ‘b)’:] “(…) small business man; and finally an analysis of Fourier’s Theorie de quatre Mouvements.”

36. From an earlier draft.

37. From an earlier draft.

38. From an earlier draft.

39. All brackets contain material from an earlier draft, cut for the final submission.

40. Löwenthal’s note: “Names are used merely as illustrations”

41. In original: [*] More details on the Institute’s beginnings may be found in the pamphlet International Institute of Social Research. A Report on Its History, Aims and Activities, New York, 1938.

42. [*] Among them were Paul Honigsheim, now professor of anthropology, State College, East Landing, Mich.; Kurt Mandelbaum, now at the Institute of Statistics, Baliol College, Oxford, England; Gerhard Meyer, now professor of economics, University of Chicago; J. Rumney, now professor of sociology, University of Newark, N.J.

43. [*] Dr. Otto Kirchheimer is with the Office of Strategic Services [OSS].

Dr. Herbert Marcuse was with the Office of War Information [OWI] and is now with the [OSS].

Dr. Franz Neumann acted first as Chief Consultant to the Board of Economic Warfare [BEW] and is now with the [OSS].

Dr. Leo Löwenthal was a Consultant for the [OWI] and served for some time as a Section Chief for the same agency.

Dr. Fredrick Pollock served as Consultant to the [DoJ] and [BEW].

44. [*] A partial translation was published by the State Department of Social Welfare and the Department of Social Science, Columbia University, as a report on Project No. 165-97-6999-6027, conducted under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, New York, 1937.

45. Followed by: APPENDIX. BOOKS, ARTICLES, MANUSCRIPTS, LECTURES AND SEMINARS by Members and Collaborators of the Institute, pp. 21-36 of the report. Not reproduced here.