Max Horkheimer: Lectures Towards a Psychology of Anti-Semitism (April, 1943).
+ Fragments with Adorno on the Study of A.S.; Letters on the Scientific Concept of the Research Project (1942/43).
“Civilization itself cannot be cleared of the responsibility of having engendered its opposite: barbarism. History achieved the domestication of man only by continuous suffering. … The profound story of Paradise and the expulsion from it in the first chapters of Genesis may combine a theological truth with a historical memory which toiling and oppressed people harbored of happier days free from the burden of organized and regular work. Only during the last one or two thousand years has man learned to do his work without the pressure of the ruthless taskmaster by transforming the outside coercion into the power of conscience in his own soul, by translating the immediate need into concepts which comprise the future as well as the past and the present. What I am referring to is the process which leads from a stage in which compulsion of the masses by the very few was a social necessity to a level where force finds its expression in the law, where people have become capable of molding their own relations by respecting their mutual interests and of making work a tolerable and even desirable expression of life. If we try to understand the psychology of the present-day human being, we have to remember that this whole transmutation is a recent one. …” — Horkheimer, On the Psychology of Anti-Semitism (4/30/1943).
Translator’s note.
First: The core of this post is the archival reconstruction of two lectures Horkheimer delivered in April 1943: (I.) on the scientific conception of the ISR’s planned research project on anti-Semitism; (II.) on the idea of a social-theoretical psychology of anti-Semitism and a complementary socio-psychological program for empirical social research, both of which are developed by recourse to a speculative, historical-philosophical critique of civilization that’s equal parts Nietzschean genealogy of morality, Marxian history of (and as) class struggles, and Freudian ‘depth’-psychology. The crux of my interpretation of the ISR’s 1940s social research is the following: the ‘esoteric’ side of the ISR’s ‘Studies’ on anti-Semitism and Prejudice in the 1940s must be construed and denied. My hope is that this collection of reconstructed, translated, and excerpted texts will help make this interpretive approach more convincing—namely, by first drawing and then undermining the distinction between ‘theoretical depths’ and ‘empirical surface.’ Adorno and Horkheimer have often been accused of asymmetrically ‘grounding’ their ‘Studies’ (on anti-Semitism and Prejudice) in a speculative philosophy of history at the expense of the empirical dimension of research.1 However, this interpretation not only, I’ve argued in a previous post, mischaracterizes their actual ‘working method’ in the 40s, but also misses the central contention of texts like Horkheimer’s ‘On the Psychology of Anti-Semitism’: the theoretical critique of civilization does not unilaterally ‘ground’ the empirical social research on anti-Semitism and social prejudice independently of the facts; rather, the facts of anti-Semitism and social prejudice, as far as empirical research has and can establish them, demand the theoretical critique of civilization. As Adorno will formulate the point in Negative Dialectics (1966), “it abhors stench because it stinks—because, as Brecht put it in a magnificent line, its mansion is built of dogshit.”2 In Horkheimer’s 1944/45 “Program for an Inter-European Academy,” he writes:
Nazi barbarism has a long and uninterrupted prehistory. From Cortes’ rule of conquered Mexico to Leopold II’s administration of the Congo the native’s experiences with the invader might not have been so very different from that of the inhabitants of occupied countries with their German oppressors. Even the advocates of concentration camps for interning fellow countrymen could find some support in institutions such as French Guyana.
In sum, for Adorno and Horkheimer, the atrocities of the 19th, 20th, and now 21st centuries don’t just require us to contextualize ourselves in the longue durée of the history of Western Civilization that brought us to this point; rather, these atrocities demand an unsparing re-evaluation of the history of Western Civilization as a whole precisely because it brought us here at all. The anatomy of the man is the key to the anatomy of the ape.3 History, too, must always be read forwards and backwards at the same time.4
Second: I’ve included several of Adorno and Horkheimer’s ‘Fragments on the Study of Anti-Semitism (ca. 1942/43),’ two of which—viz., ‘Problems in the Study of Anti-Semitism’ and ‘The materialist explanation of anti-Semitism’—have not, to my knowledge, previously been published in English or German. Finally: I’ve included excerpts from several of Horkheimer’s letters in 1942/43 on the multidisciplinary concept of the ‘Studies’ and the problem of ‘social pathology.’
Contents.
Lectures Towards a Psychology of Anti-Semitism (April, 1943).
I. Planned Research Projects on Anti-Semitism (4/16/1943).
II. On the Psychology of Anti-Semitism (4/30/1943).
Adorno and Horkheimer—Fragments on the Study of Anti-Semitism (ca. 1942/43).
Problems in the Study of Anti-Semitism.
The materialist explanation of anti-Semitism.
Adorno—Ad. Anti-Semitism (1943).
Letters On the Scientific Concept of the Research Project (1942/43).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Scientific Concentration and Integration (1/5/1942).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: an Antidote for Social Illness (11/19/1943).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: “A kind of socio-psychological experimental lab…” (11/28/1943).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Fascism as Social Hygiene (5/6/1942).
Appendix—Marcuse and Horkheimer: Notes on Christianity and Anti-Semitism (1943).
Letter—Marcuse, re: The Inadequacy of the ‘Spearhead’-Theory (7/28/1943).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Anti-Semitism and the End of Paganism (9/11/1943).
Lectures Towards a Psychology of Anti-Semitism (April, 1943).
I. Planned Research Projects on Anti-Semitism (4/16/1943).
[MHGS, Bd. 12] Editor’s remark. The following presentation of a research program on anti-Semitism is the text from a lecture delivered by Horkheimer on April 16th, 1943. The occasion, location, and audience are unknown. The plans for a comprehensive study of anti-Semitism, eventually culminating in the Studies in Prejudice, date back to 1939; its first theoretical expression was Horkheimer’s essay, “The Jews and Europe.” A version of the empirical program [1939/40] was published in 1941. The relationship between the ISR and AJC was established in the summer of 1942, when the latter took on funding for the studies. Around the same time, the ISR also established contacts with the JLC, which provided funding for the study Anti-Semitism in American Labor, the first draft of which was completed in 1945. This study was the product of collaborative work between Arkadij Gurland, Leo Löwenthal, Paul Massing, Friedrich Pollock and Felix Weil, and remained unpublished due to methodological and content-related political concerns. The following lecture from 1943 documents a certain stage in the far-reaching plans that would never be realized in the form in which they are presented. The plans of the Los Angeles group have recognizable connections: the first study, “Elements of Anti-Semitism” in Dialectic of Enlightenment, the second study, Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman’s Prophets of Deceit, and the fourth study, Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford’s The Authoritarian Personality (1950), as well as Bruno Bettelheim and Morris Janowicz’ Dynamics of Prejudice (1950) and Nathan W. Ackerman and Marie Jahoda’s Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder (1950).5
[During the years of 1929 to 1932 I was engaged, together with some of my colleagues of the university of Frankfurt am Main, in a study on the German employees and workers with regard to their family life.6 The study was carried through in connection with the International Labor Office. We also investigated their reactions toward certain forms of relief and their views on several different social and political problems. The cross-section of the stratum which we had selected for our study was composed of relatively intelligent, well-informed individuals who had, with none too many exceptions, a satisfying knowledge of the republican form of government, the administrative machinery, and even of Germany’s relations with other nations of the world. They proved to be very cooperative by answering our long questionnaires and by granting additional time to our special interviewers. The data we collected on our main topic were comprehensive and satisfactory.
But there was one thing that was not so satisfactory: that was the general mentality and character structure of those questioned by us, as it was conveyed to us by an examination of the consistency of the various answers on the individual questionnaire. We discovered that the same person who had proven himself to be well-acquainted with the difficulties of the actual government, with the doctrines of a political party and, above all, with his own material interests, was in many cases totally blind to the cravings and ideas of his fellow-men and fellow-sufferers in other walks of life, and even of the individuals very close to himself. We found that the same man who had answered our question of what he thought should be the foremost task of the government in foreign politics with the sentence “it should maintain peace with all nations,” had responded to our question on his own family-life by giving a picture of patriarchal tyranny which somehow implied he was using the whip on his children and the fist on his wife. The man who analyzed the items of the national debt and the alliances of parliamentary groups, believed in chain-letters, quack-salvers, and resented his wife’s spending some money for a decent dress. What struck us was not so much the crudeness of such views and instincts, but the discrepancy between the outspoken conventional beliefs and the chaotic psychological dispositions behind them. It was our first scientific experience of the superficiality of civilization, or, to put it more exactly, of the destructive forces, the coldness, the resentment which, during, and perhaps as a result of, the march of civilization, had accumulated behind the sociable forefront of the average man. The impact of the humanistic concepts on man was frightfully weak.
When, after the catastrophe had begun, some of the scholars who had undertaken those investigations, together with myself, were invited by Columbia University to teach and study in the framework of its educational system, we brought with us the conviction that the impressionability of the masses by anti-Semitic stimuli had to do with those psychological inconsistencies. No doubt, anti-Semitism, in the first instance, was due to political and economic causes. It was used by social forces that wanted to divert public attention from their own responsibilities. But they were successful—only because civilization itself had created an antagonistic state of mind in human beings. It had, by its very progress, kindled its own opposite: barbarism in the very heart of civilized man. This is not true only with regard to the so-called reactionaries. It manifests itself even in the works of the protagonists of modern culture. French Enlightenment, the very movement which inaugurated the liberal era on the European continent, is permeated with anti-Semitism, not to speak of England where not even the great Hume and historians like Gibbons are free from it. The barbarian aspect of the work of such great humanists as Kant and Goethe manifests itself most distinctly when they speak of Jews and Judaism, and the trace of anti-Semitic feeling betrays the philosophical works of Zola and Anatole France. Enlightened thinkers were no victims of a hostile propaganda or of their own need for an ideological escape. Their hostility sprang from the core of modern culture itself. If their souls harbored such destructive elements, the average men, not to speak of the backward layers of society, had, despite their neighborly attitudes, a deep affinity to oppression and inhumanity.]7
For many years it has been our conviction that the daily defense against anti-Semitism, against the lies and crimes of our enemies, was only one side of our fight for self-preservation. We treat cancer in hospitals, we attend to the sick trying to relieve their pain and to prolong their lives. But aside from the hospitals and independent of their endeavor, the tenacious work of research is going on, a methodical and well-organized study integrating the knowledge from the various realms of science. Similarly, the daily fight against anti-Semitism should be accompanied by a well-planned investigation of the underlying destructive tendencies.8 Our interest as Jews which leads us to engage in such a work is identical with our task as laborers for the future of mankind. For, like the biological studies into the nature of one illness has often brought a better knowledge of other plagues, or even a deeper understanding of the nature of illness itself, the fearless study of anti-Semitism may well prove to be the best approach for the exposition of the anti-democratic feelings in the masses and lead to new methods in order to bring their emotional and moral condition to the level which has been reached in science and industry.9 You know that Hitler has won his great, early success by swamping first Germany, and then Europe, and the whole world with anti-Semitic and totalitarian ideas. He was able to do so because the subject was studied in excellent institutions all over the Reich and from all practical and scientific angles. [Not only the Institute for Germans Abroad and the big Institute of Research in Judaism, but all sociological and psychological departments of any university became a part of that gigantic research project. The Ministry for the Enlightenment of the People, directed by Mr. Goebbels, was, during the first years of the regime, a fantastic laboratory in which thousands of experts studied all the psychological, social, and even physiological means of transforming human individuals into the material of totalitarian states.]10 The Germans gave the world an example of how to put social science into affect. To accept their challenge—and we are late in this field as we were unfortunately late in others—we must concentrate even harder on the subject, for one needs more knowledge to cure an illness than to cause it.
The Institute for Social Research, for which I stand, is affiliated with Columbia University. Last month, the Institute together with the American Jewish Committee in New York have created a fund for the research into the roots of anti-Semitism. The studies are to be carried through by the members of the Institute and a small staff of assistants. Our budget is at present rather limited, but it is the intention of our sponsors to put the investigation on a much larger scale if the preliminary studies should develop satisfactorily. The undertaking is based upon the idea of combining the knowledge and experience of the Committee with the knowledge and experience of the European scholars who form the group of the Institute and who represent the different branches of social science and humanities. The work will be divided into two sections. The main part, referring to the economic and social causes of anti-Semitism, will be handled in New York under the supervision of Dr. Frederick Pollock and Dr. MacIver of Columbia University. The psychological part will be conducted in Los Angeles by myself and Dr. Theodor Adorno, [the sociologists.]11 The two groups shall work in perfect understanding and contact with each other, and, at the same time, the project will benefit from the advice and the suggestions of outstanding experts from the two great cultural centers of our country.
During the first nine months we intend to engage in a number of model studies. By this we understand examples of different approaches to the problem. We shall follow up each of them to the point where it can be decided in how far its expansion is scientifically justified.
I shall give you now the program of these studies.
(1) The New York Group will [first]12 give a criticism of the methods used in the fight against anti-Semitism in Germany from the collapse of the Kaiserreich to the ascent of National Socialism. This will include an analysis of the different phases of anti-Semitic propaganda and the popular reaction to it under the Weimar Republic.
(2) There will be a second study on the main turning points on the road toward the goal of extermination of the Jews. It will be attempted to analyze the direct and indirect causes of totalitarian anti-Semitism, and to clarify this concept in contrast to other forms of anti-Semitism.
(3) There will be made an inquiry into the nature of anti-Semitic argumentation in the different phases of Nazi-ideology. The aim is to determine the shift from intermittent practices of propaganda to a coordinated political system.
(4) It will be studied how various groups, political, social, cultural ones, in different European countries reacted to the gyrations of totalitarian anti-Semitism. Special attention will be devoted to the question of to what extent the democratic institutions in some of the countries proved to be a wall against the rising tide of barbarism, and why they finally crumbled.
(5) A fifth study is planned in order to determine how the European experiences can be applied to the American scene.
In Los Angeles we shall cope with the psychology, or better, cultural anthropology of anti-Semitism. We shall try to develop methods in order to study the destructive tendencies inherent not only in anti-Semitism but in other barbarian trends of modern society as they manifest themselves in the growing indifference, or even hostility, towards the ideals of democracy.
(1) Our first study will be a survey of the most important theories on the irrational opposition against civilization in individuals and groups. During the last decades a great many writings on this most pertinent problem have been published. However, the intuitions of those foremost scientists, theologians, pedagogues, and philosophers could be made much more fertile if they were translated into the form of verifiable hypotheses to be followed by methodical empirical research.
(2) We shall make a textual analysis of anti-Semitic writings and speeches in order to discover the very [stimuli] to which the masses respond. [The propaganda of our enemies is not only based on its manifest contents, on its arguments, and therefore the fighting of these arguments should only be one part, however important, of our counter-measures.]13 It is typical of anti-Semitic propaganda that it tends to establish a deeply hidden intelligence with the darker psychological layers within its prospective followers. Insofar as this understanding goes, propaganda can easily dispense with truth. We shall try to enumerate the linguistic and other elements which bring about such intelligence.
(3) We shall study autobiographies of personalities in public life who have turned anti-Semites. That’s how we should be able to find out certain mechanisms and experiences promoting such conversions.
(4) We shall, with the help of universities, colleges, and possibly churches, arrange a series of psychological sessions with students and members of other typical groups. These sessions will be conducted by American psychologists with a view on determining the anti-Semitic and anti-democratic syndrome in an indirect and more effective way than it could be done by questionnaires and by the relatively crude methods developed by various institutions for the research of public opinion.
(5) We intend to combine number four with a small experimental movie picture which we want to produce. The movie is supposed to show some boys playing at games. An argument starts and one of the boys is singled out and takes a terrible beating. At the beginning of the picture, the names of the boys will appear on the screen. But for different groups of spectators, we shall have two different versions of the list of names. One group will read a gentile name for the boy who is the victim, the other will find him named with a typical Jewish one. Students, legionnaires, soldiers, etc. who cooperate as our spectators will be told that we are studying the accuracy of the testifying witness. After the completion of the picture we shall distribute questionnaires and ask the members of each group separately what they think started the argument, whether the boy was courageous or a coward, whether he deserved the beating, and so on. It is possible to boost the experiment by reproducing certain parts of the picture in which the beaten up boy is being played by a Jewish actor with pronounced Jewish gestures. A third version might show a Negro or a Philippino in that particular boy’s role. You can imagine how manifold the scientific possibilities are that such a picture will offer.
I repeat that in the year to come our project can be carried out only at a very modest scale. [They will be model studies which, although they may lead already to some useful results, will be only a first attempt at the organized study of the nature of the tendencies inherent in man himself as they threaten our society.]14 Nevertheless, even those preliminary studies may lead to some worthwhile results. And [...] there is only one thing left to be hoped for: that we may really contribute to the fight.
II. On the Psychology of Anti-Semitism (4/30/1943).
Following the kind invitation of your outstanding rabbi whose name has become a symbol of Jewish courage in the face of anti-Semitism in its most terrible form, I have come here to tell you of an investigation which, during the last weeks, has been inaugurated by the Institute of Social Research. This Institute for which I stand is [proof] of American hospitality. When German universities, in contrast to their fine tradition, ceased to be the home of independent thinking, I came to this country and explained the situation to the President of Columbia University in New York. I told him—in particular—what had happened to the University of Frankfurt and some of its outstanding institutes. When he asked me about myself I had to report that I and several colleagues who had often collaborated on problems of social science and philosophy were now separated, scattered all over Europe without any possibility of continuing our studies. A few days later I was invited to inspect a house on the campus of Columbia University and, if I liked it, to send wires to my colleagues encouraging them to resume our common studies within the framework of that university. These were the first steps of our Institute in this country.
While, before the war, our research work was concerned with such problems as the Family, Unemployment, the State and the Economic System, and the Philosophic Problems of Democracy, more recently we have devoted most of our time to problems concerning the war effort.15 We have analyzed the institutions of National Socialism, German morale, labor in Europe, and the problems with which America will be confronted after the war. The project on anti-Semitism, which is now getting underway, is sponsored jointly by the Institute and the American Jewish Committee in New York. It is divided into two sections. The first and main section will gather new data on the economic and political history of totalitarian anti-Semitism;16 it is our conviction that a deeper insight into its rise in Germany may help in the discovery and diagnosis of similar movements elsewhere. We shall try to explain the tragic failure of the democratic forces to oppose totalitarian anti-Semitism, that we may learn here by the mistakes that were made over there. The second section refers to the psychology of anti-Semitism and that is what we are interested in tonight.17 With our work just getting underway, I can but develop some ideas which anybody who approaches this appalling phenomenon may find worthwhile considering.
The history of mankind can be regarded as an incessant effort to achieve all that is meant by the concept of civilization, an effort which is constantly hampered and opposed by the darker forces in human beings themselves. Modern psychology has taught us to regard the specific nature and the direction of these darker impulses as depending on what has happened to human beings in society.18 The different schools of psychological thought all converge toward the idea that the human being, too weak to deal properly with certain coercive situations with which he is confronted from the beginning of his life, develops, under the surface of his sociability and decency, a resentment against the lawful attitude which he has to practice continually, a secret lust for destruction. The inclination for that lust which comes to the fore in times of crisis in the life of the individual and also of society may be born with man, but the forms which it assumes, the dreadfulness of its expressions, the damage it does, depend on the social reality in which the human beings find themselves. Civilization, as we have known it so far, has kindled by its own ruthlessness the very tendencies which have proved hostile to it.
Therefore the greater part of an investigation into the anti-Semitic mentality will have to deal with the destructive tendencies in modern man as they are opposed not only to the Jews but to anybody who is the weaker and can easily be singled out;19 opposed to fairness, tolerance, and justice; to everything that democracy stands for.20 Hatred of the Jew is hatred of democracy, the ultimate goal of civilization itself. This does not mean that there are no specific features in the enmity towards the Jew. There are indeed so many particular traits that it is quite impossible to enumerate them here. It has been pointed out recently that the most outstanding one is the hatred of Christianity inherent in the hate of Judaism.21 It was no less a student of the human heart than Sigmund Freud who taught that “all the peoples who now excel in the practice of anti-Semitism became Christians only in relatively recent times, sometimes forced to it by bloody compulsion. One might say they are all ‘badly Christened’; under the thin veneer of Christianity they have remained what their ancestors were, barbarically polytheistic, they have not yet overcome their grudge against the new religion which was forced on them, and they have projected it onto the source from which Christianity came to them.”22 In Christianity, and even more in the Jew, they see representatives of the values which they abhor in the depth of their souls while they swear them with their lips.
Civilization itself cannot be cleared of the responsibility of having engendered its opposite: barbarism. History achieved the domestication of man only by continuous suffering.23 In the childhood of humanity all activity was directly conditioned by immediate need, under menace of danger. Vital instincts comparatively unfettered by social organization guided the first men. The path from that era until people first became used to organized labor was a painful one, and the necessity to provide for hard times was often impressed upon their minds. Ruthless conquerors who had come to rule the aborigines, tyrants and castes of military oppressors, —in one word, domination, did the job. The profound story of Paradise and the expulsion from it in the first chapters of Genesis may combine a theological truth with a historical memory which toiling and oppressed people harbored of happier days free from the burden of organized and regular work. Only during the last one or two thousand years has man learned to do his work without the pressure of the ruthless taskmaster by transforming the outside coercion into the power of conscience in his own soul, by translating the immediate need into concepts which comprise the future as well as the past and the present. What I am referring to is the process which leads from a stage in which compulsion of the masses by the very few was a social necessity to a level where force finds its expression in the law, where people have become capable of molding their own relations by respecting their mutual interests and of making work a tolerable and even desirable expression of life. If we try to understand the psychology of the present-day human being, we have to remember that this whole transmutation is a recent one. It has left its imprint not only on the institutions of modern society but also on the character of its individuals. They still bear the marks of the terrible punishments, the humiliations and tortures which humanity had to undergo until it learned to respect law, the neighbor’s property and life, the woman’s or the stranger’s weakness. These marks are shown in the ambiguity with respect to such values, in the readiness of the individual to tear down the boundaries of civilized life not only because of a strong materialistic urge but also for the sake of the violation itself.
We can observe this mechanism still today.24 A young boy is taught the necessity for respecting his neighbors, for the sense of fair play. This is done not so much by his parents and teachers or by the exhortations of religion itself, but by the contempt and the blows he earns from his classmates when he violates any of the rules which form the tight little society of his school-class, sports team, or whatever [the group] may be. What history has done to humanity is experienced by each individual today from the hands of all groups of which he is a member. And the individual in most cases pays for his effort to integrate the rules of society into his own character by neglecting these same rules in many cases. For instance, he does not apply them to anybody who does not belong to that powerful and coercive collective group of which he himself has become a part by so much renunciation of his instincts. Therefore the most loyal and dependable members of a social unit are often the most ruthless to outsiders. The disgust and hostile hilarity which the outsiders cause are a reflection of the secret hate which the insiders have for their equals and for their solidarity.
The Jews throughout the ages, for the very reason of their religion, were regarded as the eternal outsiders.25 In addition to their economic situation, which had resulted from the restrictions put on them by a hostile environment, made them, whether they liked it or not, the symbols of law and order, of the respect for life and property. I want to give only one example by pointing to the deep historical affinity between the economic role of the Jew in European history and the great principles of civil law as they have become decisive for Western civilization.26 Ever since its Roman origin, civil law has been the law of creditors. Whereas it recognizes no differences between any group or individual, but aims at the universal protection of property, it is antagonistic to the debtor. Historically, because of the creditor role of the Jews, deriving from their function as merchants and bankers, we find them usually on the side of rational law, their foes, on the other hand, favor a vague natural law, based on the so-called sound instinct of the average man. To understand the tragic conflict between certain rural and urban strata and the Jews, which forms the background of many a chapter of European history, we have to acknowledge that the ruin of those social groups was the effect of economic tendencies within society as a whole.27 Those who profited by it were the princes, the gentry, the new aristocracy and others. The money which they borrowed from the Jews could only delay the economic downfall of the respective individuals, but then it was the Jews who asked for the money and behind them the bureaucratic machinery of the courts and the enforcement of the law. The Jews then were the apparent and not the real oppressors. In this instance as in many others, particularly in recent history since the 15th and 16th century, the natural ally of the Jew has been the state. However, the hatred of its rules and law as part of the hatred of civilization, the indignation of the condemned and foreclosed peasant, or the widow plunged into poverty, was not unjustified. It only hit the wrong object, the one which was well-known and visible. Is it not a most pathetic that the French Revolution which brought human rights to the Jews started with both a great persecution of rural lords and a persecution of the Jews. The mob slaughtered both of them at the same time. [It is always the Jew who eventually suffers for all the injustice of society and therefore he is the one who has the greatest interest that justice for all be achieved in the whole.]28
As students of the psychology of anti-Semitism, we have to delve deep into history, economics, and sociology in order to understand the un-understandable, the lust for destruction, the denial of reason and democracy.29 But we must not neglect the complexity, the diversity of the phenomenon. We should differentiate between totalitarian and pre-totalitarian anti-Semitism, between religious and non-religious discrimination, although it might well be that the core is the same in all of them. We have classified present-day anti-Semites into several types. The success of any attempt to fight anti-Semitism depends largely on the knowledge of its various types, often indiscernible in daily life. We must investigate the social and psychological genesis of each kind. I shall have to be content with giving you some examples.
There is the so-called born anti-Semite.30 His nausea is a reaction to the scars of mutilation which a long history of sufferings has stamped upon many Jewish groups. Even Jewish names are repugnant to him. He simply cannot stand the Jews. It can often be observed that this type appreciates Jewish women if they are presented to him as Gentile. This trait indicates that he actually is fond of Jewish features and that his hatred is an overcompensation for suppressed desires. We don’t believe in natural or born anti-Semitism.
And then again there is the religious-philosophical anti-Semite.31 Although this type has largely disappeared there are still a good many left who regard the Jews as adherents to a hostile religion. The Jews have crucified Christ. They have remained impenitent for thousands of years. The Jew is Judas. He is the stranger who deliberately excludes himself from the Christian community.
A third type is the backwoods or sectarian anti-Semite.32 His world is dominated by the notion of conspiracy. He believes in Jewish world domination, he swears at the Elders of Zion. On the other hand, he himself tends to favor conspiracies such as the Klu Klux Klan which have much in common with the images he fears. He has the reverence of the half-educated for pseudo-sciences and believes that non-intercourse with Jews is a sort of natural cure for rejuvenating man and world.
In addition there is the vanquished competitor. His hatred stems from certain economic relationships through which he suffers and therefore can disappear with the changing of those relationships.
We all know the well-bred anti-Semite who wants to imitate aristocracy by an exclusive social life.
There is the Jew-baiter whose anti-Semitism is a relatively thin pretext for repressed fury.33 He hates the revolutionary Jew who wants to improve social conditions. Nevertheless he himself is pseudo-revolutionary and calls his own lust for a pogrom action and dynamism [and, in turn, the socialist ideas capitalism.]34
In contrast to the Jew-baiter there is the Fascist anti-Semite for political reasons. He is characterized by sober intelligence. He is cold, without affections and perhaps the most merciless of all. He has no immediate gratification from the persecution of the Jews but deliberately plans their annihilation in connection with his own political aims. He knows that anti-Semitism is an excellent advertisement even in countries where it must remain underground. In Germany Goebbels is the incarnation of the Fascist political anti-Semite whilst Streicher is the representative of the Jew-baiter.
There are many other types and in reality most anti-Semites will often appear as combinations and intermediate forms of the types which I have mentioned.35 All of them have one thing in common: the secret hatred of civilization, everything which is embodied in the Ten Commandments.
The defense against anti-Semitism is divided into two different parts, similar to the fight against any physical illness.36 We treat cancer in hospitals, we attend to the sick trying to relieve their pain and prolong their lives. But aside from the hospitals—and, independent of their endeavor—, the tenacious work of research must go on, a methodical and well-organized study integrating the knowledge from the various realms of science. Similarly, the daily fight against anti-Semitism, the rational refutation of the lies and crimes of our enemies, should be accompanied by a well-planned investigation into the underlying destructive tendencies. Our interest as Jews which leads us to engage in such a work is identical with our task as laborers for the future of humankind.37 The fearless study of anti-Semitism may well prove to be the best approach for the exposition of the anti-democratic feelings in the people and lead to new methods of bringing people’s emotional and moral condition to the level which has been reached in science and industry.
What I mean becomes quite clear if you look at anti-Semitic and anti-democratic propaganda.38 Taken at its face value it apparently does not appeal primarily to destructive psychological tendencies but rather to those of the “decent citizen.” As far as this more rational aspect of anti-Semitic propaganda is concerned, it might be dealt with by measures of counter-propaganda. False statements and lies can be corrected. The motives behind supposedly objective statements can be revealed. The elements of propaganda, however, which are at least as dangerous and perhaps even more poisonous, are of a different kind. It seems to be typical of anti-Semitic propaganda that, apart from its argumentative contents, it tends to establish a deeply hidden intelligence with the darker psychological layers within its prospective followers. Insofar as this understanding goes, propaganda can very easily dispense with truth. The very fact that truth is consciously disregarded, that it is, so to speak, humiliated, mutilated, and destroyed, satisfies those psychological trends which make for humiliating, mutilating, and destroying those who have no power. It is probably this “intelligence” to which anti-Semitic propaganda owes its effectiveness, disproportionate to any power of rational stringency which it may carry. On the basis of this understanding anti-Semitic propaganda becomes truly dynamic. It does not only incite to murder; by the very fact of its disfiguring truth, which, in the minds of the people stands for the spiritual God, it is, at the same time, the rehearsal of murder itself. Therefore the simple refutation of the lies of the enemies of civilization does not suffice.39 The lies themselves, as the images of the crucified, disfigured truth, attract the subconscious of the people by their hidden promise that there will be more crucifying and disfiguring, more torturing and slaughtering in reality. The destructive tendencies respond to this hidden promise. Although the responses may be different for each of the types of anti-Semites I have just mentioned there are certainly stimuli which are common to all. We are trying to discover what these stimuli are and how they can be counteracted.
I have often been asked whether the authors of that propaganda are really so intelligent as to be familiar with the latest results of modern psychology.40 It is well known, you might object, that the arch-priest of propaganda, Mr. Goebbels, who even today has proven to be more successful than we thought possible, is a superficially educated, half-learned author, a former writer of trashy literature and that even Hitler’s knowledge of science is about as great as the artistic value of his own pictures. But don’t let this fool us. Apart from the fact that the subject of propaganda in Germany has been studied from the very beginning of the Nazi regime in excellent institutions and from all practical and scientific angles, Hitler and his pupils have a most wonderful instinct for stirring up evil in men. They don’t have to think very hard since they have been themselves the average member of their own audiences and parties all over the world. Their gift to impress people springs from their being akin to the dark impulses in people. In this regard, MEIN KAMPF, poorly written as it is, constitutes a masterpiece. But we who want to fight that self-same influence, to combat the destructive tendencies, to make people susceptible to rational argumentation, we cannot rely upon our instincts: we must walk the harder path of reason. [We must try to understand the nature of modern man as it is produced by our civilization and then integrate this knowledge into our educational system and the organization of our daily life. To accept the challenge of totalitarianism which is not only embodied in the armies of our enemies but constitutes a bacillus in the flesh and blood of modern civilization itself]41 we must concentrate more on the subject than our enemies, for more knowledge is needed to cure an illness than to cause it. […]
As I have told you in the beginning, the study of the psychology of anti-Semitism is only one part of our work. There are quite a number of other investigations already under way. One is a criticism of the methods used to fight against anti-Semitism in Germany from the collapse of the Kaiserreich to the ascent of National Socialism. Another is concerned with the main turning points on the road towards the goal of extermination of the Jews in Europe. It attempts to analyze the direct and indirect causes of totalitarian anti-Semitism, and to clarify this concept in contrast to other forms of anti-Semitism. We are also making an inquiry into the changes of anti-Semitic argumentation as they occurred in the different phases of Nazi ideology. The aim is to determine the shift from intermittent practices of propaganda to a coordinated political system. Furthermore, we study how various groups, political, social, cultural ones, in different European countries reacted to the gyrations of totalitarian anti-Semitism. Special attention will be devoted to the question of how far the democratic institutions in some of the countries proved to be a wall against the rising tide of barbarism, and why they finally crumbled. We are planning a fifth study in order to determine how the European experiences can be applied to the American scene. How far our studies will be of practical use we cannot foresee, but we know that there is hardly another topic in social science as urgent as the one of which we are talking now.42
The average American does not yet have a clear idea of what totalitarian anti-Semitism really means, at least not in his conscious mind, and some even in our own ranks are closing their eyes to what is really taking place. In order to recall the extension of the catastrophe, let me read you a passage from the Congressional Record of the Senate of the United States from January 14th, 1943. According to it, Senator Edwin C. Johnson explains […] “men speak of international cooperation after the war, ‘tis well they do; but before there can be international cooperation, there must be universal sympathy and understanding. Hearts must grasp and hold fast to the knowledge that Israel cannot bleed alone but that her wounds are the wounds of all mankind. Jews in Europe are being slaughtered on the average of 7,000 per day or 5 per minute. In the 10 minutes allotted to me on this program, 50 Jews have been ignominiously put to death.” Let us hope that the American weapons will defeat the enemy on the battlefields outside of this country and that the wisdom of the government will prevent the bacillus of totalitarianism from becoming virulent within it, and let us help in both efforts with all our strength.
Adorno and Horkheimer—Fragments on the Study of Anti-Semitism (ca. 1942/43).
Editor’s note. “Problems in the Study of Anti-Semitism”43 and “The Materialist Explanation of Anti-Semitism”44 are fragments isolated from the materials collected in the ‘pool’ of notes composed during the drafts for ‘Elements of Anti-Semitism.’ Adorno’s “Ad. Anti-Semitism (4/12/1943)”45 was first published in the Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005).
Problems in the Study of Anti-Semitism.
The study of anti-Semitism is suffering from all the drawbacks which, during the whole history of science, have hindered knowledge in the field of human relations. In fact, the difficulties are even greater. At the time when Hobbes first set forth the principles of natural law and contract according to which a man “be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself,”46 there was a great and powerful part of society which took an interest in the establishment, once and for all, of an order as outlined in his concepts. Even more than the form of government which Hobbes conceived as an absolutistic one and his successors as a democracy, governmental functions and aims, as he had outlined them, agreed with important social trends. Welfare and security of the individual, in contrast to the Middle Ages, began to be recognized as the highest human values. Hobbes and the whole school of natural law found an expression for the inner thoughts of rising social forces of their era and so to speak of society itself. Nevertheless, the frame of reference for the theory of human relations as it was conceived by that philosophy was bitterly attacked by other groups and interests. The attacks against its fundaments and the barriers erected consciously and subconsciously against its investigations into the repressions hampering the fulfillment of natural law have never been entirely removed. [Physical insight]47 is not itself easier than social insight. If it was not for the economic structure of our society which made for an ever expanding human empire over nature, modern technical achievements would still be the objects of extravagant dreams and utopias as in older days. “If Geometry,” says Leibniz, who was himself one of the world’s greatest mathematicians, “were as much opposed to our actual passions and interests as are morals we would hardly dispute and violate it less, despite of all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes who would be treated as dreamers and believed to be full of false conclusions.”48
[The idea of the good, which, according to [Leibniz’s] philosophy in contrast to the technological pragmatism, underlies each meaningful thought on social problems, like striving for control over nature determines for the structure and the contents of science, is an aspect much opposed to our actual passions and interests.]49
Besides [X] the general handicaps of social thought[,] studies in anti-Semitism are necessarily obstructed by the relation of its specific subject to the structure of our society. By anti-Semitism, which, after having been an issue in earlier chapters of Western history, has reached a crisis in present-day Europe, we don’t understand objective criticisms directed towards the Jews. Like any other social group, the Jews give rise to many justified and unjustified, favorable and unfavorable reflections, and we may even assume that due to the fate and actual composition, this group of the population shows more anomalies than many others. The logical consequence would be an effort of the critics as well as the criticized to correct the shortcomings. Such an attitude is not that of [anti-Semitism] as society is confronted with today. [...]50
The materialist explanation of anti-Semitism.
The materialist explanation of anti-Semitism. Jews as exponents of the fixed order of property. Economics in the sense of a market economy leads to a fragmentation of the ruling class and a lack of concentration, which forces the ruling class to cooperate. Problem of luxury. The fascist society is in a certain sense the technocratic one.
Instead of the abolition of exploitation, there is the abolition of what is superfluous to maintain the apparatus. The Jews are, in a certain sense, ornamental. Instead of the ownership of property, numbers take over. Fundamentally, it is already irrational that anything plays out in its own, idiosyncratic way—and, indeed, the specificity of existence as such. Connection between anti-Semitism and rationalism and enlightenment. The Jews are a community that has preserved itself as such and no longer refers its existence to purposiveness for the apparatus of domination; they are a challenge to its rationality, which turns against them. Feudalism and the bourgeoisie. Jews are heirs of the feudal lords. Their alliance with absolutism and with the prince.
(On the dialectic of luxury: while luxury in class society represents the only life that’s worthy of human beings, namely a life that is more than just self-reproduction, it is at the same time always a sign of a life unworthy of human beings, for luxury lives off the self-reproduction of the lives of others.)
Adorno—Ad. Anti-Semitism (1943).
That anti-Semitism is no matter of individual psychology, but rather one of “situations,” is evident in the fact that anti-Semitic impulses are tied to the most up-to-date consciousness of power. Anti-Semitic situations are always those in which power is to be displayed against the weaker, and they themselves only emerge under the pressure of power. German anti-Semitism since Hitler bears in all its features the moment of external stimulation, of the threat from on high that if anyone is not anti-Semitic, every power will turn against them as well. That is the limit of all so-called psychology of anti-Semitism, because there are no psychological experimental conditions that can institute real power as their presupposition. The observation that anti-Semitism is essentially related to the fear of anti-Semitism and that Jews do not in truth attract attention and irritate Christians through their alleged impudence, intrusiveness, loudness, etc. (these are all rationalizations), but rather through the very antithesis of these, through imponderably subtle expressions of fear. The very thing that happens to the Jews is precisely what they fear most. This has a very particular application in a very specific situation: the feeling of “being at home.” By virtue of their historical fate, Jews have a particularly strong need for a homeland, which is also expressed in their behavior (it has been noted on several occasions that Jews in their emigration have a much greater longing for Germany than Christians, who assimilate more easily and without developing any resistances). It is precisely this relation between the Jew and the feeling of being at home—the Jew, already at home with himself—that enrages, driving others to demonstrate to the Jew he is not, in fact, at home. (Observation by TWA, Rügen summer 1933, where at a tourist destination two teachers said: “They are Jews, they think everything belongs to them.”)
The mere existence of Jews in a gentile living space provokes the possessive instinct and that ancient form of hospitality which consisted in the eating of strangers. “What do they want here?” People who consciously and aggressively react in an anti-Semitic manner often have a very specific make-up, which I remember from my school days. The two boys in my class who were anti-Semitic, one openly, the other covertly, were both above average and gifted, one especially in the natural sciences, —this one, named Eckhardt (a typical anti-Semitic name), was a small, ugly boy with a prematurely old face who once had soap stuck to the top of his head and was therefore nicknamed “saffenkopp.” By way of a certain depressiveness, awkwardness of expression, and lack of linguistic ability, he did not achieve anything in high school; it was only in his last years that his outstanding mathematical talent became apparent. He was always at a disadvantage compared to a small group of the “best” in the class, among whom I figured—as ‘the Jew’ despite my participation in Protestant religious education. He probably felt his mathematical superiority over my linguistic talent even at a time when, as the top student, I automatically got the better grades in mathematics. —The anti-Semitic type in question here consists of people who are treated unfairly by competition, but who identify with competition itself. They are Darwinists. They believe in “the survival of the fittest” and always have the feeling that they are fitter than the Jews and that nature has therefore predestined the latter to perish. When nature does not function accordingly, they are there to help it along. —In my class there was an unspoken, conspiratorial hierarchy which gave these boys, as opposed to the official “liberal best,” a kind of leadership which was expressed in elections to the Vertrauensrat and on similar occasions. I actually always had the feeling that Eckhardt represented a greater power than the “best” despite the latter’s success in intellectual contests.
Letters On the Scientific Concept of the Research Project (1942/43).
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Scientific Concentration and Integration (1/5/1942).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Paul and Gabrielle Oppenheim, 1/5/1942.]51
In the midst of all this I did not neglect my studies on anti-Semitism. I am determined not to abandon this topic, whether the Institute is able to pursue it on a grand scale or not. As I deepen my knowledge of this social phenomenon I become more aware that it has to be measured by much more than merely the day-to-day sorrows of Jewry. If so many branches of science dealing with individual ills can concentrate on medical research—physiology, chemistry, biology, and many others—cultural studies such as psychology, history, political science, economics, under the leadership of social science, should concentrate on social ills, for instance, anti-Semitism. I think that this integration has not yet been undertaken sufficiently. Just as in medicine the study of the nature of disease is distinguished from the therapy, so in social science propaganda and other political measures should be distinguished from theoretical research.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: an Antidote for Social Illness (11/19/1943).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Pollock, 11/19/1943.]52
[Adorno’s] Thomas is almost ready. (...) If you speak to the committee about the study, it should be clear that it is not aimed at any publication for its own sake. It is an attempt to break down anti-democratic propaganda into its elements, in order to enable a democratic defense to “entzaubern”53 it completely. The goal is, as you know, a popular possibly well-illustrated manual of destructive propaganda directed not only against antisemitic, but definitely against antidemocratic public activities. The whole efforts of combatting anti-Semitism should be concentrated upon the broader issue of anti-democracy, because in the future there will be no fascism without anti-Semitism, and no anti-Semitism without fascism. It will be one of my main concerns in New York to do the groundwork for a manual. Naturally, to do it well, there should not be one Thomas study, but a series of similar analyses. To prepare the right antidote for a definite social illness, one needs even greater and better equipped socio-chemical laboratories, and at least as well trained staff as for the fight against physical illnesses or for the invention of new weapons in real warfare. But the nature of a social illness is of such a kind that the creation of such laboratories encounters tremendous prejudices, not only with the real enemies, but even with the prospective victims.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: “A kind of socio-psychological experimental lab…” (11/28/1943).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Pollock, 11/28/1943.]54
… Let us go back to your program. The introduction looks a little too timid to me. It suggests that we have a guilt feeling with regard to the practical use of our work. We should be very careful with apologies. If we want to make a point of practicability, we should rather state that this period of our work was mere preparation. We tried to find and test methods which, if employed on a much larger scale, could lead to the formulation of new devices for the fight against anti-Semitism. We might say that an adequate synchronization of research work with the practical fight can only be the outcome of a continued period of close cooperation. (I am quite aware that I insisted upon showing clearly that our work is aimed at realistic measures. Since, however, the means at our disposal were much too small, there could not be any real result in this regard. I do not think we should engage in empty assertions, or even in bringing up the issue quasi in self-defense.)
Do you really think that the points (notes) I to 5 (on point 1) on page 2 of the notes of November 22nd are shared by many influential people in the committee? I think they correspond rather to the average mentality in 1935-36. Today, people know better, even the Jews.
Under (note) I would omit “From our studies we hold that,” because what follows is too obvious. By the way, I think you are right to use more often the word study or research than science, because the word science does not apply well to our fields. On page 4, omit (the sentence on line 10 to 12. It invites the answer that the Jews will still be caught unprepared even if the danger is recognized.
With reference to the last paragraph on that page, I want to add that the post-war situation is not only “by no means so free of danger as is generally assumed,” but that this is the danger period itself. The boom which some intellectuals seem to expect will either be very short or not come at all. I believe in deflation rather than in inflation, were it for the only reason that this will enable the decisive economic forces to gain the control they need.
Page 5 of your memo #22 bottom lines: be very careful with “adapting” the first part of our statement. We had a hell of a time to formulate our aggressive hypotheses in such a way that they were still bearable in such a document. The adaptation should be made with a well trained writer. I think that a good stylist could present our remarks in an interesting manner. But emphasis must be laid upon the fact that the concepts used in that section are not to serve as a frame of reference for the whole problem. They are meant as hypotheses for the psychological part, and even here only as some of the more or less new ideas, those which transcend the psychological literature on the subject.
Page 7, line 10 to 6 from the bottom: the content of this sentence is obvious.
Page 8: I do not think that the title of (point) IV “How to fight anti-Semitism” is corroborated by what we will be able to present under that heading. In a way, the whole project serves this purpose. A paper like Peck’s which is nothing but a bibliographical report on certain aspects on criminal psychology, should certainly not be presented in this section, if it should be presented at all. I vote against it. Or do you have another paper than Peck’s in mind on page 9, line 10? Perhaps, section (point) IV should be called “Research into defense methods,” or something on that line [sic].
If we had had the necessary help in obtaining our experimental picture, we would probably be able to present some worthwhile results already at this time. The modest experimental picture which I have demanded for so long a time is much too little. A kind of socio-psychological experimental lab should be created with the purpose of producing experimental pictures for the study of anti-democratic mechanisms. In view of the facilities of the motion picture industry, the relation of the costs would be almost negligible with regard to the possible results. The industry would have to give us the occasional services of one or two of their experienced writers and produce the little pictures (i.e., short films). I dare say that even such pertinent questions as “How to present the minority problem to the American public,” or “How to make the American soldier acquainted with the problems he is facing in Germany” could be furthered tremendously if the necessary instruments were available.
Sanford, Levinson, and Frenkel-Brunswik who have been working on our lines have, even without the help of pictures, done some first steps to discover the psychological syndrom [sic] of anti-semitism. We have reached certain first hypotheses about the social and familial factors’ contribution to the susceptibility to anti-Semitic propaganda. These experiments are being undertaken on so small a scale and with so inadequate an equipment that we dare not publish our main hypotheses or even submit them to our friends. In natural science, a hypothesis which deserves that name has to undergo not hundreds but many thousands of tests. Our topic is not less important and not less complicated than most of those with which chemists (and) physiologists are concerned.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Fascism as Social Hygiene (5/6/1942).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Margot Weil, 5/6/1942.]55
The idea of purging, sweeping-away, cleansing, is, as is well known, tied to bloodthirsty militarism, the hatred of pleasure, and even anti-Semitic instincts. Calvin himself, in his leisure hours, drew up a plan for the regular purification of the city of Ghent. I believe this was also occasioned in part by its rather gloomy appearance. The malicious sort of freedom movements within the Völker are often preceded by calls for purity in the affairs of government, the clearing-out of public offices, and similar hygienic slogans. Whenever the masses begin to issue open threats that the stench and the filth must be eradicated root and branch, the wise ones, dreamers, and philosophers ought to leave that dust in the dust with which they would otherwise be swept clean away.
Appendix—Marcuse and Horkheimer: Notes on Christianity and Anti-Semitism (1943).
Letter—Marcuse, re: The Inadequacy of the ‘Spearhead’-Theory (7/28/1943).
[Excerpt from: Marcuse to Horkheimer, 7/28/1943.]56
I was very glad to receive your letter; I sometimes thought that you had forgotten about me. True, Pollock sent me the New York papers on the project, but I have not yet received the Los Angeles contributions. In order to keep my mind on theoretical problems, I have tried to work up my own ideas on anti-Semitism. So I can at least use the more or less exclusive material I get here for the common cause. Although your letter does not reveal the concrete pattern of your studies, I think I can see their general direction, and I seem to be working along the same way. Perhaps I wrote you already that the “spearhead” theory in the form in which we formulated it originally seems to me inadequate, and this inadequacy seems to increase with the development of fascist anti-Semitism. The function of this anti-Semitism is apparently more and more the perpetuation of an already established pattern of domination in the character of men. Note that in the German propaganda, the Jew has now become an “internal” being, which lives in Gentiles as well as Jews, and which is not conquered even with the annihilation of the “real” Jews. If we look at the character traits and qualities which the Nazis designate as the Jewish elements in the Gentiles, we do not find the so-called typical Jewish traits (or at least not primarily), but traits which are regarded as definitely Christian and “humane.” They are furthermore the traits which stand most decidedly against repression in all its forms. Here, we should resume the task of elucidating the true connection between anti-Semitism and Christianity (which so far has not been followed up in the project). What is happening is not only a belated protest against Christianity but also a consummation of Christianity or at least of all the sinister traits of Christianity. Der Jude ist von dieser Welt, and diese Welt is the one which fascism has to subject to the totalitarian terror. As far as the socioeconomic aspects of anti-Semitism are concerned, it seems to me that we should place more emphasis on anti-Semitism as an instrument of international fascism. With the eclipse of the Hitlerian stage of fascism (which, as we see now, was only a preparatory stage), anti-Semitism becomes more and more a weapon for the “coordination” of the diverging national fascisms, or, a bid for the negotiated peace. Here again, we have to correct our earlier conception. I mean that of the “sham war.” In the last analysis, the conception holds true. But the Scheinhaftigkeit of the war demands rather than excludes the utter defeat of Germany and rests in the ends rather than in the means to achieve the ends. However, I do not believe a minute that the fascist stabilization will succeed in “integrating” the actual conflicts for any length of time. I do not believe so against all facts and common sense. The most depressing aspect of Mussolini’s exit is that all this happened without any excitement, rebellion, hate. After more than twenty years of terror, the fascist party dissolves itself like a Kegelklub. Nobody really cares. Life goes on. Nothing has happened. A sign, not of a more mature consciousness, but of a totalitarian apathy, fatigue, indifference. Can you imagine Hitler and his gang just resigning and handing over business to a new management (partly new), but staying on in Germany unmolested and enjoying undisturbed privacy? I think this goes even beyond our most audacious predictions, and still, it might happen.
Letter—Horkheimer, re: Anti-Semitism and the End of Paganism (9/11/1943).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Marcuse, 9/11/1943.]57
I fully share your ideas on anti-Semitism and Christianity as expressed in your letter of July 28th. The more I look into history, the more I find that wherever Christianity was accepted as a state religion it functioned in the sense indicated in your letter not only automatically but consciously. By the way: have you ever had a close look upon the events connected with the extinction of Paganism in Greece and Egypt in the beginning of the 5th century? Particularly Alexandria offers interesting examples, partly astonishingly parallel to the period of the Reformation and both yielding valuable clues for the understanding of what is going on today. With regard to the spirit of Christianity such periods of transition are more characteristic than the standpoint of the Catholic Church which after all is defined a priori by her relation to the prevailing powers. You remember the circumstances of the death of Hypatia! Another most interesting figure, but belonging to the opposite side, is Shenoute of Atripe (Lachen Sie nicht!).58 The sermons of this gentleman against the worldly, materialistic, commercial Egyptians resemble precisely the sermons of up to date anti-Semitic radio priests or German Jew-baiters before and during the Nazi period. As a courageous man he took even a personal part in the burning and looting of Greek temples and the killing of defenseless priests. As the head of an organization of monasteries he introduced military discipline and his letters show a remarkable interest in the whipping and torturing of everybody who violated the rules. Since we are speaking of early centuries I might as well mention a curious observation. It is very probable that from the foundation of the city of Alexandria a part of the population was Jewish. The bulk of the rest was of course Greek. While the two sections met along very nicely up to the middle of the first century there were serious anti-Semitic riots at that time and the Jews were called aliens and intruders by the Greeks who certainly were not genuine Egyptians. The Jews seem to be the aliens under all circumstances.
Cf. Rolf Wiggershaus: “Ultimately, the only promising point around which interdisciplinary collaboration might crystallize within the framework of the dialectics project was the focus on anti-Semitism. In the first months of work on the dialectics book, however, the focus on anti-Semitism was hardly noticeable; nor was there any mention of it in the ‘Memorandum.’ It seemed that Horkheimer and Adorno were still recoiling from the topic, or that they were leaving it to have its effect as a hidden central point in the work. But the considerations which did then lead to its becoming the central topic of the research programme were surprising. When financial support for the Institute’s anti-Semitism research project was guaranteed for at least one year by the American Jewish Committee (see pp. 355-6), Horkheimer informed the astonished Marcuse (who saw Horkheimer’s participation in the project merely as an irresponsible distraction from his real work on the philosophy book) in spring 1943: [See: Horkheimer to Marcuse, 4/3/1943.] This made it sound as if an external stimulus had been necessary for the concentration on the topic of anti-Semitism to take place—the signing of a contract which must and indeed could be put to the best use. Above all, Horkheimer seemed to consider the dialectics project and the anti-Semitism project as two distinct items relating to one another in the way that an abstract theory relates to its application to a concrete topic, or in the way that Hegel’s logic relates to the Hegelian philosophies of history, law or aesthetics. Was this not turning a distinction within the theoretical and empirical research process into a distinction which silently gave the theory the dignity of speculation and made it independent of the empiricism appropriate to science? And was empirical research not thus being denied its status as a dimension of reflected experience, and degraded into a means of illustrating the theory? Horkheimer and Adorno’s willingness to devote themselves to the anti-Semitism project with an intensity similar to that for the dialectics project, and the fact that they had both several times emphasized the central role of the problem of anti-Semitism precisely for the theory of their times, left open the question of how the relation between the dialectics and anti-Semitism projects, and the relation between philosophical work and interdisciplinary research, was to take shape. A further open question was whether their enthusiasm for the theory, and their contemptuous remarks about research in specific scientific disciplines, in fact represented more than mere evidence of personal values and moods; whether these did not have an influence on the way in which their scholarly work was carried out and on its results—particularly when external influences were forcing them to take both dimensions seriously.” In: The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, translated by Michael Robertson (Polity, 1994), 319-321.
Cf. Adorno [1966]: “A child, fond of an innkeeper named Adam, watched him club the rats pouring out of holes in the courtyard; it was in his image that the child made its own image of the first man. That this has been forgotten, that we no longer know what we used to feel before the dogcatcher’s van, is both the triumph of culture and its failure. Culture, which keeps emulating the old Adam, cannot bear to be reminded of that zone, and precisely this is not to be reconciled with the conception that culture has of itself. It abhors stench because it stinks—because, as Brecht put it in a magnificent line, its mansion is built of dogshit. Years after that line was written, Auschwitz demonstrated irrefutably that culture has failed. That this could happen in the midst of the traditions of philosophy, of art, and of the enlightening sciences says more than that these traditions and their spirit lacked the power to take hold of men and work a change in them. There is untruth in those fields themselves, in the autarky that is emphatically claimed for them. All post-Auschwitz culture, including its urgent critique, is garbage. … Whoever pleads for the maintenance of this radically culpable and shabby culture becomes its accomplice, while the man who says no to culture is directly furthering the barbarism which our culture showed itself to be.” In: Negative Dialectics, translated by E.B. Ashton (Routledge [Seabury], 2004 [1973]), 366-367.
Cf. Horkheimer to Felix Weil, 1/13/1943: “It is a fact that most of the people who have been held in a concentration camp bear the traces of hell in their souls. We might say that some of the character traits, which now have developed into symptoms of madness, may have been recognizable even before the person had that terrible experience, but at that time they did not have that sinister aspect. Once a certain psychological quality has become clearly visible, we always can trace its roots back to the past, but we easily forget that it would not have struck us as something unusual if it were not for the new form which it has taken in the meantime. You will remember the observation that human anatomy is the key to that of the monkey? The meaning of that truth is that once we know man, we can discover his beginnings in earlier forms of life. Once Fascism had developed in European society, we now are able to find its hallmarks in earlier stages of human history, but it would be an error to say that, because of those traces, the development was a necessary one.” In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 397.
Horkheimer is alluding to Marx’s methodological “Introduction” to the Grundrisse: “Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance within it, etc. Human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known. The bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the ancient, etc. But not at all in the manner of those economists who smudge over all historical differences and see bourgeois relations in all forms of society. …” In: Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft). Translated with a Foreword by Martin Nicolaus (Penguin Books; New Left Review, 1993 [1973]), 105.
Cf. Adorno to his Parents, 3/28/1944: “We would have to talk properly about the matter of experience and history; even touching on the question would completely exceed the scale of a letter. On the other hand, I still recommend liberality in the reading of philosophical texts, not getting bogged down in expressions or even individual sentences, but rather seeking to grasp the overall conceptual structure first, after which the details will become largely self-explanatory. Even I often find myself not understanding details in the texts that are most important to us, the two principal works by Hegel, and in the case of Kant I have actually made a rule of always reading forwards and backwards at the same time, so to speak. In Kant, for example, one often stumbles over some incomprehensible sentence that one thinks is about God knows what, but in truth contains no more than some pedantic observation on the disposition of the book. Incidentally, the most difficult passages in Hegel are almost entirely lacking in special terms, simply German words, and yet in a fashion that would make poor WK’s head spin. Highly terminological writers such as Husserl are much easier to follow—in fact terminology is generally a means of facilitation, in the sense that it serves to fix the meanings of words, to capture them identically, whereas the greatest difficulties—admittedly also the most profound insights—are found where thought-movements take place within the words themselves, i.e. where (in a highly specific sense) the demand for ‘clarity’ in our conventional understanding of the word is suspended.” In: Theodor W. Adorno, Letters to his Parents 1939-1951. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, translated by Wieland Hoban (Polity, 2006), 176.
“[Plan des Forschungsprojekts über Antisemitismus] (1943).” In: MHGS, Bd. 12 (1985), 165-166. Author’s translation. Cf. MHA Na, [655].
Viz.: Erich Fromm (and Hilde Weiss), The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study. Translated by Barbara Weinberger, edited and introduced by Wolfgang Bonss (Berg Publishers, 1984).
Opening of earlier draft, ‘b)’. Three ¶.
[Crossed out in ‘c)’:] “... of the underlying destructive tendencies, of the dispositions in individuals as well as with the masses which meet the anti-Semite’s propaganda halfway, of the causes which infect even the most progressive gentile minds with that bacillus.”
Compare to the penultimate ¶ of “Psychology of Anti-Semitism”
[Crossed out – the following sentences – in ‘c)’:]
[Crossed out:] “the cultural anthropologists”; [Crossed out of draft ‘b)’:] “... by myself and another member of the Institute. The reason for this division is the fact that—when the Committee made its decision—we had settled down here in order to write a book on philosophy we had planned long ago.”
[Crossed out:] “... will investigate (1) the growing impotence of defense against anti-Semitism. In this connection it will give a…”
[Crossed out from ‘c)’:]
[Crossed out in version ‘b)’:]
[Handwritten marginal note: The Institute and its activities.]
[Handwritten marginal note: European experiences.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Separate (?) Psychology.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Civilization and destructive trends caused by it. Oedipus complex, destructive impulses.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Division of our psychological investigation in the psychology of destruction in general and specific anti-Jewish features.]
[Handwritten marginal note: But in Germany 19th century: democrats against Jews.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Specific anti-Jewish traits: hate of Christianity, Freud quotation]
[Horkheimer’s note:] Moses, [pp.] 144-55.
[Handwritten marginal note: Historical development of civilization. Its means were need and terrible punishment. Law and love of civilization came only later, mediated through self-discipline, conscience, puritanism. Character of the individual still shows marks of that process. Therefore ambiguous attitude towards civilization: ambivalence.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Example of ambivalence: a boy and his group.]
[Handwritten marginal note: In- and out-groups. The Jew as eternal outsider.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Creditor role of Jews. Their affinity to Roman law.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Profiting were—princes, gentry, aristocracy. But the Jew represented the bureaucratic machinery of enforcement.]
[Crossed out in ‘c)’:]
[Handwritten marginal note: historical, social, psychological typology of anti-Semitism]
[Handwritten marginal note: The born anti-Semite: idiosyncrasy; repugnance of Jews]
[Handwritten marginal note: Religious-philosophical anti-Semite: Christian education, Jew = Judas. Anti-semite hates Christianity but Christianity is already a compromise. Christian teachings – The murder of the God. Pogrom perpetuated by Jews.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Backwoods or sectarian anti-Semite: World-conspiracy.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Jew-baiter: anti-revolutionary rebel.]
[Crossed out in ‘b)’:]
[Handwritten marginal note: Other types – all have in common the hate of civilization.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Defense has two parts: hospitals and laboratories. They are necessary as study-centers for anti-Semitic feelings. Studies into the race riots etc. etc.]
[Crossed out in ‘c)’:] “For like the biological studies into the nature of one illness has often brought a better knowledge of other plagues or even a deeper understanding of the nature of illness itself, the fearless study…”
[Handwritten marginal note: Study of anti-Semitic propaganda. Open lies are only one of its features. Establishes deeply hidden intelligence with deeper psychological layers in followers. Mutilation of truth in sadistic symbol.]
[Handwritten marginal note: Not only refutation, but analysis of stimuli (Our manual – examples?)]
[Handwritten marginal note: The propagandists of anti-democracy do those things instinctively (but still the instinct-less in Germany!). We must study.]
[Crossed out in ‘b)’:]
[Crossed out in ‘b).’]
“[Notizen] [ad Anti-Semitismus: 12. April 1943.],” in: BW, Bd. III (2005), 441-443. Author’s translation.
[fn. 1. Leviathan, I, Chapter 14, Everyman’s Library, p. 67.]
[crossed out—‘natural science’]
[fn. 2. Nouveaux Essais, book I, § 12, ed. Erdmann, Berlin 1840, p. 216.]
[Handwritten insert]
Typescript breaks off.
Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Paul and Gabrielle Oppenheim, 1/5/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 240. English in original.
Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Pollock, 11/19/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 497. English in original.
German (for ‘demystify’) in original.
The second half of Horkheimer’s November 1943 letter to Pollock, from which a stand-alone fragment given the title “On Problems of Scientific Style” would be excerpted.
“(10.) ‘On problems of scientific style.’ Reaction to a document (from a letter to Friedrich Pollock). a) Typescript, dated: 28.11.1943, 3 pages b) Max Horkheimer: 1 Letter to Friedrich Pollock, no location, 28.11.1943, 5 pages.” In: MHA Na [653], S. [389]-[396]
Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Margot Weil, 5/6/1942. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 287. Author’s translation.
Excerpt from: Marcuse to Horkheimer, 7/28/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 466-468. English in original.
Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Marcuse, 9/11/1943. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 470-473. English in original.
German parenthetical in original.
“The Holocaust is traced back to the only-too-familiar record of the hundred of years of ghettos, legal discrimination, pogroms and persecutions of Jews in Christian Europe – and so revealed as a uniquely horrifying, yet fully logical consequence of ethnic and religious hatred. One way or another, the bomb is defused; no major revision of our social theory is really necessary; our visions of modernity, of its unrevealed yet all-too-present potential, its historical tendency, do not require another hard look, as the methods and concepts accumulated by sociology * are fully adequate to handle this challenge – to ‘explain it’, to make sense of it, to understand. The overall result is theoretical complacency."
*and psychoanalysis. -- PW.
Zygmunt Bauman, *Modernity and the Holocaust," rev. ed., pp. 2-3
BTW-- Brecht, who had participated in a few classes with Reich in Berlin, makes a similar observation in the margin of his own copy of "Massenpsychologie."