Author: M. Farahi Tojegi
A Brief Overview of the Frankfurt School (Part 7)
Members of the Frankfurt School
In the previous note, the principles of the Frankfurt School were discussed, and at the end, a brief account of the life of Max Horkheimer was mentioned. However, in this note, Horkheimer’s theories will be examined.
Alongside Marxist thought, the Frankfurt School also drew upon the ideas of Max Weber and the theories of Freud. During their time in the United States, their theories were largely based on Freudian analyses, while Weber’s ideas were used to critique modern society and instrumental rationality.
Max Horkheimer
After the death of Grünberg in 1931, Horkheimer assumed the directorship of the Institute and intensified its critique of positivism.
Horkheimer called his theory a critical theory. At first, most of his interpretations were based on Marxist principles, but later he went beyond that. Another feature visible in his thought was that he tried not to tie himself directly to the Communist Party or the proletarian class. This allowed him to put forward interpretations, some of which turned into political critiques and even critiques of Marxist principles themselves.
It seems that he sought to examine the crisis of positivist science (or bourgeois science). [1] conducting this analysis from a Marxist [2] perspective. Positivist science, which merely gathered data and analyzed them empirically without paying attention to the real needs of human beings, was, in his view, insufficient. For this reason, Horkheimer, in his earliest works, criticized the Vienna Circle (regarding the unity of science and the methods of natural sciences). He believed positivism placed human beings in the same category as natural events and objects, eliminating the distinction between human and natural phenomena.
In his view, the traditional perspective is essentially the positivist one, which interprets phenomena statically. In contrast, the critical perspective, fundamentally Hegelian, interprets phenomena as a dynamic process through dialectics.
According to Horkheimer, bourgeois science was once progressive, but due to the interests of the bourgeoisie, it shifted its focus to empirical data. Today, bourgeois science concerns itself only with “being” and not with “becoming,” thus imagining social reality as stable and unchanging. Such a science cannot reveal social contradictions and crises, nor can it predict transformations.
This, according to Horkheimer, was its great shortcoming. He emphasized that social science must have predictive power. He concluded that history and society are products and reflections of human social labor, and a significant part of history is the result of conscious human action. Therefore, prediction is possible in the social sciences, and complete human freedom is achievable through rational mastery of both inner and outer nature.
Horkheimer believed that during the revolutionary rise of the bourgeoisie, positivist and empirical analyses sufficed to explain reality. However, with the consolidation of bourgeois rule, the establishment of social-political stability, and the dominance of capitalism, positivism no longer sufficed. Instead, one must return to a dialectical view of totality.
From this perspective, bourgeois society always embodies only a limited rationality, failing to fulfill the total needs of humanity. The task of critical theory, then, is to expose the rationality and irrationality of the social system and to replace irrational institutions with rational ones. In his view, society is only slightly rational, whereas it must become wholly rational. Dialectics of totality, for them, was the first step in transforming reality and changing the way it is perceived.
Another important point is his view on the base-superstructure relationship, which departs from orthodox Marxism. He considered human beings the creators of all forms of social life. The primacy of the economy had a humanistic character: it was human labor, not the mode of production, commodity, technology, or productive forces, that determined society, since all these were carriers of human labor. In orthodox Marxism, the matter was somewhat reversed, as productive forces and technology, though products of human labor, were treated as determinants of relations.[3]
In any case, the historical process of social reproduction contained an element of rationality that had not been fully realized, and critical theory had the essential task of perfecting reality by making it fully rational.
In Authoritarian State, Horkheimer wrote that all of Marx’s predictions had come true: the state had become the collective capitalist, and the bourgeoisie had become fragmented. He argued that the roots of the contemporary authoritarian welfare state must be sought in Jacobin democracy. In the age of authoritarian states, all hopes for revolution had vanished; revolutionary movements had become bureaucratized and subordinated to capitalist rationality. Instead of revolution, they sought political concessions, as a conservative atmosphere had dominated political life. In this context, neither democracy nor liberalism had any essential superiority over fascism.
According to Horkheimer, the need for party leadership and ideology reflected a desire for security, and this desire gave rise to domination. Domination and authoritarianism, he argued, also prevailed in Leninism and Stalinism. Genuine transformation was not development but rupture, sudden breaks, and radical change. The system of domination obstructed the expansion of rationality. Thus, for him, the main duty of critical theory was to critique existing society rather than design a utopian alternative. Domination in modern society had even killed hope for utopia. As long as world history continued according to its current rational and logical path, it could not realize the true nature of humanity. Hence, in a world ruled by domination, only critical theory could bring liberation.
In his final years, Horkheimer became increasingly conservative and pessimistic. He attributed this tendency to the lack of integration between theory and practice in the world. In truth, he regarded social pessimism as the only means of preserving critical consciousness against the all-encompassing domination of capitalist reason. This pessimism, paradoxically, also contained a form of hope, since it persisted as ongoing critique. Critical theory was interested not in what exists, but in what does not yet exist and what could be.
Horkheimer’s thought opposed all kinds of theorizing about society, especially neo-positivist approaches, which in his view failed to grasp the essence of society and instead served as tools of the productive system. He traced the roots of this outlook back into the history of philosophy, to the emergence of a particular form of reason that saw itself merely as instrumental. This instrumental rationality, especially in capitalist production and exchange, had expanded extensively. The rationality of the Enlightenment, which once brought the bourgeoisie to power, had now led to historical stagnation and rigidity.
Continues…
Previous Part/ Next Part
References:
[1] Positivism is an empiricist philosophy of inquiry that considers true knowledge to be only that which arises from human “sensory experience.” Positivism is based on the principles of empirical science and an objectivist approach. That is, it is assumed that reality is something that an individual can experience through their senses.
[2]. Bourgeoisie (French: Bourgeoisie) is one of the categories used in the analysis of human societies and refers to the upper class of wealth in society, the wealthy and capitalists.
[3]. Bashiriyeh Hossein, History of Political Thoughts in the Twentieth Century, Tehran: Nishrani, 1938-76. Vol. 1, p. 169.
