(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Stuart Jeffries:
Grand Hotel Abyss – The Lives of the Frankfurt School
Verso Books, 2016
How does theory relate to practice? Is it okay to think instead of acting? When you are on the left, these are the questions that pop up all the time. No group of thinkers has been more exposed to this type of question than the philosophers, sociologists, economists, and literary scholars of the Frankfurt School. Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Leo Löwenthal, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse – to name a few of the most prominent of the first generation of frankfurters – all had different ways of tackling this issue. Not everyone is as successful, according to Stuart Jeffries' new book about this school.
Grand Hotel provides a nuanced and elaborate picture of the Institut für Sozialforschung, and is by no means an unreserved tribute. Jeffries thoroughly explores the whole story from the institute m opened in 1924 and up to its preliminary latest director Axel Honneth, who belongs to the third generation of frankfurters. The book is full of anecdotes for those who care about the people behind the concepts.
Acute political. But "theory and practice" – are things as simple as this conceptual duo easily lead us to believe? Is it that we are either out on the streets shouting slogans, or sitting in the study room writing Kant comments?
With Jeffries' book in his hands, it is tempting to answer "both and". A natural place to start is with the Frankfurt School's original interest in politics and Marxist thought. The reality of the action was in fact highly present to the members of the Institut für Sozialforschung at the start. The central question – yes, one of the main motives for starting the institute – was why there had been no revolution in Germany, as in the Soviet Union. The political was in the background for the entire research project in the first years, and became an acute issue when Hitler came to power in 1933. Then anti-Semitism quickly became a touch for this gang – many of them were Jews.
Adorno was among those who experienced climate change when he applied for membership in the National Chamber of Literature, which he needed to be a teacher for non-Aryan students. He got a blank refusal. Only "reliable members of the People" could join, he was told – "individuals who belonged to the German nation through deep-seated roots in character and blood. As a non-Aryan, you are unable to appreciate such a commitment. "
Is there anything we need these days, it's just texts that turn our gaze on history into new tracks.
Only a few weeks later, the institute had to close its doors. Soon the members were on their way out of the Third Reich.
Adapt the thinking. Most of the Frankfurters landed via detours in the United States, and continued their research in Los Angeles. Here, too, the tone had to be changed – there was no totalitarian state to which they came, but the tolerance for left-wing attitudes was disappearing in postwar California (though better there than in the rest of the country). The Marxist basis of research had to be masked so that they, as Adorno and Horkheimer insisted, would not offend anyone or lose much needed financial support.
This was – unfortunately, some would say – nothing new: they had already explicitly rewritten Communist views so as not to offend. Among other things, in 1936, when Walter Benjamin's well-known essay "The work of art in the age of reproduction" was printed in the Institute's journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Again, it was Adorno and Horkheimer who insisted that Benjamin change the fiery end. Jeffries understands the reservations, but points out that this may be the reason why the Frankfurters eventually retire in the philos-
philosophy has. So into the tower of theory.
Traditional and organic intellectuals. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, the criticism of Frankish civilization became more pessimistic. The thoughts they had about social transformation and practice gradually disappeared in the background of intellectual work, and for some out of sight, writes Jeffries.
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci's distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals became more and more appropriate for the Frankfurters as time went on: Gramsci thought that the intellectual who really wanted to do something for society had to be organic intellectual – thus connected to a social group, to civil society, and work for them and their best. Instead, the Institut für Sozialforschung entered into a professionalization of the thinking that distanced itself from social reality and ordinary citizens. This culminated in the ultimate, critical work of civilization Enlightenment dialectics (1948). The Enlightenment project, according to the authors Adorno and Horkheimer, had turned into its opposite and turned into barbarism in the 20th century. Here they are far from actionism: Pessimism permeates a work that today appears as excessively black-eyed. For example, the fact that popular culture is necessarily repressive is an unsustainable thought, something New Left intellectuals of the sixties, including Stuart Hall, made very clear.
Thought before action. It all assumed comical proportions when Adorno lectured on non-identity during the 1960s student revolt, and was met with slogans that he was allied to the bourgeois oppressive ideologies for not acting, and had entrenched himself in his philosophical ivory tower. It is worth noting that Herbert Marcuse is in a special position in the first generation of frankfurters. After all, he became something of a hero among the students in 1968: His belief in change was tangible and connected to social reality, and he allied himself with the student revolt, pointing out that civil disobedience was not just a right, but a duty if it were to be necessary. He did not hold back, and he was at the same time and engaged: The rebellious students were not based on idolatry, as Adorno claimed, but were in contact with real negative thinking, a utopian potential, Marcuse suggested.
Christ and class struggle. What unites the Fronts, then? It's difficult – something Jeffries makes clear – to put these thinkers on formula. One of the lesser-known texts of this time, Erich Fromm's "The Dog of Christ" (which also exists in Norwegian), tells an interesting story about the origins of Christianity, with a strong reverberation in both 1930s Germany and today's Europe and the United States. Fromm's little book is a good example of how we can open for social change by thinking through history. Christ had gained his position, he believed, because of ordinary people, workers – but Christianity was disguised as a model of social change when it was hijacked by scribes who moved attention far – to salvation – instead of looking at reality here and now.
This way of thinking about historical class we can learn a lot from today, when class questions have again become fiery.
Recognition now. Walter Benjamin – who is probably Jeffries' favorite among them all – is another example of someone who is difficult to put in a stall. Benjamin, who was always in the fringes of the Frankfurt circle, did not have the pessimism that characterized Adorno and Horkheimer, and made up his mind about popular culture and history from more experimental angles – which are hardly outdated. "Articulating the past historically is not the same as acknowledging 'how it really was'," Benjamin writes in History philosophical theses (1940). "It is to gain a memory when it strikes like a lightning bolt at a critical moment. In every era, one must try again to save the tradition from the conformism that is in danger of overpowering it. " Is there anything we need these days, it's just texts that turn our gaze on history into new tracks.
Still relevant. Are the Frankfurters just as current today? Have they become fossils in the ivory tower?
Despite some reefs in the sea, Jeffries is positive. The action was at the level of thinking, he believes: The Frankfurters provided explanatory models that could organize how people could understand reality – and possibly change it themselves. Such theoretical models are not direct practices per se, but they are empowering as they create overview and context.
An important matter was to understand why the labor unions and the workers themselves had less solidarity with each other, and thus not large enough power to resist totalitarian regimes like Hitler's. These themes are reactivated by the weakened solidarity of the labor movement and the rise of populism today. Frankfurt's many studies of the authoritarian personality and why obedience was replaced by solidarity are highly relevant.
The Franfurts teach us that reflected action is not possible if you do not think carefully first. Using philosophy as a tool for understanding a complex contemporary – even if you do not go out into the streets and demonstrate – is a good model for thinking well and thoroughly today. Then we also have to look through our fingers with the exaggerated pessimism and the sour taste of popular culture that some of the frankfurters could not let go.
