Presentation made at Midlands state University on the Theoretical History of Frankfurt School

Theoretical History of Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt school is the second generation of Marxist critics emerged in the early 30’s in the work of thinkers associated with the institute for Social Research at the university of Frankfurt. The Frankfurt school encompasses the group of scholars, who elaborated a critical theory of society and most of whom, as Jewish scholars, fled from Germany after 1933. One of the founding members, Max Horkheimer, helped to ground the institute in non-dogmatic Marxian thought, which criticized existence and society while remaining grounded in historically conditioned meaning, Other important members include Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin, who was linked peripherally rather than centrally involved. In addition, Martin Jay, the historian of the Frankfurt school, write that the work of Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Adorno among others, formed the core of the institutes achievement, rooted as it was in the central traditional of European philosophy open to contemporary empirical techniques and addressed to cure social questions. It is important however, to remember that the thinkers of the Frankfurt school lacked experience in Marxist “praxis”, that is they lacked practical experience in politics.
The Frankfurt school institute began in 1923, but with the rise of Nazi German, the Jewish scholars associated with it realised the necessity of leaving Germany. By 1936, the institute was housed at Columbia University in New York. In the 40.s Horkheimer and Adorno moved to Los Angeles, utilizing their proximity to Hollywood to study mass culture at close range and continuing the work of the institute there by 1980, Horkheimer and Adorno were able to return to Frankfurt where the institute remains, currently including the work of scholars like Jurgan Habermas. The operant tern for their dialectical social criticism of the Frankfurt school is “critical theory”. Critical theory in conceived of as a sustained reflection on the dialectical relationship between reason and freedom.
Furthermore, critical theorist wish to preserve the notion that reason serves the aim of human emancipation while rejecting claim of harmony between reason and liberation. Several motifs are considered central in critical theory:
i) A reinterpretation of Marxism in the light of growing discrepancies between dialectical materialism as a theory and as a practice, that is Marxism as a focus on the material forces and contradiction of those forces was turned away from emphasis on a simplistic concept of economic base reflected by a cultural superstructure.
ii) A critique of a positivist and pragmatist sociology which could claim to be value free, resulting in a refusal of scientific neutrality coupled with an insistence upon critically engaged social research.
iii) An attempt to address the social and psychological grounds of authoritarianism in modern times, for a re-evaluation of enlightenment rationality through its power to demystify and subjugate by its imperative to dominate nature, including human nature at all cost. This is similar to findings available from Foucault’s work on power, madhouses and prisons. To the Frankfurt school thinkers like Adorno and Benjamin, “aesthetic” is central to their projects (Hopkins 282)
Adorno and Horkheimer: The Cultural Industry
Theodor Adorno and max Horkheimer (1979) argued that in advanced capitalism societies, the culture industry produce material that deadens masses, while the potential of art to provoke critical thoughts is drowned by the peddling of endlessly bland and repetitive cultural commodities. Dant (2003:110) states that just as manufacturing industry generates things as products, so the cultural industries generate and circulate ideas as products. Religion on the other hand can be viewed as part of capitalism that as noted by Harlbon and Haralambos (1995) assist to cushion the wounds created by the capitalist. Apostolic faith Mission in Zimbabwe (AFM) reinforces culture industry through its biblical teachings that devoted Christians should receive blessings from God, which can enable them to live comfortable in this universe. This makes Christians to work themselves hard so that they can perpetually purchase the cultural industrial commodities that set them distinct from the so called non-Christians. As with commodity production in general, the social form fetishisms cultural products, create specific culture and economic value in intangible commodities such as the entertainment value to the artistic value (Adorno 1991:33-35)
Moreover, cultural commodities are directed not to the material needs of human beings, such as food and clothing, but to people’s minds; their conscious and subconscious selves. Therefore, capitalism has an interest in the state on those minds; it needs workers who are happy enough to accept uncritically their position within the system. Just like the church which preaches to its followers that they should respect their government and accept those in power as installed by God. This is a belief which becomes the cultural of all Christians who read and believe Romans (13 verses 1-6) AFM as a church moulds its followers to be happy enough to accept uncritically their position within the system and perceived it as God’s will. Horkheimer described the aims of the Frankfurt Institute as being to explore the interconnection between the economic life of society, the psychic development of individual and transformation in the realms of culture (Held 1980:33) This philosophy can be strongly supported by Fanon (1961:190) in his book entitled ;“The Wretched of the earth”.
Fanon says; every effort is made to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior to recognize the unreality of his nation, and in the last extreme the confused and imperfect character of his own biological structure”.
It can be strongly argued that the “cultural industry” as perceived by Adorno and Horkheimer just like the church such as AFM instills certain culture to the individuals that can make them throw themselves In frenzied fashion into the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying power and takes every opportunity of unfavorably criticizing his own national culture, or takes refuge in setting out and substantiate the claims of that culture in a way that is passionate but rapidly becomes unproductive (Frantz Fanon 1961). In cultural industry, the mass-produced new media of movies, music and radio delivered a product, once consumed leaves nothing but memories. The entertainment produced by the culture industry gives the illusion of happiness through laughter dulling the sensibilities of the masses and preparing them for work in the rational organization (Adorno and Horkheimer 1979:147)
Dant (2003) notes that Frankfurt scholars as critical theorists analyzed all mass mediated cultural artifacts with the context of industrial production, in which the commodities of the cultural industries exhibited the same features as other products of mass production such as Commodification, standardization and massification. In addition, the cultural industries had the specific function, however of providing ideological legitimating of the existing capitalist societies and of integrating individuals into its way of life. For instance, AFM as a church fosters ideology of capitalism by teaching its followers that they should work hard and be loyal to their employers. Pastors on several occasions have quoted verses such as from Proverbs 19 verses 22, which say that;
“Loyalty makes a person attractive and it is better to be poor than dishonest”
Judging from the above verse the church reinforces the ideology of capitalism and encourages its followers to be loyal and to prefer to remain poor rather than being dishonest. Such teachings make Christians who are simultaneously workers to accept the cultural industry and God determined. In addition, Althusser’s assertion that the church is an ideological state apparatus is true since the church uses hegemony to make Christians accept their status as normal and acceptable.
It can be argued that the Frankfurt school theorist were among the first neo-Marxian group to examine the effects of mass culture and the rise of the consumer society on the working class which were to be the instrument of revolution in classical Marxian scenario. Again Frankfurt school focused intently on technology and culture, indicating how technology was becoming both a major force of production and formative mode of social organization and control. Again the church assist in hamming and convincing Christians to acknowledge capitalist innovation by admitting that technology comes from God and people at work, schools and church should use this God given gift for the betterment of their lives. For example, the satellite televisions have resulted too many religious channels for Christianity and Islamic religion. The instrument used to produce gospel music is so appealing such that the audience instead of castigating capitalism modes, they intend to admire and wish if possible for them to use the new technology for preaching and songs. The Christianity satellite channels on television uses English language as an “interpellation”, that is the use of language to influence people to like and support capitalism mentality and its structure. Marcuse (1941:414) say that; “In the realm of culture, technology produces mass culture that habituate individuals to conform to the dominant patterns of thought and behavior, and thus providing powerful instruments of social control and domination.
Moreover, victims of European fascism, the Frankfurt school experienced first hand the ways that the Nazi used as the instrument of mass culture to produce submission to fascist culture and society. While in US the Frankfurt school came to believe that American “popular culture” was also highly ideological and worked to promote the interest of American capitalism (Wiggershaus 1994). The cultural industries were organize according to the structures of mass production, churning out mass produced products that generate a highly commercial system of culture which in turn sold the values, life-styles and institutions of the American way of living. This however make it apt when scholars like Turnstal assert that “media are American” Even the contemporary society like in Zimbabwe they is the commodification, standardization and massification of American products. For instance, the use of satellite television enable most households to develop an insatiable appetite for the Western values such as music, food, fashion, Hollywood films and western worshiping style.
In addition, Fanon (1961:199) says that “imperialism which today is fighting against a true liberation of mankind leaves in its wake here and there tinctures of decay which we must search out and mercilessly expel from our land and our spirit”. Again AFM in Zimbabwe as a church uses the bible as the literature that manipulates the so called “devoted” Christians to relinquish to the demands of capitalism. Fanon (1961:193) notes that, “the bible is a literature of combat, because it moulds the nation consciousness, giving it form and contours and fling open before its new and boundless horizons”.
The work of the Frankfurt school provided what Lazarsfeld (1942) one of the originators of modern communication studies termed “critically approach”, which he distinguishes from the “administrative research”. In the work of arts in the age of mechanical reproduction, Benjamin (1969) noted how new mass media supplanted older forms of culture, whereby the mass reproduction of photography, films recordings and publications replaced the emphasis on the originality of “aura” of the work of art in earlier era. Max Korkheimer one of the Frankfurt key scholars in 1964 wrote a book entitled “eclipse of Reason”. Here Horkheimer was influenced by Nazi power in Germany. He outlines how the Nazi were able to make their agenda appear “reasonable”. Horkheimer’s book “Eclipse of Reason” deals with the concept of “reason” with the reason as “rationality”. He details the different between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ reason and state that the state (German) has moved from objective to subjective reasoning. However, objective reasoning deals with universal truth that dictates that an action is either right or wrong. Subjective reasoning takes into account the situation ad social norm. Actions that produce the best situation from the individual are ‘reasonable’ according to subjective reasoning.
The movement from one type of reasoning to the other occurred when thoughts could no longer accommodate these objectives truth or when it judged them to be delusion. In addition, Horkheimer suggest that under subjective reasoning, concept lose their meaning. All concepts must be strictly functional to be reasonable, because subjective reasons rules the ideals of a society, such as democratic ideals, became dependent on the “interest” of the people instead of being dependent on objective truth.
Another Frankfurt school Walter Benjamin was at the “outer circle” of the institute in the 1930. Benjamin made correction to Marxist theory and his perspective added to what Marx called “unscientific methods”. In his collection of his work Benjamin demonstrated complete adherence to the notion of history moving through the necessary epoch set forth by Marx to human material desire being the prime mover of mankind; to the notion of alienation and to the proletariat being the class with the ability to move mankind (through revolution) from the current epoch of capitalism, to the next epoch, communism. Benjamin challenged the orthodox Marxism with the notion that the individual participant in the bourgeoisie can come to a full awareness of his part in the current disintegration of man by the structure of his method and by questioning the deterministic element of Marxism. Benjamin method is a combination of an artful use of literary tools, empirical observation, and “transcendent” experience.
As on of the Frankfurt scholar Benjamin illustrates historical materialism through the imagery and ancient man demonstrating his regard for nature by pouring out libation, with modern man’s use of technology to strip[e nature of her products prematurely. Benjamin’s essay on the cities, particularly Moscow (98), and his essay “One way” (75) present in-depth illustrations of alienation. In addition, Benjamin used cities to depict the bourgeois mind, and its perpetuation of its own illusion. Benjamin presented the transcendent element in surrealism as “profane illumination”. This illumination is either the bourgeoisies’ apprehension of its participation in capitalism. Benjamin sites the ecstasy of drugs and religion as possible vehicle of imitation into illumination. However, Benjamin’s entire collection represents an “I think” conscious efforts to demonstrate that Marxism can be the object of criticism, as well as the move of history. Scholars like Dant (2000) say are that Benjamin’s solution is unclear. He seems to purport, as Marx does that this current epoch will be at the hands of a proletariat in revolt, or at the hands of a self destructing bourgeoisie.
Frankfurt schools analysis of culture in the 1930’s and 1940’s presents a radical penetrating critique of the role of mass communication advanced industrial western societies (Beverly 1987) The school above all is concerned with radical social change in the direction of human emancipation. Frankfurt school refers to a group of German intellectuals who comprised the inner circle of the institute of social sciences. Marx Horkheimer, a philosopher and Kantian scholar, directed the institute from 1931, served as the group’s nucleus. Adorno formulated the school’s major theoretical position, which came to be known as the critical theory of society. A number of other individuals have been closely associated with the Frankfurt school, such as Pollock an economist who analyzed the soviet Unions planned economy, Leo Lowenthal, a sociologist of literature, who made contributions primarily in the area of popular culture, Herbert Marcuse, a student of Husserl and Heidegger the principle architects of critical theory Benjamin probably was the most peculiar Marxist ever produced by Frankfurt scholar (Arendt 1968:11)
In addition, traditional and critical theory Horkheimer make it clear when he states that man’s emancipation from slavery is the major goal of critical theory. Horkheimer and Adorno broached the problem on a grand scale in “Dialect of Enlightenment” was sought to discover “why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972:6). Horkheimer and Adorno wrote; “man imagines himself free from fear where there is no longer any thing unknown” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972:6). This denial of man’s dialectical relationship with nature is traced back to the dawn of civilization. Horkheimer writes:” one might say that the collective madness that ranges today, from the concentration camps to the seemingly most harmless mass-culture reactions, was already present in germ in primitive objectification in the first man’s calculating contemplation of the world as a prey (Horkheimer 1947:176). Horkheimer and Adorno states that for enlightenment mankind: ideation is only an instrument. In thought, men distance themselves from nature in order thus imaginatively to present it to themselves but only in order to determine how it is to be dominated. Like the things the material tool, which is held on to in different situation as the same thing, and hence divides the worlds as the chaotic, many sided, and disparate form the known one and identical, the concept is the ideal tool, fir to do service for everything, whenever it can be applauded (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972:39)
However, Horkheimer and Adorno (1972:54) suggests that mankind’s alienation from nature distorts not only the telos of control of nature, but the telos of man’s own life; “As soon as man discard his wariness that he himself is nature, all the aims for which he keeps himself alive… social progress, the intensification of all his material and spiritual power, even consciousness itself… are nullified”.
Irrational
The rationality of enlightenment society is irrational; the more man struggle to establish his sovereignty from nature, the more he becomes dominated by social forces which lord over him as relentlessly and blindly as nature ever did. The theme of the irrationality was taken up by Marcuse, most notably in his 1964 analysis of advanced industrial society “one dimensional man”. He too, saw “civilization rationality” as tainted throughout its history by man’s denial of his dialectical relationship with nature; “ In the social reality, despite all changes, the domination of man by man is still the historical continuum that links pre-technological an technological reason. However, the society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence… With dependence on the objective order of things” (Marcuse, 1964:144)
Furthermore, it can be noted that the Frankfurt school contested Marx’s belief that the proletariat could be expected to provide the material force for radical social change. One good reason for this is lack of revolutionary consciousness on the part of working class. In addition, the school denied Marx’s assertion that the proletariat represented a universal interest, and believed that it would be wrong for critical theory to consist of formulations expressing the idea and feeling of any one particular class. (Horkheimer, 1972:214)
The later work of Frankfurt school presents a shift away from these early expectations for critical theory. Two major theoretical changes resulted in;
i) The Frankfurt school conceptualization of the relationship between theory and praxis. Over time, the school became more and more convinced that it is incorrect to assume that praxis arises spontaneously from theory. They asserted that’ “the call for unity of theory and practice has irresistibly degraded theory to a servant’s role “Adorno explains, the position eventually reached by the Frankfurt school vis-à-vis the theory/ praxis nexus. The liquidation of theory by dogmatization and thought taboos contributed to the bad practice; the recovery of theory’s independence lies in the interest of practice itself. The Interrelation of both moment is not settled once for all but fluctuates historically. Today with theory paralyzed and disparaged by the all-governing bustle, its mere existence, however important, bears witness against the bustle (Adorno 1973:143)
ii) A second change was a shift in emphasis from the ultimate good of human emancipation to the more immediate goal of negating existing social conditions. It was believed that any premature reconciliation of the contradiction that characterized contemporary society would obliterate the chance for radical reformation. Adorno (1976b) say that instead of attempting to smooth away tension and present a harmonious view of society, social research must develop and make fruitful the tensions and contradictions.
A final point to be made about the Frankfurt school’s social research is that the objective of study shifted with changing historical conditions. Returning to his 1937 essay on critical theory, we find Marcuse reaffirming the materialist basis for critical theory, arguing that critical theory is an economic rather than a philosophical system. His claim is narrowly defined economic concepts might not be adequate for the analysis of social system, the critique of political economy criticized social existence in its entirety.

The Critique of culture
The Frankfurt school met face to face with a thoroughly commercialized culture which had virtually obliterated individual consciousness. From the perspective of critical theory, the individual in mass society is dominated in more subtle yet irresistible ways than before, the very core of his being is tightly bound to a repressive social structure whose most powerful weapon is the cultural industry. Frankfurt took note of the flourishing business in radio, jazz, movies and magazines in the liberal industrial notions, and tied the industry’s progress to the general laws of capital (Horkheimer 1941:37)
Similarly, in a 1944 essay by Horkheimer and Adorno, the cultural industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, also speak of the cultural industry as an integral part of the economic web of monopoly capitalism. The commercialization of culture has advanced the state where it no longer even pretends to be art, the write. “The truth that they are just business is made into ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberate produced (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972:121)
Amusement and all the elements of the culture industry exist along before the latter came into existence. The cultural industry can pride itself on having energetically executed the previously clumsy transposition of art into the sphere of consumption. The eccentricity of the circus, peepshow, and a brothel is an embarrassing to it as that of Schonberg and Kraus. For instance, jazz musician Benny Goodman appears with the Budapest string quarter, more pedantic rhythmically than any philharmonic clarinetist, while the style of the Budapest players is as uniform and sugary as that of Guy Lombardo. But what is significant is not vulgarity, stupidity, and lack of polish. All this is meant to reflect mass deception caused by culture industry.
In addition, enlightenment as mass deception through Frankfurt scholars can be witnessed through Schonberg and Picasso, the greatest artist who have retained a mistrust of style, and at crucial point have subordinated it to the logic of the matter. What Dadaists and expressionists called the untruth of style as such triumphs today in the sung jargon of a crooner, in the carefully contrived elegance of a film star, and even in the admirable expertise of photography of a peasant’s squalid hut. It unconditionally posits the real forms of life as it is by suggesting that fulfillment lies in their aesthetic derivatives (Blunden 1998) To this extent the claim of art is always ideology too.

Another Frankfurt scholar Jurgan Habermas wrote extensively on the concept of the public sphere, using accounts of dialogue that took places in coffee house in eighteenth in England. It was this public sphere of rationale debate on matter of political importance, made possible by the development of the bourgeois culture centered on coffee houses, intellectuals and literary salons, and the print media that help to make parliament ideals of equity, human rights and justice. Here Habermas as Frankfurt scholar suggests that public sphere was guided by a norm of rational argumentation and critical discussion in which the strength of one’s argument was more important than one’s identity.

According to Habermas, a variety of factors resulted in the eventually decay of the bourgeois public sphere of the enlightenment. Most importantly, structural forces, particularly the growth of a commercial mass media, resulted in a situation in which media become more of a commodity something to be consumed rather than a tool for public discourse.
In addition, Habermas sees media such as internet, radio, print media and so forth as a tool to create a forum for public sphere. Furthermore, in an era of globalization and technology and automation in the economy puts in question both Karl Marx’s labor theory of value, upon which the early work of the Frankfurt school was based, as well as Habermas’ distinction between production and interaction as the fundamental distinction to make sense of, interpretive, and criticize contemporary societies.
It can be noted that Frankfurt school attempt to develop a theory for the Marxist revolutionary project the radical reconstruction of society in the interest of human emancipation based on a philosophy which denies Marx’s theories of man and history. It can be observed that the Frankfurt failed in this effort to do that. Its early effort and ambition’s of merging critical theory with political praxis were gradually abandoned and in later years the school retreated into a pessimistic denial of the desirability of revolution praxis. Furthermore, Frankfurt school hands are tied by the lack of a philosophical anthropology and theory of history: not only do they reject Marx’s contributions, but they suggest that mankind is capable of reason and of praxis, including the shaping of history, under optimal condition. But their vague abstractions fail to provide any concrete starting points any criteria for knowledge, wisdom, action or vision for the future.

Conclusively, it can be argued that Frankfurt school was concern to distance itself from the construction of utopias, and refused to discuss specifies of a future socialist society. Again interpretation of a dialectical approach to the study of society places heavy emphasis on discrepancy between a social institution “real” conditions principles and ideology under which it function , that is between what a thing is and what it says is. Frankfurt analysis of commercialization of culture in contemporary society are biting and to the point. Perhaps its major theoretical contribution is the insistence that cultural domination permeates all social strata in industrial society today. But its final analysis is pessimistic that critical mass communication inquiry must confine itself to negation is itself an invitation to resignation.

References

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Adorno, Theodor (1973b) Negative Dialectics. New York. Seabury.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944) The Cultural Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.

Arendt, Hannah (1968) Walter Benjamin: (1892-1940). Introduction to: Illuminations by Walter

Benjamin. New York: Harcourt, Bruce and World.

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Dant, T (2003) Critical Social Theory London. Sage Publication.

Fanon F (1961) The wretched of the Earth. France. Penguin.

Hanno Hardt (1992) Critical Communication Studies . London Routledge

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurgen Habermas

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http://filer.case.edu/ngb2/Author/Benjamin.html