The Frankfurt School, officially known as the Institute for Social Research, emerged in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s.

Comprised primarily of German Jewish intellectuals, such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, who combined Marxist and Freudian views to create Cultural Marxism - a series of ideologies that went on to undermine Western culture.

Historical Context and Founding

The origins of the Frankfurt School are rooted in Germany's post-World War I disillusionment and the perceived failure of a socialist revolution. By October 1918, Germany faced defeat in the First World War, and many Jews and Marxist intellectuals believed conditions were ripe for a revolution, akin to the Bolshevik Revolution.

In May 1923, Felix Weil, son of a wealthy grain merchant with an interest in Marxism, organised the Erster Marxistische Arbeitswoche (First Marxist Workweek) to address why Germany's revolution had not yielded significant economic reform. This led to the establishment of the Institute for Social Research on 22 June 1924, in Frankfurt am Main. Its first director, Karl Gruenberg, an economic and social historian, stressed a "scientific" approach to Marxism, distinct from party politics. Initial studies at the Institute were largely empirical and economic, maintaining the belief in the inevitability of a socialist revolution, though concluding "the time hadn't quite been right".

Shift to Critical Theory 

A pivotal shift occurred in 1930 when Max Horkheimer, a psychologist and philosopher, succeeded Gruenberg as director.

Horkheimer brought a new theoretical perspective, leading the Institute to move away from a sole focus on economics and embrace the social sciences, turning instead to the study of people, society, and culture.

Horkheimer was sceptical of the inevitability of the socialist revolution they craved, arguing that capitalism had successfully integrated the working class into its structure, discouraging insurrection.

In 1936, Horkheimer would coin this new mode of societal analysis as Critical Theory. Its objective was to draw upon diverse fields, from economics to sociology and psychology, to foreground the ways in which capitalism encourages conformity.

The Frankfurt School became concerned less with Marx's "economic base" and more with the "political and cultural superstructure of society," understanding that capitalism shapes social and cultural forces, which in turn shape individuals.

They applied Marxist theory to culture, often incorporating ideas from Sigmund Freud, viewing the world through the prism of the unconscious in relation to individuals and society.

Their stated aim was the "liberation of man from the oppressive structures of Western culture," including capitalism, Western tradition, and its aesthetic and sexual norms.

Exile and Wartime Influence 

The rise of Adolf Hitler to Chancellor of Germany in 1933 posed an immediate threat to the Frankfurt School due to their left-wing intellectual stance and the fact that the majority of their members were Jewish.

This led Horkheimer to close the Institute premises in Frankfurt and initiate their exile, first to Geneva and then, in 1935, to Columbia University in New York. During their exile, particularly in California and Washington, the school's work was profoundly impacted by the rise of authoritarianism in Europe and the USSR.

This period saw the development of one of their key texts, Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-authored by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In this work, they argued that the Enlightenment's hyper-focus on rationalism had backfired, leading to an "instrumental reason" that resulted in totalitarianism and a "culture industry" that perpetuated the system.

They saw totalitarianism as an extreme application of objectivity, uniformity, and standardisation to society, reducing individuals to mere cogs in a machine.

They contended that the "culture industry" (films, radio, magazines) promoted sameness, prioritising profit and pleasing the largest audience, thereby robbing people of imagination and individuality, and manufacturing consent.

Following this, Adorno and other scholars at the University of California Berkeley published The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, which sought to identify an individual's susceptibility to supporting a fascist political program through an "F scale".

Notably, the term "democratic personality" was used in this context, a change from earlier studies that referred to a "revolutionary personality," reflecting a strategic alteration of language to avoid / obfuscate overtly Marxist terminology.

Post-War Return and Continuing Critiques 

In 1950, with the end of World War II, Horkheimer made the decision to return the Frankfurt School to its original home in West Germany.

Critical Theory, now an established body of work, significantly influenced the study of human society, politics, and culture. Subsequent publications, such as Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia (1951) and Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (1964), continued to articulate a pessimistic view of modern society.

Adorno argued that contemporary society had irrevocably damaged human life, making it impossible to live a truly good life. Marcuse contended that under both capitalist and Soviet systems, critical thinking was becoming obsolete, with people assimilated into modes of production and bureaucracy, unable to think outside the system.

This pervasive pessimism was only resisted within the school by Jürgen Habermas, who later became director of the Institute for Social Research. Despite their earlier revolutionary zeal, Horkheimer and Adorno remained sceptical of the student uprisings of May 1968, with Adorno notably calling the police on protesting students.

Impact and "Cultural Marxism" 

The Frankfurt School's work, particularly their critique of Western tradition, have become associated with the term "cultural Marxism," a philosophy underpinning contemporary "wokeness", which is aimed to undermine Western culture, including its aesthetic and sexual norms.

A key aspect of their philosophy involves a celebration of ugliness and a rejection of traditional beauty. Adorno, for instance, believed that "poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" and that anything presenting itself as whole, healthy, harmonious, or beautiful is inherently oppressive because it implies that anything outside of it is ugly or untrue.

This perspective suggests that beauty must be "exploded in terms of its own contradiction". Modern art's ugliness is, at least in part, attributed to the Frankfurt School's promotion of ugliness as a means of undermining Western power structures.

Herbert Marcuse extended this critique to sexual norms, arguing that Western tradition maintained power through sexual normativity.

He was an early proponent of female liberation movements and LGBT ideology, believing that the rejection of gender and sexual difference was a fundamental step towards "liberation".

Marcuse posited that traditional systems of sexuality were repressed due to oppressive economic systems, and that with the abolition of capitalism, there would be no need for such repression.

His vision of "erotic communism" suggested a society where work would become play and all social relations would be erotic, with polymorphous and narcissistic sexuality leading to "culture building" and the "pacification of external nature" through environmentalism. This perspective views the desire to escape pain as a core drive, advocating for the "destruction of distinction and merge together" through erotic energy.

Critique of Liberalism and Legacy 

The Frankfurt School's criticisms of Liberalism and mass consumer capitalism, particularly their concept of a manipulated mass of people pushed into "false consciousness" by a standardised culture industry, is actually true, but while the focus was on Capitalism and Fascism, totalitarianism comes in different flavours.

We can see that in the time since - an era defined as The Boomer Truth Regime and The WW2 Consensus - the "culture industries" use the same means of manufacturing conformity, and have been weaponised in ways that are in line with their ambitions of undermining Western society, for example Anti-Western Programming.

There is a clear Lucifarian nature to the "liberation" they seek. This proto-"woke", pseudo religion for atheists sought to create "heaven on Earth," but historically results in hell - in life and in death.

The Frankfurt School's were instrumental in shifting left-wing thought beyond a purely economic analysis of capitalism, fostering a more holistic study cognisant of social and cultural forces.

Despite their radical origins, their revolutionary zeal reportedly faded over time, with later members more often criticised for pessimism than for being dangerous insurgents. Their work, diverse in focus and methodology, continues to influence sociology, philosophy, political science, and other fields, consistently highlighting the potential for contemporary society to foster conformity and erode individuality.