Adorno and Horkheimer proved both right about fascism’s end

Evidence

As usually happens in our disagreements over practical matters, we have both been proved right. My bourgeois thesis that Hitler could not last has been proved correct, although with a delay so long as to render it ironical. In other words: the productive forces of the economically more developed countries have proved stronger than the heights of technology and terror achieved by the `latecomer’: in accordance with the general historical tendency, the war has been won by industry against the military. By corollary, however, your thesis on the historical power of fascism is also true, except that this power has changed places, just as Europe became bourgeois after the fall of Napoleon … the young, enterprising bankrupt has sold his business to a stronger company. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1641

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Horkheimer and Adorno diverged from sociology to philosophy of history (similarity 0.83)
• Horkheimer’s logic implied the USA carried a greater fascist potential than Germany. (similarity 0.82)
• Adorno reframed their fragmentary collaboration as an end in itself rather than a failure (similarity 0.81)
• Horkheimer and Adorno never shared one unified school paradigm (similarity 0.81)
• Horkheimer and Adorno claimed their dialectic critique held regardless of Nazism’s existence (similarity 0.81)
• Horkheimer held incompatible theories of fascism as both despotism and passing gangsterism (similarity 0.80)
• Industrial production decided WWII in favor of developed economies over fascist regimes (similarity 0.80)
• Adorno packed Frankfurt theory into the Berkeley study at proof stage (similarity 0.80)
• The Institute’s anti-Semitism project grew beyond its capacity and dominated Horkheimer and Adorno (similarity 0.80)
• Adorno paradoxically hoped more for post-Hitler Germany than for the USA (similarity 0.79)
• Horkheimer and Adorno reduced theory’s role to stimulating thought rather than progress (similarity 0.79)
• Horkheimer and Adorno each deployed Hegelian dialectics toward different ends (similarity 0.79)
• Adorno treated all phenomena as evidence bearing on humanity’s fate (similarity 0.79)
• Rationalization plus nature-domination themes replaced Marx’s critique for explaining fascism (similarity 0.79)
• Adorno’s earlier anti-fascist position demanded denunciation of Communist policy remain purely theoretical (similarity 0.79)