Adorno rebuked Benjamin for paying an unflattering tribute to orthodox Marxism

Evidence

Your solidarity with the Institute, which no one can be more happy about than I am, has moved you to pay a tribute to Marxism which does not really flatter either Marxism or yourself. In God’s name, there is only the one truth. And if your powers of thought take hold of this one truth in the form of categories which may seem to you, according to your conception of materialism, some-what apocryphal, you will nevertheless be able to make more of that one truth with those categories than you do when you furnish yourself with mental equipment which your hand unceasingly resists at every touch. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 884

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is a famous open letter fragment — worth chasing the full Adorno-Benjamin exchange and what specific ‘tribute to Marxism’ in the Baudelaire essay was being criticized.
• XREF: Connects to the broader Adorno-Benjamin break documented in ‘The Complete Correspondence’ and to the materialist aesthetics debate of the 1930s. — connects to: Adorno judged Benjamin’s Marxism an unwitting productive misreading, not orthodoxy — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 297; Adorno’s criticisms of Benjamin’s Marxism reveal his own conception of Marxian critique — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 221; Adorno saw Benjamin’s Marxist side as an un-Benjaminian artifact of Brecht’s influence. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2717 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno judged Benjamin’s Marxism an unwitting productive misreading, not orthodoxy #qualifies (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 297
• Adorno saw Benjamin’s Marxist side as an un-Benjaminian artifact of Brecht’s influence. #corroborates (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2717
• Adorno’s criticisms of Benjamin’s Marxism reveal his own conception of Marxian critique #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 221
• Adorno and Benjamin diverged on whether Marxism solved or truncated problems #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 893
• Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism. #exemplifies (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290
• Adorno judged both Benjamin and Brecht ignorant of core Marxian theory #expands (0.70) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 226