Bureaucratic workers’ organizations and monopoly mass culture destroyed working-class spontaneity.

Evidence

The working class had largely been robbed of its spontaneity by its bureaucratic organizations and by a standardized mass culture dictated by the private monopolies, and it was easy prey for the Nazis. After passing through a democratic phase, the masses could no longer simply be ignored, and the Nazis had been able to manipulate them effectively. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 310

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This inverts the standard Marxist expectation that bureaucratic organization would protect the proletariat; the very institution built to represent workers delivered them to fascism.
• XREF: Directly continues the Frankfurt School’s integration-of-the-working-class thesis and the Weimar worker study discussed earlier.