Cold War pressures drove Horkheimer and Adorno apart from Marcuse’s leftism

Evidence

Moreover, what further dismayed the Institut’s younger, more radical adherents was the ideological repercussions of this change. The Cold War spirit that Horkheimer and the others had struggled so hard to combat in the forties began gradually to filter into their pronouncements in the fifties and sixties. A widening gulf began to separate Horkheimer and Adorno from Marcuse, whose political inclinations remained firmly to the left. No public acknowledgment of the rift was made because of the personal ties that still obtained, but private disagreements were keen. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 864

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the emergence of the New Left’s embrace of Marcuse in the 1960s, and to the broader story of how Cold War liberalism pressured émigré intellectuals. — connects to: Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization revived the revolutionary Freud Horkheimer and Adorno had rejected. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 364; Adorno’s theory equated fascism with communism, suiting Cold War needs — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1333; Political rifts among French intellectuals mirrored the Cold War’s polarizing pressure — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 788 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Late Horkheimer embraced anti-Communist and pro-American rhetoric #exemplifies (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1726
• Marcuse and Neumann preserved Critical Theory’s political project that Horkheimer and Adorno abandoned #exemplifies (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 31
• Adorno’s theory equated fascism with communism, suiting Cold War needs #corroborates (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1333
• Cold War-era US ideological identity required an uncomfortable middle position #qualifies (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 671
• Political rifts among French intellectuals mirrored the Cold War’s polarizing pressure #exemplifies (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 788
• Cold War bipolarity threatened the autonomy of French intellectual culture #exemplifies (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 489