Financial fear, not intellectual conviction, drove the dialectics project’s priority.

Evidence

There was a definite reason why the Institute’s organization appeared to be a danger to the dialectics project, a reason why the project became more and more independent of the programme of using the Institute for collaborative research on social theory integrating empirical and specialist research. This was the Horkheimers’ fear of not having sufficiently large finances at their disposal. It was this fear which had enabled Horkheimer to produce some of his severest criticisms of the bourgeoisie in his aphorisms in Dawn, and which had nevertheless driven him to make the peculiar contracts with the Society for Social Research which were mentioned above. In the summer of 1940, on his way to settle in Los Angeles, he wrote to Lowenthal, `On the whole journey I keep seeing it coming up in front of my eyes: “Money is the best protection, money is the best protection, money is …”’ This fear, which Pollock, who usually saw the dark side of things, exacerbated, reminded him that in view of the increasingly insecure financial situation the book on dialectics had to be given first priority. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1042

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A striking inversion: Horkheimer’s radical critique of bourgeois wealth arose from his own deep personal fear of losing money, and this same fear redirected the Institute’s entire research agenda. The dialectics project triumphed because of an anxious-bourgeois reflex, not an intellectual decision.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: to what extent did Horkheimer’s personal financial anxiety shape the theoretical content of Dialectic of Enlightenment itself, beyond just its scheduling priority?
• BMF: The image of a radical theorist haunted by ‘money is the best protection’ echoes Changez’s anxious self-reconstruction in The Reluctant Fundamentalist — both driven by a bourgeois fear that reframes their loyalties.
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer’s fear of dwindling finances redirected the Institute toward the dialectics book — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1042