Frankfurt School members espoused proletarian solidarity while maintaining bourgeois lifestyles.

Evidence

Yet it is in one of the pieces in Dammerung, “A Fable of Consistency,” that he implicitly justifies the combination of radical beliefs and a bourgeois standard of living. … And so, the Institut’s members may have been relentless in their hostility towards the capitalist system, but they never abandoned the life-style of the haute bourgeoisie. It would be easy to term this behavior elitist or “mandarin” - to give Griinberg’s word a slightly different meaning - as some of the group’s detractors have done. But it seems unlikely that the rejuvenation of Marxist theory to which they so heavily contributed would have been materially advanced by a decision to wear cloth caps. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 171

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the general question of intellectuals’ class position and complicity raised throughout histories of the Left; connects to Gramsci’s organic vs. traditional intellectuals. — connects to: Frankfurt School theorists pioneered analysis of mass culture and working-class integration — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 22; Working-class movements accommodated capitalism while theory idealized a revolutionary proletariat; The proletariat’s backwardness enabled its integration into bourgeois society — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 977 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Working-class movements accommodated capitalism while theory idealized a revolutionary proletariat #expands (0.85)
• Frankfurt School theorists pioneered analysis of mass culture and working-class integration #expands (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 22
• The proletariat’s backwardness enabled its integration into bourgeois society #corroborates (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 977