Horkheimer’s core indignation was that capitalism blocked publicly responsible rational action

Evidence

Those who did not wish to speak of capitalism should also be silent about fascism, Horkheimer had written in 1939 in The Jews and Europe'. Now he no longer mentioned capitalism himself either. This was primarily for tactical reasons. If one criticized capitalism, one would have no chance of gaining the goodwill and support of the American authorities which permitted his activities as an American citizen in Germany, and which would possibly allow an Institute to be founded. (The fate of the journal Der Ruf (The Call), founded by Hans Werner Richter and Alfred Andersch, which was banned by the American military government in 1947 for its nihilistic’ ideas about democracy, was only one among many examples showing how narrow were the limits of what the American authorities would permit or even support. William Faulkner’s novels, describing the collapse of the old aristocratic families in the American South and the rise of unscrupulous upstarts, were banned in 1947 even during a preliminary selection in Washington of books to be exported to Germany because, as it was stated, they presented a wholly negative image of American society.) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1722 (#complicates, via linked claim)

When Marx seemed to go further in defining the categories of human self-production in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Horkheimer drew back. The central position of labor in Marx’s work and his concomitant stress on the problem of alienated labor in capitalist society played a relatively minor role in Horkheimer’s writings. In Ddmmerung he wrote: “To make labor into a transcendent category of human activity is an ascetic ideology… . Because socialists hold to this general concept, they make themselves into carriers of capitalist propaganda.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 229 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer’s own silence on capitalism contradicted his 1939 demand that fascism analysis require it — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1722; Horkheimer rejected labor as a transcendent human category, calling it capitalist propaganda. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 229

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer’s own silence on capitalism contradicted his 1939 demand that fascism analysis require it #complicates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1722
• Horkheimer rejected labor as a transcendent human category, calling it capitalist propaganda. #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 229