Horkheimer’s divide-and-rule management precluded rational collective resolution of crises

Evidence

Together with the fixation which the individual members of staff had on Horkheimer, who encouraged these fixations by giving each of them individually the impression that he had a special relationship with him, and by giving inconsistent and sometimes even intentionally contradictory information to each of them, this was a classic example of the maxim `divide and rule’ being applied. Under conditions such as these, there was no way for a crisis to be resolved rationally on a common basis. Crises could only be resolved at an unnecessarily high psychological cost and, in the end, only according to the principle that some people must be asked to make sacrifices so that others, or rather others’ ability to fulfil the theoretical task, could be saved. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1090

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The passage shows how an intellectual project’s institutional survival required systematically undermining the rational-communicative ideals it theorized — a rich paradox about the Frankfurt School’s own practice contradicting its theory of communicative rationality.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — the principle that some members must be sacrificed so the theoretical task survives echoes the sacrificial logic of institutional stability, though here the sacrifice is psychological and economic rather than literal.
• XREF: Mirrors the Milgrom/Roberts analysis of how information asymmetries and selective disclosure enforce cooperation in private regimes; also prefigures discussions of Habermasian communicative action vs. strategic manipulation. — connects to: Individualized self-improvement solutions block collective confrontation of structural crisis — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 1074

Broader Connections

• Individualized self-improvement solutions block collective confrontation of structural crisis #exemplifies (0.85) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1074