Horkheimer argued ideology’s collapse left people submissive rather than liberated

Evidence

With optimistic-sounding words, as in his view that the ideas of nation and race had achieved their ultimate extension, and that the Germans did not really believe in them any more, Horkheimer seemed to be confirming the communist theory of fascism as the last struggle of capitalism before it went under. But in reality he was denying any hopes of this sort by using a theory derived from Fromm’s social-psychological functionalism. This held that a fundamental anthropological change was taking place which, precisely in the absence of cultural illusions and in the absence of belief in any ideology, was leaving humanity submissive and obsequious towards its rulers. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1071

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows the administered-world thesis of later Frankfurt School work; reverses Marx’s assumption that disillusionment with ideology produces emancipation rather than docility. — connects to: Horkheimer held that authoritarian societies still need living authorities — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 622
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the death of ideology produces submission rather than freedom is genuinely paradigm-shifting — it inverts a core Marxist premise and underpins the whole later Frankfurt School pessimism about administered societies.