Horkheimer held that all friendly gestures in bourgeois society target social position, not persons

Evidence

The correct attitude to society is produced if one constantly keeps the following facts before one’s eyes: in today’s society, all human relations are distorted, and nothing across the whole gamut of friendship, approval and goodwill is ultimately meant seriously. The only thing which is serious is the competitive struggle within classes and the struggle between classes … Every friendly act is offered not to a person but to his place in societythis fact is shown in all its brutality when the same person loses his position as a result of minor or major changes in the conditions of the struggle (stock exchange, persecution of the Jews). But it is not a question of an abstract conclusion. Instead, you must constantly be aware that it is you yourself who are at their mercy when all the friendly, benevolent people with whom you are surrounded every day find out that you have become powerless. Conclusion: never on the same footing as the gaolers; solidarity for ever with the victims. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 441

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later Frankfurt School critique of instrumental reason and to Adorno/Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment; also resonates with the reader’s critical-theory thread. — connects to: Bourgeois friendship is offered to a person’s social position, not the person
• APHORISMS: ‘Never on the same footing as the gaolers; solidarity for ever with the victims’ functions as a life-orienting maxim worth returning to, distinct from the surrounding theoretical observation.

Broader Connections

• Bourgeois friendship is offered to a person’s social position, not the person #corroborates (1.00)