Horkheimer rejected non-class-based accounts of ideas as perpetuating suppression

Evidence

Horkheimer was following the same pattern when, at about the same time, he criticized the sociology of knowledge. He accused the sociology of knowledge of putting considerations of intellectual history before inquiries into the complex ways in which the objective struggles of human beings condition their ideas', and of reinterpreting objectively existing contradictions as oppositions between ideas, “styles of thought” and “systematic world-views”’. With both Fromm and Horkheimer, the nub of the criticism lay in drawing attention to conditions, such as the misery and oppression of the lower classes, which produced various ideas, world-views and religions. They went on to show that any view of intellectual phenomena which did not start with the fundamental role of the mode of production and the division of society into classes would be perpetuating the suppression of any awareness of the misery and injustice which were the basis of such phenomena. It would be doing this even when it was modified by psychoanalysis or the sociology of knowledge. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 220

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends the Young Hegelian critique in [218-219]; links to the reader’s broader critical theory infrastructure. — connects to: Horkheimer saw Nazi-susceptibility as itself a product of oppression, not innate psychology — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1509; Horkheimer dismissed the Nazi-versus-German distinction as a lapse into totalitarian cynicism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1630; Horkheimer rejected introspective understanding of history because past was made unconsciously — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 209 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘the suppression of awareness’ as a test for whether a sociology genuinely starts from class — applicable to evaluating modern tech/media criticism.

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer rejected introspective understanding of history because past was made unconsciously #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 209