Increasing theoretical radicalism coincided with growing political pessimism

Evidence

In calling Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s critique “radical,” the word should be understood in its etymological sense of going to the roots of the problem. This is especially important to grasp in view of the Frankfurt School’s growing distrust of what passed for “radical” politics in later years. Paradoxically, as the theory became more radical, the Institut found itself decreasingly capable of finding a connection to radical praxis. The desperate hopes of Horkheimer’s wartime essay on the “Authoritarian State” soon gave way to a deepening gloom about the chances for meaningful change. Disillusioned with the Soviet Union, no longer even marginally sanguine about the working classes of the West, appalled by the integrative power of mass culture, the Frankfurt School traveled the last leg of its long march away from orthodox Marxism. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 772

Categorization

• XREF: This is the classic criticism of the Frankfurt School — theory radicalized as practical engagement attenuated — echoing later critiques from Habermas and others. — connects to: Radicalism among critics is reduced to abstract prestige within an allotted pattern — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 228; The Popper-Adorno debate turned on pessimism versus reformist optimism about social change — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2414; Anti-political attitudes have grown in scope and intensity since the mid-1900s — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 597 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that intellectual ‘going to roots’ severed the connection to practical transformation is a genuinely dense, sit-with-it insight about the price of critique.