Only the more sensitive privileged classes could perceive the evils of social atomization

Evidence

The fact that `many people are poorly off, even though everyone could be well off … necessitates the poisoning of the public mind with lies and is driving this social order towards collapse’. Yet, among those people who suffered through this poisoning, Horkheimer considered only the more sensitive members of the privileged classes, who were also able to perceive the evil in the fact that there was no organic relationship between the individual and society, that each person’s contribution was not duly recognized and that the good things in life usually fell to the worst sort of people. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 198

Categorization

• QUESTION: Curious inversion: the privileged, not the exploited, are epistemically positioned to see the social evil — worth chasing how this anticipates later Frankfurt epistemology.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 198
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer saw only sensitive privileged classes as able to perceive society’s contradictions — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 198; Masses distill perverted attitudes shared across all classes

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer saw only sensitive privileged classes as able to perceive society’s contradictions #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 198
• Masses distill perverted attitudes shared across all classes #contradicts (0.80)