The Institute abandoned class conflict in favor of man-nature domination as history’s motor

Evidence

The clearest expression of this change was the Institut’s replacement of class conflict, that foundation stone of any truly Marxist theory, with a new motor of history. The focus was now on the larger conflict between man and nature both without and within, a conflict whose origins went back to before capitalism and whose continuation, indeed intensification, appeared likely after capitalism would end. Signs of the new emphasis had appeared in the debate over fascism among Institut members during the war. To Horkheimer, Pollock, Adorno, and Lowenthal, domination was taking increasingly direct, noneconomic forms. The capitalist mode of exploitation was now seen in a larger context as the specific, historical form of domination characteristic of the bourgeois era of Western history. State capitalism and the authoritarian state spelled the end, or at least the radical transformation, of that epoch. Domination, they argued, was now more direct and virulent without the mediations characteristic of bourgeois society. It was in a sense the revenge of nature for the cruelty and exploitation that Western man had visited upon it for generations. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 773

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the pivotal theoretical turn of the school — replacing class analysis with the man-nature domination dialectic of Dialectic of Enlightenment.
• XREF: Directly sets up the reading of Dialectic of the Enlightenment’s Odysseus thesis and the revenge of nature motif. — connects to: Pollock’s state capitalism theory erased class antagonisms in favor of purely political rulers — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 599; Nature’s qualities are historical, not fixed, under human mastery — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 825

Broader Connections

• Pollock’s state capitalism theory erased class antagonisms in favor of purely political rulers #expands (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 599
• Nature’s qualities are historical, not fixed, under human mastery #expands (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 825