Marcuse became affiliated with the Institut fur Sozialforschung, headed by Max Horkheimer, at Frankfurt am Main. Marcuse calls the Institut "the only real personal influence upon the development of my thought", and he stresses the invaluable ambiance provided by compatible colleagues engaged in fruitful collaboration.

Kellner outlines four periods of development in the Frankfurt School:

1. Orthodox Marxian historical and theoretical studies carried out from 1923 through the late 1920s, when Carl Grunberg was director

2. Work produced from early 1930s through the 1940s when Max Horkheimer. was director and when Institute, from 1933 on, was in exile from fascist Germany in the U.S.

3. Period from Institute’s return to Frankfurt in 1950 until the death of Horkheimer and Adorno

4. The 1970s and 1980s work of Jurgen Habermas, his colleagues and students, who form the second the third generations of CT -

 

It was primarily the experiences of WWI, the Russian revolution of 1917, the German revolution of 1918 and a strong belief in the bankruptcy of bourgeois capitalist society which erupted into war and revolution that led many young intellectuals and activists to embrace Marxism. Marxism had previously served as the official doctrine of the working-class movement, and was not fashionable in bourgeois social and cultural circles. Many young member of the middle and upper classes were driven to pacifism and Marxism by their experiences in WWI, however. Biographical material shows that Horkheimer, Marcuse, Pollock, Fromm, Lowenthal and others were opposed from the beginning to Germany’s war policy, and were deeply alienated from bourgeois society by the senseless slaughter and destruction produced by the war. They were all drawn to Marxian ideas, which explained the war in terms of the dynamics of capitalism and imperialism and

produced a thoroughgoing critique of capitalist society, as well as an alternative to it.

In the aftermath of the German revolution of 1918, political ferment eventually erupted with the traditionally conservative German universities, and for the first time, Marxism began to be taught and discussed in a university. setting. Many Leftist intellectuals, disappointed by the collapse of the German revolutionary movement but hoping that a socialist revolution was still possible in Germany, returned to university life. At this time, Felix Weil, a committed sympathizer of the German revolution, undertook to establish the first Marxist-oriented research Institute in Germany. Weil was the son of a wealthy grain merchant, and had studied with Karl Korsch, for whom he wrote a dissertation on the various plans for socializing the economy and the contemporary debates over socialism. Soon after, Weil’s father agreed to contribute a substantial endowment to establish an institute for social research, and the liberal and Social Democrat education minister and administrators of Frankfurt University were receptive to the idea.

The Institut fur Sozialforschung was founded in 1923 at Frankfurt and was an affiliate there of the University. One of the major purposes of the Institut was to focus upon contemporary developments in society in order to work out "a comprehensive theory of social life" for the purpose of remaking society. Another was to highlight subjects felt to be inadequately treated at German universities: the economic interpretation of history, psychoanalysis, social psychology. and the classical sociology associated with Max Weber. (p.11) The individuals who would produce Critical Theory thus conceived of Marxism as an open-ended, historical, dialectical theory that required development, revision and modification, precisely because it was, they believed, a theory of contemporary socio-historical reality which itself was constantly developing and changing.

They saw the need to concern themselves with consciousness, subjectivity, culture, ideology and the concept of socialism precisely in order to make possible radical political change.

In this context it is significant that the Institute for Social Research was founded in 1923, the year marking the end of the period of revolutionary upheaval that began with the Russian revolution and the end of WWI, while also marking the beginning of the stabilization of capitalism and bourgeois rule.

Weil financed the construction of a building to house the Institute, its library and archives. After the premature death of its first director, Karl Albert Gerlach, the Austrian Carl Grunberg, who had edited a yearbook for the history of the workers’ movement, took over the directorship. Grunberg was an authority on historical materialism and the first self-proclaimed Marxist to hold a chair in a German university. Under Grunberg the Institute specialized in empirical and historical research from the point of view of historical materialism.

The first head of the Institut, Kurt A. Gerlach, died in 1923, the year of its founding. He was replaced by Carl Grunberg, editor of the Archiv fur die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, commonly known as Grunbergs Archiv. For Grunberg, the aim of Marxist research was to discover the causes and laws of social change. Grunberg believed that social life in all its manifestations is a reflex of the existing economic system, and that they key to social theory can be found in the laws governing the economic system. Grunberg had a serious heart attack and was forced to step down from the directorship in 1929; Max Horkheimer was named director in 1930. Under Grunberg the Institut had given up much of emphasis upon contemporary social life. Horkheimer shifted back to its original purposes. Under Horkheimer’s direction the Institute carried through a unique synthesis of philosophy and social theory.(p.14)

Horkheimer delivered his inaugural address on January 24, 1931; it was entitled "The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research." It provided the first major conception of his view of critical social theory as a synthesis of social science and philosophy.

He began by criticizing opposing position to clarify his views. He criticized Kant for grounding social philosophy in the experience and faculties of the particular individual. Hegel’s idealism and tendency to justify the existing order is rejected. (pp. 34-7) Then Horkheimer criticizes the current forms of idealism in the neo-Kantian, neo-Hegelian, phenomenological and existential philosophies with their questionable speculative metaphysics and their tendencies to celebrate a higher, transcendental sphere of being (Sein) and meaning (Sinn) over concrete existence (pp. 38-9). The positivistic schools which root their theories in isolated facts are also criticized for their unsupportable metaphysical presuppositions and methodological limitations (p. 39

Horkheimer concludes that none of the dominant philosophy schools contains an adequate social philosophy. In opposition to the separation between social theory, science and philosophy which was dominant at the time and continues today, Horkheimer called for a new sort of synthesis between philosophy and the specialized sciences. Horkheimer stated that the project would unite:

philosophers, sociologists, economists, historians, and psychologists in an ongoing research community who would do together what in other disciplines one individual does alone in the laboratory, - which is what genuine scientists have always done: namely, to pursue the great philosophical questions using the most refined scientific methods; to reformulate and to make more precise the questions in the course of work as demanded by the object; and to develop new methods without losing sight of the universal. (p.41)

Horkheimer is calling for a new synthesis of philosophy and social theory. He claims that the Institute’s new multidisciplinary program will allow its members to raise the question of ‘the interconnections between the economic life of society, the psychic development of the individual and transformations in the realm of culture . . . including not only the so-called spiritual contents of science, art and religion, but also law, ethics, fashion, public opinion, sport, amusement, life style, etc.’ (p. 443)

Critical social philosophy, by contrast, described the complex set of mediations which interconnect consciousness and society, culture and economy, state and citizens. These relations can best be clarified and developed in concrete historical contexts in which one asks ‘which interconnections exist in a definite social group, in a definite period of time and in a definite country, between the role of this group in the economic process, the transformation of the psychic structures of its individual members, and the totality of the system that affects and produces its thoughts and mechanism’.

Horkheimer illustrated the project of the Institute’s social theory by indicating that an empirical study of the white-collar working class would be its first research project. The study investigated social and psychological attitudes of two large groups in Germany - manual and white-collar workers. A questionnaire was distributed to 3,300 recipients. By the end of 1931, 1,100 had been returned; 584 were extant when Fromm began writing his report in 1934, due to loss of some of the material in the emigration. Publication was announced by the Institute for 1936, but differences over the value of the study delayed publication; and when Fromm left the Institute in 1939, he took the relevant documents with him

To express and propagate its point of view, the Institut organized the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung (ZSF) which commenced publication in 1931 and continued to appear through 1941. Among Horkeheimer’s collaborators were Theodor Adorno, philosopher and musicologist; the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, and the economists Henryk Grossmann and Frederick Pollock. Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, Karl Wittfogel and Walter Benjamin also contributed, giving it a rich interdisciplinary brilliance.(p11)

Herbert Marcuse explains the collective work of the Frankfurt school:

a theory of history was the prerequisite for an adequate understanding of social phenomena, and that such a theory would provide the standards for an objective critique of given social institutions which would measure their function and their aims against the historical potentialities of human freedom. (preface to Franz Neumann, The Democratic and the Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory, ed. by Herbert Marcuse, 1957).

 

During World War II the members of the Frankfurt School were dispersed throughout the United States; Adorno and Horkheimer had written Dialectic of Enlightenment. Horkheimer and Adorno did not initiate any sustained efforts to regroup the old multidisciplinary team of the Institute for Social Research. Both Marcuse and Neumann wrote from Washington inquiring into the possibility of a revival of Institute activity, and were constantly proposing the renewal of the journal and various collective projects. Horkheimer and Adorno did not seem particularly interested in reviving the project of developing an interdisciplinary social theory of the contemporary epoch, however; indeed, they no longer seemed to believe that such a theory could be grounded in the Marxian critique of political economy or serve as a springboard for revolutionary politics.

Recent materials from the Marcuse archives reveals that, not only was Marcuse eager to resume the multidisciplinary project of the previous years, but that he continued to concern himself with Marxian theory and revolutionary politics. Marcuse was not aware of the changes that had taken place in Horkheimer and Adorno’s interests and thought during the years after he left California to work in Washington during the war. In 1946 he enthusiastically wrote to Horkheimer concerning the great interest in the Institute’s work and proposed a special issue on Germany, incorporating analyses of the diverse political, economic and cultural programs of the most important German parties and groups at present.

Later in the year Marcuse met with Horkheimer in Washington, and they agreed to sketch out a theoretical orientation to the problems of the current historical epoch which could serve as a framework for renewed publication of the Zeitschrift. Marcuse sent a twenty-four-page draft outlining his perspectives on the postwar situation in Germany. He demonstrates continued commitment to Marxian revolutionary politics. Since Adorno and Horkheimer were rapidly abandoning such orthodox Marxian perspectives they perceived their growing distance from Marcuse, which no doubt contributed to their reluctance to bring him back into the inner circle.

Marcuse never provided any commentary on Dialectic Enlightenment when he was sent a copy in 1948. In Wiggerhaus’ words:

The ‘orthodox Marxist’ theorist of the unrealized revolution (Marcuse) and the authors (of Dialectic of Enlightenment) no longer shared the same conception of critical Theory . . . Marcuse spoke of the emancipation from exploitation and oppression and meant the emancipation of the exploited and the oppressed. When Adorno spoke of emancipation he was thinking rather of emancipation suggested by his own situation - namely freedom from anxiety, from violence, from the indignity of conformity . . . Marcuse attempted, with utopian means, to preserve orthodox Marxism. Adorno attempted to justify the distanced and isolated social critic. The ‘existentialist’ Marcuse made himself spokesperson for outrage over social injustice. Adorno made himself ‘philosophy of life’ advocate for the non-conformist intellectual

From this point on, Horkheimer distanced himself somewhat from Marcuse, and was also nervous concerning reports that one of his former students in Germany, Heinz Maus, was presenting Critical Theory as a Marxist alternative to the dominant paradigms of social theory in postwar Germany. At this point, Horkheimer hesitated in response to requests that he publish his and other Institute texts from the 19030s; and Habermas later reported that by the 1950s, after his return to Germany, Horkheimer kept copies of the Zeitschrift hidden in the basement of the Institute.

In November, 1951, with the help of the city of Frankfurt and of the American High Commissioner, John McCloy, the Institut fur Sozialforschung re-established itself in Frankfurt under the leadership of Max Horkheimer, assisted by Theodor Adorno. It played a prominent role in a reorientation of German intellectual life in terms of a radicalization of the study of the social sciences, particularly of sociology, enabling German students to catch up with the development of the social sciences in other countries. Popularly known in student jargon as "Cafe Max," the Institut once more made available in Frankfurt the familiar combination of empirical sociology and broad theoretical concern upon which its reputation had been based prior to the war. (Frankfurt am Main: Institut fur "Sozialforschung, 1952) ff p. 12 Adorno, Horkheimer and Pollock returned to Germany to re-establish the Institut fur Sozialforschung, while Marcuse, Lowenthal and others decided to remain in the United States. This permanently destroyed the possibility of re-establishing the sort of multidisciplinary research program begun in the early 1930s.

In the absence of Institute attempts to develop a systematic and comprehensive social theory of the present age, the elaboration of Critical Theory henceforth took place in a variety of essays, books and lectures produced by various members of the Institute at different times, which often exhibit great differences, even conflicts.