Among the former Institut figures who graciously granted me interviews were Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno (shortly before his death in the summer of 1969), Erich Fromm, Karl August Wittfogel, Paul Massing, Ernst Schachtel, Olga Lang, Gerhard Meyer, M. I. Finley, and Joseph and Alice Maier. Horkheimer, Marcuse, Fromm, and Wittfogel also took the time to comment on sections of the manuscript after its completion as a doctoral dissertation in history at Harvard. Jürgen Habermas, Alfred Schmidt, and Albrecht Wellmer, of the more recent generation of Frankfurt School adherents, were also willing to submit to my questions. Although we never actually met, Felix J. Weil and I carried on an extensive and spirited correspondence concerning many facets of the Institut, in whose creation he played so important a role. His reactions to sections of the manuscript were invaluable, although our interpretations of certain issues remain somewhat at odds. Gretel Adorno and Gladys Meyer were also very helpful correspondents.
There were three participants in the Institut’s history whose cooperation went well beyond anything I might have reasonably expected. Friedrich Pollock spent countless hours with me in Montagnola, Switzerland, in March, 1969, reliving his almost fifty years of involvement with the Institut. After I returned to Cambridge, we maintained a lively correspondence about the progress of my work. He painstakingly commented on the chapters I was able to submit for his scrutiny before his death in December, 1970. The enormous pride Professor Pollock demonstrated in the Institut’s achievement was such that I deeply regret not having been able to present him with a completed manuscript.
Leo Lowenthal was one of the first members of the Frankfurt School with whom I spoke at the beginning of my research. At Berkeley, in the summer of 1968, he gave generously of his time and materials, patiently explaining those references in his valuable correspondence with Horkheimer that had eluded me. In subsequent years, his interest in my work remained keen, and like Pollock he commented with great care and sensitivity on the first drafts of my chapters. Although our interpretations of specific issues were occasionally different, he never sought to impose his views on mine. Since my arrival at Berkeley, he has continued to give support and advice on the completion of the manuscript. Of all the benefits of my research, his friendship has been one of those I value most highly.
Finally, Paul Lazarsfeld offered me constant encouragement and wise counsel throughout the course of my work. Although never a member of the Institut’s inner circle, he was interested in its work and peripherally involved in its affairs from the mid-thirties. The documents and letters he had preserved from that time were generously put at my disposal. Moreover, his theoretical distance from the Frankfurt School helped me gain a perspective on its work I might otherwise have lacked.
In short, my debt to the surviving members of the Institut is considerable. Nothing symbolizes this more strikingly than Professor Horkheimer’s willingness to compose some prefatory remarks, despite a very serious illness.
No less an acknowledgment of gratitude is due to others who contributed to the making of this book. Of my former teachers, H. Stuart Hughes, who directed the dissertation, warrants a special mention for his many kindnesses throughout the course of my work. I also owe much to Fritz K. Ringer, who first aroused my interest in German intellectual history, for the care and severity with which he criticized the manuscript. To my friends in Cambridge I can only repeat in print what I hope they already know of my deep appreciation. Paul Breines, Michael Timo Gilmore, Paul Weissman, and Lewis Wurgaft did much more to sustain me during my graduate career than read my chapters with a critical eye. I am also very grateful for the advice of newer friends whom I have come to know through a common interest in the Frankfurt School: Matthias Becker, Edward Breslin, Susan Buck, Sidney Lipshires, Jeremy J. Shapiro, Trent Shroyer, Gary Ulmen, and Shierry Weber. I have also greatly benefited from the opportunity to speak to older scholars concerned with the work of the Frankfurt School, including Everett C. Hughes, George Lichtheim, Adolph Lowe, and Kurt H. Wolff.
My new colleagues at Berkeley have shown me in the short time I have been in their company that considerable vitality can still be found in the old notion of a community of scholars. The book has been improved in particular by the comments of Fryar Calhoun, Gerald Feldman, Samuel Haber, Martin Malia, Nicholas Riasanovsky, Wolfgang Sauer, and Irwin Scheiner. I would also like to express my thanks to William Phillips of Little, Brown, whose unwavering enthusiasm and keen editorial eye have been of great help throughout. My fine typists, Annette Slocombe of Lexington, Massachusetts, and Boyano Ristich and her staff at the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley, were invaluable in getting the manuscript into shape for publication, as was Boris Frankel, who helped me with the index. Finally, it is a particular pleasure to be able to acknowledge the support of the Danforth Foundation, financial and otherwise, which sustained me during my graduate career.
I hope that this list of acknowledgments has not seemed unduly long, for I am anxious to convey the extent to which The Dialectical Imagination approached a collective project. Many of the strengths of the text derive from that fact; the weaknesses, alas, are my own responsibility.
M. J.
THE
DIALECTICAL
IMAGINATION
I
The Creation of the Institut für Sozialforschung and Its First Frankfurt Years
One of the most far-reaching changes brought by the First World War, at least in terms of its impact on intellectuals, was the shifting of the socialist center of gravity eastward. The unexpected success of the Bolshevik Revolution—in contrast to the dramatic failure of its Central European imitators—created a serious dilemma for those who had previously been at the center of European Marxism, the left-wing intellectuals of Germany. In rough outline, the choices left to them were as follows: first, they might support the moderate socialists and their freshly created Weimar Republic, thus eschewing revolution and scorning the Russian experiment; or second, they could accept Moscow’s leadership, join the newly formed German Communist Party, and work to undermine Weimar’s bourgeois compromise. Although rendered more immediate by the war and rise of the moderate socialists to power, these alternatives in one form or another had been at the center of socialist controversies for decades. A third course of action, however, was almost entirely a product of the radical disruption of Marxist assumptions, a disruption brought about by the war and its aftermath. This last alternative was the searching reexamination of the very foundations of Marxist theory, with the dual hope of explaining past errors and preparing for future action. This began a process that inevitably led back to the dimly lit regions of Marx’s philosophical past.
One of the crucial questions raised in the ensuing analysis was the relation of theory to practice, or more precisely, to what became a familiar term in the Marxist lexicon, praxis. Loosely defined, praxis was used to designate a kind of self-creating action, which differed from the externally motivated behavior produced by forces outside man’s control. Although originally seen as the opposite of contemplative theoria when it was first used in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, praxis in the Marxist usage was seen in dialectical relation to theory. In fact, one of the earmarks of praxis as opposed to mere action was its being informed by theoretical considerations. The goal of revolutionary activity was understood as the unifying of theory and praxis, which would be in direct contrast to the situation prevailing under capitalism.
How problematical that goal in fact was became increasingly clear in the postwar years, when for the first time socialist governments were in power. The Soviet leadership saw its task in terms more of survival than of realizing socialist aims—not an unrealistic appraisal under the circumstances, but one scarcely designed to placate socialists like Rosa Luxemburg