In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Rob Schaap
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>(b) Goran Therborn's 'The Frankfurt School' would have it that the early
>Frankfurters (pre-1939) posited a classical Marxist definition (ie. 'the
>replacement of competitive capitalism by monopoly capitalism and as the
>seizure of power by the monopoly capitalists in order to deal with the
>economic and political crisis of capitalism'). The Freudian stuff (none of
>it contradicting this) came later, with stuff like 'The Authoritarian
>Personality- - which I've never read, alas.
Thanks to Rob for these egs. Can I recommend Frankfurter Franz Neumann's
Behemoth, written in 1944, and still to my mind the best account of Nazi
Germany I have read. Neumann employs orthodox Marxism, but with a
theoretical depth that is sadly lacking from Eclipse of Reason and
Dialectic of Enlightenment. He does indeed read Fascism as the victory
of imperialism over free market, fully understood as an outcome of the
centralisation of capital, but also puts the importance of anti-Semitism
as a race ideology right at the centre, as well as the suspension of
legal and democratic norms, political 'decisionism' and the atomisation
of the working class are all traced back to the underlying conditions of
Nazi Germany as the full blossoming of German Imperialism. Next to that
his analysis of the Nazi party, its social base and its links with
business is second to none.
Reading the Frankfurt correspondence, it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that Adorno and Horkheimer were jealous of the sheer rigour
and comprehensiveness of Neumann's book, and sought to damn it with
faint praise, hoping that it would be forgotten, while their little
speculative essays were plumped up out of all proportion to their real
achievements.
--
Jim heartfield
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