Max Horkheimer: The struggle against Total Bureaucratization

Abstract

In July 1973, at the age of 78, Max Horkheimer passed away In the Swiss town of Montagnola. If not the founder, he has at least the most important director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, from which the famous name “Frankfurt School” is derived. Actually, if we can believe Habermas, who began his academic career as Adorno’s assistant, there was never a Frankfurt ‘’school’’ in the strict sense of the word, except of course in its first year in exile from Germany after the escape from Nazism. At any rate, Horkheimer, more than Adorno and with grater incisiveness than Marcuse and Fromm, represents a basic point of reference for an intellectual climate that has had, despite obvious limitation, a crucial influence on both Marxist and non-Marxist thought. More rigorous than Adorno, and more open to economic and practical reality than Marcuse, the cautious Horkheimer was throughout the secure point of reference, especially after his return in Frankfurt.