466
DICK HOWARD
combination of mysticism, Marxism and a child's attention to details was not
integrated, and his political views, especially as influenced by Brecht, were
anathema. Franz eumann and Otto Kirchheimer's analyses of Fascism were
radically different from those of Horkheimer and Pollock. Though some eco–
nomic analysis was present in nearly every issue of the Institut'sjournal, it was
never woven into the theory; such contributors as Wittfogel and Grossmann
remained strictly on the periphery. Of the five volumes published in the In–
stitut's
Studies in Prejudice,
only
The Authoritarian Personality
even partially
presented the earlier standpoint of Critical Theory; the volume by Bettelheim
and Janowitz, for example, came ,to conclusions diametrically opposed to those
of Adorno and his collaborators. Jay notes interestingl} that this may
be
due
to the sample population. Adorno el. al. were using
a:
middle-class sample
in California while Bellelheim and Janowitz dealt with lower class whites and
blacks in Chicago. America's best-known "critical theorist," Herbert Marcuse,
though greatly influenced by Horkheimer in his move away from Heidegger–
ian phenomenological-Marxism, had fundamentally different views on such
critical issues as the role of labor and alienated labor, the problems of a philo–
sophical identity theory, the place of a philosophical anthropology, and the
interpretation of Freud. The later political differences between Marcuse and
the other returned Institut members may have its source here, though Jay
doesn't take up the question since it goes beyond his self-imposed historical
limits.
The second myth is that of the interdisciplinary community of indepen–
dent scholars whose freedom permits them to pay attention to and integrate
the problems of .tie time. Jay tends to see the School as a model of intellectual
and political behavior. Rejecting the politics of the SPD and KPD during the
Weimar Republic ' , they were, however, "increasingly forced into a position of
'transcendence' by the withering away of the revolutionary working class."
Making a virtue out of necessity, the role given to theory and reason from the
outset was ever more stressed and stretched until, in Jay 's paraphrase, it be–
came "the only form of
praxis
still open to honest men." This was perhaps not
unexpected since, as th is study makes clear, the School had never really defined
what it meant by
praxis
anyway. The notion behind Critical Theory was that
of a radical refusal, the search for
the
negative that creates the open space in
which
praxis
can occur. (Typical of Jay 's historical detective work is his note,
n122, p. III, suggesting that Marcuse's "Great Refusal" had its origins in the
old Institut slogan "Nicht Mitmachen.") No doubt about it:
the
conviction
that such an open , negative space was necessary led to brilliant critiques of
mass culture and modern forms of domination. Typical is Horkheimer's "It is
not that chewing gum undermines metaphysics but that it
is
meta-
l.
Not all did: in facl Neumann and Kirchheimer had been active in the SPO;
Witlfogcl, Borkenau and Cumperz in
the
KPO; and Crossman in the Polish CPo
