The Frankfurt Synthesis
These legacies informed the development of Frankfurt School Critical Theory
that melded the insights of Marx’s critiques of alienation and exploitation
with Weber ’s discussions of rationality, dehumanization, and religion, with
Freudian depth psychology, especially his analysis of authority, submission
and the superego.^59 Their approach to the critique of ideology (ideologiekritic-
immanent critique of the contradictions within an ideology) provided theo-
retical tools that not only illuminated what was cloaked by ideology and/or
defense mechanisms, but held an implicit emancipatory hope for the over-
coming of alienation, dehumanization and repression and a better future (see
Jacoby 2005). Identification with parents ensured that the legitimations of tra-
ditional, rational and charismatic authority were internalized and became
enduring moments of character.
Thus one of the most useful legacies of Critical Theory was to see that
materially determined values were not simple emanations from factories, but
as embraced by certain actors, could act as material forces that stamp the
society such that certain values can act in autonomous ways that yet served
economic interests. In their words, Instrumental Reason, as the legitimating
ideology of capitalism, stood as the dominant form of authority; the king was
replaced by manuals of bureaucratic regulations and procedures. Nevertheless,
that rationality produced advanced technologies of production/distribution,
wealthy market societies and highly efficient forms of administration. Yet that
efficiency demanded compliance and the erosion of critical thought. The legit-
imacy of capitalism was ultimately sustained by its purposive rationality
zweckrationality, which held promises of wealth, freedom, community, self
determination and creative self fulfillment. But in order for that market soci-
ety to produce vast wealth, it has spread the logic of Instrumental Reason,
as well as its economic and/or military power throughout the world. But
ultimately that rationality subverted itself; it not only led to dehumanization
of those living in sterile, empty “iron cages” but, in certain cases, led to the
ultimate of irrationality, the Holocaust.
336 • Lauren Langman
(^59) To be sure there were many other influences from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer –
indeed the entire history of philosophy, as well as their contemporaries. Lukacs, for
example, introduced Marxists to Weber.