134 Part II: A Change of Scene
institute, and Grünberg declared himself in favour of a more open form
of Marxism. However, there were other members, for example, Karl
Wittfogel, Richard Sorge, Henryk Grossmann and Franz Borkenau, who
were convinced that socialism and communism provided the models of
a more equitable social order, one destined by history to triumph over
capitalism. Friedrich Pollock and Felix Weil, who were both committee
members of the Society for Social Research, also endorsed such views.
The majority of the assistants who worked for the institute in the mid-
1920s were either formally members of the USPD or the KPD, or else
in sympathy with the communist movement. A further move in this
direction was the controversial attempt by Pollock and Weil to establish
a publishing house for Marxist literature. Their idea was to set up a
privately run organization within the institute, a move that led for a
short time to major conflicts in the university. This publisher was to act
as a Marx–Engels archive. Pollock and Weil intended to use it as the
vehicle for a critical edition of the works of Marx and Engels, in coop-
eration with the Marx–Engels Institute in Moscow and its director, David
Riazanov, who was in contact with Grünberg.^10 There was some col-
laboration between the Frankfurt and Moscow institutes, but it did not
last, since the growth of Stalinism in Russia proved to be the downfall
of Riazanov, who was sent into internal exile in the early 1930s. In a
parallel development, some institute members became increasingly scep-
tical about the ability of the working class to take on the role of agents
of revolution, despite their economic oppression and social privation.
Max Horkheimer attempted a kind of sociological summing up in the
light of current events in 1930 with a study entitled The Beginnings
of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History. The chapter entitled ‘Utopia’
contains a number of sentences that encapsulate the climate of the
period – and a viewpoint that may well have been shared by the major-
ity of institute members, particularly since they had chosen Horkheimer
as Grünberg’s successor. ‘History has produced a better society from an
inferior one, and in its course it can bring about one that is even better
- that is a fact. But it is also a fact that the course of history passes over
the suffering and misery of individuals. Between these two facts there
exists a variety of explanations, but no meaning that can justify them.’^11
Two inaugural lecturesMax Horkheimer was appointed to the chair in social philosophy in
1930 – having been a Privatdozent until then. The publication of his
study The Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History in the
same year must have told in his favour, since an in-house appointment
was not without its difficulties. This made it possible for him to be
installed formally as director of the institute the following year. His
appointment led to a clear shift of emphasis in the work of the institute.