Adorno’s Reluctant Emigration 175authoritarianism of both manual and non-manual workers before
- It was evident that in all likelihood only a minority would resist
a victory of the National Socialists. At the time, this explosive finding
was kept under lock and key because, as Herbert Marcuse recollected,
it was thought to be politically undesirable to give the impression that
German workers had always felt attracted to the ideology of National
Socialism.^5 However, these findings did give rise to internal institute
debates on the future of parliamentary democracy in Germany. What
social factors were responsible for the gulf between left-wing political
opinions and bourgeois attitudes in everyday life? How was it possible
for the objectively oppressed class to fail subjectively to understand its
own social situation? The institute gradually came round to the view
that, as a political formation corresponding to monopoly capitalism,
National Socialism would scarcely be stoppable if the workers sub-
mitted to their oppressors instead of resisting them. Once it became
clear that sections of the proletariat were willing to join forces with the
Nazis, Horkheimer began to lose faith in the key Marxist idea that the
working class would emerge as the agents of social change. As early as
June 1932, he wrote to Adorno, ‘Only one thing is certain: the irration-
ality of society has reached a point where only the gloomiest predictions
have any plausibility.’^6
Adorno was already publishing in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung,
but he was not yet officially a member of the institute. This meant
that he had only sporadically taken part in the discussions about the
attitudes of the German working class. He had not been informed
about the crucial practical consequence of the empirical study, namely
Horkheimer’s decision to establish foreign branches of the institute.^7
Löwenthal subsequently emphasized that the results of the research
into workers’ attitudes had been a major factor in predicting the coming
disaster. The institute members had been convinced that the Nazis would
come to power and
that resistance was so poorly developed, particularly in the Liberal
Democratic and Social Democratic Parties and in the Christian
and Social Democratic trade unions, that they would not becapable
of any great resistance against victorious fascism. Moreover, we
grew increasingly disappointed and pessimistic, first independently
from each other, and then in the political exchange of opinions
within our group about the Soviet Union and the international
Communist movement. And then developments in the Weimar
Republic made us more and more worried and uneasy. Of course
there was progressive literature and progressive theatre, but in
the final analysis these were only futile fringe-phenomena. No,
precisely in cultural matters one could notice, from the middle
of the twenties on, that Germany was becoming increasingly con-
servative, if not reactionary.^8