proletariat as a revolutionary force, was becoming systematically dulled by
the incremental improvement of their material well-being without the need
of a revolution. The working class did not and still does not have the soli-
darity of class-consciousness nor even the awareness of its continued, sys-
tematic exploitation, which could produce the resolve to be such a revolutionary
force.
Solidarity Through Compassion
By means of the determinate negation of Marx’s theory with that of the bru-
tally honest and pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, Horkheimer
attempted to critically identify a universal form of human solidarity that
could not be overcome by the capitalist system of production. This solidar-
ity is established through the consciousness that all human beings are finite
and will die. According to Schopenhauer, such consciousness of universal
suffering and death of all living things can create compassion and empathy
for the other. Such compassion can thereby overcome the “will to life,” which
is the ontological cause of all suffering as well as happiness in the world.
However, Horkheimer (1978:38–39) also determinately negated Schopenhauer ’s
metaphysics of compassion with Marx’s class analysis, as he stated that not
everyone suffers and dies in the same way in a capitalist class society. Barring
the immediacy of tragic and accidental death, the circumstances surround-
ing the death of a millionaire are different than the death of a worker. A mil-
lionaire dies with the knowledge that his family and friends will be secure,
whereas the poor die with the added weight of fear, anger, if not guilt, at the
conditions of those that are left to grieve. For such consciousness of death
and compassion to be a liberating force of social change it must also become
a consciousness of this social class antagonism. The suffering, pain and even
death of a decent human being is directly connected with the social quality
of that person’s love, longing, and life struggle for a new, non-antagonistic
society (Horkheimer 1978:207–208). It is this critical, social consciousness of
a shared finitude, suffering, and death that has the potential of breaking down
the socially produced solipsistic, monadic isolation and alienation of people
from themselves, each other, and ultimately the products of their own labor
in bourgeois society. Through the shared experience of suffering produced
by the antagonistic society in which people live, people can break out of their
isolated, compartmentalized selves and enter into solidarity with others in
138 • Michael R. Ott