Notes to pp. 232–238 54196 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 571f.
97 Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940, p. 208.
98 Adorno to Löwenthal, 15 September 1937. Löwenthal Archive, Stadt-
und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
99 Adorno to Löwenthal, 1 October 1937. Ibid.
100 Adorno to Fromm, 16 November 1937. Adorno and Horkheimer,
Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 541ff.
101 See Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 95f. Three decades later, in the context
of his diagnosis of late capitalist society, Herbert Marcuse produced sim-
ilar ideas under the heading of a theory of ‘repressive tolerance’. See
Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man; ‘Repressive Tolerance’, in H. Marcuse,
R. P. Wolff and Barrington Moore Jr., A Critique of Pure Tolerance.
102 Between 1937 and 1938 the Dow Jones lost 49 per cent of its value. The
bear market lasted twelve months and twenty-two days. In March 1938
the economy was revived by a spending programme. One cause of the
recession was a wave of strikes and labour disputes which involved almost
two million people by the end of 1937. This had led President Roosevelt,
who had been re-elected in 1936, to come out in favour of a law regulating
wages and working hours. See David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear:
The American People in Depression and War 1929–1945, p. 286ff.
103 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, pp. 416 and 422f.
104 Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940, p. 213.
105 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 448.
106 See ibid., p. 472; Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence
1928–1940, p. 229.
107 Ibid., p. 228.
108 Ibid., p. 229.
109 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 480.
110 Benjamin to Horkheimer, 6 January 1938. Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS,
vol. 16, p. 360.
111 In this essay he explored the reasons why the struggle for social justice
was always linked in the history of bourgeois emancipation with the
suppression of the individual’s search for happiness. In the process he
reconstructed the outlines of an optimistic and a pessimistic anthropology
whose common denominator was the condemnation of egoism. ‘The
tabooing of “common” pleasure has succeeded so well that the average
citizen who allows himself any becomes shabby instead of free, crude
instead of grateful, stupid instead of clever’ (Horkheimer, ‘Egoismus und
Freiheitsbewegung’, ZfS, V, 1936, p. 172; GS, vol. 6, p. 9ff.). Adorno was
‘deeply moved and gripped’ by this essay of Horkheimer’s. ‘I would like
especially to emphasize our agreement in our view of those revolutionar-
ies who take over bourgeois morality in a positive spirit.... The language
you use is a particular confirmation of your essay for me.... It is as if in
your hands even the tactic of keeping silent is transformed into a means of
expression: the entire essay throbs with what has not been said. It seems
to me that our stylistic ideals are no longer so far removed from each
other’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 174f.).
112 Ibid., p. 438f.; cf. p. 492ff.
113 Adorno, Fragmente über Wagner, ZfS, I, 2, 1939, p. 1ff. The complete
manuscript was not published for another thirteen years. It appeared in