Frankfurt school - critical social theory PDF

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Frankfurt school was a Marxist school founded from private grant at Frankfurt University in 1923. It was heavily influenced by Freud To understand its thought path and analysis developed, it is essential to remember it was founded at the same time Hitler rose to power; he became chancellor of Germany in 1933 and by this time his policies of race hatred and anti-semitism were becoming well known. Key members of Frankfurt school eg Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno were Jewish. As the Nazis became more threatening, the school moved firstly to Geneva, then New York then to LA for the war years. After the war, key members returned to Germany although Herbert Marcuse remained in California. The main innovations of the school: ● Roots of research in Marxism, but argued Marx’s theory overemphasised the importance of work and production. The theory of surplus value certainly demonstrated how workers under capitalism are exploited, however, it neglects that capitalism also produced a measure of wealth redistribution. As capitalist countries grew richer they devoted a larger proportion of their wealth to welfare functions of the state. ● Capitalism required educated and healthy workers who had surplus income to consume goods and services, so via taxation, money was channelled into the state to provide public education, healthcare, unemployment benefit, pensions. This is referred to as the incorporation of the working class - the provision of state benefits brought the working class into having a stake in capitalism. Huge inequalities between ●...