ILN EP 72: The Frankfurt School

Pat was feeling critical so Ben teaches him the critical philosophy of The Frankfurt School. Founded in 1923 in Weimar Germany, The Frankfurt School was instrumental in revitalizing Marxist theory in the West, exposing the phantasmagoria of late stage capitalism. They identified a new, sinister dimension of capitalism called the Culture Industry, which lulls the working class into compliance, dashing any hopes of the proletariat achieving class consciousness. Ben & Pat explore these ideas through the lives of The Frankfurt School's members: a bunch of bookish Jews chased out of Nazi Germany and ended up settling in the US. We're talking titans such as Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, and friend of the show Herbert Marcuse. It's not delivery, it's Adorno.