Reification, Resentment, and the Enduring Appeal of Right-Wing Rhetoric

A Review of Marxist Modernism by Gillian Rose

Review: Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory (2024) by Gillian Rose

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The legacy of the Frankfurt School has never ceased to be contentious on the Left. For many, Adorno and company’s transdisciplinary incorporation of psychoanalysis and cultural theory was a necessary corrective to orthodox Marxist economism and determinism. This is especially vital to understanding why, in lieu of socialism, many in the twentieth century working and middle classes chose fascist barbarism. For others, the Frankfurt school constituted a retreat into intellectual elitism and even idealist insularity. Many agree with Domenico Losurdo’s claim in Western Marxism that there is a pronounced “element of regression in Horkheimer and Adorno”, who take the rather idealist step of locating the origins of fascism in the dialectic of Western reason rather than in the vast array of racist genocides and imperialism directed towards the non-Western world. To the critics, the Frankfurt school presented as left-wing radicals only to arrive at the very reactionary conclusion that the biggest symptoms of cultural decline were the Beatles and jazz music. 

This debate has gone to and fro for a long time. The ascent of Trumpism and other far right movements has rejuvenated serious interest in fascism, which has perhaps inevitably rejuvenated the “pro” wing of the Frankfurt School debate. References to their work abound as the left and even centrist commentariat comes to terms with a felon becoming an icon to authoritarian Christian nationalists and vulgar Nietzscheans alike. 

The publication of Gillian Rose’s seminal 1979 lectures on Frankfurt School critical theory is thus both well timed and likely to find a receptive audience. Rose was an accomplished and original thinker in her own right, and one might expect that this will read less like an introduction and more like a fusion. One formidable intellectual creatively and dialogically engaging with others. But while the lectures undeniably bear the stamp of Rose’s interpretation, much of them read as straightforward exercises in pedagogy by a young and emerging philosopher. This makes Marxist Modernism easy to recommend as both a reasonable entry point into Frankfurt School critical theory and Rose’s own oeuvre.