THE ORIGIN

OF
FRANKURT
SCHOOL
CALABUGA & IDONG
 WHAT IS
FRANKFURT SCHOOL?

marxists.architexturez.net/subject/frankfurt-school/index.html
- Established in 1923, initially funded by
Felix Weil, a young Marxist thinker.

- Aim of the institute was to bring together different

strands of Marxist thinking into one
interdisciplinary research center.
 - Max Horkheimer took over as director in
1930 and recruited many talented theorists,
including T.W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert
Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin.

Max Horkheimer
T.W. Adorno Erich Fromm Herbert Marcuse Walter Benjamin
Jürgen Habermas is the leading intellectual figure in
the Frankfurt School, belonging to its second
generation of theorists.
CRITICAL THEORY
- The term Critical Theory describes the neo-
Marxist philosophy of the Frankfurt School.
Frankfurt theorists drew on the critical methods of
Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.
 CRITICISM
- Another criticism,
- Although Frankfurt originating from the left, is
theorists delivered a that critical theory is a form
number of criticisms of bourgeois idealism that
against the theories and has no inherent relation to
practices of their days, political practice and is
they did not present any totally isolated from any
ongoing revolutionary
positive alternatives.
movement.
THEORY
OF
COMMODITY
FETISHISM
KARL MARX
- A critic of
Capitalism
- A German thinker of the 19th century
- A philosopher and political economist
COMMODITY
- An object
- An object in relations
- Objects-in-relations are shaping our social
relations
• Satisfying our need and desire (use value)
• Satisfying the need of exchange
(exchange value)
FETISHISM
- The commodity world characterized by
the logic of equivalence conceals.
• Social relations
• Social character of labor
COMMODITY FETISHISM
Commodity Fetishism Karl Marx’s narrative of
modernity focuses upon two linked social
processes not emphasized by Weber:
commodification and fetishization.
- A commodity is an article produced for
market exchange rather than for its own
immediate consumption.
- It is sinister not only because people are
deprived of ‘sensuously varied objectivity’, but
also because, as commodified entities
themselves, people (workers) come to be treated
as mere objects.
- This objectification of labor is what makes profit
possible: although a portion of labor is indeed
“exchanged for the equivalent of the worker’s wages;
another portion is appropriated by the capitalist
without any equivalent being paid” (Marx). The
masking of this swindle is the most pernicious effect
of modernity.
- Thus, commodity fetishism: the idolatry of
consumption goods.
- Marx highlights for us the central role played
by the technique of demystification or
“ideology critique” – what Weber called
rationalization process- within the narrative of
modernity.
 For Marx, modernity is ideology; it is a
narrative that maintains the existing structure
of power by obscuring or defending as
legitimate its inherent in equalities and
injustices.
 THE FRANKFURT'S
THE FRANKFURT'S
THEORY OF
THEORY OF

MODERN
MODERN
CAPITALISM
CAPITALISM
MODERN CAPITALISM

- Capitalism overcomes the challenges of

the economy (class tensions)
- Becomes stable and continuous
(superfically includes working class)
MODERN CAPITALISM
- Means of reinforcing its existence
( self-investment)
- The failure of Marxism
- Develops a range of
false needs for the
crowd.
- False needs serve as a distraction
from ”true/real” needs.
- When the false needs encounters,
- The failure of Marxism
the ”culture industry” produces ”new” forms
of false needs.
(e.g pager to cellphone to smartphone)
- Consumption of false needs
further enslaves them to
capitalism 
- True needs cannot be met through modern
capitalism.
 SOURCES
The Frankfurt School and "Critical Theory". (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.marxists.org/subject/frankfurt-school/index.htm

Modern Capitalism. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/modern-capitalism

Marx's Commodity Fetishism and Theory of Value. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.thesociologicalcinema.com/videos/marxs-commodity-fetishism-and-
theory-of-value