Adorno took over running the Institute in 1960, and his primary philosophical concern in the 1960s was his critical engagement with Martin Heidegger, especially Heidegger’s language, as
detailed in the book The Jargon of Authenticity. In the meantime, Marcuse had developed a critique of Stalinism, and was developing a critique of social conditions in Western democracies, in
part based on his familiarity with Adorno's work. He was, for example, connecting the analysis and critique of false needs to a critical theory of mass media and popular
culture
(Agger, 1995, p. 34). Marcuse did not oppose popular culture as completely as Adorno, however, recognizing fissures in the edifice of mainstream mass
culture which could be pried open still further
(Agger, 1995, p. 34). In One-Dimensional Man Marcuse put an analysis of late capitalist society into a systematic
context,
as opposed to other writers in the Frankfurt School (Wiggershaus, 1994, p. 609). Instead of culture serving ideological ends, for Marcuse “social control mechanisms in advanced
industrial society ensure the wholesale integration of the individual into mass society” (Reitz, 2000, p. 144). Capitalist production and the tremendous wealth that resulted from it formed
a system of repressive affluence
that kept elements of society satisfied and quiescent (Alway, 1995, p. 83). The entirety of society had become organized around an
ideology whose main objectives were to maintain social control and continue to perpetuate the ideology that maintained that control.
Echoing Adorno, Marcuse wondered whether the information and entertainment aspects of mass media could be differentiated from their manipulation and indoctrination functions (Marcuse, 1991, p.
8). However, it is difficult in Marcuse's argument to separate culture or mass media from society as a whole because Marcuse did not distinguish culture or mass media as entities separate from
the totality of dominant ideology in the same way that Adorno had done. In the end Marcuse’s analysis of society allowed for no opposition to the dominant ideology. Marcuse
wrote, how can the administered individuals—who have made their mutilation into their own liberties and satisfactions, and thus reproduce it on an enlarged scale—liberate
themselves from themselves as well as from their masters? How is it even thinkable that the vicious circle be broken?
(Marcuse, 1991, p. 251). Given the pessimistic tone of the book,
it is somewhat ironic that largely because of it he would be perceived as an icon for leftist movements of the 1960s in the U.S. and Germany that developed an oppositional stance. In spite of
this, Marcuse maintained that he was a philosopher, and not an activist. Like others associated with the Frankfurt School, he was wary of the idea that theory could be translated into practice
(Chambers, 2004, p. 226).
While Marcuse was writing a work that would become essential to student movements in the 1960s, in 1961 Adorno and Horkheimer resisted the reissue of Dialectic of Enlightenment that had been proposed to them by the publishing house of Fischer. The publisher felt that the book could be read as a description of prevailing conditions in Germany. Marcuse enthusiastically supported the reissue of the book in 1962, but Adorno and Horkheimer withheld their consent (Jäger, 2004, p. 194). The reasons that Horkheimer and Adorno tried to keep Dialectic of Enlightenment from reaching a wider audience are not entirely clear. In reviewing the text in 1961, Friedrich Pollack reported to Adorno and Horkheimer that the work required too much revision to receive mass dissemination. The two authors continued to negotiate with the Fischer publishing house until 1969, and may have only agreed to republish the work since pirate copies had already been disseminated by individuals in the German student movement. Students also began posting snippets of the text as handbills.
While student movements in the United States and Germany looked to Herbert Marcuse as their idol, the situation in Frankfurt degenerated to the point at which Adorno could no longer effectively conduct classes. He complained to the dean about the radical students in his classes who were making teaching impossible. In the winter term of 1968-69 students occupied a number of buildings at the University at Frankfurt, including the Institute for Social Research. After the strike ended, Adorno returned to teaching, but his lectures continued to be disrupted, including one “tasteless demonstration” in which three females bared their breasts. Adorno died a few months later (Jäger, 2004, p. 201-08).
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