HORKHEIMER, Adorno, Grünberg, Habermas, Benjamin, Fromm, Marcuse… these are the names of the philosophers and intellectuals who are invariably bound up with the legacy of the Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. Founded in 1923, this bastion of Marxist investigation and political praxis was originally intended to explain why German Communists had failed to overthrow the state in 1918–19 and to account for the rise of National-Socialism during the 1920s and 1930s.

This new book explores how the Frankfurt School not only set out to study the effects of totalitarianism, mass culture and capitalist consumerism through the lens of critical theory, but may be held directly accountable for the subversion of the traditional family, the encouragement of open borders, the spread of gender issues in education and a selective ‘identity politics’ that has transformed the face of Western civilisation. A full century after the Frankfurt School first appeared, this significant collection of essays will finally allow us to understand the theory and practice that has had such an enormous impact on our lives. Needless to say, it makes crucial reading.