Racket Theory | Max Horkheimer

Preorder soon | Coming December 2026

“The historical course of the proletariat led to a crossroads: it could become a class or a racket. Racket meant privileges within national borders, class meant world revolution. The leaders have relieved the proletariat of this decision.”

Translated into English for the first time, Racket Theory brings together the material written by Max Horkheimer from 1942-1944, with considerable input from Theodor W. Adorno, that analyses state capitalism, the problem of the disappearance of socialist internationalism, and the reactionary turn of the labor movement. Initially intended to be a part of the project that came to be Dialectic of Enlightenment, the pieces collected in this volume demonstrate the development of the Frankfurt School’s socio-psychological studies of the psychological internalization of class domination in the 1930s and also includes essays and aphorisms from the Critical Theory Working Group on the economic limits of rackets to collectivization and the Spanish Civil War. Racket theory unifies Horkheimer and Adorno’s political and economic reflections, becoming an essential step in the development of their characterization of the impersonal domination of capitalist society, the fundamental commonalities between fascism and liberal capitalism, and the worthlessness of reformism.