Abstract
The article seeks to reconstruct the positions of members of the Institute of Social Research within a series of conferences carried out in 1941 during their exile in the United States, which addressed the historical present marked by National Socialism, the Soviet System and North American capitalism. It then points out how Max Horkheimer's and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of enlightenment offers an answer to the same questions that originated the debate of 1941, but from a different point of view, namely that of a critique of the process of civilization as a form of dealing with horror and barbarism.
Keywords
Critical theory; National Socialism; State capitalism; Monopoly capitalism; Critique of the process of civilization