ABSTRACT
The Frankfurt School emigres came to a United States caught up in the New Deal, which itself incorporated of critical American social thought. The liberal critique of empire suffered from an inner contradiction which tells much about post-war American society. Social theory is the effort of a social group to reflect upon itself, not a record of experience alone but an effort to master it. Despite the enormous emphasis placed upon psychoanalysis in the areas of therapy and in certain kinds of social commentary a consensual behaviourism devoid of passion ruled the social sciences. The integration of the immigrant groups from eastern and southern Europe in the society, the opening of access to elite and subelite positions, constituted a social fundament for the process. The history of the American welfare state is rather more complicated, but is no less a case of the supersession of the original ends of the social movements which struggled for it.
