Their leader, Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), preached the gospel of social change—and suggested that systems had to be deconstructed in order to make way for that social change. He explained that what he termed critical theory was “suspicious of the very categories of better, useful, appropriate, productive, and valuable, as those are understood in the present order.”8 The present order had to change, Horkheimer said, because “the wretchedness of our own time is connected with the structure of society.”
