Dialectic of the Enlightenment, written in collaboration with Horkheimer, is a critique of instrumental reason, a fundamental concept of the latter author, or, in other words, a critique, based on a pessimistic interpretation of the Enlightenment, technical civilization and the culture of the capitalist system (which it calls the culture industry), or of the market society, which does not pursue any other end than technical progress. The current technical civilization, arisen from the spirit of the Enlightenment and its concept of reason, does not represent more than a rational dominion over nature, which simultaneously implies an (irrational) dominion over man; the various phenomena of modern barbarism (fascism and Nazism) would be nothing but samples, and at the same time the worst manifestations, of this authoritarian attitude of domination.