![]() Therefore, we instead fetishize commodity by believing that something’s ability to be exchanged is not due to the relations between people in society, but a property of the thing itself: money really has some special quality that makes it exchangeable, thereby mystifying the social relations that really determine exchange. One cannot be totally aware of the logic of exchange or it loses its efficacy. This is a “fetish” because if everyone consciously believes, for example, that their money is simply a symbol for the social relations between people (which really determine markets), then currency would lose its value. The real value (as it is perceived by people) of a commodity is its exchange value – its ability to be traded for other commodities. Marx argued that the used value of a commodity – for example the ability to generate heat from wood or coal – is not the real value of a commodity. Marx’s idea of “commodity fetishism” was deeply influential for twentieth century theory and contemporary philosophy. While one can clearly recognize Adorno’s critique of enlightenment here, there is another key influence in his analysis of culture: Marx and his analysis of commodity. ![]() In the case of culture this is a “false identity” so, according to Adorno, “Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through” ( Dialectic 120-121). This is the same language with which he critiques philosophy, where the process of synthetic logic, of unifying the whole with the particular, is divorced from overarching goals or morality and thus becomes a kind of automated process. “The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm presents men with a model of their culture: the false identity of the general and the particular.” In his essay, Adorno examines the art and culture of industrialized society, particularly the United States which he lived in during the mid-twentieth century. ‘Culture industry’, a term coined by Adorno & Horkheim, refers to popular culture being akin to factories that produce standardized cultural goods (e.g., films, radio, magazines) used to manipulate mass society in various ways. In this post, Jonathan looks at Adorno’s essay, The Culture Industry. Rationalism and science has become an administrative methodology which simply carries out the (irrational) needs of global capital. Adorno: An Introduction) by Merlin volunteer and scholar Jonathan Drake, Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment” was explored.īriefly summarized: Adorno and his co-author, Max Horkheimer, argue that the philosophy of the Enlightenment has been mechanized into rational scientism that lacks critical reflection. ![]() In part one of this article series ( Theodor W.
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