Adorno first seriously studied Marx’s Capital only in 1938, while in American exile

Evidence

Adorno apparently tackled the required reading for this undertaking only shortly beforehand: in a 1937 letter, he writes to Benjamin that ‘[o]ne of the first things I have planned to do is to undertake the systematic study of Capital’, and one of the two copies of the first volume of Capital from his personal library bears the date 10 June 1938 handwritten on its endpaper. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 390

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the retrospective claim in ‘On the Fetish-Character in Music’ that these were Marxian categories all along; connects to the editorial framing about the genealogy of Adorno’s political-economy critique. — connects to: Adorno’s basic philosophical positions were fixed before his American emigration — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 298; Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s basic philosophical positions were fixed before his American emigration #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 298
• Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism. #corroborates (0.72) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290