Adorno held that productive forces raised living standards while perfecting dehumanization through reification

Evidence

In retrospect, Adorno is left to conclude that the development of the forces of production have ‘had the opposite effect of the Marxian prognosis and led to an increase in worker living standards’: … Marx’s insight that the system produces the proletariat has been fulfilled on a scale that was absolutely unforeseeable. By virtue of their needs and the omnipresent requirements of the system, men have truly become its products: under the monopoly system the process of dehumanization is perfected on the backs of the civilized as an all-encompassing reification, not as naked coercion; indeed, this dehumanization is what that civilization is. The totalizing character of society proves itself in the fact that it does not just take utter possession of its members but creates them in its own image. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 668

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The density here is high: Adorno simultaneously concedes Marxian foresight (‘the system produces the proletariat’ fulfilled on an unforeseeable scale) while inverting its political meaning — creation ‘in its own image’ rather than mere coercion, reification as what civilization is rather than an effect of it. This defies any one-sentence summary.
• SEED: Angle: Adorno’s account of the fulfillment-in-vertion of Marx’s insight — the prophecy came true but its significance flipped from revolutionary hope to totalizing dehumanization.
• XREF: Directly builds the chapter’s argument against the integration-of-the-proletariat claim from location 663, and connects to the Marxian theory of history detailed in Capital vol. III. — connects to: Adorno saw quantifying culture as the reification typical of mass culture — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 664; Adorno reads reification as human self-domination through self-created compulsion — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 88; Adorno treats welfare and living-standard improvements as deliberate ruling-class measures, not capitalist byproducts — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 689 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno treats welfare and living-standard improvements as deliberate ruling-class measures, not capitalist byproducts #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 689
• Adorno made instrumental reason a transhistoric urge rather than a capitalist product #qualifies (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 380