Adorno read the commodity fetish as translating theological corruption into Marxist terms.
Evidence
By way of example, Adorno refers to the following passage from Benjamin’s essay: ‘If there were such a thing as a commodity-soul (a notion that Marx occasionally mentions in jest), it would be the most empathetic ever encountered in the realm of souls, for it would be bound to see every individual as a buyer in whose hand and house it wants to nestle. Empathy is the nature of the intoxication to which the flaneur abandons himself in the crowd’. Regarding this claim, Adorno suggests that Benjamin ‘once again pay particularly careful attention to this theory and compare it with the chapter on commodity fetishism in the first volume [of Capital]’. In other words, here again, another self-proclaimed Marxist thesis of Benjamin’s ‘must be documented with appropriate passages’ from the man who first articulated the fetish-character of commodities. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Adorno’s approval, therefore, stemmed from his fascination with a new variant of the response to the passage in Marx’s Capital which was always the most important for left intellectuals in the Weimar period: the section on the fetish character of commodities. To look at the world of commodities with the eyes of a philologist interpreting allegories, a philologist who was also linked to Baudelaire, the first representative example of aesthetic modernism: in Adorno’s eyes, this promised an interpretation of capitalism in which the theological category of a materially corrupted world was translated into the Marxist category of the commodity fetish. This interpretation did not contradict dialectical materialism, but rather radicalized it by deciphering the world of commodities as a mythical primeval landscape and as a hellish, negative image of the true world. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 794 (
#qualifies, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Adorno read Benjamin’s arcades project as a radicalization of Marx’s commodity fetish — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 794; Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290; Adorno held that truth is a reflection of a transcendent theological light — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2151
Related
- Adorno read Benjamin’s arcades project as a radicalization of Marx’s commodity fetish (similarity 0.96)
- Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism. (similarity 0.92)
- Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations (similarity 0.88)
- Benjamin located commodity fetishism in collective consciousness, contradicting Marxism (similarity 0.87)
- Adorno demanded inverting Benjamin’s imagery so reality, not fantasy, undergoes fetishistic inversion (similarity 0.86)
- Adorno’s critique of Benjamin charged him with un-Marxist psychologizing (similarity 0.86)
- Hans Mayer accused Adorno of using Marxian categories without grounding them in Capital. (similarity 0.85)
- Adorno rejected Benjamin’s equation of commodity with the archaic (similarity 0.85)
- Adorno repurposed Marx’s commodity fetish concept toward art reception rather than production relations. (similarity 0.85)
- Adorno proposed that modern consumption targets exchange-value itself. (similarity 0.83)
- Adorno rebuked Benjamin for paying an unflattering tribute to orthodox Marxism (similarity 0.83)
- Adorno’s criticisms of Benjamin’s Marxism reveal his own conception of Marxian critique (similarity 0.83)
- Adorno supervised Benjamin’s attempt to fuse theology with historical materialism (similarity 0.82)
- Adorno used fetishism to mediate Marx and Freud into synthesis (similarity 0.82)
- The early Adorno’s project of fetishizing pre-capitalist society contradicts Marxian theory (similarity 0.82)
Broader Connections
- Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism.
#expands(0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290 - Adorno read Benjamin’s arcades project as a radicalization of Marx’s commodity fetish
#qualifies(0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 794