Adorno traces Marx’s productive-forces metaphysics back to Saint-Simon

Evidence

Although Adorno believes that Marx ‘in principle thought dialectically’, he maintains that ‘the forces of production nonetheless gain a certain metaphysical character in Marx’s work’, something which the Marx ‘adopted directly from Saint-Simon’. Moreover, Adorno argues, Marx was ‘forced’ by his ‘historical optimism’ to ‘give the forces of production the final say’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1577

Categorization

• XREF: Links Marx’shistorical optimism to Saint-Simon, connecting Adorno’s political economy to the broader socialist tradition. — connects to: Marx, Nietzsche, and Saint-Simon founded modernity’s three thinking schools — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 261; Adorno read Marx’s stylistic failures as philosophical evidence against his theory — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 973