Adorno treats welfare and living-standard improvements as deliberate ruling-class measures, not capitalist byproducts

Evidence

However, rather than conclude from this that class-domination, blind and indifferent to the individual, always asserts itself quasi-naturally through the capital-relation, Adorno sees class-formation – that is, the formation of classconsciousness – as ‘closed off by the conscious will and practical measures of the rulers in the name of the great totality [which they themselves are]’. Adorno recognises one such practical measure, necessary for preventing the material pauperisation of the proletariat, in an ‘extraeconomic improvement of the standard of living’ through an irregular ‘handout’ (Trinkgeld) from the rulers, paid not as part of one’s salary, but rather ‘out of income or monopoly profits’. ‘The dynamics of poverty are brought to a halt by the process of accumulation. The improvement or stabilization of the economic situation of the lower classes is extraeconomic’.This is to say that the ruling class had made the economic stabilisation of the working class its own private concern, albeit certainlynotoutof kindness:‘Goodwillandpsychologyhavenothingtodowithit’. Rather, the ruling class ultimately has to provide for workers, the sole guarantors of its own existence – it has to ‘“secure for the slaves their existence within slavery” in order to consolidate its own’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 689

Categorization

• XREF: Directly counters the ‘pessimistic cul-de-sac’ reading of Adorno — connects to the book’s stated revisionist purpose of linking Adorno to critique of political economy. — connects to: Adorno held that productive forces raised living standards while perfecting dehumanization through reification — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 668
• DEFINE: Clarifies the contested term ‘extraeconomic’ improvement — the Trinkgeld/handout concept.