Annulling exchange comparability would yield raw force and monopoly privilege

Evidence

While exchange in existing society is mediated by value, an Adornian solution to this cannot be the replacement of the exchange of equivalents with an immediate exchange which is unjust. As Adorno argues in Negative Dialectics, echoing a point he makes in ‘Reflections on ClassTheory’, ‘[i]f comparability as acategoryof measureweresimplyannulled,therationalitywhichisinherentin the [exchange] principle – as ideology, of course, but also as a promise – would give way to direct appropriation, to force, and nowadays to the naked privilege of monopolies and cliques’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1559

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates Adorno’s core claim that the exchange principle carries rationality as a promise, not merely as ideology.
• XREF: connects to: Bourgeois reason presupposes exchange rules that collapse when power resorts to direct appropriation — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 169