Bourgeois ideology conceals that domination persists beneath the rhetoric of productive work.

Evidence

Bourgeois anti-Semitism has a specific economic reason: the concealment of domination in production. In earlier ages the rulers were directly repressive and not only left all the work to the lower classes but declared work to be a disgrace, as it always was under domination; and in a mercantile age, the industrial boss is an absolute monarch. Production attracts its own courtiers. The new rulers simply took off the bright garb of the nobility and donned civilian clothing. They declared that work was not degrading, so as to control the others more rationally. They claimed to be creative workers, but in reality they were still the grasping overlords of former times. The manufacturer took risks and acted like a banker or commercial wizard. He calculated, arranged, bought and sold. On the market he competed for the profit corresponding to his own capital. He seized all he could, not only on the market but at the very source: as a representative of his class he made sure that his workers did not sell him short with their labor. The workers had to supply the maximum amount of goods. Like Shylock, the bosses demand their pound of flesh. They owned the machines and materials, and therefore compelled others to produce for them. They called themselves producers, but secretly everyone knew the truth. The productive work of the capitalist, whether he justifies his profit by means of gross returns as under liberalism, or by his director’s salary as today, is an ideology cloaking the real nature of the labor contract and the grasping character of the economic system. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 130

Categorization

• XREF: The capitalist-as-producer ideology talk connects to Marx’s labor theory of value and commodity fetishism, which Adorno is implicitly drawing on here. — connects to: Ideological forms like wages serve to maintain capitalist domination — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 903; Ideology appears as manifest surface while its real foundations are hidden; Ideological inflections like wage bargaining maintain capitalist domination, not merely describe it. (+7 more)
• SHARE: The Shylock ‘pound of flesh’ framing that casts every boss as Shylock is a sharp inversion worth sending to someone interested in economic-antisemitism history.

Broader Connections

• Ideological forms like wages serve to maintain capitalist domination #expands (0.95) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 903
• Ideological inflections like wage bargaining maintain capitalist domination, not merely describe it. #corroborates (0.92)
• Participatory management rhetoric conceals a reorganization that strips subordinate power. #exemplifies (0.88)
• Ideology appears as manifest surface while its real foundations are hidden #expands (0.85)
• Postindustrial society narratives ideologically mask continuing class struggle. #exemplifies (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 39
• Bourgeoisie rule can hide behind the facade of old aristocratic classes #exemplifies (0.75)
• Enlightened progress remains entangled with domination and cruelty #complicates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 200
• Ideological control persists even in a classless society #expands (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 639