Bourgeois reason presupposes exchange rules that collapse when power resorts to direct appropriation

Evidence

Reason is based on an exchange. Specific objectives should only be achieved, as it were on the open market, through the small benefits which power can obtain by playing off one concession against another and following the rules of the game. But cleverness becomes meaningless as soon as power ceases to obey the rules and chooses direct appropriation instead. The medium of the traditional bourgeois intelligence—that is, discussion—then breaks down. Individuals can no longer talk to each other and know it: they therefore make the game into a serious and responsible institution which requires the application of all available strength to ensure that there is no proper conversation and at the same time no silence. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 169

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines reason as grounded in exchange — a key Adorno premise that ties epistemology to economics and parallels the rational-choice exchange axioms elsewhere in the reading.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that reason itself is an exchange-based medium, so that rules-violating power makes rational discussion not merely futile but structurally meaningless, is a dense paradigm-level claim.
• XREF: connects to: Market ideology conceals exploitation by making exchange stand in for production; The sphere of exchange generates capitalism’s spontaneous commonsense and bourgeois theory; Economic success built on coercion may collapse when rule liberalizes (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Market ideology conceals exploitation by making exchange stand in for production #expands (0.85)
• The sphere of exchange generates capitalism’s spontaneous commonsense and bourgeois theory #corroborates (0.82)
• Economic success built on coercion may collapse when rule liberalizes #corroborates (0.80)
• Annulling exchange comparability would yield raw force and monopoly privilege #contradicts (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1559