Class-rule consciousness is mutilated and no valid aesthetic standard.

Evidence

The empirical consciousness of present-day society, which is promoted by class rule for the sake of its own preservation, in narrowness and unenlightenment, indeed even to the stage of neurotic stupidity … cannot be considered as a positive standard by which to judge a form of music belonging to a humanity which is no longer alienated, but free. Politics must not take a detached view of such a state of consciousness, which must count as a central factor for social dialectics. Nor can scientific knowledge permit limits to be set to it by a state of consciousness which is itself produced by class rule and which bears with it, even in the form of the class consciousness of the proletariat, the marks of mutilation by the mechanism of class. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 495

Categorization

• XREF: Adorno’s refusal to ground aesthetic judgment in proletarian consciousness contrasts with Lukács and with Lenin’s party-consciousness doctrine; connects to the book’s earlier debates over proletarian standpoint. — connects to: Fashion dictates styles with no objective, aesthetic, or practical justification. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 715
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that even proletarian class consciousness bears the marks of class mutilation is a dense, paradigm-shifting argument — it simultaneously defends avant-garde autonomy and rejects any vanguardist or workerist grounding for critique.

Broader Connections

• Fashion dictates styles with no objective, aesthetic, or practical justification. #corroborates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 715