Economic rationality reduces individuals to obstacles in the production process
Evidence
The individual has become an obstacle to production. The gap between technical and human development, the cultural lag highlighted by sociologists, is beginning to disappear. Economic rationality, the highly-praised principle of the smallest mean, is incessantly converting the last units of the economy: firms and men alike. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 162
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the meaning of the ‘cultural lag’ thesis as it disappears under economic rationality.
- XREF: Connects to Burns’s later invocation of Adorno’s culture industry critique — this is the foundational link. — connects to: Scientific rationality reduces individual life to statistical ratios; Economism reduces history to individual self-interest, technical change, or single factors of production; Rationalized production requires the elaboration of a new type of man (+12 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Scientific rationality reduces individual life to statistical ratios; Economism reduces history to individual self-interest, technical change, or single factors of production; Rationalized production requires the elaboration of a new type of man (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Economism reduces history to individual self-interest, technical change, or single factors of production
#expands(0.80) - Rationalized production requires the elaboration of a new type of man
#expands(0.78) - Economism reduces social formations to a single line of economic determination
#expands(0.78) - Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity
#expands(0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 23 - Standardized production forces a compensating pretence of individualism
#expands(0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 82 - Administered rationality works by reducing qualitative differences to commensurable equivalents.
#expands(0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 152 - Capital accumulation lowers profit rates unless exploitation intensifies via labour rationalisation
#expands(0.70)