Ending deprivation requires increased domination of nature and self-repression

Evidence

The notion that deprivation shall not exist, that no one in the world shall go hungry anymore – in other words, the notion that the abolition of distress be fulfilled – itself requires an increase in the forces of production, and thus the domination of nature. Not only is this increase deeply entwined with the anti-materialist principle, it is only conceivable in the first place insofar as human beings – who, in their domination of external nature, are supposed to learn to dominate themselves – are constantly subjected to disallowances. The conception of a state without disallowances, the unfettering of the forces of production, the elimination of distress. That is, to be possible at all, the utopian element of unlimited fulfilment indeed requires – in order to be possible at all according to its own sense – limitation, asceticism, a particular element of repression, of oppression. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1572

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the internal paradox of utopia in Adorno: fulfilment requires asceticism and repression by its own logic.
• XREF: connects to: Rational self-preservation conquers nature only by imitating nature’s own rigidity — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 63; Nature is the object of reason as liberation, not only domination — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 826; Liberation-from-control paradoxically requires self-control by a prior autonomous self (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The drive to dominate external nature extends inward to the human self #expands (0.90)
• Liberation-from-control paradoxically requires self-control by a prior autonomous self #expands (0.85)
• Dominating nature chiefly becomes power over other humans #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 703
• Unlimited individual freedom breeds new repression through natural inequality #expands (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 534
• Social precepts can become interiorized until external compulsion becomes unnecessary #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 6435