Exchange becomes totalized across society by encroaching on production

Evidence

‘Adorno sought the origin of the real difference between concrete and abstract, the particular and the general, ultimately in the process of production as well. … Therefore, for him, exchange is ultimately an exchange between wage-labour and capital which is realised in production as a unity of real differences: the concrete process of labour, and the abstract process of valorisation’. As the exchange of wages for labour-power, exchange encroaches on production, thereby becoming totalised throughout society. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1376

Categorization

• XREF: This totalization thesis echoes the abstract/concrete dialectic that connects Adorno to Marx’s Capital and to Lukács’s reification analysis. — connects to: Exchange logic has fully absorbed even love, the last sphere of immediacy — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 180; Economic primacy over society presupposes a fully consolidated exchange economy — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1179; Use-value’s definition is circular within value-producing society. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1277 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Treating the market as a totalizing concept shifts explanation from production to exchange #expands (0.88) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 474
• Production and exchange form a unity of the diverse, not an identical unity #contradicts (0.82)
• Market ideology conceals exploitation by making exchange stand in for production #expands (0.75)
• The sphere of exchange generates capitalism’s spontaneous commonsense and bourgeois theory #expands (0.72)