Historical materialism cannot be assimilated as a spectacle because it denies thought’s autonomy

Evidence

No, the peculiarity of the structure of historical materialism lies in its denial of the autonomy of thought itself, in its insistence, itself a thought, on the way in which pure thought functions as a disguised mode of social behavior, in its uncomfortable reminder of the material and historical reality of spirit. Thus as a cultural object, Marxism returns against cultural activity in general to devalue it and to lay bare the class privileges and the leisure which it presupposes for its enjoyment. It thus ruins itself as a spiritual commodity and short-circuits the process of culture consumption in which, in the Western context, it had become engaged. It is therefore the very structure of historical materialism—the doctrine of the unity of thinking and action, or of the social determination of thought—which is irreducible to pure reason or to contemplation; and this, which the Western middle-class philosophical tradition can only understand as a flaw in the system, refuses us in the very moment in which we imagine ourselves to be refusing it. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 338

Categorization

• XREF: Explains why Marxism resists the Western ‘imaginary museum’ of contemplation — connects to the book_so_far claim that cultural theory displaces tactical political questions in late capitalism. — connects to: Polanyi rejected sociologically determinist histories of ideas — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 748
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox of a thought that devalues thought-as-contemplation — a self-consuming doctrine — is quintessential Frankfurt-school dialectic worth sitting with.