Human subjectivity itself is constituted by the social process of production.

Evidence

The organic composition of man is growing. That which determines subjects as means of production and not as living purposes, increases with the proportion of machines to variable capital. The pat phrase about the ‘mechanization’ of man is deceptive because it thinks of him as something static which, through an ‘influence’ from outside, an adaptation to conditions of production external to him, suffers certain deformations. But there is no substratum beneath such ‘deformations’, no ontic interior on which social mechanisms merely act externally: the deformation is not a sickness in men but in the society which begets its children with the ‘hereditary taint’ that biologism projects on to nature. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 254

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Marx’s organic composition of capital, and to the arguments against the ‘substratum’ view of the subject that runs through Frankfurt School debates with Lukács and later Habermas. — connects to: Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517; Reality is produced through collective work and action — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 386; Reified social wholes are objective forces that decide individual existence — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 735 (+11 more)
• DEFINE: Adorno transfers Marx’s ‘organic composition of capital’ from capital to the human subject itself.

Broader Connections

• Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence #corroborates (0.92) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517
• Social and cultural structures overdetermine our natural human constitution. #corroborates (0.88)
• Reality is produced through collective work and action #expands (0.85) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 386
• Cultural and political power relations operate outside the social relations of production #contradicts (0.85)
• Human culture originates in the socially mediated relation between man and nature #expands (0.82)
• Human deformation is a social product, not a damage to an underlying essence #corroborates (0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 939
• Capitalist production relations are reproduced socially and ideologically, not just economically #expands (0.80)
• Human life must be understood under both individual and social attributes at once #expands (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 213
• Reified social wholes are objective forces that decide individual existence #complicates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 735
• Capitalism is a class-divided socioeconomic system of contingent human making. #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 58
• Social reproduction of labor-power requires family, education, and cultural institutions #expands (0.75)
• Material forces of production determine the superstructure and drive social revolutions #expands (0.72)
• The body is constituted as the totality of its meaningful relations to the world #qualifies (0.72)
• The situation is constituted from Others’ meanings rather than from being itself #qualifies (0.70) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 444