Influential readings wrongly claim Adorno ignored political economy

Evidence

‘Adorno was not bothered with political economy’, claims Jürgen Habermas, when in fact the opposite is true. … Yet Karl Marx, himself not an economist, also made no secret of his aversion to dealing with ‘economic stuff’ (ökonomische Scheiße). Indeed, for Adorno, ‘[t]he genius of Marx consisted precisely in the fact that, filled with disgust, he tackled exactly that which he found disgusting: the economy’. ‘People who champion critical theory’, Adorno claims in a seminar from 1968, ‘should not let the predominance of the economic deter them from attempting a critique of political economy’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 35

Categorization

• XREF: Directly counters the ‘pessimistic cul-de-sac’ reading the reader is engaging with, and revises Habermas’s and Jay’s canonical dismissal of Adorno’s economic engagement. — connects to: Adorno refused to treat economic primacy as a static anthropological constant — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1178; Adorno prioritized critique of dead-end economic theory over new economic research — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 505; Adorno’s culture industry critique is structurally grounded in political economy, not mythical ruling elites — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 831

Broader Connections

• Adorno refused to treat economic primacy as a static anthropological constant #corroborates (0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1178
• Adorno prioritized critique of dead-end economic theory over new economic research #corroborates (0.78) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 505