Lenin wrongly treated capitalist technical rationality as separable from class domination

Evidence

However, in this polemic, Lenin ‘fatefully neglects the connection between the formal determinants of politics and economy’. Assuming that ‘capitalism contains a quasi-neutral, technical rationality of nature-appropriation which, once liberated from class-domination, would enable a free and emancipatory form of social production’, he is able to refer positively to the allegedly socialist-affirming elements of capitalism – as if these could be separated from their functional context within capitalism and implemented within socialism while maintaining their functionality. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 521

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the recurring technocratic fallacy in Marxian socialism — treating the productive apparatus of capitalism as neutral machinery that can be unplugged from class relations and re-housed in socialism.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the theoretical hinge of the chapter: the argument that capitalism’s technical rationality is formally intertwined with its social determinants, which is precisely the Adornian/Institute line against Lenin and Pollock.
• XREF: connects to: Pollock’s state capitalism theory erased class antagonisms in favor of purely political rulers — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 599; Overcoming capitalism alone would not prevent new forms of domination — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1568; Lenin treated state capitalism as a neutral stepping-stone to socialism — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 517 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Lenin treated state capitalism as a neutral stepping-stone to socialism #expands (0.90) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 517
• Overcoming capitalism alone would not prevent new forms of domination #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1568
• Domination in advanced capitalism is masked as neutral administration and objectivity #exemplifies (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 186