Lukács saw rationalization as reification caused by commodity fetishism

Evidence

Habermas follows Weber in conceiving ‘the modernization of Euro­ pean society as a result of a universal-historical process of rationaliza­ tion*. In starting from Weber’s account of modernization as the differentiation of autonomous subsystems — above all the market and the state - regulated by instrumental rationality, Habermas takes the same course as Lukâcs and the early Frankfurt school. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukâcs interpreted rationalization as reification, as the consequence of the penetration of all the spheres of social life by commodity fetishism, the reduction, produced by capitalist econo­ mic mechanisms, of all relationships between people to relations between things regulated by the market. The obverse to this process of reification was, Lukâcs believed, the proletariat, conceived in highly Hegelian terms as the ‘identical subject-object of history’ whose inevitable assumption of revolutionary consciousness would shatter the reified structures of capitalist society. … Horkheimer and Adorno took over, and indeed considerably enriched Lukâcs’s analy­ sis of reification but gave up any expectations of proletarian revolu­ tion. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 379

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Lukácsian concept of reification as rationalization via commodity fetishism, and notes the Frankfurt school’s abandonment of proletarian revolution.
• XREF: Connects directly to Jameson’s use of reification and late capitalism; the whole chapter is a counterargument framing. — connects to: Commodity fetishism presents social labour relations as properties of things — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 410; Objectification becomes bourgeois rationalization when objectivity remains unfree. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 267; Reification is not negative but rooted in commodity economy and irremediable — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 270 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Commodity fetishism presents social labour relations as properties of things #expands (0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 410
• Objectification becomes bourgeois rationalization when objectivity remains unfree. #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 267
• Reification is not negative but rooted in commodity economy and irremediable #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 270