Mass culture’s technical rationality masks class domination as consumer demand.

Evidence

Interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms. It is alleged that because millions participate in it, certain reproduction processes are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with identical goods. The technical contrast between the few production centers and the large number of widely dispersed consumption points is said to demand organization and planning by management. Furthermore, it is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the core concept of the ‘circle of manipulation and retroactive need’ — that consumer demand is manufactured by the system that claims to serve it.
• XREF: Ties directly to Burns’s use of Adorno; the technological-rationale-as-domination claim also echoes Marcuse’s later notion of technological rationality in One-Dimensional Man. — connects to: Commodity fetishism in mass production dictates conventional human behavior — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46; Consumer culture’s desire-production reproduces itself autonomously without needing any external cause — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 468; Mass culture creates the very needs it then claims to satisfy — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 113 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass culture creates the very needs it then claims to satisfy #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 113
• Market ideology fragments classes into individual consumers and hides production #expands (0.85)
• Ideology masks class by fragmenting people into individuals bound as consumers and citizens #expands (0.85)
• Consumer culture’s desire-production reproduces itself autonomously without needing any external cause #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 468
• Mass culture reproduces subjects already shaped by systemic coercion rather than influencing them #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 716