Mass production really means producing the masses, not producing massively

Evidence

And this translates a more general fact: that throughout the “civilized” world the construction of stockpiles of objects has brought with it the complementary process of stockpiles of people - the line, waiting, traffic jams, concentration, the camp. That is “mass production,” not in the sense of a massive production or for use by the masses, but the production of the masses. The masses as the final product of all sociality, and, at the same time, as putting an end to sociality, because these masses that one wants us to believe are the social, are on the contrary the site of the implosion of the social. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 227

Categorization

• XREF: This redefinition of ‘mass production’ reads almost as a Marxian inversion of the industrial term — echoes Baudrillard’s earlier ‘the end of the social’ and connects to his ‘Impossible Exchange.’ — connects to: Mass consumers are calculated objects, not the subjects, of culture production — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 138; The culture industry is production from above, not culture arising from the masses — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 134; Mass commercial culture is produced for workers, not by workers (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Mass consumers are calculated objects, not the subjects, of culture production #expands (0.82) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 138
• Mass culture’s ideal achievement is subordination, not autonomous triumph #corroborates (0.82) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 128
• To produce originally means to present oneself, not to make things #responds-to (0.80)
• The culture industry is production from above, not culture arising from the masses #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 134
• Standardized production forces a compensating pretence of individualism #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 82
• Mass commercial culture is produced for workers, not by workers #corroborates (0.75)
• Mass culture creates the very needs it then claims to satisfy #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 113
• Commercial mass culture was produced for, not by, the working classes. #corroborates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 143
• Abundant content obscures the industrial concentration that actually produces it #expands (0.72) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 210
• The system’s usefulness claim masks that production serves profit not need #expands (0.72)
• Mass acceptance of a society does not make it rational or defensible #complicates (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 93
• Economic rationality reduces individuals to obstacles in the production process #corroborates (0.72)
• Market ideology is real practice, not fantasy, because it legitimately misrepresents production #complicates (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 890
• Cultural goods derive exchange-value from production, not from any special appearance of immediacy #expands (0.70) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 444