Production budgets signal value independent of any real meaning in products

Evidence

Here, a tentativeness in Adorno’s approach to commodity-analysis reveals itself. When he remarks that the exchange-value of cultural goods ‘exerts its power in a special way’ because these goods take on ‘the appearance of immediacy’, he fails to recognise that it is precisely this appearance which Marx attempts to capture with his concept of the commodity’s fetish-character. By Marx’s definition, every commodity has a corresponding fetish-character, not simply those to which an immediacy is ascribed externally and possibly for cultural reasons – such as music. Once music has become a commodity, it has the same immediacy as any other profane commodity: namely, an immediacy in appearance only. Therefore, it is not the appearance of immediacy ‘which alone gives cultural goods their exchange-value’; this appearance is the result of the commodity-form of cultural goods, that is, is logically proceeded by their exchange-value. Rather, once again: as is the case with every commodity, cultural goods gain their exchange-value from the way in which they are produced. The insight that economic value, and hence also exchange-value, is not imposed on a commodity by ideology, but rather emerges objectively in the production of commodities, is the core of the Marxian labour theory of value. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 444 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The values of efficiency and economy, the fundamental(ist) foundations of rational choice reason, assume the status of empirically established truth the force of which is unquestionable and so incontestable. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 121 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Individual consumption effects cannot be isolated from production-side forces; The system’s usefulness claim masks that production serves profit not need; Cultural goods derive exchange-value from production, not from any special appearance of immediacy — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 444 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural goods derive exchange-value from production, not from any special appearance of immediacy #corroborates (0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 444
• Individual consumption effects cannot be isolated from production-side forces #corroborates (0.72)
• The system’s usefulness claim masks that production serves profit not need #expands (0.72)
• Efficiency is treated as uncontestable truth rather than a contestable value #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 121