Proletarian integration into capitalism proceeded through organization rather than revolutionary consciousness
Evidence
The integration of the proletariat is a negative integration. Rather than being achieved by workers overcoming the class-antagonism with the help of a revolutionary class-consciousness forged through collective misery, it came about when those who had more to lose than their chains became equally as organised through the class-relation as the class struggle itself. Meanwhile, class struggle has been confined to limits set by capital in the interest of its own continued existence. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 673
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies what Adorno means by ‘negative integration’ — integration achieved not by triumphing over class antagonism but by becoming organized within it.
- XREF: connects to: The proletariat’s integration forced critical theory into transcendent critique — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 190; Working-class movements accommodated capitalism while theory idealized a revolutionary proletariat; The proletariat’s backwardness enabled its integration into bourgeois society — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 977 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Working-class movements accommodated capitalism while theory idealized a revolutionary proletariat
#expands(0.92) - The proletariat’s backwardness enabled its integration into bourgeois society
#expands(0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 977 - Proletarianization created divisions among workers instead of erasing them
#corroborates(0.75) - Capitalism produced revolutionary classes at both poles of its expropriation
#contradicts(0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1286 - Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class
#corroborates(0.72) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267