Proletariat and intellectuals need each other mutually for revolution

Evidence

Revolution is supposed to eliminate anxiety and barbarity, and we need not fear it, but rather what currently exists. Yet although we need not fear revolution, we also do not have to revere it … in abstract overexcitement. Politically speaking, this means simply that the proletariat needs the intellectuals for revolution just as much as the latter need the proletariat – whereas Benjamin, and this is in fact the worst of Brecht, places his trust in the proletariat as though it were a blind world spirit, tolerating specifically those characteristics of it which were produced by bourgeois machinery, characteristics which our precise task is to transform with knowledge. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 266

Categorization

• XREF: This mutual-need argument counters the orthodox vanguardism vs. blind-world-spirit dichotomy — connects to the reader’s broader political-theory framework and echoes the critique of economistic reductionism in revisionist Adorno scholarship. — connects to: Intellectuals either serve existing power or align with emerging popular forces. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 126; Genuine political knowledge requires sentimental connection between intellectuals and the people; Organic working-class intellectuals link production roles to political direction — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 248 (+4 more)
• SEED: An essay angle on Adorno’s insistence that the proletariat’s bourgeois-produced characteristics must be transformed by knowledge offers a corrective to both workerist and vanguardist readings.

Broader Connections

• Organic intellectuals must arise from and stay in contact with the masses #corroborates (0.95) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1224
• Genuine political knowledge requires sentimental connection between intellectuals and the people #corroborates (0.85)
• Organic working-class intellectuals link production roles to political direction #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 248
• Peasant and intellectual initiatives advance each other reciprocally #exemplifies (0.80)
• Intellectuals either serve existing power or align with emerging popular forces. #complicates (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 126
• Marxism was a theory about the proletariat, not a theory produced by proletarian intellectuals #qualifies (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2432