Pseudoconservatives misdirect resentment at democratic form rather than economic inequality

Evidence

Pseudoconservatives have an underlying sense of legitimacy': legitimate rulers are those who are actually in command of the machinery of productionnot those who owe their ephemeral power to formal political processes. This last motif, which also plays a heavy role in the prehistory of German fascism, is to be taken the more seriously because it does not altogether contradict social reality. As long as democracy is really a formal system of political government which made, under Roosevelt, certain inroads into economic fields but never touched upon the economic fundamentals, it is true that the life of the people depends on the economic organization of the country and, in the last analysis, on those who control American industry, more than on the chosen representatives of the people. Pseudoconservatives sense an element of untruth in the idea of their’ democratic government, and realize that they do not really determine their fate as social beings by going to the polls. Resentment of this state of affairs, however, is not directed against the dangerous contradiction between economic inequality and formal political equality but against the democratic form as such. Instead of trying to give to this form its adequate content, they want to do away with the form of democracy itself and to bring about the direct control of those whom they deem the most powerful anyway. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1797

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Adorno’s concept of `pseudo-conservatism’ as legitimacy tied to economic power rather than formal political processes.
• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s broader critique of formal democracy masking economic domination, echoing Marx’s distinction between political and social emancipation. — connects to: Adorno’s pseudo-conservative distinction added psychological depth to the political concept of conservatism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1587; Pseudo-conservatism masked destructive impulses beneath conventional values, unlike genuine conservatism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1800; Right-wing authoritarianism is psychological submission, not economic conservatism — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 140 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Pseudo-conservatism masked destructive impulses beneath conventional values, unlike genuine conservatism #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1800
• Right-wing authoritarianism is psychological submission, not economic conservatism #complicates (0.80) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 140