The energy spent molding people from above measures their potential to go another way

Evidence

The study therefore concludedin words unmistakably written by Adornothat what was needed was an instinctual and utopian version of the hope for a sudden change resulting from a redirection of energies. It is the fact that the potentially fascist pattern is to so large an extent imposed upon people that carries with it some hope for the future. People are continuously molded from above because they must be molded if the over-all economic pattern is to be maintained, and the amount of energy that goes into this process bears a direct relation to the amount of potential, residing within the people, for moving in a different direction. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 447

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the usual reading of social control as evidence of docility: the magnitude of repressive effort is itself the index of resistance potential — an argument about the dialectic of domination worth sitting with.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘Repression as Thermometer’ — use Adorno’s energy-investment argument to read modern surveillance and propaganda spending as a measure of unexhausted political potential.