The system’s usefulness claim masks that production serves profit not need

Evidence

It is not possible, however, to be blind to the fact that the useful - that which is of advantage to man in all previous history - is nothing immediate, existing for its own sake, but rather that within the total system which has its eye directed towards profit. The useful per se has been relegated to a secondary position, where it is produced by the machinery of the system as well. There is hardly another point to which the consciousness of society is so allergic as it is to this one. Precisely because the usefulness of the useful is so dubious a matter, it is doubly important that this apparatus demonstrate its usefulness through its function solely for the sake of the consumer. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 156

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Here Adorno grounds the useful/useless antinomy that later justifies why ‘free time’ is administered — core to the reader’s goal.