Third-person intellectual autonomy survived bourgeoisie by escaping production coercion.

Evidence

Our predicament has a dual nature: we don’t simply want to become third persons again. This doesn’t mean that we have something against ‘the parasitic’. On the contrary, freedom from the coercion of production within degenerated bourgeois society was accompanied precisely by the survival of autonomy. Yet following the Marxian era, one can no longer seek to amuse the bourgeoisie as a third person, be it through critique or glorification. We have to be clear about this, even while we certainly know that for us, intellectual pursuit is still the natural mode of existence for the sons of rich parents. Thus, as ‘philosophers of existence’, we want to reflect on our own existence. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1064

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that ‘freedom from the coercion of production… was accompanied precisely by the survival of autonomy’ deserves chasing: is autonomy parasitically dependent on bourgeois privilege, in Adorno’s account?
• XREF: connects to: An economically displaced class can retain political and intellectual supremacy; Traditional intellectuals can retain political dominance through an independent economic base — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 307

Broader Connections

• Traditional intellectuals can retain political dominance through an independent economic base #qualifies (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 307
• An economically displaced class can retain political and intellectual supremacy #contradicts (0.75)