thought becomes a commodity when public opinion reaches a certain state

Evidence

Advertising is no longer (was it ever?) a means of communication or of information. Or else it is overtaken by the madness specific to overdeveloped systems, that of voting for itself at each moment, and thus of parodying itself. If at a given moment, the commodity was its own publicity (there was no other) today publicity has become its own commodity. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 303 (#expands, via linked claim)

I wish to suggest, in contradistinction, that thought is pre- dominantly public and social. It occurs primarily on blackboards, in dances, and in recited poems. The capacity of private thought is a derived and second- ary talent, one that appears biographically later in the person and historically later in the species. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 200 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

One could say therefore that the historical personality of an individual philosopher is also given by the active relationship which exists between him and the cultural environment he is proposing to modify. The environment reacts back on the philosopher and imposes on him a continual process of self-criticism. It is his “teacher”. This is why one of the most important demands that the modern intelligentsias have made in the political field has been that of the so-called “freedom of thought and of the expression of thought” (“freedom of the press”, “freedom of association”). For the relationship between master and disciple in the general sense referred to above is only realised where this political condition exists, and only then do we get the “historical” realisation of a new type of philosopher, whom we could call a “democratic philosopher” in the sense that he is a philosopher convinced that his personality is not limited to himself as a physical individual but is an active social relationship of modification of the cultural environment. When the “thinker” is content with his own thought, when he is “subjectively”, that is abstractly, free, that is when he nowadays becomes a joke. The unity of science and life is precisely an active unity, in which alone liberty of thought can be realised; it is a master-pupil relationship, one between the philosopher and the cultural environment in which he has to work and from which he can draw the necessary problems for formulation and resolution. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1254 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Thought is primarily public and social, not private — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 200; Popular beliefs can carry the energy of a material force — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1344; Thought requires active engagement with a modifying cultural environment to be real — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1254 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Thought is primarily public and social, not private #qualifies (0.75) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 200
• Publicity has become its own commodity rather than an image of commodities #expands (0.75) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 303
• Thought requires active engagement with a modifying cultural environment to be real #expands (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1254
• Political change begins in minds that imagine a different world locally #qualifies (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3442
• Popular beliefs can carry the energy of a material force #expands (0.70) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1344