Total socialization destroys the cultural traditions it depends on

Evidence

A policy of maintaining the latency of the class structure seemed bound to undermine itself, since increasing state intervention in the sociocultural sphere clearly had the effect of destroying cultural traditions and diminishing meaningfulness, and these effects could not be offset indefinitely through social compensations and the provision of consumable values. Habermas’s analysis of late capitalism thus led to a more precise restatement of an old theme of Critical Theory, that total socialization of society (Vergesellschaftung der Gesellschaft) would stifle its own base. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 679

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the chapter’s earlier thread of Habermas’s legitimation crisis thesis; connects to the Frankfurt School’s older critique-of-reification theme.
• DEEPTHINKING: A self-undermining mechanism at the core of late-capitalist stabilization — the system erodes the very meaningfulness it needs to reproduce consent.
• DEFINE: Supplies the German term Vergesellschaftung der Gesellschaft and its translation as total socialization of society.