Adorno and Neoliberalism: The Critique of Exchange Society (Critical Theory and the Critique of Society)

"The first book to investigate the relevance of Theodor W. Adorno's work for theorizing the age of neoliberal capitalism. Through an engagement with Adorno's critical theory of society, Charles Prusik advances a novel approach to understanding the origins and development of neoliberalism. Offering a corrective to critics who define neoliberalism as an economic or political doctrine, Prusik argues that Adorno's dialectical theory of society can provide the basis for explaining the illusions and forms of domination that structure contemporary life. Prusik explains the importance of Marx's critique of commodity fetishism in shaping Adorno's work and focuses on the related concepts of exchange, ideology, and natural history as powerful tools for grasping the present. Through an engagement with the ideas of neoliberal economic theory, Adorno and Neoliberalism criticizes the naturalization of capitalist institutions, social relations, ideology, and cultural forms. Revealing its origins in the crises of the Fordist period, Prusik develops Adorno's analyses of class, exploitation, monopoly, and reification to situate neoliberal policies as belonging to the fundamental antagonisms of capitalist society"-- Provided by publisher The first book to investigate the relevance of Theodor W. Adorno's work for theorizing the age of neoliberal capitalism. Through an engagement with Adorno's critical theory of society, Charles Prusik advances a novel approach to understanding the origins and development of neoliberalism. Offering a corrective to critics who define neoliberalism as an economic or political doctrine, Prusik argues that Adorno's dialectical theory of society can provide the basis for explaining the illusions and forms of domination that structure contemporary life. 0Prusik explains the importance of Marx's critique of commodity fetishism in shaping Adorno's work and focuses on the related concepts of exchange, ideology, and natural history as powerful tools for grasping the present. Through an engagement with the ideas of neoliberal economic theory, Adorno and Neoliberalism criticizes the naturalization of capitalist institutions, social relations, ideology, and cultural forms. Revealing its origins in the crises of the Fordist period, Prusik develops Adorno's analyses of class, exploitation, monopoly, and reification to situate neoliberal policies as belonging to the fundamental antagonisms of capitalist society Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Foreword 8 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 14 Why Adorno? 15 Context and Scope 16 Chapter 1: Exchange Society 22 Commodity Fetishism 24 Real Abstraction 37 Negative Totality 45 Chapter 2: Neoliberalism and the Class Antagonism 62 State Capitalism 66 The Golden Age of Capitalism 70 Crisis: The End of the Golden Age 76 The Neoliberal Revolution 81 Chapter 3: Natural-History and the Critique of Neoliberal Theory 100 The Idea of Natural-History 101 Liberalism: Economy as First Nature 104 Neoliberal Theory and the Economics of Information 108 Neoliberalism as Second Nature 116 Chapter 4: Neoliberal Reason 132 Dialectic of Enlightenment 133 Sacrifice: The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment 135 The Organic Composition of Humanity 140 Neoliberal Reason: Computation, Mechanization, and Mind 142 The Domination of Nature 146 Chapter 5: Neoliberal Culture 154 The Culture Industry: Mass Culture and the Commodity-Form 155 The Neoliberal Culture Industry 157 Flexible Standardization 159 Precarity and Crisis 169 Afterword 178 Bibliography 184 Further Sources 187 Index 196