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There has been discussion on this topic for about 100 years, but the most prominent is in the books Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno or One-Dimensio
by DiscourseFan 2y ago
There has been discussion on this topic for about 100 years, but the most prominent is in the books Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno or One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse. They are a bit heavier than this article but they go into the problem with far more depth.
The Frankfurt school in general deals with this problematic of Capitalism losing its revolutionary potential and becoming a stagnant, homogenous, unchanging system. Walter Benjamin, the spiritual father of both the above authors, in fact did extensive work attempting to uncover the wondrous possibilities of early high capitalism before it collapsed under the rule of Louis Bonaparte, which was the subject of Marx’s quite famous article The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Disagree with Marx if you want but he did believe that capitalism, if left to run wild, would produce a new form of hypermobile, freely associating society, but when that gets close to happening in times of crisis a certain section of elite seize power for themselves and prevent the revolutionary social changes from occuring, thus producing this endless mediocrity.
- telesilla 2y agoHow prescient
- DiscourseFan 2y agoWhat we’re experiencing today has happened many times before in modern history, but those moments only become legible in times of crisis
- EarthBlues 2y agoEven before them, in Guénon and Vico. While it’s mostly a laugh (a shock?) to read Guénon and Marcuse side by side, I think Vico is really misunderstood and under-appreciated in our present cultural moment and I think a lot of good could come from a revival of his thought. He’s influenced a diverse array of characters, from Marx to Rosmini-Serbati, and I see a lot of his thought in Horkheimer and Habermas (I.e., the side of the Frankfurt school that rediscovered the big questions in a non-reactionary, non-nostalgic way).