Thoughts on Adorno, exploitation, the bounds of agency, and control vs. domination.

I think this bit in Adorno is of a peice with the Frankfurt School's anti-positivism, even if it is an extreme pole within the school. 1/ https://twitter.com/profitratedown/status/1262532312794685440

The more moderate anti-positism of Habermas says: don't treat humans like non-human nature (no behaviorism, no social engineering, etc.) But Adorno suggests: don't treat nature (or life, or just animal life) like stuff that can be manipulated at will. 2/

But this carries over to their theory of exploitation, which has both an normative and a social theortical side. Normatively, exploitation is upsetting for Kantian reasons: it treats ends in themselves as mere means. 3/

Social theoretically, however, exploition is understood in Weberian terms, as an exercise of control -- making another do what you will. 4/

The implication of Adorno's criticism of Marx's surplus value theory is that non-human animals are ends in themselves, and that capitalist production bends them to the will of the capitalist. They produce surplus value because their sponaneous lives exceed this will. 5/

But Marx drew the line between humans and horses not because he was a positivist, or viewed horses as inert, but because he thought human power so far exceeds the power of horses that their inpits to production can be counted upon, and this is b/c horses can't talk back. 6/

I talk about this in my book, but (as Chis Arther and David Schweikert have noticed) labor power is the only commodity that is a source of surplus value b/c it is the commodity that you don't know how much you got of until you put it to work. 7/

That is: workplace discipline, government, and incentives -- which cannot be reduced to an established method -- determine how much work you get out of labor powers. Humans are unruly, and have a sort of deliberate and social agency that can be dominated but not controlled. 8/

In short, Adorno's anti-positivism is mixed with the Weberian belief that power works to effect control. That's why he can't se any difference between the exploitation of horsepower and the exploitation of labor power. 9/

Where Marx saw a gulf between the management of livestock and the governemnt of human beings, Adorno sees no significant line.

But if Adorno overestimates power, how much more do the economists who equates the exploitation of labor power and the use of corn or iron?

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