The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception is an article that deals with the aspect of the culture industry. This is in the context that the authors, Horkheimer and Ardono view the society of the capitalist as one who has gone beyond its mandate and betrayed itself. This is in the manner that the concept of enlightenment has contributed to the hampering of logic taking over the human’s aspect of social life (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). The authors denote that the term culture industry was term which was used to hide the fact from the masses that the mass industry is something which springs out of them spontaneously. Adorno & Horkheimer, (1944) assert that the Culture Industry has led to the hampering of autonomous criticism and thinking and thereby only serving the interests of those who are reigning in power. In this case, the masses are objects of manipulation and therefore do not have the necessary capacity to do things their own.

The content and context of the article can be connected to the “Estranged labor” of Karl Marx whereby they both agree that the masses are subject to the manipulation of those in high order (Marx, 2012). In this case, the connection is that in the means of production the masses are always estranged by their employers by them withdrawing some incentives to initiate hard labor for higher proceeds. Is in this context that competition is a monopoly, just as the culture industry denote that those people who are under capitalist authority suffer the same fate as those in the art’s fate in the culture industry (Schulz, 2012). Even though one article deals with consumption (Culture Industry), and the other deals with the means of production, both agree that is manipulation, personal interest, and benefits which drive the activities in production and consumption of goods and services in the capitalist world.

The article is fascinating because it points out the dynamics of the aspect of consumption form the mindset of a producer of goods and services. There is a sense in which one can determine that the authors seem to ascertain that culture industry has overtaken reality as the prism in which people would be experiencing reality. It denotes that culture industry has led people to become passive and subordinate subjects who are unable to bear full the responsibilities of their actions (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). The favorite part is that the only service in which the Industry Culture can offer to people is to make them have freedom of thinking and making of choices.

References

Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1944). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. Dialectic Of Enlightenment.

Marx, K. (2012). Estranged labor: Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Courier Corporation, 2012.

Schulz, K. (2012). New Governance and Industry Culture. SSRN Electronic Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2064242