Now that the livelihood of those still needed to operate the machines can be provided with a minimal part of the working time which the masters of society have at their disposal, the superfluous remainder, the overwhelming mass of the population, are trained as additional guards of the system, so that they can be used today and tomorrow as material for its grand designs. They are kept alive as an army of unemployed. Their reduction to mere objects of administration, which preforms every department of modern life right down to language and perception, conjures up an illusion of objective necessity before which they believe themselves powerless. Poverty as the antithesis between power and impotence is growing beyond measure, together with the capacity permanently to abolish poverty. From the commanding heights of the economy to the latest professional rackets, the tangled mass of cliques and institutions which ensures the indefinite continuation of the status quo is impenetrable to each individual.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. 1st ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002 (first print: 1944). (p. 30)
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