CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

properties: for any commodity x, if x has a specific value v, it can be replaced by any
other commodity of value v without regard for the particularity of the objects.
Importantly, commodity production leads to a distinction between concrete and
abstract labor that mirrors the distinction between use value and exchange value.
Concrete labor refers to the specific skills required to produce an object of a certain
kind—skills that are irreducibly qualitatively distinct depending on what the product is—
whereas abstract labor refers to a general expenditure of labor power that is measurable
equally for all types of labor. Abstract labor, like exchange value, is measured along a
merely quantitative scale bereft of qualitative distinctions. With the transformation from
concrete to abstract labor characteristic of capitalism, labor power itself becomes a
commodity. It comes to be measured in terms of segments of labor time, each of which
is allocated a specific exchange value. The result is that finite segments of human life
become commodities in the market.
Based on this analysis, Adorno claims that the idea that individuals encounter
each other in the market as equals, though false in terms of the transaction that takes
place between worker and capitalist, nonetheless has a dimension of “truth”—namely, in
the fact that individuals’ lives are broken down into segments that are accorded equal
exchange value measured in terms of the purely quantitative, commodified category of
abstract labor power. The value of the individual becomes abstractly measurable as the
value of an object in the commodity market. But then every individual is replaceable by
any other individual with similar qualifications or similar skills, which in the capitalist
division of labor tend to be reduced to the lowest common denominator. The very
content of individual identity becomes socially understood as an abstract content
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