Philosophy of New Music by Theodor Adorno; Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor

By Patrick Schabe

For Adorno, the opiate of the masses in late capitalism was not religion, but culture, and mass-produced culture was little more than a drug that served no other capacity than the reification and perpetuation of the dominance of capital -- culture as product that could only produce more product as culture. [19 September 2006]