Social Hierarchy

Karl Marx, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno share similar ideas, although Marx was writing more about the economy and Horkheimer and Adorno were writing about culture. In Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he speaks about how the forces of production dictate the structure of society. Similarly Horkheimer and Adorno write about how culture has become standardized because people will not accept anything other than the status quo as “good”. Therefore, Marx, Horkheimer, and Adorno agree that the means of production create society.

Marx’s ideas are about the economy because he is writing during a time when the economy in Europe was terrible because there was a strangle-hold control on the economies of the majority of European nations. Marx advocated for the release of these holds and letting the market determine prices and operate on the basis of supply and demand. According to Marx, “the totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness”(20). This means that the path to production creates the superstructure of society. Horkheimer and Adorno apply this same idea to culture.

Horkheimer and Adorno believe that the media dictates to people in a specific culture the definition of good and bad music, films, photography, drawing, painting etc. However, they also explain that the media uses the technology of the culture industry to standardize and influence social systems. Horkheimer and Adorno say that the culture industry is what shapes a society just as the means of production shape a society in the eyes of Marx. This culture industry caters to the public with a range of pass-produced products of varying quality in order to quantify culture (1038). Simply, the media shape culture into whatever they want it to be and society laps up the ideals that the industry says are right. For example, smoking was extremely popular on television, in books, etc. because it was made to look sexy, mysterious, and just cool in general. However, once smoking was found to be harmful smoking has appeared less and less in movies, on T.V., in books, etc. As a result of this lower profile fewer people start smoking today because it is not as glamorous as it once was. Once again, the media has and is changing the culture.

Now we come full-circle that the media is the means. Marx said that the means of production drives social hierarchy. Horkheimer and Adorno say that media, the machine of culture, now drives our social hierarchy. Different levels of society are marketed to differently. Culture however, does impose its own stamp on society by detailing exactly what is and is not acceptable and good or bad.