Chapter 3 - Totality

Summary

Chapter 3 is devoted to explaining the most fundamental category of domination in capitalism: “totality.” According to Adorno, the ubiquity of the exchange of commodities makes society in capitalism a totality. Individuals, on pain of perishing, must necessarily follow the logic of exchange. The totality, therefore, effectively functions as a “spell” from which nobody can flee. Turning to the logic of essence, I then reconstruct the dialectical development of the category of totality. Hegel first conceives of totality as an “actuality” that, like an organism, has the ability to maintain and reproduce itself across different circumstances. The most determinate form of actuality for Hegel is “substance.” Although individuals as “accidents” constitute substance, they remain subject to the “absolute power” of substance. It seems to individuals that they have power over each other, yet the power of individuals is an objective illusion. In fact, it is the totality of substance that makes one individual powerful and the other powerless.