General Marxist Terms
Labor itself becomes a service sold per task
Commodification
Society is built around part-time, freelance labor.
Gig Economy
The process by which ideology “hails” individuals and turns them into subjects.
Interpellation
Function of product vs. what it can be sold for
Use Value vs. Exange Vlaue
The process of turning things (including ideas, relationships, even people) into commodities. Klages connects this to how capitalism expands into all areas of life.
Commodification
A system of beliefs that justifies the power of the ruling class. It operates unconsciously and is embedded in institutions (schools, media, religion). It is the structure through which we experience reality.
Ideology
It is the reflection of a basic reality
— it masks and perverts a basic reality
— it masks the absence of a basic reality
— it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum
"the Image"
Workers in a capitalist system feel this way when they are disconnected from their work/product/self.
Alienation
Reality is shaped by material conditions (economics, labor, production) vs. reality is shaped by ideas or consciousness
Materialism vs. Idealism
Marx (and Klages’ explanation of him) argues that material conditions determine ideas, not the reverse.
______ Refers to broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth vs. ______ refers to set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas that provide basis for the aesthetic of __________
Modernism vs. Modernity
Signs and images no longer reflect reality. Instead, they create their own reality. A ___________ is thus a self-contained representation—it only refers to other representations, not to something “real.”
Simulacrum
Terms influence each other. The _____ is the economic system: the forces and relations of production (labor, tools, class relations). The ______________ includes culture, law, politics, religion, and ideology.
Base/superstructure
Is a cultural and theoretical movement that rejects the assumptions of modernism, especially the belief in stable meaning, universal truth, and coherent identity.
Postmodernism
A process of contradiction and change: opposing forces (thesis/antithesis) interact to produce a new condition (synthesis). Marx “materializes” this idea—the conflict between classes drives historical change.
Dialectic
The ruling class maintains power not just through force, but by winning consent. Cultural norms and values make domination seem natural. Klages highlights how people participate in systems that oppress them.
Hegemony