Affluent alienation and its contestation

pp. 51-76

in: Lawrence Wilde, Ethical Marxism and its radical critics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1998

Abstract

To a child returning from a holiday, home seems new, fresh, festive. Yet nothing has changed there since he left. Only because duty has now been forgotten, of which each piece of furniture, window, lamp, was otherwise a reminder, is the house given back this sabbath peace, and for minutes one is at home in a never-returning world of rooms, nooks, and corridors in a way that makes the rest of life there a lie. No differently will the world one day appear, almost unchanged, in its constant feastday light, when it stands no longer under the law of labour, and when for homecomers duty has the lightness of holiday play (Theodor Adorno).¹