Equivalence

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Equivalence is similarity in in value, meaning or effect.

Quotes

• Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes dissimilar things comparable by reducing them to abstract quantities. For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry.
  • Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment E. Jephcott, trans., p. 4

See also

• Copula
• Equality