Abstract
This article aims to compare aspects from Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and from Theodor Adorno's essay Freudian theory and the pattern of fascist propaganda, seeking to emphasize elements that would underline a fetishistic character integrated to institutions and political phenomena in the bourgeois world - both at its dawn and in its late outcome. In both interpretations, there is a curious recurrence of characters and schemes that would encourage people to act as a mass. If, on the one hand, it is possible to emphasize in Marx's analysis of the rise of Louis Bonaparte consequences of the centralization and rationalization of the state apparatus, on the other hand, it is possible to emphasize the mythological and phantasmagorical aspect that seem to organize the inside political sphere. By scrutinizing the phenomenon of Nazism and modern anti-Semitism, Theodor Adorno develops an interpretation about the objective bases and the subjective mechanisms involved in the dynamics of the relationship between the fascist leader and the mass comprised by his followers. Here, too, eminently fetishized phenomena are observed.
Keywords:
Karl Marx; Theodor Adorno; politics; fetishism; mass society