tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post5569368530716393944..comments2024-03-20T01:04:27.846-05:00Comments on Permanent Crisis: Debt, continuedUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post-74672503293651458792011-03-29T01:46:21.198-05:002011-03-29T01:46:21.198-05:00That our capacities are narrowed under capitalism ...That our capacities are narrowed under capitalism is a key insight. I suggested earlier that consumerism could be compensation for kinds of fulfillment that are frustrated under neoliberalism - but it may rather be that consumption is precisely the kind of satisfaction that people actually do want under neoliberal conditions.<br /><br />Do you have any thoughts on how exactly this narrowing of capacities happens? Is it simply that the media are such an overwhelming presence in our lives that they determine our desires? If so, how to explain those who seem immune to consumerism? But maybe that's the wrong way to phrase it - it's not that those people are outside of neolberalism in some way, but that a different, contradictory facet of neoliberalism has more decisively shaped them. Even if we go that route, I'm still not sure that exposure to the media is adequate to fully account for the nature of consumerism...Walkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06912406198051338502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1110115832783903104.post-27686199032874498262011-03-25T17:04:50.722-05:002011-03-25T17:04:50.722-05:00I think this is a great start at figuring out what...I think this is a great start at figuring out what the subjective and affective forms are that sustain capitalism. It's not merely that the economy grows *more* when CEO's buy watches on credit that they don't need, but the economy *requires* this kind of spending, and more and more the frailer a regime of accumulation becomes.<br /><br />What I think this point allows us to explore is the relationship between subjective and objective conditions under capitalism. I mean these in a specific sense. Objective are conditions that could not be otherwise, and subjective are things that might have local diversity and variation without changing the essential character of the situation they are a part of (I'm not wedded to these terms since they're used in many different ways than I'm using them here and have way too fraught a history, but the binary I think makes sense). Here we have a problem as analysts of seemingly subjective practices that have an objective form to them. We would not have a functioning economy without debt consumption, but whether or not one CEO lives on credit doesn't matter. I think coming out of the neoliberal age where popular and scholarly analysis spent so much time analyzing the particular we need to take this moment of crisis to renew the problem of objective social conditions in a way that takes subjective forms as essential and a legitimate starting point for analysis.Earl McCabehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00385037345218807231noreply@blogger.com