Doug Henwood wrote:
> I wouldn't repudiate anything I wrote in the passage. I'd express it
> a bit differently, for sure, but I'm not rejecting it. In fact, I
> think it hints at what Angela was calling for, a material analysis of
> where "postmodernism" came from. I'm with Jameson when he argues that
> one can't really be for or against "postmodernism" - it's everywhere,
> the cultural logic of what's optimistically called "late capitalism."
> I think Jameson is wrong in his essay on culture & finance capital
> when he takes the apparent immateriality of finance capital at face
> value; I'm not sure what the implications are for the cultural side
> of his analysis, but I would emphasize that behind the apparent
> immateriality of fin K are relations of power and coercion, and that
> the markets themselves are important institutions of class formation.
>
> Doug
>
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Charles: Yes, indeedy, and one can't really be "for or against" finance capital either; it's everywhere too, underlying the logic of the last or last two phases of capitalism. And it remains a merger of finance and industrial capital.
CB
((((((((((
> >***** from Doug Henwood, _Wall Street_ (NY: Verso, 1997)
> >
> >In higher rentier consciousness, production disappears from view. This is
> >apparent not only in ruling-class thinking, but even among its supposed
> >critics. Many postmodern cultural theorists, for whom class is an obsolete
> >concept left over from when production mattered most, see the world as one
> >of identities and desires formed and expressed in the sphere of
> >consumption. "Capital," complained Andrew Ross (1988, quoted in Hawkes,
> >1996, p. 8), "or rather our imaginary of Capital, still belongs for the
> >most part to a demonology of the Other. This is a demonology that inhibits
> >understanding and action as much as it artificially keeps alive older forms
> >of _ressentiment_ that have little or no purchase on postmodern consumer
> >society." [31] Capital becomes fictive, a product of imagination rather
> >than a real social relation; all antagonism disappears, and money becomes
> >not a form of coercion, but a realm of desire, even of freedom. This is
> >unsurprising coming from capital's house intellectuals, but it seems to
> >infect even its opponents. Forms meant to disseminate these mystifying
> >temptations -- the media, advertising, PR -- become the principal objects
> >of study in themselves, overshadowing relations of property and power.
> >
> >Immateriality simplifies the work of apologists, as it complicates that of
> >critics [Yoshie: How nicely put!]. Interest-bearing capital is a "godsend"
> >to bourgeois economists, who yearn to represent capital as an independent
> >source of value in production -- which therefore _earns_ its profits just
> >as workers earn their wages. Interest, especially in its compounded form,
> >"appears as a Moloch demanding the whole world as a sacrifice belonging to
> >it of right, whose legitimate demands, arising from its very nature, are
> >however never met and are always frustrated by a mysterious fate" (Marx
> >1971, p. 456). But reformers who aim to transform or abolish credit
> >"without touching upon real capitalist production [are] merely attacking
> >one of its consequences." Interest-bearing capital is a distillation of
> >capital as a social form, not some phenomenon above or apart from it.
> >Therefore, abolishing interest and interest-bearing capital, Marx (1971, p.
> >472) argued, "means the abolition of capital and of capitalist production
> >itself."
> >
> >[31] Ross seems to have evolved away from this position, with his more
> >recent interest in the sweatshop reality behind the glitz of the fashion
> >industry.
> >
> >Hawkes, Daivd (1996). _Ideology_ (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
> >
> >Marx, Karl (1971). _Theories of Surplus Value_, vol. 3, translated by Jack
> >Cohen and S.W. Ryazankaya (Moscow: Progress Publishers).
> >
> >(237) *****
> >> >retrofitting the post-Foucauldian Marxist chronotope,
> >
> >Yoshie