"I hate the capitalist system (Jim O'Connor)

Barbara Laurence cns at cats.ucsc.edu
Sun Apr 16 17:30:33 PDT 2000


W. Sokolowski wrote that "capitalism is...an abstraction, a heuristic model ..." and that "corporations are real entities with names and addresses, endowed with material resources."

This is the opposite of the truth, and populist-like thinking. Corporations are legal entities, form in which capital is organized. Capital is money, means of production, laborpower, products produced... Capital is a social relation (real) between capital and labor, one of apparent but not real equality in the labor market; one in which capital dominates labor in production; one in which in final product markets capital kisses the worker-as-consumer's but to sell her more crap. In short, corporations are the "form of the content," the content being self-expanding capital and all its contradictions, manifested not abstractly but in material ways.

Those who believe that the "content of the form" is the form itself (like Hayden White's masterpiece of pomo crap, his book called the "content of the form," the thesis being that there are a limited number of story forms, and that these forms decide the content of any story) - those who believe this might be called "postmodern populists."

Relatedly, all you fellow beneficiaries of Doug's and others' great postings from Fin. Times, etc., etc., should know that when Nader (the Ultimate Populist) spoke in Santa Cruz, he let slip, "we have to save the corporations from themselves" (followed by a nervous giggle).

The recent Nation discussion between Katha Pollit and her naderite critics indicates that one can't go very far with the critique of populism ("against populism, for populists" is my slogan) without a social/economic/political theory used as anti-populism tool. Jim O'Connor



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