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

[Barbara Laurence]

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