From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Wed Apr 12 2006 - 19:42:17 EDT
>> This subordination is then summarily *equated* with >> indifference to use-value - "all that capitalists care about is profit", >> the lazy leftist caricaturists claim, AND THEREFORE they do not care >> about anything else. Addendum: The "capital personified" assumption is also an assumption about capitalist *consumption* behavior. I.e. if capitalists are capital personified then they will be driven by their inner nature to "Acumulate! Accumulate!" rather than use a greater proportion than (customarily) necessary for individual (unproductive) consumption of surplus value. It is, of course, easy to find exceptions to this in the form of conspicuous consumption by individual capitalists, but I think Marx believed that it was an assumption which corresponded broadly to capitalist history. Here there is a difference in interpreting capitalist history between Marx and Veblen. Perhaps this is a topic that is amenable to empirical investigation: e.g. have rates of unproductive consumption of surplus value for the purposes of individual capitalist consumption grown, declined, or remained stable over time and across social formations? (A note: I think it might be interesting to also look at how patterns of working-class consumption have historically been affected by patterns of capitalist consumption. My initial thought on this is that with the development of new mass communications technologies [especially the television] the cross-class effect has been more pronounced. A side note: one can probably also identify some ways in which bourgeois consumption habits and tastes have been influenced by the habits and tastes of workers. But, I think the greater impact is from capitalists to workers _because_ so many workers secretely want to be, and fantasize about being, 'filthy' rich like capitalists. In a perverse sense then the 'rich and famous' and their lifestyles are both envied and copied -- to an extent allowable by the wages of workers.) In solidarity, Jerry
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