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what could be better for capital in general that convincing so many petit bourgeois that the problems of economic instability and exploitation (they are linked) can be traced not to problems of economic organization but rather to problems of inner being?
the poor are poor because they are morally reprobate or because they are stupid or because...well they ought to be poor.
it is a question of essence.
same kind of arguments are embedded in the racism mobilized cheerfully by the right to rationalize the "war on terrorism".
same kind of arguments are embedded in elements organized by the assimilation of fundamentalist protestant discourse into right politics.
same kind of arguments are embedded in conservative conceptions of nationalism.
what could be better for capital than convincing people that the effects of capitalism can be explained in ways that divert attention away from capitalism?
well you could make these same folk suspicious of mobilization, of unionizing.
you could have them endorse their own economic powerlessness
if you want to cement the deal, you float the Ideal of the Entrepreneur
which is the simple-minded mapping of the ideology of the autonomous individual
not conditioned by social factors
into the space of neoclassical economics.
for good measure, add the horatio alger mythology
and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and
why bother with direct domination
when you can convince people to render and maintain themselves as powerless?
this discourse is the veil around which decline unfolds.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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