Student said: “So if capitalism has subsumed or partnered with coolness, can it survive without it? What about cultural facets, outsiders who are not part of this totality of the protestant ethic (like developing nations) that capitalism has not found a way to market/profit from?”
“Developing” nations are indeed crucial for the sustainability of capital, for capital is a global phenomenon, both in thought and action. Several authors have written on this, V.I. Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism(1) and Immanuel Wallerstein’s World System’s Theory(2) both discuss the need of Advanced Industrial Nations – first world powers – for these developing countries for several reasons (1) raw materials and resources which are crucial for mass production and cheaper to extract due to cheap labor, lax environmental regulation and state oversight, really flexible labor laws and low corporate taxation, (2) cheap labor also keeps commodity prices down so that the first world consumers can buy the products for sale, even with their wages stagnating since the 1970s – it is one way to increase the purchasing power of “first world” consumers without having to raise their wages and decrease corporate profits, you just decrease the products cost of production via decreasing the cost of labor-power, (3) these labor markets can be used to keep the wages of “first world” workers from rising substantially – through the threat of off-shoring, (4) these markets can be used to dump product that cannot be sold in the U.S. do to lack of consumer demand or their becoming illegal to sell – for instance, Nestle sold millions of packages of dry formula to mothers in Africa and ran a campaign to get mothers to stop breastfeeding their babies and use the Nestle formula instead, at a time when these practices were illegal in the United States. Globalization and colonialism is a direct result of capitalism and colonialism is a direct manifestation of accumulation through dispossession.
Additionally, through IMF and World Bank policies “developing” countries are kept in a state of dependence on “first world” countries through debt repayment plans and industrialization plans which tend to push money away from creating a viable autonomous state with a self-sufficient industry and infrastructure to one dependent on being integrated into a world economy – with devastating affects on the agrarian population and small industries who cannot compete with the big industrial or agri-business of the U.S. or Europe. These policies tend to focus on opening up their markets to “first world” investment, with the majority of profits going to the U.S. or European corporation and not staying locally or national to benefit the nation itself.
If Capital was merely a national phenomenon and not a global phenomenon it would be even more unstable and class conflict would be even more salient than capital is on a global level. For capital’s internal logic makes it a global phenomenon, it cannot be kept nationally, it will expand all over the globe, converting everything in its path over to its side. If Capital was forced to be national the internal contradictions within capital would manifest themselves at a much more frequent and deeper level than they currently do.
Student said: “So if capitalism has subsumed or partnered with coolness, can it survive without it?”
For the past 40 years capital’s advertising and marketing of products has been directly intertwined with youth, sexuality, being rebellious and being cool. These components I believe are identity needs, the last three primarily of the youth – adolescence and early adult hood. Youth subcultures are constant springing up because they want to be cool, be different, be rebellious, it has become a natural part of life. As long as the youth create new subcultures then capital will use their image and style to mass market them to the masses who want the same things. Capital might find a way to work around it, find something even better – but I think it has found the perpetual fountain of youth – the geyser of eternal ideas and change, which is great for capitalism – giving it new images and styles to sell to the public.
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