Aesthetic comparisons secretly express contests between modes of production.

Evidence

We do, however, make comparisons of this kind and seem to enjoy the process, however meaningless it may be; one can therefore only conclude that such compulsive matchings and rankings must mean something else. Indeed, I’ve argued in another place that in the political unconscious of an age, such comparisons — whether of individual works or cultural styles more generally — are in reality the figuration and the expressive raw material of a deeper comparison between the modes of production themselves, which confront and judge each other by way of the individual contact between reader and text. The example of the modern/postmodern, however, shows that this also holds good for stages within a single mode of production, in this case for the confrontation between the modernist (or imperialist, or monopoly) stage of capitalism and its postmodern (or multinational) stage. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 658

Categorization

• XREF: Directly addresses the reader’s stated goal: ‘style is periodizable — aesthetic form is the economy’s way of appearing.’ Connects to Jameson’s political unconscious (Althusserian/Lukácsian lineage).
• DEFINE: Links the modern/postmodern distinction to imperialist/monopoly vs multinational capitalism stages — key for the reader’s cognitive map.