Capitalism’s total subsumption paradoxically requires unsublated exteriors to exploit

Evidence

Yet this appearance of total subsumption is at least partially misguided. As Mandel points out, “late capitalism is not a completely organized society at all. It is merely a hybrid and bastardized combination of organization and anarchy… . The quest for profit and the valorization of capital remain the motor of the whole economic process, with all the unresolved contradictions which they inexorably generate.” Even formal subsumption occurs unevenly: capitalism must rely on producing spaces “beyond” capitalism, in outside spaces that may seem “impoverished” because of their abandonment by capital, exteriors that, anarchically, produce new conflicts and possibilities through the essential contradictions of capitalism, such as the inevitable contradiction between use value and exchange value. The formal and real subsumption of “everything” generates, and even requires, people and activities that cannot be subsumed, “abandoned” by capital—a horizon left to rot until capital can “save” (read: exploit) these very spaces once left behind. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 353

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Marx’s formal/real subsumption distinction and use-value/exchange-value contradiction; also echoes the structure of enclosure. — connects to: Capitalism must keep finding uncommodified experience to profit from — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 129; Capitalism structurally requires a permanent underclass of surplus labor — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 70; Capitalism profits by manufacturing inherent dissatisfaction that can be sold to indefinitely — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2250