Capitalism functions by redirecting social reproduction toward its own ends

Evidence

So, increasingly, under financialized capitalism, which has seen the bleed of financial logics into the fabric of daily life, we are guided to act in the world on the basis of economic imperatives. Our social cooperation with other people is based increasingly on the mediation of money, in the sense that more and more aspects of our lives become “services” and more and more of our material culture becomes commodities (De Angelis 2007, 172–174). For instance, many university students, brought up in this cultural climate, have little interest in learning for its own sake or even for even for the role of higher education in society, but, rather, see its value as a commodity they are investing in for their own personal enrichment (Giroux 2004, 81–104). That said, as De Angelis (2007, 34–35) takes pains to make clear, the vast majority of relationships and activities that matter to most people are, by and large, based on non-economic values like friendship, family, solidarity, cooperation and equality. In this sense, all points of life are a struggle between, on the one hand, the relentless threat of commodification and, on the other, the semi-autonomous negotiation of values based on the necessities and contingencies of social reproduction. This is not to suggest that there is a set of universally “good” values, which we need only discover and live by, and they are eternally counterposed against “bad” capitalist values. It is to say that capital represents a unilateral value logic that seeks to confine and redirect the negotiation of social values more broadly towards its own ends. Put otherwise, capitalism can and should also be seen as a system that functions to reorient the reproduction of social life towards its own reproduction by coopting, conscripting and reshaping the way values are imagined and practiced, under the banner of commodification, monetization, quantitative measurement and exploitative discipline. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 347

Categorization

• XREF: Directly bridges toward deWaard’s cultural argument — this is exactly the mechanism through which finance colonizes culture, which is the reader’s stated goal. — connects to: Capitalist social failures are actually successes for capital’s own logic — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 381; Autonomy is threatened by capitalism’s mutual implication of life and technology — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 566; Capitalism’s material system is interwoven with cultural reproduction — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 122 (+15 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that capital’s ‘unilateral value logic’ conscripts the whole field of social value negotiation is dense and paradigm-shaping — worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Capitalism reproduces itself by drawing civil and cultural life into conformity with its needs #corroborates (0.92)
• Capitalism’s reproduction requires family, education, and media apparatuses #exemplifies (0.85)
• Capitalism shapes selfhood, ecology, and institutions well beyond economics #expands (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69
• Capitalism subordinates social values to economic value via a rogue value paradigm #expands (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 561