Capitalism requires perpetually unsatiated desire to maintain civilizational growth

Evidence

I come to desire the pleasure of desire itself. In fact it could not be otherwise. If desire were satiated, if it were not deflected onto a demand for commodities, the fashionable replacement of which knows no limits, then not only would the growth of wealth come to a halt but the whole social nexus of civilization would fall apart. (Buck-Morss 1995:452) … So, as capitalism is central to civilization, desire is central to capitalism and becomes its most resilient and captivating export. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3420

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that satiating desire would collapse the whole social nexus — that unsatisfied desire is not a bug of consumer capitalism but its structural spine — is a genuinely paradigm-level idea worth sitting with.
• SEED: Against-the-grain essay on how ‘desire as destabilizer’ narratives get it backwards: perpetual insatiability is the stabilizing principle, not the disruptive one — could pair with advertising histories.
• XREF: connects to: Capitalism condemns the poor’s present-orientation while itself running on debt-financed gratification — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1269; Knight held that capitalism’s survival paradoxically requires individuals to defy its own incentives — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 95; Capitalism perpetually seeks new privatization frontiers like water and seeds — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 81 (+14 more)