Capitalism subordinates social values to economic value via a rogue value paradigm

Evidence

In this chapter, I drew on the work of Massimo de Angelis and David Graeber, who have sought to understand capitalism as a system based on the subordination of social values to economic value. Social life, for these authors, is driven by human cooperation (species being) that is coordinated through a dialectic of value: on the one hand, values shape the social actions of individuals and groups which reproduce society and its individuals; on the other, the actions of individuals and groups help reproduce values, reinforcing or undermining established notions of worth, propriety, rank, station or decorum. … As John McMurtry (1999; 2002) argues, capitalism represents a rogue value paradigm, one which shapes our individual and shared sense of what and who is valuable in such a way as to orient social activity towards the endless reproduction of the system of accumulation, even when that accumulation jeopardizes our own social and biological reproduction. … McMurtry (1999) defines our moment as the “cancer stage” of capitalism, when deregulation, globalization, ecological pollution and the voracious consumption of natural resources threaten to overwhelm society’s and the planet’s capacity to survive this pathological value system. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 561

Categorization

• XREF: Graeber’s value dialectic and McMurtry’s rogue paradigm feed the cultural-financialization synthesis the reader is building toward. — connects to: Profit accumulation and citizen well-being move in opposite directions — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 28; Capitalist need-satisfaction depends on suppressing needs — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 383; Abstracting value from life processes enables new commodified social relations (+10 more)
• SEED: Angle: McMurtry’s ‘cancer stage’ as a diagnosis — why self-endangering accumulation persists culturally despite its destructiveness.

Broader Connections

• Culture is not superstructural but is where financialized capitalism subjugates social values #expands (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 563
• Capitalism and materialism shape a society’s entire worldview and value system #corroborates (0.85)
• Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 612
• Free-market economic views correlate strongly with social dominance orientation #corroborates (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1055
• Capitalism shapes selfhood, ecology, and institutions well beyond economics #expands (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69
• Market-centered accounts of capitalism function as ideology masking production #corroborates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 475