Capitalist commodification of cultural difference has roots in Marx’s analysis

Evidence

Lastly, there is the charge that trying to rethink the variegations of culture and radical cosmopolitanism can be all too quickly assimilated by the desire to exploit exotica and difference commercially. These critiques often invoke an unspecified “progressive” political alternative (see Hutnyk, 1997, 2000). The idea that corporate interests assimilate cosmopolitan impulses is not new. Marx commented in 1848 that production and consumption under capitalism would take on a “cosmopolitan character” (Marx and Engels, 1998:39). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3030

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Marxist categories still explain contemporary multinational and media capitalism — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 48