Global capitalism depends on depicting abject others to justify its operation

Evidence

But more importantly, the “benign opacity” of the global economic system, which seems to lie beyond the functioning and therefore the power of the state, is a system whose very operation relies upon the continual depiction of the abject limits of the civilized social body, the barbarous and uncivilized, which both justify and motivate the operation of capital. The ideology of global capitalism reveals itself as an almost seamless extension of the rhetoric of empire. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3422

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ‘benign opacity’ idea with James C. Scott’s ‘Seeing Like a State’ and also with the anthropology of ‘abjection’ in Kristeva; the empire-as-understructure claim resonates with the same thread as the ADAPTATION of the civilizing mission. — connects to: The capitalist world’s essence is abomination yet its lying appearance stands in for truth. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 142; Capitalist power infected and colonized state, deliberative, and propaganda powers. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 839; Capitalism’s legitimacy now rests on circulating images of appearance — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 136