In late capitalism the economic base generates its cultural superstructures directly

Evidence

That means that the expression late capitalism carries the other, cultural half of my title within it as well; not only is it something like a literal translation of the other expression, Postmodernism, its temporal index seems already to direct attention to changes in the quotidian and on the cultural level as such. To say that my two terms, the cultural and the economic, thereby collapse back into one another and say the same thing, in an eclipse of the distinction between base and superstructure that has itself often struck people as significantly characteristic of Postmodernism in the first place, is also to suggest that the base, in the third stage of capitalism, generates its superstructures with a new kind of dynamic. And this may also be what (rightly) worries the unconverted about the term; it seems to obligate you in advance to talk about cultural phenomena at least in business terms if not in those of political economy. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 32

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the eclipse of base/superstructure distinction as itself characteristic of postmodernism — the causal mechanism at the heart of the book.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that base and superstructure collapse in the third stage of capitalism — and that this collapse is itself a postmodern symptom — is dense enough to merit sitting with.
• QUESTION: If base and superstructure collapse into each other, how does one still assert — as this passage does — that the base ‘generates’ the superstructure with a new dynamic? The causal relation seems to presuppose the very distinction it declares eclipsed. A claim worth interrogating for falsifiability.
• XREF: connects to: Capital’s dominance is the real message of every cultural product; Late-capitalist crises are displaced from economy onto culture as legitimation gaps — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 403; Cultural forms are causally rooted in the daily circulation of capital. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1888 (+10 more)