Perception, not production, is the core generator of value in late capitalism
Evidence
It would be a mistake to regard this market Stalinism as some deviation from the ‘true spirit’ of capitalism. On the contrary, it would be better to say that an essential dimension of Stalinism was inhibited by its association with a social project like socialism and can only emerge in a late capitalist culture in which images acquire an autonomous force. The way value is generated on the stock exchange depends of course less on what a company ‘really does’, and more on perceptions of, and beliefs about, its (future) performance. In capitalism, that is to say, all that is solid melts into PR, and late capitalism is defined at least as much by this ubiquitous tendency towards PR-production as it is by the imposition of market mechanisms. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 94
Categorization
- DEFINE: Frames ‘market Stalinism’ as a structural dimension of capitalism proper, not as a Soviet anomaly — an essential redefinition of how value functions.
- FICTION: A worldbuilding/plot seed: a society where speculators gamble on the perception of companies’ futures, so that fabricated news about a company doesn’t just affect its stock — it literally creates and destroys value.
- XREF: connects to: Climate catastrophe demands constructing a collective subject that does not yet exist — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 139; The spirit of capitalism shifts from risk-taking to uncertainty-endorsing speculation. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 79; Commodity form has totally colonized social perception — Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 55 (+2 more)
Related
Broader Connections
- The spirit of capitalism shifts from risk-taking to uncertainty-endorsing speculation.
#qualifies(0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 79