Postmodern political change flows from markets rather than mass struggles

Evidence

The culture of the postmodern is the inverse. Although great political changes have swept over the world in the past quarter century, these have only rarely been the hard-fought outcome of mass political struggles. Liberal democracy has spread by force of economic example, or pressure — Marx’s ‘artillery of commodities’ — not by moral upheaval or social mobilization; and as it has done so, its substance has tended to dwindle, both in its homelands and its new territories, as falling rates of voter participation and mounting popular apathy set in. The Zeitgeist is not stirred: it is the hour of democratic fatalism. How could it be otherwise, when social inequality increases pari passu with political legality, and civic impotence hand in hand with novel suffrage? What moves is only the market — but this at ever-accelerating speed, churning habits, styles, communities, populations in its wake. No predestined enlightenment lies at the end of this journey. A plebeian beginning lacks automatic connexion with a philosophical ending. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 273

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘democratic fatalism’ and apathy diagnosis parallels the ‘time of reduced expectations’ and history-exhaustion themes central to the Jameson/postmodernism debate. — connects to: The modern-to-postmodern shift correlates with capitalism’s transformation from monopoly to multinational — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 374; Postmodern architecture rejected utopian planning in favor of market-driven spontaneity — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 59; Market-centered accounts of capitalism function as ideology masking production — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 475 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Market discourse displaces the Marxian model by shifting from production to circulation #expands (0.85)
• The economic and cultural shifts of 1973 crystallized postmodernism as a new landscape #corroborates (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 29
• The modern-to-postmodern shift correlates with capitalism’s transformation from monopoly to multinational #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 374
• Market-centered accounts of capitalism function as ideology masking production #contradicts (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 475
• Postmodern spatial disruption mirrors flexible accumulation’s global marketplace. #expands (0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1906
• Postmodern architecture rejected utopian planning in favor of market-driven spontaneity #exemplifies (0.78) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 59