Postmodern wealth is inscribed as a palimpsest over precapitalist exploitation

Evidence

Let us retrieve the concept-metaphor of the text that we left behind a few pages back. Within this narrative replay of my argument in the previous pages it may be pointed out that whereas Lehman Brothers, thanks to computers, “earned about $2 million for… 15 minutes of work,” the entire economic text would not be what it is if it could not write itself as a palimpsest upon another text where a woman in Sri Lanka has to work 2,287 minutes to buy a T-shirt. The “postmodern” and “premodern” are inscribed together. It should also be remarked that Simmel argued nearly a hundred years ago that a developed money-form naturally promotes “the individual”: “if freedom means only obeying one’s own laws, then the distance between property and its owner that is made possible by the money form of returns provides a hitherto unheard-of freedom.” — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1021

Categorization

• CANDY: The 2,287 minutes-to-a-T-shirt contrast and the ‘15 minutes of work’ Lehman Brothers figure make a dense point instantly graspable.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s coresearch on whether ironic identity performance is the luxury of the postmodern subject. — connects to: Capitalist wealth is built on the subjugation of weaker economies — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 337; Wealth and power in bourgeois society come from fraud or force concealed as earnings — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 430; Everyday tiered pricing makes modern society subjectively feudal — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 298

Broader Connections

• Capitalist wealth is built on the subjugation of weaker economies #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 337
• Wealth and power in bourgeois society come from fraud or force concealed as earnings #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 430