The 1930s offered a visibly stark class antagonism that postindustrial capitalism obscures
Evidence
Such a world had more in common with the life forms of earlier centuries than it does with our own. To say that it was simpler is by no means to claim that it was easier as well: on the contrary! It was a world in which social conflict was sharpened and more clearly visible, a world which projected a tangible model of the antagonism of the various classes toward each other, both within the individual nation-states and on the international scene as well—a model as stark as the Popular Front or the Spanish Civil War, where people were called on to take sides and to die, which are, after all, always the most difficult things. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 24
Categorization
- XREF: The claim that ‘simpler’ societies of the 1930s were more sharply conflicted, not easier, sets up Jameson’s later argument about how postmodern culture’s apparent ease hides deeper reification — a thread connecting to his Postmodernism book. — connects to: Postindustrial society narratives ideologically mask continuing class struggle. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 39; Postindustrial capitalism severs the continuity with the past that genetic criticism relied on — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 24; Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Postindustrial society narratives ideologically mask continuing class struggle.
#corroborates(0.95) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 39 - Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class
#corroborates(0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267 - Post-cold-war racism defeated Marxian class-based explanations
#complicates(0.75) - The twenties-thirties antithesis gets reified into image and symbolically reinvents the bourgeoisie
#complicates(0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 627 - Postindustrial capitalism severs the continuity with the past that genetic criticism relied on
#complicates(0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 24 - Modernism emerged from a specific industrial-capitalist conjuncture that postwar capitalism destroyed
#exemplifies(0.72) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 562 - The early 1930s radicalized governments and isolated free-market economists.
#corroborates(0.72) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 41