The corporation displaced individualism while the market persisted unchanged

Evidence

Being immortal, the corporation also stills those fears of death and dying aroused as we have seen, by individual consumption. But this is now a relatively insignificant feature of the process whereby The Gold Standard rises to the occasion and produces a concept of the collective itself and of collective agency. In some philosophical or theoretical sense, of course, the problem has not been solved but compounded, for we now find ourselves in the presence of two such concepts — in other words, of the contradiction between the corporation and our old friend the market, which has persisted in life throughout this other, seemingly momentous, change. On one level of history, something has happened: the corporation and the trust have consigned individualism (and its forms and categories) to the ash can of history. On the other level, nothing has changed and the market continues as before, as far as the eye can reach. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 483

Categorization

• XREF: This two-level reading (corporate restructuration vs. enduring market) parallels the book’s core claim that postmodernism is a cultural dominant layered within a continuing capitalism — connects to the reader’s stated ‘style is the economy’s way of appearing’ framing. — connects to: Managerial displacement of owners was once seen as progressive insulation from profit pressures — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 130
• QUESTION: The question ‘which comes first — belief generating the market, or the market producing the concept of belief?’ is the crux I’d want to chase when testing whether the cultural-dominant thesis is falsifiable.