Walmart profits by selling simulations of the community order it destroyed

Evidence

Walmart’s cultural politics here are revealing. It profits by offering (ostensibly for “free”) a set of services emulating or simulating the forms of community, family and morality, which, while they may never have existed (at least in such an idealized form), relied on a post-war socio-economic order that Walmart, in various ways, helped eradicate. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 300

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is a genuinely dense, paradoxical thesis: the retailer commodities ersatz versions of the social forms it itself demolished. Dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: Situates Walmart as financialized capital — direct precursor to deWaard’s argument about finance colonizing everyday life; also connects to the ADDENDUM article on sacrifice/community stability. — connects to: Walmart sells consumers the spectacle of security amid manufactured chaos — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 251; Revealing corporate evils fails because Walmart embodies consumers’ securitized subjectivity — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 310; Walmart sells protection from the precariousness it generates — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 303 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: How exactly does the post-war order Walmart helped eradicate relate to the financialization shift? Worth chasing the mechanism.

Broader Connections

• Revealing corporate evils fails because Walmart embodies consumers’ securitized subjectivity #complicates (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 310
• Walmart’s power goes unchallenged partly because it produces its own subjects #complicates (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 304
• Walmart sells protection from the precariousness it generates #corroborates (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 303