Millennial Capitalism: First thoughts on a second coming, Comaroff (2000)

I found this article particularly useful and profound, myself drawing heavily from the following:

"The effects of rampant liberalization; on whether it engenders truly global flows of capital or concentrates to a few major sites; whether it undermines, sustains, or reinvents the sovereignty of nation-states or whether it frees up, curbs, or compartmentalizes the movement of labor; whether the current fixation with democracy, its resurrection in so many places, bespeaks a measure of mass empowerment or an emptying out of its meaning, its reduction to paper. "

I believe that consumerism produces poverty. Capitalism is a system that needs poverty. Capitalism can only transform the marginalized and disempowered by offering foreign aid or national aid, but this is still enforcing money and the principles behind credit on populations who are otherwise not involved. This is forcing a culture in order for others to be a part of the global conversation. In the age of millennial capitalism, technology talks and money listens.

Consumption has become an identity, both individual and social. We are defined by the things we own, and technology has played a large part in that. We are now buying things that we use to communicate. In the same way that I speak to someone, my identity is in myself. Now, in the same way that I email someone, call someone, text someone, post to Facebook, my identity is still behind all those things, my mouth is metaphorically all of those things. I am my technology.

Also mentioned is the the relevance of increasing consumption in shaping reality. Our reality is not in the land, Marx reminds us that the age of capitalism is separated from the land, so then our reality is where? In space? In a virtual headspace? There is land and air and then what? What are we existing in? Work and online shopping?

Social class is very much extent in this age of equality. “Generation, gender, and race as principles of difference, identity, and mobilization” commit to a forum that demands equality, when the mere act of acknowledgment separates.  Modernity is measured through wealth, health, and vitality. So are the poor not modern? Or not a part of modern society? Postmodern is a person made of objects. Post modern is a fantasy. What other societies reached a post-modern society, and what happened to them? How is capitalism the connecting factor in all of these things?

I think anthropologically, modernity reaches a threshold, and beyond that threshold is societal decline. I believe that we as a capitalist society are close to that threshold, and the pull between stasis and change are a result of this level of modernity. Each generation understands the new generation has different, less “moral” if you will. At what point does that actually become true, that it actually is something that all of society agrees with? That the moral of humanity has been compromised for the sake of consumption?

There are these epochal shifts in the constitutive relationship of production and consumption, of labor and capital. No longer producing, only consuming. No longer having money, but having excessive labor.

With more communication technologies, we need more stuff to talk about, but not too in depth of thoughts which defy the simple nature of these technologies, and with more people in the world, we need more jobs, so we need more stuff to make, and we need that stuff to break so that we can keep those jobs.

Percieved salience of the wealth of nations. Perceived noticablity of the wealth of nations. What do we notice about nations that allows us to depict them as having wealth. Are they actually wealthy? No, they are very much in debt.  There is no longer identity in labor. There is no longer identity in labor. There is identity in the things we can buy. Which is brilliant really, because with infinite amounts of buying options, we will work ourselves to death to pay off our debt.

                        Gambling as become the hope of managing our debt, thousands of dollars that we will never be able to afford, because we were never able to afford it. Hope comes in the luck of winning large sums of money. A postmodern society that relies on luck. When did we become so spiritual? We expect immediate return. We expect immediate purchasing power