Post Class

This past week we spoke about culture as a commodity. While we didn’t say that is exactly what it was, I will argue that culture is used in a capitalist structure as just that – a hard commodity.  I think back to what I know; historically we have traded food, building resources, and services that were facilitative to a community. Now, we sell culture. How did we get to late-capitalism? 

A simple answer to this question would be problematic. The reasons that aspects of culture have been capitalized upon themselves contradict each other – coming from different interests and creating different results. So briefly, it has been modern’s man ability to develop industries to self-sufficient levels of only requiring low-skill, low-paying, foreign labor to maintain production – ultimately steering any new generation’s aspirations towards undeveloped industries, who, at a time of surging media technology have found room to build something online. I have a hard time drawing this to a global phenomenon, so let me speak for the United States when I say this:

We have created lifestyles of consumerism that can be entirely fulfilled by products of large corporations. Corporations whose profits come from the inside of America, go untaxed to foreign banks, and are then spent on foreign grounds. At the same time telecommunications have connected every day people to the rest of the globe, we are facing the implications of these large companies’ ability to do just that decades prior.

Capitalism, as of late, has surpassed politics. We are still domestically governed, yet we bank on an international level. I am not worried that this won’t work itself out, as history says it will, however the current problem here in the U.S. is that people are left without desirable employment opportunity because of the default provided by corporations. This isn’t a recession, depression, or what have you. This is a call for aligning our technology with our interests, in an ethical manor, on a folk level.

Culture, especially at the subversive level, is a commutative expression of humans based on their place in time and their circumstances. As soon as that is capitalized upon, the signification of place, time, and circumstances are negated and it is no longer an aspect of a community but rather a commodity to another.