The Capitalist Unconscious

The Capitalist Unconscious
Author: Hyun Ok Park
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231540515

The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. As Hyun Ok Park demonstrates, rather than territorial integration and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research in South Korea and China, The Capitalist Unconscious shows how the hegemonic democratic politics of the post-Cold War era (reparation, peace, and human rights) have consigned the rights of migrant laborers—protagonists of transnational Korea—to identity politics, constitutionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Park reveals the riveting capitalist logic of these politics, which underpins legal and policy debates, social activism, and media spectacle. While rethinking the historical trajectory of Cold War industrialism and its subsequent liberal path, this book also probes memories of such key events as the North Korean and Chinese revolutions, which are integral to migrants' reckoning with capitalist allures and communal possibilities. Casting capitalist democracy within an innovative framework of historical repetition, Park elucidates the form and content of the capitalist unconscious at different historical moments and dissolves the modern opposition among socialism, democracy, and dictatorship. The Capitalist Unconscious astutely explores the neoliberal present's past and introduces a compelling approach to the question of history and contemporaneity.

Portfolio Society

Portfolio Society
Author: Ivan Ascher
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-09-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1935408747

A bold extension of Marx's Capital for the twenty-first century: at once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell. As financial markets expand and continue to refashion the world in their own image, the wealth of capitalist societies no longer presents itself, as it did to Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, as a “monstrous collection of commodities.” Instead, it appears as an equally monstrous collection of financial securities, and the critique of political economy must proceed accordingly. But what would it mean to write Capital in the twenty-first century? Are we really to believe that risk, rather than labor, is now regarded as the true fount of economic value? Can it truly be the case that the credit relation—at least in the global North—has replaced the wage relation as the key site of exploitation and political struggle? And finally, if precarity is indeed the name of today's proletarian condition, what possible future does it actually portend, what analysis does it require? Through a series of creative substitutions, in Portfolio Society Ivan Ascherextends Marx's critical project in bold and unexpected ways. Ascher not only explains some of the often mystifying processes of contemporary finance, he also invites us to consider what becomes of capitalism itself in those places where the relation of capital to its own future is now mediated by financial markets. In the end, we may find that much has changed and much has not; relations of domination endure, and mystifications abound, but the devil is in the details, and that is where Ascher directs our attention. At once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell, Portfolio Society succeeds in revealing the potential limits of Capital, while reveling still in its limitless potential.

The Capitalist and the Activist

The Capitalist and the Activist
Author: Tom C. W. Lin
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1523092556

2023 Axiom Business Books Award Silver Medalist (Business Commentary) 2023 Nautilus Book Award Silver Medalist (Social Change & Social Justice) This is the first in-depth examination of the important ongoing fusion of activism, capitalism, and social change masterfully told through a compelling narrative filled with vivid stories and striking studies. Corporations and their executives are at the forefront of some of the most contentious and important social issues of our time. Through pronouncements, policies, boycotts, sponsorships, lobbying, and fundraising, corporations are actively engaged in issues like immigration reform, gun regulation, racial justice, gender equality, and religious freedom. Despite corporate social activism being everywhere these days-witness how quickly companies and progressives united to oppose North Carolina's bathroom bill or support the Black Lives Matter movement-there has been no in-depth examination of the far-reaching consequences of this movement. What first principles should guide businesses' approaches? How should activists engage with businesses in a way that is most beneficial to their causes? What are potential pitfalls and risks associated with corporate social activism for activists, businesses, and society at large? Weaving studies and stories, Temple University professor of law, Tom C. W. Lin offers a road map for how we got here and a compass for where we are going as a nation of capitalists and activists seeking profit and progress.

The Capitalist Unconscious

The Capitalist Unconscious
Author: Samo Tomsic
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2016-02-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 178478110X

A major systematic study of the connection between Marx and Lacan’s work Finalist for the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize Despite a resurgence of interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly in terms of the light it casts on capitalist ideology—as witnessed by the work of Slavoj Žižek—there remain remarkably few systematic accounts of the role of Marx in Lacan’s work. A major, comprehensive study of the connection between their work, The Capitalist Unconscious resituates Marx in the broader context of Lacan’s teaching and insists on the capacity of psychoanalysis to reaffirm dialectical and materialist thought. Lacan’s unorthodox reading of Marx refigured such crucial concepts as alienation, jouissance and the Freudian ‘labour theory of the unconscious’. Tracing these developments, Tomšič maintains that psychoanalysis, structuralism and the critique of political economy participate in the same movement of thought; his book shows how to follow this movement through to some of its most important conclusions.

The Capitalist Comeback

The Capitalist Comeback
Author: Andrew Puzder
Publisher: Center Street
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1478975423

Andy Puzder, the former CEO of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, says that "capitalism" is not a dirty word, and thankfully President Trump understands this; his pro-business policies will bring back economic growth and secure our future. As a successful CEO in the restaurant industry, Andy Puzder uniquely understands how important the profit motive is to our country's ultimate prosperity. Furthermore, as the grandson of immigrants, the son of a car salesman, and someone who worked his way up from earning minimum wage to running an international business, he has a first-hand view of how America's exceptional capitalist spirit can lift everyone to success. In 2016, the American people faced a stark choice between two very different presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton spent most of her adult life involved in politics and promised to uphold and advance the progressive legacy of President Barack Obama who had first won the White House on promises to "spread the wealth around." Donald Trump, on the other hand, came from the business world, was an unapologetic capitalist, used his own personal wealth as inspiration, and promised simply to "Make America Great Again." By choosing Trump over Clinton, the American people put a stop to decades of government expansion under progressive leadership, and they might just have saved our economy by doing so. America was once a land where everyone was encouraged to seek their fortune - the more prosperous our citizens, the more our whole society could in turn prosper. But leftist forces in the United States have been seeking to tarnish the pursuit of prosperity and to paint profit as an evil motivation fit only for greedy plutocrats. Andrew Puzder understands this first-hand after a progressive smear campaign stopped him from joining President Trump's cabinet. As Puzder explains in his new book, The Capitalist Comeback, this was an act of desperation from a left wing facing irrelevance with a pro-business president in the White House. From its roots in the Progressive Era to labor unions to education to entertainment to its political resurgence with avowed socialist candidates such as Bernie Sanders, Puzder traces the development of the anti-profit forces in the United States and shows how, under President Trump, they can be vanquished for good.

The Capitalist Mode of Destruction

The Capitalist Mode of Destruction
Author: Costas Panayotakis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre:
ISBN: 9781526144522

The capitalist mode of destruction investigates capitalism's mounting destructiveness. Tracing today's economic, ecological and democratic crises to capitalism's undemocratic use of the surplus, TMCD also highlights the necessity of a democratic classless society, which would restore control of the surplus to those who produce it.

Capitalist Realism

Capitalist Realism
Author: Mark Fisher
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2022-11-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1803414316

An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system.

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Erik Olin Wright
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1788739558

What is wrong with capitalism, and how can we change it? Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values—equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity—can provide both the basis for a critique of capitalism and help to guide us toward a socialist and democratic society. Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into this concise and tightly argued manifesto: analyzing the varieties of anticapitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and an unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible. Included is an afterword by the author’s close friend and collaborator Michael Burawoy.

The Cowboy Capitalist

The Cowboy Capitalist
Author: Charles van Onselen
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 812
Release: 2018-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813941369

The Jameson Raid was a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa, linking events from the Anglo-Boer War to the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910. For more than a century, the failed revolution has been interpreted through the lens of British imperialism, with responsibility laid at the feet of Cecil Rhodes. Yet, the raid was less a serious attempt to overthrow a Boer government than a wild adventure with transnational roots in American filibustering. In The Cowboy Capitalist, renowned South African historian Charles van Onselen challenges a historiography of over 120 years, locating the raid in American rather than British history and forcing us to rethink the histories of at least three nations. Through a close look at the little-remembered figure of John Hays Hammond, a confidant of both Rhodes and Jameson, he discovers the American Old West on the South African Highveld. This radical reinterpretation challenges the commonly held belief that the Jameson Raid was quintessentially British and, in doing so, drives splinters into our understanding of events as far forward as South Africa’s critical 1948 general election, with which the foundations of Grand Apartheid were laid.