“X is a†is a way of expressing the metaphor, “X†the unknown is “a†the known. ‘X is a’ is the way we say ‘X’ can be understood by recognizing that the unknown reality is much like ‘a’ the known reality. Metaphor—a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
‘Logic’ is a word with more than one meaning and can be confusing. Most people seem to use the word to mean the domain of knowledge connected with syllogism and fallacies but ‘logic’ can also mean the principles of any domain of knowledge. To be clearer in some uses one might use the metaphor ‘logic is grammar’.
When I say ‘Wal-Mart is the logic of capitalism’. I mean ‘Wal-Mart is the grammar of capitalism’. Also I mean that Wal-Mart has become what the principles of capitalism could be expected to produce if the principles of capitalism are extended to their logical conclusions.
I suspect that Globalism is the grammar of capitalism. Consumerism is the grammar of capitalism.
Globalism need not in any way be linked to capitalist culture, it just so happens that it is in our world…
i.e. it is perfectly possible that had the communists won the cold war (which could have happened had they not been so poor) that we’d see a similar globalisation, a similar internationalism, a similar homogenising/heterogenising process taking place.
Or, for that matter, had we replaced the old monarchies with something other than (for the most part) capitalist democracies. Instead of rebounding so far we could have set up some sort of elitist corpocracy, a series of fascist states with free markets or any number of other possibilities.
As it has turned out Wal Mart is the grammar of capitalism. But it isn’t so necessarily…
Consumerism is a culture, rather than a political or economic ‘system’…
Could globalism exist in a socialistic system? I doubt it.
You do not think that Wal-Mart is the logic of capitalism? It seems to me that if one extends the principles of capitalism they will culminate in a Wal-Mart.
Consumerism is a culture is correct. The culture of consumerism is the logic of capitalism.
However, much like Communism, philosophical Capitalism is Utopian, and requires morals and ethical practices to work. We hide behind Government regulations as a way to downplay the inherent nature of moral integrity in Capitalism, or we just don’t care enough not to be raped. Either way our actualization of Capitalism is a failed attempt at the political theory of Adam Smith.
It might be a different kind of globalism, but ultimately it would have resulted in the same tension between homogeneity and heregeneity that we see being played out in the cultural landscapes of our countries…
That depends on which version of capitalism you talk about. Tertiary stage capitalism, or late capitalism as Jameson described it, isn’t the singular, hierarchical beat that Marx tried to slay, it’s more a plural set of constant subversions…
You’ve only learnt the phrase ‘logic of capitalism’ quite recently, I reckon…
Or, more accurately, it isn’t. It’s the result of a series of movements in philosophy and the collapse of the old Absolute Monarchies and the political/economic structure that came with that. I’d prefer to say that it was invented (somewhat ironically) by a group of french scholars known as the physiocrats. But that isn’t true.
Capitalism developed hand in hand with liberal democracy (i.e. one person one vote) and I think that it’s very hard to extricate one from t’other.
Or you could just say Wal-Mart is among the consequences of modern American capitalism.
There’s something to that; but I’d put much more stock into globalization being a consequence of the information age - internet, cell phones, etc. Given the world’s most powerful economic nations are capitalistic, it’s more appropriate to see the spread of capitalism as a consequence of globalization, not the other way around.
Sure. And law is the ‘grammar’ of society. I’m not sure why you find this important to point out.
i could not agree more, we have corporate mixed markets with heavy governmental involvement… capitalistic… yes, but it is not capitalism in any meaningful way.
i believe the more proper term is corporatocracy. and walmart is certainly that - a faceless entity, and not a person who acts in good faith or with morality.
a corporation is an amoral agent with, as i think the quote goes, “no soul to save, and no body to incarcerate.”
This is kind of what I was driving at, that globalisation is more about the proliferation of communications technology and, simply, an increase in the amount and rate of information available.
“The global and dominant effect of television, the telephone, the fax machine, satellites, the accelerated circulation of images, discourse, etc., is that the here-and-now becomes uncertain, without guarantee: anchoredness, rootedness, the at-home are radically contested.” (Derrida)
This 'contest’ing is easy to associate with capitalism but it could have occured under any number of other potential circumstances.
Indeed, SIATD. And, to tie back to the OP, we could say a massive globalized capitalisitic venture such as Wal-Mart is merely the evolution of the single trading post, the first Mom & Pop store, subsequent to the advance of said communications - the ‘shrinking Earth’, so to speak.