Zombie Capitalism

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from a lecture on Violent Geographies, focusing on capitalism as represented by zombies and vampires.

Zombies and vampires

Metaphors for capitalism

Capitalist realism

A lived ideological framework; a pervasive atmosphere where it's hard to imagine a world without capitalism.

Neoliberalism

The value system and logic of contemporary capitalism. 20^th C. capitalism promised the good life for everybody. But capitalism no longer makes those promises. It just shambles on like a zombie.

Reluctant acceptance

The acceptance that there is no alternative to capitalism.

The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism

Term describing how neoliberalism has emerged from collapse more powerful than before.

Left arm of the ambidextrous neoliberal state

Spending legacy from past social struggles, primarily the labor movement.

Right arm of the ambidextrous neoliberal state

Instinct to eradicate the left arm through austerity, privatization, deregulation etc.

Capital as monster

Capital, money are not naturally occurring, but have their own vitality.
•             Like Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together

•             Capital, money are not naturally occurring, but have their own vitality

Legal status of capital in the UK (1844 – 1914)

The company became the legal subjectivity of capital with many rights, but almost no responsibilities.

•             No longer a collection of human beings

•             A new kind of ‘person’ with its own property and its own mind: interests, will

•             All separate from the people working there

Limited Partnership Act 1907

Formalized the status of the private company as the legal form of capital.

•             Many rights but almost no responsibilities

•             Rarely punished

•             Generally, responsibility for crimes falls on chosen individuals

•             Eg 2008 financial crisis: no corporations punished

Marx and Engel's Communist Manifesto

Capitalism is a revolutionizing force of creative destruction.
•             Capitalism is a revolutionizing force of creative destruction

•             Everlasting uncertainty and agitation

•             “All that is solid melts into air.”

Capital as Vampire

Capital is dead labor that sucks life out of living labor.

•             Capital is dead labour; the outcome of past work

•             Sucks life out of living labour

•             Inherent tendency to work labour 24 hours a day

Zombie Capitalism

Wealth becomes a monster that dominates labor.

•             Wealth comes from human labour

•             Wealth becomes a monster that dominates labour

•             Exploitation = value drained off workers and accumulated in capital

•             Alienation = separation from world of wealth, workers working for the machine

Exploitation

Value drained off workers and accumulated in capital.

Alienation

Separation from world of wealth, workers working for the machine.

Concrete labor

Living activity; specific, unique.

Abstract labor

Labor embodied in commodities; dead, fixed.

Capitalist realism

is the typically reluctant acceptance that there is no alternative to capitalism.

Capitalism as cannibalism

•             Human labour seen as homogenous, frozen in commodities; congealed human labour

•             The living hands, muscles and brains of the wage labour become undifferentiated ingredients for the feast of the capitalist

•             The target of Marx’s satire is bourgeois consumers – constantly consuming other people

•             He likens capitalist labour relations to prostitution