Late Capitalism in Postmodern Literature
Let's sum up an entire economic and political way of living in one sentence: capitalism describes an industrial society in which consumerism and private ownership are the order of the day and competition is the name of the game.
(Yes, there's much more to it, but let's just start there.)
A guy called Ernest Mandel helped popularize the idea that capitalism comes in three stages. The most relevant to us is the third stage, late capitalism, which Madel defines as a time of "generalized universal industrialization" (source) that began around 1945—the same year that World War II ended and postmodernism is often said to have gotten started.
The alternate name for this stage, "advanced capitalism," helps shed some light on what we're talking about: a stage in which industrialization and commodity culture have invaded more and more areas of everyday life. When we use the term "late capitalism," then, we're referring to a world of mass media and consumerism, globalism, and big corporations. Ring any bells? Yep, this is the kind of setup that grew out of the mid 20th century and is still going strong today.
Mandel isn't the only one who's discussed this concept: in his well-known book, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric Jameson helps flesh out the timeframe in which late capitalism developed, pointing to the 1950s as the decade in which wartime shortages were being made up for and new technologies were coming onto the scene. It wasn't just about economics but cultural changes, too, and Jameson emphasizes that, by the 1970s, we'd reached a fully-fledged stage of postmodern late capitalism.
That's right: Jameson draws a connection between late capitalism and postmodernism. For him and many other folks, postmodernism isn't just about experimental art and fiction—it's a major symptom of late capitalism. In fact, Jameson argues that any opinion on postmodernism is also a "political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today".
So what does this mean in practice? How do the two connect?
Take fragmentation: in Jameson's view, fragmentation is a sign that we've become lost in a world of globalization and mass communication where there's no longer an obvious "center" and space isn't easily mapped. It's no surprise that paranoia rears its head, too, this being a world in which technology is everywhere and the media is king. And how about late capitalism's reliance on the recycling of images and commodities? Originality and authenticity are no longer seen as possible in a postmodern age—all we can do is work with the stuff that already exists.
For Jameson, though, postmodernism isn't about creativity; rather, it's a sign of a hollow world in which any sense of history has been lost and replaced with just a stream of images.
Way to harsh our mellow, Fred.
Chew on This
When late capitalism seems as though it's all-powerful and controls every area of life, it can get seriously frustrating. Just check out Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996), in which a bunch of guys decide that they're mad as you know what and aren't gonna take it anymore. Their chosen mode of rebellion? An underground fighting ring that grows into a full-blown anarchist mission.
Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) is a great illustration of lots of postmodern concepts, and late capitalism is no exception. In this novel, we find that people may be different in loads of ways, but there's one thing they have in common: they're driven by greed. Capitalism is all about about money, money, money, and the characters in this novel put aside their moral values as they pursue the almighty dollar.