Even In The Most Market-obsessed

Traditional Hedonism...was Based On The Direct Experience Of Pleasure: Wine, Women And Song; Sex, Drugs And Rock 'n' Roll; Or Whatever The Local Variant. The Problem, From A Capitalist Perspective, Is That There Are Inherent Limits To All This. People Become Sated, Bored...modern Self-illusory Hedonism Solves This Dilemma Because Here, What One Is Really Consuming Are Fantasies And Day-dreams About What Having A Certain Product Would Be Like.

The Difference Between Capitalism And Feudalism Is That Under Capitalism, They Make Money Directly Through Wages, Manufacturing, And Commerce And Under Feudalism, It's Directly Through Juro-political Means.

But In The Years Since The Neoliberal Project Really Has Been Stripped Down To What Was Always Its Essence: Not An Economic Project At All, But A Political Project, Designed To Devastate The Imagination, And Willing - With It's Cumbersome Securitization And Insane Military Projects - To Destroy The Capitalist Order Itself If That's What It Took To Make It Seem Inevitable.

The Working Poor Are The People Suffering Out Subprime Mortgages And Fatal Loans And More And More Of Our Money - You Know, Capitalism Is Operated By Extracting Money, Not So Much Directly Being Paid.

Consensus Isn't Just About Agreement. It's About Changing Things Around: You Get A Proposal, You Work Something Out, People Foresee Problems, You Do Creative Synthesis. At The End Of It, You Come Up With Something That Everyone Thinks Is Okay. Most People Like It, And Nobody Hates It.