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The living dead of capitalism

In the usual accounts of industrialism's resistless march, what is ignored is the coercive dissolution of whole ways of life that were once promoted as embodiments of virtue, and the associated psychic and spiritual pain resulting from the loss of coherence and purpose in one's life. Even those appointed by capitalism to privileged positions are vulnerable to industrial society's lurches from one mode of being to the next. And, when the young rebel against yesterday's privilege in the name of a new moral order that is itself sanctioned by `progress', they, more often than not, fail to anticipate that their values, too, will one day be deemed obsolete. Here, a tale of this hidden injury is told through memories of a generation which came of age in the 1950s with a determined zeal to do away with antique prejudices and which committed itself to values of public service that have now been discarded. Will today's children of the market, who embrace the privileging of conspicuous consumption and conscienceless hedonism, also come to be mocked as yesterday's men and women?

Key Words: class • consumerism • industrialism • labour • postwar England • market values

Race & Class, Vol. 49, No. 3, 19-32 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0306396807085899


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