The 80s were the period when capitalist realism was fought for and established, when Margaret Thatcher's doctine that 'there is no alternative'--as succinct a slogan of capitalist realism as you could hope for--became a brutally self-fulfilling prophecy.

It would be dangerous and misleading to imagine that the near past was some prelapsarian state rife with political potentials, so it's as well to remember the role that commodification played in the production of culture throughout the twentieth century.

with unions in abeyance, utilities and railways denationalized

the Soviet system was an 'empire of signs', in which even the Nomenklatura themselves--including Stalin and Molotov--were engaged in interpreting a complex series of social semiotic signs

the Soviet system was an 'empire of signs', in which even the Nomenklatura themselves--including Stalin and Molotov--were engaged in interpreting a complex series of social semiotic signs

the failure of the Father function, the crisis of the paternal superego in late capitalism

Supernanny is a Spinozist insofar as, like Spinoza, she takes it for granted that children are in a state of abjection

A Marxist Supernanny would of course turn away from the troubleshooting of individual families to look at the structural causes which produce the same repeated effect.

Spinoza's move both deprives the grounding of Law in a sadistic act of scission (the cruel cut of castration), at the same time as it denies the ungrounded positing of agency in an act of pure volition

allow the media class to further abnegate its function to educate and lead