The personal is systemic

Economists and others have used the term “late capitalism” to signify both a coming socialist revolution and, conversely, the idea of the modern market economy’s excesses as having become permanently entrenched. More recently, critics have invoked it in reference to something closer to “woke capitalism,” to highlight the emerging tendency of brands to embrace social-justice missions in their marketing. Does the expression actually mean anything?

Rachel Connolly is a writer based in London. Connolly says the expression is part of a broader pattern of arts and lifestyle critics gesturing at structural analyses they don’t ultimately deliver. Like other invocations of “systemic” forces, the concept of late capitalism can add an aura of urgency and seriousness to critics’ work, but without illuminating the cultural phenomena—whether movies or moisturizers—they’re supposedly reviewing. Rather than asking that critics become activists, Connolly says, they might embrace a form of culture writing that isn’t pretending to be anything else …

Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Is “late capitalism” something related to claims by corporations that buying their products will save the world?

Rachel Connolly: It’s not a term used by companies. It’s used a lot in a specific type of writing, which is aiming to read as quite academized, maybe to read as a political and wide-ranging cultural criticism. There is a trend for doing cultural criticism about something writers had noticed within their own social spheres.