Jameson's Spiritual Reawakening: Labor Theory in the Time of Wal-Mart

Fredric Jameson's reading of Wal-Mart as a figure of a postcapitalism-to-come is exemplary of the market logic that value is produced outside production in distribution and consumption. Through his dialectics of ambivalence, Jameson produces an analysis that empties the social relations of their class content by making social transformation into an affective and spontaneous action. In this sense, Jameson's celebrated reading of Wal-Mart is indicative of the general reading of global capitalism on the “radical” Left today, which spiritualizes Marx's materialist dialectic by emphasizing form over content and turns theory into crisis management on behalf of the ruling class.