Really need to stop arguing with folk who believe "late stage" is a thing.

The term "capitalism" first appears in print in 1850 (Blanc). Supposed "late capitalism" was identified by Sombart as starting in 1918.

At this point, supposed capitalism has been "late" for 108 of the 176 years, or three fifths of the time, during which "capitalism" has been a word.

It's easier to imagine a forever late stage of capitalism than to imagine that capitalist society, in the metropole at least, is mostly dead and buried.

For to mourn the demiurge would be to enter into an uncertain territory, of rentier society and whatever might come after, for which canonical 19th-century maps, however indelible, are ill-suited.

So capitalism the revenant, the malevolent Jesus figure that refuses to die, son of the god-idol state, haunts us still, and forever shall haunt those for whom retrofutures are the only imaginable present.

#lumpentheory