Disintegrator **EXOCAPITALISM** (w. Charles Mudede & Becoming Press)
Jul 31, 2025
Charles Mudede, author, critic, and filmmaker known for sharp cultural commentary, riffs through Marx, Baudrillard, and Postone with humor and speed. He maps how capitalism shapes minds, explores labor detaching from capital, and likens modern life to theme parks and carnivals. The conversation probes politics without final exits, rapid systemic change, and why imagining post-capital life is harder than we think.
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Confession Is The First Step To Useful Critique
- Critics must admit they are formed by capitalism rather than imagine an outside escape.
- Charles Mudede recounts growing up in Zimbabwe, realizing imported fruit and goods showed he was always implicated in global capitalism.
There Is No Purely Real Economy Any More
- Baudrillard's mirror of production dissolves the real/fictional split between finance and goods.
- Mudede praises Baudrillard for showing pickup trucks and stock markets are equally 'fantastic' forms of capitalist fictions.
Shift From Labor To Capital's Structural Form
- Moishe Postone rewrites Marx by rejecting labor as history's subject and locating the problem in capital's form.
- Mudede connects this to Japanese Kōza critiques that remove wages from core analysis of rent and profit claims.
