chapotraphouse

I'd posit it's a sort of weaponized resignation: capitalist propaganda works on multiple fronts, from the engines that insist it's the natural order of things to the ones that exalt its principles as a pure and unblemished good to the ones that recapture doubters who recognize that it's awful, actually. It's that last part, the machine that tries to insist that capitalist systems may be flawed but that they work, that exploitation of the marginalized is in fact a charity being given to them by the benevolent ruling class, that however bad things may look this is actually the best it can possibly be. Recuperating dissent is a part of that, because they can still commodify and market it without endangering themselves, especially when the dissent is limited to just calling for the most tepid of concessions.

I don't think that can be turned around: the capitalists want to extract wealth above all else because that's their source of power, but what power can be extracted by decommodifying capitalist apologetics or bad faith critiques of socialist projects?