David Kuebrich – The Hidden Ideology of Capitalist Production in ‘Bartleby’ (1996)

It’s Melville Monday!

Published in The New England Quarterly, 69.3 (September 1996).

1:01 Class Conflict in Melville’s New York
6:14 ‘Bartleby’ in Contest
15:12 Melville's ‘Doctrine of Assumption’
19:10 Legitimating CapitalIst Production
35:52 Bartleby's Resistance and the Lawyer’s Obligation

Featuring:

Melville
James Gordon Bennett
Horace Greeley
Albert Brisbane
John Jacob Astor
Merton Sealts
Allan Melville
Emerson
Alexander H. H. Stuart
Sean Wilentz
Cornelius Blatchley
Daniel Raymond
Langdon Byllesby
William Maclure
William Heighton
Thomas Skidmore
Calvin
Jonathan Edwards
Joseph Priestley
Henry A. Murray

[ZackLivestone]

Very interesting, thanks for reading!

[spaghettiking]

This sounds remarkably similar to today.

[mikesaler]

The U.S. has become a culture by and for corporate power. Canada, Europe and Scandinavia have worked to balance the wants and needs of corporations/the wealthy, with those of the ordinary citizen. They are wise enough to recognize the inherent power differences. And use social forces like laws and values to protect their people and their social fabric from the horrors of unbridled capitalism.