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سرمایه داری نوین (مدرن)
Some level of luxurious 'conspicu- ous consumption' is to be found in all except the simplest subsistence-level societies, but only in modern capitalism does it become a major motive force in the economy.
In modern capitalism the compulsion to pursue profits now has a purely structural foundation; that is to say, it is driven by the quest for survival in competitive markets and by the demands of shareholders for dividends.5 Nowhere is this more evident than in the absolute exigency that con- sumers' wants are stimulated without limit, lest falling demand triggers a recession and a down- ward spiral of factory closures, unemployment and ultimately social and political unrest.
Marx's 'fetishism of commodities' is now institutionalized in the culture of modern capitalism, and per- sonal identity in modern capitalism is largely achieved by the display of a distinctive pattern of 'lifestyle' of 'conspicuous consumption' (Slater 1997; Veblen 1994 [1899]).
Today, for example, the interplay between central banks' interest rate decisions and the money markets' reactions to them in their pricing of currencies and every kind of financial asset is argu- ably the most important institutional nexus of modern capitalism.
In modern capitalism, most money consists of electronic impulses that record and transmit quantities of ab- stract value between bank accounts.6
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