property values¶

Honestly a much better heuristic of class than my glib little "property values" jab.

Credit is tightly modulated and its flow is directed by the "nervous system" of capitalism. Capital is jealously guarded and doled out only to its worthiest scions. https://t.co/oBmhiua6RH Credit has been around for eons, and the development of its mechanics can be traced through various stages of capitalist construction. Who can access it, how freely it moves, what can be done with it, etc. It is, at its core, the crystal composite of a gestalt political economy. It's dose-dependent, meaning individuals and cohorts can be assessed on their "creditworthiness" on a continuum and be granted smaller or larger amounts of credit -- and therefore given more or less room to maneuver within the capitalist system. The construction of a labor aristocracy is very much an intentional product of widening access to greater chunks of that accumulated capital.

The historical trend of small business loans -> mortgages -> consumer credit is a trend of "trickle-down credit." The more credit you are allowed to take on at once, the more of that collective pile of capital you are being allowed to wield. If capital can be considered a form of motion, credit might be called the "instantaneous velocity" of capital -- its movement at a given moment. We can directly track this flow of apportioned nuggets of capital through the various social cohorts deemed "creditworthy" by the financial system writ large, informed by its assessment of risk. Capital's chosen "moments," selected as being able to accelerate its flow. And how is that assessed? By proximity to the progenitors of bourgeois hegemony. The more distinct from that core -- the less European, less white, less male, less Christian, less straight, etc. -- the less trustworthy. Even with explicit delineation of these social cohorts proclaimed no longer legal, their codification is sacrosanct in the eyes of capital carried forward through the lineage of credit. Who is creditworthy? Those who have held credit. And who has held credit? Credit is where the rubber meets the road, the unity of capital and culture. It is one of several permeable membranes through which social heuristics are passaged into the realm of the material. As far as the semi-joking heuristic of "labor aristocracy = concerned with property values," that's simply an expression of how members of that class -- the little scions of capital -- look to expand their piece of the inheritance.