The New Prophets of Capital The Jacobin series features short interrogations of politics, economics, and culture from a socialist perspective, as an avenue to radical political practice. The books offer critical analysis and engagement with the history and ideas of the Left in an accessible format.

The series is a collaboration between Verso Books and Jacobin magazine, which is published quarterly in print and online at jacobinmag.com.

Other titles in this series available from Verso Books: Playing the Whore by Melissa Gira Grant Utopia or Bust by Benjamin Kunkel

Strike for America by Micah Uetricht The New Prophets of Capital

by NICOLE ASCHOFF For Ila and Simi First published by Verso 2015 © Nicole Aschoff 2015

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Verso

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Verso is the of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-810-6 (PB) eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-811-3 (US) eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-812-0 (UK) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset in Fournier MT by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh Printed in the US by Maple Press Contents

Introduction: Storytelling

1. Sheryl Sandberg and the Business of Feminism 2. Capital’s Id: Whole Foods, Conscious Capitalism and Sustainability 3. The Oracle of O: Oprah and the Neoliberal Subject 4. The Gates Foundation and the Rise of Philanthrocapitalism 5. Looking Forward

Further Reading Acknowledgements Introduction: Storytelling

We are all storytellers. We embellish, ignore, and cherry-pick moments of our lives to create an emergent story of us. The stories we tell are integral to our lives. They help us find friends and lovers, they demonstrate our values and beliefs, they showcase our competence and trustworthiness, and they teach our children how to navigate the world. Our stories make us appear interesting, compassionate, heroic, and responsible. Most of our stories lack potency, though —they linger close to us and get lost in the cacophony of other people’s stories. But on rare occasions stories grow, often in direct proportion to the power of their teller, to become big, all-encompassing stories that define a people, a social movement, or a moment in history. Stories become powerful and defining because people love stories and society needs stories. Big stories reproduce the social order by providing meaning and mooring. They get us out of bed in the morning and remind us where we are going in life. They identify our friends and our enemies. They stir our hopes and allay our fears. They keep alienation at bay. The big stories we hear and tell today—stories about freedom and terrorists and the American Dream—are as integral to society as the old stories of Anansi, Manas, Beowolf, and Parvati were to the societies that created them. Capitalist society is particularly in need of stories. Our everyday lives are defined by going to school and to work, caring for our kids, listening to gossip, having a laugh, and stressing about this or that. Yet all of these micro- interactions take place within a set of larger structures and relationships whose primary purpose is to make a profit. The vast majority of people go to jobs that were not created to meet human needs but to give the owners of capital a return on their investment. All of us, wage-earners and capitalists alike, are locked into a system designed to perpetually accumulate more and more profit, not to satisfy human needs or provide for the common good. This is a strange way of organizing society. It goes against our nature as social, mutualistic beings. Yet for capitalism to survive and thrive, people must willingly participate in and reproduce its s