All that capitalism, or rather the liberal society that allows capitalism to flourish, does, is to give mimetic phenomena a freer rein and to direct them into economic and technological channels… capitalism is capable of doing away with the restraints that archaic societies placed upon mimetic rivalry.
We have the impression that if it were possible some cultures would dispense with individual choice entirely and so entirely eliminate the possibility of mimetic rivalry. In contemporary society, the exact opposite increasingly takes place. No more taboos forbid one person to take what is reserved for another, and no more initiation rites prepare individuals in common, for the necessary trials of life… Instead, modern education thinks it is able to resolve every problem by glorifying the natural spontaneity of desire, which is a purely mythological notion.
The value of an object grows in proportion to the resistance met with in acquiring it… Even if the model has no particular prestige at the outset… the very rivalry will be quite enough to bring that prestige into being…
The non-legal prohibition brought about through rivalry has the greatest capacity to wound and traumatize. This structure of rivalry is not a static configuration of elements. Instead the elements of the system react upon one another; the prestige of the model, the resistance of he puts up, the value of the object, and the strength of the desire it arouses all reinforce each other, setting up a process of positive feedback…
Since the model obstinately bars access to it, the possession of this object make. All the difference between the self-sufficiency of the model. And the imitators lack of sufficiency, model fullness of being and the imitator’s nothingness.
The process of transfiguration does not correspond to anything real, And get it transformed the object of something that appears super-abundantly real. Thus it could be described as metaphysical in character.