Olivier Assouly's 'Le capitalisme esthétique' traces the industrialization of taste

In 'Le capitalisme esthétique', Olivier Assouly argues that taste has become the central driver of consumer capitalism, transforming from an unproductive faculty into the matrix of economic apparatus. Published by Éditions du Cerf, the essay extends Assouly's earlier collective volume 'Goûts à vendre' and builds on the work of André Gorz and Yann Moulier Boutang on contemporary capitalism, which Assouly characterizes as aesthetic rather than merely immaterial or cognitive. The book offers a genealogy of this aesthetic moment, tracing its origins to aristocratic valorization of taste in the Renaissance and classical age, a decisive inflection with Adam Smith, consolidation in the 19th century, and radicalization in the 20th. Assouly warns that as taste is used for infinite market expansion, it risks being depleted through normalization, simplification, and privatization. The work proposes an alternative path, drawing on a substantial corpus to show how taste, as a common, singular, and complex wealth, is under threat. Emmanuel Tibloux contributes to the volume.