Capitalism takes toll on formerly shocking rapper. (Commentary).

THE new album from the "controversial rapper" Eminem fell to second place on Billboard's chart last week, pushed from its top spot by the release from Nelly, another rapper. Nelly's album is called "Nellyville." Eminem's is called "The Eminem Show." These rappers -- they're so modest.

And not nearly so controversial as they used to be. Eminem may be happy with his sales -- the new CD went platinum almost immediately, then topped the charts for five weeks -- but the critical reaction must have struck him as ominous.

"Eminem sticks to the tried and true," wrote L.A. Weekly.

"It has become a shtick," said The New York Times.

In fact, the nicest recent comment came from Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah who's gone ontheHome Shopping Network to hawk recordings of his own religious songs. "I don't like his message," Hatch said. "But there's a genius to it."

A shtick. Inoffensive. Admired by Orrin Hatch. This rapper is doomed.

From at least the time of Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 19th century, it's been feared that democratic capitalism would subvert itself. With its unrivaled productivity, its marvelous exfoliation of material temptations, the free market might undermine the virtues of prudence, self-restraint, and hard work upon which the system depends.

By the logic of Tocqueville the horribleness and dreadfulness of Eminem and his comrades should, over time, ruin capitalism.

In practice the process works the other way around. Capitalism is ruining Eminem.

Communism disposed of its rebels with a knock on the door in the dead of night, a long stay in the Gulag or a quicker, more final fate. Capitalism is subtler, though just as pitiless. Capitalism subverts the subversives.

This is what happened to Elvis, whose records were once burned in Bible Belt bonfires. Within a decade he had made millions, moved to Beverly Hills, and volunteered to work as a mole for the FBI. More recently, the rapper Ice-T -- famed in the early '90s for "Cop Killer," his song about the pleasures of shooting police -- has found steady work as an actor on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." He plays a cop.

Capitalism also works its magic on a scale far beyond the individual. It seduces whole movements, pacifies entire bodies of revolutionary thought. Socialism was once a menace. Subdued by capitalism, it became the welfare state.

Against this inexorable process of appeasement, Eminem struggles helplessly. He tries to shock our bourgeois sensitivities. His new video shows Vice President Dick Cheney being electrocuted by a pacemaker.

But he's a rich man now, a successful businessman, and the shock's turned to shtick. The story of his life has become a major motion picture, to be released this fall, and he's approved a cartoon series based on Slim Shady, a character in his songs. His Web site publicizes Eminem contests to win show tickets. There are T-shirts.

Happily enough, Eminem's swift slide into harmlessness coincides with the news that Whoopi Goldberg has quit the coveted center cube on "Hollywood Squares." After his movie tanks this fall, and before he signs up for an old-timer's tour next year, the middle square will be waiting for Eminem.

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.