Thoughts on "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?"

 

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher

"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism." 

That's the key sentence that sums up, very broadly, the idea of what "capitalist realism" really is. If, at the past, certain political and economic orders needed to employ vast amounts of propaganda to justify themselves (Liberal Capitalism, too, did so quite until fairly recently, "The American Dream" and the like) nowadays Capitalism requires no such thing. Paradoxically, it employs a certain cynicism and anti-utopian sentiments to maintain its entrenchment. The reason it can do that is because, instead of competing for our sympathy, Capitalism, and in particular Neoliberal Capitalism (characterized by a totalizing market that pervades all spaces, including in the private sphere, or what Fisher himself termed "Business Ontology") simply occupies everything that the eye can see, stretching from one horizon to the other, nothing else remains visible. If during the 20th Century there was a visible alternative in the form of the East Bloc, nowadays none of that remains - the triumph of Capitalism cannot be overstated.

Due to this, a remarkable development has occurred. Even nominally anti-capitalist elements have now resorted, instead, to simply mitigate the negative effects of capitalism by advocating for what amounts de-facto to a mild social-democracy. Thus we can see the common occurrence, that without this context might appear surreal to an outside observer, of full-blown 'communists' supporting Bernie Sanders staunchly. A social-democratic politician that would have been regarded by the ultra-left politics of the 1920s as the worst enemy of communism now became the hero of the communists. Alternatively, we also see leftists that simply refuse to participate in politics and therefore place themselves in a state of total-irrelevancy.

In fact, this limitation to our very perception of reality, the total domination of capitalism over our epistemological horizons mean that apart from a broad statement of intent, there is no true difference anymore between the progressive liberal, social democrat and communist and anarchist - all these divisions are nothing but different brandings in our current condition of what amounts to left-leaning Liberalism. There were also additional effects that proved self-fulfilling. The left lost all real confidence in its ability to change anything that the same ideological arena responsible for countless revolutionary movements during the 20th Century have resorted to a condition of fantasizing about a revolution, but only in the broadest of terms, making it resemble more an idea of a religious end-times one has to wait for, rather than a very complex and momentous time period in which one is an active participant. For this reason, as the far-right labors substantially for the acquiring of more and more power by making connections in powerful institutions, infiltrate them, place their people in office and parliament, form militias, the radical left, now lacking the slightest of imagination, calls for a revolution on twitter (and guillotine memes) that it is entirely unprepared for and cannot possibly win.