Capital Parading as Reality

“Capitalist Realism – Is There No Alternative?” by Mark Fisher, 2019

This is another thin book from Zero Books in their non-academic public intellectual series.  Thinness is a virtue, let me tell you.  Fisher’s supposed main point here is to challenge the philosophic designation of post-modernism as the present functioning of culture under capital and replace it with the notion of ‘capitalist realism.’  This is much like authors who challenge the ‘anthropocene’ designation for the present environmental period and want to call it the ‘capitalocene.’  Fisher argues that Fredric Jameson’s idea of ‘post-modernism’ no longer makes sense because the situation has gotten much worse since the 1980s.  ‘Modernity’ as formally described no longer exists, so it is not even a reference point. 

     

Fisher is inspired (of course) by Jameson, Slavoj Zizek, David Harvey and the French neo-Marxists – Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, Badiou, Lacan, Lyotard and Baudrillard.  Marx and Franz Kafka provide backup.  Movies, among them “Children of Men,” “Wall-E,” “Office Space” and “The Parallax View” make appearances illustrating points the author is trying to make.  ‘The Big Other” makes repeated visits too, which moves me to caution writers against this pompous vagueness.  NAME the ‘big other’ for fuck’s sake.  It is not true that HE does not have a name – especially for Marxists.

Fisher argues that capital has moved from a discipline society to a soft control society – control through culture.  He paints the familiar picture of the ‘conquest of cool’ – how cultural rebellion has been commodified in such a way that now actual rebellion (in the global north I would assume...) is unthinkable. The entertainment-industrial complex has created a hedonist environment where constant entertainment and food - music, videos, drink, pictures, television, movies, games, drugs - saturate the population, especially youth. This cultural soup undermines any stern ‘grand narrative’ opposing capital, as belief in anything but enjoyment and happiness is at zero.  Boredom is the enemy!  Our emotions are all that matter!  Thinking is stupid!  Even many ritual protests against aspects of capital are inert.  Fisher: “Protests have formed a kind of carnivalesque background noise to capitalist realism.”  Instead of class struggle we have charity.  I.E. there is no future beyond the infantile present.

Fisher argues that there is nothing ‘real’ about capitalist realism – ‘reality’ under capitalism is an ideological concept that pretends to be natural.  Pragmatists and 'realists' hide or are unaware of their own ideological bias as they pompously declare their own grown-up-ness. The whole 'adults in the room' trope is part of this.  Fisher discusses the issue of increasing mental health problems, which show that falsity and stress have actual consequences and reflect an underlying reality.  He also looks at the increase in bureaucratism under lax ‘horizontal’ post-Fordist capital, which gives the lie to its pretensions of increasing freedom.  Much of this is self-imposed by workers upon themselves. He calls this rise in capitalist bureaucratism “market Stalinism,” with the call center a reference point. 
 

Eat and Text, Eat and Drink, Eat and Facebook

Fisher, in his remarks about labor, only references public workers – in academics, in the civil service, in the British National Health Service.  He has nothing about labor in the private sector and nothing about the global south.  The various chapters in the book seem not to be a tight argument, but instead a looser series of observations.  For instance, he remarks that control societies are based on debt, not on punitive ‘enclosure.’  But he has nothing to say about the massive role of debt, only about illusions.  Nor is he aware that “Fordism” is very much alive in much of the world, even in Europe and the U.S.  Nor is the use of the odd phrase 'market Stalinism' correct, as there were very little real markets under Stalin.  He's trying to hit anti-totalitarian readers with this.  Fisher is not part of any organization except perhaps the British Labour Party.  Ultimately the book comes off overwhelmed, as it seems to portray ‘The Matrix’ as a successful strategy. Marxists are those who chose 'the red pill' and Fisher has done his best to reveal what is behind appearances.  But his suggestions on how to change the situation seem slight. 

The book contains some interesting insights and neo-Marxist references, worth a look to update your own ideas.  Fisher is dead set against the heroic nostalgia of 1870, 1917, 1934, 1949 or 1968 and that makes sense.  The present and future is the thing.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

June 14, 2019