End of the World is easier to imagine than the end of Capitalism

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism

Capitalist realism can be seen as a belief: that there’s no alternative to capitalism, that, as Fredric Jameson put it, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Other systems might be preferable to capitalism, but capitalism is the only one that is realistic

 Fundamentally, it’s a pathology of the left, nowhere better exemplified than in the case of New Labour. Ultimately, what capitalist realism amounts to is the elimination of left wing politics and the naturalisation of neoliberalism.

 Slavoj Zizek’s latest book, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, begins with the Persian concept of war nam nihadan: “to murder someone, bury his body then grow flowers over the body to conceal it.” Zizek argues that, in relation to 2011’s efflorescence of militancy (Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, the English riots etc) dominant ideology achieved a war nam nihadan. “The media killed the radical emancipatory dimension of the events . . . and then threw flowers over the buried corpse.”

 it could be argued that the austerity measures that have been implemented have constituted an intensification of capitalist realism. Those measures couldn’t have been introduced unless there was still a widespread sense that there is no alternative to neoliberal capitalism. The various struggles that have blown up since the financial crisis show a growing discontent with the panic-neoliberalism that has been put in place since 2008, but they have yet to propose any concrete alternative to the dominant economic model

 

capital has subdued the forces acting against it – most obviously, it has crushed unions, or forced them into being consumer or service institutions within capitalism. The situation has changed since the heyday of social democracy, and one of the principal ways in which it has changed is the globalization of capital. Indeed, this is one way that unions were outmanoeuvred: if your members won’t work for these rates, we’ll go to a place where workers will.

 

What remains, now that the socialist consciousness has succumbed to capitalist realism

- is there still no alternative?

 

Source: Mark Fisher Capitalist Realism, available on Zero Books.