For the Marxist in Training

[zen_monk]

 Mark Fischer's Capitalist Realism is a very on-the-point essay which was helpfully stated in three points: 

1) "Ultimately, there are three reasons that I prefer the term capitalist realism to postmodernism. In the 1980s, when Jameson first advanced his thesis about postmodernism, there were still, in name at least, political alternatives to capitalism. What we are dealing with now, however, is a deeper, far more pervasive, sense of exhaustion, of cultural and political sterility. In the 80s, ‘Really Existing Socialism’ still persisted, albeit in its final phase of collapse. In Britain, the fault lines of class antagonism were fully exposed in an event like the Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985, and the defeat of the miners was an important moment in the development of capitalist realism, at least as significant in its symbolic dimension as in its practical effects."

2) "Secondly, postmodernism involved some relationship to modernism. Jameson’s work on postmodernism began with an interrogation of the idea, cherished by the likes of Adorno, that modernism possessed revolutionary potentials by virtue of its formal innovations alone. What Jameson saw happening instead was the incorporation of modernist motifs into popular culture (suddenly, for example, Surrealist techniques would appear in advertising). At the same time as particular modernist forms were absorbed and commodified, modernism’s credos – its supposed belief in elitism and its monological, top-down model of culture – were challenged and rejected in the name of ‘difference’, ‘diversity’ and ‘multiplicity’. Capitalist realism no longer stages this kind of confrontation with modernism. On the contrary, it takes the vanquishing of modernism for granted: modernism is now something that can periodically return, but only as a frozen aesthetic style, never as an ideal for living."

3). "Thirdly, a whole generation has passed since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In the 1960s and 1970s, capitalism had to face the

problem of how to contain and absorb energies from outside. It now, in fact, has the opposite problem; having all-too successfully incorporated externality, how can it function without an outside it can colonize and appropriate? For most people under twenty in Europe and North America, the lack of alternatives to capitalism is no longer even an issue. Capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable... What we are dealing with now is not the incorporation of materials that previously seemed to possess subversive potentials, but instead, their precorporation: the pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations and hopes by capitalist culture. Witness, for instance, the establishment of settled ‘alternative’ or ‘independent’ cultural zones, which endlessly repeat older gestures of rebellion and contestation as if for the first time. ‘Alternative’ and ‘independent’ don’t designate something outside mainstream culture; rather, they are styles, in fact the dominant styles, within the mainstream."

And instead of buying the book and adding to the steady growing amount of money spent on overpriced textbooks, here's a handy link to the pdf of that entire book: 

 

www.haraldpeterstrom.com/content/5.pdfs/Mark%20Fisher%20%E2%80%93%20Capitalist%20Realism,%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternative.pdf

Comments

[novel_machinist]

Thanks for that!

[sarasa_cat]

Ooooh. This is relevant to my interests. Thanks for the link. You are the third person I've seen quoting Capitalist Realism this week.

I've been thinking about #3 a lot over the past couple of years, particularly what it means when "For most people under twenty in Europe and North America, the lack of alternatives to capitalism is no longer even an issue. Capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable.."

I want to have something intelligent to say but I feel like I need to go read Fischer sometime this week or next.

[zen_monk]

Fischer really goes into how capitalist realism has current capitalism try to shy away from focusing on large organizations and the system itself as being something to be overcome to achieve change, and that it's pretty much shifting the focus on "personal responsibility" and the project of the individual as the presumed agent of change when really it's totally not. Especially on the delusion of "improving from the inside."

[sarasa_cat]

Started reading. HM. Midway through chapter 3.

Couldn't help smiling when Fischer described so concisely one of the things that made be deeply dislike Wall-E: "A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity"

And his comments on Product Red(tm): " The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products."

I started wondering what he thought about major events that happened after he wrote this book and google found me this interview from 2013: http://strikemag.org/capitalist-realism-by-mark-fisher/

HIs argument for the first few chapters leaves me nodding in agreement: his argument that our society's (or world's) mindset is trapped inside a capitalist worldview where, despite the faults of capitalism, people argue all other systems are worse. I could probably ramble incoherently on this for hours but I should probably finished reading the rest of it first. :)

[zen_monk]

A lot of the things that he talked about made me think that a lot of what social media sites, blogs, and tumblr are doing right now and exemplify the problems he finds in capitalist realism. Namely that most folks who try to be progressive or more ethical do so within the frameworks and guidelines of capitalism, and how morality is still heavily referred to based on where we decide to put our monetary value.

Fischer referenced a lot of Zizek, and it reminded me of one of Zizek's lectures on charity and ethical consumerism which I saw in one of the RSA animated lecture drawings seen on YouTube (search for Zizek RSA Animate for it, it's really well known).

And a lot of both say isn't anything new but when we're constantly reminded about where to throw support or credit for something on the Internet or in "educating oneself," there seems to me a disproportionate amount of responsibility placed upon the power of the individual whether for the person learning or for the person expected to do the teaching.