Mark Fisher’s "Capitalist Realism"
Today’s subject of late capitalism is the “debtor-adddict”, coerced into wage-labour to pay off debts and rents, with little more to comfort them than consumption outside the home and technology within it.
This is a very short review I wrote of Fisher's book a little while ago. I cite the page numbers of the second edition.
Fisher’s book, heartfelt in its tone and passionate in its critique, puts words to the experiences of countless radicals and other individuals suffering under late capitalism. Through the use of references to well-known pieces of popular culture, Capitalist Realism depicts the effects of capital’s hegemony over our lives with striking characterisations such as the debtor-addict and the depressive hedonist.
Fisher addresses the barely acknowledged greyness of life within capitalism, that “forever empty” as others have called it. First identified by Marx and Engels (the drowning of “religious fervour”, “enthusiasm”, and “sentimentalism” and conversion of “personal worth into exchange value”). Mark claims that this is the epitome of capitalist realism, which cynically denies every value except its own, and subsumes every energy into its own internal logic of profit. In a way, this can be comforting, for at least when we know the rules of the game – no matter how much it harms us – we know what to expect. In this way, the average individual eerily resembles Boxer of Orwell’s Animal Farm: if there is to be no questioning the current arrangement of things (“Napoleon is always right”) then how we are to live is clear and stable (“I must work harder”). Doubtless our fate, should we continue to live in this way, will be the same as Boxer’s.
But this is not to say that capitalism itself is stable. Instead, the recurrent destruction and creation of values, systems, and beliefs instils a deep sense of precarity. Under the guise of “flexibility” working people less and less receive the sense of stability necessary for meaningful engagement in social and political life.
However, Fisher goes beyond merely antagonising and demonising capitalism. He explicitly recognises all the ways we participate willingly in the system, "our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital” (p. 15). But this does not mean that the responsibility to fix the world’s problems lie solely with the individual. Fisher uses recycling as an example, for in fact, the call for individuals to recycle presupposes – and then abdicates – the economic system which produces the waste that pollutes the land and sea. And individualising issues like these prevents the creation of a “collective subject” capable of overcoming the worlds’ problems, chief among them, capitalism (p. 66).
Fisher does not take capitalist realism to be insurmountable. The antidote to the present cultural malaise and political stagnation is to show that capitalist realism is merely a fiction, and that there are indeed alternatives. He defines the task of emancipatory politics as “destroy[ing] the appearance of a ‘natural order’ ”. One method of this is environmental critique and the demonstration that capitalism is condemned to destroy the ecological foundation that supports it and us.
One of the implications of capitalist realism is what Fisher calls “reflexive impotence” (p. 28), the self-fulfilling prophecy that says “there’s no point doing anything, because you are powerless to change the world around you.” This very belief is what prevents the growth of a radical movement and creates conditions ripe of right-wing populism and fascism. The men (and women) in the US who look around them at a world of despair and hopelessness voted for Trump because he at least seemed capable of challenging the status quo.
The psychological effect is “depressive hedonia”: the depressive sense that meaning is missing, and the substitution of advertising-fuelled consumption in its place. Today’s subject of late capitalism is the “debtor-adddict”, coerced into wage-labour to pay off debts and rents, with little more to comfort them than consumption outside the home and technology within it (p. 25).
Fisher’s book, as importance now as it was in 2008, leaves me with two contradictory impulses. One is to give up, retreat into my private happiness, and leave the impossible task of resistance to others. The other is to take his insights, as morbid as they are, and continue to learn, and work towards creating a future where Fisher’s book only has historical value. May we all choose this hope.