Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?

Fisher provides a short, clearly distilled analysis of the neoliberal (i.e. consumerist) superstructure that alienates people in capitalist societies. He's writing about the UK, but it reads equally well for Americans, which is part of the point – far from being the paragon of bold, individual expression its proponents claim, capitalism in fact molds societies in its image – endlessly reproducing profitable forms of art, culture, and entertainment, reluctant to challenge existing market orthodoxies in the chance such risks won't provide a strong enough ROI. The strongest part of Fisher's book is his direct challenge to the notion of "mental health problems" as individual pathologies – as random chemical imbalances in the individual consumer's neural makeup – rather than evidence of a social and political failure in the system at-large. Fisher challenges the left to "repoliticize" the mental health debate, to "transform the taken for granted into the up-for-grabs." The widespread crisis of depression, anxiety, ADHD, and bipolar disorders must be reframed as a priori evidence of the failures of the system – *not* as individualized flukes that can be resolved through medicine and training in order to better mold the individual into the system's image.

This short book lead me to so many other books, writers/thinkers. One tiny criticism: I wish there was an index and bibliography. However a book that one can go back to again and again.

Anyone who believes Fisher's book is "Zizek-lite" (as in the case of the reviewer below) has clearly neither read Zizek nor Fisher. Zizek's work unfolds in and through the analysis of the cultural register or symbolic formations. While Fisher certainly has much to say about cultural artifacts, he also deftly analyzes contemporary structures of affectivity (such as the recent rise of depressive and anxiety disorders), as well as how the post-Fordist workplace is structured and what challenges these transformations entail for organizing and pursuing emancipatory politics. The reviewer below misses the key point of Fisher's analysis of students and schools today. Fisher is not setting out to *blame* students or shake his cane and declare with exasperation "these kids today!", but rather to analyze the new forms subjectivity is taking within our contemporary milieu and to analyze how the reigning apathy and ubiquitous (yet unsatisfying hedonism) that characterizes our cultural memory is a product of a social structure in which "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism". Just as Voltaire's Candide suggested that we tend our gardens, the new form of subjectivity, discerning no limit to the horizon of capitalism seems to resign itself to dissatisfying small hedonistic pleasures as the only way to render life tolerable within such a hopeless situation. The question, then, is that of how it might become possible to begin imagining an alternative to current historical moment. What I appreciate most about Fisher's short little book is that it is not yet another cultural or ideological analysis of artifacts, focusing on texts and cultural artifacts like films, but that in manages to weave together this sort of ideology critique, with something like Foucaultian analysis of regimes of subjectivization and the subjectivity they produce, Jamesonian Marxist critique, Deleuze and Guattari's material analysis of desire, and good old fashioned Marxist material analysis of modes of production. Something new is brewing here that is much more than a onesided analysis of the ideological and symbolic, accounting simultaneously for concrete material conditions of production. Fisher's book is a terrific read, often illuminating obscure social, political, and cultural phenomena, proceeding in such a way that what initially seems random and without reason (apathy of students for example) becomes transformed into a genuine *symptom*, thereby opening a space of the political in response to what has been depoliticized. But above all, it is a book that aims straight at the heart of our contemporary malaise characterized by a sense of hopelessness and meaningless, at least doing some of the legwork that would help us to become engaged once again. Your ten dollars will not be wasted. Let us hope that Fisher develops his project in greater and more elaborate detail in the future. Levi R. Bryant, Collin College

This one was a doozy. Effectively, it's a philosophical and critical breakdown of capitalism, the way capitalism is envisioned and "supposed to" work, and the reality of our entrapment in capitalism as an institution and ideology. It's pretty dense for a relatively short read, and it's rather bleak, brutal, and eye-opening, though it's clearly a late-2000s UK work, based on some of its references. It shines a spotlight on our own hypocrisies and humanity's cyclical nature, showing how even anti-capitalist thought has been confined to a capitalist structure - i.e. me complaining about capitalism using Facebook or an Amazon review page, or how Wall-E criticizes capitalism but is ultimately produced by Disney, an enormous corporation. Our distrust for capitalism and our thirst for an alternative has been itself been used to create capital and market to us - your Facebook feed probably uses algorithms to pitch socialist meme pages and T-shirts to you after all, does it not? And this, among other ideas posited by the book, is rough to reckon with. This is a solid book that uses plenty of modern media/pop culture allegories to get its point across, but be prepared for at least a mild existential crisis afterwards.

Aun no lo termino, a pesar de ser un libro pequeño.

This is one of the most perceptive and interesting books I've read that describes the systemic problems of our times. Mark Fischer was brilliant, and his passing is everyone's loss. I am so glad to have read this book. I'll share some quotes below: "What is needed is the strategic withdrawal of forms of labor which will only be noticed by management: all of the machineries of self-surveillance that have no effect whatsoever on the delivery of education, but which managerialism could not exist without." "For example, the left should argue that it can deliver what neoliberalism signally failed to do: a massive reduction of bureaucracy." "One of the left’s vices is its endless rehearsal of historical debates, its tendency to keep going over Kronsdadt or the New Economic Policy rather than planning and organizing for a future that it really believes in." "To tell people how to lose weight, or how to decorate their house, is acceptable; but to call for any kind of cultural improvement is to be oppressive and elitist." "it is only individuals that can be held ethically responsible for actions, and yet the cause of these abuses and errors is corporate, systemic – is not only a dissimulation: it precisely indicates what is lacking in capitalism." "The cause of eco-catastrophe is an impersonal structure which, even though it is capable of producing all manner of effects, is precisely not a subject capable of exercising responsibility."

Me ha gustado esa idea que trata de transmitir el autor de que percibir el sistema productivo capitalista es algo "natural" e "inevitable" es un gran error. Además incorpora numerosas referencias y citas interesantes, que invitan a seguir leyendo las fuentes que cita el autor. Aunque es un libro pequeño la edición es buena.

book. A post Deleuze/Deridda masterpiece, A step forward in actual thinking. f.e. “The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”

Definitely needs more than one reading for the average reader without a lot of political education. Don't forget to keep a dictionary handy.