Capitalist Realism

The book investigates what Fisher sees as the widespread effects of neoliberal ideology on popular culture, work, education, and mental health in contemporary society. The subtitle refers to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's pro-market slogan "There is no alternative". Capitalist Realism was an unexpected success and has influenced a range of writers.

Definition

Capitalist realism (a play on the term "socialist realism") is an ideological framework for viewing capitalism and its effects on politics, economics, and public thought. It is widely regarded as Fisher's most consequential idea. Through his writings and numerous interviews with political bloggers and theorists, he continually expounded on the idea.

According to Fisher, the quotation "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" (attributed to both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek) captures the essence of capitalist realism. It is the prevailing notion that capitalism is the only viable economic system, and thus there can be no alternative:

Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.

Capitalist realism propagates an idea of the post-political, in which the fall of the Soviet Union both solidified capitalism as the only effective political-economic system and removed the question of capitalism's dissolution from any serious consideration. This has subverted the arena of political discussion from one in which capitalism is one of many potential means of operating an economy, to one in which political considerations operate solely within the confines of the capitalist system. Similarly, within the frame of capitalist realism, mainstream anti-capitalist movements shifted away from promoting alternative systems and toward mitigating capitalism's worst effects.

Exponents of capitalist realism do not assert that capitalism is a perfect system, but instead that it is the only one that can operate in a manner compatible with human nature and economic law. By promoting the idea that innate human desire is only compatible with capitalism, any other system that is not based on the personal accumulation of wealth and capital is seen as counter to human nature and, by extension, impossible to implement successfully.

Fisher argues that the bank bailouts following the 2008 financial crisis were a quintessential example of capitalist realism in action, reasoning that the bailouts occurred largely because the notion of allowing the banking sector to fail was unimaginable to both politicians and the general population. Due to the intrinsic value of banks to the capitalist system, Fisher proposes that the influence of capitalist realism meant that such a failure was never considered an option. As a consequence, he observes, the neoliberal system survived and capitalist realism was further validated. He classifies the current state of capitalist realism in the neoliberal system in the following terms:

The only powerful agents influencing politicians and managers in education are business interests. It's become far too easy to ignore workers and, partly because of this, workers feel increasingly helpless and impotent. The concerted attack on unions by neoliberal interest groups, together with the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist organisation of the economy – the move towards casualisation, just-in-time production, globalization – has eroded the power base of unions.

Fisher regards capitalist realism as emerging from a purposeful push by the neoliberal right to transform the attitudes of both the general population and the left towards capitalism and specifically the post-Fordist form of capitalism that prevailed throughout the 1980s. The relative inability of the political left to come up with an alternative economic model in response to the rise of neoliberal capitalism and the concurrent Reaganomics era created a vacuum that facilitated the birth of a capitalist realist perspective. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which Fisher believes represented the only real example of a working non-capitalist system, further cemented the place of capitalist realism both politically and in the general population, and was hailed as the decisive final victory of capitalism. He added that in the post-Soviet era, unchecked capitalism was able to reframe history into a capitalist narrative in which neoliberalism was the result of a natural progression of history and even embodied the culmination of human development.

Despite the fact that the emergence of capitalist realism is tied to the birth of neoliberalism, Fisher argues that the two are separate entities that merely complement one another. He believes capitalist realism has the potential to outlive neoliberal capitalism, but that the opposite would not be true. Capitalist realism is inherently anti-utopian, as it holds that no matter the flaws or externalities, capitalism is the only possible means of operation. Conversely, neoliberalism glorifies capitalism by portraying it as providing the means necessary to pursue and achieve near-utopian socioeconomic conditions. In this way, capitalist realism, with its hard-edged tone, pacifies opposition to neoliberalism's overly sunny projections, while neoliberalism counteracts the despair and disillusionment central to capitalist realism.