As with every baby leftist my generation who is already accumstomed to cultrual analysis, my first "proper" leftist text was Capitalist Realism, which I read at the beginning of this year. I was very impressed with the book, its a foundational text for the last 15+ years of cultural analysis for a reason, but what I found interesting is that I've seen the sentiment floated around that Donald Trump disproved Capitalist Realism, which doesnt quite feel right. The argument(that Trump broke Capitalist Realism) goes that because of his tariffs and extensive intervention in the economy, the idea that the only way to run an economy was through the dissolution of the state in its affairs was disspelled. Some variants on the argument I've heard also point towards Bidens Infrastructure bill and claim it to be a bipartisan shift away from neoliberalism, in popular lib-left spaces books like the peoples republic of walmart and associated meme "fully automated luxury space communism" refute the economic arguments of neoliberalism. This does raise the question as to whether we still live in a capitalist realist society, and its been eating away at me, so in this blogposts I want explore the arguments that I've been having with myself about this for months.
I think there could be two ideas intertwined in Fishers writing that we could seperate. One is the cultural stagnation that he calls hauntology, which many would consider disporven by art movements like hyperpop(we will get back to this). The other is the epistimological base that neoliberalism was reduced to in the 80s and 90s, its rhetoric having survived everything from 9/11, the financial crash and two Trump terms. In fact I think that trump solidifies this rhetoric more than anything else has since the 80s considering the budget cuts that happened under his "doge" programme. Making this seperation reminds me of what I hear Vivek Chibber argue alot, that the left has had too much of an emphasis on culture. It could be said that Fisher embodies the extreme of the paradox of a culture-obsessed left, he is the disco elysium reading group, he opens one of his books with a Drake quote. This might also be where Fisher missed the mark with Acid Communism, instead of recreating the 60s of the Situationists which coupled the (leftist)political and cultural spheres, we should de-couple them again. What I'm saying is that the CIA should give me money to make art, give culture back to the right lmao.
I find that I have an interesting relationship to this line of thinking, because I really enjoy cultural analysis. For this reason its especially important that *I* remember that these blogposts, or letterboxd reviews that call the Dark Knight a neolib psyop arent activism. My interest in materially improving peoples lives can be achieved through cultural work, but I am ultimately in line with Chibber. So in that spirit, this post will be seperated into the cultural and political.
1. culture
It still feels true. Ok hear me out here, Capitalist Realism is from the get go a vibes based theory, Fisher bases his analysis on the idea that Fukuyama's end of history is "accepted, even assumed, at the level of the cultural unconscious". My argument here is that because it is a cultural analysis, it was never about economic policy, but rather about cultural milleu, it remains true for as long as it resonates, and we are still talking about Fisher. There was even a film about him released last year, I havent watched it so I don't know if it engages with any of this but its existance implies relevance, the conversation is still ongoing.
We have been asking ourselves what comes after postmodernism for about 20 years, and while there does seem to be a sense of postmodernism fatigue, the fact that this conversation still feels relevant feels like some indication that this is still where we are culturally. In fact I think that the conversation is far less popular than it was in the 00s, which might indicate a sense of resignation to the postmodern, a sort of postmodernist realism. In an earlier blogpost I proposed that gen z and millenials, rather than being just digital natives, as we usually speak about ourselves, are rather fluent in the language of nostalgia, even harbouring nostalgias for times we can't even remember. Whether this breaks or reinforces capitalist realism is up for question, but I think this is far more clear now than it was in 2009.
Theres a general sense that the cultural stagnation that Fisher talks about was broken by hyperpop, which is actually rather ironic given that Fisher was writing at a time when most people were kind of over the poptimism of the 00s, as with every idea I put forward in this post, there is a book on this concept that I havent read.
In the 1990s, Fisher was part of a collective called the CCRU(Cybernetic Culture Research Unit), a sort of situationists of the 90s(speaking of which, can we start using the term digital psychogeography? thatd be great thnx xx). If the theory of capitalist realism is a reaction to accelerationist use of deluze and quattari's analysis of capital to, well accelerate it, then it is over. Capitalist Realism is a theory that served its purpose at countering accelerationism and other pseudo-marxist quacks of the 90s. Fisher wrote Capitalist Realism because much of the critique of capital of that time operated within the framework of capitalism, think 90s anti-consumerism.
2. politics
Reframing Capitalist Realism(to make it still work)
In an essay that I wrote for college earlier this year, I condensed capitalist realism using a thesis from the Society of the Spectacle that I think both captures it very well but also reframes it in a way I find interesting. The thesis in question is no 213, you can read the full thesis for yourself, but what I find important is this bit: "The specifically ideological forms of system-supporting labor are reduced to an "epistemological base" that is itself presumed to be beyond ideology". I think that what Fisher calls Capitalist Realism is the result of the Thatcherian idea that "there is no alternative" being realised, and reduced to Debord's epistimological base. Using this understanding we can see that this narrative and rhetoric still pervades(particularly american) politics, where Trump, with the collaboration of Elon Musk, cut various government programmes.
One thing that I think is very important to Capitalist Realism is that politicians don't advocate for their policies, but rather against their opponents. A sort of lowest common denominator politics. I think this is the fundamental argument in Thatcher's statement that there is no alternative and it can be seen everywhere from the right wing rage against "the libs" to the democratic parties candidates that they advertise as "not trump".
Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism has devolved back to feudalism, and if capitalism is over, then capitalism realism much also be ending. This is the most terrifying thought here, not because it is the end of capitalism, but because it opens the door to technofeudalist realism. Are we entering the age of the divine right of the computer? This slots very well with the idea of Trump breaking capitalist realism, when a system worse than capitalism is ushered in under Trump, he gets blamed with breaking the associated milleu.
3. both
I said at the beginning that there is an intersection, and the following thoughts dont cleanly fit in either category, so I(the fraud that I am), am doing a section on that intersection.
In a sense, Fisher names that which has no name with Capitalist Realism, which could be seen as the antidote to the, according to Debord – unnameable, materialised ideology(if you can't tell, I really like the idea that Fisher dispells capitalist realism by describing it, cultural analysis does after all inform culture).
Returning one last time to Chibbers idea of the seperation of culture and politics, could it be that this idea is born out of Fisher, that Fisher exposes the paradoxes and flimsiness of a culture obsessed left. Opening a book on an anlysis of Children of Men(and a pretty fucking good one at that) won't tell us about what is actually real, what marxists call "material conditions". Returning to Trump again, his rhetoric, as harmful as it was most of the time, was the only person whose rhetoric egaged with peoples material conditions. Many Trumpies like him because he's percieved as being "real", where before the 60s, 70s and 80s the politics of culture belonged to the right, the left were the people promising to put bread on the table, or build public hospitals. This turned in the 60s and 70s, right around the time we shifted towards neoliberalism. The people who were trying to fix "real" problems then became the people promising to privatise everything. I proposed giving culture back to the right earlier, but a much better(and somewhat in line) proposal might be for the left to take back the real(this appears to be happening anyway, but still a good thing to say).