Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism”
Summary
This episode provides a chapter-by-chapter analysis of Mark Fisher’s influential work “Capitalist Realism.” The host begins by explaining Fisher’s central thesis: that capitalism has become the only viable political and economic system, making it impossible to even imagine a coherent alternative. This condition, termed “capitalist realism,” is explored through cultural examples like the films Children of Men and Wall-E, which illustrate how critique is often absorbed and neutralized within the system.
The discussion examines Fisher’s distinction between capitalist realism and postmodernism, arguing that while postmodernism emerged alongside alternatives like communism, capitalist realism operates in a world where such alternatives have vanished. Capitalism now generates simulated antagonisms within itself, commodifying resistance (as seen in punk and grunge music) to perpetuate its own existence.
Fisher’s analysis extends to the psychological and bureaucratic dimensions of late capitalism. The host explores the concepts of “reflexive impotence”—the feeling that nothing can be done—and how mental health issues like depression are often individualized rather than seen as systemic consequences. The episode also critiques Fisher’s sometimes judgmental tone toward youth culture while acknowledging his insights into how capitalism relies on bureaucracy and a “control society” that internalizes discipline.
Finally, the host considers Fisher’s concluding thoughts on potential resistance, including the idea of a “Marxist super nanny” who could impose limits in our collective interest. The episode ends with a critique of Fisher’s limited engagement with intersecting issues of race, gender, and sexuality, suggesting that a more holistic analysis is needed to effectively challenge capitalist realism.
Recommendations
Books
- Capitalist Realism — Mark Fisher’s book, which is the central subject of the episode. It analyzes the pervasive sense that capitalism is the only viable system and explores cultural, psychological, and political dimensions of this condition.
Events
- Live Aid (1985 & 2005) — Mass fundraising concerts critiqued by Fisher for promoting the idea that Western consumerism could solve systemic global inequality, thereby reinforcing the very system that creates the problems.
- 2008 Financial Crisis — Presented as a moment revealing the fusion of state and capital, where the state bailed out banks. Fisher saw it as a ‘hit against capital,’ though the host notes it led to austerity measures harming social services.
Films
- Children of Men — Cited by Fisher as a dystopian analogy for capitalist realism. The film depicts a world where humanity has become infertile and authoritarian control is irreversible, mirroring the difficulty of imagining alternatives to capitalism.
- Wall-E — A Disney-Pixar film discussed as an example of how capitalism incorporates critique. The movie’s environmental message allows viewers to feel they’ve engaged with anti-capitalist ideas without changing their behavior, exemplifying ‘disavowal.’
- Office Space — Used to illustrate the absurdity and anti-productive nature of bureaucracy under capitalism, where the appearance of work often trumps actual meaningful production.
- Heat — Referenced as depicting a post-Fordist world ‘without landmarks,’ where characters are detached from history and identity, purely pursuing money like entrepreneurs in a gig economy.
- The Bourne Identity — Mentioned as an example of characters losing their memory and history, analogous to how individuals under capitalism can function effectively (‘on autopilot’) while losing their sense of self.
Music_Genres
- Vaporwave — Described as a musical genre that exemplifies the appropriation and repackaging of past aesthetics (80s music, Renaissance art) without any living ideals, representing the evacuation of modernism under capitalist realism.
- Punk / Grunge — Discussed as examples of cultural resistance that capitalism ‘pre-corporates’—commodifying anti-establishment sentiments to perpetuate the system, using Kurt Cobain and Nirvana as key examples.
People
- Slavoj Žižek — Philosopher whose idea (with Fredric Jameson) that ‘it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’ opens Fisher’s analysis. Also referenced for the concept of ‘disavowal’ in capitalist critique.
- Fredric Jameson — Theorist of postmodernism, whose work Fisher contrasts with capitalist realism. Jameson viewed postmodernism as the ‘cultural logic of late capitalism’ in an era when alternatives still existed.
- Theodore Adorno — Referenced for his concept of ‘standardization’ under capitalism, where once something sells, producers endlessly mimic it, stifling genuine newness.
- Gilles Deleuze — Philosopher whose concept of the ‘control society’ is used to describe how discipline under late capitalism is internalized rather than externally imposed (as in Foucault’s panopticon).
Topic Timeline
- 00:01:15 — Introduction to capitalist realism and its grim premise — The host introduces Mark Fisher’s book, starting with the famous line: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This idea, taken from Slavoj Žižek and Fredric Jameson, sets the tone for the analysis. The host reflects on how this feels true in the face of ecological and other crises, where capitalism is defended even as it leads to potential demise.
- 00:02:01 — Analysis of Children of Men as a dystopian analogy — Fisher uses the film Children of Men to illustrate the concept of capitalist realism. The film’s dystopian setting, where humanity has become infertile and authoritarian rule prevails, mirrors the slippery slope of increased control post-9/11. The host explains Fisher’s point: once such measures are implemented, they become seemingly irreversible, just as capitalism presents itself as the only possible system.
- 00:05:21 — Defining capitalist realism and its contradictions — The host reads Fisher’s definition: capitalist realism is “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” The discussion highlights capitalism’s paradox: it demonizes government while relying on state apparatuses like police, military, and surveillance to function. This opacity makes challenging its foundations difficult.
- 00:12:12 — Differences between capitalist realism and postmodernism — Fisher distinguishes his concept from Fredric Jameson’s postmodernism in three key ways. First, postmodernism existed when alternatives to capitalism (like communism) were still present, whereas capitalist realism operates after their collapse. Second, postmodernism appropriated modernist aesthetics, while modernism is now a “frozen style” without living ideals. Third, capitalism now generates simulated cultural zones of opposition internally, pre-corporating resistance like punk music.
- 00:16:36 — Capitalism’s incorporation of anti-capitalism — The host explores how capitalism contains simulated forms of anti-capitalism, using examples like the Disney-Pixar film Wall-E. While the film critiques consumerism and environmental degradation, watching it allows audiences to feel they’ve engaged with critique without changing their behavior. Fisher, via Žižek, calls this “disavowal”—believing capitalism is bad lets us continue participating in it. The Live Aid concerts are another example, where consumerism is presented as the solution to the problems it creates.
- 00:21:07 — Capitalism and the Lacanian Real — Fisher uses Lacan’s concept of the Real to analyze capitalism’s inconsistencies. The Real is the underlying, often hidden truth that sustains social relations. Capitalism’s contradictions—like infinite growth on a finite planet, or automation eliminating the consumer base—are moments where the Real ruptures through, revealing the system’s untenable foundations. Other “Reals” include environmental catastrophe and the mental health crises induced by late capitalism.
- 00:26:38 — Reflexive impotence and mental health under capitalism — The host discusses Fisher’s analysis of “reflexive impotence”—the feeling among students (particularly in British further education colleges) that nothing can be done to change their conditions. Fisher links this to depression, not from lack of pleasure, but from the inability to do anything but pursue pleasure under intense surveillance and control. The host critiques Fisher for potentially blaming marginalized individuals for seeking pleasure while ignoring systemic issues.
- 00:34:17 — Post-Fordism, control societies, and the loss of self — Fisher contrasts Fordism (stable jobs, skills) with post-Fordism (precarious gig economy). Films like Heat depict a world without landmarks or tradition, only the pursuit of money. This shift, Fisher argues, transforms workers’ nervous systems to cope with unpredictability, leading to anxiety and depression. Control is internalized; we surveil ourselves to be flexible laborers. The host notes Fisher’s potential romanticization of the Fordist past.
- 00:41:04 — Bureaucracy as capitalist anti-production — Using the film Office Space, Fisher analyzes bureaucracy under capitalism. Bureaucracy emphasizes the image of work over actual production, creating self-perpetuating systems that serve no real purpose. It exemplifies the “big Other”—an anonymous force that disciplines without a visible enforcer. The call center, where responsibility is endlessly deferred, symbolizes capitalism’s lack of accountability.
- 00:49:04 — The 2008 crisis and the fusion of state and capital — The 2008 financial crisis revealed the state and capitalism as intertwined, not separate. The state bailed out banks, becoming a scapegoat for capitalism’s failures. Since capitalism has no central headquarters, blame is deflected, often inward onto individuals (e.g., personal responsibility for climate change). This lack of a clear target reinforces the sense that the system is immutable.
- 00:52:24 — Conclusion: Towards a Marxist super nanny and new possibilities — Fisher concludes by imagining a “Marxist super nanny”—not a Stalinist bureaucrat, but a force that imposes limits in our collective interest and fosters genuine newness. This involves reducing bureaucracy and focusing on individual realization beyond work-based identity. The host critiques Fisher’s celebration of the 2008 crisis, which led to austerity, and notes the absence of race, gender, and sexuality in his analysis, arguing for a more intersectional approach to challenging capitalism.
Episode Info
- Podcast: Theory & Philosophy
- Author: David Guignion
- Category: Society & Culture Philosophy Arts Books Education
- Published: 2020-05-23T17:00:00Z
- Duration: 00:59:43
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/b53d1860-dc59-0137-b657-0acc26574db2/episode/802aacf5-e828-4803-ba17-8dc44544af8d/
- Episode UUID: 802aacf5-e828-4803-ba17-8dc44544af8d
Podcast Info
- Name: Theory & Philosophy
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://theoretician.podbean.com
- UUID: b53d1860-dc59-0137-b657-0acc26574db2
Transcript
[00:00:00] hey hey y’all back again this time we’re talking about mark fisher’s capitalist realism so pretty
[00:00:21] important text like contemporary marxist thought uh but before jumping into that a few things to
[00:00:26] say you can find this on instagram or find me on instagram at theory underscore and underscore
[00:00:30] philosophy if you just want to see mostly pictures of my cats uh you can also find this in podcast
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[00:00:48] be great you can find me on paypal or patreon and there are links for that in the description
[00:00:53] for now i’d like to thank uh boz honrick
[00:00:56] james john juiced or used kill switch matt nicholas and sebastian uh as well as ashley
[00:01:03] who have all been extremely helpful in keeping this going uh thank you very much for your
[00:01:09] support now without further ado time to jump in here to mark fisher’s capitalist realism
[00:01:15] so the first chapter is titled it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to
[00:01:21] imagine the end of capitalism which is an idea that he takes here from uh slavoj zizek and
[00:01:26] frederick jameson and it’s a pretty grim statement but one that if you reflect upon it seems to be
[00:01:33] really true especially when we think about you know the impending ecological crisis or any of
[00:01:38] our other crises that that we are in the in the midst of or in the throes of that you know for
[00:01:44] many reasons people feel the need to defend capitalism in the face of these things
[00:01:49] so it seems as though our demise is more likely than the end of capitalism which is obviously
[00:01:55] not good
[00:01:56] so he starts with this chapter by meditating on the book and movie titled children of men
[00:02:01] now for those that haven’t seen it this movie is kind of a dystopian fiction in which people have
[00:02:08] a dystopian fiction i would hope it’s fiction in which people have grown infertile and they
[00:02:14] are unable to reproduce and so there’s a kind of lionization of the youngest people for they
[00:02:20] are ostensibly going to be the ones that live longest and there’s a kind of like overarching
[00:02:26] nationalism for the fact that there’s nothing anyone can do about it and people are just kind of
[00:02:31] holding hand in hand to the end of human humanity now one of the perhaps unintended consequences of
[00:02:41] this you know a terrible uh event that is the the fact that people are have grown infertile
[00:02:46] is that there’s been a kind of dystopian military rule put in place now it’s unclear as to whether
[00:02:53] or not you know this rule was kind of taken over by the government or by the government of the
[00:02:56] you know capitalist um interests you know in order to kind of galvanize or or hoard as much as the
[00:03:03] wealth and power as possible or if it came about through a kind of democratic means because people
[00:03:08] thought like well you know we need as much order as we can in these times so it’s fairly unclear
[00:03:13] at least according to fisher here now it would seem incredibly uh difficult to imagine in this
[00:03:19] movie any reversal of these measures uh occurring that is of these kind of disciplinary measures
[00:03:26] these kinds of orderly uh moves for them to be undone so the idea here is that once these things
[00:03:33] have happened it’s kind of like a slippery slope into more and more control so he says that this
[00:03:38] is analogous to what we saw in the united states and much of the world really after 9-11 where 9-11
[00:03:45] saw the implementation of various new measures of kind of surveillance and control especially
[00:03:50] in certain areas like airports and and other kind of borders and stuff like that so it would seem
[00:03:56] uh almost impossible for us to imagine these things going back as though there could ever be a
[00:04:01] time when people say you know what our uh anxiety our paranoia has gone on long enough we have to
[00:04:09] dial back you know the clock on this so it’s almost like imagine uh a kind of zip tie okay
[00:04:17] wrapped around your wrists and this zip tie every time you kind of click it a little bit tighter
[00:04:22] you can’t pull it back like it stays at that
[00:04:26] tight tightness level it can only go even more tighter from there and every time you click it
[00:04:31] it gets more and more tight more and more tight and you can’t actually go back you need to kind of
[00:04:36] cut the entire thing off right and this is my own analogy for the what is necessary a kind of
[00:04:42] complete overhaul of these of these binds in order to uh overturn the system now he he uses this idea
[00:04:51] of this impossibility the impossibility to kind of undo these measures to think about the way
[00:04:56] capitalism has become the only possibility in our minds it is the only alternative it is the only
[00:05:04] you know economic way to organize the world and when this happens when capitalism becomes its
[00:05:10] kind of own self-fulfilling uh you know prophecy becomes its own its own destiny he says that then
[00:05:16] we enter into capitalist realism where there’s no alternative and he provides the following
[00:05:21] definition where he says that it is the widespread sense that not only is capitalism
[00:05:26] the only viable political and economic system but also that it is now impossible even to imagine
[00:05:32] a coherent alternative to it so capitalism though is really effective at least mark fisher says
[00:05:40] because it is not what it claims to be and what it claims to be is uh the kind of arbiter for a
[00:05:46] free market purely individualistic enterprise and what he finds and he uses children of men
[00:05:52] once more to think about this is that capitalism relies pretty heavily
[00:05:56] on the state and a lot of what the state has to offer some things being like the police and the
[00:06:02] military and surveillance things that capitalism uses very effectively towards its own ends all
[00:06:08] the while um demonizing chastising everything to do with government so it takes what it wants
[00:06:15] from government but then leaves the rest just like how uh in you know george under george bush
[00:06:22] jr george w bush there was obviously
[00:06:26] a great move to try to uh limit government power while at the same time there was a move to
[00:06:33] increase government spending when it came to military uh efforts and wars and stuff as though
[00:06:40] these things aren’t government actions so it’s you know we’re dealing with a kind of paradox here
[00:06:46] the an antinomy uh where you know two conflicting opinions are being held about something
[00:06:50] or a paralogism that you know strikes us here that that is right in our face here
[00:06:56] when it comes to uh capitalism so like the film that is the film children of men there is no kind
[00:07:03] of clear outline as to how the situation came about and fisher then says because there is no
[00:07:10] clear uh kind of delineation of what occurred then it makes it that much more difficult to
[00:07:15] find out what we must do to mitigate its effects or to undo it which he says is analogous perhaps
[00:07:22] the correlative to what we see with at least uh present
[00:07:26] capitalism in that its foundations are are not incredibly uh clear it’s quite opaque and it
[00:07:34] makes it that much more difficult then to find out a kind of process of possible reversal or at
[00:07:40] least one that can uh kind of demolish those foundations because they’re difficult to kind
[00:07:45] of pin down so you know a good marxist might respond and say well no quite simply it comes
[00:07:51] down to the uh the idea of base and superstructure and the base you know the economic
[00:07:56] relations upon which the superstructure uh is allowed to flourish or is allowed to kind of grow
[00:08:01] it is that base that is the foundation so it’s very clear then to see where the problem lies
[00:08:08] fisher then is is a little bit more careful in how he wants to imagine challenging capitalism
[00:08:13] because he doesn’t want to risk just putting all the eggs in one basket and saying like if we just
[00:08:19] do this one thing then you know all our problems will be solved now i say that and i want to add
[00:08:25] a little asterisk by saying that if we just do this one thing then you know all our problems will be
[00:08:26] solved now i say that if we just do this one thing then you know all our problems will be
[00:08:26] like he does oscillate he does at times you know recognize the difficulty of positioning
[00:08:33] a single enemy that is you know capital and saying like it is only capital and we must
[00:08:39] go right after capital in order to undo this and then on the other hand he wants to recognize the
[00:08:45] complexities of that process so i think it’s important to maintain this kind of tension
[00:08:50] and not to you know say at least in what i think we’re reading here in fisher is that it’s one or
[00:08:56] the other
[00:08:56] so he draws another parallel from children of men and that is the idea that fertility or
[00:09:02] infertility can be extended to our own situation under late capitalism and that is because a lack
[00:09:09] of fertility implies that there is the incapability to produce newness which he says is indicative of
[00:09:16] capitalism in that it only wants to reproduce what is you know common what is standard what
[00:09:23] theodore adorno calls standardization once we have figured out what sells then other producers
[00:09:29] all they try to do is mimic that because they exist under the pretense of making more money
[00:09:36] and if more money means producing the same song over and over again then that is what they’re
[00:09:40] going to do so one of the other consequences of this is that we forget about things like history
[00:09:45] in order to always be it’s we always consider the present without considering newness so we
[00:09:51] always want to see a replication of what we have right now
[00:09:53] which means both a forgetting of the future and a forgetting of the past so we have a very myopic
[00:09:58] view of history in this way focus specifically on the present and he says this is adduced at
[00:10:05] least evidence of this is provided by the fact that we have things like museums that kind of
[00:10:10] capture the past in a kind of simulated form in order for us to feel as though we haven’t lost
[00:10:19] touch of the past so we crowd ourselves into museums as though we have
[00:10:23] you know a history to look back upon and then we can leave the museum and forget all about it
[00:10:28] because history doesn’t really affect us in in any kind of clear way and this is this is a reductive
[00:10:35] way to look at it obviously to look at uh present day quote-unquote present-day civilization at
[00:10:41] least in the quote-unquote west um but there is a point to it in that the the history of the west
[00:10:47] is very much a present history it is concerned mostly with what it can do right now not you know
[00:10:54] learning from its mistakes of the past so with this kind of destruction of history comes for
[00:11:02] fisher a destruction of anything that might be superstitious or or mythical in favor of a kind
[00:11:09] of realism and here’s another you know capitalist realism plays into this because it is for him that
[00:11:15] the uh
[00:11:17] enterprise of realism pal excellence it is the one that provides realism above all other things
[00:11:25] and this is one of capitalism’s most effective strategies it convinces people that it is the
[00:11:31] only viable system therefore it is able to say look we must then have some kind of affinity
[00:11:38] or connection with something that is natural or innate to humans so people point to the past and
[00:11:44] look competition has existed forever
[00:11:46] and capitalism is the system that fosters competition so therefore it must be natural
[00:11:52] it must be real so capitalism then has a certain purchase or a kind of special purchase
[00:11:58] on this claim to naturality or to realism which is just more emphasizing more of the same
[00:12:05] so fisher takes the time now to consider how he feels his project is different or his conception
[00:12:12] of capitalist realism that is the situation we find ourselves in is different from the
[00:12:16] what frederick jameson describes as post-modernism so for frederick jameson in the 80s he was suggesting
[00:12:24] that post-modernism was the you know the cultural logic of late capitalism that post-modernism
[00:12:30] emerges at in response to and as a product of late capitalism so fisher says that capitalist
[00:12:37] realism is different from post-modernism in three ways firstly he says that when jameson
[00:12:44] was describing post-modernism in the 80s he said that post-modernism is different from post-modernism
[00:12:46] there were still alternatives to capitalism at least ostensibly so we should all know that
[00:12:52] the berlin wall came down in 1989 which marked at least ostensibly the end of the soviet union
[00:12:59] the end of communism at least ostensibly so that would then signal that over the course of
[00:13:07] most of the 80s there was still that kind of antagonism present antagonism antagonism present
[00:13:13] in the form of communism to capitalism
[00:13:16] whereas now we don’t have that there is there isn’t that same kind of antagonism
[00:13:21] uh the second reason is that jameson believed post-modernism to exist in proximity to modernism
[00:13:28] and therefore it kind of appropriated it for example uh this is the one he gives
[00:13:33] surrealist techniques would appear in advertising for fisher on the other hand modernism has been
[00:13:41] completely eviscerated uh occasionally resurrected as what he calls a frozen
[00:13:46] frozen
[00:13:46] aesthetic style never as an ideal for living so whereas previously uh the kind of tenets or some
[00:13:53] of the maybe aesthetic um qualities of modernism could be revived as you know kind of relics of a
[00:14:01] past that can be aspired to in the future now they have been completely evacuated of any potential
[00:14:07] and they have been if they’re used at all they’re purely appropriated for the sake of their
[00:14:14] being appropriated so one
[00:14:16] you know i the most perfect example of this is vaporwave if if you aren’t familiar with this
[00:14:24] vaporwave is a kind of strange genre if you can call it a genre of music that kind of exists in
[00:14:32] between the 80s and and the 2020s while using elements of both and caught between kind of
[00:14:41] modernist or even earlier than that like renaissance art anyways it’s a
[00:14:46] kind of hodgepodge of all of these kinds of aesthetic domains and these aesthetic qualities
[00:14:51] into a kind of repackaging of what happened in the 80s. It’s very strange. And if you aren’t
[00:14:59] familiar with Vaporwave, it’s worth looking into on YouTube or whatever. I should say I happen to
[00:15:05] listen to it a lot because I’m just a postmodern tool, I guess. Anyways, I digress. The third
[00:15:14] reason here why Fischer sees capitalist realism as being different from postmodernism is that in
[00:15:20] the 60s, 70s, and 80s, capitalism attained its force by being the most appealing alternative
[00:15:26] to the other systems, that is like communism. Now, because these systems have vanished,
[00:15:32] capitalism conjures up almost simulated, and these are his words here, alternative or independent
[00:15:39] cultural zones. So it doesn’t actually have the antagonism in this kind of
[00:15:44] mirror-like way. It doesn’t actually have the antagonism in this kind of mirror-like way.
[00:15:44] The first point, it produces its own antagonisms, its own enemies within itself,
[00:15:51] which makes it all the more effective at continuing itself on its course. So one example
[00:15:57] of this he uses is rock music or punk kind of grunge and Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, for those
[00:16:04] that aren’t familiar, and how capitalism pre-corporates, in his words, pre-corporates
[00:16:12] these antitheses. Like,
[00:16:14] one example I like is like punk music that has been, you know, appropriated by capitalism because
[00:16:20] it’s a pretty good way to make money if you can commodify even resistance. If you can commodify,
[00:16:26] you know, the counter-revolution, then not only do you find another way to make money,
[00:16:31] you find a way to keep your system going indefinitely. So that pushes us here into
[00:16:36] chapter two. What if you held a protest and everyone came? So he starts out this chapter
[00:16:41] by considering further the idea that capitalism is a way to keep your system going indefinitely.
[00:16:44] What if you held a protest and everyone came? So he starts out this chapter by considering further the idea that capitalism
[00:16:44] contains within it the possibility for anti-capitalism in these kind of simulated forms.
[00:16:50] And he provides the example of the Disney-Pixar movie Wall-E, in which there’s the world has
[00:16:55] kind of succumbed to its extreme consumerist practices to the point that all the resources
[00:17:03] have been effectively depleted, and humans are sent off on this spaceship called the Axiom
[00:17:08] in space, in space of course. Meanwhile, what was supposed to be happening was that the
[00:17:14] there was supposed to be a mass cleanup operation occurring on Earth in order to kind of revitalize
[00:17:19] it, which of course doesn’t happen. And there’s one lone robot who remains, who ends up saving
[00:17:25] humanity. Now, Wall-E, as far as the movie goes, is a pretty prescient warning or kind of even
[00:17:34] critique of the effects of capitalism, at least on our world. And I would like to say as an aside,
[00:17:41] like, the way that capitalism is
[00:17:44] affecting this world, we often paint it as though it’s the world that’s going to be the victim,
[00:17:50] and definitely the world will suffer, species will suffer, but humans will, the world will
[00:17:57] long outlive humans. But this movie depicts it in such a way that the world actually kind of dies,
[00:18:05] and humans are then forced to leave it, which is an interesting perspective. But anyways,
[00:18:09] so what Fisher says about this movie is that this movie kind of
[00:18:14] acts as our critique. We can watch this movie, and then we can critique it, but then we turn off
[00:18:20] the television and watch something else. So we, having seen it in the movie theater, we then leave,
[00:18:25] and then we don’t think about it. So we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that,
[00:18:29] oh good, someone out there made this movie, therefore someone out there is thinking about
[00:18:34] this. Great, like we can absolve ourselves of any responsibility and just move on.
[00:18:39] So in his words, he says that so long as we believe that capitalism,
[00:18:44] is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange.
[00:18:48] So according to Žižek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal.
[00:18:54] So we pretend as though it’s enough to critique, right? As though we can just sit around,
[00:19:00] we can point to all the problems of it, and then therefore we have done our part, which is just,
[00:19:05] you know, a way by which the system can continue itself. So the capitalists are, you know,
[00:19:11] brushing their hands together with a big smirk,
[00:19:14] on their face as everyone, you know, theorizes and thinks about what to do instead of doing
[00:19:19] anything. So one of the other examples he gives, or I guess it’s two examples, are the live aid
[00:19:25] concerts, or a live aid concert in 1985 that featured, you know, artists like Queen and David
[00:19:31] Bowie and Ultravox, I don’t know why that one came to my head, you know, a number of different
[00:19:38] bands that, from 1985, that was meant as a huge fundraiser for,
[00:19:44] starving people in some African countries. And then again, in 2005, another one occurred.
[00:19:52] Now, Fisher looks upon these efforts, that is, these fundraising efforts, with a great deal of
[00:19:58] suspicion, because he says that it was paraded that Western consumerism, far from being intrinsically
[00:20:05] implicated in systemic global inequality, could itself solve systemic global inequality. So,
[00:20:14] in this whole process, or in these big live shows, which attracted, you know, I think,
[00:20:20] to date, it’s still one of the most watched things in all of human history, that is, live aid in 1985,
[00:20:27] I’m pretty sure, it was believed that by participating in this kind of mass consumerist
[00:20:33] enterprise, that, you know, things like world hunger could be eradicated. But of course,
[00:20:39] that doesn’t get at the systemic problems that will just continue to reproduce world hunger,
[00:20:44] and it goes to that, you know, famous saying by that, I believe it was by that monk, you know,
[00:20:49] who said that, like, when I feed the poor, I’m called a saint, but when I ask why there are poor
[00:20:55] people, then I’m called a communist. And I think that really speaks to what
[00:21:01] Fisher is getting at here. And that pushes us here into chapter three, capitalism and the real.
[00:21:07] So, he starts at this chapter by saying that capitalist realism is a pervasive atmosphere
[00:21:12] conditioning not to be a reality, but to be a reality. And that’s what he’s saying. And that’s
[00:21:14] only the production of culture, but also the regulation of work. It’s ubiquity, and that’s the
[00:21:21] quote. So, pretty much it’s ubiquity, that is, it’s all omnipresence, it’s existing everywhere,
[00:21:28] makes any challenge to it difficult to imagine, which we’ve already kind of alluded to in the
[00:21:32] first chapter. The task then should be to reveal it for how it’s inconsistent, how it is inconsistent
[00:21:41] or untenable, which demands dissimilarity. And that’s what he’s saying. And that’s what he’s
[00:21:44] saying. So, instead of it being regarded as kind of humanity’s salvation, it should be revealed for
[00:21:53] its varying consistencies. And this isn’t new. In the history of, you know, Marxist thought,
[00:21:57] we go right back to Marx. That is exactly what he was describing, that capitalism, like many of
[00:22:04] the systems that preceded it, is rife with inconsistencies. One of them being that the
[00:22:11] world is finite, yet capitalism is finite. And that’s what he’s saying. And that’s what he’s
[00:22:14] saying. And that’s what he’s saying. And that’s what he’s saying. And that’s what he’s saying. And
[00:22:14] seems to think that you can extract from the world indefinitely, or that you can continually
[00:22:19] extract surplus value from, from labor. So, you pay people less and less and take from them
[00:22:27] more and more. And that won’t inevitably lead to a kind of, to a kind of evacuation of all
[00:22:35] potential from people, right? You kind of take from them all you can take. Or one of the other
[00:22:41] ones, and this is touted by,
[00:22:44] you know, people in, you know, Silicon Valley, when we think about automation,
[00:22:49] one of the problems with that is that if everything turns to automation,
[00:22:54] then suddenly the people producing things with automation are not going to have consumers to
[00:23:00] buy those things because they don’t have people working in order to make wages that they can then
[00:23:05] use that money to go back and buy the stuff with. So he then positions the realism of
[00:23:14] capitalism with the real of capitalism. Now this demands a little bit of an exposition into Lacan’s
[00:23:22] thought, which I’m by no means an expert on, but I can, I think I can kind of give a fair idea about
[00:23:28] what Fischer is using it for, where he says that in Lacan, the real is kind of like what subtends
[00:23:35] or, or exists underneath and allows for the possibility of social relations to emerge in
[00:23:41] a social field. And of course, within that, the real is kind of like what Fischer uses to
[00:23:43] that, you know, even our idea about ourselves, our identities, anything like that exists upon
[00:23:50] the real. Now the real is kind of like the unseen highway that connects all of these things. So we
[00:23:59] don’t see it, we can’t recognize it. But there are brief moments where we can kind of glimpse into it
[00:24:04] and these happen at various ruptures. So in the case of capitalism, when one of these contradictions
[00:24:10] is revealed, then suddenly we see the kind of puppet master behind the curtains, like in
[00:24:16] The Wizard of Oz, and we see it for what it really is. That is, its problems, the kind of illusions
[00:24:22] upon which it lays its claim to truth. So another such real is the environmental catastrophe that,
[00:24:32] you know, if we stare at it in the face, we have to come to terms with the fact that our system
[00:24:37] is unsustainable. And its claim,
[00:24:40] to superiority, or its claim to being, you know, regulating itself or sustaining itself through
[00:24:46] the market is completely, is completely incorrect. Another real is the kind of mental illnesses that
[00:24:55] emerge in response to late capitalism, like stress and depression, which he talks about
[00:25:01] in the next chapter, chapters four and five. And then he says another real is the bureaucracy
[00:25:10] that capitalism relies upon. Now you might ask, well, why is that a real? Why is that a thing that capitalism
[00:25:18] tries to veil? It tries to veil that because capitalism was supposed to be the response
[00:25:23] to bureaucracy. That is the kind of Stalinist bureaucracy that emerged in the Soviet, Soviet
[00:25:28] Russia. But, you know, look around. There’s no way anyone of us can really do anything
[00:25:34] in this, in this world without going through some kind of bureaucratic enterprise. So he
[00:25:39] wants to think about the
[00:25:40] these two things specifically, that is mental health and bureaucracy. And he thinks about
[00:25:45] them in relation to his experience in the further education college in Britain, where
[00:25:50] students from working class backgrounds were drawn to if they wanted to wanted an alternative
[00:25:57] to more formal state educational institutions. So because of their location, these schools
[00:26:02] were often a testing ground for neoliberal reforms of education. So what I mean by their
[00:26:08] location was that they drew in
[00:26:10] students that would otherwise not fit in with the regular quote unquote regular kind
[00:26:15] of public school institutions. So in many cases, there’s a kind of classist implication
[00:26:20] here where students who are obviously going to be less affluent would be attracted here
[00:26:27] and the state saw them then as more like guinea pigs than anything else. So he’s going to
[00:26:32] now think about that in the next chapter, chapter four titled reflexive impotence, immobilization,
[00:26:38] and liberal communism.
[00:26:40] So he starts out by saying that British students, you know, the ones that he was seeing in
[00:26:45] this further education, college, were less radical than their French counterparts, because
[00:26:52] of their what he calls the reflexive impotence, which is the knowledge that there is nothing
[00:26:57] they can do. That is about their position or about their economic conditions or anything
[00:27:02] like that.
[00:27:03] But of course, this isn’t their fault, like no one wants this. This is instead for Fisher,
[00:27:08] a consequence of the effects of labor.
[00:27:10] late capitalism on these young minds. Now this is where I must criticize Fisher for what he’s about
[00:27:19] to say where he says that these kinds of people that he recognizes as being kind of embracing a
[00:27:27] kind of impotence that is in their believing that there’s nothing that can happen he says that they
[00:27:32] enter a kind of depression which is fair that seems like it could be the case. So we saw in
[00:27:38] the school that these students were not so much depressed because of the a lack of pleasure but
[00:27:44] instead because they were depressed because of their inability to do anything else except pursue
[00:27:50] pleasure. So this is essentially difficult for people to navigate because they are both placed
[00:27:55] under intense surveillance and control while also encouraged to shop and consume and to be
[00:28:00] pleasured or to strive for pleasure. Now in the problem with this or something that we should
[00:28:07] really you know be careful about is that the problem with this is that the problem with this
[00:28:08] is that the problem with this is that the problem with this is that the problem with this is that the
[00:28:08] about when he when he says something like this is that for many people that you know exist uh
[00:28:16] in a certain class dynamic where they are marginalized where they are oppressed their
[00:28:21] concern is not so much the pursuit of pleasure than it is the pursuit of survival so it seems
[00:28:28] like a strange kind of disavowal of that fact and it it really seems to regress at least in my
[00:28:34] reading of it where mark for fisher’s just being like this kind of like old like all the youth
[00:28:41] today are you know they’re too concerned with their what he what he says their playstation or
[00:28:46] he says um playstation all night tv and marijuana like okay mark fisher like okay put that judgmental
[00:28:54] tone away and is this really the case for rich people like why is it that we only condemn poor
[00:29:00] people that try to strive for pleasure as being part of the problem but we don’t
[00:29:04] think about that in terms of rich people who are by and large the hedonistic ones of our kind of
[00:29:10] time of our of our age so it seems kind of condemnatory and it’s like blaming people for
[00:29:16] wanting to you know pursue what little happiness they can in this very alienating world um and it
[00:29:23] seems kind of focusedly individualistic but you know i’d like to hear your rebuttals if anyone
[00:29:31] wants to defend fisher here um
[00:29:34] so he says that the search for pleasure has marked a new system of control so if we we can
[00:29:40] accept that which is a kind of a post-disciplinary form of control now what does that mean
[00:29:46] post-disciplinary well there’s no one with like a gun or sitting in a watchtower telling us what
[00:29:52] we can and cannot buy or what we should and shouldn’t buy so when students are online they
[00:29:59] might know they’re being surveyed chances are they don’t they just don’t care because what
[00:30:04] the internet affords them far outweighs any potential harm that can be caused by their
[00:30:11] information being taken from them or their conversations being spied on or anything like
[00:30:16] that because there’s no immediate consequence so this is kind of post-disciplinary in that
[00:30:22] it’s disciplinary it’s the disciplining system that we are so accustomed to like with guns and
[00:30:29] military and police has been so effective that we’ve come to discipline ourselves
[00:30:34] we discipline ourselves by submitting so easily to these kinds of hidden forms of control these
[00:30:40] hidden forms of surveillance so he says then it’s no wonder really that people don’t read anymore
[00:30:48] because you know we don’t where the add is running rampant and whatever and it’s really
[00:30:54] difficult for people to focus and yeah sure he might have a point but we can’t forget the fact
[00:31:02] that his generation is the one that’s
[00:31:04] started you know wars like in vietnam and and and everything else before then so it seems as though
[00:31:12] setting um a benchmark of people being able to read as being like a step toward something uh a
[00:31:20] better system forgets that some of the most brutal people in history were incredibly intelligent in
[00:31:26] terms of these capacities or as in terms of these benchmarks now i say all this and i’m critical of
[00:31:33] fisher but i also recognize that what he’s saying is that we’re not going to be able to read
[00:31:34] what he’s doing it’s extremely powerful and helpful here but it’s important to take it with
[00:31:39] it with a grain of salt so in the face of all this schooling kind of loses its meaning because
[00:31:45] schools just kind of uh push people out right you know and this is something that i think we’ve
[00:31:50] all recognized is that kids don’t really fail these days it’s really about just kind of pushing
[00:31:56] them through onto the next teacher who will have to deal with it and then they just push them
[00:32:00] through until they finally make it to the end and then that’s that’s really the case
[00:32:04] and then it makes it impossible to really teach so school is not then really like the ivory tower
[00:32:11] that it’s made out to seem it is instead what he calls the engine room of the reproduction of
[00:32:16] social reality you know this kind of like a production line idea of just kind of getting
[00:32:24] kids through as fast as possible so that a new crop can come in so overall he wants to characterize
[00:32:31] the society not so much as a fucodian one with like surveillance but he wants to characterize it as a
[00:32:34] surveillance and the idea of the panopticon and someone sitting in a tower watching he instead
[00:32:40] locates this more along the lines of what deleuze calls a control society which is like the pure
[00:32:46] internalization of all forms of control that you know we don’t need any kind of um you know guard
[00:32:52] tower person watching us to kind of maintain which is i’m not totally clear on that distinction
[00:32:58] because foucault doesn’t think that either foucault says that he just uses that as an
[00:33:03] analogy and then says we’re
[00:33:04] we are beyond that like that that is something of i guess even that’s a relic of the past when he
[00:33:09] moves into what he calls the carceral state so in the face of this kind of control society
[00:33:15] it would be wrong for us to try to implement the old forms of control so like implementing
[00:33:22] discipline and this is one of the images that comes out of you know kind of soviet propaganda
[00:33:28] was that you know it’s about work and it’s about order and structure which is um obviously
[00:33:34] problematic but it’s not it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem
[00:33:34] and more of a reactionary response to capitalism rather than a a meaningful alternative to it
[00:33:43] now he says kind of tangentially that a meaningful uh undoing of capitalism demands a consideration
[00:33:50] of newness without it being for the sake of newness right as we saw earlier with like
[00:33:57] capitalism just appropriating the new for its own benefit in order to reproduce the same over and
[00:34:03] over again so now he’s going to consider the old forms of control and he’s going to consider the
[00:34:04] more closely that is in the next chapter uh post-fortism and the distinction between
[00:34:10] fortism and post-fortism so that brings us to chapter five october 6 1979 don’t let yourself
[00:34:17] get attached to anything now he starts this chapter by considering the the film heat which
[00:34:23] i haven’t seen but i’m familiar with as a gangster movie from the 90s i guess late 90s maybe mid to
[00:34:29] late 90s uh to older gangster films like the godfather and goodfellas
[00:34:34] where he says that heat’s los angeles is a world without landmarks a branded sprawl
[00:34:40] where markable territory has been replaced by endlessly repeating vistas of replicating
[00:34:46] franchises so he says that the ghosts of old europe that stalked scorsese like with uh goodfellas
[00:34:53] and and coppola with uh the godfather those streets have been exercised or those ghosts
[00:34:59] have been exercised so in you know the godfather there is the kind of commitment to
[00:35:04] uh a so-called history that is a history that goes back to italy in these cases but um what we
[00:35:13] see in heat at least according to fisher is a detachment from that where people that is the
[00:35:18] other gangsters are only going after the pursuit of money there’s no attachment to history or
[00:35:23] identity or anything like that so instead of them having a kind of national identity fisher just
[00:35:28] says they’re just like entrepreneurs that just go where the money is and that’s it they have no
[00:35:32] commitment to anything else
[00:35:34] to demonstrate the distinction between fordism and post-fordism where fordism is kind of uh
[00:35:41] corresponds to like goodfellas and the godfather in that there was maybe some kind of connection
[00:35:46] to tradition i wouldn’t go so far there uh where formally i guess workers would have some
[00:35:52] connection to a single set of would have a single set of skills that they would apply then for
[00:35:57] a chunk of their lives by working in like one factory right and this is i don’t know why he
[00:36:04] because like this was still bad that people were you know being exploited on a mass scale and it
[00:36:11] seems like he’s he’s romanticizing this point in capitalism’s history but even if he isn’t and i’m
[00:36:16] just reading him wrong what he’s saying is that um under fordism you know you had some skill
[00:36:23] you’re always a white dude but in going to this job where you’d get paid well and you’d go back
[00:36:28] to your nuclear family with your 2.3 kids and white picket fence and dog this is not a good
[00:36:34] you know the vision of america as it as it was that we you know trump promised to bring people
[00:36:40] back to if it even existed so i i don’t know i have trouble trouble with this but this is the
[00:36:46] idea and that was kind of nice because it gave people a kind of structure whereas under post
[00:36:51] fordism that he puts uh as a correlative to the movie heat there’s no structure it’s you know
[00:36:57] people take jobs wherever they can so what we see here is the merchant emergence of a kind of gig
[00:37:04] a just-in-time economy so people just work to make enough through like contracts and stuff
[00:37:10] instead of any having any stability so this takes the pressure off of employers because they don’t
[00:37:15] need to pay out things like health care or or retirement plans or anything like that because
[00:37:22] they can just wherever there’s uh there’s a lot of turnover all employee employees uh come and go
[00:37:29] quite quickly so there’s no need to maintain any of these other things so it’s a kind of like
[00:37:34] pure wage labor where that is all you’re making so this is how um fisher characterizes this
[00:37:42] difference and this quote will i think i don’t know reveal to you my wariness or why i’m wary
[00:37:51] about the way that he romanticizes this fordest past he says where formerly workers could acquire
[00:37:57] a single set of skills and expect to progress upwards through a rigid organizational hierarchy
[00:38:04] now they they are required to periodically re-skill as they move from institution to
[00:38:11] institution from role to role which is obviously bad like this is something that we shouldn’t we
[00:38:16] shouldn’t celebrate this transition into post-forwardism absolutely not it is a worse
[00:38:21] situation but we can also just say that these were both terrible situations which he might be
[00:38:27] doing i don’t know i might be being unfair so what we see here is then this transition into a gig or
[00:38:34] or or in labor and of course this portends a transformation in the laborer’s nervous systems
[00:38:40] to make them capable of living through such unpredictability and precarity which of course is
[00:38:47] for fisher is the is the reason why there’s so much depression anxiety stress because there isn’t
[00:38:55] that sense of stability and he says and i don’t know why he says this but he’s like this is
[00:39:00] in part the the fault of the workers who many of them didn’t want
[00:39:04] to work in a single factory for 40 years and then earn enough for retirement and leave people
[00:39:10] wanted opportunities people wanted to be their own individual selves because they wanted you know
[00:39:16] what they did to reflect who they were and because who they were was always changing and
[00:39:21] developing then what they wanted to do would change and develop and so we almost yearn to go
[00:39:27] back to this kind of fortis instance where there was a much more clear line of demarcation between
[00:39:32] the worker and and you know the the
[00:39:34] landowner the capitalist whereas now we just you know we just hate ourselves we just turn that kind
[00:39:41] of judgmental pendulum or it swings back from the capitalist to ourselves where we are constantly
[00:39:48] surveying ourselves we are constantly putting ourselves under self-surveillance saying the
[00:39:53] same thing twice so that we can be effective laborers in this very precarious system
[00:39:59] and then he presents all these studies about why then there’s no surprise that
[00:40:04] we’ve seen an upshot in the in the cases of depression or stress in the past 30 or 40 years
[00:40:13] now one of the additional strategies that capitalist realism mobilizes is that it makes
[00:40:19] mental illness an individual problem that is reducible to biology so we can say there’s just
[00:40:25] something wrong with your biology there’s something wrong with you it’s not the system it’s not the
[00:40:29] structure it’s just you so take these drugs because we know it’s a natural thing and these
[00:40:34] drugs that are going to affect your natural physiological body are going to cure you so then
[00:40:40] what is what is happening or two things are happening here they are enforcing the strength
[00:40:44] of pharmaceutical companies but they are also integrating the idea that there is only individual
[00:40:50] solutions to large systemic problems which of course doesn’t get at the entire picture and that
[00:40:57] pushes us here into chapter six all that is solid melts into pr which is public relations market
[00:41:04] bureaucratic anti-production so he starts out this chapter by thinking about the movie office space
[00:41:10] and for those that haven’t seen it it’s a kind of funny take on the just how mundane life is for
[00:41:17] you know office workers where pretty much the most excitement in anyone’s day is what message
[00:41:26] the printer is going to read out to them that day in its ineptitude in its failure to actually
[00:41:33] produce the proper print
[00:41:34] that’s just one of the moments but what this movie shows or illustrates is the kind of um
[00:41:42] the the ineptitude of bureaucracy as well where there are all these kind of bureaucratic figures
[00:41:48] throughout the movie uh one of the big components of the film is that an uh a kind of exterior
[00:41:55] surveyor or an exterior uh couple of analysts or um that are going to gauge the kind of
[00:42:04] inefficacious how efficacious the workers are are two kind of bumbling uh totally incompetent people
[00:42:13] that are not actually effective at determining whether or not workers are being good workers
[00:42:18] so we have here a kind of reversal of of of the the process they were supposed to be you know the
[00:42:25] assessors of what is good work but then it’s revealed that they themselves are incapable of
[00:42:29] good work and one of the examples is that one of the main characters is named uh michael
[00:42:34] bolton and he’s the one who’s the one who’s the one who’s the one who’s the one who’s the one who’s the
[00:42:34] and these two these two these two characters get so caught up in the fact that he has the same name
[00:42:41] as the the pop star michael bolton that they completely forget about their job and they
[00:42:46] pretty much like you know give another guy who who shows to be completely inept and doesn’t care
[00:42:51] about his job give him like promotions and it’s really quite funny to see that that occur but
[00:42:57] anyway so this is one of those other things from earlier from his discussion of the real of
[00:43:02] capitalism that is in this case bureaucracy
[00:43:04] that you know claims to do away or to be done away with but that actually thrives under capitalism
[00:43:12] so bureaucracy for him is characterized as um an emphasis more on the image of doing work
[00:43:21] than actually doing work or then actually doing meaningful things so some of the things that are
[00:43:26] most important are keeping a paper trail uh you know going through series of phases that can you
[00:43:33] know always be uh
[00:43:34] checked up upon by other by people in authoritative positions or of higher positions in order to
[00:43:40] assess how well the bureaucracy worked and it seems as though bureaucracy only exists for more
[00:43:47] bureaucracy it only exists for to keep itself alive rather than to actually make the thing
[00:43:53] that it claims to be monitoring to be working for to make that thing better so this bureaucracy
[00:44:00] obviously participates in this kind of control society
[00:44:04] because it keeps people in line you know people within the bureaucracy and the people that the
[00:44:08] bureaucracy kind of watches keeps keeps gauge of now he he takes goes into a little tangent here
[00:44:15] with lacombe once more to think about the idea and and jizek to think about the idea of the big
[00:44:20] other which is something i’m not totally familiar with but we can think of the big other in this
[00:44:24] sense if i’m understanding it right for for fisher is kind of being the force that exists on the part
[00:44:32] of the masses that they have no knowledge of and that’s the idea of the big other and that’s the
[00:44:34] idea of the big other so this is a force that is necessary to kind of subtends the social field
[00:44:39] but it is like i said something that people aren’t aware of a kind of potential that they are not
[00:44:44] aware of so he gives the example of a jewelry company executive who admitted to selling poor
[00:44:49] quality jewels and whose company uh then subsequently collapsed as a result so he says
[00:44:55] that kind of the big other has power but the people don’t know this because once people found
[00:45:00] out about the um this jewelry company then they were
[00:45:04] didn’t go there and then the company died at the whims of this big other that the people didn’t
[00:45:10] organize around but it was a kind of group effort that we didn’t even know we had so fisher is kind
[00:45:16] of suggesting that maybe there’s a way to tap into that potential in order to challenge the
[00:45:21] entirety of capitalism but of course self-discipline keeps that at bay and here we move into chapter
[00:45:28] seven uh if you can watch the overlap of one reality with another
[00:45:34] realism as dream work and memory disorder so one of the really important things to do when coming
[00:45:40] to terms with the state of capitalism capitalist realism is that we’re not coming to terms with
[00:45:45] a reality that is grounded and fixed which would be kind of the basis of any reality and that’s what
[00:45:51] he’s trying to show is that it’s not real like in the way that we would associate anything with
[00:45:55] reality that is uh permanence or immutability but instead we are concerned here primarily with
[00:46:01] a system that is constantly evolving and changing
[00:46:04] so the conditions of its so-called reality are not by by any means consistent so i should add in
[00:46:11] brackets of course like there are a few principles that remain uh like some of the guiding principles
[00:46:17] to know that we are still within even a capitalist system you know that the system is predicated upon
[00:46:22] wage labor or something like that that is predicated on the uh drive for profits that
[00:46:27] you know it it it puts the you know profit motive above so-and-so thing as long as these things are
[00:46:33] still intact then we know that we’re still in a capitalist system and we’re still in a capitalist system
[00:46:34] we are still existing within capitalism um but with everything else it is constantly evolving
[00:46:41] and shifting like how those relations are conducted where they are being conducted against
[00:46:46] whom uh you know who becomes the oppressed who becomes the proletarian how is work done and so
[00:46:52] on and so forth so the kind of person that stands in for this system for um for fisher is kind of
[00:47:00] like the person that exists in middle management you know the people that were kind of depicted in
[00:47:04] office space so this is the person that you know probably earns just enough money to sleep at night
[00:47:10] with the kind of mild assurance that they will have a retirement at one point in their life
[00:47:15] like they stand in for this but they are also the person that is kind of the most controlled
[00:47:20] they are expected to be controlled in their being productive for this system so they’re being
[00:47:27] controlled is not so that they just act in one way they’re being controlled is that is so that
[00:47:32] they’ll be as flexible as they can possibly be and so on and so forth so i think that’s the kind of
[00:47:34] that’s the kind of thing that i think that’s the kind of thing that i think that’s the kind of
[00:47:35] to accommodate this system and in effect we lose sense of our even ourselves of our identities
[00:47:40] and he uses examples here of like the born films the born like born ultimatum and born identity and
[00:47:46] all those movies memento and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind these are all movies in which
[00:47:52] characters have lost their history they’ve lost their memories and that is for him um a good
[00:47:57] example of the kind of or a good way to illustrate this phenomenon that people undergo under capitalism
[00:48:04] but he specifically focuses on the born movies now if you aren’t familiar with that uh the first
[00:48:09] one i think is the born identity uh jason bourne played by matt damon wakes up i think he’s on like
[00:48:15] a boat or something and he has no memory of who he is but he has like unparalleled fighting skills
[00:48:20] and other knowledge about the world and how to be like a secret agent and stuff and fisher says that
[00:48:27] isn’t that interesting he loses his identity he doesn’t know who he is yet he he works extremely
[00:48:32] effectively in this system as though he was on a boat and he’s like oh my god i’m gonna die
[00:48:34] autopilot what better way to kind of characterize this worker today this worker that is forced to
[00:48:41] adapt in this kind of autopilot mode while losing all sense of self and to kind of gloss over these
[00:48:48] things we regress into hence the title a kind of dream work a kind of dream scenario where the
[00:48:54] contradictions of the system are glossed over are are sanitized so that we can keep going through
[00:49:01] this world and that puts us here into chapter
[00:49:04] eight there’s no central exchange so if we think of 2008 that is the financial crisis of 2008
[00:49:11] what we saw was not so much uh an antagonism between the state and capitalism we saw these
[00:49:17] two things going hand in hand where the state you know bailed out the big banks uh for having
[00:49:22] screwed over the world pretty much because these people got greedy they fell asleep at the wheel
[00:49:27] they were not um nearly as responsible as they should have been with everyone’s money or handing
[00:49:34] out money and it was a complete uh mess and of course no one really was punished for that even
[00:49:40] though they were their greed overtook everything but what we saw in this moment was that the state
[00:49:46] and capitalism are not nearly as separate as perhaps we sometimes believe them to be so we
[00:49:54] often then blame the state for problems that come about through capitalism and that you know the
[00:50:00] state just kind of exists as a scapegoat for the
[00:50:04] problems of capitalism now this happens for one kind of big reason for for fisher you know it
[00:50:13] serves as a scapegoat for one kind of big reason in that it convinces us that there is still some
[00:50:17] possible control over the market as though the market isn’t just a completely you know
[00:50:23] rhizomatic thing without anybody at the helm where you know everything is just
[00:50:27] it goes wherever it wants to and there’s no like real control there’s no single person to
[00:50:33] to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to
[00:50:34] to point the finger at because it’s a lot easier to blame the government which has a face like we
[00:50:39] know who belongs to the government we know where the government is we don’t know where capitalism
[00:50:46] is there’s no capitalism headquarters anywhere for people to kind of point the finger to so
[00:50:52] there is then no responsibility and he gives the example of a call center where he says that this
[00:50:57] the call center is kind of indicative of this lack of responsibility because in a when you call a
[00:51:04] call center and i’m sure we can all relate to this experience you know you talk to someone and
[00:51:08] they say i can’t help you let me connect you to someone else and then you talk to them and they’re
[00:51:14] like oh i’ll send you to to another person and you find out you’ve actually been sent to the
[00:51:19] first person and you’re like well who can help me here like it just seems like an endless deferral
[00:51:25] an endless process of deferring responsibility so all of this contributes to a kind of um because
[00:51:33] there’s no system really to point the finger at there is but it’s very difficult to see and
[00:51:39] there’s no single like headquarters of capitalism people then often turn uh the judgmental pendulum
[00:51:46] back upon themselves they see themselves as being the problem so people uh think that
[00:51:52] combating uh climate change is an individual problem as though it can only happen by like
[00:51:57] people recycling at home forget of course the fact that most carbon emissions emerge from
[00:52:03] these huge companies that that you know just produce en masse or like fracking or anything like that
[00:52:09] so that here then moves us into the final chapter where fisher gives us kind of a look about as to
[00:52:17] what we can do or what can be done and that’s chapter nine titled marxist super nanny so he
[00:52:24] meditates here on the show called super nanny which aired in like the early 2000s uh where a
[00:52:29] kind of goes into rich families houses and corrects
[00:52:33] corrects or kind of fixes the house or fixes the household that he thinks is kind of overrun by
[00:52:40] hedonistic children where parents are only interested in making their kids happy
[00:52:45] and he attributes this to capitalism where capitalism forces both parents to work so he
[00:52:50] says that like when parents actually do get to spend time with their kids they don’t want to be
[00:52:55] you know disciplinarians they want to have fun with their kids and that for for fisher produces
[00:53:03] like they’re super entitled to things which of course we can problematize and we should especially
[00:53:09] when we consider the fact that like why are we reacting like why why are we being reactionary to
[00:53:16] both parents working when for the longest time we seem to have no problem with the fact that women
[00:53:20] just exclusively were forced to stay at home but of course wait important to consider that
[00:53:28] so he says that the world almost needs a kind of marxist super nanny
[00:53:33] to come in and fix things to reveal the kind of systemic undertones of this world so that we can
[00:53:40] be better attuned to it in order to kind of elevate ourselves out away from it and this is different
[00:53:46] from kind of um adding in a an orderly almost fascistic uh paternalistic response like in the
[00:53:55] form and like what happened with all these kind of reactionary movements in the 20th century up
[00:54:00] till today of course um and instead he wants to
[00:54:03] think about the other possibilities or like the other kind of culprits that are important to
[00:54:09] recognize before we mount an effective strategy one such kind of culprit being the internet that
[00:54:15] for him just affirms our kind of hedonistic desires you know the wanting more pleasure than
[00:54:21] you know than we can really handle which is causing discord in our minds you know what
[00:54:26] and the internet is kind of like an echo chamber in that it just
[00:54:30] participates in that process of reproducing the same
[00:54:33] that is the internet like everything else wants us to see things be done uh the same way they’ve
[00:54:39] been done you know the year before and the year before that and the year before that because
[00:54:43] that’s really the effective way that um you know data can be extracted right because if people are
[00:54:49] suddenly changing it’s difficult or becomes more difficult then to anticipate trends to anticipate
[00:54:54] uh future desires and and so on so he says the marxist super nanny would not only be the one
[00:55:01] who laid down limitations
[00:55:03] who acted in our own interests when we are incapable of recognizing them ourselves
[00:55:08] but also the one prepared to take this kind of risk to wager on the strange and our appetite for it
[00:55:14] and what he means by that is kind of our appetite for the new and and that is to push us into
[00:55:19] something new to to open the door for something new so a kind of proper leftist strategy and
[00:55:26] this is him writing against like the kind of stalinist tradition tradition that stalinist
[00:55:31] response to capitalism in the
[00:55:33] you know 20th century um he’s saying that we don’t necessarily want more state we don’t want more
[00:55:39] bureaucracy because that’s part of the problem he he wants like more of a kind of individualistic
[00:55:44] response where people are free to embrace who they want to be which to the cautious listener
[00:55:51] might say well that seems like an extension of the logic of capitalism you know this hyper
[00:55:57] individualistic logic but of course he wants a balance he wants to find a balance between
[00:56:02] mobilizing group solidarity and mobilizing group solidarity and mobilizing group solidarity and
[00:56:03] within those groups you know fostering a sense of kind of self-identity and he says all problems
[00:56:11] then like and these are the examples he gives teenagers shooting each other and hospitals
[00:56:17] incubating aggressive super bugs are the effects of a single systemic cause capital
[00:56:23] where he and he believed that 2008 was a was a hit against capital and he interestingly prescribes a
[00:56:33] kind of self-regulated kind of aestheticism not aestheticism aestheticism which is uh kind of
[00:56:42] disciplining oneself you know not to enjoy the pleasures of the body or of anything else
[00:56:47] because that is what you know will move us into something better if we aren’t focused on what
[00:56:52] offers which is obviously problematic um but anyways it seems strange to me that he was
[00:57:01] celebrating um
[00:57:03] 2008 as a hit against capitalism because what followed that was you know not cuts to you know
[00:57:09] banking power it was cuts to you know health care cuts to education cuts to other social services
[00:57:17] through austerity through kind of uh large-scale efforts to cut funding to things that people
[00:57:24] needed of course not the military or at least well i can’t say that i don’t know in the united
[00:57:29] states context if that’s what happened but there were still many many many many many many many
[00:57:33] other cuts that happened to social services to public goods so the left should promise what
[00:57:41] capitalism promised but actually deliver on it and that is an end or what he calls a massive
[00:57:47] reduction of bureaucracy which would necessitate a kind of focus on individuality as we kind of said
[00:57:53] and the realization of these individuals rather than on their work or them attaining their
[00:57:58] identity through their work in favor or at the behest of a kind of bureaucratic
[00:58:03] overlord or bureaucratic overlords and yeah that’s pretty much how he ends this off here
[00:58:11] it’s you know this is a really good contribution obviously uh to contemporary marxist thought
[00:58:18] it would also be good though to consider some things like race or gender or you know sex or
[00:58:26] anything like that because these things are affected differently under capitalism and i think
[00:58:33] by considering these things if we’re going to maintain a kind of marxist framework that is if
[00:58:38] we are going to consider the ways in which capital lies at the root of some of these large problems
[00:58:43] i think we can develop a better picture about what to do if we develop a more broad picture or more
[00:58:49] kind of holistic picture about how it affects people differently because then we’re going to
[00:58:54] have a kind of broader uh kind of camp of knowledge or kind of broader base of knowledge
[00:59:00] from which to pull to understand our target
[00:59:03] that is in this case capitalism but yeah so that’s about it if anyone has you know concerns i was
[00:59:10] pretty hard on fisher here um you know i i did sanitize my criticisms a little bit because it’s
[00:59:17] not you know you’re not here for that um but yeah if you know if i mischaracterized him in any
[00:59:23] way i’d love to hear about it if if he says things in other books that might clarify some points or
[00:59:27] you know would make it so that i would necessarily necessarily extend an olive branch to him
[00:59:33] absolutely i’d love to hear about it uh and until then catch you next time