surprisingly one of the more digestible leftist philosophy reads, although i would eschew from calling it "plain language." gotta love zizek recommending this book in his philosopher circle jerk as if he isnt the most quoted theorist in it. ( )

zie week 49 2023 ( )

One wonders, on a meta-philosophical/political level, whether depressed tracts like these, where allusions and metaphors that are meant to carry great theoretical weight are sourced in mere cultural artifacts like Supernanny and Heat and The Godfather etc. etc., simply carry out the reflexive impotence and interpassivity and depressive hedonia that Fisher rallies against. Ok, so I’ve spent a couple of hours re-reading this and I feel like having a cry and then a wank and then after all of that maybe another cry - is that all the Post-left postmodern blah blah theorists have to offer? Is this praxis? Is it so tyrannical and Kafkaesque that schools in England have internal controls/Maoist-esque self-criticism so as to lessen the frequency of OFSTED inspections? In a fight against climate catastrophe, or whatever great Capital-instigated crisis you want to point at, am I just meant to rethink the concept of general will? Get rid of bureaucracy? Come come, Mr Fisher, this is weak - leftist populism, maybe a few instances of surrealism’s most essential and despicable act (look to the second manifesto, bang bang), wouldn’t that do the trick? Or must we just endorse a Žižekian quietism, think through things and stand around until we see the light at the end of the tunnel (and being perceptive intellectuals, recognise that it is a train hurtling toward us)? Little works like this seem to only really have a call to action toward paralysis in their affective impact, and are quickly sucked up, “reterritorialised” if you want to be pedantic, by the very structure of Capital itself. I’m rambling. I still like Mark. Rest in Peace Champ. ( )

With the amount of references to Zizek, from concepts to ideas, you're left wondering why you didn't read a Zizek book instead of this, since it's seemingly the only person who the writer thinks knows what's going on. Got a good chuckle of the criticism of commodification of culture and disparaging of capitalist influence from a guy who drops media references constantly. Just like Zizek tries to justify being captured by the boobtube as if he's doing important research. The book also forgets to answer the question it poses. ( )

Capitalist Realism is a powerhouse of a book that effectively dissects, (in its very few pages) the pervasive idea that not only is Neo Liberal Capitalism the best, it is in fact the only possible option for organizing a society. Fisher has an enormous talent for condensing complexities into wonderfully pithy sentences. Below are a couple that really stuck out to me:

“What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our cooperation.”

“A moral critique of Capitalism, emphasizing he way in which it leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine, and war, can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated, easily painted as utopianism.”

Overall a good, readable, and only occasionally dense, book that encapsulates the contradictions and pitfalls of our current economic model.
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