The Capitalist Realism I will be writing about is not the German art movement of the 1960s, but the concept written about by the late Mark Fisher, most notably in his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?.
Fisher gives a brief summary of the meaning of capitalist realism in Issue 1 of STRIKE! Magazine:
“Capitalist realism can be seen as a belief: that there’s no alternative to capitalism, that, as Fredric Jameson put it, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Other systems might be preferable to capitalism, but capitalism is the only one that is realistic. Or it can be seen as an attitude of resignation and fatalism in the face of this—a sense that all we can do is accommodate ourselves to the dominance of capitalism, and limit our hopes to containing its worst excesses… Ultimately, what capitalist realism amounts to is the elimination of left-wing politics and the naturalisation of neoliberalism.”
Capitalist realism: Is There Still No Alternative? (2012)
