NEOLIBERALISM WON’T SAVE US BUT NEITHER WILL FATALISM.
In Chapter 3 of Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative, titled Capitalism and the Real, Mark Fisher writes that Capitalist Realism
“cannot be confined to art or the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere… acting as kind of an invisible barrier constraining thought and action.” (16)
Capitalist realism keeps us from dreaming of, let alone asking for, a better way of living. Fisher offers in this chapter:
“One strategy against capitalist realism could involve invoking the Real(s) underlying the reality that capitalism presents to us. Environmental catastrophe is one such Real.” (18)
Fisher suggests we use the reality principle to combat capitalist realism. He refers to French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who describes the reality principle as being particularly important when an “ideology presents itself as an empirical fact. It is here that we should be most alert to the functioning of ideology.” Capitalist realism presents Capitalism as the only working system; it presents this as a fact, as a certainty. It presents a reality in which the market can solve every issue, in which the Earth has infinite resources and is separate from us. Lacan defines the ‘Real’ as the thing that ‘reality’ suppresses. Capitalist realism as a ‘reality’ suppresses many things:
- That Climate Catastrophe is beginning
- That capitalism is the cause of said catastrophe
- That capitalism isn’t the only way
- That capitalism needs to be replaced with a fundamentally different system
He points out that any representation of climate catastrophe in the capitalist culture only exists as simulacra because “its real implications for capitalism [are] too traumatic to be assimilated into the system.” Capitalism does not and will not admit it’s role in the catastrophe, but instead will turn the crisis into a marketing opportunity (Greenwashing, Reusable Straws, Tote Bags, Waterbottles, etc.).
“A moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing the ways 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 naive utopianism.
Capitalist Realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism’s ostensible ‘realism’ turns out to be nothing of the sort.”
BUT… WHAT NOW?
MARK FISHER DIED BY SUICIDE on January 17, 2017, before the publication of his last book the weird and the eerie. I COULD WRITE A WHOLE OTHER WEBSITE ABOUT THE IMPACT OF CAPITALISM / NEOLIBERALISM / CLIMATE GRIEF ON MENTAL HEALTH. THE REALITY IS THAT WE KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES SINCE COLONIALISM AND SCIENTISTS SINCE THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES HAVE BEEN BEGGING US TO LISTEN TO THEIR KNOWLEDGE. they HAVE THE SOLUTIONS, we know the solutions. but PUTTING THEM IN PLACE IS ANOTHER STORY. IT IS DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE BUT capitalism is not the only option, but it truly is not the only way.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of Kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin
MAKE IT EASIER TO IMAGINE THE END OF CAPITALISM THAN THE END OF THE WORLD.
I’ve linked these videos on the For Further Learning Tab but I’ll put them here too.
