Why It's Easier to Imagine the End of the World Than the End of Capitalism

Capitalism is not the only way to organize our society. To move beyond it, the Left needs to imagine viable alternatives.

J. Patrick Patterson

Illustration by Kazimir Iskander

cap•i•tal•ist re•al•ism

noun

  1. the idea that capitalism is the only viable way to organize the economy
  2. our collective inability to imagine an alternative to capitalism

Can you give an example?

The government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. Allowing the banking system to disintegrate was held to be unthinkable,” the late British philosopher Mark Fisher writes in his 2009 book, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, and what ensued was a vast hemorrhaging of public money into private hands.” In other words, because there was seemingly no way out, we just dug in deeper. 

Other key features of capitalist realism, Fisher writes, include the individualization of stress, and the absurd bureaucracy and excessive auditing in education.

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How’d we get here?

Amid the anti-authoritarian milieu of the 1960s and the absence of a clear left-wing path forward, the Right was able to shift public sentiment toward capitalism as the natural order. The vibe was, Sure, capitalism has its issues, but at least we’re not one of those discredited authoritarian regimes.” 

By the 1970s, neoliberalism — the idea that everything should be run like a business without government intervention — gained popularity. Idealogues went on a deregulation and privatization spree, and, in 1979, interest rates began to skyrocket. The economy restructured its expectation of stable, well-paying jobs into a more flexible” workforce characterized by part-time labor, outsourcing and instability — which weakened unions. 

These socioeconomic shifts, says Fisher, allowed capitalist realism to rule the political-economic unconscious.”

“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” —Fredric Jameson, “Future City” (2003 essay)

What’s the solution?

The moral critique of capitalism certainly isn’t it, Fisher says, because that can allow social problems like poverty and homelessness to be framed as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated [can be] easily painted as naive utopianism.” 

What’s needed instead are anti-capitalist movements and political organizations to actually challenge the current system. Fisher says the Left needs to occupy new political terrain and offer people solutions to the problems that capitalism creates. He calls for a politicization of mental health, for example, to emphasize the political and economic causes of anxiety and depression, and a rejection of the excessive auditing and surveillance that stifles teachers. 

Most fundamentally, we need to believe an alternative is worth fighting for. Fisher puts it this way: From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

This is part of ​“The Big Idea,” a series offering brief introductions to progressive theories, policies, tools and strategies that can help us envision a world beyond capitalism.

J. Patrick Patterson is the Associate Editor at In These Times. He has previously worked as a politics editor, copy editor, fact-checker and reporter. His writing on economic policies and electoral politics has been published in numerous outlets.

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