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

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

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.

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.”

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.