Austerity protests can win determinate goals unlike symbolic anticapitalist carnivals

Evidence

For that reason, this is definitely not the time to recline into the leftist version of capitalist realism, the defeatist counterpart to the Bullingdon club’s bullishness. Now is the time to organise and agitate. The cuts can provide a galvanising focus for an anti-capitalist campaign that can succeed. Protests in these conditions won’t have the hubristic impotence of anticapitalist “feelgood feelbad” carnivals and kettles. This is shaping up to be a bitter struggle, but there are specific, determinate and winnable goals that can be achieved here: it isn’t a question of taking a peashooter to the juggernaut of capital. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1470

Categorization

• XREF: Fisher’s ‘feelgood feelbad’ carnival critique recurs in his writing on activism; connects to his broader critique of spectacle-left. — connects to: Specific winnable goals distinguish effective anti-capitalist struggle from mere carnival — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1470; Anti-capitalist protest becomes carnivalesque background noise without an alternative model — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 32; A protest’s media success can diverge from its organizers’ goals — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 393 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Specific winnable goals distinguish effective anti-capitalist struggle from mere carnival #corroborates (0.92) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1470
• Anti-capitalist protest becomes carnivalesque background noise without an alternative model #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 32
• A protest’s media success can diverge from its organizers’ goals #qualifies (0.72) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 393