Capitalism’s defenders justify it as the least worst option rather than as ideal
Evidence
We live in a contradiction: a brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian — where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone — is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 412
Categorization
- XREF: This is Badiou’s formulation of capitalist realism itself — the very term Fisher later made famous. Connects to ‘the least worst option’ no-Good logic in contemporary political discourse. — connects to: Free-market economists saw themselves as doomed defenders of a dying creed. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 41; Frank Knight advocated markets reluctantly as the least-bad option, not from conviction — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 97
- SEED: An essay contrastive structure: how ‘least worst option’ rhetoric has become the default defense of every failing institution, from healthcare to transit to democratic governance.
Broader Connections
- Free-market economists saw themselves as doomed defenders of a dying creed.
#corroborates(0.78) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 41