Capitalist realism became entrenched through the 1984 miners’ strike defeat

Evidence

For any British, left-wing person, remembering the mid-1980s is liable to provoke a sadness that is visceral, choking, wrenching. I still can’t recall without weeping the day when the miners returned to work in 1985 after a year on strike. What I have called capitalist realism — the deeply embedded belief that there is no alternative to capitalism — was definitively established in the UK during that period, in Margaret Thatcher’s second term in government. For a significant proportion of the population, the 1982 Falklands War had transformed Thatcher from a figure of loathing into a glorious war leader. This renewed popularity, together with the formation of the Social Democratic Party by Labour Party defectors, allowed the Tories to achieve a landslide victory in the 1983 general election. It proved to be a traumatic defeat for the British left in general, and for the Labour Party in particular. Labour began its long march towards Blairism and its eventual complete capitulation to neoliberalism and corporate tyranny. Meanwhile, the crushing of the miners’ strike, and the wave of privatisations that the Tories unleashed, created the conditions for the neoliberal Britain that is only now falling apart, thirty years later. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1362

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concise authorial definition of capitalist realism as ‘the deeply embedded belief that there is no alternative to capitalism.’
• XREF: This is the core thesis of Fisher’s own book Capitalist Realism, providing a compact causal account of how the 1983-85 defeats embedded no-alternative belief. — connects to: Miners’ alliance with the state sealed their defeat through austerity — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 419; Thatcher’s second term and the miners’ defeat concretised British capitalist realism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1362; The 1984-85 miners’ strike’s defeat was only registered and secured a decade later — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 212

Broader Connections

• Thatcher’s second term and the miners’ defeat concretised British capitalist realism #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1362
• The 1984-85 miners’ strike’s defeat was only registered and secured a decade later #qualifies (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 212