Mistrust of hierarchy and organization fuels capitalist realism’s freeze on systemic change

Evidence

Adam Curtis’ recent documentary series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace argued that discourses of self-organisation, which had formerly been associated with the counterculture, were now absorbed into dominant ideology. Hierarchy was bad; networks were good. Organisation itself — held to be synonymous with “top-down control” — was both oppressive and inefficient. There is clearly something in Curtis’ arguments. Practically all mainstream political discourse is suspicious of, and sceptical towards, the state, planning and the possibilities of organised political change. This feeds into the ideological framework that I have called capitalist realism: if systemic change can never happen, all we can do is make the best of capitalism. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1580

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fisher’s own capitalist realism concept and to Curtis’s argument that countercultural anti-hierarchy discourse was absorbed into dominant ideology. — connects to: Capitalist realism frames workplace change as both inevitable and desirable — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 107; Capitalist realism makes alternatives to capitalism unthinkable — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 8; Loathed-but-complied systems typify capitalist realism (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Capitalist realism makes alternatives to capitalism unthinkable #expands (0.90) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 8
• Loathed-but-complied systems typify capitalist realism #exemplifies (0.85)
• Advanced capitalism generates a false conviction of individual centrality that blocks collective action #expands (0.78) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 808
• Advanced capitalism’s superstructures slow revolutionary action and demand long-term strategy #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 167