Neoliberalism won by absorbing sixties desires the left failed to address

Evidence

Neoliberalism consolidated the discrediting of state socialism, establishing a vision of history in which it laid claim to the future and consigned the left to obsolescence. It captured the discontent with centralised bureacratic leftism, successfully absorbing and metabolising the desires for freedom and autonomy that had emerged in the wake of the Sixties. But — and this is a crucial point — this isn’t to say that those desires inevitably and necessarily led to the rise of neoliberalism. Rather, we can see the success of neoliberalism as a symptom of the leftist failure to adequately respond to these new desires. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1716

Categorization

• XREF: The absorption of countercultural desires by capital echoes themes in Fisher’s other work and broader analyses of how market ideology metabolizes critique. — connects to: Neoliberalism generated desires that remain unsatisfied and could anchor left renewal — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 163; Neoliberalism’s triumph reduced left politics to survival through a desert trial. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1560; Council house sales succeeded by harnessing Sixties desires for freedom — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1650 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Capital absorbed the left’s own liberation desires against it #expands (0.95) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 74
• Neoliberalism appropriated dancefloor freedom while the left ceded it #exemplifies (0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1386
• Neoliberalism existed to crush Sixties democratic socialism and is now failing #contradicts (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2022
• Alt-right politics inverted sixties counterculture by recasting progressive institutions as oppressive #corroborates (0.70) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 451