Thirty years of hegemony atrophied the left’s imaginative capacity
Evidence
But there’s another way in which capitalist realism persists. Capitalist realism can also be a seen as the inability to imagine an alternative to capitalism, and I don’t think we’re close to overcoming this yet. Not surprisingly, after thirty years of capitalist realism, our capacity to even conceive of alternatives to capitalism has atrophied. Opposition to neoliberalism is growing, but this new anti-capitalist mood has yet to bring forth any powerful vision of post-capitalism. Certain tendencies in anti-capitalism are, in effect, inversions of capitalist realism — they accept that capital controls technological modernity, and offer only withdrawal and retreat as an alternative. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2229
Categorization
- XREF: This is the imagination-atrophy argument Fisher developed in Capitalist Realism; resonates with Fredric Jameson on the difficulty of imagining the end of capitalism. — connects to: The left’s embrace of pluralism wrongly led it to abandon hegemonic alternatives — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 501; The old left’s deafness to culture let the new right claim modernisation — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1379; Neoliberals out-thought the left on how knowledge is organized politically. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 137 (+1 more)
- SEED: Angle: withdrawal-and-retreat anti-capitalism as the mirror image of the system it opposes — escapism that concedes the terrain of technological modernity.
Broader Connections
- The left’s embrace of pluralism wrongly led it to abandon hegemonic alternatives
#expands(0.78) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 501 - The left lost by framing freedom and fairness as a forced choice
#exemplifies(0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 104 - The old left’s deafness to culture let the new right claim modernisation
#exemplifies(0.74) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1379 - Neoliberals out-thought the left on how knowledge is organized politically.
#qualifies(0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 137