Widespread discontent stays apolitical without an organized agent to mediate it
Evidence
The decline of the unions is probably the biggest factor in the rise of capitalist realism for ordinary people. Now we find ourselves in a situation where everybody disdains bankers and finance capitalism, and the level of control that these people still hold over all of our lives. Everyone is aghast at the plunder, avoidance of tax and so forth, yet at the same time there is this sentiment that we can do nothing about it. And why has that sentiment grown so powerful? It is because there really is no agent to mediate the feelings people have and organise those people. The effect is that discontent can be widespread, but without such an agent it will remain at the level of individual disaffection. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1645
Categorization
- XREF: Builds on the whole ‘privatisation of stress’ theses and connects to the book-claim about unions as psychic/political infrastructure disappearing since the 1980s. — connects to: Universal anti-capitalist discontent stays inert without an organizing agent. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1645; Popular uprisings succeed only when elite allies coordinate with mass discontent; Modern protest movements are transient swarms held together by stimuli, not durable organizations — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization…, 229 (+1 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: A compact statement of the mechanism by which grievances without organizational agents collapse into depression rather than politics.
Broader Connections
- Universal anti-capitalist discontent stays inert without an organizing agent.
#corroborates(0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1645 - Modern protest movements are transient swarms held together by stimuli, not durable organizations
#complicates(0.78) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 229 - Popular uprisings succeed only when elite allies coordinate with mass discontent
#qualifies(0.75)