Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Mark Fisher deftly outlines the contours of our world as it appears today in Late Capitalism, and how Capital rules even our very imaginations through its logic of desire and production. He shows how everything in our world, even public services and universities, must act as though it is a business providing a product, that we are rational actors, that science and statistics can guide us to the truth, etc. His blistering critique points out that it can't be actual reality that capitalist realism is dealing with, as we are all anxious, miserable, confused, and alienated; and this shows no sign of being resolved through Capitalism, as it is in fact the result of Capitalism and of Neoliberalism's reign legitimized via Capitalist Realism.

He makes a good case, however, that Neoliberalism, while it employs capitalist realism to enforce its ideological supremacy, is not identical to capitalist realism, which does not, by necessity, have to carry a neoliberal flavor to it. Neoliberalism, Fisher argues, stands defrocked and delegitimized by its handling of the 2008 global financial crisis, and as such we, here among the ruins at the “End of History,” can still find new alternatives and build them – alternatives which embrace collective responsibility and a generative constraining of desire in ways the Neoliberal world order, by its own ideological constraints, can not.

Capitalism will eventually destroy us, and in many aspects already has. Unfortunately, it is harder to imagine the end of capitalism then it is to imagine the end of the world, but maybe we can change that. Capitalist Realism explores these alternatives using words that are too big for my monkey brain to understand.

Capitalist Realism was thought-provoking and somewhat deserved its status as a classic introduction to post-Marxism.
Fisher rightly highlights how capitalism portrays itself as having no alternative, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and terms this as inherently anti-utopian ‘Capitalist Realism'. It doesn't matter that the rise of free markets means ever-increasing inequality, the demise of public education and healthcare, and growing disillusionment and apathy - all that matters is capitalism cannot be allowed to perish. Consequently, capitalism is not constrained by politics anymore - instead, political systems fight amongst themselves to carve a space within capitalism.
Fisher also highlights capitalist realism as encouraging interpassivity (or protesting capitalism through media consumption). He also tries to view mental health through the lens of his theory (coining a term called reflexive impotence). People recognise that capitalism is inherently flawed, but they also believe they can do nothing about it -leading to a lack of self-worth and depression. I somewhat disagree with this argument because not every mental health issue can be laid at capitalism's doorstep, but I digress.
It is frighteningly easy to get lost in the doom-and-gloom. Still, to Fisher's credit, he's not a (complete) doomer - he provides meaningful criticism, added on with a warning not to get too cynical about democracy and the State because what good has ever come of handing over the entire public sphere to the industry?
All in all, an eye-opening experience and one which I wish I had read much sooner. Must-read.