Capitalist Realism

thankfully two other people beat me to the punch on this one and i have to say i'm not going to miss it

i'm going to go and read deleuze now

I should have read Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism" at the very beginning of my incursion into philosophy - it would have made many concepts easier to grasp. It's a solid introduction to concepts such as "reality versus The Real", "the big Other", to the critique of ideology.

The tone is closer to "anecdotes told over beer" than to a formal philosophical essay. To my understanding, the book is, after all, an extension of ideas that Fisher was already writing about on his blog.

This book ties together a lot of strands of modern thought into a coherent narrative about the corrosive effects of capitalism. I'm sure I missed a lot the first time through, so it's on my list for a re-read.

A scathing indictment of capitalism, by (successfully) putting the blame for several contemporary social ilks on it.

My only criticism is that while it makes a strong case both for capitalist realism existing as an ideology and it being a problem, the book does not make the case for any alternatives. It does contain some actionable suggestions for how to fight capitalism. But it falls short of providing a systemic alternative. As such, while it successfully argues that capitalist realism is a problem, it doesn't fully prove that it's wrong.

Nevertheless, a good read and well argued.

No society survives effects of its material existence on social, economic, political, cultural and personal lives. K-Punk knows like nobody else how to describe the burden of the consumerist society on its every member, from the moment of their waking up to the second of their going to sleep. The ubiquitous presence of market demands, propaganda of individualist existence, and economic hardship which, for most people, leaves no space and time for analysis and introspection, is conveyed in his usual, rare eloquence, and even rarer emotional intelligence.