I think Capitalist Realism was summed up to me when he said that it doesn’t want workers to be productive, it simply wants to eliminate their ability to imagine any alternative.
@deso92 heartening comments. its so topsy turvy to see people spitting on this guy's grave, if only because his message troubles the self-flattering narrative of society's more well adjusted... no more empathetic, caring leftist 'thinker' comes to mind
Which is why I wince every time I hear the term ‘hard working families’, as if there is a moral and ethical superiority in being too stressed, busy, and anxious, to have meaningful or purposeful relationships with one another. The agenda is clear, subjugation to the corporation and the state. Mark is right though, it is collapsing under it’s own weight, as it was never fit for purpose. We are not machine we are alive.
The present world event has shown that the old model is over.. What is coming is much worse.. Check out Alan watt who died last week. He nails ths nwo agenda 21 etc.. Depressing but planned over decades.
@@OjoRojo40 Which is exactly why a school of thought could emerge from him. The accessibility of his and Deleuze's ideas and writing couldn't be more different
@@OjoRojo40 I think that every new school of philosophy is allways some kind of product of old school of philosophy. There would not be Marxism without Heglism, there would not be Hegel without Kant etc.
the depth of the vulnerability when he says "you haven't worked hard enough telling yourself a positive story" at 29:55 is staggering; you can almost see the pain of it throwing him off balance for a second :(
Mark Fisher, David Graeber, Michael Brooks... The left has lost quite a few legends in recent years. It hurts, compounded with the torture of living in this hellhole of a world.
This talk is indeed haunting, It haunts all who have to work for a living, What a terrible loss both Fisher and Graeber. It's almost unbelievable we lost both of these profound thinkers.
what a brilliant mind. it's gut-wrenching to hear of his death, especially having recently read an article he had written about his struggle with depression. may you rest in peace, mark.
I recently viewed a RU-vid video about the homeless and working poor in Seattle Washington, USA. One case showed a temporary construction worker who lived with his two children and wife in a tent city. He was asked if he was a proud American. He had difficulty answering. Ultimately he claimed he loved his country. He was then asked how he felt about the inequality between rich and poor in the US. He claimed he felt no animosity toward the rich and added, "I've never been given a job by a poor person". The entire orientation here is erroneous, but to put it in the vernacular - that's just the way it is.
It's because people in need are rarely fit to go helping those around them. People in America trust the wealthy to distribute wealth within society, but helping people doesn't stop at just giving them things, ESPECIALLY when there's a financial return expected on whatever was given, it's not a gift if it's expected back with interest. They're being exploited, and all they can think is "well, at least I've still got work", even when they've got no home, even when there isn't enough to eat, even when there's not enough time to care for your kids, at least they've still got that job that pays shit, always asks more of them everyday, and doesn't care about the difficulty of the work, or lack of tools to get it done, at least they've still got that job that pays them a couple crumbs a day, as long as they have that, they can trick themselves into thinking that everything's still fine and dandy, because, really, they do feel as helpless as they are, but are terrified of recognizing it, as though realizing it would suddenly make all the losses real...
Here is a partial transcript, done on the morning of Good Friday 2020, during coronavirus quarantine : [11:00] Part of the problem I think was impatience. With a lot of the 60s counter-culture people flipped out of dominant reality very quickly and assumed that was just how things were going to go now, and everything will flow from that. One of the values that we need at the moment is a kind of a revolutionary patience, really. There was a kind of impatience in that period and a sense that all of the historical structures, stratifying structures that had dominated human life up to that point could be dissolved within a generation, but just wasn't as quick as that. They are much more tenacious than that. What the right bet on, was the tenacity of these structures, that they would return, and it's a long process to dismantle them. The third form of consciousness that was also around this period and neoliberalism had to subjugate, was that which was theorized and practiced through post-socialist-feminism and which goes under the rubric of consciousness-raising. Consciousness-raising practices, the key aspect of, is people would talk about their feelings, but they would relate those feelings to structures. Typically, very quickly, when people got together they would see that they have common problems and that these problems weren't their fault. Things that they have been encouraged to blame themselves for, or feel inadequate for, could be related to structures. Typically patriarchy and capitalism and their interrelation. And this obviously touches on all areas of life. [13:40] Part of the power of consciousness-raising is its kind of molecular contagion, that any group of people can engage in consciousness-raising. I guess the key thing of all of the things that I've talked about in terms of the issue of consciousness, is a transformative power of consciousness itself. That consciousness is not then a raised consciousness. It's not simply that facts are recognized that were already there. When people develop group consciousness, when they develop class consciousness, it's not that they passively register something that is true. It's that they constitute themselves as a group, which has already changed the so-called world. So consciousness is immediately transformative, and shifts in consciousness become the basis for other kinds of transformation. [18:30] It's the specter of democratic socialism or libertarian communism that neoliberalism that was organized around preventing. You can say that the key evental moment of neoliberalism was the crashing of the IND government in Chile. Why? Because that was everything that capital feared. Because it was no longer this kind of soviet stereotype, of a top-down Stalinist bureaucratic and dreary monolith. The waves of this democratic socialism throughout the US and in Europe and elsewhere also. And that it what had to be stopped. That what had to be stopped, eliminated for even a possibility of existing. And in place of that then this mandatory Individualism. This individualism of neoliberalism has always to be policed. There is always the danger of consciousness being raised again. There is always the danger when people are together that they will develop a collective consciousness, that will succeed from these forms of miserable angst-ridden individualism which is a kind of supervised condition. And I think that is where we are at the moment. [17:00] So you have to organize a loathing around people who want working. So that a possibility of life beyond this miserable angst-ridden anxiety-dream drudgery is not anywhere. They've done it really well. We've as close as possible, I think, in Britain in the 21st century to eliminating that possibility, as any society as ever come really. That's the bad news. Good news is, that it's all breaking down, and we can see the symptoms of that breakdown all around us really. All certainties are off, for good and bad. The Santa has disappeared. That's partly why they are in such utter fucking panic. Because, you know, they sort of know it at some level, that the center-ground that they've posited as eternal, with all their, you know, careerist orientation, that's collapsed now, and it's never going to come back. In all sorts of ways that's also not good because it has led to the rise of the right, and particularly the horrific kind of specters around this kind of migrant crisis, the worst kind of elements of European history, the specters of them returning. [30:00] People developing new kind of structures. One thing we can say, and that's I suppose new in my lifetime, that the left has learned since 2008, the left has learned stuff. The right doesn't seem to have anything. Practically all my lifetime every tiny thing the left got something, the right has been one step ahead of it. Well, you know, it's been 7-8 years since the financial crash. They've got nada. We kind of have to face this. They haven't got anything, but new kinds of political formation are emerging, new kinds of thinking, new kinds of organization are emerging on the left. And ok, Syriza might have been crashed, and might not succeed there fully. Jeremy Corbyn, might be crushed. But, I think we can be confident. Those two things are related anyway. That there is now a new wave. There wouldn't have been Corbyn without Syriza, and if Corbyn is crushed something else can emerge later. There is a new wave and I think we can now start to ride it towards post-capitalism.
My god do I love a guy who takes on a topic like this! I am just learning about Mark and have been devastated to learn he has already died. Wow what a loss... these kind of intellectuals are in short supply in our video game and junk food world today
To me his ideas are part of anti-work philosophy, that many do not understand. It is not just "work sucks" I do not want to do it or I do not want to contribute to society. It is the way work is set up in capitalism at its core is dehumanizing and impacts all facets of our lives. Wage labor is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism that leads to massive alienation, and furthermore it is a form of control over our entire lives not just our working hours (which alone is bad enough).
Agree, I linked this with 'Bullshit Jobs' as soon as I read the synopsis of his book (then went on to read the book Capitalism Realism). Glad to see Fisher shout him out here. Bullshit Jobs brings awareness to the issue with some attempts at explanation and Capitalism Realism explains why it's so inherently bizarre and seemingly illogical very well.
that, but also his texts need to be considered through the lens of his eventual suicide - Fisher is a hugely inspiring thinker to me but his cynicism does overwhelm a lot of his broader ideological ideas - I have to remind myself that entirely leaning in to his perspective is also leaning in to a life costing cynicism (although this, for clarity, doesn't negate his points)
If you have time to watch this or to attend the evermore fashionable street protests, capitalism hasn’t dehumanized your life but rather made it possible for you to complain.
Wow! He really nails it, what I feel about my job and what I see around me. I've never heard it articulated so coherently and palpably before. Too bad I first came across Mark Fisher's work only yesterday through a chance RU-vid affiliation.
I sympathize with Fisher's thought, and lament what has happened to my fellow humans, even though I'm one of the few people I know lucky enough live an older style of life, working less and spending more time being human. Too bad my fellow humans are almost always "too busy"
What's fascinating is where Mr. Fischer's analysis overlaps with arch Catholic conservative E. Michael Jones. Neo-Liberalism has created a hall of mirrors, (not so fun house), where the notion of balance or gravity itself is up for life style choice.
The mirrors in this dystopian fun-house threaten to reveal our own Jungian shadows, and it is the narcissistic fear of this self-betrayal and vulnerability that keeps us under the control of an illegitimate system of economic co-option. Our social management of equitable economic relationships with each other is anti-social at best.
My favourite of Fisher's works is "Good For Nothing", describing mental health and particularly depression as resulting from the maddening neoliberal "believe and you can achieve" mentality that describes every success as entirely yours and therefore every failure as entirely yours. Audio version here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-e_h_5Ykj7vA.html
Great analysis of where it's at. A string of key points one after the other. The only false note, the obligatory happy ending. More realistic to end with a dire warning. Don't hide the Doom.
Getting to the end of this when he’s expressing optimism and bringing up corbyn etc I can’t get the “does he know? He doesn’t know” Batman meme out of my head 😢
A great lecture worth summarising. I used online tools to do that. I hope you all find it useful. **Title: All This Is Temporary - on Capitalism and Consciousness: A Critical Analysis** - **Defining Capitalism Realism** - Conceptualizing capitalism beyond mere economic system - Understanding capitalist realism as a form of consciousness deflation - **The Rise of Capitalist Consciousness** - Correlation between capitalism's rise and diminishing consciousness diversity - Neoliberalism as a strategy to crush emerging consciousness forms - **Forms of Consciousness in the 60s and 70s** - Class Consciousness - Decline of class consciousness post-70s - Impact of neoliberal strategies on class structures and unions - Psychedelic Consciousness - Expansion of psychedelic culture beyond drug use - Beatles and mainstreaming of psychedelic consciousness - Socialist Feminist Consciousness - Practice of consciousness raising - Relating personal feelings to structural issues - **Neoliberalism's Response to Consciousness** - Libidinal engineering and reality manipulation - Imposition of anxious, time-strapped consciousness - Promotion of individualism and eradication of collective time - **Symptoms of Neoliberalism's Breakdown** - Collapse of the center and rise of right-wing populism - Emergence of leftist movements like Corbynism - Left's learning curve since the 2008 financial crisis - **Prospects for Post-Capitalism** - Riding the wave towards a post-capitalist future - Possibility for emergence of new political formations - Optimism in building towards post-capitalism, despite setbacks
@SH-cu9rc Thank you very much. I missed some of the words because the audio is so awful and his British accent difficult for me. I would like to add something to this category of yours: *Forms of Consciousness in the 60s and 70s*. Not a direct quotation. Consciousness, especially experiencing group consciousness, makes one realize that the perceived reality is plastic and fluid, not static and concrete. Relating personal feelings and *experiences, as in feminist teach-ins.
@@lunaridge4510 Thank you for your comment and addition. Yes, some people find some of the British accents difficult to understand, although his is 'mainstream', if you can say that. But, I notice that it does not flow, and you can tell there is a lot going on in his mind while speaking. Also, when you know how much he struggled with his mental health, you'd understand some of the reasons behind his way of speaking, at times better than others though. He was a great man, he is a great loss. RIP
I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I'm sick. I wanna die. I completely relate to ALL he's saying. I get it. But I have to get a job. I have to go to work on Thursday, and can't enjoy this critique like a cradled scholar (and even then, I know. I know.). I'm starting to relate a bit too much to Fisher these days. Hm, that's not good, is it?
~’The form of time that neoliberal culture creates is a constant series of anxieties. Through technology, we are always available to capital on call. They have captured our time’. 25:30
He was.. It is hell. More so surrounded by meat puppets.. An ordeal I am not coping with. Check out Thomas sheridan on RU-vid.. It will support you.. You will not wake up the clowns to this sick agenda.. They mean to get rid of us..
something i wish he had explored before he left us are the aspects of human nature that may lead us to accept dehumanizing structures. is it possible the 60’s failed to “take” because freedom and ambiguity and autonomy are intolerably scary to homo sapiens? was neoliberalism (or religion) forced upon us or it is simply the case that many people like to be told how to act and what to believe? would love to have heard his thoughts on this
He's still correct that the centre that Blairism is predicated on has gone and isn't coming back. Neoliberal austerity as well as the parasitic wealth destruction that is financialisation are continously wearing down middle class savings, assets and prospects for future earnings and advancement. What I've been saying since 2015 is that the number of people whose ideal politics is a Labour party one centimetre to the left, or as currently to the right) of the Conservative party is not above 5000 individuals who all work in ruling class media or for Blairite MPs. The notion that the mass of votes are in what the media calls "the centre", defined as exactly in between Labour and Conservative policies is laughable, but the media hasn't got the joke yet because they are in the tiny bubble of beneficiaries of such unbearable policies. The media's centre ground isn't where the voters are - no-one lives there anymore, as the direct product of "centrist" policies. That is still true and that is why Starmer is going to lose as many general elections as happen while his unprincipled, dictatorial, careerist wing of the party controls it. The real centre in terms of voters' beliefs and policy wishes is far, far to their left, farther to the left than Corbyn. Their only way of winning elections used to be by depriving the electorate of any other choice to the left of the careerists, but that stopped working before 2010. Now it is their only way of retaining control over the Labour party at the known and inevitable cost of continuing to lose elections and decline in influence and parliamentary numbers. That's a price they are willing to pay to hold on to their sinecures, because that's all they ever believed in. And their class position insulates them from the real suffering the policies they collude in enforcing impose on the poor and working class voters, who once gave Labour 6 general election victories when it was a shamelessly Socialist party which catered exclusively to the needs and wishes of those voters and their unions, and not the professional-managerial salariat the careerists pride themselves in being.
A thought- the key to understanding Fischer s despair is the original split between Left Hegelianism and Right Hegelianism. To heal the left s spiritual malaise it needs to spiritualise its economist IV materialism,
Crazy it’s almost been 10 years already since 2016…other than bits and pieces of technology, the decline seems to be across the board. There is no such thing as public trust anymore. The best and brightest are doing their best to shelter themselves and their families and are hunkered down, homeschooling their children using very expensive virtual or private tutors. Save whatever money you can and put that towards building up your independence.
06:33 Mark refers to David Graeber's views on 'class subordination being an export of Britain' - does anyone know the exact essay/work he's referring to?
Might have found it: "The historical defeat and humiliation of the British working classes is now the island’s primary export product." thebaffler.com/salvos/despair-fatigue-david-graeber
hey fellow wage slaves is there like an app we can use to organize direct action and build dual power and shit? if not there should be. it should be easier to fight back
He mesmerises me. Could anyone help? I'm stuck with Covid in my claustrophobic London room and decided to subtitle into Italian some of Fisher's talks available on YT, including this one. Sooooo... is it an advert he's referring to at 15:59 ? "Up across there's passion about sandwiches" ? Does anyone know the reference?
it still breaks me he killed himself. i hope i never such hopelessness, but I understand every human is vulnerable to this, and some more than others. I will never fear this happening. I wonder what mark would of thought of large language models such as chatGPT.
I read a remark by an obese matriarch in a multi-generational dole-dependent family, who said:"I'd rather be fat, happy and unemployed than thin, stressed and working." Hard to argue with. At least until the money/ freedom created by capitalism runs out.
I can't do it mate. Can't quite bring myself to become fully selfish. Some part of me still believes in trying to do the right thing even if everyone else ends up doing the wrong thing. So far...
GPT summary: "This speech explores "capitalist realism," the pervasive belief that capitalism is the only viable system. The speaker discusses how neoliberalism has crushed class consciousness, psychedelic consciousness, and feminist consciousness-raising. Despite this, they see hope in emerging leftist movements that challenge the status quo and promote new, collective ways of thinking."
I think his continued referring to consciousness "raising" works against his ideas. It creates a situation which people can think they are the group with the "raised" consciousness and can convince themselves that they have the moral authority to force their ideas on the electorate because they obviously aren't evolved enough to understand. It gives power structures the "moral" license to subvert the will of the people.
I find Fisher and his thoughts quite intriguing but many of which flies above my head. I really want to understand more though. Would any kind person be able to point me in a direction for a way in to some of these ideas? TIA!
@@superdeluxesmell quite a lot of words to say "no"! At alchemy (a burn in the states) there was a camp called the acid communist guerrilla training camp and a collection of readings which featured pieces by mark fisher. Which brought me here :)
Nothing wrong with leaving the gold standard, as it's arbitrary and cannot be controlled, the problem is the financialisation of the economy and neoliberal cultists who think business is the answer to everything.
There exist two side to the Orwellian world on one side you have a brutal Big brother that oppresses a weak society, on the other hand the brutal oppression of the weak society originates from the disintegration of that society from reasonable humans to unconscious primitive animalistic cannibalistic human behavior and the total loss of reason functioning exclusively as wild animals even lower than some of them destroying their own self functioning against their own interest destroying whatever they believe is against their emotional brain as reason has ceased to exist. Big brother in the end became the solution to save prevent the total annihilation of the human species Orwell is no different than the planet of the Apes and the Brave new world of Huxley which his book is the answer to a society that has gone totally mad and rather than evolving is traveling on the opposite direction each day closer to cannibalism that to civility.
I think this guy had huge blindspots about what was going on in society around him. I also think he didn't look far enough into the past to inform his perspective. He offed himself right before the things he was talking about started to get interesting.
He only sees half the picture. Totally ignores culture and race. Imagine unironically thinking people went to pubs because of 'class conciousness' c'mon man.
by your subscriptions i think you are a generation who did not grow up in eras where there was a class consciousness because this was definitely a fucking thing
“I’m an anecdotilist” - David Brent This is like a tedtalk that someone wrote in bathroom 5 mins before showtime. Zero books. Zero statistics. Zero truth.
There are zero statistics in Plato. The system of philosophy which underwrites the entire educational system in which you've spent your life. So what is it, exactly, that you think you're trying to say?
@Whizper2me Yes, Godel showed us that any formal system in which basic arithmetic can be derived is not both consistent and complete, therefore there's no such thing as truth or evidence and we're all just kinda wording it out.
I`ve just come across this guy and he speaks so particularly to me and all that has happened to me in the last 15 years,the whole horror story.I`m so sorry for his passing,for his family and to all those that followed him. I`d love to have put a question to him,one that i have been trying to formulate for some time and speaks directly to some of the themes he has covered - What is the role of ART in atomisation ? Let me try to clarify - Art or an aspect of art,its conceptual mirroring and doubletalk is now pandemic.In every construction site,coffee franchise,big box retail outlet,this doubletalk is now mandatory.This of course is post Fordism,post Taylorism and industrial psychology etc and is the toxic cherry on top of the grotesque neo-liberal cheesecake.It means in practical terms they have it sewn up so tight that there is absolutely no way to resist capital flow.Some acid commentator described this social phenomena as "even the lowliest peasant is now an impossible aesthete".I think Dali called it the concrete illusion. It now appears that everyman is an artist and being an artist he/she is a fierce individualist...which of course dovetails perfectly with the neo-liberal agenda of individualism and atomisation,of ensuring there is no collective consciousness. I have learnt to my cost,3 jobs fired from in less than 3 years,that trying to slow or interfere with capital flow is impossible.They find you and find you quick.You end up in the margins with your head in a spin and blacklisted.The degree to which they are prepared to go to control even one minimum wage worker is truly shocking and does not confine itself to the actual physical workplace.It was a frightening revelation, with plain clothes police used to put the frighteners on you,to bring you back in line(on 2 of the jobs i was fired from).Anyone not familiar with these tactics in the workplace will think me unstable or half mad but this whole story takes place in a universe of allusion and ambiguity,nothing is direct or explicit.You are supposed to sound half mad,an unreliable crackpot.It relies on its ability to call you paranoid and of course it cannot be recorded. I won`t go on.There are some here who will understand what i`m talking about,will have some experience,perhaps even say its commonplace but do they understand why it is mandatory and the implications therein ?If we can talk of the social fabric,then we must look at some of the fine stitching,the language. Wintering it out. Win to ring it out.
Please let’s discuss the in practice slave religion of marxism. Please tell me how a slacker benefactor and leach of the bourgeoisie. Who not only never worked a day in his life but never knew or spoke kindly of a single proletariat ever. Why should he be the process of thinking by people like me that have worked their entire lives?
Its not a religion its a theory of economic relation and that person who refuses to work has probably rejected this capitalist alienation. Without this alienation and given the ability to be pursue genuinely productive labor, that small minority you speak of can actually feel connected to their work. There's nothing supernatural about wanting life to be worth living.
