Likewise, acts of subversion, resistance and even protest are absorbed and re-presented not as attempts to develop alternatives, but as parts of the capitalist conversation open for negotiation only in its own language.

In a capitalist realist system, expressions of opposition to the socio-political situation, from Nirvana to The Hunger Games, are always-already transformed by the smooth logic of capitalism into its very products for sale. Fisher’s 2009 book Capitalist Realism – a significant influence on me personally – demonstrated the peculiar capacity that capitalism has to sell its discontents back to the consumer as commodities. The idea ‘originates’ – insofar as it can be talked about in such terms – in the work of Frederic Jameson, before it was used to wider effect by Slavoj Žižek and by the wonderful philosopher of all aspects of capitalism, Mark Fisher, who was very sadly lost in January of this year.

One of the prominent arguments about capitalism that has circulated in the political and philosophical discourse of the last decade is the idea that ‘there is no alternative’. Drawing on the glimmers of hope enfolded in Fisher’s 2009 work Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Bown argues that the events of 2016 have turned the glimpses of optimism identified by Fisher into concrete and pressing opportunities for rupture in the workings of capitalism – ones that he urges the Left to seize.

In Opening Capitalist Realism, Alfie Bown pays tribute to the work of the late writer and philosopher on all aspects of capitalism, Mark Fisher.

Capitalist realism book