Episode #202 ... Why we can't think beyond capitalism. - Neoliberalism (Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism)

Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophize This. So I wanna begin today with a question the late Mark Fisher had been asking people for decades by the end of his life. Do you ever look at the world around you? See the problems that are going on. Here are people like Zizek we've been talking about lately who bring an anti capitalist sort of energy to this whole conversation. And do you ever feel like, okay, yeah, there's certainly problems with capitalism. I can agree with that. But I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't see the obvious amazing revolutionary way out of this situation that seems to be required for any of this stuff to work. In fact, sometimes the way I think about it, and this is a quote attributed to Zizek and Frederick Jameson, but something that describes the way I feel sometimes is that it's easier for me to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. I mean, that's just a true statement for a lot of people. I can't think of 10 different ways the world may end tomorrow. It's not even hard to. But you asked me for one single way that we can go from capitalism to anything, whatever it is on the other side of it. It just seems much more likely to me that what's gonna end up ending global capitalism are the flaws in setting things up this way that are already producing bad results that are just gonna get so out of hand one day that we run civilization off a cliff. I mean, is that the fate that all this is headed for because things will just never change? Because from where I sit, this person may say, where my life has always seemed to be as an adult is in this constant place where I'm choosing between the lesser of two evils. So many things already feel that way to me. Why wouldn't it be the case that most of the issues we talk about politically are fundamentally grounded in this value judgment that capitalism may not be great, but at least it isn't the Marxism of the twentieth century? At least it isn't total anarchy with people killing each other all the time. At least I'm not living under the rule of a ruthless dictator. In other words, it's not that this system is so amazing. It's that at least it's not any of this other stuff. That's the mantra we live by that we're all supposed to be very proud of in our world. And I know, this person could say, you know, that may sound like I lack some kind of revolutionary spirit that other people have had at other points in human history, but quite frankly, you guys on the left haven't really laid out a good, easily accessible plan for people here. And when I stop to think about my position …