Talk:Capitalist realism

	This Economics related article has not received a brainstar for quality. Please consider expanding the article appropriately. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

Too powerful

Capitalism is nowadays too powerful to be thrown away. We can only expect its collapse and the emergence of two possible ways:

1. Human extinction 2. Neo-feudalism

Communism is no longer an achievable goal, deal with the great defeat Nitrato de Chile (talk) 19:37, 4 July 2021 (UTC) Nitrato de Chile

Are you a troll? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:45, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

They strike me as being one. Their sole obsession seems to be with shitposting on articles concerning left-wing subjects and positions. — Oxyaena ^Harass 20:12, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Do you really belive that I´m here to annoy people and the lulz? There´re far better places to do that (TF2 chat, for example).

No, my questions/comments in Rationalwiki are made in a serious way (except that one of Talk:Spain, the rest are not shitpost, but personal conclusions and/or interpretations of my experience at online left), hoping to be answered or refuted propertly.

BTW, why do you think capitalism is still beatable and it´s not too late for that? Nitrato de Chile (talk) 11:08, 5 July 2021 (UTC) Nitrato de Chile

I could not believe there was a talk page for this article but I was not surprised to read comments like yours. I only wonder who you are talking to? The article is descriptive, not prescriptive. It does touch on one Marxist perspective (technological determinism) but it does not make any claims about communism being achievable. The article also says, "...capitalism shall be overtaken by something else, what that something is remains to be seen." That neo-feudalism may emerge (a view also shared by Marxists like Yanis Varoufakis) is nowhere disputed in the article. So it appears you are arguing with no one and playing rhetorical games. Yes, people obviously really believe you are/were here to annoy people. They clearly said as much to you. Nowhere did anyone on the talk page, nor does the article, suggest capitalism is "beatable." It appears you are (or were) bored and looking for communists to argue with. Thus my surprise that there might actually be a discussion on a wiki about the content of such an article and ways to improve it, and my unsurprise that the talk page is an unhinged derailment by a pitiable wingnut. .45.128.36.194 (talk) 03:29, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

What in the hell is this?

Maybe I'm just one of those "bourgeois-liberals" with a need of self-sustaining criticism (or maybe it's just that it's always easy to criticize with the hindsight of an extra decade), but this seems pseudoscience all the way down.
I mean, leftism and anti-capitalism are good, but here I could only read like the usual marxist dogma (in the unfalsifiable sense of their brand of "materialism") except with a more modern and pop-cultural prose.

The average Joe having heard once "we live in the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried", is not your "socialism vuvuzela" right-wing nutjob, which is not Fisher's bloody students taking an elective course that they eventually regretted. I understand that it's woefully frustrating not to be able to get across even some of the most basic points (whether we are trying to explain climate change, flatearthery, or the socio-economic reality), but motivated/emotional reasoning is still that. Psychology: different actual cognitions with a multi-faceted experience behind.

Then, if you still want to summarily blame corporate and a certain media environment for all the bad information you want, be my guest (and Chomsky's) but just say it outright and discuss framing:

• don't imply a kind of star-warsy force that even when face to face with somebody in isolation, could still act stronger than any word you might ever utter (unless you give up on the premise of people always retaining a modicum of personal autonomy)
• don't strawman activists as posers not putting their money where their mouth is just because they once purchased a good from a company that does also happen to have a reputation laundering department (it can be the case that they are hypocrites of course, but it wasn't radical chic to cause the left biggest blows)
• cut off this reactionary dystopia of impotent governments only being able to cater to business interests because these directly purchase politicians or something, as if the "dupe voters" step wasn't nonetheless the key (or as if their promises weren't actually kept)

I get simplifying the message to.. uh, reach the biggest number of people. But there's dumbing down, and then there's making an 80 pages pamphlet just to underline in the most doomer-baiting way possible the mere fact that "Capitalism is actually unethical at its core, so don't ever co-operate with it". Featuring a lot of bullshit from fraudsters like Lacan, Deluze&Guattari and Zizek, unactionable aphorisms (there is no difference between "authentic" and "gestural" anti-capitalism, if voting is not up to your tastes and you don't even want to preach for literal revolts), and somehow misattributing methodological individualism in the social sciences to Stirner, Smith or Hayek and not motherfucking Weber. --Mirh (talk) 21:40, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I think it’s best compared with socialist realism as a cultural enforcement. If as Debord says what is good appears and what is good appears, then even history and ontology is shaped by capitalism. Think the big speech about the world as a business from Network rather than woo woo. When the 50 year old clerk says, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and that’s just the way it is,” that is capitalist realism. Certainly there’s an emotive continental style to this discourse but it is primarily describing direct experience with heavy influence from the French tradition totally opposed to any analytical framework at least up until the 90s. But that’s just the very insulated and tilted style. ^{— Unsigned, by: 68.106.208.214 / talk / contribs}

I'm not sure I understood half of the reply (who is Network? and what has "a style of [purported] realistic art" to do with this? did you mean real socialism perhaps?).. Anyway, yes capitalism is part of history and of "the stuff which exists", so of course it influences them. But implying that it has this direct, purposeful and chief blanket effect is just paranoia (and an intellectually lazy one, if I may say so). Like, by all means more or less explicit propaganda is real and it's commonplace. But let's be honest: your media diet is trashy right-wing media if this happens, because even centre-right politicians (by european standards.. which I guess is some left-centrist in the US of A?) wouldn't unconditionally and uncritically jerk off the invisible hand of the market. Even your super stereotypical boomer example is clearly a brain(dead)child of reaganism, whose contemporary mocking I hope I don't have to underline you.
In a sentence, Fisher's opposition to analytical frameworks seems to have run so deep that he didn't even stop the hype train to consider what the facts themselves were saying. --Mirh (talk) 15:14, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I haven't read Debord, but from what I've seen the Spectacle isn't described as a "purposeful blanket effect." It's a description of the reification of consumerism as a mass phenomenon. To say that "your superstereotypical Boomer example is clearly a brain(dead) child of Reaganism" isn't a refutation of the concept of capitalist realism, either. I've seen similar sentiments IRL, they clearly exist, and are informed by media narratives. Motivated and emotional reasoning are a thing, nobody is saying differently. But it's also equally flawed to dismiss the effects of media narratives. You are not immune to propaganda. Sure a lot of people will ignore propaganda, but it does have a passive effect that makes it so powerful.

I haven't seen many left-wing politicians in the US pushing anti-capitalist perspectives either, like questioning the ethics of a structure that enables land to be held in the hands of a few at the expense of the many, who are marginalized into a subservient relationship and forced to pay rent just to have a place to live, and if they are no longer able to afford rent they get forced out onto the streets, or noting the historical process by which this power structure came to be (through land theft from the indigenous and the closure of the commons and the displacement of the peasantry from their land). Carthage (talk) 15:28, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

It is absolutely a refutation of the concept, at least if you care the slightest about its validity. The thing is still a reference to TINA, right? So it means people positively need to hold that belief.
The 50 year old clerk telling you to suck it all up because they are (in general, with everybody) callous fucks with a loveless life and their dad always having told them the same, is not capitalist realism.
Just like this can hardly be an idea belonging to the mind of the average white supremacist (aka "average american right-winger"), despite the fact they are the prime audience of the bullshit mouthpieces of the various Murdoch, Berlusconi, Bolloré and Döpfner that regularly spew the worst copious and shameless display of "capitalist circlejerk". Like, once you cross the event horizon of hyper-reality you stop to give any damn to the relations of production (or anything other that actually exists in the world): you just support whatever buzzwords the racist-enabling party rallies around. Of course for the higher political or educated élite (that is perfectly well aware a different world could exist) that's probably just a handy smokescreen to hide tax cuts behind, but if you are a gullible true believer at the base that's not your gripe. "Objectively" it may be a distinction without a difference if the unjust ancapistan policies still end up getting passed, but if this pretends to be a sociological framework then it has to engage with the internal mental logic of each individual. Sure would be a shame if you had written 80 pages to complain about an eerie "imagination block" (almost akin to crimestop) with considering alternatives, when the only thing you needed was just the right racist framing or euphemism. Right?

And in my opinion this would already be enough to seriously axe the concept: it's not unbelievable, but there is a very hard and relatively low upper bound to how much "widespread" it could be in society (you can only suffocate the minds that still have something left to cripple). But here's the thick deal: even if I pick up the most steelmanned case of some "around the center" moderate that isn't downright stupid or an egoist asshole, which is otherwise civically engaged and with an unmatched thirst for novelty.. it is written *nowhere* that this theory is in fact what's happening? Just because we can all easily picture this being a dogma (among another one thousand things though) for a redneck that would rather die without his insulin than live "socialist", it doesn't mean you can ipse dixit project it on everybody else.
Even with bloody radical centrism, who said they would be against any possible form of even *market* socialism (I mean, the real deal of the term, not the degenerated definitions they have in the US of A) but it's just that as a part of their principles they follow gradualism? Let alone the majority of leftists.
And to project this on big swats of society (that is, not just the intelligentsia) seems also offensive. Not only the average Joe or working class man doesn't know the tiniest speck about the difference between, say, the administrative-command system and anarcho-syndicalism.. but they are also completely ignorant about what capitalism (or free markets, if not even the fucking state itself) is to begin with. People cannot imagine a coherent alternative to capitalism, just like they don't even dare to imagine anything (let alone of coherent) in the fields they know to be at the lowest bottom end of the Dunning–Kruger plot.

In short this seems like a whole big defensive fantasy (like the ones the alt-right pulls out of their ass every odd week) except to explain without the slightest psychological insight why the general public couldn't manage to put up with people like him completely abstracted from even the colour of the grass they should have gone out to touch. A discount version of false consciousness, that is too clear cut to cover much more than conservativism.
And yes, I really want to take an issue with the man here (apparently maladaptive schemas stop to be relevant if you take your own life?) because this time I didn't skim the pages I wanted to re-read for accurate quoting and oh my fucking god. We are talking about someone pulling a 4D multi-universe double pike backflip to complain that if students aren't more motivated^{[citation needed]} after the "erosion of the carceral regime of discipline" that affected education, that's because of "the technologies of control". In *2009* (well before the modern scare of "tiktok attention") he was attacking weed and Call of Duty because supposedly "many A-level students refused to read more than two sentences". He's so detached from the wisdom of god (or any of its creatures for all it matters) that he doesn't even stop for a moment to consider whether the fucking undergrad student that was playing music in their headphones during this teachings mightn't have been lying, he just straight up directly blamed the matrix.

p.s. left-wing politicians question capitalism all the time.. of course that's never at the top of their electoral platform, because in a society that struggles to even just agree on the most basic fucking rules of democracy (people having a right to vote, every head has the same voting power, who gets the most votes wins) it would be akin to navel gaze about the scientific objectives of a moon landing in ancient Rome.
p.p.s. while concluding this piece, I realized not only he called George fucking Soros a "liberal communist" (fair enough, given this isn't supposed to be his choice of words but a reference to some third party) but he's accusing the poster child of Popper of POSTMODERNISM
--Mirh (talk) 23:08, 1 April 2024 (UTC)