Mark Fisher

Published: 26 Aug 2025

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

A frankly difficult read in multiple different facets, the literal book itself outlining the trouble we are in (combined with how much worse its gotten since publication and the unfortunate suicide of author Mark Fisher), the nagging feeling that even for all its astute observations that such a work in 2009 was “too late”, but also the sense that the book itself is frequently unclear, unorganised and scattergun in its approach - making it very difficult to untangle and solidify any thoughts I have without relative qualification or hesitation, mirroring the despondency and uncertainty riven throughout the book. I’m not even sure who this is specifically pitched at, if even at all, with plenty of “layman-understandable” pop culture references to get non-philo reading plebs like myself through the door, yet also quoting without reference an array of philosophers to support numerous arguments made throughout - despite its short length it felt dense and at times difficult to understand.

Regardless, there’s plenty of good, and bad, contained within. The three aspects discussed to finally beat Capitalist Realism (namely environmental catastrophe, mental health and bureaucracy) are all interesting angles yet none are fleshed out enough nor feel unique to capitalism as a whole to explain them, meanwhile other quoted observations seem great but yet obvious (“anti-capitalism reinforces capitalist realism” being the… obvious one), and I’m unsure if its in the “obvious in retrospect” or just plain obvious in general - not to mention Fisher’s age, academic background and 2009 as a time period leads to some very “kids these days” or “old man yells at cloud” perspectives, especially around the use of students in some arguments and his… sometimes questionable comments on mental health in general.

But, this should not take away some strong chapters, inasmuch that they resonated strongly with my own experiences and fledgling belief system (with the perpetual caveat that again, the supporting arguments were often shaky). The discussion on “Fordism vs. Post-Fordism”, outlining inherent instability across families and building resentment to a system that one is inevitably invested in (i.e. my pension), as well as the “Market Stalinism” diatribe on bureaucracy building due to the need to assess performance in jobs inherently resistant to generic quantification (despite the… unnecessarily provocative turn of phrase, its just Goodhart’s Law writ large et. al.), and finally the phrase “responsibi-lization” of society, the mismatch of ethical responsibility that corporate structures create and one of my favourite observations of all throughout the book - that “govts. have discovered… give powers to private companies, and those private companies screw up, voters blame the govt. for giving powers away, rather than the companies for misuse” - something that rings extremely true in the UK, a country where state capacity has long been hollowed out and wrung dry and perpetually farmed out at all costs to terrible private companies.

Lastly, to bring this back to a sour note, the end to this book around how to approach and engineer a “true” alternative to Capitalism and Capitalist Realism feels very much weak and underdeveloped - almost as if being aware of said affectation and malaise still leaves you totally unequipped but other than simply labouring under said affectation.