Capitalist Realism

An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system - a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework. Using examples from politics, film (Children Of Men, Jason Bourne, Supernanny), fiction (Le Guin and Kafka), work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colours all areas of contemporary experience, is anything but realistic and asks how capitalism and its inconsistencies can be challenged It is a sharp analysis of the post-ideological malaise that suggests that the economics and politics of free market neo-liberalism are givens rather than constructions. Mark Fisher's writing put Zero Books on the map in 2009. His book Capitalist Realism continues to define Zero Books' mission. The world lost a radical thinker when Fisher left us in January of 2017. He was highly respected both as a music writer and a theorist and wrote regularly for frieze, New Statesman, Sight & Sound and The Wire, where he was acting deputy editor for a year. He was a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University Of London, and maintained one of the most successful weblogs on cultural theory, k-punk (http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org).