It pains me so that Fisher lost the fight with the debilitating condition that depression is, I would love more than anything to know what he'd thought about the post-COVID world, most of the the far reaching ambitious conclusions of this book, true in the moment of the absolute capitulation to capital in 2008 bailouts (throwing entire world to the flames for the sake of continuing business as usual in the financial world), were revealed by the march of time to be mostly a mirage.
COVID has shown that great changes in way we do things are not only, contrary to the proposed ideology of capitalist realism (the "nothing ever happens" meme), are possible and readily accepted by the wider population but also at times simple, with those changes capitalism itself is transforming, not merely adapting, fully warping, moving into the weird and bizarre in this transitionary phase.
What comes of it, it's not possible to predict but when there is change there is agency.
When Fisher was writing this book internet was a completely different place than today, blogosphere was alive and well, news were trusted, Hollywood was adored, TV played a serious role in how people saw the world, social media was not centralized, youtube hadn't properly started, tiktok and gig-economy were insane ideas not yet born.
The merit of this book lies less so in what it says but when it said what it has said, it's a source of a very interesting perspective of how things were perceived in that bone-chilling moment of dull despair of 2008 and it's fun to compare with how they are seen now. The points about TV and Hollywood playing a different role then are very relevant because Fisher was a kinophile, I having abstained from watching most cinema, felt flustered reading his passionate lectures how the themes Hollywood movies represent the unconscious ideology of the now. I don't watch any movies so I didn't get it. My favourite films are Princess Mononoke and Paprika.
Another point that I thought a lot while reading this book, Fisher claims markets have a pseudo-stalinist tendency of using bureaucracy for PR, he describes how by a proxy of bureaucracy in his field of work, academia, data (grades, impact factors) that is completely pointless and detrimental to the process is elevated to the highest of importance when it's connected to funding and grants.
In the coming years the concept went much further than Fisher could have imagined with how the gig economy manages labor today, apps like Uber and Food delivery apps manipulate people, they use dark UI patterns to rope people back into work, to operate like a homo oeconomicus, data created by people being motivated to work on those apps, in part from those UI patterns, is then used to push the economical models that were good at predicting what happened along with them the ideology that comes bundled with them. An interesting extension of what Fisher talked about (heard about this entire kerfuffle from this video).
Fisher introduced me here to an idea of the "big Other", a Lacanian concept I don't fully get, an imagined subject that doesn't have full knowledge on the reality of the matter but his opinion is critical for the continued existence of the relationship it plays a role in, relationship with it as such relies on presenting information to it, examples I could imagine were "the subscribers" on youtube, "the board" in a corporation and "the electorate" as a politician).
I can't stop repeating how fun it was comparing this book to what has happened with the pandemic, how the government reacted, how important was the opinion of the "society at large" in adopting masking, vaccinations, social distancing what were the forms of resistance against those, why people resisted, and how that push-back was perceived.
Personally since I have read this book I came to different conclusions than Fisher had, there are things coming that go beyond the limits of capitalism, post-capitalist, you can see more and more cases where good things are happening but incessant focus on the ownership and profitability slows them down, anti-capitalism truly outside of capital and not pre-incorporated is something that the seeds of are germinating and those tiny sproutlings are something people can notice, TV and especially the 24/7 news cycle are dying, tools that people have for influencing the opinion, creating culture, are as powerful (first time ever in history) for the rich as they are for the poor.
Reorienting the socialist movements back to the ideas of pointless sluggishness and issues with scale of tools capitalism provides as main motivators for change, not egalitarian ideas of harm that capitalism causes, might be the way to go, there are some aspects that I find extemely alluring in how open source cooperation does things and maybe there are useful insights hidden within the core of that movement.
All in all I think the fabric of the world today is very susceptible to ideology, people who got scared of power of ideology when nazis and communists were doing their thing, are dead, there is a solid chance it all will end up in fascism or even other forms of illiberal technocapitalism (USA seems to me moving into a bit of a dark enlightement direction), but there clearly are ways to reroute it.
The part about the depressive hedonism and debtor-addict relationship as a basis of how capital operates also made me think at times, it echoed my musings about gacha video games under true Communism, how Marx didn't go that deeply into things that may hijack human spirit to do pointless stuff.
Socialist ideas have promised better efficiency but never explained exactly how would the organization differ in a way to allow for that freeing up of the human spirit and when push comes to shove did things similarly, just changing the goals of the management.
Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcomes.
- Northenlion