Tag Archives: Mark Fisher

The Real Villains

Bernie Sanders knew who the real enemy is — and it isn’t the Republican Party or our clown President. They are a mere diversion. The real villains in the political drama that is playing out before our eyes are the corporations. And because Sanders was becoming too loud he had to be silenced. The Democratic Party, which is funded by the corporations in large measure (as, of course, is the Republican Party) saw to it that his candidacy came to an end. He has been set aside and is now no more than a whimper, something the corporations can ignore because the rest of us can’t hear him, or refuse to listen.

The corporations are the modern face of capitalism and many of the criticisms by people like Mark Fisher (author of Capitalist Realism) are more properly directed at the corporations than they are at capitalism, per se. The corporations were recently allowed to come from behind the political curtain and declare themselves openly when, in “Citizens United,” the Supreme Court determined that corporations are persons and entitled to make huge donations to the political parties without having to do so under the table. As a result their cover is blown, but they are now beyond our reach because we do not know who the hell they are! That’s the problem, and that’s precisely why they are NOT persons: they are insubstantial and they cannot be found responsible for their misdeeds because they are like a shadow that suddenly is no longer there. Assigning responsibility to the corporations is like nailing Jello to the wall:  it cannot be done. They will be bailed out when in financial difficulty by the government, which they own, and if they should be discovered doing the dirty they will throw one of their own under the bus — or cover over the mess like the Valdez oil spill, with clever P.R. They are insidious because they are essentially vaporous and operate in secret.

Mark Fisher paints a vivid picture the Kafkaesque world of the corporations which is now our world. And toward the end of his book he outlines for us the effects of capitalism on the family and education — two of the pillars of our civilization — and the sorry state to which each has been brought mainly because of corporate influence. I quote him at some length because his message is worth pondering:

“It is the parents’ following of the trajectory of the pleasure principle, the path of least resistance, that causes most of the miseries in the families. In a pattern that quickly becomes familiar, the parents’ pursuit of the easy life leads them to accede to their children’s every demand, which becomes increasingly tyrannical.. . .

“The problem is that late capitalism insists and relies upon the very equation of desire with interests that parenting used to be based on rejecting. In a culture in which the ‘paternal’ concept of duty has been replaced by the ‘maternal’ imperative to enjoy, it can seem that the parent is failing in their duty if they in any way impede their children’s absolute right to enjoyment. Partly this is an effect of the increasing requirement that both parents work; in these conditions, when the parent sees the child very little, the tendency will often be to refuse to occupy the ‘oppressive’ function of telling the child what to do. The parental disavowal of this role is doubled at the level of cultural production by the refusal of the [corporations] to do anything but give audiences what they already (appear) to want. The concrete question is: if a return to the paternal superego — the stern father in the home — is neither possible nor desirable, then how are we to move beyond the culture of monotonous moribund conformity that results in a refusal to challenge or educate?”

Corporations remain out of focus in our world of constant entertainment and diversion — provided, of course, by the corporations (who also see to it that both parents must work in order to “provide for their families”). Thus the corporations are able to determine not only political but cultural outcomes while remaining  anonymous. And those outcomes are always about the same thing: profits for their shareholders and C.E.O.s. The shareholders themselves feel they are benefitting because they enjoy a higher standard of living and are able to take advantage of the diversions provided for them by  — wait for it — the corporations! It is a circle, and it is a vicious circle. Bernie Sanders saw this clearly. But his voice has been silenced. Will anyone have the courage to speak up — say, Elizabeth Warren? Or will her voice also be silenced as well before she can shout “wolf” loud enough to be heard by those who really don’t want to listen.

In any event, the notion that we live in a “democracy” is no longer tenable. In fact, we live in a tyrannical bureaucracy run by numerous powerful corporations that are above the law because they determine what the laws will allow or disallow. The founders worried about the influence of money on the tenuous threads that hold a Republic together, but they never, in their worse nightmares, imagined the power that could be wielded by giant multinational corporations. The Republic they envisioned, resting as it  precariously did on the balance of powers, has been replaced by the all-powerful corporations and the unimaginably wealthy few who run the show.

 

 

 

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Capitalist Realism

I am reading a short book with the above title written by Mark Fisher. The author is a teacher in England who is both well read and articulate, though a bit enamored of postmodern jargon. His argument is a fascinating blend of insight and overstatement.

An example of his tendency to overstatement is his sweeping generalization about the inevitable destruction of the planet by “capitalist realism.” As he would have it, “. . .capitalism is by its very nature opposed to any notion of sustainability.” This claim flies in the face of the endeavors of such people as Elon Musk and the growth, world-wide, of the renewable energy movement which is clearly driven by the profit motive. The fact is that alternative energy is a step in the direction of saving, not destroying, the planet. And it is a step taken by capitalists — and those governments that support capitalism.

Fisher also conflates religion and superstition, almost in passing, as do so many intellectuals. The two are not the same, though in the case of many devotees the differences may be hard to make out. Superstition is a crutch the fearful lean upon to help them make it through the day and it attempts to explain the mysterious in simple terms that can be understood by the tiniest minds. It is above all things self-regarding.  Religion, on the others hand — at least in principle — requires faith in a Being greater than the self and demands constraints on impulse and a willingness to sacrifice self-interest in the name of sympathy, if not love, for others. In a word, religion demands that its followers do their duty; superstition demands nothing.

But when it comes to the topic of education, which is close to Fisher’s heart, the man has important things to say. Much of what he says rings true and echoes my own experience and that of the folks I have read and spoken with who are also concerned about the sorry state of education in our day.

Fisher worries about what he calls the “post-disciplinary framework” within which education finds itself today, a time when the very notion of discipline has been lost in the wave of education’s gobble-de-gook about “self-esteem” that leads invariably toward a sense of entitlement in the spoiled child. He worries, as do I, that education has also succumbed to the dreaded business model and is now all about profit and loss rather than about the students and their ability to function in an increasingly complicated world. He has also discovered the truly disturbing effects of the fascination on the part of the young with electronic toys and the social media. He is aware, as are growing numbers of people (backed by several recent studies) that they are addictive and that they stand between the young and their ability to use their minds in a thoughtful and productive way — a way that will benefit them and those around them. He draws upon first-hand experience to help us understand the pitfalls of the digital age in which these young people live and thrive:

“Ask students to read more than a couple of sentences and many — and these are A-level students mind you — will protest that they can’t do it. The most frequent complaint teachers hear is that it is boring. It is not so much the content of the written material that is of issue here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed ‘boring.’ What we are facing here is not the time-honored teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate ‘New Flesh’ that is ‘too wired to concentrate’ and the confining, concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems. To be bored means simply to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, YouTube and fast food; to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. . . .

“The consequences of being hooked into the entertainment matrix is twitchy, agitated, impassivity, an inability to connect or focus. Students’ incapacity to connect current lack of focus with future failure, their inability to synthesize time into coherent narrative, is symptomatic of more than mere demotivation . . . . What we in the classroom are now facing is a generation born into that ahistorical, anti-mnemonic blip culture — a generation, that is to say, for whom time has always come ready-cut into digital micro-slices.”

In a word, the new electronic toys to which the young have become enslaved are standing between them and the possession of their own minds. They cannot possibly become educated citizens who are involved and able to creatively address the problems they will indubitably face in the future. Worse yet,

“By contrast with their forbears in the 1960s and 1970s, British students today appear to be politically disengaged . . .[Moreover, they] seem resigned to their fate.”

Fisher blames it all on capitalism and he may be right. I suspect he is. But whether he is right or wrong about the cause of the inability of today’s young to become responsible participants in their own future what he says is disturbing, to say the least. And while many will dismiss his claims on his inability to understand the young — the latest version of the generation-gap — we must remind ourselves that he is himself young and much involved with others younger even than himself. And, more to the point, he just may be right. It’s time to stop shooting the messenger and think about what he is saying.