Pill Pod 221 - Capitalist Realism

1Dime joins Erik and Victor to discuss Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. We cover the popularity of the book, the term, and then wonder whether left-populist electoral campaigns perform the same cathartic function as anti-capitalist TV shows.

See more from 1Dime: https://www.youtube.com/@1Dimee
All our public episodes are ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The other problem here, though, is another a concept called interpassivity.
Zorin could put us into this interpassive state where, because
the problem is, you know, this spectacle of him winning
could be taken as you, oh, great, I don't need
to do anything anymore. I don't need to get out
there and support him because he's going to do my

(00:22):
anti capitalism for me. And whether or not he does
is obviously just a question that has to be left
to the future. But it goes to the broader point
that when you have fascism, when you have communism, you
need propaganda with those things you need to argue, but
capitalism doesn't need you to believe it works for it
to work. And apparently, according to this argument, fascism and

(00:46):
communism are things that require you to believe them to
work for them to work. So in capitalism and capitalist
realism you can have this state where I don't believe
money is real, but I act as if it is,
or I don't believe this works, but I act as
if it does work. Right, you get into this capitalism

(01:07):
capitalist realism is this unique situation that produces that, and
the danger of interpassivity is, you know, whenever any spectacle
comes along like Zorin winning or the Squad winning, or
Bernie gaining ground.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
The danger is that it can relax us into passivity
because it's, like we see, it's obviously the media system
that we're not going Unless you're going in person to
their rallies and hearing them speak, you're probably getting this
information from the media. So you have a spectacle of
anti capitalism and you relax and say everything's good, and
you pay attention to something else. Hello, pillpods listeners. Today

(01:53):
we're picking up on a topic we actually covered a
couple of years ago now, I guess it was so
I can't even remember when we did our last episode
on Mark Fisher, when we did Exiting the Vampire Castle.
That was a bit a bit of a different angle.
But today we're going to capitalist realism, something I've wanted

(02:13):
to read for quite a.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
While and.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Never never done it. It's not even that long. I
don't know, why have you never?

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Was this your first time reading it?

Speaker 4 (02:23):
Eric?

Speaker 1 (02:24):
It actually is, Yeah, I'm really yeah. I missed out
on a few texts I know, and I claim to
be knowledgeable about the sort of British Marxism type of stuff,
but I guess this is one of the ones I missed.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's like one of the only theory books that anybody
has ever read. I know it is. Yeah, it's like
the kind of theory book that gets a lot of
people into theory. They're like, I think I can read
theory now, and then they read Jamison They're like, Okay,
I give up.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
There's probably a good chance that many of our listeners
and may have this might be the only theory book
that they've read.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Perhaps yes, oh yeah, everyone can school me on it
because that's my first run through. But I mean his
style is quite familiar, right, Like it is kind of eclectic,
bringing in very different topics from pop culture, economics, politics,
and drawing on like psychoanalysis.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
And also if it's if it's not obvious already, we're
joined again by Tony from the one Time YouTube channel
and the One Time radio.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Podcast to talk about this.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
So I just want to get that, make that clear
so the listeners are aware of what's happening.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I know I'm blowing this introduction.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm the substitute teacher, the substitute yeah, guest host at
this phase. Treat me well.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Tony is a guest host, meaning we're.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Going to put on a film for you for m's
going to be the class today.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Is a teacher? Yay.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Actually Fisher does talk about teaching quite a bit because
I guess he is a teacher or was a teacher, sorry,
and he drew a lot of stuff on his experience.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
What was it?

Speaker 1 (04:00):
It was almost like a continuing education he taught in.
It was like almost like an alternative oh yeah, school
system where like working class families or people who didn't
fit into the mainstream British school system, which I'm not
familiar with at all, could sort of send their kids there.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
And I think it was more like the British equivalent
of community college. Oh yeah, yeah, kind of what he taught.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah, right right, that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
I was I was also going to say, it's before
Tony got here and before we started recording, Eric and
I were sort of noticing that there's you know, it's
it's funny that in the Exiting of the Vampire Castle
he talks very like praisingly about Russell Brand, who I
think was for a time like authentically a pretty left
wing guy, like talking about working class issues. And then
I also added the fun fact maybe even some of

(04:46):
you who have listened have actually listened to the audiobook
of Capitalist Realism because it is actually read by Russell
Brandt in the audiobook.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
In the audio, he's the narrator. Yeah, I mean the
Russell brand crossed the Aisle not long ago.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
I think it was always genuine. I mean, and he
was a bit again on like the more British cultural scene.
He was big and until he got into those big movies.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
But he's trying to find some self reflective answers.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
I don't know that's in the sexual harassment stuff. Yeah,
he probably, I don't know. He exited the Vampire Castle,
but he turned right.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
So what's the So maybe we should just get like
the core thesis of the book on the table. I
don't know if either of you kind of have. I
mean I can kind of give it a shot if
you want. But Eric, did you like a have a
way into the core thesis and maybe also why you
wanted to read it, because in this case, Eric actually
chose the topic.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
So yeah, I suggested getting back to this text because
again it was one I feel I'm feeling the guilt
of not having read it, even though it's such an
obvious thing to read. When you're in this area of anyway. Yeah,
so capitalist Realism. I wanted to read it at this
time too because of Zorin's win and the kind of

(06:03):
I think it seems to me like the mainstream establishment
democrats at least are like those today who are most
under the influence of capitalist realism, because you kind of
have like the anti establishment right that seems to have
taken over and I don't know what they I don't
know how they would fit into the capitalist realist argument.

(06:24):
Maybe they do, maybe you disagree, but they seem to
be not there. And then Zorin also seems to be
kind of like an anti capitalist realist challenge from within anyway.
It's just it was just an opportunity to use some
theory to meditate on an interesting development in democratic politics

(06:48):
in the United States as outside observers and capitalist realism. Yeah,
I mean, it's just very basically, Yeah, it's the subtitle
the book, right is is there no alternative? Which is
asking that question. That's rephrasing Margaret Thatcher's famous line, there

(07:09):
is no alternative, Tina, there is no alternative to capitalism,
and today that problem seems to be very dominant, especially
after the fall of the USSR. Right, He's like, you know,
at least in the eighties, you know, there was a clear,
actual alternative to capitalism. We say, Okay, you can just

(07:32):
point to I don't know why everyone suddenly forgets about
China after nineteen eighty nine, as if they stop being
communists somehow, But okay, anyway, the fall of the USSR.
Now there's no alternative, like for real it seems. And
you could argue China's pretty plugged into the global capitalist
market despite its avowed communism.

Speaker 5 (07:53):
But arguably it is an al Yeah, I mean it's
symbolically at the very let But anyway, it seems like
we're deeper than ever into this.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
And you know, this Fisher text is also just a
blast from the past too, you know, like I started
university maybe not too long after he actually wrote this,
and I remember two thousand and eight. I remember all
that stuff too that he's talking about. I've seen those
damn movies. He's mentioning most of them, So I mean,
it's also fun for me to get back to that stuff.

(08:27):
But yeah, capitalist realism, it is a kind of subjective
belief that there is no alternative to the capitalist order.
It goes a bit deeper than that too, because of
the shift to post forwardism, which we'll have to get
into as almost created a new situation in which work

(08:52):
in labor seem to be changing drastically, and our relationships
with our jobs and our families seem to be changing
very draftically. Seems things seem to be in flux quite
a bit more than they used to be. And actually
capitalist realism seems in many ways to pick up or
provide an alternative way of conceptualizing all this to something

(09:16):
like say Friedrich Jameson's the Logic of Postmodernism or the
Logic of late Capitalism. It's another way of talking about
postmodernism with some different ideas about it for those of you,
for those who may be less comfortable with using postmodernism

(09:37):
as a way to conceptualize all of these social changes
over the twentieth century and beyond. So it's not just
like a simple you know, oh, there's an alternative, that's
the definition of it.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
It does.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
It is a cultural and historical configuration in much the
same way that postmodernism is. When you use it in
the way Jameson uses it, so can get into more
of the specifics as we go along. But that's the
general you know, that's why I was thinking of about it,
And that's kind of a basic what is capitalist realism?

(10:11):
What's Fisher're talking about here?

Speaker 4 (10:12):
Also the kind of Gijak saying it's like much easier
to imagine an end of the world, write some sort
of catastrophe than it is an end to capitalism, and
like so, and that's sort of like the way and
I guess like the fact that that's assuming you accept
that premise, the fact that that's true is like evidence
of capitalist realism existing in our sort of social political,

(10:34):
cultural milieu.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Fisher kind of attributes this equally to Gjek and jameson. Yeah,
this this idea that it's easier to imagine the end
of the world than the end of capitalism, which just
and then he uses a kind of discussion of the
movie Children of Men at the very beginning to illustrate

(10:56):
this idea. But it just kind of goes towards the
broader argument again of capitalist realism, right like, if it's
easier to imagine the end of the world, then there
really is no way we can imagine an alternative, right
like our imaginative horizons have shrunk in around us in
a way that means we just kind of give up.

(11:20):
It's like this situation where now where we don't actually
believe in the ideologies that we espouse. We know it's
all kind of just like cynical bullshit, and yet we
have to we act as if it's all true. Everything
we're saying is true, and we act as if we
believe in it. But that's all I was just saying.
You know, like Zorin makes these promises. In one sense, yes,
he's a politician. They all want to win, and he's

(11:43):
saying these things to win cynical disavowal. But on the
other hand, like we should rally behind him because these
are good things and we all want these things. And
there's this sort of schizophrenia contradiction there between these two things.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
I'm actually not convinced that renfree is are a good idea.
I actually think that's kind of a bad idea. But
that's a whole other stuff.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, in any in any case, like the afford the
general message of affordability is something everybody can get behind.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Well, yes, that's crucial. I totally agree with that.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Please elaborate on that wire. Rent freeze is bad under
is it like bad under a certain context or just
in any context?

Speaker 4 (12:23):
The problem with that with this is like housing availability,
and when you just keep things artificially cheaper, you're just
going to continue to increase demand, and it's actually just
going to be harder to get an apartment, get anything.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
You mean that you would, you would reduce supply.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
You're gonna You're also going to reduce the incentive to
increase supply.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
So I don't know about the demand, but the supply
is that going to happen?

Speaker 4 (12:47):
Do I think that there should be like other policies
that like make rent freezes possible, Like yes, I'm just saying,
like in a vacuum in the current context we live in,
doing a rent freeze is generally like not a good
long term solution.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Disagreeing with how we get there is not disqualifying you
from having a leftist point of view is still like it,
But the general message of affordability is like something we
still even if we don't all agree on specifically how
to get there. I don't think Victor secretly has like
major real estate investments that he's worried about and he's
like hiding them and lying to us by saying no,

(13:21):
actually there's technical problems that would be hilarious and ballsy
if that were the case, and I'd love it, not
really because I'd feel betrayed, but anyway, yeah, I think
he's behind.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
In New Zealand, there was a policy that was like
a real failure, like when they had kind of the
labor government, where they started giving like first time home
buyers like a big tax credit and basically just like
giving people more money to try to help them get
a house, which sounds on paper like a good idea,
but what happened is housing prices went through the roof

(13:51):
because all of a sudden, there's more people have money
to buy houses, but they're not actually building more houses.
So therefore the price of houses went way up because
everyone was trying to buy into market. So like, you
need more than just like one policy in isolation, like
you need to do more than just give people money
to buy houses. You need to increase the supply of houses.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
You could definitely do rent freezes. It's just not a
long term solution, that's what I mean. It's not a
long term. So definitely it's not like it's catastrophic.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
No, No, I don't think it's catastrophic. The way that
that policy in New Zealand is.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Like commodifying the housing market in general is probably more
long term issue.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
But yeah, sorry, capitalist realism.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, we should pivot back to that.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, I can. I can bring it to that. Just
I was surprised you want to talk about this boo
because I was thinking of, like, this is the one
book that's probably talked about too much on the left.
In fact, it's so I knew that this book was
something unique when a few years ago I would see
people's hinge profiles like have capitalist Realism in it sometimes,

(14:52):
and it was like one of these books you would
see people.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Just really quote on the dating app.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah. Well what I mean is like you'd find normy
is quote unquote nor me is. Are people who aren't
really into theory like that who would know about this
book and kind of like it.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
I think signal that they're like I'm kind of into theory.
They just have like, yeah, post realism.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Quote, which it is very accessible. It is very accessible
a virtue.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, And I think the other thing about it is
that it really is like Jamison Jishak and I would
say parts of Christopher lash kind of distilled in this
more accessible format, although Christopher lash is very accessible and
I think he's much better to be honest, But like,
this book is good. I mean it resonates with people,
I think because of the examples when he talks about,

(15:36):
like in university, how there's this one idea I remember
resonated with me a lot, was this idea of depressive
hydonia as opposed to add hidonia, which like traditionally you
can get diagnosed for not being able to feel pleasure,
but he thinks the sort of zeitgeist of a lot
of young people is actually this inability to not feel

(15:58):
anything but constant pleasure. It's like addiction, but it kind
of numbness as a result of that. And how you
would see people in his classes like wearing headphones all
the time, even if they weren't listening to anything. Yeah,
you know what I mean. It was just just this
obsession with always wanting to be distracted. So it resonates
in terms.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Of art, resonated with me definitely.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
In terms of what it says. You know, there's the
kind of obvious like people can't imagine anything outside of capitalism,
but I think there's other aspects of it that are
more interesting. I know, you know, I'm curious what you
guys's favorite chapter was. For me, it's Marxist Supernanny, the
chapter nine, I.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Believe, Yeah, the last one, I think, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Marxist Supernanny has this has a point that I think
gets at something a lot of other Left authors, except
the likes of Jijik and maybe Lash and Jamison, get at,
which is actually this idea of Marxist supernanny. Is this
idea that you know what, like the left has defined
itself about freedom for so long, and but what is

(17:01):
capitalism's big, big strength. It's like constantly giving people things
that they want, but not giving things them what they need. Right,
it's giving them what they want but not what they need.
And what is the left's role in this? Is it
to like accelerate the wave of capital by you know
more opening up more windows of freedom and you know,

(17:23):
desire or is it actually to kind of be like, hey,
you know what, protect us from what we want and
give us what we need. Like this is the whole
point about the supernanny. The supernanny. Oh, I should really
probably elaborate on this super nanny for those who don't know,
is this TV show in Britain which was basically about
this like very menacing, big supernanny woman who would be

(17:45):
called in by parents who had no ability to like
manage their kids, and their kids would be total delinquents, misbehaving, just.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Like Missus Stoubtfire type of thing.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, like kind of just like eating ten
chocolate bars a day, won't want to listen to their
parents and it's just video games. And usually it would
often be like single mothers who need to call in,
or very where I would say permissive liberal dads, So
I dad's do I say? Like featured, who would be
calling it would be calling in the super nanny to

(18:17):
go manage the kids, and she would bring in this
like really harsh discipline, but like in a way that
would work, not just like mindless, you know, not like
just beating kids or something, but just effective discipline that
would put the kid's life in order and get them
to actually listen, because you need that for kids to
grow up, like some level of obedience. Right, And he

(18:39):
thinks that's emblematic a little bit of capitalist culture. And
then how it kind of destroys our discipline willpower through
constant consumerism, and how it's in the system's interest to
do that. And how if if a lot of people
seem to actually kind of crave and to some extent,
like I feel almost like I have I'm free, but

(18:59):
in a way that actually hinder me. You know, Young
John gets at this a lot like, how now we're
masters of our own exploitation, and how maybe actually there's
been a collapse of authority, but in a collapse of
authority except for like capitalist hierarchies, but in all these
other arrangements, like the family, there's a collapse of authority,
collapse of communal authority, religious authority, and all that's good

(19:22):
for capitalist interest to kind of colonize everything. And I
thought that chapter was great, and I wish it was
longer because I wish he took that logic to a
bigger conclusion, because I think a lot that goes over
a lot of people's heads, and that's stuff that lash
in the culture and Narcissism has been saying since, you know,
first book was in the seventies and in the eighties.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
In a way, I'm not surprised that it goes over
people's heads, because it does suggest maybe some conclusions that
are traditionally associated with a more right leaning or at
least right right leaning analysis of culture.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I mean Christopher Lash.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
Too, like for those of you that don't know listening,
is someone that you know, I think that if you
actually read him, it's not really like clear that you
can just say he's a right wing figure. But the
right has co opted him like recently, like the right wing,
like like the post liberals have kind of like used
taken a lot of inspiration from Christopher Latch But like
I think I'm tempted to say that Lash would even

(20:17):
likely reject that characterization, but well.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
His daughter does actually very much dislike the way he
is used by the likes of Steve Bannon, because Steve
Banner claims to be influenced by revolt of the elites,
and when you think about that, it's not hard to
see how. But Christopher Lash saw himself, as he described
himself as a socialist in economics and a small sea

(20:41):
culturally conservative on small cea culturally conservative but socialist on economics,
and you start off as a full on Marxist at
the beginning of his career. So he has a kind
of historical materialist look at things, and he's been critical
of both the left and right, Like he'd be critical
of the right for not really proposing like material solutions

(21:02):
and really speaking to superstructural things, and the left kind
of actually having like weirdly capitalistic views on some like
so sociocultural stuff.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
With like desire and enjoyment and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Right, he's kind of a critical kind of.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
Like liberal illiberal like like like hedonism basically.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, Yeah, it's it's interesting that you brought up biunchall
Han as well, because I definitely while I was going
some of the parts definitely brought me back. I was
like burnout society. There's definitely some big overlaps between self
exploitation that that bunch Han talks about and the kind
of self self surveillance that after he brought up Deluze,

(21:48):
after Mark Fisher brings up Deluze and that that PostScript
on control Society, he brings up this idea of self
self surveillance, like you're internalizing these mechanisms that were once
sort of seems like they were outside of you. That
there that you're being You're being performance evaluated. Your performance
at work is, for example, or in an interview, it's

(22:11):
being evaluated all the time. And there's a big complicated
system that that requires. Ironically, as we move deeper into neoliberalism,
the anti government ideology par excellence, we end up with
more and more layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy go figure
Fisher points out. But one of the things we end
up doing also is internalizing that performance review kind of structure,

(22:34):
so we end up self monitoring, we end up and that, Yeah,
that reminded me of of kind of Bunchulhan's argument about
like what we do with with cell phones and the
way we the way we we have to move from
like a negativity of almost like cynicism towards ever achieving anything,

(22:56):
to like this overabundance of positivity like work, work, work,
and work.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Is never done.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Exploit yourself like a paradigmatic influencer is something. The longer
they step away from the computer is the more chance
that they're going to fade into irrelevance. So they kind
of have to be and people are literally just burning out,
passing out on the subways and stuff like that. There
are some elements of that I think in here, but
more of a materialist analysis as well, because it is

(23:23):
all pinned down on I mean, one of the big
tectonic shifts he points at is the movement from Fordism
to Postforwardism, which is a little more maybe one of
the more obscure things in here that people won't be
quite as familiar with.

Speaker 4 (23:40):
Do you want to outline that transition from from Fordism
to Postfwardism just for the listeners?

Speaker 1 (23:45):
I know, I immediately regretted bringing that up prison, like shit,
I'm gonna have to fucking oh my god. So obviously
it's named after like Ford himself of car Fame, where
you have a physical factory and you have an assembly
line and loads of employees and kind of a very
clear work structure. But actually he dates the transition of

(24:10):
Fordism to Postfordism. What was it like October nineteen seventy
nine or something like.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
That, where.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
There's this shift according to I'll just read it here.
According to Marxist economist Christian Marazzi, the switch from Fordism
to Postfordism can be given a very specific date October sixth,
nineteen seventy nine. It was on that day that the
Federal Reserve increased interest rates by twenty points, preparing the
way for supply side economics that would constitute the economic

(24:42):
reality in which we are now and meshed. And what
I got out of this was the movement towards much more.
This word flexibility comes up, and these flexible supply lines
on demands, manufacturing supply lines that are ready to sort

(25:04):
of shift and break and pop up somewhere else. Rather
than having these very stable, secure, long term supply lines,
you also have you know, the offshoring of a lot
of works and the diversification and globalization of all these
like logistics lines too. So like Japan is one of

(25:27):
the big then the Japanese car industry is one of
the big pioneers of like on demand shipping for example,
where you have very very carefully timed and tuned supply lines.
You don't just have these big factories and with like
tons of like parts in them anymore. Everything is on demand,
on time. Everything has to be tightly regulated. But then

(25:49):
at the same time, this flexibility creates a lot of
instability too, and so Postfordism is kind of this move
towards also markets where it's not about a stable commodity,
it's about you know, creating new desires, shifting to accommodate

(26:11):
what consumers are saying. And by the way, people are
more considered as consumers. Now we're very used to being
referred to as consumers, which is kind of a type development.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
I would say probably the simplest way I could think
of explaining Fordism and postforism is just the transition from
a producer economy to consumer economy. Like the Fordism is
just you know, assembly lines. It's a company, sorry, a
country where you're exporting goods for other people to consume,

(26:46):
whether it be weapons or whatever, materials cars like America
was producing more than it consumed for a while and
then and you could say the ideology of that was
more what Weber might call the Protestant work at you know,
which is, you know, you should be a little bit
more austere, you shouldn't consume too much, you should work hard,
you should be disciplined. But then the shift from a

(27:09):
consumer economy, which comes with world trade and globalization and
people are consuming more and now the main way for
people to get rich is to sell stuff to Americans
and First World countries like in Britain, France, Canada, and
so you know, with that you get an ideology that changes,
like you get this is the basin superstructure thing with
Marxism is like, when you people and capitalists have a

(27:33):
means of getting rich one way, ideologies are going to
kind of shift in ways that benefit that. It's not
really conspiratorial, it's just that, you know, obviously it's going
to mesh together just due to the nature of the interests, Like,
you know, what ideologies are better for a consumer economy,
one that doesn't tell you to be guilty about consuming,

(27:53):
one that tells you actually should be guilty for not
living your best life, for not consuming. And that's the
kind of also get like these sort of liberation movements
on the left, there's a constant debate between the like
proletarian feminist wing, which I support, and the sex positive
wing of feminism, which is more like, you know what,

(28:14):
we should like legalize all sex work and let's do
all that, and which I think accelerates the trends that
I've got us here, you know, kind of it's a
whole other topic. We don't have to go into that.
But what I what I just mean is like a
lot of the ideologies I think more people when they
have issues with the left, they have issues with certain

(28:35):
sociocultural tendencies, and that comes out of the sixties, which
comes out of this post fort is transition, right.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
You're accelerating the processes if I'm hearing you're right, Tony right,
Like that's kind of what you have in mind that Like,
so it's not necessarily like about whatever, like legalizing prostitution
in specific, but just like it's an example of something
that is like that you see as consistent with this
pattern of just like come out of find kind of
like desires.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Right, I mean.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
One of the big features of postfwardism is kind of
like a gig economy type as opposed to like the
stable work that I don't know, I guess like grandparents
now in this generation had this kind of stable work,
paying into a pension, having this kind of company that
lays out the path before you a little bit, and
maybe you probably have healthcare through your company and all that.

(29:26):
We move much more towards like a dual income gig
economy where work is contractual and expected to be temporary
and you're not expect the company is no longer expected
to you know, have your back on healthcare and pension
and all these other things. Like the so called sort
of nanny state did or forced them to do. The

(29:48):
kind of welfare state idea corporate or at least like
a kind of corporate welfare state type of consensus. Postfwordism
kind of does away with that. And that's also connected
to this flexibilizing of supply lines, this offshoring, this of production,
this transition to a consumer economy. And he even talks about,

(30:11):
you know, he's him and being again in this sort
of I guess community college like system where he's seeing
kids coming in from families that now have like overworked,
dual income parents, and the parents have a lot less
time to spend with the child. So he's saying, like,
you know, the kids I'm seeing are seem to be
like almost less and less socialized because they haven't had

(30:35):
that like attention that a single income sort of you know,
fordist family could could afford for them. Postfortism makes this
makes it a lot more demanding to even have a family,
which is he says, is ironic because neoliberalism depends so

(30:55):
heavily on the factory. It's the it's the fact that
the family is the fact factory of the consumers that
need to buy the products that that are being made.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah. I caught that too in the book where I
actually didn't like that because he kind of uncritically went
with what is a very popular view and at leftist academia,
which I think popularized kind of by Wendy Brown, is
this idea that neoliberalism actually pushed the idea of the
family as something to replace the safety net. But you

(31:29):
know that is like taking Reaganist rhetoric and like the
right wing faction of neoliberalism, because that's where I think
this point of view ignores is that there is very
much a left wing faction in neoliberalism. There's both the
right and the left faction neoliberalism. And they'll say, yeah,
of course the right will sometimes say the family is

(31:50):
like the haven and the heartless world. I mean, that's
not the that's actually a Marx Marx quote, but this
idea of like says that about religion, though, But the
family is like this thing that will replace that should
be exist, but the welfare state should be abolished. But
the thing is the regardless of what anyone says, is

(32:12):
the family was just declining. You know, you see a
broader decline of the family, no, regardless of what's happening.
So doesn't really matter what I think is actually the
overall just factual trend is that Postfordism saw a decline
of the family. And it's I and I think people
throw in that stuff which is like, oh, the neoliberals

(32:34):
wanted to keep the family. No, it's that they were
more like, they weren't idiots, and they knew that if
you threw people off the welfare state there would be
consequences to some extent, and that you had they preferred
the family over you know, the welfare state, whereas a
left where often prefer the welfare state over the family.
I think we should have support both. Like, I think

(32:56):
both are pretty damn important.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Like worrying about the integrity of the family lately has
been more of a right wing talking point in like
more contemporary politics of today. Fortunately, and I mean he's
I think his broader point is kind of correct. I mean,
especially for the latest generation where like you know, again,

(33:21):
the affordability crisis also makes like having a family much
more difficult and expensive. And of course, but the right
he tends to take this criticism and say, like the
left is against family is the postmodern neo Marxist culturalists
are actually like directly opposed to any kind of family.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
But they do say abolish the family. They just envision
this idea of like a communal structure which is basically
like the pre nuclear family structure of the tribal communal structure,
which you know it say's not like they don't appo,
they don't support family, It is that how are you
just going to abolish the family and go to that structure?
And they'll say, well, it's possible because past, you know,

(34:02):
there's been past arrangements. And it's like sure, but how
do you get there in this modern state? And you know,
most people think that it's going to be the administrative state.
And if you look at the way the left talks
about childcare, like the radical left, because a lot of
some some marksists supported a lot of anarchists support it,
and you know, some like academics, left wing progressive academics

(34:23):
support it, but it's not a really popular position.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
I think everybody is worried about whatever version of the family,
whether it's the very traditionalist heterosexual nuclear family of the
right where you're not allowed to have gay parents or anything,
and then or the more I think ample versions you
find on the left. Everyone is kind of worried about
what capitalism means for the family structure, which it's connected

(34:51):
to the move to postfwardism. Is really what I wanted
to say, All these different phenomena are connected there. Yes,
Postfwardism is like the movie Heat compared to like older
gangster movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas are like are
like the paradigmatic Fordist situations, because in The Godfather and

(35:13):
Goodfellas you have this very traditionalist ghost of the old
world Italian gangsters with these family structures and these like well,
these like hard one value system that holds their almost
very kind of almost slightly mysterious and ritualistic kinds of

(35:34):
hierarchies in place, as opposed to Heat, which is just
like a bunch of guys who are doing a job
and aren't really like connected and to anything and not
clearly not part of a family. Because at one point
one of the characters wants to get married, and one
of the crime bosses is like, how do you expect
to help me if you're tied down with marriage? Like

(35:54):
the idea of like rootless criminals who have no attachment
to and they're much more on a hey, I kind
of just compares those The Heat is like analogous to
the difference.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
Part of the thing in this book that I always
felt was maybe incomplete or taken a two face value
is the structural explanation.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
For mental health.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
Okay, I guess that that it's like that, it's like, oh,
like it's it's like the capitalist economic which like I'm
I think that that plays a role, but it's like
not the actual mechanism. And I do actually feel like
maybe the family is like an important kind of question
here that uh that like that I again, and I've
said this before on the podcast on past topics, that uh,

(36:45):
you know, the left is maybe not equipped enough or
like too wary because of how conservative right wing coded
talk about the family is and religion.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Yeah, and really well, when I.

Speaker 4 (36:55):
Really do feel like like just saying, oh, like it's
because capital is is so toxic and it's not giving
us the things that we need. That's why we're all depressed.
I just don't think that that's a that's an incomplete.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Story, because we have to work. That's the thing. The
way they take it is like, oh, capitalism makes us
depressed because we have to work. And it's like, I.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Mean, in some cases that's true.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Part like capital well, the thing about Marx, Like, remember Mark,
what Marx was saying said capitalism creates alienation, not that
it makes you depressed. There are different things. I mean,
alienation is a does like limit your humanity. It kind
of dehumanizes you in some way. But it's not like
he's not saying capitalism makes you want to kill yourself.

(37:35):
Like the rise of mental illness is is really something
unpressed in it that we've been seeing and it's does
zact like it's merely as a result of people now
just being open about it. Like I mean, it's completely
utter bowl like the fact that you have such high
depression rates and suicide rates in the most rich countries.
May I add I think Han takes Mark Fisher's analysis

(37:58):
to a more strong conclusion. Like Young Johan talks about
the family, but he also talks about religion and decline
of rituals, where he says the decline of ritual of
religion has not been completely emancipatory process because while we
can say, like organized religion was really repressive and some
of the superstitions of some religions were very backward and unenlightening,

(38:21):
he thinks that you think the core strength of religion
is rituals, and rituals are something that are actually good,
and that is very much missing in the capitalist society.
And yeah, like I think, I mean, he goes as
far to say that is the cause of depression, and
I think that's certainly part of it.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
It is interesting that he brings up the mental health
crisis because that has been seeing a lot of attention,
especially in universities in the last couple of years. This
like sort of and obviously we got a good dose
of dose of it in COVID as well, the mental
health epidemic, the hidden pandemic it was called at the

(39:01):
time or something like that. And not that I'm laughing
at it. It's a serious thing having an ADHD diagnosis
myself and then reading a line that runs something like
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a pathology. It is a
pathology of late capitalism. I'm like, yeah, I'm late capitalism

(39:23):
man produced by money slamming together and Lena Hadrian Collider
and then I popped out, and also my mother and father.
But they're inconsequential to my birth. No, I mean, I
take his point. These are depression and ADHD and mental
health are conditions that are obviously neurologically instantiated. It's not

(39:48):
like the scientists who are studying these things are just
crazy ideologues hallucinating genes and cells and brain activity. But
these sorts of things are also reflective of I don't
know if he asks this in the right way, Like
obviously they're biologically instantiated, but what causes them? Like what

(40:11):
is their cause? And obviously the answer will be will
like ADHD, for specifically, is one of the most genetic
things they've identified, like out of out of anything. If
you see someone with ADHD, like there's a huge chance
that like one of their parents will have it too.
It's very heritable. So that's how they would answer. But
he's you know, I take his point to.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Play devil's advocate. One could like you can definitely say
like that adh the traits we associate that we call
ADHD are genetic, But the classification of ADHD is a
result of capitalism, I think is more what like Fisher
would say, given that, like think about it, like why

(40:53):
is ADHD a problem to be diagnosed? Because it makes
you like the only reason why any pathologies ever really
created as a pathologies? Because it renders your renders you
unable to effectively integrate into the existing society. When in
the case of ADHD, it's like it's not like a
it doesn't make you violent, it doesn't make you completely dysfunctional.

(41:17):
Maybe yes, but like it's just like, you know, maybe
you're not as productive as you should be.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
It's a bit of emotional regulation problems.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
Yeah, or you're not as productive as you should be also, right,
which is more mundane.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Oh, I have so many days where I'm like, I'm
going to get everything done today, and then at eight o'clock,
I'm like, I did nothing today. In fact, I undid
some things.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
I did yesterday.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
But but no, it's uh, it's the problem of separating.
You know, I guess historical processes from sort of like
the scientific style of explanation, right, Like we know we
know things like heart attacks are modern era diseases because
while people simply just died more often than they would

(41:59):
reach the age where heart attacks became and then once
life inspectancy goes up, you have new diseases to deal with.
Or once the refrigerator is invented and we're not curing
all of our meat, okay, like now stomach cancer is
going to change its distribution, and it's the problem of
separating kind of I guess subject and object in that

(42:19):
sort of way too. It's like, okay, well, then what's
is refrigeration the cause of heart attacks? Like they you
know it doesn't of course, of course there's like it's
so there's lots of different ways to explain those sorts
of things, and ADHD and depression are examples. But then
you know it's no coincidence that you have this like

(42:39):
massive pharmaceutical company. I remember the last time they changed
my my ADHD medication. I can't remember if I mentioned this.
I'm not on it anymore, but last time they just
changed it on me without asking, and I looked at
it and the new place the factory was located in Israel.
It went from a factory from Sweden to a factory

(43:00):
of in Israel. And then I was just like, and
they didn't think that like asking me about this.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
We wait.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
So it was the same medication. It just happened to
be one that was made in Israel.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
Now it was a generic that they started offering. So
once once a generic comes out when there was no
generic before, your insurance company says we're not going to
cover the normal one. We're only going to cover the
generic now. And apparently sometimes the also the pharmacy will
just switch you onto the generic without even telling you,
so then suddenly your medication is different. And I looked

(43:31):
up the factory that was being made in It wasn't
Sweden anymore, it was in Israel.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
You'd rather support those blonde Swedes than those than those
Jews in Israel.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yes, definitely, definitely That's what I was getting at.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
And also.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Also all of it's connected. These material developments, developments of science, history, culture, society.
Obviously they all interact, and it's really kind of crazy
to try to separate and isolate these things. But yeah, anyway,
back getting back to sorry.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
Well, I just want to I want to bring it
back for sure to sort of like the capitalist realism
and maybe like how we can use this to think
about contemporary stuff. I mean, this was originally inspired partly
by Eric's observations about the reactions to Zoron's when in
New York, but I guess like before getting to that,
I also kind of I've been meaning and I wasn't

(44:26):
sure where to fit it in. Just to comment about
this the sort of thought experiment that I've mentioned before
that I've used with students about, you know, it's easier
to imagine the.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
End of the world.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
I guess I just want to start by throwing a
little bit of cold water on that, because I guess
it's not surprising to me if you think about it.
Why it's easier to imagine the end of the world
because it's simple, Like it's like an asteroid hits the world.
It's not complicated. It's like people are going to die,
you know, like there's going to be droughts, Like it's
not like the things that could destroy the world are

(44:59):
relatively simp Mass destruction is like not complicated. Making sure
that everybody has like a good material means is complicated.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Like that's why it's harder.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
To imagine, because it's actually complicated. So I don't know
if you guys disagree with me, but I guess I
guess I just think that the little the fun thought
experiment is actually like not as revealing to me as
it seems, because to me, it's actually not a mystery
why it's harder to imagine alternatives because it is actually
a very complicated problem, whereas destroying every human on the
planet Earth is not that complicated.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
It is certainly like a catchy little slogan that really
drives the point home. It's easier to imagine, and our
cultural imaginary is definitely much more jam packed with disaster
films and climate and zombie and plague and whatever. Other
ends of the world's kind.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
Of even in the conversation we've been having now, like
we've sort of been talking about the balance between and
Tony I think up really like interesting stuff with regard
to Christopher Lash and just sort of this like the
fact that, okay, like if capitalism is just about satisfying desires,
well it's no wonder that there's going to be some
sort of emptiness to that.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
That.

Speaker 4 (46:14):
So then it's we've sort of been dancing around this
idea that you know, we haven't been framing it in
terms of alternatives, right, But there's a way in which
our conversation was sort of talking about, well, what do
we really need in our society?

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Right?

Speaker 4 (46:26):
And I think Chapter nine, I guess, is sort of
onto some of these ideas that you know, well, we
need some kind of paternalism, some sort of way to
encourage more discipline or something like that, right, because just
Giving people more of what they want, i e. To
satisfy their sort of hedonistic desires. Well, that's not really
going to do it in a way because I mean

(46:47):
it may might help, right, like I mean just giving
people stuff, but maybe like the more fundamental problems that
Fisher is talking about in this book, well we're not
really just going to solve them necessarily by just giving
people like more liberal freedom in the sense of just
more or more hedonistic freedom. And then so like even
so as my point of bringing that up and rehashing

(47:09):
that is, like we are noticing the complexity because there's
like so many like competing interests and desires and concerns
about like what actually constitutes a good life that's worth
living in a society. What's a thing that constitutes a
good society. Well, maybe it's rituals and patterns and family.
I mean, these are like I'm saying, these are complicated problems, right,

(47:30):
these are not This is not like like imagining an
alternative that addresses all of those things that we've been
talking about is seems to me to be actually like
a huge puzzle.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
My idea with this thinking about Zorin was just that well, clearly,
like conservatives disagree and that, and they would say it's
very easy apparently for them to imagine the end of
capitalism because Zorin apparently represents a threat because he's being
called a communist. I think, like just just recently, Trump

(48:01):
was just agreed that he's a communist and was going
to look into deporting him, and like Homeland Security had
a meeting about him and all this shit, Like there's
some panic going around. And so apparently for them, it
is easy to imagine the end of capitalism because a
New York mayor could end capitalism, apparently by the way
they're reacting. But that's the point, right, how do you

(48:23):
distinguish their rhetoric from the reality that they're like, they're
not talking about a reality at all. Anyway, as far
as Zorin can go, he's just going to be able
to draw a happy face, which is fine.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
So there's this tendency, and I've talked about it with
other people on my podcast One Time Radio, and it's
this tendency for the left to affirm or support something
that inadvertently either is it commentative to capitalism, benefits capitalism,
or affirms something that is already happening under capitalism. A

(48:59):
good example is this authority question, like the family arguments,
you often hear in favor of abolishing the family, or
against the likes of you know, Biancho Han's view, or
the likes of Christopher Lash's view, or just anyone who
wants to defend the family. They'll say, well, the existing
family is oppressive, and that sometimes you know, if when

(49:23):
kids are and don't have you know, real freedom, I mean,
their parents have custody and all that. If you have
a bad parent, you're fucked. And now they're not wrong
about that. However, their solution is to look at broken
families and to say, you know what the solution is,
we should just do away with the family. And I

(49:44):
think it's silly and naive, because yes, this is something
that is bad, like that some people have really bad luck.
In fact, a lot of the people who make this
very argument come from broken families, which gives them a
sort of bias in the where they'll say, you know,
if they'll project what is really ultimately a family trauma

(50:06):
onto their politics, and I think, damn, don't ruin it
for the rest of us. But like, also, it's just
not a great solution. What I think we should look
at is why not that we should get rid of
the structure necessarily, or like I don't think there's only
one structure, but that we should think that we're wise
enough that we have figured out this clear alternative to

(50:28):
like the family structure. I think, you know, you have
we really careful before you embrace the politics of like,
you know, let's get rid of that.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
I think the real thing is the construction a society
of just deconstructing everything, deconstruct gender, deconstruct family.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Like, yeah, we should look at like, Okay, we should
have better authorities, Like that's that's the question, is we
should have We shouldn't help families so that we have
as we have less broken homes.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
Don't get rid of binaries, just have better binaries.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Well, I don't know, I don't know if i'd go that,
but like, actually, actually, you know what, I'm pretty much
I'm very I'm pretty against the gender binary. But that's
another whole topic.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Well, I just I just meant.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
I just meant in the sense of like these authoritative
like ways of thinking about things that like it's not
that there's a problem with like authority per se, it's
just a problem some people think there is.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Yeah, some people.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
People think there is. In fact, like this is a
kind of streak you find in Wilhelm Reich's sort of view.
Wilhelm Reich was this guy who thought that the family
was oppressive. We covered him, didn't we.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Yeah, we talked about him a couple of weeks back.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah, the family was oppressive. It gets people to bay
authority because the family's a first cell of fascist.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Yeah, holy shit, I forgot about that.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
What he's right about is what Hegel kind of says
in the philosophy of right is that the family is
the first cell of the state. And unless you think
you can live with no state, then you'd think that
view is ridiculous. I think the idea of like the
family is.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Where ideology is shaped for Reich.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
I think, yeah, but this is this is the kind
of thing this anti this pro hetero, this anti authority,
this blanket anti authority politics.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
It's just having sexually repressive parents. What's more authoritarian? Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
A lot of people who find themselves attracted to politics
that are, you know, against all authority as such. And
often you see this a lot in the way some
of the left intellectuals who are on this sort of
side like to use Nietzsche. They like to use Nietzsche
and kind of forget about as aristocratic hierarchical politics and
just take the kind of anti authority part and you know,

(52:38):
embrace that kind of like Adulus doayes this actually, you know,
and how he uses Nietzsche, And a lot of the
people who find themselves attracted to this sort of thing,
they think in their own shoes and that's it. They think, well,
you know, I can, I can be a free thinking
individual and I'm perfectly fine without any authority structures. You know.

(53:00):
It's to say that everyone can't be can be like that,
And it's like, one, you're probably an adult. Two, if
you are a kid, this would be bad. Three. Also,
not everyone is like you. This is the thing that
a lot of people who are intellectuals get attracted to
this politics because they are by default people who are
inclined to this sort of freethinking, free spirited view. Not

(53:21):
everyone wants to be like that. Not everyone wants to
be like that for everything in every matter. Like I'll
give you an example. I'm very like, you know, forward thinking,
free thinking on political matters, intellectual matters. But when it
comes to like I don't know, deciding where to eat
or deciding certain thing. I prefer other people decide. I like.
I love it when people decide, you know. I love

(53:43):
it when someone who knows their shit about something just
goes and does it.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
Last night, I decided we go to Patua.

Speaker 4 (53:50):
You know, which is a good A good Jamaican Asian
fusion restaurant in Toronto anyway, Okay.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Sorry, you just docks to everybody, dude, Anyway, They're great.
The broader point here is about authority. I don't think
authority is inherently bad. I really don't. It's a matter
of better authority and the outcomes that it leads to
some people who find themselves attracted to like just anti
authority politics. It went well with neoliberalism, partially because you know,

(54:18):
when you get this crackdown on the welfare state that
comes largely from the right, starting already with the seventies,
but you have, like, at the same time, the new
left politics is so anti bureaucracy, and part of that's
you know, legitimated, Like it's part of that's legitimate and
that there is a real critique of bureaucracy. But it'll
have as like libertarian politics that actually mesh very well

(54:39):
with the new spirit of capitalism. You know, the new
spirit of capitalism was all about getting government off your back,
about delegating stuff to the market. I think sometimes man like,
because I had never found the systems of the Soviet
Union appealing. If I was alive in the sixties, I
could see myself getting going from a you know, new
leftist to a you know, neoliberal. I mean, a lot

(55:03):
of left ease became neoliberals. That is a fact. In fact,
there's this book called the left Wing Origins of Neoliberalism
that's about how a lot of like people used to
be like full on Marxist Soviet sympathizers, and after they
got disenfranchised, they thought, well, you know what, maybe the
market is the way to a freer society, maybe even
a socialist society, because you have like this, it's more

(55:27):
liberating than the state. And it's we look back on
that like, oh, that's like a you know, I would
never believe that, But I don't know. Man. The way
the the left has marked pro I would call like
the dominant form of feminism today market feminism gender ideology,
This idea of choosing a million genders it's so marketized.
Think about it like the marketplace of genders, the marketplace

(55:48):
of ideologies.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
I don't know, that's a that's a tough one. That's
a tough one. I think there's a difference between.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
Your sciritu agree by the woke mob.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
I think there's a difference between trying to like analyze
what's going on in any of these situations and then
navigating the distinction between facts and values, which can never
really be separated. But it's not like every time we're
describing something, we're also advocating a very specific solution to it, right,
just like what opened us up with the housing thing. Right,

(56:20):
Like we would all agree on affordability, but maybe not
all of us would agree that freezing housing prices is
the pathway to affordability in that in at least in
where housing comes into it. But I think also, you know,
saying okay, all these genders and reflects some kind of
market ideology, and then even that, what's the problem with that?

(56:40):
There's there's a certain level of analysis lackings that I
can't agree or disagree with statements like that because I
just don't know what the fuck, where the fuck they're
even coming from and what the problem is in the
first place. But anyway, that is to say, I don't
know the answer to the gender stuff there.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Yeah, I guess do we want to mentions?

Speaker 4 (57:00):
Talk about Zoran a bit like because I'm you know,
as a as a student of political as a doctor
in the philosophy of political science, I was looking into it.
What power does the mayor have in New York in general,
Like for the mayor to be able to do any
of his core policies, he would need at least some
funding authority from from the state government. And this and

(57:21):
the governor I forget her name, Hochel or something like that.
Maybe I'm mixing it up. She basically said, like she's
not going to increase taxes on anyone, like she just said,
and because she's been asked like, are you gonna do
the things that are necessary for like him to implement
his policy to for example, create like a like childcare
in New York City, like she would need to or
he would need to appropriate like funding, and the only

(57:43):
way that he can do that is by going to
the state capitol.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (57:48):
And so I was just saying, like that's not going
to happen. So like his core policy is just not
not realistic. It's not because I'm not in favor of them,
it's just about like the institutional reality that like then
that there's only so much that the New York Mayor
can do. I mean, maybe he can so to freeze
rents he needs so, I know that there's like something
called like the Rental rate like review board in New

(58:10):
York City, and the mayor does have the power to
appoint those members, but the mayor can't directly like freeze rents.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
He would need to.

Speaker 4 (58:19):
Get that board to agree to freeze rents. And he's
not allowed to fire people from the board unless it's
for misconduct, so like he would have to like if so,
you know, he would have to find an excuse to
fire all the members of the board and then implement
his own who are going to promise to freeze rents.
So it's just like those are just like the kinds
of fine institutional details that I was looking at. I

(58:39):
was like, well, it's his platform is just like not
gonna fucking happen.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
So and no matter how much she feels like kind
of a breath of fresh air and a real turn
and at least like municipal politics and or even a
real turn in politics and the Democratic Party.

Speaker 4 (58:55):
We need a new system in san Antoni will agree
with me.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
We need sortition, we needs.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
The other problem here though, is another a concept called
interpassivity that that comes up here in this text. And interpassivity. Well,
he's talking about the film, Wally, but it's a broader point, right,
So he says about it that the film, it is
a great film. The film performs are anti capitalism for us.

(59:21):
It's a it's an eco catastrophe movie.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
He brings up.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
So what but and it's a great film, and he
has some criticisms of it, But what he wants to
get out is this concept interpassivity, which means capitalism anti
The film performs are anti capitalism for us, allowing us
to continue to consume with impunity. And so this is

(59:45):
the problem when and we you even get this even
from more like Marxist, like more more even like more
hardline leftists, is like, well, I'm not I'm against Zorin
because he's not like radical enough. He's not he's not
a true Marxist. He has critiques of capitalism, but there
are critiques from within capitalists and.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
He's not enough, and he's ultimately damaging because he's going
to perform. I don't know, that's almost seems like he could.
And Victor's skeptical attitude may then be appropriate. Here is
that Zorin could put us into this interpassive state where
because the problem is, you know, this spectacle of him

(01:00:26):
winning could be taken as oh, great, I don't need
to do anything anymore. I don't need to get out
there and support him because he's going to do my
anti capitalism for me. And whether or not he does
is obviously just a question that has to be left
to the future. But it goes to the broader point
that when you have fascism, when you have communism, you

(01:00:46):
need propaganda with those things you need to argue. But
he's saying here, the role of capitalist this is a quote,
the role of capitalist ideology is not to make explicit
and explicit case for something in the world that propaganda does,
but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital
don't depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. Capitalism

(01:01:11):
doesn't need you to believe it works for it to work,
and apparently, according to this argument, Fascism and communism are
things that require you to believe them to work for
them to work. So in capitalism and capitalist realism, you
can have this state where I don't believe money is real,

(01:01:31):
but I act as if it is, or I don't
believe this works, but I act as if it does work. Right,
you get into this Capitalism capitalist realism is this unique
situation that produces that. And the danger of interpassivity is,
you know, whenever any spectacle comes along like Zorin winning
or the squad winning or Burnie gaining ground, right, the

(01:01:52):
danger is that it can relax us into passivity because
it's like we see, it's obviously the media system that
we're not going unless you're going in person to their
rallies and hearing them speak. You're probably getting this information
from the media. So you have a spectacle of anti
capitalism and you relax and say everything's good, and you
pay attention to something else. You go back to, you

(01:02:13):
resume your Lord of the Rings movie or whatever you
were watching.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yeah, it's such a performative ritual at this point, like
in art galleries or a lot of these artistic events
where people will say and then then that's why laid capitalism.
I see a lot of video essayists. It's strange, like
there's this interesting thing where like bread tube started, Like
this category of bread tube is this fascinating thing on

(01:02:37):
YouTube because it includes a lot of channels that are
frankly aren't very political at all. But every now and then,
and they're like three hour long analysis of Harry Potter
or whatever film or video game, they'll say something something
late capitalism, and it's almost like a ritual and that's
the disavowal you mentioned, you know, like this fetishistic disavowal,

(01:02:59):
which is to be like, yeah, I acknowledge it, but
you know, whatever is Usually he talks a lot about this.
How like the way in which Mao is China would
deal with criticism, you know, like in Dissent, he quotes
Mao at a meeting, how he would say, okay, guys,
whatever criticisms you have of our party, just shit it out.

(01:03:20):
Let it out like a shit. And the way describing
it like a shit, like just get it out, like
just out of the way so we can move on
life as usual. It is kind of the way we
treat like sometimes like our ritualistic anti capitalism. You know,
it's like okay, you know, yeah, it's bad whatever, not
think about it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Capitalism itself is the biggest purveyor of anti capitalism. Yeah, capitalism,
like movies, music, or the cultural sphere is full of
anti capitalist messages. Reality shows are a good example of
all this postfortist and capitalist realist stuff too, because reality
shows are something that are affected by what they say,

(01:04:01):
which is an interesting situation. So it's like what you
say is real also somehow affects what is real. And
I guess the point is, you know, you can have
a reality show and then the audience can react, and
you can incorporate audience reactions back into the supposedly realistic
and unscripted show, and there's a feedback loop between what

(01:04:23):
people are saying and what is happening, and then so
what is real in that circuit, like it becomes a
little less clear. And that matches the point too of
interpassivity and the fact that capitalist ideology doesn't require a
case to be made for it. In fact, capitalist ideology
works best when you're not making a case for it,

(01:04:46):
and so you can behave in whatever way you want,
you know, as long as you believe this is all bullshit,
then you can still do it. And I'm sure every
Silicone Valley capitalist.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Is like that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
You know, oh, I know money is completely just paper
and worthless and or just bits on a computer. Now
if you're talking about those people, But I'm gonna act.
I'm gonna conduct my life as of getting as much
of this ship as possible is the most important thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
So there you go. My prediction is they're gonna get
a huge return of trad culture, but it's gonna be
super commodified and ironic, and it's gonna be totally ineffective.
It's gonna be a bunch of people who are like,
I'm a trad cath. Now you already see what the
likes of like red Scare podcast, where they're like they
consider themselves to be trad cath but are they really though,
And you know, you people who will like flaunt the

(01:05:33):
kind of like crosses, but at the end of the day,
they'll do the same stuff and nothing will change. Capitalism
will continue.

Speaker 4 (01:05:39):
Do you think there's gonna be any growth of real
trad Like do you think that your generation's gonna have
gonna have kids sooner like our zoomers? Do you think
zoomers are gonna have kids, maybe uh sooner than millennials.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
I don't think they'll have a choice. It's not like
it's they can barely buy a house. Yeah, that's forget
having forget having kids.

Speaker 4 (01:05:59):
So the trend's gonna the trend will conte.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
Look. I have friends who have master's degrees in like
engineering and chemistry, and like, really, you know, you would
think employable, employable degrees, and they can't even find a job.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):
True.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
I would expect the family structure to continue to be
challenged under capitalism, as as Fisher's saying here as we're seeing,
and I would not be surprised if trad came back,
because a lot of what trad is is just kind
of playing house right, like like very traditional family roles, childbearing,

(01:06:37):
stay at home wife, brett winning father, like kind of
this nostalgia for Fordism. It is a it is a
it's a fortist fantasy. I'm sure it'll get stronger if
things continue in the direction they're going.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Yeah, I agree. I think that's interesting. Well, I think
that was a good episode, guys.

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
Thanks for listening everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
And yeah, thanks for indulging my choice.

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):
It was good.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
I think if we really never talked about or never
covered a capitalist realism on an early episode. I'm glad
we did, and even if we did, it was probably
appropriate to revisit it. Tune in next week for Kim
Jong Pills to be back back in the driver's seat,
and do check out Tony's YouTube channel one dime and

(01:07:26):
his podcast one Diime Radio. And yeah, we'll leave it
at that.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
We should thank our guests for joining us, Thank you
for Ross for that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Hell yeah, I went substitute teacher and didn't get bullied.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
All right, win win, all right, chow stop recording