Two Kinds of Capitalist Realism

In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher talks about how capitalism constitutes the horizon of the possible. Picking up and popularising Fredric Jameson's 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism', he describes a habit of mind, a sensibility, that is entirely defined by the demands and rationalities of the system. This isn't the same as saying there is no alternative politics or imaginaries or that people can't resist capitalism, but rather this is an imaginary, and the dominant one at that, unable to conceive of differing imaginaries. Its sense of the real is all there is, nothing else. Capitalist realism then is more than "ideology" or, horror of horrors, "false class consciousness", but habits of thought, practices, doxa cultivated, reinforced, and reiterated relationally. Rarely does capitalist realism announce itself as something to be accepted or rejected, but proceeds and insinuates by a multiplicity of contacts. It works precisely because it appears spontaneous and natural, though its current manifestation has a history and a process of conscious political constitution by generations of policy makers, elected and not.

We can talk about varieties of capitalist realism at different times and places, but today capitalist realism in British politics manifests in two policy-making forms. There is "conventional" capitalist realism as it presents itself to self-defined progressives, centrists, and technocrats. There's no point wasting time talking about alternatives when capitalism is the only game in town, so the horizon of centre left politics is determined by presenting as better managers of the system. The growth imperative is never questioned. What's good for business is good for society. But there are irrationalities and impurities in the system, and the task of a reforming government is to legislate away the difficulties and run the state as if it's GB plc. Equality as a virtue is defined by opportunity, not outcomes. Social justice is understood by "inclusion" and removing barriers to "aspiration", of levelling the playing field so, in effect, we're all equal before capital. Capitalism then assumes abstract proportions, a knowable abstract machine, that will work the best when the right levers are pulled in the right order. This mindset is one you are more likely to find among Labour and the the Liberal Democrats than the Tories, with slight permutations.

Then there is the form of capitalist realism that doesn't often get talked about. What might be more properly called bourgeois realism. Its logics are rarely spelled out, and prefers to use the language of conventional capitalist realism. George Osborne, for example, was a past master at this. Growth, growth, growth, and when Tory austerity undermined their stated objective, they either made up nonsense about paying down the debt or asserted their objectives as if it was evidence. They weren't interested in justifying what they were doing, because at a gut level they knew what they were doing was unjustifiable: heightening inequality and strengthening the whip hand of capital over labour. Tory governments since have not departed from putting the bourgeois class interest before the abstract machine of a fair and technocratic capitalism, hence why Boris Johnson can abandon what were previously considered touchstones of capitalist realism. If state largesse and selective industrial activism suits the sectional interests of the class he leads better than deregulation, privatisation, and more markets, then this is what bourgeois realism will go for.

In his book on Thatcherism, Alexander Gallas makes a distinction between economic order politics and class politics and uses these to periodise the governments from 1979 to the Blair years. He argues at different times the Tories pitched toward outright class politics to smash the labour movement, and concentrated more on the economy in conventional capitalist realist terms as they were gearing up for their assault and after the trade union dragon had been slain. But thinking through this distinction via the two kinds of capitalist realism allows for finer grained analysis of government strategy on a by policy and by politician basis. It also recognises how, despite the two forms broadly mapping onto historic party associations, each can and do at times adopt the realism of the other. The Labour right's scorched earth cynicism is their own form of bourgeois realism, pared down to pathetic self-interest and struggling to ensure Labour is fit for capital's endorsement. Something we saw with liberal remainia too. And now, especially after winning big in former Labour strongholds, new Tory MPs from less than well-heeled backgrounds find themselves thinking through politics in conventional realist terms and find it baffling how the party of business is pushing Universal Credit cuts and National Insurance hikes to pay for adult social care, measures that would suck growth out of these places.

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