After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system - a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework. Using examples from politics, films, fiction, work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colours all areas of contemporary experience. But it will also show that, because of a number of inconsistencies and glitches internal to the capitalist reality program capitalism in fact is anything but realistic.

This book offers the first realist reconstruction of Marx’s critique of capitalism. Reading Marx through a realist lens enables us to make sense of the connections between (1) Marx’s positive concept of freedom, rooted in a theory of human development, (2) his understanding of alienation as diagnosing capitalist unfreedom, and (3) his conceptions of democracy and socialism, respectively, as the cures for this unfreedom. Along the way, it discusses and responds to some of Marx’s most insightful critics, such as Max Weber and Friedrich Hayek. This clarifies Marx’s ideas for a new generation of political thinkers; explains the challenge they pose to contemporary debates about freedom, democracy, and future economic institutions; and demonstrates that these ideas remain both defensible and compelling.

"This is an important and ambitious piece of work. It develops a number of large-scale and bold theses about Marx's method in political theory, his critique of capitalism and his vision of a better society. It is well researched and well argued. It will have a significant impact on debates about these issues." -Sean Sayers, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Kent, UK "This sober and wide-ranging work is a clear and thoughtful account of some of Marx's central concepts and theses, and a spirited defense of their relevance as tools for understanding and criticising contemporary society. It will be of interest to anyone who wishes to know where we are and where we might go." -Raymond Geuss FBA, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, UK This book offers the first realist reconstruction of Marx's critique of capitalism. Reading Marx through a realist lens enables us to make sense of the connections between (1) Marx's positive concept of freedom, rooted in a theory of human development, (2) his understanding of alienation as diagnosing capitalist unfreedom, and (3) his conceptions of democracy and socialism, respectively, as the cures for this unfreedom. Along the way, it discusses and responds to some of Marx's most insightful critics, such as Max Weber and Friedrich Hayek. This clarifies Marx's ideas for a new generation of political thinkers; explains the challenge they pose to contemporary debates about freedom, democracy, and future economic institutions; and demonstrates that these ideas remain both defensible and compelling. Paul Raekstad is an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam working on radical political theory, in particular Marxism, anarchism, prefigurative politics, and direct action. They co-authored Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today (2020). .

This book examines the relationship between critical realism and Marxism. The authors argue that critical realism and Marxism have much to gain from each other. This is the first book to address the controversial debates between critical realism and Marxism, and it does so from a wide range if disciplines. The authors argue that whilst one book cannot answer all the questions about the relationship between critical realism and Marxism, this book does provide some significant answers. In doing so, Critical Realism and Marxism reveals a potentially fruitful relationship; deepens our understanding of the social world and makes an important contribution towards eliminating the barbarism that accompanies contemporary capitalism.

A collection of transcripts from Mark Fisher's final series of lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London, in late 2016. Edited with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun, this collection of lecture notes and transcriptions reveals acclaimed writer and blogger Mark Fisher in his element -- the classroom -- outlining a project that Fisher's death left so bittersweetly unfinished. Beginning with that most fundamental of questions -- "Do we really want what we say we want?" -- Fisher explores the relationship between desire and capitalism, and wonders what new forms of desire we might still excavate from the past, present, and future. From the emergence and failure of the counterculture in the 1970s to the continued development of his left-accelerationist line of thinking, this volume charts a tragically interrupted course for thinking about the raising of a new kind of consciousness, and the cultural and political implications of doing so. For Fisher, this process of consciousness raising was always, fundamentally, psychedelic -- just not in the way that we might think...

As the world has been reshaped since the 1970s by economic globalization, neoliberalism, and financialization, writers and artists have addressed the problem of representing the economy with a new sense of political urgency. Anxieties over who controls capitalism have thus been translated into demands upon literature, art, and mass media to develop strategies of representation that can account for capitalism’s power. Reading Capitalist Realism presents some of the latest and most sophisticated approaches to the question of the relation between capitalism and narrative form, partly by questioning how the “realism” of austerity, privatization, and wealth protection relate to the realism of narrative and cultural production. Even as critics have sought to locate a new aesthetic mode that might consider and move beyond theorizations of the postmodern, this volume contends that narrative realism demands renewed scrutiny for its ability to represent capitalism’s latest scenes of enclosure and indebtedness. Ranging across fiction, nonfiction, television, and film, the essays collected here explore to what extent realism is equipped to comprehend and historicize our contemporary economic moment and what might be the influence or complicity of the literary in shaping the global politics of lowered expectations. Including essays on writers such as Mohsin Hamid, Lorrie Moore, Jess Walter, J. M. Coetzee, James Kelman, Ali Smith, Russell Banks, William Vollmann, and William Gibson, as well as examinations of Hollywood film productions and The Wire television series, Reading Capitalist Realism calls attention to a resurgence of realisms across narrative genres and questions realism’s ability to interrogate the crisis-driven logic of political and economic “common sense.”

An international set of eminent scholars examine the contemporary relevance and continuing contribution of Marx's work. This indispensable volume presents Marx's theories in a new light, both for specialists who might think they already know everything about Marx and for a new generation of readers who are approaching his work for the first time.