Capitalist Realism

When even businesses can’t be run as businesses, why should public services?

Alternative’ and ‘independent’ don’t designate something outside mainstream culture; rather, they are styles, in fact the dominant styles, within the mainstream.

Contemporary culture has eliminated both the concept of the public and the figure of the intellectual. Former public spaces - both physical and cultural - are now either derelict or colonized by advertising

take the opportunity opened up by the crisis to begin to rid public services of business ontology. When even businesses can’t be run as businesses, why should public services?

The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again

What is needed is a new struggle over work and who controls it; an assertion of worker autonomy (as opposed to control by management) together with a rejection of certain kinds of labor (such as the excessive auditing which has become so central feature of work in post-Fordism). This is a struggle that can be won – but only if a new political subject coalesces

As Badiou has forcefully insisted, an effective anti-capitalism must be a rival to Capital, not a reaction to it;

Nothing is inherently political; politicization requires a political agent which can transform the taken-for-granted into the up-for-grabs

needs to be left behind is a certain romantic attachment to the politics of failure, to the comfortable position of a defeated marginality. The credit crisis is an opportunity

cultural entrepreneur for Hollywood. Since it is now clear that a certain amount of stability is necessary for cultural vibrancy, the question to be asked is: how can this stability be provided, and by what agencies