I've lurked here since day 2, but I haven't made a post on here yet so let my first one be an effort post, even though I suck at posting and efforts.
Ever since I read Mark Fisher's “Capitalist Realism, is there no alternative?” a couple of years back, my politics and the lens through which I view and understand the world has been pretty much unchanged. Nothing that I read or watched after that really had an impact on me, or at least not one of this size.
In the country/region I was born in the most popular party has a concept called “climate realism”, and this morning rereading Capitalist Realism I couldn't help but think that it's pretty much the same deal. Climate realism is a position held by absolute ghouls, it's acknowledging that there's catastrophic change coming for us and things will keep getting worse; but that we can only try to prepare or mitigate within the confines of our dear capitalist system, where the only truth is the market, and the only tools are taxes.
Climate realism is capitalist realism. Capitalist realism is the idea that there is no alternative, that only solutions that work within capitalism are even conceivable. Which is why the most radical idea somewhat accepted by liberals is a carbon tax, because taxes is pretty much the only tool governments have left after privatizing almost everything.
Capitalist realism is of course so completely ingrained into politics and culture, that even proposing alternative solutions like nationalizing electric companies so you actually have direct control over future investments, would immediately condemn you to the political margins. And maybe we won't get ridiculous situations like when corona first hit, where Germany's coal powerplants kept running even though lack of demand resulted in negative electricity prices.
Don't get me wrong, having green parties and left parties in power that function within capitalism is still way better than neolibs and neocons, but their policy would still be confined by our political culture of capitalist realism. However in said country/region I'm from, neolibs have way more power, so we won't even get that.
So I guess we just end up waiting for some giant contingency that will change everything and make things possible again.
I hope I'm wrong and I probably am.
What book has cemented your politics? Is there anything I could read that might evolve me beyond this extremely depressing worldview?
tldr: shitty effortpost
Realistically is there any hope that we will build the momentum to overthrow capitalism not even in 10 years but this century? What will it take to stop people from resisting even trying to understand left wing ideas? We can go on chanting "capitalist realism" and how "it's easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism" but we aren't building momentum fast enough to take charge of the situation.
Right now the rich are cutting their losses and are building doomsday bunkers. While you are planning on dying alone on rice and beans the chuds are training to slaughter you and have twelve kids. We need a back up plan on the left just to keep our ideas alive. Small pockets of determined leftists maintaining gene banks to ensure the diversity of the species reproducing only at a scale at which human life can be supported on the new earth. It's problematic as fuck but I'd like to think somebody will be left to rebuild.