Fukuyama’s triumphalist thinking a generation ago, even if he himself has now renounced it somewhat, still matters. That is because it has since gone on to infuse a broader folk politics that understood the end of the Cold War to not only signify the supremacy of market capitalism, but also the inevitable demise of self-governing nation-states.
In this flat, crowded and connected world everything would be subject to ever-accelerating change. Everything, that is, except the rules of the game. Indeed, many no longer even considered them to be rules but rather reality itself, with alternative political systems viewed as either futile or incomprehensible. Here, liberal capitalism went from a contingent project to a reality principle. Welcome to the world of capitalist realism – where the map is the territory and nothing really matters.
Capitalist Realism
Capitalist realism is best summed up with a single sentence: ‘It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.’<sup>\*</sup>
For Mark Fisher – the British theorist who coined the term – that catchphrase captures the very essence of our era, with capitalism not only viewed as the exclusively ‘viable political and economic system’ but also one where it is ‘impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative ’. After all, how can you contrive an alternative to reality itself?
The Great Disorder
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\* This phrase is attributed to both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, although Jameson himself is unclear as to its original source.