Tag: Conservatism

Harsh Reality? Love and Class in Theodor Fontane’s On Tangled Paths

On Tangled Paths (Irrungen Wirrungen) is the fourth novel of the German author Theodor Fontane that I have read, and the third on this blog after No Way Back and Effi Briest. It is a love story, but an incredibly prosaic one. Its focus is the relationship of Lene, the adopted daughter of a washerwoman, and Botho, a young aristocrat and officer. The relationship is doomed from the start – Botho cannot possibly marry her. The great question is whether the characters will accept that and let what they have become a pleasant memory, or whether they will try to hold onto the past and potentially destroy their own futures. As with his other novels, Fontane writes simply, carefully, and intelligently about the social problems of the late 19th century. An old man when he published the novel in 1888, he treats his subject with corresponding warmth and wisdom.

Setting the Scene in On Tangled Paths

We begin with a house. Fontane demands a little initial patience – each one of his stories begins with a slow camera shot, drawing ever closer to a front door. The house in question is the one where Frau Nimptsch and Lene, her adopted daughter, live. From the beginning there is a note of plaintive nostalgia – Fontane mentions that the house is no longer there. We take this to mean that it has been consumed by the urban sprawl that transformed Berlin in the closing decades of the 19th century from a comparative backwater to a metropolis as great as any then in Europe. We are witnessing in this building something temporary as the relationships of the novel, but still we are asked to sit by, to watch, to find its beauty.

A painting showing a thriving Berlin scene
In the background of On Tangled Paths we have a sense of the churning development of the newly founded German Empire. Many of the locations featured in the novel had already been destroyed and replaced by new buildings to house the city’s ballooning population by the time Fontane published it. Painting by Adolph von Menzel

Alongside Frau Nimptsch is an old couple, the Dörrs. They grow a little produce that they sell at market. These four characters form the working class of the novel, an untraditional family of sorts. They bicker, they argue, but there is a tenderness and warmth here. We are introduced to Lene and her relationship through conversation between the two older women. Frau Dörr, whose husband married her in part because he considered her more attractive for once having had a relationship with someone from the higher classes, takes a somewhat cynical view of things – that one must remain detached. “When they start gettin’ ideas, that’s when things turn bad.” Love is not something that triumphs over all else, but one factor among many in determining what makes best sense.

Lene and her Love

Lene is perhaps my favourite heroine of Fontane’s. Though she is young, she evades many of the clichés authors, especially male authors, usually attach to their female creations. And indeed, perhaps that’s what I like about Fontane – for all his mundanity in style, his content is quietly revolutionary. I was genuinely surprised when I understood that On Tangled Paths was going to have such a focus on the lower classes. It was so natural, but at the same time unusual for a work of the 19th century. Though Lene is in love with Botho, her aristocrat, she also is intelligent enough to know that their time is limited. At one moment she’s putting a strawberry in her mouth for him to eat; in another, she’s admitting she knows this cannot last.

“Believe me, having you here now, having this time with you, that’s my happiness. I don’t worry about what the future holds. One day I’ll find you’ve flown away…”

Maybe words like these are dishonest. Maybe Lene uses them to try to convince herself to let him go. But they still speak to a deep self-knowledge and reflection, a kind of strength of character.

We meet Lene already into the relationship with Botho. They met after a boating trip went wrong and Botho intervened to save her party. That is in Easter, and before the end of the Summer things are finished between them. Time is short, and they aim to spend it well. One day, they go alone on a trip to an inn out in the countryside for a few days of peace and quiet. The whole experience is fragile, but beautiful for that very fragility. “Neither of them said anything. They mused on their happiness and wondered how much longer it would last.”

Botho…

Botho is less interesting than Lene, but then again, I’ve met far more of his kind in literature than I’ve met of hers. Botho is the kind of person I’d dismiss as a fool, no doubt because I see myself in him. He is terribly weak-willed, completely prey to external circumstances – his reputation, his family, and money. He is, at least at first, unable to do either what is necessary and part with Lene, or else to do battle against necessity and find a way for them to be together forever. Anything that suggests commitment he shies away from.

But at the same time, he is interesting more for what he and his role says about class in the early German Empire. Fontane is, after all, writing a book that is keenly attuned to slight and not-so-slight social differences. From the moment we meet him we’re aware that he’s not like the others: “He was visibly on the merry side, having come straight from imbibing a May punch, the object of a wager at his club”. He has been at the club, a place inaccessible to the women both on account of their gender and their class. He is jolly, but there is a hint of mockery about his joviality. When he declares that every station in life has its dignity, even that of a washerwoman, it’s hard to tell whether he really means it, or indeed anything he says.

…And his World

Fontane shows us Botho among Lene’s people, and then among his own. The change is immediately apparent. No longer is he Botho, but “Baron Botho von Rienäcker”. He lives in an apartment, with servants, with art on the walls and a bird in a cage for entertainment – the little hobbies of a certain social stratum. When he meets his friends they adopt masks in the form of names taken from books – Lene can read, but she hasn’t the cultural knowledge that is second nature to Botho’s coterie. He dines out with them, and we have a sense of further insurmountable linguistic barriers. Metaphors are invariably hunting related, or else concern the military – they are all officers. Botho’s enjoyment of Lene is tolerated, but not any suggestion that he would take it further. He is allowed entertainment, but not to go against his duty. He is trapped, but not like her.

A painting showing a restaurant scene of the sort Lene wouldn't have access too with her income and class
Max Liebermann, Restaurant Terrace in Nienstedten, 1902. Nienstedten is in Hamburg, but I like the painting. Food and drink is a part of Fontane’s repertoire of social commentary in On Tangled Paths. The Dörrs grow their own food, while Botho simply orders it. When he dines with Lene he gets filling meals of fish, but with Käthe he is forced into eating sweets – one woman provides what is nutritious, the other what is only on fulfilling on the surface.

But we should not judge him too harshly. He cannot truly know her life, just as she cannot truly know his. Each station has its sufferings, and while one certainly has it worse, we can only compare what we know. For Lene, the relationship is her life. “Lord, it’s such a pleasure just to have something going on. It’s often so lonely out here.” Her simple words speak to a deeper gulf. He can always find another Lene, but she can never find another Botho. Once, she describes seeing him in town among his people, riding. She cannot approach – her position is one of a spectator, doomed never to interact with him in the public space. She does not have the systematic advantage that is his by birth.

Two Perfect Matches?

Suddenly the relationship ends. Botho’s expenses have consistently eclipsed his spending, and his mother puts her foot down in a letter. Botho breaks with Lene, marries his rich cousin, and time skips forward two and a half years. Käthe, his wife, is a disappointment. Lene’s desire to learn is beautifully shown in a scene where she inspects a painting whose inscription is in English. She can mouth the letters with passionate interest, but their meaning is inevitably hidden from her. Käthe just doesn’t care. She epitomizes everything that Botho dislikes about his class – she is frivolous, full of empty words and phrases, and childish. Part of this is yet again a language problem – Botho wants authenticity; instead, he gets “chic, tournure, savoir-faire” – all French and fashionable words. He compares Käthe’s soulless letters from her time at a resort town to Lene’s misspelt but heartfelt ones.

And yet in On Tangled Paths there is no going back.

Meanwhile, Lene suffers into a new life of her own. She and Frau Nimptsch move out of their old home. In their new lodgings a religious man, Gideon Franke, falls in love with her. It is not the best match in the world, but Franke is hardworking, industrious – a new and modern man, through and through. He brings to Lene’s life much-needed stability, saving her from what no doubt would otherwise have been frightening poverty. Given a woman’s lot in the era, we should probably be as grateful as she is.

Pessimism or Realism? – the Morals of On Tangled Paths

Botho eventually comes to terms with his situation. In this lies the pessimistic, or perhaps realistic, side of On Tangled Paths and Fontane in general – no rash actions come in to save the day. But then again, no rash actions come in to spoil it. He doesn’t try to meet her again; in fact, he burns their love letters to better forget her. Lene, whose parentage is unknown, doesn’t turn out to be of royal blood. She doesn’t turn out to be anybody but herself. Botho, for his part, decides to find the good in his wife. It is not a wholly successful endeavour, but these things take a lifetime, and for Fontane it is enough to show the beginning of the process.

A photo of Theodor Fontane, author of On Tangled Paths, in his later years
Theodor Fontane. He started writing fiction when he was 57, and his works reflect that. There is a wisdom in On Tangled Paths and elsewhere, which though at times can strike one as pessimistic, nonetheless comes from a lifetime’s experience.

One day a colleague from the military meets him, Rexin, and asks his advice. He wants to know what to do about his own mistress: he hopes to marry her, or else escape Berlin altogether. He longs for “honesty, love and freedom” and hopes Botho will back him up. But Botho does not. He says that it is better to stop now, before the memories get too strong. No middle path is acceptable in the world they live in, and in the end staying within society’s bounds will always be the thing to do. It’s a surprisingly conservative message. But then, perhaps it’s the right one. The social bonds are simply too tight for anything beyond them to be worthwhile. There is no great love against the odds here, but we must remember that there is no great tragedy here either.

Perhaps “A silly young wife” really “is better than none at all”, as Botho concludes.

Conclusion

On Tangled Paths celebrates a pragmatic approach to life. Lene and Botho may not elsewhere reach the heights of bliss that they had had together, but they also remain alive and happy (enough) when the novel draws to a close. In the 19th century novel this is already a great achievement. The message that love does not, or oughtn’t, conquer all may strike us as pessimistic or overly conservative, but I find it hard to argue with here. Lene perhaps is perhaps right in her parting words to Botho: “If you’ve had a beautiful dream you should thank God for it and not complain when the dream ends and reality returns.” Better to have a beautiful dream than see life become a nightmare.

I have come to love Fontane. His novels are short, but they each display a great deal of variety in their subject matter, and they are all extremely well-written. However boring they may appear, they are all worthy of close and repeated reading. The only shame is that with On Tangled Paths I have now reached the end of Fontane’s novels easily available in English translation. There exist versions of both Jenny Treibel, and of The Stechlin, but they are hard to find. I may be forced, alas, to read him in the original again, as I did Effi. Luckily, Fontane’s worth it. Wish me luck!

Nature and Politics in Joseph von Eichendorff’s Life of a Good-for-nothing

This is not a book for our times. Joseph von Eichendorff’s From the Life of a Good-for-nothing / Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts is a novella that is positively soaked in the Romanticism of its day. But while that might make for exciting poetry elsewhere, it doesn’t make the story nearly as interesting as one might hope. While other writers of German Romanticism, such as Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann used their Romantic milieu to create gripping and horrific tales that made use of magic and monsters, Eichendorff’s decision to – on the contrary – use Romanticism’s tropes to tell an ultimately happy and positive story means that the whole thing just becomes drearily cheery and predictable.

An etching of Eichendorff
Joseph von Eichendorff. He wrote, as did many of the German Romantics, a combination of both poetry and prose. From the Life of a Good-for-nothing contains a great many poems interspersed among its pages.

That’s not to say that From the Life of a Good-for-nothing isn’t without its positive aspects. But for me at least they weren’t enough to make me finish reading with a sense that I’d really enjoyed the work.

Plot

The plot of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is not complex. Our narrator, an Austrian, is kicked out of his father’s house and decides to find his own happiness in the wide world, taking with him his violin. He finds work in a castle, first as a gardener and then as a collector of customs duties, and there he falls in love with one of the women who live within its walls. Events force him out of the castle and onto the road again, and he decides to visit Italy. On the way he meets various other people, from painters to chambermaids, with whom he sings and dances. He also spends a lot of time wandering through nature, in true Romantic style, falling asleep in bushes and dreaming of being a bird. Once in Rome he meets his beloved again, and chases her back to Austria, where they marry.

Music, Nature, and Poetry in From the Life of a Good-for-nothing

I read From the Life of a Good-for-nothing in the original German. Normally, I try to avoid the originals of these novellas like the plague, but I enjoyed Eichendorff’s work more than I expected to. His writing is rather clear. More importantly, From the Life of a Good-for-nothing contains a lot of poetry, which is never fun to read in translation (including below). I’m not going to pretend that the poetry was fantastic, because unfortunately it is infected by the same sickly cheeriness as the rest of the book, but there were a lot of nice ditties, like this one, from the beginning:

If God decides on joy for man,
He sends him into the wide world
And there He shows him all His wonders,
In crag and river, wood and field.

Those lives which lie enclosed at home
Are not refreshed by morning dew;
They only know of children's cradles,
Of worries, burdens, toil and sweat.

Among the hills the river springs,
The larks are whizzing high from joy,
Why shouldn't I be singing with them,
With all my throat and all my chest?

I let the dear lord God be praised:
His rivers, larks, and woods and fields,
And earth and heaven are so great,
And He gives blessings to me too.

The poem really contains within itself the essence of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. Here nature is seen as the greatest thing that humankind possesses. And real happiness is to live within that nature. Singing and playing music always seem the happiest moments of the narrative, especially because as the novella progresses the narrator finds himself ever more often in the company of people who are willing to join in with him in the playing. Music is a universal language, in contrast to the various other languages encountered by the narrator – French, Latin, and Italian – which he doesn’t speak. He is left isolated and sad when he is unable to speak with and understand people, but using the power of music he is able to overcome language barriers. There is one moment near the end where he joins in a Latin song because the music is accessible to him.

A painting showing a castle which is falling apart and overgrown
Heidelburg Castle by Carl Blechen. Castles were beloved by the Romantics for their history and imaginative potential. The narrator of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing spends lots of time in castles as he travels.

Nature’s great. The narrator spends lots of time wandering around hills and forests and falling asleep in trees. He also regularly expresses a wish to be a bird. This is Romanticism, but it’s not always particularly interesting. It may be that I didn’t understand all of the fine details of the descriptions of forests, but I feel like I understood enough to follow the general idea. The problem with all of this is that the book is hopelessly cliched to modern readers, and far too happy. Don’t get me wrong, I try to be positive in my own life, but the whole worldview of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is so terribly optimistic it makes me squirm. All you need is the power of music and your own two feet and you can travel the world, make money, and marry the girl of your dreams. It sounds silly.

The Context and Politics of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing

From the Life of a Good-for-nothing was finished by Eichendorff in 1823, and any deeper look at the novella will struggle to avoid the political dimensions that lurk beneath the surface of the work. But first, the context. The German lands, Britain, Austria, and Russia in 1815 had ultimately emerged victorious in the conflict with Napoleon. However, the ideas of the French Revolution were not to be stopped as easily as its political and military leaders were. To combat these ideas, of progress and of freedom, the Austrian foreign minister and later also Chancellor, Klemens Metternich, organised a system of alliances with Russia and Prussia to isolate France and liberalism and also keep such ideas repressed within their own borders by means of increased censorship.

From the Life of a Good-for-nothing, for all its apparent innocence, is not free from the influence of its times, and is ultimately a rather conservative book – just as Romanticism more broadly in some ways was. The novella begins in a world of hard work – a world where even the snow drips “industriously” (emsig), under the shadow of the narrator’s father’s mill. Although the mill is not a modern invention, its inclusion nonetheless reflects the Romantics’ concerns about the destruction of nature for economic reasons. The narrator, instead of continuing to try to conquer nature, goes out and wanders. He finds his joy singing among the trees – a harmony, where the mill otherwise indicated disharmony. His job as a gardener is also implicitly contrasted with that of the millworker. As a gardener he is responsible for ensuring nature’s growth and development, rather than its control and destruction.

The narrator’s reward for his rejection of the stodgy, sedentary life, is the girl of his dreams and a house and wonderful wedding trip. He manages to “earn” more by not trying to “earn” anything within the growing industrial framework of value, and he does all this while being happier than the average worker. Further evidence for the rejection of modernity comes in the portrayal of Rome, where the narrator dreams of nature and doesn’t enjoy the company of the people he meets.

The ending of the novella is not only conservative for its attitude towards hard work. It’s also important to pay attention to class here. The poet’s beloved, who for the majority of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is referred to as the “Countess”, turns out not to be a noblewoman at all. At the very last moment of the story she declares herself a foundling – thus making her marriage to the narrator suitable from a social perspective. The conservatism of the novella lies, therefore, not simply in a Romantic rejection of early industrialisation and urbanisation, but also in a subtle refusal to allow anything that would go against the existing class structures and propriety. Go into nature if you so wish, but know your place. In light of Marx and the development of radical politics later on in the 19th century this message is dangerously naïve.

Conclusion

Look, don’t get me wrong, From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is a fun and innocent book. It comes from a simpler, kinder time than our own. To come at it with a modern and critical sensibility is to destine yourself for disappointment and frustration. Its escapism is too unreal and impractical to offer any solutions for our own cynical lives, and its ultimate message of idleness being the source of wealth is not particularly inspiring either. If idleness had engendered a mental wealth, but not a physical one, then the book’s message would be both more relevant to our own days, where many are attempting to extract themselves from the rat race. To say we can make money by doing nothing, unless we’re rentiers already, is a stupid lie, and one that distracts from the value of the escapism the book otherwise proposes. At least the poetry’s good.

For more German poetry, have a look at my thoughts on a few pieces of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s work here. For more interesting examples of German novellas, see Storm’s Aquis Submersus and Meyer’s Marriage of the Monk.

Have you read From the Life of a Good-for-nothing? Am I wrong to dislike it? Have I completely misunderstood the whole thing? Why not leave a comment!

Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Mental Health in a Mental World

I recently read Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, a delightful book on the problems facing almost everybody alive in late capitalist society – which is to say, pretty much anyone reading this.

We have come a long way as a people. Free market capitalism has lifted great numbers out of poverty, given homes to them, placed food on their tables, and led to countless new inventions. It’s hard to argue with that. But something in the past fifty-or-so years has gone very wrong. Today, nations continue getting richer, our phones continue getting faster, our supermarkets continue getting even better stocked… and yet it appears that we have lost something of value that the data can’t or won’t acknowledge. People are getting unhappier – there is a worsening crisis in mental health, the planet’s ecosystems are collapsing before our eyes, innovation is slowing down, income inequality is getting worse, and extremism is on the rise in our politics. It’s hard to argue with that, too.

A photo of Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism
Mark Fisher (1968-2017) was a cultural theorist and a pretty cool guy. Capitalist Realism is probably his most famous work, but he is also important in modern British music criticism. Photo by MACBA and used under CC BY-SA 2.0

Capitalist Realism tries to explain what’s gone so wrong. It’s a compelling, frightening, and valuable book. Here I’d like to cover a few of its very many exciting ideas, and then discuss the value of Fisher’s critique for people who are not on the radical left like he was. For it turns out that the very power of this book lies in the way it answers questions faced by people all over the political spectrum.

What is Capitalist Realism?

As I study Russian, my first port of call is almost always going to be Dostoevsky. His books are full of passionate characters who are constantly espousing theories for new forms of governance, people filled with a great and infectious optimism for the future of the world. Dostoevsky himself was a dreadful reactionary, but his characters weren’t always. In the 1860s Russia was filled with hope – serfdom had been abolished, and the new Tsar seemed like a reformer. People debated the direction reforms should take, but nobody doubted that positive change was coming.

Things are different now. Early on in Capitalist Realism Fisher writes that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism”, a quote that comes from either Slavoj Zizek or Fredric Jameson. That is the essence of the problem – we cannot imagine, or even hope to imagine, a way out. Fisher’s own definition for capitalist realism is this: “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it”. Since the collapse of the USSR it has seemed that there’s no other system quite so resilient as capitalism. But accepting this doesn’t exactly bring us happiness.

Fisher charts this loss of imagination using examples from popular culture. He compares the utopian aspirations of rock with the grittiness and self-styled “realism” of modern hip-hop. He contrasts the movie Heat, where criminals don’t form attachments to anything because they are always on the move, with earlier gangster movies where there was an emphasis on loyalty and honour. And what he finds is that the closer we approach to the present day the less hope and non-monetary values there is to be found.

Values in a World of Capital

“Everything has a price”, and indeed it’s true for everything from harvested organs to works of art. But the problem is that’s not necessarily a good thing. To give something a price is to take away everything about it which is priceless. The mysterious quality of historical or artistic artefacts is lost, in what Fisher calls the “desacralization of culture”, the second you say how much it’s worth. It allows you to make comparisons between things that shouldn’t be compared – a work of art and a loaf of bread, for example. But the very moment something has a price that price then blocks out those other values which cannot be so easily named. And over time those values are lost.

If you think of art, or a watch, or a car, as an investment, then you’re already thinking about things in a way that’s conditioned by capitalism. In much the same way, if you think about Christmas as a time for getting cool presents, then the original message of that time has been lost or at the very least partially displaced too. I’m not saying that Christmas ought to be the Christian holiday it once was – rather, it’s a good example of how capitalism can destroy the traditional aspects of tradition and leave only a commercialised shell in its wake. In the UK we now “celebrate” Black Friday – a whole tradition was created for consumerism where there was just a calendar day before.

Fault Lines: Not So Real

Capitalism works so long as people buy into it, mentally and literally. Boom and bust cycles are all dependent on people investing themselves psychologically into speculation, and without these cycles, capitalism falls apart. Capitalism portrays itself – that is, businesses and politicians supportive of the status quo portray it – as hyperrational, hyper logical, the best option. Fisher writes that the only way to challenge capitalism is to reveal that this portrayal is a fabrication, and bear that knowledge in your own mind and spread it into the minds of others, too. Where are these fault lines in the system? Fisher singles out a few.

The first of these is the environment, and the effect on it of climate change. The fact that our ecosystems are collapsing because of capital’s pursuit of unlimited growth has already provided many people with an impetus to abandon faith in capitalism. Science, which is so valued in capitalism’s self-theorizing, is suddenly ignored and denied when it paints a terrifying view of the future. The consequences of climate change are not yet sufficiently visible, in the West at least, to cause mass clamour for alternatives to untrammelled free market growth, but they will be in due course. Millions of climate refugees, increased storms and extreme weather, and rising sea levels, will all be visible challenges faced by the West and capital in the coming decades.

Next, there is the matter of bureaucracy. Fisher points out that what we have seen, in spite of notions of “innovation” and “efficiency”, is that capitalism now demands reams of paperwork. Much of it, however, seems pointless. Endless targets, self-inspections, call centres – these aren’t efficient at all. Capitalism appears to be deteriorating from its initial agility. Fisher also talks about culture in connection with this. He approvingly refers to Jameson again, who thought that in the later stages of capitalism all culture will be pastiche or revivalism. That is, innovation will end. To me, at least, it does seem that culture is stagnant right now, with postmodernity being a dead-end but nothing else being created as an alternative. Fisher points out that by contrast, in the Soviet Union, cinematic innovation was far greater than it was elsewhere. Consider Tarkovsky and Vertov, among others. However, this is hard to quantify.

The third point is mental health. There are no two ways about it: people in the West are getting sadder and sadder. It’s all well and good to excuse this by saying that rising numbers of sufferers are due to changing methods of diagnosis or increased openness or by blaming social media. All of these things play a part. Fisher doesn’t deny that chemical imbalances can make us depressed. But he notes that capitalism encourages us to seek solutions and causes within ourselves – whether in the brain, or in our family, or in our upbringing – instead of in the system. “Unhealthy” mental health can be seen in the brain, but that doesn’t mean that its first cause was in the brain, or that the solution is necessarily in the brain. I know that when I’m depressed the best antidepressant is company – the complete opposite of capitalism’s relentless atomization of us.

A picture of the cover of Capitalist Realism, showing skyscrapers and a red background for text.
It’s red! There are skyscrapers! It’s enough to make any big-C conservative shudder… (fair use)

When you consider all the things that late-stage capitalism does to humanity, it’s hard not to see a lot of truth in Capitalist Realism’s suggestions. Nature is being destroyed, values that are not economic are devalued, family is broken up due to demands that both parents work to make ends meet, we lack the free time to make friends and spend time with them, and when we see people our views are distorted by increasingly unrealistic portrayals of life seen through social media, and politically we feel powerless too. And the worst thing is, we can’t imagine another system. We feel absolutely trapped and hopeless.

A Conservative View on Capitalist Realism

I have a habit of arranging all of the books that I’m taking with me on holiday in various shapes and piles, and rather unfortunately Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? was lying in pride of place just as my mother entered to see how my packing was going for my latest trip to Russia. She took one uncomfortably long look at the book, said nothing, and promptly left. Unfortunately, it seems like I’ll have to be defending myself against accusations of being a socialist anti-monarchist traitor for the next few months again, just when I thought I’d managed to escape the worst of it…

All this is frustrating, because Capitalist Realism, for all its radicalism and its angry red cover, is not a book that “conservatives” should reject out of hand. Capitalism ought to be seen as a monster by those on the right just as much as it is for those on the left. I’d like to explain why that is the case, and in doing so hopefully redeem myself partially from the disappointment of my family. Though truth be told, the views that follow are not entirely my own.

First, I should just qualify what I mean by “conservative”. It does not mean the Republican Party in the US and nor does it mean The Conservative and Unionist Party in the UK, at least as these parties currently are. Rather, to my mind, it means a set of values and attitudes. It means a preference for slow change over rapid change, for local communities over global connections, for modesty in matters of sex and relationships when in the public view, for tradition and (sometimes) religion in public affairs and in culture, for a sense of honour and duty, for conservation of history and nature and the good aspects of the past, for the tight-knit family, and for respect. Conservatism in this sense is an intellectual tradition with such notable supporters as Edmund Burke.

A Painting of Edmund Burke,
Edmund Burke, a founding figure of modern British Conservatism and a believer in those old-fashioned things we call values. It is only recently that conservatism seems to have lost its way and become more about attacking its opposition than promoting its own values and positive vision of the world.

Many of these values are easy to get behind, and some are easy to disagree with. But I think that all of these values when present in another human being are deserving of respect, in the same way that many “liberal” values are also worthy of admiration. The problem is that these values are strangely absent from modern conservative parties. Yes, they pay lip service to them at election time, but “conservatism” for them seems much more an economic policy of low taxation and regulation, rather than a social one. And the problem with all this is that, for the reasons Fisher describes in Capitalist Realism, the values imposed by economic conservatism are incompatible with the values of social conservatism as I’ve defined it.

Capitalism doesn’t encourage loyalty because it demands businesses and individuals make money over cultivating dedication and honour and duty. It doesn’t encourage respect for nature or history or art or tradition because all that gets in the way of making profits. It doesn’t encourage our participation in local communities because it is focused on our atomization and individual consumption. It doesn’t even, really, encourage conservative politics, because the capitalist system demands anything be blamed instead of the system itself, and so parties on the right end up adopting elements closer to fascism in order to remain electable, such as demonizing unproductive groups as the source of people’s discontent.

Taken this way, people throughout the political spectrum ought to find good reasons to be disappointed with the state of the world right now, and both would benefit from reading Capitalist Realism. People all over the political spectrum have a lot of positive values to offer the world, but the problem is that capitalism, instead of encouraging those values so that together left and right can build a brighter future, instead turns left and right against each other, forcing them into increasingly unsavoury political positions with little chance of compromise or peaceful resolution. “The system works, don’t change it”, is a traditional conservative rallying cry. But Capitalist Realism provides us with enough evidence to show that’s not the case. And though they would not approve of rapid change, I’d hope conservatives wouldn’t be against slow, steady, and sensible change towards a world that actually values their values.

Conclusion

I really can’t recommend this book enough. It’s only eighty pages, and it’s pretty cheap too. Fisher is an excellent diagnostician of our present woes, and he even puts forward some decent suggestions as to how to move forward going into the future. Capitalist Realism isn’t perfect – it has a few problems typical of this kind of book. For example, his suggestions about how to fight back against capitalism were a little undeveloped, and his comments on the 1985 miners’ strike in the UK are somewhat contradictory in light of what he writes about climate change. But that’s doesn’t matter too much. The book gets the job done. To understand the nature of our predicament is already the first step out of it. And whether you’re on the left or on the right, you should have reason to be disappointed with the current state of our overcapitalised world.

Mark Fisher died in 2017, a victim of the system he had spent his life analysing. I may not have agreed with everything he wrote in Capitalist Realism, but it’s hard not to think of him as, in his own way, a heroic figure…

So go off and try imagining something other than capitalism for yourself! If you do manage to think up a solution to our problems, why not leave a comment with your answer?

For a recent film that showcases a few ideas featured in Capitalist Realism, have a look at my analysis of Joker. For more theory complaining about the state of the world, check out my piece on Adorno and our relationship with the past.