Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But on the other hand, this acceleration in the neoliberal modern culture doesn't seem to offer, like this point that Anderson made, it offers endless variations, so therefore there's not a progressive project either. No, totally, right, yeah. So what's the temporality that we should shoot for here?
No, I think that's a really good way of getting to the problem, exactly. And also, there's an advantage there, I think, that the left, or whatever that would be, has, which it isn't taking, which it isn't aware of, as it were. Because this is partly why I think it's important to bang on about this stuff. It's crucial to say neoliberalism has not delivered on what it promised. Neoliberalism does not deliver us a future any more convincingly than the left does. And, you know, that's a weakness. That's a weakness. There's a rhetoric. There's a rhetoric and there's a kind of simulation
of endless novelty and innovation. But as you say, really, what that amounts to is just permutations of the already familiar. In terms of what we should shoot for, this is the space isn't it? there's no easy answer to that what is clear is that I think what is clear is that certainly after 2008 with the bank bailouts the neoliberal right no longer has the grip on modernisation or the notion of the modern that it had before then it looks defunct
but then everything else is defunct as well it's a strange situation where every single political ideology is dilapidated and sort of derelicted but I think that you can learn from neoliberalism in that neoliberalism didn't just start in the 70s as I'm sure you know, I mean it started in the 40s, 50s, Hayek or whatever, you know, waited a long time until the moment was right and it could take control. And the other key lesson we can learn from neoliberalism is the way that the impossible became the inevitable. That's what's interesting about capitalist realism.
Okay, so capitalist realism, the only realistic model is this neoliberal model. It certainly was not realistic in the 50s or indeed the 70s. You know, it was ludicrous. If you'd have said to people in the streets in the UK in the 70s, well, in 10 years the miners would be defeated, you know, there'd be coal, steel, telecoms, all of that would be denationalised. It just sounded like a ludicrous scenario which no one would have believed. Yet it happened, you know. And how has it happened? how does that happen well it's partly because of structural shifts in capitalism that's talked about in terms of the move to post-Fordism but it's also partly that
neoliberals had a story prepared which they could helicopter in when things went wrong as it were and you can learn from that anticipation that some theoretical production an imaginative production is what is needed at the moment I think in a way Like, we don't ourselves know what we want things to look like, if we're honest. I mean, I think we can, you know, we can be fairly clear that what we don't like, as it were, and, you know, certainly in the UK at the moment, what we don't like is getting worse and worse and more and more intense at the moment. But, you know, that's just why I said at the start, it's not capitalist realism is something other people have and we don't have, I don't think.
we have as well. And that, you know, it disables our ability to think about what an alternative would look like. But this isn't just, and I don't think this is a contingent kind of, it's just a contingent thing to do with cultural ideology in the last 30 years, although that is a massive part of it. And I think here, maybe as a connection with speculative realism and some of the ideas coming out of those thinkers, is, you know, particularly Ray Brassier, I think, is the cognitive dimension of things like property. And some of my younger comrades, Alex Williams and Nick Srickeko, worked with,
and I've come up with this notion of folk politics, which they derive from neurophilosophers, the churchlands who have this idea of folk psychology basically folk psychology is it's a much disputed concept many people dismiss the idea that it even exists but let's not worry about that for the moment that folk psychology is really the sort of beliefs the apparently spontaneous beliefs that people have got that they have things like feelings emotions, will etc and the churchians argue this is akin to ideas
about witches or demons that people used to have in former times there's no neurological basis for these things and something like a feeling or emotion is just a vague way of speaking about neurochemical events I'm not asking you to buy that theory necessarily But I think what we can see is a problem about this issue around the folk in terms of capitalism. Why? What do I mean by that? Well, you can't see capital, evidently. You can't see it. This is part of the reason that the anger around the bank bailouts found it difficult to have an object, as it were.
because you know we can see we can't see particular individuals we can understand or think we can understand the failings of particular individuals we can attribute things to biographical individuals you know we can't see capital at all and in particular in the UK with its tradition of plain jumble common sense, empiricism, if you can't bloody see it or touch it, it doesn't exist. Particularly with that, then capital is a massive advantage in terms of folk categories, I would argue.
Because it doesn't appear at this level of, it doesn't appear on this ordinary level of experience. Yet, nevertheless, we can see that nothing is clearer than the fact that this hyper-abstract entity, which has no central properties whatsoever, has caused caused a catastrophe in the world. We're living this disjunct, aren't we? We sort of think,
well, in terms of our everyday life, we have a set of categories that make sense, or seem to make sense, that we can operate with. In terms of the broad frame of what gives social life consistency now and what can affect it, we can only account for this in terms of something which does not appear at that level at all, which is capital. And those categories, like the individual, like individual volition, like responsibility, play into the agenda of the neoliberal right very easily, don't they?
Because, you know, and, but there's a further kind of, I would say, the cognitive issue there, like that's, well, that means it's not, it's not only the conceptual problem, it's also about tactics and strategy. Like, where do you aim at then? Where do you aim at if you're, if you're wanting to attack capitalism? Particularly this post-Fordas finance capitalism, where is it? What are the, I mean, in the previous forms of capitalism, you could have disputes, you know, when a miner's, you know, when a miner's brought down Tory government in the 70s in the UK, they're able to do that because you could attack, you know, certain resources, remove those resources, remove labor.
There's a problem. You know, it's much harder now. Yeah? . . Yeah. . Yeah. . Yeah. . Yeah. . Yeah. . Yeah. . Yeah. . Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. of save our own identity and that produces a certain kind of attention. And that's what you kind of save and that you are not willing.
One is very difficult maybe to give up. Yes. And that's I think maybe one of the difficulties that makes people to come together, even though I guess now people are coming together in some ways. And I think artists from musicians are kind of pragmatic subject in the sense that they are at the top of this kind of individual production of individual production of oneself and individual qualities that you can experience only through these people. So, yeah, I think the notion of subjectivity is where the main problem lies at least. I think they're intertwined, aren't they? The two issues are completely intertwined, aren't they?
As it were. I mean, I think the objective irony of capital, I think, is part of what you're talking about. I don't want to re-describe what you're saying, but how I'd maybe think about that in terms of... well what do I mean by the objective irony of capital well as it were communism has to propagandise for itself you know capital sells that's capital you know that's the way it can respond to anything as it were and in terms of now we ourselves since we ourselves are so invested in selling ourselves and like you say
we in the cultural industries, the so-called creative industries, are the vanguard of this kind of entrepreneurial subjectivity. It won't survive. I don't exist in that forwardist world, the crumbling forwardist world of the British Academy. I haven't got any. All my contracts are short term contracts. Which means exactly I have to engage in this frenzied kind of entrepreneurialism, selling myself, etc. at all times. Yes, I think that absolutely is part of it. But I don't think it's opposed to what I was saying. I think it's part of
this overall kind of, overall matrix as it were. That's, I mean, this is the thing, the folk, I think, is the focus that not something only dupes believe in and idiots believe in and that sophisticated people can believe in someone else. The work of Thomas Metzinger, I think, is really important in this respect. Metzinger wrote a book called Being No One a few years ago. He's a kind of newer philosopher. Metzinger's argument is basically that people attack him and go, oh, Metzinger, everyone's said this before, there's nothing new about but I think there is something new about what he's saying he's saying look there's no such thing as a self it just follows on from people like the churchlands if you look in the world for a material
thing which corresponds to that idea of the self you won't find anything what we do what we call a self is really a process which misrecognises itself as a thing so this kind of marxical reification as it were is almost a neurological happens with an eleventh neurology for Metzinger so that as it were neurological processes reify themselves they almost perform this act of ideology themselves which that, you know, Louis Alterser famously said that what does ideology do? It produces subjects you know that it produces subjects by interpolation
and that that's what I mean between a kind of folk ideologies which emerge and a political ideology a political economic ideology of capitalism specifically and so Metzinger's argument is not then, okay well that's it then I Thomas Metzinger oh Thomas you can't, you know people go why do you even call yourself Iden Thomas if you know that you don't exist. Because part of what you're saying is you can't just opt out of this. But even if you know there's no such thing as a self, you'll still have to keep operating as if there is one, as it were. And just do one more thing and then please come back. What I wanted to say then is about things like property,
I think, operate in a similar way. Issues to do with property, this is a cognitive category. A cognitive category that, when John Lennon says, imagine no possessions, it is very hard to do in lots of ways. It is very hard to step out of framing the world in terms of property, etc. It's like Kant's notion of transcendental categories, the categories which precede experience and which form experience and frame experience. And property is a quasi-transcendental category like that for us. So it's not only that we can't identify an enemy capital, which we can easily overcome, or which we can personalise or anthropomorphise in such a way that we can overcome it.
It's not only that we've got that problem. It's also that the structures that we're fighting against are internalised in us. And I think at a deeper level of what you were saying, is that, you know, that we, it's ourselves that are required to be dismantled in a fundamental way. And, you know, this is why Marx was saying, this is the difference, Marx was saying that, you know, the proletariat fundamentally wants to abolish itself. And that's what's different from, you know, other kinds of identity-based politics, which would want to assert certain kind of identities, that, you know, this is about liquidation or elimination. so that there's this move in philosophy
this movement in philosophy called Elimited Materialism and people like Metzingo and the Churchlands said to belong to that what do they mean by Elimited Materialism? they mean that what the Churchlands hope for is that in the end we'd get rid of the language we'd get rid of this whole set of categories like emotions, feelings, selves even, and replace it with an accurate scientific account of what's going on on a neurological level. Now, again, I'm not saying you should buy this. What I'm saying is that there's at least an analogy with what is required, I think, for a successful communist project, a post-capitalist project. I prefer to turn post-capitalist to communist for lots of levels. That will require an eliminative project.
We'll have to eliminate categories which are so fundamental to us. And, you know, this is not easy, despite what John Mellon said. You know, but... And again, I think that's... There is also this question of strategy, where we're aiming at now, because of the distributed nature of capital. As capital becomes more and more... ethereal, as it were, less and less based on particular kind of spatial, temporal locations. Sorry, do you want to come back in? Of course, I agree. I think that this concept of individuation or distributed capitalism
is an effect on neoliberalism. It's a problem that when we say neoliberalism doesn't deliver, they just say, well, that's your own fault, because you're also one of the capitalists now. And that's a problem If you're not successful, the bank crisis was as much yours than mine. No, absolutely. But I think that's absolutely correct. I think what's happening there is folk economics as well as folk politics, actually. What happens is people feel on an individual level guilty because they have spent too much on their credit cards in their mind. In the UK, they get this idiotic mantra from Cameron, you know, of this, well, you know, if you keep spending money, you have to, you know, at some point you have to pay it back.
You know, and this makes sense for people because they have spent a lot of money on their credit cards. Why have they spent a lot of money on their credit cards? Because they're morally decadent and they're, you know, no, one, because they, as I said before, they need to spend the money in order to make up their wages, which are lacking. And secondly, because if they didn't spend the money, the economy would have collapsed. Because, you know, consumerism, consumer capitalism and requires people to be indebted. You know, so the whole category of personal guilt and responsibility is completely irrelevant here, but it is played upon. You know, and that is precisely the case. I did want to mention one other thing, which is when you mentioned that thing about nostalgia for old, right-wing nostalgia for left-wing music, this was happening to Cameron. You know, Cameron said he really liked the jam.
This was a famous thing, you know. but, you know, Eton Rifles, you know, a song about public school boys, you know, and in the UK, yeah, he really likes it, you know. It's a whole other dimension of capitalist realism than that, you know, what's on Cameron's iPod, you know, and it just, it shows the level of content they can have for things, as it were, now. It's just aesthetics. Culture is just aesthetics. It doesn't have, it doesn't, you know, we can just consume all this stuff, whatever it meant in its original form. And, you know, this is why I start with that image of the start of capitalist realism with the British Museum. So, I mean, the irony of capital. But capital reduces, you know, removes the ability to believe in things. That's what it does. You know, something like the British Museum is what Earth looks like
from the extraterrestrial perspective of capital as a science fictional entity. You know, look, it's like it's laid out on a spaceship, isn't it? This is the stuff that people believed. but you can't like you know that we don't believe that's the implicit thing isn't it of course because you can't you know because this is capital doesn't believe in anything that it can solicit beliefs particular beliefs to its own end but capital itself you know has that is the genius of capital that it has no specific commitments to anything you know religions they've got you know they can wriggle and move around and change things but only within a certain bandwidth. Capital is not committed to any kind of belief whatsoever. You know, there's no beliefs. And that's why you can have, any world you can imagine can be a capitalist version of it, right?
You know, it's not tied down to a particular set of beliefs in that way. And that's why I compare it to, you know, the theologian Alvin Plantinga has this idea of trans-world depravity. Basically what Plantinga's trying to do was account there's this problem in philosophy of religion which you'll be familiar with, the problem of evil if God's so good and so powerful why does he allow there to be evil and suffering in the world, which Plantinga says well it's basically down to free will of human beings and that whatever world human beings were in evil would emerge just because human beings are in it, so that's what he means by trans world depravity and capitalism is similar to that. Whatever world there is, capital can emerge out of it. And I think
this actually relates to the real strengths of Deleuze and Guattari's theories of capitalism, which I still think is one of the most sophisticated theories, really. But what is it that defines capitalism is nothing positive, but that it is really to do with the decoding of all other previous social regimes, a kind of radical desacralization, that, you know, that, as it were, that, you know, religious, sacred, or societies based on the sacred, you know, are committed to particular sets of axioms which they really can't remove. capitalism can in theory take away anything
of course it can't completely remove everything and carry on it removes things and then it puts other things in its place as it were and that's partly accounts for the strange temporality in which we now live which was where I was before the break I think which was this why you can have as it were a leading edge of kind of techno, um, and technological development, um, radical shifts in, um, radical, radical shifts at every level in, um, science and technology, you know, unprecedented, um, changes in, you know, that, you know, something like genetic engineering, which we can take for
granted now, but, you know, this is the capacity of, you know, an animal to enter into its, the abstract code of its own, you know, production. This is big stuff. That, you know, you can have that alongside, you know, the most, you know, reactionary, you know, most reactionary atavistic throwbacks. You know, and that, you know, this is what Deleuze and Guattari argue will be the key defining feature of capitalist culture, that it combines futurism with archaism. And this is what we're living now. It's what we're living. And I think the UK sums this up more than anything else. You've got these, as it were,
sedimented temporalities and cultures. You know, ridiculous kind of bourgeois aristocratic royal family, you know, the miserable spectacle of the royal wedding in a few weeks. alongside being a leading edge of finance capital, etc., etc. These kind of cyber-gothic compounds are kind of just what you'd expect capitalism to be like, according to Deleuze and Guattari, really. But would you say that these two trajectories of of the full psychology of selfhood, drawing on Metzinger and where that could go, and the
trajectory of capitalist development up until becoming ubiquitous are intertwined or the same trope? No, I don't think they're into it. And then further on, because there is a movement to both of those tropes or trajectories, as it seems that, I mean you said that Althusser speaks of our interpolation, or the state interpolates its subjects, because those things are present at a level that we cannot even question, because It operates on a level that we take for granted, and that's why we keep on calling ourselves I, as Metzinger's approach would.
But then, because in Marxist theory and development of theory around capital, I guess very strongly it draws a lot on the teleological idea that, you know, dictatorship of the proletariat, and then when we have overthrown capitalism, we will no longer be a proletariat, because we will be communists. But since we could clearly say that capitalism is based on a false axiom and has nothing to do with truth, or truth even without quote unquote, because it's based on the fact that there is endless resources, that's obviously not true. And the self is, I mean, how long can the self persist in respect of the fact that
that capitalist ideology is based on a fallacy, because I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is not a very pleasant topic, but I mean, because there is also ideas of conatus or this desire in the Lost in Guattari that keeps us moving on for some reason. Yeah. And even though we become this nostalgic, the way I perceive it, there is not a mass suicide yet. And I mean, why is there no mass suicide? There's different ways of killing yourself, I don't know. Like they, um, um, well, okay. If we are alone together, and we could, uh, we couldn't mobilize a mass suicide, because we're not a community that could say, let's do it that.
Because that would take organization. We could do it via Facebook. But, um, no, no, okay, that's, um, no, I don't think it's the same thing. I don't think it's... Because one could easily imagine a scenario where we would start to collectively organize like a communal suicide because we're tired of this. And it would be almost a utopian scenario where we would start to, you know... Well, the thing is, if we could... The thing is, if we could... Set up, and then we would have a community. Isn't it the case that if we could organize for that, then we wouldn't need to commit suicide? Because we would have the ability to organize things completely differently. I think what I'm suggesting is that there is a human tendency,
just at the level of the animal, towards folk psychology of various kinds. Which entails also self-preservation. Yes. But then, I don't think that's the same as ideological interpolation. interpolation, thousands of talks about. But clearly that interpolation can take advantage of these already existing tendencies in human beings. And I think this is also what you can see anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Qatari being about as well, where they're saying that why is there a relation between, on the one hand, this massive system of planetary destratification, which is capitalism. Where, you know, all the solid melts into air,
everything that was previously believed is up for grabs and can be forgotten, dispensed with. How on the one hand have we got that, and on the other hand, this continuing firm belief in the individual? How, why do the two things come together? And, you know, it's because it seems that, because of that residual kind of folk bias, I think, as it were, isn't it? That when you strip everything else away, it can seem as if you're still an individual. That's what's, you know, we're still... I mean, isn't this what Descartes says? Isn't this the basis in lots of ways of modern philosophy, as it were? You can strip everything else away, but you're still left with reflexive subjectivity.
And that's irreducible, actually. You can take God away. I was a part of saying it when you spoke about Metzinger. Right. It was too seamless, though I'll refrain. Now you give me a second opportunity. Go on. Metzinger is like the inverse decalte saying, I think, therefore I'm not. Right, yeah. Yes. Exactly. But, okay, hang on. But I would like to disagree about this. it's the individual and it's the capitalism. Because we also have other structures as the nation state, we have the global corporatives. That is also structuring the life even though we don't like it
and maybe we would love to have another vision of how to structure it. But even if it's folks psychology or whatever, we need these structures or we live within them. It's not only the two, the individual and the capitalism. But I mean, can we separate the nation state from capitalism? I mean, like, that's... Yeah, maybe it's just tearing it up, but still, the nation state is also organizing us as individuals. So it's not as I am a part of the national state either. No, I mean, I agree. I mean, I don't want to say there's only those two actors involved, but I think, you know, increasingly the nation-states are born into capitalism, isn't it?
I mean, that's... Yeah, yeah. It can't be effectively... But it's also... that is also a kind of power relation that is not just fluid. It is active in some way. No, no, I think that nothing is fluid. Nothing is fluid at the local level, as it were. but at the you know because capitalism has to work with what's already there but it's about tendency though isn't it tendency is towards just take the path of least resistance won't it if it can work with stuff that's already there why get rid of it but everything can come back under capitalism
but it comes back in its ironic form doesn't it that, okay, we can have religion back, but no one really believes it anymore. In a sense that the emergence of capitalism as such is the displacement of religion, right? Because before capitalism, we had a medieval world of theocracy, and that meant that everything had to be compatible with the church. I mean, that level of authoritarian ideological control has to be got rid of for capitalism to emerge. And so it's not that you can't... Well, of course, one can believe in religions, but the status of that belief is not the same as it was before capitalism, which has ironised it. Because capitalism said, you can only exist now
because you're compatible with me. And so far as it's a subject which is not... Sorry, did you want to come and...? Yeah, just that then... So it seems there's nothing to rely on, and that's mainly why yourself as an individual is an escape. And then Metzinger brings this even further and dissolves that, I wonder on which side he really is in dissolving categories. Politically, you think which side is the other? I don't know where he's, I don't think he's a right-wing in particular.
But I think this category needs dissolving for us, you know, as it were. that's I think the power of it particularly the weight that science carries in our culture so when people are saying everyone said that before there's no such thing as a self Barth said it Buddhists have said it it actually carries a different weight in our culture than what scientists say I think because science has this ideological power I think that makes things different but I think we needed some range of kind of ideological weapons against this idea of irreducibility of the individual and I think Schmetzinger's theory is one of those another thing
since you mentioned your point about responsibility and it's all down to words I think it's absolutely how things are operating at the moment is that interpolation it's why have things gone wrong it's you and in a certain sense that's not false either because part of the reason we know that there's not a lot of point you know we can hang all the bankers that we want it's not necessarily going to change that much because we know it's not the bankers it's not particular ethical failings of bankers that made the system go wrong it's not because they were greedy and we can imagine nice bankers putting their place who just behave in a different way we know systemic tendencies of banking
the nature of a bank and this relationship that produced this crisis, not particular individuals. So I think we shift responsibility off them as much as off ourselves, actually, in this situation, which isn't to deny that business interests have an agenda which they do pursue in a quasi-conspiratorial manner. That's certainly true. But it's that, you know... Let's come back to this problem of protest and effective strategy. this is the problem for me about the anti-capitalist protests is that okay who do you who are you petitioning here around the streets we've got carnival atmosphere it's going really well lots of people are joining in
it's like the Pied Piper of Hamman more and more folk are coming in the street yes capitalism is really really bad then we go up to the G20 and the G20 go okay the game's up right, that's it, we agree. You've made enough noise and actually we want to join your party. The capitalism is miserable, sorry. Then what? Do you know what I mean? Then what? It's not that then the problems start, right? People can't voluntarily get rid of capitalism because it's about organizational structures, isn't it? So it's about transcendental structures and, you know, getting rid of those. So, I mean, the other side of ideology for Althusser
is ritual. Basically, for Althusser, I think, an important notion for Althusser is ideology is not beliefs in the head. And so far as it's beliefs in the head, they are effects of behaviors, rather than the other way around. And really it's just about certain forms of compliance with, with, you know, with, with behavior. And so I, as I describe in, in capitalist realism, we have this, in, you know, in managers that I'd encountered, you know, work, they go, well, you know, we've got this latest batch of nonsense business, sort of self-surveillance that you've got to do, everybody.
Now, of course you don't have to believe in this stuff. You know, we don't have to believe in it, you just got to do it though. You know, you've got a fifty page log book to fill in. You know, about, you know, as part of your continuous, you know, continuing personal development. That ominous phrase. So, you know, you have to fill that in and, okay, why do we go along? Because we have to. But it doesn't really matter because none of us believe in this stuff. Well, you know, I think this is the strength of, one of the strengths of GGX analysis is to really draw attention to the way in which it does really matter. It does matter that it matters more what we do,
how we behave, and ritualistic compliance than what we believe in our heads. Because why have we got a sense that there's not, that we can't fight business interests anymore. That no matter how much we might deplore them, nevertheless their encroachment into all areas of culture, public services, and the psyche is inevitable. Why? Because we've mouthed this language. We've mouthed it, we've complied with it. You know, we've used this language, we behave as if it is true. And actually the antiseptic points were borne out, I think, by studies of depression, et cetera. which are actually Altausser takes this from Pascal and Pascal's dictum of kneel and you will believe
in other words first of all you perform the rituals afterwards you'll believe in it and that this is when you're dealing with severely depressed people they're not amenable to anything you certainly can't talk to them what you can do to get them out of that state is make them act as if what they're doing mattered. They don't think it matters. There was no point. There was absolutely no, what's the point? You know, I'm just worthless. And even if it wasn't worthless, there's absolutely no point doing anything anyway. But then if you make them go through the motions of doing things, that's possibly the only way you can get them out of that state, really. And, you know, I think it's sort of that, you know,
we are that depressed person now, actually, in lots of ways. But the whole point of this preamble was that what we need is not just ideology critique, but new ideological rituals, as it were. I mean, since what is our language to counter their language? You know, what kind of behaviours can we impose that counter the ones that are in place already? And, you know, I think we should stop being kind of... Jodie Dean's work is very strong on this notion of leftist kind of belief in openness.
As Jodie puts it, there's this idea that if we just leave things open, then people automatically come around to the left-wing way of thinking. She says the right-wing don't believe this, particularly in the US. the right wing take advantage of democratic openness in order to propagate their agenda and to propagate in a dogmatic way we shouldn't be fine with dogmatism we just need the right dogmatism you know there's a kind of because it just totally disadvantages us totally disadvantages us well they ruthlessly pursue the same mantras which they keep imposing wherever they can we're going that's ok we can be open about it people naturally come to believe whether they're the right thing? Well, they won't. We've seen
that they don't. And even if they do at some level believe, and that's all evidence, most of the evidence we've got does suggest that people actually are, people do hold views that are broadly left of centre. Actually, they do hold those, even if they hold those views, they don't believe anyone else holds them. Because, why? Because the ideological atmosphere is such that that seems to be the case. And a book, I strongly recommend, a recent book on this is Dan Hind's book, Return of the Public, which came out on Verso recently. He described the mechanisms of this kind of production of belief, actually, particularly through media. It was Dan Hind, H-I-N-D, and it's called The Return of the Public. What he's talking about is precisely this mechanism where, you know, most people hold
these left of centre views, but they think they've had no traction because nobody else has that view. And how does this work? Well, not just by direct manipulation of public opinion, but it's by manipulation of the representation of public opinion. Another book important on that is from a few years ago, Nick Davis's book, Flat Earth News, a shocking book, really, about the extent to which media is controlled by PR now. in the UK 60% of content of so-called serious newspapers there's a ludicrous description of these papers now 60% can be traced directly back to PR press releases this is the environment in which people live
it's one dominated by PR and business this media environment great example from Heinz's book in spite of all this most people are still sceptical about business even in the US and the findings showed when a study came out that showed the majority of Americans distrusted business, how is this reported business has a PR problem so it wasn't that there's actually a fucking problem with business it was that business poor old business with its lack of resources and not much access to the media and all of that kind of thing had not got its message across strong enough you know that, um, but, you know, so I think that, um, we, again, we can learn the lessons of neoliberalism.
How did it work? Well, it didn't believe in openness of people, it believed in dogmatism, dogmatic kind of repetition. And, um, you know, and, you know, it succeeded in pushing that, that, you know, it's the most successful Leninist project in the history of the world. you know cadres of think tanks small cadres, elitist think tanks were capable of disseminating this ideology across the world now of course you can say there's asymmetry there, they've got interests of the wealthy on their side well okay, but we've got a majority of earth on our side so you know, swings and roundabouts you know but I mean The struggle over media, in other words, is crucial. And the struggle over, you know,
to formulate a new orthodoxy, a counter-orthodoxy to a neoliberal orthodoxy. The belief that somehow just disappear of itself, that's just, that never happened. You know, how do we kill this zombie of neoliberalism? Only by a counter-orthodoxy, I think. That can be propagated through media. Partly, yeah. There's a thing about the zombie that you mentioned, like this ritual repetition, which of course potentially has the effect that you can't have in just trying to convince through an argument what you're saying, right? Yes. But that also creates this sort of zombie behavior
according to a better orthodoxy for sure, but nevertheless. But I think I believe, Althusser, you can't step outside ideology insofar as you... And this is also, I think, the point of Metzinger in some ways. You can't step out of, as it were, delusional beliefs in a certain way. The question is that, in a way, you can... One can only step outside them and not in life. And so far as you're a living being, then you're inside ideology. And the question is, which one are you in? and you know science has no ideology but science is then so science has no subject but that gives you analytic purchase as it were on things, science, but it doesn't tell you
how to live as it were, as soon as you're living that's living subject again or living being let's not say subjects, it's begging the question of whether we can you know, of whether we can have an ideology of whether there aren't subjects at all, and I think we shouldn't I beg that question. But, you know, I think he's right on that. And the question is then, okay, which ideology is it to be? Sure, but I think that the repetition sort of empties out the potential meaning that you were actually looking for. We don't want meaning, though. I just don't really want meaning. We just want, I mean, seriously, I just think we want, you know, we just want things to work better. in a way that politics would, in a way, recede into the background in a good way,
in a way it does for neoliberals. So then we could get on with doing the other stuff in life that we want to do. But I think it has to be autonomic on that level in order to work. It's overinvestment in that kind of meaningfulness, I think, on our side. Yeah, Matt. Yeah, it's very interesting because I guess my question is very simply, do you think, because I mean, very closely, obviously, has no reason of a way of understanding of all that, that really doesn't happen in itself, do you think it's possible to draw from this conclusion a political perspective in which might be, you know, bringing back this kind of very negative, or what is now supposed to be negative, you know, perspectives on the way that we're going to be able to do it.
role here? Do you think we can basically produce some politics out of this? I'm working on it. I don't know if there's a direct relation. I think there's some of the things that Ray's interested in, I think, such as Metzinger. As I said, I think there is a relation, I think, to politics. Metzinger is doing the work that Marx did with the commodity form. Right, okay. what it appears to be. Right, OK, yeah. And this is what we need in our life, not something that is based on a set of beliefs, or that we live our life according to the beliefs, that there are folk that we're talking about, that there is a faith.
Yeah, I think that dimension is, that's what I'm, that's the way I'm going with Ray's themes, is this. It's not me, it's just me, it's also, as I say, there's a couple of other younger theorists. Alex Williams and Nick Sricac are writing a little book called Folk Politics at the moment where they're trying to use these ideas which they've got from Ray ultimately. But it's not only Ray, it's also Jameson. Jameson's essay, Cognitive Mapping, which is very good, is online. It is about this issue of how do we... It's partly an aesthetic problem for Jameson, which is how do we produce an image of capitalism? that, you know, because since we've got, since it is this abstract global process,
you know, there's a paucity of imagery there which we can call upon in order to produce any kind of sense of what it is. Alberto Toscano has done work on The Wire, you know, as being an attempt at cognitive mapping, you know, the TV series, Dwyer. And it's actually, if you want to get close to what, if you want to get close to what, any sense of what capitalism is, you need some of that scale. You need five series. You know, I mean, this is equivalent of what, the mapping of Victorian capitalism in novels, wasn't it?
You could do it in novels in those days. Now you need something of that scale to show the commodity trails, to show the connections between container ports on the one hand, the disintegration of labor, drug economies, all of this. You need some of that scale of that length in order to get close to this because it can't be apprehended in any quick way. but so I think this problem of the, I think what Wade's work brings out is this old Kantian problem I think of the disjunct between what we know to be true, what we know to be true and what is livable as it were, and like Wade says why should you be on the side of life always, you know why should be
in life we might have to be on that side but why should thought be on the side of life as it were thought just limits thought is limited by the interest of life, which involve things like conatis, etc. Race projects do aggravate this kind of enlightenment trauma, I think, which is precisely based in that thing. Folk categories which we've got, which we depend on, which we in fact cannot seem to do without, certainly in the near future, have no relation to how things actually are at the level of matter, if you want to use that term which is multiply contested obviously
in terms of relation to politics I think one relation to it one relation is to do with the most pressing political problem we've got which is the environmental crisis but as it were that we can see the problems of the persistence of folk categories extremely clearly in relation to environmental catastrophe right? I mean I think Shishak again puts this very well when he says look the reason why we can't believe in environmental disasters is they just go against all of our folk phenomenological experience
it. You know, you know, you sort of keep, because there's no way of connecting up in terms of your experience. You know, you turning a kettle on and polar ice caps melting. You can do it cognitively. We can all do it cognitively, but there's nothing in our experience corresponds to this. Okay, and then this poses a problem also of, which I think is also posed by capitalism, and this is what Alex and Nick are working on their stuff, is that there's never been an agent, there's never been an agent in the history of Earth that can deal with this problem. The problems we're facing require an agent that has never existed before. Collective human agency.
Such an agency has never, never ever existed. And this is the challenge that we now face. And that, you know, we can, unless we can strike that agent, then surely we know we're heading for disaster. Again, we know it. We don't feel it. Look outside, it will make sunshine and still, you know, it looks fine, you know. And because, you know, I think, you know, Hizek is right that the only point at which we believe the catastrophe has happened is after it's happened. You know, and then it's too late. And that's why he uses this thinker, Pierre Depuy, his interesting conjecture that the only way we'll deal with environmental catastrophe is we have to put ourselves in a position that it's already happening and think what we would have done to have avoided it.
And that's what I think. It does make a lot of sense to me, this, actually. That is the power of things like The Road, I think. you know these films which you think oh my god if it gets that quick run out of the cinema what can we do to stop this happening you know unless you you know you can see the scale there's all kinds of problems here can't we we can see that there's no more pressing problem than dealing with the environmental issues yet the kind of feelings of despair and hopelessness that we feel in relation to that we all know it's pressing we all know We all feel that nothing can be done, or that very limited things can be done. That's why in the same time, I think,
Shishek paraphrases Marx, saying ecology is the new opium for the masses. Right? Because there are different ways that we can run out of the cinema. Right. So it can also keep us busy, you know, buying eco-typers. Well, exactly. that again if we, but the problem is that as some of the trying to bring out capitalist realism, if we take, if we, can come back to this issue of responsibility, if we now as individuals take responsibility for it, this will mean that the agent required in order, that could be responsible to deal with it, will never be created. You know I think that's the point isn't it? That the actions of individuals will never resolve this environmental crisis. It
It requires, you know, collective human agency to be asserted. And so it's not, no one is responsible for it. And that, because there isn't an agent that could do anything about it yet. We're only responsible for it, so far as we haven't created that agent, not directly responsible now, in terms of, you know, as I mentioned in the book, I mean, this whole agenda of recycling is really so that corporate problems become our responsibility. You know, that, yeah. I think it's a fact of what you were saying earlier. The reason we're nostalgic about 40s capitalism, or that we say it's the same financial capitalism as it used to be, is that we're not nostalgic about 40s capitalism per se, because it was miserable. We were nostalgic for a time when we had collective passion. Yes. And the thing is that we knew what produced that collective passion.
It was the factory and the Communist Party. Right. Whatever problems they had, they did that. They produced a collective agent. And what is the machine? we know what the neoliberal machine is. It's owning your house. What is the machine that is capable of producing a connectivity that can relate to this? Yeah, exactly. You have all the key questions. That is it, isn't it? Hold on. I just wanted to pick on something you initially said. What did you first say? Sorry, I'm just... No, I said that we're nostalgic about... Oh, yeah, nostalgic, yeah, yeah. So what you were saying there is sort of my answer to this question about the sort of
meaning, etc., you know, you posed. But actually, in a way, like, you know, these sort of boring things, certain kind of boring institutions or whatever were preconditions for other interesting stuff to happen, I think, in life. So that's what we need in place. It's something that is taken for granted, in that sense, boring, but that allows us to do other stuff. I just thought that it becomes like a sort of condition, psychologically, of the same thing. You know, that other stuff that you do when the structure is set
that is a better structure, that other stuff is also affected by, that you have... Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, I mean, but it doesn't sort of have to be that way. I think that's sort of, I think that's right about why there's something in Fordism to be learned from, is that, you know, you could have fairly drab bureaucracies, you could have fairly boring political meetings or whatever, but they allowed people to do other things and I think what it was going to get on today, it was still on the first slide but good we can do this tomorrow it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter is that we have no time to do anything now
and I think that's what Brerardi's works brings out really strongly work invades everything but it's worse than that even is that work commandeers libido in this disturbing way. But, you know, okay, do you want to stop now? Okay, so what is the, you know, what is our excuse for endlessly checking our emails? Well, you know, it's work, and also this ruthless entrepreneurial spirit, like, oh, there might be some offer come in here that I'll miss if I don't check it this second, you know. and so this fusion of libido and work, this endless superego demand that we keep doing this,
there's a horrible, horrible synergy, isn't it, that we're now living in, where it's like the autonomous vision of freedom from bosses and bureaucrats, an infernal inversion of that, isn't it, where we're never free of work ever, or the situationist dream of enchantment of everyday life. It's like the infernal inversion of that, where, you know, everyday life is saturated with libido, but libido that makes us miserable. And we don't even particularly notice how miserable we are until we reflect on it. Okay.