In capitalism, that is to say, all that is solid melts into PR, and late capitalism is defined at least as much by this ubiquitous tendency towards PR-production as it is by the imposition of market mechanisms.

The idea that the world we experience is a solipsistic delusion projected from the interior of our mind consoles rather than disturbs us, since it conforms with our infantile fantasies of omnipotence; but the thought that our so-called interiority owe its existence to a fictionalized consensus will always carry an uncanny charge.

‘Being realistic’ may once have meant coming to terms with of a reality experienced as solid and immovable. Capitalist realism, however, entails subordinating oneself to a reality that is infinitely plastic, capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment.

The new defines itself in response to what is already established; at the same time, the established has to reconfigure itself in response to the new.

capitalism brings with it a massive desacralization of culture.

‘The reality principle’, Zupancic writes, is not some kind of natural way associated with how things are ... The reality principle itself is ideologically mediated; one could even claim that it constitutes the highest form of ideology, the ideology that presents itself as empirical fact (or biological, economic...) necessity (and that we tend to

What we are dealing with now, however, is a deeper, far more pervasive, sense of exhaustion, of cultural and political sterility.

Enough is no longer enough. This syndrome will be familiar to many workers who may find that a ‘satisfactory’ grading in a performance evaluation is no longer satisfactory.

What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement.