"Over the past thirty years [add nine years since these words were written],
capitalist realism has successfully installed a 'business ontology'
in which it is simply obvious that everything in society, including
healthcare and education, should be run as a business. As any
number of radical theorists from Brecht through to Foucault and
Badiou have maintained, emancipatory politics must always
destroy the appearance of a 'natural order', must reveal what is
presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency,
just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable. It is worth recalling that what is currently
called realistic was itself once 'impossible': the slew of privatizations that took place since the 1980s would have been
unthinkable only a decade earlier, and the current political-economic landscape (with unions in abeyance, utilities and
railways denationalized) could scarcely have been imagined in
1975. Conversely, what was once eminently possible is now
deemed unrealistic. 'Modernization', Badiou bitterly observes,
'is the name for a strict and servile definition of the possible.
These 'reforms' invariably aim at making impossible what used
to be practicable (for the largest number), and making profitable
(for the dominant oligarchy) what did not used to be so'." — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...
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