While I’ve seen other reviewers praise Capitalist Realism for its accessibility, I found it kind of impenetrable. Maybe that’s just because a lot of the pop culture references went over my head.

There were some compelling ideas put forward in this book. “Capitalist realism” itself is a very useful term, though it’s not properly defined and explained until the third chapter, “Capitalism and the Real.” This is the book’s strongest chapter. It goes on to discuss the “privatisation of stress” and the way we approach mental health issues from an individualist perspective rather than looking at the bigger picture and dealing with the underlying cause – as Fisher later states, “considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism.” There’s also an interesting note about “depressive hedonia” in the following chapter (“Reflexive impotence”)

Beyond these few points, however, the book is mostly made up of nonsensical ramblings and wild assertions. Some are just baffling, like students listening to music being indicative of some kind of Oedipus complex. At other times, Fisher’s assertions are much more serious and potentially harmful. For example, he insists that ADHD is “a pathology of late capitalism – a consequence of being wired into the entertainment-control circuits of hypermediated consumer culture” and that dyslexia is caused by neoliberalism and/or postmodernism... somehow.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I have to give credit where credit’s due and acknowledge that there are some really good ideas in there, but to get to them you have to wade through so much nonsense. I can’t say it’s is worth reading, unfortunately.