Mark Fisher's 'Capitalist Realism' Reaches 100,000 Copies Sold

Mark Fisher's 'Capitalist Realism', first published in 2009 by Zero Books, has sold over 100,000 copies in English alone, with a second edition released in November 2022. Slavoj Žižek called it 'the best diagnosis of our situation', and Russell Brand narrated the audiobook. The book has over 4,000 academic citations on Google Scholar. Fisher wrote it while struggling to find teaching work. The book became a bestseller after the 2008 financial crisis, offering a new vocabulary for critiquing neoliberalism. It influenced student protests against tuition fee hikes in 2010. Key concepts include 'market Stalinism', 'reflexive impotence', and 'depressed hedonia'. Fisher predicted the attention economy's psychological toll before the iPhone, Instagram, or TikTok. The article argues the book remains relevant today, especially after the failures of Corbyn and Sanders, and amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Fisher died in 2017.