The Privatisation of Stress

Abstract

In the article, Mark Fisher elaborates on the observation made in 2008’s Capitalist Realism about the relationship between neoliberalism (the destruction of unions, the privatization of public services, the „flexibilization” of the labor market), its ideological justification (Thatcher’s „there is no alternative”) and mental health, especially its medicalization and privatization. According to Fisher, the leftist remedy for the problems described in the main part of the article is not to reproduce the past forms of political organization, but to return to the project of „left modernism”, which has never really been realized.