this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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This is a frequently repeated quote attributed to the late philosopher Frederic Jameson. On its own it doesn’t make a statement about capitalism or what it is at all. (If you wanna know more about Jamesons theories on capitalism you can read about it in his books)
Jameson’s quote points out that people often find it easier to picture possible world ending doomsday scenarios, than it is for them to think about alternatives to living in a capitalist world to try to avoid these scenarios.
You can even test this yourself. Ask people around you about the end of the world and many will point out reasons like climate change, demographic changes, environmental destruction, pollution, world wars, nuclear holocaust, asteroid impacts (shoutout Roland Emmerich) and even biblical scenarios for an eventual end of the world as we know it.
But ask them if they think there are other ways to live, so that those things won’t happen and usually they will just give you a version of “this is just how things are, not much you can do about it” or “the world could be different, but there is no use in trying because this is just a utopia and I have no idea how to change stuff anyways”.
Regarding your last paragraph, imo this kinda misses the point. I agree, there are structures that exist parallel to what most people consider capitalism, but ask people in most self described capitalist societies and they will not really recognise the difference and will just see it as an anomaly at best.
Btw, this is all coming from a European perspective, albeit heavily informed by US media.
People around me will definitely conceive of a noncapitalist alternative because a significant number of them have lived in one.
That doesn't mean they will approve of returning to the systems they experienced previously. In many cases those systems were demonstraby worse and less sustainable. Plus "from an European perspective", the current system most of them live in is heavily social democratic, so again how we define those terms will be relevant.
If you want to argue that this is not the "default" human experience, then with all due respect that just sounds like ethnocentrism to me. On the authors' (and Jameson's) part, at least. Probably a bit of internalized cultural imperialism on our part. It's not the first time I notice a lot of the European left is trying, and often failing, to import some US left concepts that don't really apply.