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Negative Capitalism: Cynicism in the Neoliberal Era Kindle Edition

by J.D. Taylor (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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Negative Capitalism: Cynicism in the Neoliberal Era offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the current economic crisis. Through a ranging series of analyses and perspectives, it argues that cynicism has become culturally embedded in the UK and US as an effect of disempowerment by neoliberal capitalism. Yet despite the deprivation and collapse of key social infrastructure like representative democracy, welfare, workers' rights and equal access to resources, there has so far been no collective, effective and sustained overthrow of capitalism. Why is this? The book's central call is for new strategies that unravel this narcissistic cynicism, embracing social democracy, constitutional rights, mass bankruptcies and animate sabotage. Kafka, Foucault, Ballard and de Sade are clashed with the X-Factor, ruinporn, London, and the artwork of Laura Oldfield Ford. Negative Capitalism's polemic is written to incite responses against the cynical malaise of the neoliberal era.

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  1. Print length
    183 pages
  2. Language
    English
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  4. Publisher
    Zero Books
  5. Publication date
    March 27, 2013
  6. File size
    2527 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Negative Capitalism represents a new generation of critique by what I've termed graduates without a future. Taylor brings together incisive and provocative analysis alongside personal experience to explore how debt, cynicism, smartphones, psychopharmacology, underemployment and neoliberalism all represent a new era of negation. In a time of economic meltdown and mass struggle, this book offers one way out of the current crisis.
--Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight Economics Editor and author of Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, and Meltdown

About the Author

J.D. Taylor is a writer and community worker from London. He has been active in the recent university fees protests, and he blogs at Drowned and Saved.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00BY12VOW
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Zero Books (March 27, 2013)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 27, 2013
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2527 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 183 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

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J.D. Taylor

J.D. Taylor

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4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
7 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Bill Gonch
5.0 out of 5 stars The thinking we need right now
Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2013
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J. D. Taylor's Negative Capitalism is a brilliant treatise on the real causes, and some ways out of the situation in which we find ourselves at the moment. Put extremely briefly, Negative Capitalism is the working out of the Neoliberal agenda resulting in inaction, ahedonia, depression and inactivity. Taylor's philosophic influences include mainly Spinoza and Deleuze. I found it especially exciting to see Deleuze deployed in creating a creative agenda, as opposed to using him only as an analytic tool. There is also a very erudite and informed use of Kafka in Taylor's arguments.

I have felt for a while that there has been enough postmodern criticism (they do call it critical studies, after all). We have been a little short on the use of thinkers like Deleuze and Spinoza for the very difficult task of figuring ways for the creative desires of the multitude to progress. Taylor's work in this space is very well informed and simply impressive. I cannot recommend him too much.

The work is challenging. There were a few arguments where Taylor made me cringe, but it is all well thought out. I suppose every review should point out some negative, so I have to say I thought the criticism of Negri was a little on the light side. That said, this is a wonderful book. If you care about ways we in the multitude can work or ways out of the situation in which we find ourselves (a situation which is really bleak) you should read this book.
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Rich Moreland
4.0 out of 5 stars Destroy the Castle
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2015
J.D. Taylor's Negative Capitalism is a expressively written treatise about a "capitalist oligarchy" that is oppressing industrialized nations. Its ideology is shaped under the pervading glare of neoliberalism, a post-WW II philosophy that touts a "model of financial capitalism" steeped in the supply-side mantra of "unregulated" trade. The author's answer to this woeful state of affairs is a new political animal he calls a "cooperative social democracy" where "all things" are managed by the people.

Society, in his view, has taken on a "new social contract" imposed since mid-twentieth century. It is tech-based and consumer-oriented in which daily existence is reduced to the flow of money, who gets it and who doesn't. Sadly, according to Taylor, the current generation (millennials) are chasing overburdening debt while their lives revolve around Wi-Fi hookups at cafes--the "non-places" of modern business--visits to Facebook and the mall, where chasing product sales dictate the pleasures of modern man.

In his well-presented argument, Taylor calls for a organized movement, a "coming together" if you will, to "disrupt the institutions of financial capital," society's trolls whose existence is beholden to "neoliberal theory." He hopes that "charismatic working-class leaders" will capture the public's interest and offer the organizational skills needed to affect change. In the meantime, Taylor is quick to denounce the political philosophy of the last four decades that has eroded a generation's financial future: the conservative policies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair, in particular.

For American readers who want insights into the recent Occupy Movement and its displeasure with the cabal of international finance, Negative Capitalism is an excellent primer for a taste of the European point of view. However, despite his vilification of capitalism Taylor is not a communist in the old sense of the word. Though he believes that workers' associations should own and manage a productive society, he eschews the tyranny of communism's past because it required "totalitarian measures to ensure its own security."

Taylor's argument in Chapter Eight, "New Flesh: Non-Places and Gonzo Porn" posits an interesting premise on how pornography influences today's consumer. However, it is fraught with generalities, in particular his reference to tube sites and how they promote amateur porn. His assertion about the loss of "the expertise of the adult movie star" is not entirely accurate as much of pirated commercial porn appears on tube sites. His reference to the "ecstatic eye of the amateur actor [gay porn] or actress gazing back into the camera lens" --a nod to gonzo porn--and how that raises doubts about real orgasms is an interesting question, but many of those performers are getting fewer dollars for their work than ever before.

The irony of Taylor's assumptions is that tube sites are stealing the product of the studios who are the financial engines of the business. As a consequence, professional performers and shooting crews are impoverished.

Negative Capitalism is a tough read if one is unfamiliar with British politics. A little research is needed to get the full benefit of Taylor's proposals. Nevertheless, his conclusion is thoughtful and worthy of discussion. His comment about the political Left points out its current disconnect with today's youth. Simply put, the Left's "moral righteousness and elitist language" gets in the way of its political usefulness. To move forward, the Left needs to embrace a more optimistic and tech-driven strategic position to engage everyone. The author goes on to say that "a Left-wing revolt against negative capitalism . . . [lacks] a democratic base" while the specter of "far-Right politics of religious or political nationalism" remains at hand.

Though he does not see violence as the answer, Taylor calls on the metaphoric "villagers" to storm "the restrictive Castle walls of fear, cynicism, and repressive morality."

Offering a list of upheavals necessary to achieve a political and economic future utopia, Taylor concludes with the following: "It is the fearful villagers . . . who alone have the potential to destroy the castle, in a violent anonymous revolt which destroys the financial and information control architectures."

Echoing the old Marxian chant of the last century, it is the workers in whom the answer lies.
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Top reviews from other countries

Antony Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars 'Capitalism is doing very well...'
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2013
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This analysis of cynical neoliberal ontology is a provocative call to, 'Anonymous hacking missions, community 'supermarket sweep', smash-and-grab events, and strategic acts of violence against key sites of negative capitalism would energise a wider movement of real opposition rather than symbolic process' (Taylor 2013: 147). The aim, I interpret, is to question the limited political co-ordinates of 'negative capitalism', an Act in the Zizekian sense - what is (im)possible? The style is both accessible and challenging in it's theoretical range from Pasquinelli to Spinoza, as well as a meditative series of musings on the banality of negative capitalisms impasses, inactivity and pure cyncism in all of our everyday unconscious actions, under 'communicative capitalism'.
I have been reading this along with Jodi Dean's Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, a detailed examination of Left politics and the 'communicative capitalism' which has perpetuated the Left's inaction and the radical and revolutionary take over of the New Right and Dean's The Communist Horizon. Read together they suggest radical solutions to radical banality in both discourse, inaction and the online fantasies of contemporary Left politics. It is both depressing and one of a paradoxical optimism, an 'optimistic violence', which is really worth considering seriously, his analysis is well worth engaging with.
This book was written by a twenty-four year old, which shows the various voices presented by Zer0, one of the most important series of books presently being produced in the UK, especially as a new generation of the Left: Owen Jones, Laurie Penny, Simon Hardy, and of course, J. D. Taylor. An inspiration to aspiring writers like myself.
I look forward to Mark Fisher's latest publication on Zer0: Ghosts of My Life, which I have been waiting for now for a couple of years, and the next work of Taylor and the up and coming New Radical Left in the UK.
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James
2.0 out of 5 stars Word soup
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2014
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There's not much else to say about this book other than it could have been written in half its number of pages.
The author seems to mistake density for profoundness.

I mean, there are literally whole sentences (!) repeated along the book.
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penguni
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, great subject, well written, good print quality.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 28, 2015
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Excellent book, great subject, well written, good print quality.
3 people found this helpful
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