Mark Fisher On Neo Liberalism and Individualism (2016)

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Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: stage-1 acceptance ruling — lane unclear approved for opus-only hosting; mp3 tier deferred pending a disk volume). Series: standalone. Source: audio original (.mp3).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  And, you know, the waves of this democratic socialism throughout the US and in Europe and elsewhere also, and that is what had to be stopped. That is what had to be stopped, eliminated from even a possibility of existing. And in place of that then, this mandatory individualism. But the individualism of neoliberalism…

• 00:00:55

  that kind of a supervised condition. And I think that is where we are at the moment. Fundamentally, I think that this form of capitalist exploitation or capitalist super-exploitation is no longer a commodity exploitation. If we can look back in some ways at the period of commodity exploitation, with some, to some…

• 00:01:30

  the commodity, you know, had to involve workers. You know, workers had to produce it, you had to exploit workers in order to get it. And the commodity was separate from the workers, it was something extracted from the workers' labour. Whereas now, there's a form of more direct exploitation, which is, I think…

• 00:01:55

  Particularly if you're in the cultural sector or whatever. Well, because you can promote yourself. You know, promotional remuneration. And this injunction that we promote ourselves at all times, that is totally second nature now. And certainly naturalised heavily through social media, etc. Again, it's something…

• 00:02:27

  That it's doing you a favour, right? If... since, you know, since work is a form of... allows you to develop... allows you to accrue this kind of reputational capital, then the capitalists are giving... doing you a favour by giving you a job. You shouldn't be expected to be paid as well. Right? And this is clearly…