Where Acid Communism Tripped: Orientalism, Racial Capitalism, and Colonialism

• In Event: 50660 - Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 3: Power and Stratification

Abstract

Acid Communism is Mark Fischer’s project for seeking 'the outside' of sociopolitical hegemony. This can be accomplished by “the exorcising of ‘the specter of a world which could be free’”. We are unable to see a world beyond capitalism because of hegemony and capitalist realism. Acid communism offers ways for this veil to be challenged. One way to accomplish this is revisiting the 1960s and 70s to understand how much potential for a revolution was occurring in ideologies, but also how neoliberalism and capitalist realism were used to squash it. The first part of this analysis demonstrates how Fischer theoretically relies on Marxism and the Frankfurt School for ways to achieve class consciousness through challenging hegemony. The latter portion argues that this interpretation of the 1960s and 70s is too narrowly focused on the experiences of Western Whites. While Fischer’s interpretation is not inaccurate, it can be nuanced by peeling back additional layers of hegemony that led to neoliberalism and capitalist realism beyond just a response to emerging class and psychedelic consciousness. The guiding question of this critique is: how would analyzing these examples through a lens of racial capitalism, colonialism, or orientalism alter the perception of this ‘specter of a free world’? I implore others to contribute to the project of revolution by pushing this critical analysis further and building discourse that better exorcises these specters through a lens of racial capitalism, colonialism, and orientalism. This will complicate and demonstrate that a transition from capitalist realism to acid communism must reckon with a consciousness derived from colonialism and racism that continues to haunt hegemony. I encourage others to analyze the ‘specters of the free world’ to see how capitalist realism coerces narratives for this mode of production to continue proliferating.

Author

• Alexander Hagan, University of Illinois at Chicago