It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Since 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system - a situation that the banking crisis of 2008 reinforced rather than undermined. The book analyzes the development and main elements of this capitalist realism as an experienced ideological framework. Using examples from politics, cinema, literature, work, and education, it argues that this capitalist realism that colors every aspect of modern experience is anything but realistic, and wonders how capitalism can be challenged through its contradictions.

"In the 1980s, when Jameson began to promote his position on postmodernism, there were still political alternatives to capitalism, at least in name. What we face today, however, is a much deeper, much more corrosive sense of exhaustion, cultural and political sterility. In the 1980s, the "Really Existing Socialism" still persisted, although it was in its final phase of collapse. In Britain, the divisive lines of class competition were revealed entirely in incidents such as the 1984-85 miners' strike. The defeat of the miners was a significant moment in the development of capitalist realism, significant both in its symbolic dimension and in its practical results. The closure of the pits was based precisely on the argument that keeping them open was not "economically realistic," and the miners were given the role of the last actors in a doomed proletarian romance. The 1980s were the period when capitalist realism was supported and established, when Margaret Thatcher's doctrine that "there is no alternative" - a more comprehensive slogan for capitalist realism could not be imagined - became a harshly self-fulfilling prophecy."

The long, dark night of the end of history must be perceived as a giant opportunity. The oppressive erosion of the means of capitalist realism that still radiates alternative political and economic possibilities may have had a disproportionately large result. The smallest event can open a hole in the gray curtain of reaction that has marked the horizons of possibilities under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly everything is possible again."