In the prologue to The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism became the Religion of Modernity, Eugene McCarraher says,
Words such as “paradise” or “love” or “communion” are certainly absent from our political vernacular, exluded on account of their “utopian” connotations or their lack of steely-eyed “realism.” Although this is a book about the past, I have always kept before me its larger contemporary religious, philosophical, and political implications. The book should make these clear enough; I will only say here that one of my broader intentions is to challenge the canons of “realism,” especially as defined in the “science” of economics. As the master science of desire in advanced capitalist nations, economics and its acolytes define the parameters of our moral and political imaginations, patrolling the boundaries of possibility and censoring any more generous conception of human affairs.
“Realism” is a deeply ideological word, and in a very negative sense. “Realism,” in other words, says more and other than what it pretends to say.
“Realism” pretends that it refers simply to “that which simply is, or that which is possible.” But we all know, given the countless times we have heard the word used and in its usual contexts, that what is or what is possible as designated by “realism” always has to do with what we wish were not real, that which thwarts our desires, or that which simply can’t live up to them.
“Realism” is invariably linked to some reality (present or possible) that cannot be what we wish of it. “Realism” has to do with telling us we cannot get what we want, and that we may as well accept this fact.
What are we saying if we tell someone to “be realistic”? We are almost certainly not telling him or her to see that the situation is or will become much better than he or she imagines. Almost certainly we are trying to say that things are worse than this person has imagined, or will be worse than our addressee hopes.
So what am I saying? Simply this: that “realism” is a subtle, powerful, and very commonly used ideological battleaxe deployed not only to diminish hope in a given context—indeed, in the name of honesty, one might well be justified in doing this sometimes—but to assault hope in principle. The sinister and dishonest ideology of “realism” is that it equates reality with thwarted needs or desires; it subtly curses the positive, the good things in life, with the label of unreality: if something is good, even if it is undeniably extant (and “realism” is always very reluctant to see the good, literally blinds itself in its presence) that good is somehow not real.
In effect, we have what might be described as a kind of dystopic Platonism. Only the negative, the regrettable, is entirely real in this rhetoric.
And what could be more useful to a society that wants to destroy hope at every turn? What could be more useful to a society that wants millionaires and billionaires to be in charge and desires that no one will ever question this self-evidently absurd and unjust situation?