Groucho Marxism

I have suffered from depression for most of my life; and I am not alone. According to data from the Office for National Statistics, approximately 1 in 6 adults in the UK experience mental health problems like depression or anxiety in any given week. Furthermore, according to data from the NHS Business Services Authority, around 1 in 6 people in England were prescribed at least one antidepressant medication in 2023/24; and a 2023 BBC investigation found that over two million people in England have been taking antidepressants for five years or more. Moreover, usage of these medications has risen for six consecutive years. The UK is clearly experiencing a significant, growing mental health crisis. But what is causing this?

Recently, some researchers have argued that the structure of a competitive, profit-driven society is fundamentally incompatible with human psychological needs, instead serving as a mental illness-generating system. One such researcher is British medic Dr. James Davis, who in 2021 published a book entitled Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis. Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Davies argues we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem of mental ill-health. Rather than viewing mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer’s brain. In effect, we have resorted to blaming the victim.

The standard medical explanation for depression is that it is caused by ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain (whatever that means). Davis argues instead that mental illness is caused by a combination of modern environmental and economic stressors. There are several mechanisms through which this manifests. The pressure to secure basic needs such as housing and healthcare causes significant anxiety and depression, especially among lower-income groups. Growing income gaps also directly correlate to poor mental health outcomes. Modern work environments characterized by precarious employment, long hours, and high demands create a culture of burnout and mental fatigue. And the work that people do often lacks meaning, leading to feelings of alienation, inadequacy, and disempowerment.

In his 2015 book The Burnout Society, the South Korean philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han characterizes today’s society as a pathological landscape of conditions such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality disorder, and burnout. And in his 2017 book ‘Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, Han argues that modern capitalism has moved beyond the simple struggle between classes described by Marx: “When production is immaterial, everyone already owns the means of production, him- or herself. The neoliberal system is no longer a class system in the proper sense. It does not consist of classes that display mutual antagonism. This is what accounts for the system’s stability.”

Han argues further that we have all effectively become self-exploiters: “Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise. People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.” According to Han, this shift from class struggle to inner struggle is the primary cause of our current malaise. That’s not to say that the conflict between workers and capitalists no longer exists; clearly it does, and is as relevant as ever in understanding the workings of capitalism. Han’s point is that under modern neoliberal capitalism, us workers do not believe that we are subjugated “subjects” but rather “projects” that are always “refashioning and reinventing ourselves.”

Thus, according to Han, modern capitalism is as much state of mind as it is a socio-economic system. This idea has a lot in common with the ‘capitalist realism’ concept popularized by British philosopher Mark Fisher in his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. In this brilliant little book, Fisher defined capitalist realism as “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” Elsewhere, Fisher wrote extensively about the link between capitalism and mental health, stating that “the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals.”

Fisher also wrote about his own struggles with depression. Tragically, these struggles eventually became too much for him and he committed suicide in 2017 at the age of 48. This is far from uncommon: around 7,000 people die by suicide in the UK every year. I myself have known two people who have committed suicide in the last 5 years. The work of researchers such as Davis, Han, and Fisher suggests that these deaths should be added to the list of people who are killed by capitalism and highlights once again what a dystopian system capitalism is.