Fred Block, capitalist illusions, inhabiting post-capitalist desires

We welcome Fred Block’s close interrogation of the term ‘capitalism’. Since writing The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) and initiating what has become the Diverse Economies school of thought, we have been very careful to distinguish capitalist practices from capitalism (Gibson-Graham, 1996). The latter carries the baggage of systemic logics and structural closure, is used as a lazy blanket explanatory term, deadens the imagination of ‘other worlds’ and shuts down politics. The former begs theoretical specification and empirical curiosity and, we have found, opens us up to the current possibilities of non-capitalist practices as well as a huge array of capitalist practices, including ones that might be worth working with as we face the challenges of living in the Anthropocene and surviving impacts of The Great Acceleration.