My readership deserves a more optimistic perspective, and I believe that Leftism is based on optimism, not cynicism. Cynicism is what turns old radicals into liberals, and liberals into moderates, and conservatives. It’s what turns conservatives into the Far Right. That’s not for me. I have hope, not for parties or our current political system, or our current socioeconomic order, but for people.
So, I am going to attempt outline my mind-bogglingly
simple theory about how a post-scarcity future is not science fiction.
Ready for this?
We could have a post-scarcity, post-disparity economy now,
if we got rid of capitalism and put technology to work for the working class.
How, you ask me?
Since the 1960s, we have had the technological capability
to build a slower-than-light but long-ranged interstellar starship that could
reach another solar system within my lifetime. It could be powered by any number
of nuclear drives, likely a variant of the Orion Drive (nuclear pulse drive) or
another existing model of interstellar propulsion, like an Enzmann Starship or a Medusa Drive (fission sail).
The technology exists, but it is monopolized by governments and private
industry. And that is why it has never been done, not because we can’t, but
because our leaders are unwilling to take a risk that would threaten their own
power.
Any civilization capable of this feat- and we are such
a civilization- would also be able to eliminate most scarcity and establish a totally classless, much more egalitarian society. It would not be utopia because new social problems would
arise, but a classless society, in my mind, could better navigate the nuances
of those problems. For example, automation or artificial intelligence would not be a threat to a work-voluntary society, and people who find meaning in work could still labor out of passion or love. We don’t
need AI or even such a starship to do this, merely having the capability to do build such a starship is enough. It would be more than enough energy to feed, clothe and shelter the
entire planet's poulation, and it would be concurrent with full wealth redistribution. Money
would go the way of the dinosaurs, and the future would be bright. Not perfect,
but better.
The theme of my novel, “Rentkids,” which I am
attempting to publish, is that “better than nothing” is never “enough.” Some
people call this idealistic. I think it’s realistic, and pragmatic, from an
anarchist perspective. Anarchy is not chaos. Anarchy is the democratization of
daily life, work and family. The Starfarers in my stories and novels, such as “Rentkids,”
are a nomadic group of spacefaring revolutionaries. Their society is not
perfect- they have their biases, such as when confronted with the hyper
capitalist world of Tantalus II where the main characters hail from. But their
society is egalitarian enough that their humanity can wither away those biases.
I don’t believe society will ever be perfect. All societies are complex and
nuanced. But I think we can navigate nuance and complexity better and with justice if we liberate
technology from the elites. I don’t believe in a technocratic meritocracy. I
don’t like the fetishization of intelligence or its conflation with morality,
ethics or values. But I am not an anti-intellectual, and I am anti-elitist. I
believe anarchism resolves these conflicts. It resolves church and state. It
resolves science and religion. Anarchism is the liberation of people from division
and conquest by the ruling class. To do this, we must liberate ourselves from
bourgeois values. We, the People, must aim to rise not from our class, but with
our class, in the words of Eugene Debs, labor organizer and one of the founders
of the IWW.
I believe in Eugene Debs’ credo, quoted from his statement upon conviction under the Espionage Act in 1918, for which he was persecuted for opposing conscription in a war fought mostly by monarchs and the political class of liberal democracies:
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on Earth. I said them, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
I believe in the spirit of that statement. I believe it encapsulates solidarity. I believe it is a blueprint for a better future.
It’s not science fiction. It’s liberation.