View all notes
First, utopian thought rigorously analyses the current conjuncture and projects its tendencies out into the future. Whereas scientific approaches attempt to reduce discussions of the future to fit within a probabilistic framework, utopian thought recognises that the future is radically open. What may appear impossible today might become eminently possible. At their best, utopias include tensions and dynamism within themselves, rather than presenting a static image of a perfected society. [...]
In elaborating an image of the future, utopian thought also generates a viewpoint from which the present becomes open to critique. It suspends the appearance of the present as inevitable and brings to light aspects of the world that would otherwise go unnoticed, raising questions that must be constitutively excluded. [...]
[...] The direction of technological development is determined not only by technical and economic considerations, but also by political intentions. More than just seizing the means of production, this approach declares the need to invent new means of production. A final approach focuses on how existing technology contains occluded potentials that strain at our current horizon and how they might be repurposed. Under capitalism, technology’s potential is drastically constrained – reduced to a mere vehicle for generating profit and controlling workers. Yet potentials continue to exist in excess of these current uses. The task before us is to uncover the hidden potentials and link them up to scalable processes of change. [...]
[...] With the Arab Spring, meanwhile, unity was forged through opposition to shared tyrannical opponents, bringing together a disparate series of groups. However, these recent experiences demonstrate that a unity built solely upon opposition tends to break down when the opponent falls.
good thing to keep in mind
It has already been hinted at in earlier chapters, but media organisations are an essential part of any emergent political ecology aimed at building a new hegemony. The tasks involved in such a strategy demand a healthy media presence – creating a new common language, giving voice to the people, naming the antagonism, raising expectations, generating narratives that resonate with people and articulating in clear language the grievances we feel. It is these elements that provide the anchors for media narratives to be changed over time. Foundations and journalists are particularly well placed to make efforts at changing media narratives. It was no accident that the Mont Pelerin Society included numerous journalists among its members. This communication also has to be achieved in a way that resonates with everyday conversation. The jargon of academics is rightly deemed useless by most people. Leftist media organisations should not shy away from being approachable and entertaining, gleaning insights from the success of popular websites. At the same time, the left has typically focused on creating media spaces outside the mainstream, rather than trying to co-opt existing institutions and leaking more radical ideas into the mainstream. Too often, these news organisations end up simply preaching to the choir, pushing narratives that never escape their own insular echo-chamber. The internet has enabled everyone to have a voice, but it has not enabled everyone to have an audience. Mainstream media sources remain indispensable for this and will continue to do so in the future. Their ability to influence and alter public opinion through framing what is and is not ‘realistic’ remains surprisingly strong. If a counter-hegemonic project is to be successful, it will require an injection of radical ideas into the mainstream, and not just the building of increasingly fragmented audiences outside it. Indeed, one of the key lessons from the US experience with a basic income policy is that the framing of such issues in the media is central to its prospects of success. It is for these reasons that existing media organisations constitute a key battleground in the project set out here.
[...] A technical understanding of machines like these is essential to understanding how to interrupt them, and any future left must be as technically fluent as it is politically fluent. In the end, what is required is an analysis of the automation trends that are restructuring production and circulation, and a strategic understanding of where new points of leverage might develop.
this is like exactly what I wrote in my personal statement (and still believe), I feel so vindicated
a post-work world may generate immanent dynamics towards the rapid dissolution of capitalism, or the forces of reaction may co-opt the liberated desires under a new system of control. Concerns about the risks of political action have led parts of the contemporary left into a situation where they desire novelty, but a novelty without risk. Generic demands to experiment, create and prefigure are commonplace, but concrete proposals are all too often met with a wave of criticism outlining every possible point at which things might go wrong. In light of this dual tendency – for novelty, but against the risks inherent in social transformation – the allure of political ideas celebrating spontaneous ‘events’ becomes clearer. The event (as revolutionary rupture) becomes an expression of the desire for novelty without responsibility. The messianic event promises to shatter our stagnant world and bring us to a new stage of history, conveniently voided of the difficult work that is politics. The hard task ahead is to build new worlds while acknowledging that they will create novel problems. The best utopias are always riven by discord.
This imperative runs in opposition to the kind of precautionary principle that seeks to eliminate the contingency and risk involved in making decisions. On strong readings, the precautionary principle aims to convert epistemic uncertainty into a guardianship of the status quo, gently turning away those who would seek to build a better future with the imperative to ‘do more research’. We might also consider here that the precautionary principle contains an almost inherent lacuna: it ignores the risks of its own application. In seeking to err always on the side of caution, and hence of eliminating risk, it contains a blindness to the dangers of inaction and omission. While risks need to be reasonably hedged, a fuller appreciation of the travails of contingency implies that we are usually not better off taking the precautionary path. The precautionary principle is designed to close off the future and eliminate contingency, when in fact the contingency of high-risk adventures is precisely what leads to a more open future [...] Building the future means accepting the risk of unintended consequences and imperfect solutions. We may always be trapped, but at least we can escape into better traps.
this is great and weirdly DFW-esque
[...] We must expand our collective imagination beyond what capitalism allows. Rather than settling for marginal improvements in battery life and computer power, the left should mobilise dreams of decarbonising the economy, space travel, robot economies – all the traditional touchstones of science fiction – in order to prepare for a day beyond capitalism. Neoliberalism, as secure as it may seem today, contains no guarantee of future survival. Like every social system we have ever known, it will not last forever. Our task now is to invent what happens next.
The standard Marxist response to full automation is to point to its ‘objective’ limits by arguing that capitalism will never eliminate its source of surplus value (i.e. labour). But this argument confuses a systemic outcome with an individual incentive, an internal barrier with an absolute limit, and a political struggle with a theoretical tension. In the first place, the individual imperatives are to increase the productivity of technology in order to gain extra surplus value relative to other capitalists. The systemic outcome of this is detrimental for all capitalists (less surplus value being produced), but still remains beneficial for individual capitalists, and will therefore continue. In the second place, the limits of the capitalist mode of production are mistakenly taken to be the limits of any possible change. If capitalism cannot survive with full automation, it is deemed that full automation must not be possible. Such a position makes capitalism the end-point of history, rejecting in advance any postcapitalist possibility. Finally, the theoretically derived tension between increased productivity, rising organic composition and a reduced rate of profit is taken to present a situation that capital will never allow to occur because of its systemic effects. Missing from this account is a political movement that would struggle to push capitalism beyond itself. In other words, the argument that full automation will never occur simply posits that political struggle is ineffective. In the end, such a line of reasoning gives up on every critical account of capitalism, and accepts it as the final stage of history. [...]
For example, recent fast food strikes brought forth numerous predictions that raising the minimum wage would lead to automation. Given how deplorable these jobs are, we consider their automation an unambiguous positive.
footnote 161. i actually take issue with this because they don't go into the negative short-term (or even long-term) effects for the workers themselves but maybe it's discussed in another section? or the reader is supposed to assume that the authors of course care about their plight, but it's just not relevant in the context of a long-term strategy? will have to think about this more
[...] 'Everyone strives to reach the Law,' says the man, 'so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?' The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: 'No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.'
just a classic Kafka passage