The world today can feel soul crushing. Whether you’re churning out emails in a cubicle for eight hours a day, are forced to sew t-shirts around the clock that are only worn once, or are bombarded by headlines of sea level rise, droughts, and disasters, the crushing weight of global capitalism feels inescapable. But all is not lost. While the destruction of climate chaos and the chains of fossil capitalism feels suffocating, as science-fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin argues, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and
changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” The story is a powerful tool, one that harnesses the future to create change in the present. Stories plant seeds. Beautiful visions that have the potential to germinate into alternative worlds that show us that business-as-usual is not inevitable. So, as we struggle to upend the current status quo of rampant emissions, and extraction at any cost, what role do visions of the future hold? Are they even useful, and what stories and artistic utopias are out there that might bring a light to the looming darkness of climate chaos? What is Utopia? (And is it useful?) In the days of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, utopias were under attack. Convinced that the utopian socialism of their predecessors was not an effective way to end capitalism, Marx and Engels rejected any form of utopianism. They immersed themselves, instead, in the material realities of
history and developed critiques alongside a theory of change that they called scientific socialism. This framework, unlike utopian socialism, argued that society wouldn’t be changed by appealing to reason or ideals; it would only be transformed by changing the material conditions of the economy. Or in other words, the direct overthrow of the ruling class by the working class. As a result, Marx and Engels were critical of sketching out what possible future worlds would look like and relying on those visions to create revolution. For them, socialism was to be achieved not by
attempting to appeal to peoples minds, but instead by revealing and exacerbating the already present contradictions within capitalism. The core of which was the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class. This is not to say that Marxists never once dreamed of the future, nor that speculative fiction is useless in the struggle for a world beyond fossil capitalism. But instead, that as much as we need the backbone of scientific socialism to critique fossil capitalism and guide us through ending it, we also need visions of the future that give us something to struggle for. We need to imagine what’s on the horizon. Because those imaginings, those brushstrokes of the future, are what fuel our fire. Visualizing different worlds,
at least for me, gives energy and purpose to the hard struggle of the present. So, bringing these fictions to the page, to the canvas, and to the screen are powerful tools of revolution. Which is why, as Ashley C. Ford writes, “The goal of oppressors is to limit your imagination about what is possible without them, so you might never imagine more for yourself & the world you live in. Imagine something better. Get curious about what it actually takes to make it happen. Then fight for it every day.” But these utopias of visionary fictions don’t have to be, and indeed shouldn’t be, perfect goalposts that railroad us into a strict path towards liberation. Indeed, as degrowth scholar Giorgos Kallis writes, paraphrasing Marxist scholar David
Harvey “we should oppose utopias that are meant as models or blueprints – not so much because they are unrealistic, but because the realization of a perfect ideal tolerates no objection and crushes everything that stands in its way.” Kallis goes on to say that we need “dialectical utopias,” ones that are contradictory, messy, and incomplete that challenge us and make us reflect. Ultimately, this means we need to envision, in the words of the Zapatistas, “a world where many worlds fit.” Countless authors, filmmakers, artists, and creatives need to develop a diverse range of future worlds. So that it’s not just Elon Musk [clip of elon’s future] or a white guy like me controlling the narrative of what’s possible. So, if we know that these visionary fictions are
crucial to sustaining the fire of an ecologically just struggle for a better world, who’s dreaming up these futures right now? Which artists are bringing light to the darkness of climate chaos? Visions of the Future: The worlds of the future are bright, and coursing through these future worlds are political currents that show us that a life without capitalism is possible. Degrowth, eco-anarchism, and eco-socialism all seek an economy beyond capitalism that is just and ecologically sound. But often, the political discussions of how to achieve these tendencies lack engaging narratives. It’s hard to get excited about the future when technical terms like “means of production” and “metabolic rift” are all that you hear. While it is crucial to understand the political and economic theory behind tendencies like socialism, we need stories to fill those frameworks with emotion and passion. The story is the spoonful
of sugar that makes the medicine go down, or the trojan horse that plants the seed of resistance by revealing the beauty and flaws of more liberatory worlds. Politicians in power have long understood the pontency of envisioning future worlds. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, for example, didn’t just submit a jargon-heavy Green New Deal proposal to congress and wipe her hands clean, she, together with Naomi Klein, painted her own vision of what a future with a Green New Deal could be in order to sway peoples hearts. [XXX Play clip]. And on the campaign trail, candidates will often ground their platform in personal anecdotes. [play clip] Because as neuroscientist Paul Zak reveals in his research, when we hear a narrative rich with emotion and tension, our brain releases chemicals that influence us to create change. So, for the anti-capitalist climate movement, we need
not only direct action and political struggle, but also stories. Narratives and visuals that reveal suffering and success not just in the present, but visionary fictions that explore the possibilities of the future. And there are already countless artists out there doing exactly that. One of the core examples is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. A sci-fi classic that delves into the specific contours of ecological anarchism. The Dispossessed gives us two possible futures. One on the resource rich planet of Urras that squanders it’s abundant resources through an overproducing market economy, and another on the resource scarce planet of Anarres, a planet of exiled anarchists who thrive communally on very little. The Dispossessed is ultimately a story of opposite
planets. Opposite in the sense that the planet of Annarres is the moon of Urras and vise-versa, but also opposite in the sense that, as degrowth theorists Giorgios Kallis and Hug March write, “Anarres is what Urras is not and Urras is what Anarres is not: dispossessed-possessed, barren-lush, horizontal-hierarchical.” Le Guin doesn’t just tell us what anarchism can be, she shows us, through, for example, the small vignettes of Anarresti children who are unable to conceive of a prison because their society doesn’t function on the punitive basis of our current world. Or through the massive afforestation projects that people of Anarres
collectively maintain. The Dispossessed reveals the quiet yet messy possibilities of a liberatory future. As philosopher Andre Gorz notes, the book crafts “The most striking description I know of the seductions—and snares—of…anarchist society."And the work of speculative fiction and ecological utopias has blossomed since Le Guin published her book in 1974. Solarpunk, for example, has witnessed a bright new emergence of artists and writers developing futures that look very different from the capitalist extraction economies of today. Animation studio The Line’s
solarpunk world of electric apple harvesters, lush farming cooperatives run on solar and wind power, and small technologies that tighten the connection between humanity and nature is a perfect example of a Solarpunk future. One that mends the relationship between nature and humanity through appropriate and community-centric technologies, co-operatives, and decentralization. The imaginings of Solarpunk artists reveal that an ecological future doesn’t have to mean living in scarcity or giving things up. It instead shows us how beautiful the world could be when we live
with appropriate abundance. Susan Kaye Quinn’s short story The Seven Sisters gives us another glimpse into a Solarpunk world. One that isn’t a romanticized and unrealistic view of the future, but instead reveals that struggle and loss will still exist in a post-capitalist ecological world.
Quinn’s future zooms in on a tea farming co-operative in the American south that seeks to decolonize tea through education and fair practices. At the farm, a close knit community of chosen family all grows the tea together, [“The whole farm met the mandates to be net-zero on carbon and make your own energy, but the tea house was quite the spectacle of green tech, from the passive solar design and geothermal heat pumps to the solar glass windows and rooftop windmills.”]. But in a very Solarpunk manner, the farm doesn’t rely on the backbreaking work of harvesting tea in the blistering sun of a hotter world, they instead use solar powered harvest bots. But of course not everything is pure bliss. The Seven Sisters co-operative struggles to stay afloat after a heat dome scorches seven acres of their crop to ashes and their harvest drones fall into disrepair. [“She had only four harvest bots running, out of 10 in the fleet, and it wasn’t near enough. Two were out for repairs, the rest needing one thing or another. Aubree, the farm’s bot keeper, was laid up sick in the guest house.”] Quinn shows that while the future
is promising, there is still loss and pain. Revealing that an ecologically just world will certainly be more pleasant to live within, but it won’t be without scuffs and bruises. Alongside Solarpunk there are also visions of decolonial, anti-racist realities embodied in the afrofuturistic vision of movies like Black Panther. [Play Black Panther Clip] Specifically the capital city of Wakanda which shows a vibrant urban center that seamlessly melds accessible transit, with pedestrian centric roads, local fisherie, thrumming markets, and the integration of advanced technology in the service of ecological living. All the while trying to answer the question: what does the world look
like without the destructive influence of white capitalist colonialism. This imagery is crucial, and is expanded in the Indigenous futures of storytellers like Gina McGuire who drills down into the complicated impacts a future where meat is banned [“It had been 20 years since the meat industry had been shut down and U.S. production had fully switched over to plant-based replacements…”] and how that ban might impact those indigenous to the Hawaiian island: [“He, himself, had never liked the idea of the plant-based proteins, of meat-being-made and had watched with fear for his people, as the rising protein prices had come along with the industry. He had watched as their waters had been increasingly
fished by all those who couldn’t afford the protein, returning to this ancestral icebox.”] Each of these fictions grounds notions of degrowth, anarchism, ecosocialism, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism in tangible vignettes. They imbue these politics with humanity and emotions, and allows us to stretch out our legs and walk around in the worlds we’re fighting for, if just for a moment. But there are also future visions from scholars and activists, those that want to
bring the power of the story to their political framework. This includes work stretching all the way back to utopian socialist William Morris’ 1890 book, News From Nowhere, which describes a socialist world in the year 2000. A world without private property, hierarchies, money, class, or prisons. Since Morris, there has long been a tradition of transforming the political into
the fictional to give the struggle emotion and purpose. Fiction allows the reader or viewer to step into another world or another person’s shoes and feel the result. As professor of English, Patricia Valderrama writes, “Fiction can transmit information really effectively in non-technical language.” Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass tap into this tradition in the last chapter of their book Half-Earth Socialism. After mapping out the political technicalities of Half-Earth Socialism through discussions of planning algorithms, transitions to renewable economies, and creating a decolonial and biodiverse world, they paint a very tangible narrative of a person waking up in a future that has achieved some level of Half-Earth Socialism. While the world
the protagonist inhabits does sound beautiful, Pendergrass and Vettese attempt not to romanticize their vision. The solar factory workers still want to go on vacation, albeit in this future world, that vacation is provided for by the community, [“...Edith mentioned the extra vacation time, and I do like taking the train to the beach and staying in one of those fancy houses they converted into a resort.”] and there are still cafeteria arguments on exactly what the cap on energy usage should be. [“I can’t believe those self-righteous people you hang out with on that farm… are pushing for a 750-watt quota… I’ll just be voting for a little more energy; 1,750 watts is not luxurious, and you know it.”] The characters still put in the work harvesting at the local cooperative-owned farm that services the regional area. But at the same time, it’s
a completely different future from our present. There is no fossil fuel extraction and the economy is democratically and ecologically planned. There are shared communal living situations, not unlike very nice dorms, where families can raise their kids together, share in community meals, and enjoy quiet games of cards after a filling meal. But this future lays out just one vignette of political possibility. In contrast, the youtube channel Prolekult, shows something radically
different: a world built on hemp-based production. An economy that sequesters far more carbon than it produces and builds a socialist and ultimately a communist world in the husk of a capitalist one: [“reindustrialization of the globe with a plant-based economy. We must increase the production of goods using a combination of the natural sciences engineering and carbon negative raw materials'']. All of these worlds, from coastal waters of Hawa’ii to the deserts
of the Annares reveal the energizing possibilities of a post-capitalist zero carbon world. But these are just possibilities. To make the many worlds of our imagination real, we need to join the struggle of building liberatory, zero carbon, anti-capitalist, right now. But where do we start?
Building futures today: [“Daydreams are dangerous. Daydreams are pieces of imagination, they are bits of poetry. They are the balloons that fly up in history.”] That’s Murray Bookchin, a political theorist who believed in the importance of developing an ecological vision of the world that seeps into the unconscious minds of the masses and sparks change. And hopefully the glimpses of the future worlds we’ve just witnessed do just that. But daydreams
are a double edged sword. They can change us, but they can also paralyze us– trapping us in the comfort and beauty of an unrealized future. The purpose of these speculative fictions is not to numb the pain of the current ecological and capitalist crisis, it’s to ignite a fire under us by revealing that other worlds are possible. We only get to live in those messy, complicated, but beautiful futures if we struggle for them in the present. This means building those decolonial
farmers collectives right now, like the Seven Sisters farm in Quinn’s short story. It means, for some in Atlanta, defending their largest remaining urban forest from destruction. It means organizing your workplace to demand stronger control of production, and it means developing ecological, post-capitalist solutions like the regional environmental planning of Half-Earth Socialism. This work of building those visionary fictions today, is exemplified in the anarchist practices of Nowtopias. Developing more ecological and just pockets of the world right now that seek
self-administration, DIY attitudes, and a strong relationship with nature. The freetown of Christiania right in the middle of Copenhagen is a perfect example of this Nowtopia model. After a group of anarchists and ecological archivists squatted in an abandoned military base, the Danish government eventually ceded rights to the community. A community that, while still having to navigate the realities of living in a capitalist economy, is carving out ecological and anarchists organizational models that are reminiscent of the Ursula K. Le Guins’s Anarres: [“on some fundamental areas we've tried to work on being independent we collect our own garbage we do our own road works for the younger children we have our own children's institutions”] Christiania is just one future world, realized today. There are so many other communities out there, like the 2,500 strong Catalan Integral Cooperative in Spain, struggling for worlds beyond ecologically destructive capitalism. So I invite you
to dream. Take a moment out of your day and sculpt a beautiful, ecological, post-capitalist, decolonial, and just glimpse of the future. Write it down if you want to, draw it if you can, but most importantly start the work, and struggle to make that world possible today.
2023-04-10